Casey Carback > Casey's Quotes

“Someone who thinks death is the scariest thing doesn't know a thing about life.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

“You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips.”
― Oliver Goldsmith

“Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
― Socrates

“For Longing

Blessed be the longing that brought you here
And quickens your soul with wonder.

May you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire
That disturbs you when you have settled for something safe.

May you have the wisdom to enter generously into your own unease
To discover the new direction your longing wants you to take.

May the forms of your belonging—in love, creativity, and friendship—
Be equal to the grandeur and the call of your soul.

May the one you long for long for you.

May your dreams gradually reveal the destination of your desire.

May a secret Providence guide your thought and nurture your feeling.

May your mind inhabit life with the sureness with which your body inhabits the world.

May your heart never be haunted by ghost-structures of old damage.

May you come to accept your longing as divine urgency.

May you know the urgency with which God longs for you.”
― John O'Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

“There is the music of Heaven in all things.”
― Hildegard of Bingen

“So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

“The Word is living, being, spirit, all verdant greening, all creativity. This Word manifests itself in every creature.”
― Hildegard of Bingen

“Like billowing clouds,
Like the incessant gurgle of the brook,
The longing of the spirit can never be stilled.”
― Hildegard von Bingen

“The soul is the greening life force of the flesh, for the body grows and prospers through her, just as the earth becomes fruitful when it is moistened. The soul humidifies the body so it does not dry out, just like the rain which soaks into the earth.”
― Hildegarde of Bingen

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
― Oliver Goldsmith, The Citizen of the World, Or, Letters from a Chinese Philosopher, Residing in London, to His Friends in the Country, by Dr. Goldsmith

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. When I read a book over I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one.”
― Oliver Goldsmith, The Citizen of the World, Or, Letters from a Chinese Philosopher, Residing in London, to His Friends in the Country, by Dr. Goldsmith

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
― Robert Frost

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die.”
― E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Tomorrow would be better. At the very least, tomorrow would be different.”
― Abbi Waxman, The Bookish Life of Nina Hill

“Do you know the best feeling in the world? It's reading a book, loving every second of it, then turning to the front and discovering that the writer wrote fourteen zillion others.”
― Abbi Waxman, The Bookish Life of Nina Hill

“Does everyone else feel like this?”

“Like what? Worried? Uncertain? Hopeful and cynical at the same time?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure they do, baby. That’s how it feels to be alive.”

“It’s not a good feeling.”

“Well, who knows what a fish feels; it might be even worse.”
― Abbi Waxman, The Bookish Life of Nina Hill

“A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Some things have to be believed to be seen.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“I will have nothing to do with a God who cares only occasionally. I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights. It is when things go wrong, when good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present. We do not need the sheltering wings when things go smoothly. We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along blindly.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Like and equal are not the same thing at all.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
― C.S. Lewis