Joanna > Joanna's Quotes

“Maybe we're all like that with our mothers. They seem ordinary until one day they're extraordinary.”
― Lisa See, Shanghai Girls

“May and I are sisters. We'll always fight, but we'll always make up as well. That's what sisters do: we argue, we point out each other's frailties, mistakes, and bad judgment, we flash the insecurities we've had since childhood, and then we come back together. Until the next time. ”
― Lisa See, Shanghai Girls

“We're told that men are strong & brave, but I think women know how to endure, accept defeat & bear physical & mental agony much better than men.”
― Lisa See, Shanghai Girls

“Whenever I'm out-of-doors and find myself wanting to have a first-rate think, I fling myself down on my back, throw my arms and legs out so that I look like an asterisk, and gaze at the sky. ”
― Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

“Simple pleasures are best.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

“...silence is sometimes the most costly of commodities.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

“I gave her a partial smile and kept the rest of it for myself...”
― Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

“Mediocrity, I discovered, was the great camouflage; the great protective coloring. Those boys who did not fail, yet did not excel, were left alone, free of the demands of the master who might wish to groom them for glory and of the school bully who might make them his scapegoat. That simple fact was the first great discovery of my life.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

“You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him.”
― audrey hepburn

“The beauty of a woman is not in a facial mole,but true beauty in a Woman is reflected in her soul. It is the caring that she lovingly gives, the passion that she knows.”
― Audrey Hepburn

“Why change? Everyone has his own style. When you have found it, you should stick to it.”
― Audrey Hepburn

“It's that wonderful old-fashioned idea that others come first and you come second. This was the whole ethic by which I was brought up. Others matter more than you do, so 'don't fuss, dear; get on with it'.”
― Audrey Hepburn

“We tend to be preoccupied by our problems when we have a heightened sense of vulnerability and a diminished sense of power. Today, see each problem as an invitation to prayer.”
― John Ortberg, The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God's Best Version of You

“We would worry less if we praised more. Thanksgiving is the enemy of discontent and dissatisfaction.”
― Harry A. Ironside

“..when someone says "please pray for me," they are not just saying "let's have lunch sometime." They are issuing an invitation into the depths of their lives and their humanity- and often with some urgency. And worry is not a substitute for prayer. Worry is a starting place, but not a staying place. Worry invites me into prayer. As a staying place, worry can be self-indulgent, paralyzing, draining, and controlling. When I take worry into prayer, it doesn't disappear, but it becomes smaller.”
― Sybil MacBeth, Praying in Color: Drawing a New Path to God

“Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.”
― Keith Caserta, Soul Searching

“The best way to get rid of the negative thoughts is to crowd them out with something else bigger and more beautiful: worship of the One who holds everything in His powerful and capable hands.”
― Jocelyn Green, Faith Deployed...Again: More Daily Encouragement for Military Wives

“Fair is whatever God wants to do.”
― Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

“Sometimes heroism is nothing more than patience, curiosity, and a refusal to panic.”
― Leif Enger

“Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in medical literature. It's true: They rebut every rule all we good citizens take comfort in. Lazarus obeying orders and climbing up out of the grave - now there's a miracle, and you can bet it upset a lot of folks who were standing around at the time. When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. A miracle contradicts the will of the earth.”
― Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

“Love is a strange fact - it hopes all things, believes all things, endures all things. It makes no sense at all.”
― Leif Enger, So Brave, Young, and Handsome

“Be careful whom you choose to hate.
The small and the vulnerable own a protection great enough, if you could but see it, to melt you into jelly.
Beware those who reside beneath the shadow of the Wings.”
― Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

“Good advice is a wise man's friend, of course; but sometimes it just flies on past, and all you can do is wave. ”
― Leif Enger

“Let me say something about that word: miracle. For too long it's been used to characterize things or events that, though pleasant, are entirely normal. Peeping chicks at Easter time, spring generally, a clear sunrise after an overcast week--a miracle, people say, as if they've been educated from greeting cards.”
― Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

“My sister, Swede, who often sees to the nub, offered this: People fear miracles because they fear being changed--though ignoring them will change you also. Swede said another thing, too, and it rang in me like a bell: No miracle happens without a witness. Someone to declare, Here's what I saw. Here's how it went. Make of it what you will.”
― Leif Enger

“Once traveling, it's remarkable how quickly faith erodes. It starts to look like something else--ignorance, for example. Same thing happened to the Israelites. Sure it's weak, but sometimes you'd rather just have a map.”
― Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

“You can embark on new and steeper versions of your old sins, you know, and cry tears while doing it that are genuine as any.”
― Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

“Many a night I woke to the murmer of paper and knew (Dad) was up, sitting in the kitchen with frayed King James - oh, but he worked that book; he held to it like a rope ladder.”
― Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

“It is one thing to be sick of your own infirmities and another to understand that the people you love most are sick of them also. You are very near then to being friendless in this world.”
― Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

“Of all facial expressions, which is the worst to have aimed at you? Wouldn't you agree it's disgust?”
― Leif Enger, Peace Like a River