Quotes

A community quote collection! Here are some of my favorites (updated every so often). Leave me a comment with your favorite quotes, thoughts, musings from your beloved writers and we’ll create a grand treasure chest of great thoughts.

• I’m a writer, I give the truth SCOPE! Chaucer, in A Knight’s Tale

• I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I cam to die, discover that I had not lived. Henry David Thoreau

• We are dwellers in a divine universe where no desires are in vain – if only they be large enough. George MacDonald

• ...and in some of the people of the town and community surrounding it, one of the characteristic diseases of the twentieth century was making its way: the suspicion that they would be greatly improved if they were somewhere else. Wendell Berry

• Those scenes of solitude from which the hand of nature have never been lifted, affect the mind with a more deep-toned emotion than aught which the hand of man has touched. Amid them the consequent associations are of God the Creator, they are His undefiled works; and the mind is cast into contemplation of eternal things. Thomas Cole

• Said Gawain, gay of cheer,
  Whether fate be foul or fair,
  Why falter I, or fear?
  What should man do but dare? Gawain and the Green Knight

• If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. Henry David Thoreau

• I have never found a book long enough, or a cup of tea large enough to suit my taste. C.S. Lewis

• Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars; to be satisfied with your posessions; to despise nothing in the world except falsehood and meanness, and to fear nothing except cowardice; to be governed by your admirations rather than by your disgusts; to covet nothing that is your neighbor’s except his kindness of heart and gentleness of manners; to think seldom of your enemies, often of your friends…and to spend as much time as you can, with body and with spirit. These are the little guideposts on the footpath to peace. Henry Van Dyke

• Seven times a day, as I work upon this hungry farm, I say to Thee, ‘Lord, why am I here? What is there here to stir my gifts to growth?What great thing can I do for others-I who am captive to this dreary toil?’ And seven times a day Though answerest, ‘I cannot do without thee. Once did My Son live thy life, and by His faithfulness did show My mind, My kindness, and My truth to men. But now He is come to My side, and thou must take His place.’ Hebridean Altars

• The true ideal is not opposed to the real but lies in it; and blessed are the eyes that find it. James Russell Lowell

• There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky. There is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul. -Victor Hugo

• A rare objectivity and insight can be imparted regarding this world’s struggle for spiritual integrity. In the land of Faerie, the reader may see his small battles writ large in the wars of titans or elves and understand, for the first time, his own worth. -Michael O’Brien

• Philip Sherrard has written that “creation is nothing less than the manifestation of God’s hidden being.” This means that we, and all other creatures live by a sanctity that is inexpressibly intimate, for to every creature the gift of life is a portion of the breath and spirit of God. -Wendell Berry

• Space is still filled with the noise of destruction and annihilation, the shouts of self assurance and arrogance, the weeping of despair and helplessness. But round about the horizon the eternal realities stand silent in their age old longing. There shines on them already the first mild light of the radiant fulfillment to come. From afar, sound the first notes as of pipes and voices, not yet discernible as a song or melody. It is all far off still and only just announced and foretold. But it is happening today. -Alfred Delp