Nicole > Nicole's Quotes

“I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti

“None of us really changes over time. We only become more fully what we are.”
― Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat

“I'm here to be me, which is taking a great deal longer than I had hoped.”
― Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

“[...]the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“You have to understand, my dears, that the shortest distance between truth and a human being is a story.”
― Anthony De Mello

“I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“Down on the lake rosy reflections of celestial vapor appeared, and I said, "God, I love you" and looked to the sky and really meant it. "I have fallen in love with you, God. Take care of us all, one way or the other." To the children and the innocent it's all the same.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

“Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk — real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“There is one purpose to life and one only: to bear witness to and understand as much as possible of the complexity of the world- its beauty, its mysteries, its riddles.”
― Anne Rice, Servant of the Bones

“Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Americus, Book I

“I once started out
to walk around the world
but ended up in Brooklyn,
that Bridge was too much for me.”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.”
― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

“I AM IGNORANT of absolute truth. But I am humble before my ignorance and therein lies my honor and my reward.”
― Khalil Gibran

“For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?

Seek him always with hours to live.

For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.

And in th sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.

For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.”
― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

“They say: 'If a man knew himself,
he would know all mankind.'
I say: 'If a man loved mankind,
he would know something of himself.”
― Khalil Gibran, Love Letters in the Sand: The Love Poems of Khalil Gibran

“How we respond to what happens to us - especially the painful, excruciating things that we never wanted and we have no control over - is a creative act.”
― Rob Bell, How to Be Here: A Guide to Creating a Life Worth Living

“Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti

“Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations.”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti

“Spirituality is not about being fixed; it is about God's being present in the mess of our unfixedness. (Messy Spirituality)”
― Michael Yaconelli

“Accepting the reality of our broken, flawed lives is the beginning of spirituality not because the spiritual life will remove our flaws but because we let go of seeking perfection and, instead, seek God, the one who is present in the tangledness of our lives. ”
― Michael Yaconelli

“Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.”
― Kahlil Gibran

“The litmus test of our love for God is our love of neighbor.”
― Brennan Manning, The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives – A Stirring Invitation to Accept God's Unfathomable Love

“In Love's service, only wounded soldiers can serve.”
― Brennan Manning, Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging

“Don't ask the world to change....you change first.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

“Remember for just one minute of the day, it would be best to try looking upon yourself more as God does, for She knows your true royal nature.”
― Hafiz of Shiraz

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been given to us, the ultimate, the final problem and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke