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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

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Kathleen Norris
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More quotes by Kathleen Norris

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Any life lived attentively is disillusioning as it forces us to know us as we are.
Kathleen Norris
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Traversing a slow page, to come upon a lode of the pure shining metal is to exult inwardly for greedy hours.
Kathleen Norris
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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
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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
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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
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Poets and monks... We're both sort of peripheral to the world.
Kathleen Norris
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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
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Pay close attention to objects, events and natural phenomenon that would otherwise get chewed up in the daily grind.
Kathleen Norris
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In middle age we are apt to reach the horrifying conclusion that all sorrow, all pain, all passionate regret and loss and bitter disillusionment are self-made
Kathleen Norris
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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
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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
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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
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The often heard lament, 'I have so little time,' gives the lie to the delusion that the daily is of little significance.
Kathleen Norris
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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
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I sense that striving for wholeness is, increasingly, a countercultural goal, as fragmented people make for better consumers.
Kathleen Norris
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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
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When you are unhappy, is there anything more maddening than to be told that you should be contented with your lot?
Kathleen Norris
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Just the knowledge that a good book is waiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier.
Kathleen Norris
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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
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The ordinary activities I find most compatible with contemplation are walking, baking bread, and doing laundry.
Kathleen Norris