Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Kathleen Norris
Middle
Disillusionment
Age
Conclusion
Pain
Bitter
Self
Passionate
Made
Regret
Sorrow
Reach
Loss
Horrifying

More quotes by Kathleen Norris

Image
Over and over again mediocrity is promoted because real worth isn't to be found.
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
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
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
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
Image
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
Image
Poets and monks... We're both sort of peripheral to the world.
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
When you come to a place where you have to left or right, go straight ahead.
Kathleen Norris
Image
Not money, or success, or position or travel or love makes happiness,--service is the secret.
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
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
I was taught that I had to 'master' subjects. But who can 'master' beauty, or peace, or joy?
Kathleen Norris
Image
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.
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
The ordinary activities I find most compatible with contemplation are walking, baking bread, and doing laundry.
Kathleen Norris
Image
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
Image
But in order to have an adult faith, most of us have to outgrow and unlearn much of what we were taught about religion.
Kathleen Norris
Image
This is a God who is not identified with the help of a dictionary but through a relationship.
Kathleen Norris
Image
Friendship is an art, and very few persons are born with a natural gift for it.
Kathleen Norris