Emma Troyer

“In a noisy age, I think perhaps trying to live quietly might be a virtue.”
― James Rebanks, Pastoral Song: A Farmer’s Journey

“For I've realized more and more with each year I've lived: There is no worthier work for the person who has been geared with the ability to see even a small part of God's mercy than to serve Him and to keep vigil and to pray for those people whose sight is still clouded by the shadow of worldly matters.”
― Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavransdatter

“As I scrubbed the floor I was scrubbing part of the world. And I was scrubbing my mind to make it clear. It was work that made me think clear, and it was work that made me humble. I could never talk fast, and I could never say what I meant to people, or tell them what they meant to me. My tongue was loosened by my feelings. It was with my hands and with my back and shoulders that I could say how I felt. I had to talk with my arms and my strong hands.”
― Robert Morgan, Gap Creek

“Surely she had never asked God for anything except that He should let her have her will. And every time she had been granted what she asked for - for the most part. Now here she sat with a contrite heart - not because she had sinned against God but because she was unhappy that she had been allowed to follow her will to the road's end.

She had not come to God with her wreath or with her sins and sorrows, not as long as the world still possessed a drop of sweetness to add to her goblet. But now she had come, after she had learned that the world is like an alehouse: The person who has no more to spend is thrown outside the door.”
― Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavransdatter