SO GOOD QUOTES

  • THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BETROTHAL

    “Jesus is God of the Impossible; my powerlessness shows his power; my insignificance as a creature shows his being as the creator.

    There are moments when God makes us feel the extreme limits of our powerlessness; then, and only then, do we understand our nothingness right down to the depths.

    For so many years, for too many years, I have fought against my powerlessness, my weakness. Often I have refused to admit it to myself, preferring to appear in public with a nice mask of self assurance.

    It is pride which will not let us admit this powerlessness; pride which won’t let us accept being inadequate. God has made me understand this, little by little.

    Now I don’t fight any more; I try to accept myself. I try to face up to myself without illusions, dreams or fantasies. . . Now I contrast my powerlessness with the powerfulness of God, the heap of my sins with the completeness of his mercy, and I place the abyss of my smallness beneath the abyss of his greatness.

    I seem now to have reached a means of encountering him in a way I have never known before; a togetherness I had never experienced before, an awareness of his love I had never previously felt. Yes, it is really my misery which attracts his power, my wounds which shout after him, my nothingness which makes him throw himself open to me.

    And meeting between God’s totality and man’s nothingness is the greatest wonder of creation. It is the most beautiful betrothal because its bond is a love which gives itself freely and a love which accepts.”

    —Carlo Carretto

  • “What we really want to do is what we are really meant to do. When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us.”

    The Artist’s Way
    Julia Cameron

  • “I was interested in everything and committed to nothing.”

    —Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

  • “The more intelligent, the less sane.”

    —George Orwell

  • “As soon as the flame is burning within you, run; for you do not know when it will go out and leave you in darkness.”

    —John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent

  • “Attend to yourself in the presence of your brethren, and never try to appear more correct than they are in any circumstance whatever. For if you do, you will have wrought a double ill: you will sting them by your false and hypocritical zeal and you will give yourself a motive for presumption.”

    —John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent

  • “Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.”

    —St. Augustine

  • Let books be your dining table, 

    And you shall be full of delights.

    Let them be your mattress,

    And you shall sleep restful nights.

    —St. Ephrem the Syrian

  • “If you are an ardent reader, seek not brilliant and erudite texts; otherwise the demon of haughtiness will strike your heart. But like a wise bee that gathers honey from flowers, so also through your reading obtain healing for your soul.”

    —St. Ephrem the Syrian

  • “I don’t know what good it is to know so much and be smart as whips and all if it doesn’t make you happy.”

    Franny and Zooey
    J.D. Salinger