That’s what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you onto another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It’s geometrically progressive — all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.
— Juliet Ashton in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
By midlife most individuals stop blaming external villains for problems. They accept their shortcomings more readily and change their ways. This willingness to reform is a major difference between those who age well and those who do not.
— Allan B. Chinen, Once Upon a Midlife, p. 80
All stories are full of bias and uniqueness; they mix fact with meaning. This is the root of their power. Stories allow us to see something familiar through new eyes. We become in that moment a guest in someone else’s life, and together with them sit at the feet of their teacher. The meaning we may draw from someone’s story may be different from the meaning they themselves have drawn. No matter. Facts bring us to knowledge, but stories lead to wisdom.
— Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, Kitchen Table Wisdom, p. xl
From my vantage point, you’d have seen many, many people who are deeply loved and still lonely, beautiful and still horribly self-conscious, professionally successful and still so terrified of failure that their nocturnal tooth-gnashing could crush diamonds. Here’s something you’ll need to hold in your mind, at least temporarily, if you want to get a good look at your own North Star: External circumstances do not create feeling states. Feeling states create external circumstances.
— Martha Beck, Steering by Starlight: Find Your Right Life No Matter What!, p. 6
How can a person who doesn’t know how to be happy teach someone how to be happy?
— Byron Katie, Loving What Is, p. 142
Gratitude brings more to be grateful about. It increases your abundant life. Lack of gratitude, or complaining, brings little to rejoice about. Complainers always find that they have little good in their life, or they do not enjoy what they do have.
— Louise L. Hay, Gratitude: A Way of Life, p. 3
Forgiveness about injuries this deep does not come easily or quickly. There can’t always be a moment of forgiveness, when suddenly our lives are transformed. We are human. We need time to process our experiences, to mourn, to separate, to grow. Forgiveness brews within us, expedited according to our own creative capacities, impeded by our conflicts, a mysterious product of the human spirit. The reclamation of love and of the forgiving self is an arduous and profound journey.
— Robert Karen, PhD, The Forgiving Self, p. 60
Resting in Jesus is not applying a spiritual formula to ourselves as a kind of fix-it. It is the essence of repentance. It is letting our heart tell us where we are in our own story so that Jesus can minister to us out of the Story of his love for us. When, in a given moment, we lay down our false self and the smaller story of whatever performance has sustained us, when we give up everything else but him, we experience the freedom of knowing that he simply loves us where we are. We begin just to be, having our identity anchored in him. We begin to experience our spiritual life as the “easy yoke and light burden” Jesus tells us is his experience.
— Brent Curtis & John Eldredge, The Sacred Romance, p. 174-175
The problem with always having to be in control is that you have to stay at the control panel. You can’t leave to get out on the dance floor.
— Victoria Castle, The Trance of Scarcity, p. 82
Gratitude helps us stop trying to control outcomes. It is the key that unlocks positive energy in our life. It is the alchemy that turns problems into blessings, and the unexpected into gifts.
— Melody Beattie, The Language of Letting Go, p. 18