JoAnn > JoAnn's Quotes

“Learn to like what doesn't cost much.
Learn to like reading, conversation, music.
Learn to like plain food, plain service, plain cooking.
Learn to like fields, trees, brooks, hiking, rowing, climbing hills.
Learn to like people, even though some of them may be different...different from you.
Learn to like to work and enjoy the satisfaction doing your job as well as it can be done.
Learn to like the song of birds, the companionship of dogs.
Learn to like gardening, puttering around the house, and fixing things.
Learn to like the sunrise and sunset, the beating of rain on the roof and windows, and the gentle fall of snow on a winter day.
Learn to keep your wants simple and refuse to be controlled by the likes and dislikes of others.”
― Lowell Bennion

“It will be very interesting one day to follow the pattern of our life as it is spread out like a beautiful tapestry. As long as we live here we see only the reverse side of the weaving, and very often the pattern, with its threads running wildly, doesn't seem to make sense. Some day, however, we shall understand.
In looking back over the years we can discover how a red thread goes through the pattern of our life: the Will of God.”
― Maria von Trapp

“Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
― Marjorie Pay Hinckley

“There is in every true woman's heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity; but which kindles up, and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.”
― Washington Irving, The Sketch Book

“We women have a lot to learn about simplifying our lives. We have to decide what is important and then move along at a pace that is comfortable for us. We have to develop the maturity to stop trying to prove something. We have to learn to be content with what we are.”
― Marjorie Pay Hinckley

“This is my invariable advice to people: Learn how to cook- try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless, and above all have fun!”
― Julia Child, My Life in France

“And Dorothea..she had no dreams of being praised above other women.

Feeling that there was always something better which she might have done if she had only been better and known better, her full nature spent itself in deeds which left no great name on the earth, but the effect of her being on those around her was incalculable.

For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts and on all those Dorotheas who life faithfully their hidden lives and rest in unvisited tombs. Middlemarch”
― George Eliot

“Your children are the greatest gift God will give to you and their souls the heaviest responsibility He will place in your hands. When you are old, nothing else you’ve done will have mattered…”
― Lisa Wingate, Tending Roses

“I understood now that all of us have that place inside that wants to be part of something, that needs the comfort and companionship of loved ones. Within each of us, there is an empty room, and when we open the door, light flows in. The wider we open it, and the longer we leave it open, the brighter our souls become.”
― Lisa Wingate, Tending Roses

“We ate the lunch with painful politeness and avoided discussing its taste. I made sure not to apologize for it. This was a rule of mine.
I don't believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations over the food you make...
Usually one's cooking is better than one thinks it is. And if the food is vile,...then the cook must simply grit her teeth and bear it with a smile- and learn from her mistakes.”
― Julia Child, My Life in France

“We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I have for the first time found what I can truly love–I have found you. You are my sympathy–my better self–my good angel–I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wrap my existence about you–and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.”
― Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

“Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”
― C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“The wishbone will never replace the backbone”
― Will Henry

“My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go...”
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

“So be sure when you step, Step with care and great tact. And remember that life's A Great Balancing Act. And will you succeed? Yes! You will, indeed! (98 and ¾ percent guaranteed) Kid, you'll move mountains.”
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go!

“We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls. ”
― Mother Teresa

“If you judge people, you have no time to love them.”
― Mother Teresa

“The saints are the sinners who keep on trying.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“In his pursuit of the dream, he was being constantly subjected to tests of his persistence and courage. So he could not be hasty, nor impatient. If he pushed forward impulsively, he would fail to see the signs and omens left by God along his path.

God placed them along my path.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Love is, without a doubt, the basis of everything. Not some abstract, hard-to-fathom kind of love but the day-to-day kind that everyone knows-the kind of love we feel when we look at our spouse and our children, or even our animals. In its purest and most powerful form, this love is not jealous or selfish, but unconditional. This is the reality of realities, the incomprehensibly glorious truth of truths that lives and breathes at the core of everything that exists or will ever exist, and no remotely accurate understanding of who and what we are can be achieved by anyone who does not know it, and embody it in all of their actions.”
― Eben Alexander, Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife

“Dew settles without the fanfare of thunder or patter of falling rain, yet our wet feet in the morning still tell us there is something there. Sometimes miracles are like that. There is no overwhelming proof, but deep inside we know.”
― Chris Stewart, Ted Stewart

“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations get corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”
― Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

“We, in this country, in this generation, are - by destiny rather than by choice - the watchmen on the walls of world freedom.”
― John F. Kennedy

“To live well—to live within your means and to avoid the seduction of the material world. That is what I call prospering.”
― Jennifer L. Scott, Lessons from Madame Chic: 20 Stylish Secrets I Learned While Living in Paris