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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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Kathleen Norris
American
Moving
Outrun
Place
Attach
Change
Surrender
Suffer
Oneself
Move
Suffering

More quotes by Kathleen Norris

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I was taught that I had to 'master' subjects. But who can 'master' beauty, or peace, or joy?
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Poets and monks... We're both sort of peripheral to the world.
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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.
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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
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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.
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They are fruit and transport: ripening melons, prairie schooners journeying under full sail.
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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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When you come to a place where you have to left or right, go straight ahead.
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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I write what I would like to read.
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.
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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.
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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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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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Over and over again mediocrity is promoted because real worth isn't to be found.
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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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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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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This is a God who is not identified with the help of a dictionary but through a relationship.
Kathleen Norris
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The ordinary activities I find most compatible with contemplation are walking, baking bread, and doing laundry.
Kathleen Norris