Frmichael > Frmichael's Quotes

“The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.”
― Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

“In friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another...the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting--any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," can truly say to every group of Christian friends, "Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another." The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”
― Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life

“Dare to love and to be a real friend. The love you give and receive is a reality that will lead you closer and closer to God as well as those whom God has given you to love.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen

“Every time we make the decision to love someone, we open ourselves to great suffering, because those we most love cause us not only great joy but also great pain. The greatest pain comes from leaving. When the child leaves home, when the husband or wife leaves for a long period of time or for good, when the beloved friend departs to another country or dies … the pain of the leaving can tear us apart.
Still, if we want to avoid the suffering of leaving, we will never experience the joy of loving. And love is stronger than fear, life stronger than death, hope stronger than despair. We have to trust that the risk of loving is always worth taking.”
― Henri Nouwen

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.”
― Henri Nouwen

“If you follow the will of God, you know that in spite of all the terrible things that happen to you, you will never lose a final refuge. You know that the foundation of the world is love, so that even when no human being can or will help you, you may go on, trusting in the One that loves you.”
― Pope Benedict XVI

“To have Christian hope means to know about evil and yet to go to meet the future with confidence. The core of faith rests upon accepting being loved by God, and therefore to believe is to say Yes, not only to him, but to creation, to creatures, above all, to men, to try to see the image of God in each person and thereby to become a lover. That's not easy, but the basic Yes, the conviction that God has created men, that he stands behind them, that they aren't simply negative, gives love a reference point that enables it to ground hope on the basis of faith.”
― Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict

“Truth is not determined by a majority vote.”
― Pope Benedict XVI

“Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed. Each of us is loved. Each of us is necessary.”
― Pope Benedict XVI

“One who has hope lives differently.”
― Pope Benedict XVI

“No one could have told: all that was known was, that when he returned from Italy he was a priest.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Even as I hold you, I am letting you go.”
― Alice Walker

“I am not afraid to die; I am only afraid of saying goodbye to you forever.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“This wasn't the first time that I'd come close to death, but it was the first time I'd been involved in this part of it, this strange, terrible saying goodbye to someone you've loved.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Ring of Endless Light

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“The soul is healed by being with children.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on thing and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down you cannot see something that is above you.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer, "He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone.”
― Epictetus

“A true genius admits that he/she knows nothing.”
― Albert Einstein

“Be careful not to mistake insecurity and inadequacy for humility! Humility has nothing to do with the insecure and inadequate! Just like arrogance has nothing to do with greatness!”
― C. JoyBell C.

“In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.”
― Winston Spencer-Churchill

“Life is a long lesson in humility.”
― J.M. Barrie, The Little Minister

“Every person that you meet knows something you don't; learn from them.”
― H. Jackson Brown Jr.

“True humility does not know that it is humble. If it did, it would be proud from the contemplation of so fine a virtue.”
― Martin Luther

“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Wild Years

“Humility is throwing oneself away in complete concentration on something or someone else.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life.”
― Czesław Miłosz

“Humility means accepting reality with no attempt to outsmart it.”
― David Richo, The Five Things We Cannot Change: And the Happiness We Find by Embracing Them

“He didn't mind how he looked to other people, because the nursery magic had made him Real, and when you are Real shabbiness doesn't matter.”
― Margery Williams Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit