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Freedom, in childhood, may be the right to be totally self-centered. … But freedom in old age is the ability to be the best of the self I have developed during all those years.

Joan D. Chittister

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Joan D. Chittister
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More quotes by Joan D. Chittister

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Hope grows in us, despite our moments of darkness, regardless of our regular bouts of depression.
Joan D. Chittister
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Hospitality is the key to new ideas, new friends, new possibilities. What we take into our lives changes us. Without new people and new ideas, we are imprisoned inside ourselves.
Joan D. Chittister
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In our dreams lies our unfinished work for the world.
Joan D. Chittister
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Superficial people are those who simply go along without a question in the world-asking nothing, troubled by nothing, examining nothing. Whatever people around them do, they do, too. That's a sad and plastic life-routine and comfortable, maybe, but still sad.
Joan D. Chittister
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If anything diminishes a person, it is the cancer of constant complaining.
Joan D. Chittister
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Hope is what sits by the window and waits for one more dawn, despite the fact that there isn't an ounce of proof in tonight's black, black sky that it can possible come.
Joan D. Chittister
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Mystery is what happens to us when we allow life to evolve rather than having to make it happen all the time. It is the strange knock at the door, the sudden sight of an unceremoniously blooming flower, an afternoon in the yard, a day of riding the midtown bus. Just to see. Just to notice. Just to be there.
Joan D. Chittister
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To be contemplative we must become converted to the consciousness that makes us one with the universe, in tune with the cosmic voice of God.
Joan D. Chittister
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We don't change as we get older - we just get to be more of what we've always been.
Joan D. Chittister
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Life is not meant to be a burden. Life is not a problem to be solved. It is a blessing to be celebrated.
Joan D. Chittister
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Compassion is not sympathy. Compassion is mercy. It is a commitment to take responsibility for the suffering of others.
Joan D. Chittister
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It is in community that we come to see God in the other. It is in community that we see our own emptiness filled up. It is community that calls me beyond the pinched horizons of my own life, my own country, my own race, and gives me the gifts I do not have within me.
Joan D. Chittister
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Humility is authenticity. It comes from the Latin word humus, meaning earth. As the church has taught, we're made of dust, and unto dust we shall return.
Joan D. Chittister
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It's possible to have too much in life. Too many clothes jade our appreciation of new ones too much money can out us out of touch with life too much free time and dull the edge of the soul. We need sometimes to come very near the bone so tha we can taste the marrow of life, rather than its superfluities.
Joan D. Chittister
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We are living in a period of commerical globalization. What we really need is spiritual globalization.
Joan D. Chittister
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Religion is pointing toward the moon
Joan D. Chittister
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Imagine how happy, how holy, life would be if we ever really learn to see beauty.
Joan D. Chittister
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The moment a woman comes home to herself, the moment she knows that she has become a person of influence, an artist of her life, a sculptor of her universe, a person with rights and responsibilities who is respected and recognized, the resurrection of the world begins.
Joan D. Chittister
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Ideals are like stars, Carl Schurz wrote. You will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like seafarers on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny. Ideals do not determine what we do to make a living in life They govern what we become as we do it.
Joan D. Chittister
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In Benedictine spirituality, work is what we do to continue what God wanted done....God goes on creating through us. Consequently a life spent serving God must be a life spent giving to others what we have been given.
Joan D. Chittister