Quote

The ordinary activities I find most compatible with contemplation are walking, baking bread, and doing laundry.

Kathleen Norris

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Kathleen Norris
Activities
Bread
Activity
Ordinary
Walking
Baking
Find
Compatible
Laundry
Contemplation

More quotes by Kathleen Norris

Image
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
Image
When you are unhappy, is there anything more maddening than to be told that you should be contented with your lot?
Kathleen Norris
Image
The High Plains, the beginning of the desert West, often act as a crucible for those who inhabit them.
Kathleen Norris
Image
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
Image
The often heard lament, 'I have so little time,' gives the lie to the delusion that the daily is of little significance.
Kathleen Norris
Image
When you come to a place where you have to left or right, go straight ahead.
Kathleen Norris
Image
Pay close attention to objects, events and natural phenomenon that would otherwise get chewed up in the daily grind.
Kathleen Norris
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Any life lived attentively is disillusioning as it forces us to know us as we are.
Kathleen Norris
Image
Just the knowledge that a good book is waiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier.
Kathleen Norris
Image
I write what I would like to read.
Kathleen Norris
Image
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
Image
I sense that striving for wholeness is, increasingly, a countercultural goal, as fragmented people make for better consumers.
Kathleen Norris
Image
I was taught that I had to 'master' subjects. But who can 'master' beauty, or peace, or joy?
Kathleen Norris
Image
We can't give our children the future, strive though we may to make it secure. But we can give them the present.
Kathleen Norris
Image
Acedia is a danger to anyone whose work requires great concentration and discipline yet is considered by many to be of little practical value. The world doesn't care if I write another word, and if I am to care, I have to summon all my interior motivation and strength.
Kathleen Norris
Image
Before you begin a thing, remind yourself that difficulties and delays quite impossible to foresee are ahead. If you could see them clearly, naturally you could do a great deal to get rid of them but you can't. You can only see one thing clearly and that is your goal. Form a mental vision of that and cling to it through thick and thin.
Kathleen Norris
Image
Not money, or success, or position or travel or love makes happiness,--service is the secret.
Kathleen Norris
Image
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