Top 88 Kathleen Norris Quotes

#1. Peace - that was the other name for home.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #58063
#2. I could suddenly grasp that not ever having to think about what to wear was freedom, that a drastic stripping down to essentials in one's dress might also be a drastic enrichment of one's ability to focus on more important things.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #77988
#3. If monks are crazy to live the way they do, maybe the world needs more such craziness, what Matthew Kelty has termed 'the madness of great love.' My narrow world had just opened wide, and I had glimpsed such a love.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #82510
#4. When you come to a place where you have to left or right,' says Sister Ruth, 'go straight ahead.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #94026
#5. From him I have learned that prayer is not asking for what you think you want but asking to be changed in ways you can't imagine. To be more grateful, more able to see the good in what you have been given instead of always grieving for what might have been.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #140318
#6. Any life lived attentively is disillusioning as it forces us to know us as we are.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #152569
#7. From Return of Swamp Thing
It's the old impasse:
I don't know what to wait for.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #161293
#8. The Christian religion asks us to put our trust not in ideas, and certainly not in ideologies, but in a God Who was vulnerable enough to become human and die, and Who desires to be present to us in our ordinary circumstances.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #190430
#9. In choosing a bare bones existence, we are enriched, and can redefine success as an internal process rather than an outward display of wealth and power.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #196721
#10. Might we consider boredom as not only necessary for our life but also as one of its greatest blessings? A gift, pure and simple, a precious chance to be alone with our thoughts and alone with God?

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #202422
#11. Ironically, it seems that it is by the means of seemingly perfunctory daily rituals and routines that we enhance the personal relationships that nourish and sustain us.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #212818
#12. One may have been a fool, but there's no foolishness like being bitter.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #217850
#13. An old farmer once asked my husband and me how long we'd been in the country. "Five years," we answered. "Well, then," he said, "you've seen rain.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #242271
#14. My book might be seen as a search for lower consciousness, an attempt to remove the patina of abstraction or glassy-eyed piety from religious words, by telling stories about them, by grounding them in the world we live in as mortal and often comically fallible human beings.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #243938
#15. The often heard lament, 'I have so little time,' gives the lie to the
delusion that the daily is of little significance.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #273009
#16. I am learning to see loneliness as a seed that, when planted deep enough, can grow into writing that goes back out into the world.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #274964
#17. To be an American is to move on, as if we could outrun change. To attach oneself to place is to surrender to it, and suffer with it.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #281538
#18. Not money, or success, or position or travel or love makes happiness,
service is the secret.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #286610
#19. I've come to see conspiracy theories as the refuge of those who have lost their natural curiosity and ability to cope with change.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #305686
#20. I write what I would like to read.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #314175
#21. None of us knows what the next change is going to be, what unexpected opportunity is just around the corner, waiting a few months or a few years to change all the tenor of our lives.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #319997
#22. Here we discover the paradox of the contemplative life, that the desert of solitude can be the school where we learn to love others.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #332548
#23. When you are unhappy, is there anything more maddening than to be told that you should be contented with your lot?

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #344266
#24. It may be fashionable to assert that all is holy, but not many are willing to haul ass to church four or five times a day to sing about it. It's not for the faint of heart.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #357213
#25. There are men I could spend eternity with. But not this life.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #365045
#26. Friendship is an art, and very few persons are born with a natural gift for it.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #366333
#27. Because we are made in God's image, in fleeing from a relationship with a loving God, we are also running from being our most authentic selves.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #448227
#28. Only Christ could have brought us all together, in this place, doing such absurd but necessary things.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #474200
#29. Traversing a slow page, to come upon a lode of the pure shining metal is to exult inwardly for greedy hours.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #486676
#30. Wantonness might be sheer desperation, masking a suicidal self-debasement, but it might also represent a joyful, lusty sexuality that indicated, at heart, a vast generosity of spirit.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #504687
#31. The High Plains, the beginning of the desert West, often act as a crucible for those who inhabit them.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #531488
#32. It's all so beautiful ... the spring ... and books and music and fires ... Why aren't they enough?

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #537065
#33. Disconnecting from change does not recapture the past. It loses the future.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #561758
#34. Each and every one of us has one obligation, during the bewildered days of our pilgrimage here: the saving of his own soul, and secondarily and incidentally thereby affecting for good such other souls as come under our influence.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #583225
#35. My goal is to allow readers their own experience of whatever discovery I have made, so that it feels new to them, but also familiar, in that it is a piece with their own experience. It is a form of serious play.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #586011
#36. The ordinary activities I find most compatible with contemplation are walking, baking bread, and doing laundry.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #601664
#37. This is a God who is not identified with the help of a dictionary but through a relationship.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #673660
#38. And a lot he knows about office work, not.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #696279
#39. Who can be good, if not made so by loving? - St. Augustine

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #766582
#40. Monastic people have long known--and I've experienced it in a small way myself--that the communal reciting, chanting, and singing of the psalms brings a unique sense of wholeness and order to their day, and even establishes the rhythm of their lives.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #766744
#41. But in order to have an adult faith, most of us have to outgrow and unlearn much of what we were taught about religion.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #766895
#42. The very nature of marriage means saying yes before you know what it will cost. Though you may say the "I do" of the wedding ritual in all sincerity, it is the testing of that vow over time that makes you married.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #779238
#43. The fact that one people's frontier is usually another's homeland has been mostly overlooked.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #786311
#44. Whatever you do repeatedly," he writes, "has the power to shape you, has the power to make you over into a different person - even if you're not totally engaged' in every minute!

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #799959
#45. Being closed in makes us edgy because it reminds us of our vulnerability before the elements; we can't escape the fact that life is precarious.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #849467
#46. In spite of the cost of living, it's still popular.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #858007
#47. Wariness about change is a kind of prairie wisdom.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #900898
#48. I was taught that I had to 'master' subjects. But who can 'master' beauty, or peace, or joy?

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #902802
#49. All of cleanliness is neither embraced nor denied by the taking of cold baths.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #943530
#50. Well, they tell us meat isn't good for us anyway!

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #965102
#51. Once, when I was describing to a friend from Syracuse, New York, a place on the plains that I love, a ridge above a glacial moraine with a view of almost fifty miles, she asked, "But what is there to see?" The answer, of course, is nothing. Land, sky, and the ever-changing light.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #983683
#52. Throb
You cut me
into pieces and
put them in separate corners
of the room
each part
placed under pillows
or into water
I grow from this darkness
like starfish
my fingers know the shape to take again

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #997248
#53. Over and over again mediocrity is promoted because real worth isn't to be found.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1011891
#54. Spring seems far off, impossible, but it is coming. Already there is dusk instead of darkness at five in the afternoon; already hope is stirring at the edges of the day.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1039496
#55. True hospitality is marked by an open response to the dignity of each and every person. Henri Nouwen has described it as receiving the stranger on his own terms, and asserts that it can be offered only by those who 'have found the center of their lives in their own hearts'.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1042572
#56. A prophet's task is to reveal the fault lines hidden beneath the comfortable surface of the worlds we invent for ourselves, the national myths as well as the little lies and delusions of control and security that get us through the day. And Jeremiah does this better than anyone.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1045607
#57. Laundry, liturgy and women's work all serve to ground us in the world, and they need not grind us down. Our daily tasks, whether we perceive them as drudgery or essential, life-supporting work, do not define who we are as women or as human beings.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1048506
#58. Listening to all words
the silent words of nature, the words of friends and enemies, and the words of scripture
can become an exercise in human yearning and divine response, flowing in and out of one's life like a river current.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1152044
#59. ... religious traditions build up meaning only over time and in a communal context. They can't be purchased like a burger or a pair of shoes.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1160085
#60. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness (Lam 3:21 - 23).

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1171486
#61. This is another day, O Lord ...
If I am to stand up, help me to stand bravely.
If I am to sit still, help me to sit quietly.
If I am to lie low, help me to do it patiently.
And if I am to do nothing, let me do it gallantly.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1175910
#62. At its Greek root, "to believe" simply means "to give one's heart to." Thus, if we can determine what it is we give our heart to, then we will know what it is we believe.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1235293
#63. Men are more conventional than women and much slower to change their ideas.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1241828
#64. When I was a child, it was a matter of pride that I could plow through a Nancy Drew story in one afternoon, and begin another in the evening ... I was probably trying to impress the librarians who kept me supplied with books.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1329262
#65. For grace to be grace, it must give us things we didn't know we needed and take us places where we didn't know we didn't want to go. As we stumble through the crazily altered landscape of our lives, we find that God is enjoying our attention as never before.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1335545
#66. Exile, like memory, may be a place of hope and delusion. But there are rules of light there and principles of darkness ... The expatriate is in search of a country, the exile in search of a self. - Eavan Boland, OBJECT LESSONS

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1340498
#67. Anger, [Evagrius] wrote, is given to us by God to help us confront true evil. We err when we use it casually, against other people, to gratify our own desires for power or control.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1349714
#68. Like an exasperating but invaluable friend, the Bible keeps bringing me back to my senses, often in bracing (and comical) ways.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1352479
#69. A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1354967
#70. Prayer is not asking for what you think you want, but asking to be changed in ways you can't imagine.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1357686
#71. There seems to be so much more winter than we need this year.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1425730
#72. If grace is so wonderful, why do we have such difficulty recognizing and accepting it? Maybe it's because grace is not gentle or made-to-order. It often comes disguised as loss, or failure, or unwelcome change.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1450424
#73. Just the knowledge that a good book is waiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1548382
#74. Maybe the desert wisdom of the Dakotas can teach us to love anyway, to love what is dying, in the face of death, and not pretend that things are other than they are. The irony and wonder of all of this is that it is the desert's grimness, its stillness and isolation, that brings us back to love.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1548724
#75. In any free society, the conflict between social conformity and individual liberty is permanent, unresolvable, and necessary.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1594972
#76. If we are lucky, we can give in and rest without feeling guilty. We can stop doing and concentrate on being.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1626566
#77. Listening to Jeremiah is one hell of a way to get your blood going in the morning; it puts caffeine to shame.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1630575
#78. For some reason we human beings seem to learn best how to love when we're a bit broken, when our plans fall apart, when our myths of our self-sufficiency and goodness and safety are shattered.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1641439
#79. Anyone who listens to the world, anyone who seeks the sacred in the ordinary events of life, has problems about how to believe.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1660531
#80. I was vaguely attracted to both library science and accounting, for the way that these disciplines impose order on chaos.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1675204
#81. Cities remind us that the desire to escape from the problems of other people by fleeing to a suburb, small town, or a monastery, for that matter, is an unholy thing, and ultimately self-defeating. We can no more escape from other people than we can escape from ourselves.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1698233
#82. Poets and monks ... We're both sort of peripheral to the world.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1714741
#83. Pay close attention to objects, events and natural phenomenon that would otherwise get chewed up in the daily grind.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1732242
#84. But hope has an astonishing resilience and strength. Its very persistence in our hearts indicates that it is not a tonic for wishful thinkers but the ground on which realists stand.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1773540
#85. Both liturgy and what is euphemistically termed 'domestic work' also have an intense relation with the present moment, a kind of faith in the present that fosters hope and makes life seem possible in the day-to-day.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1778210
#86. One of the advantages of laws is that you can follow them blind, when you have lost all your moorings. You can't follow your instincts, but you can remember your rule.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1780093
#87. I wonder if children don't begin to reject both poetry and religion for similar reasons, because the way both are taught takes the life out of them.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1853675
#88. It is the community that suffers when it refuses to validate any outside standards, and won't allow even the legitimate exercise of authority by the professionals it has hired.

Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris Quotes #1866813

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