Joni > Joni's Quotes

“The greatest calling of all is to have a literary life.”
― Lisa See, Peony in Love

“All women on earth-- and men, too for that matter-- hope for the kind of love that transforms us, raises us up out of the everyday, & gives us the courage to survive our little deaths: the heartache of unfulfilled dreams, of career and personal disappointments, of broken love affairs.”
― Lisa See, Peony in Love

“He was such an enigma, really - fierce and strong and weak and cruel. An incomparable friend and a son of a bitch. In the end, there wasn't one thing about him that was truer than the rest. It was all true.”
― Paula McLain, The Paris Wife

“Everything, including our pain, is His. I am thankful He will meet me in it.”
― Mary Beth Chapman, Choosing to SEE: A Journey of Struggle and Hope

“For to know a man's library is, in some measure, to know his mind.”
― Geraldine Brooks, March

“I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar-stairs
That slope thro' darkness up to God,

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.”
― Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam

“As I stood outside in Cow Lane, it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

No ... eight days a week.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

“How lucky Drew was to have this mother of hers, this constant, reliable, if at times irritating presence in her life--this mother, like so many other mothers, beloved and blamed. Lucky she was to have experience, through her mother, the twisted intricaciesof deep, and deeply complex, love.”
― Daphne Kalotay

“I used to think mercy meant showing kindness to someone who didn't deserve it, as if only the recipient defined the act. The girl in between has learned that mercy is defined by its giver. Our flaws are obvious, yet we are loved and able to love, if we choose, because there is that bit of the divine still smoldering in us.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“Dissecting a book was the same as making sense of life. You have to find a way to interpret life, or you'll go nuts.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“Papa said marriage is not kept by affection but by a pledge. Affection does not beget the pledge; the pledge begets the affection. When you share a life and a home and a bed with someone, you become soul mates as surely as cream and effort produce butter....And so I began to imagine my life with James Luddy. I imagined being butter.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“At sunset, if I am near the water - and it is hard to be very far from it here -I pause to watch the splendid disc set the brine aflame and then douse itself in it's own fiery broth.”
― Geraldine Brooks, Caleb's Crossing

“He walked through the woods like a young Adam, naming creation.”
― Geraldine Brooks, Caleb's Crossing

“. . . my obsession with gratefulness. I can't stop. Just now, I press the elevator button and am thankful that it arrives quickly. I get onto the elevator and am thankful that the elevator cable didn't snap and plummet me to the basement. I go to the fifth floor and am thankful that I didn't have to stop on the second or third or fourth floor. I get out and am thankful that Julie left the door unlocked so I don't have to rummage for my King Kong key ring. I walk in, and am thankful that Jasper is home and healthy and stuffing his face with pineapple wedges. And on and on. I'm actually muttering to myself, 'Thank you. . .thank you. . . thank you.' It's an odd way to live. But also kind of great and powerful. I've never before been so aware of the thousands of little good things, the thousands of things that go right every day.”
― A.J. Jacobs, The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible

“I would always rather be happy than dignified.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“And at home by the fire, whenever you look up there I shall be— and whenever I look up, there will be you.
-Gabriel Oak”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“Failure is the tuition you pay for success.”
― Craig Groeschel, It: How Churches and Leaders Can Get It and Keep It

“In a culture where busyness is a fetish and stillness is laziness, rest is sloth. But without rest, we miss the rest of God: the rest he invites us to enter more fully so that we might know him more deeply. “Be still, and know that I am God.” Some knowing is never pursued, only received. And for that, you need to be still. Sabbath is both a day and an attitude to nurture such stillness. It is both time on a calendar and a disposition of the heart. It is a day we enter, but just as much a way we see. Sabbath imparts the rest of God—actual physical, mental, spiritual rest, but also the rest of God— the things of God’s nature and presence we miss in our busyness.”
― Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath

“Images trigger response. Images create impressions. But images are ambivalent. Images cannot carry an argument or imply a critical interpretation. We just bring the criticism ourselves. So every time we see spectacles of military power, or terror-driven bloodshed, we can ask our Acela: What do these images want from me? And who grows more powerful if I give it?”
― Tony Reinke, Competing Spectacles: Treasuring Christ in the Media Age

“The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.”
― Susanna Clarke, Piranesi