Kathryn > Kathryn's Quotes

“Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.”
― Augustine of Hippo

“There is no saint without a past, no sinner without a future.”
― St. Augustine

“In order to discover the character of people we have only to observe what they love.”
― St. Augustine

“There can only be two basic loves... the love of God unto the forgetfulness of self, or the love of self unto the forgetfulness and denial of God.”
― St. Augustine

“Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.”
― Augustine of Hippo Augustine of Hippo

“It’s not in the book or in the writer that readers discern the truth of what they read; they see it in themselves, if the light of truth has penetrated their minds.”
― Augustine of Hippo

“RESIST no thought; RETAIN no thought; REACT to no thought; RETURN to the sacred word.”
― Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening

“It's not about right belief; it's about right practice.”
― Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind

“Kingdom of Heaven is really a metaphor for a state of consciousness.”
― Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind

“It’s very, very simple. You sit, either in a chair or on a prayer stool or mat, and allow your heart to open toward that invisible but always present Origin of all that exists.”
― Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening

“Meditation is the tool you use to “upgrade your operating system,” to move from that “either/or” thinking of the binary mind into the more spacious heart awareness that sustains the wisdom way of knowing.”
― Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind

“At the center of our being is a point of pure nothingness which is untouched by sin and illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark that belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God written in us. It is so to speak His name written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our sonship. It is like a pure diamond blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.4”
― Cynthia Bourgeault, The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three: Discovering the Radical Truth at the Heart of Christianity

“We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.”
― Richard Rohr

“Faith does not need to push the river because faith is able to trust that there is a river. The river is flowing. We are in it.”
― Richard Rohr

“There is nothing to prove and nothing to protect. I am who I am and it's enough.”
― Fr. Richard Rohr

“The most common one-liner in the Bible is, "Do not be afraid." Someone counted, and it occurs 365 times.”
― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“When you get your,'Who am I?', question right, all of your,'What should I do?' questions tend to take care of themselves”
― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain.”
― Richard Rohr, Adam's Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation

“The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them”
― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.”
― Thomas Merton, Love and Living

“If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.”
― Thomas Merton

“Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.”
― Thomas Merton

“Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am. That I will never fulfill my obligation to surpass myself unless I first accept myself, and if I accept myself fully in the right way, I will already have surpassed myself.”
― Thomas Merton

“Anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity.”
― Thomas Merton

“Reason is in fact the path to faith, and faith takes over when reason can say no more.”
― Thomas Merton

“To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.”
― Thomas Merton

“Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence there would be no rhythm.”
― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

“If our life is poured out in useless words, we will never hear anything, never become anything, and in the end, because we have said everything before we had anything to say, we shall be left speechless at the moment of our greatest decision.”
― Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

“When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children, when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet, Basho, we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash - at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the "newness," the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.”
― Thomas Merton

“Indeed, the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers the most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and the source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture.”
― Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain