Collin Baagoe

“Suffering feels religious if you do it right.”
― Chelsea Hodson, Tonight I'm Someone Else: Essays

“The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them. How much sorrow can I hold? That’s how much gratitude I can give. If I carry only grief, I’ll bend toward cynicism and despair. If I have only gratitude, I’ll become saccharine and won’t develop much compassion for other people’s suffering. Grief keeps the heart fluid and soft, which helps make compassion possible.”
― Francis Weller

“Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.”
― Thomas Gray, An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

“That god lives in silence who has scoured the following land with salt and ash.”
― Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men