daily lives Quotes

“Fixed ideas of God and human nature are indispensable to the daily practice of men’s lives; but the practice of their lives prevents them from acquiring such ideas.”

“Without realizing it, we fill important places in each other’s lives. It’s that way with a minister and congregation. Or with the guy at the corner grocery, the mechanic at the local garage, the family doctor, teachers, neighbors, co-workers. Good people, who are always “there,” who can be relied upon in small, important ways. People who teach us, bless us, encourage us, support us, uplift us in the dailiness of life. We never tell them. I don’t know why, but we don’t. And, of course, we fill that role ourselves. There are those who depend on us, watch us, learn from us, take from us. And we never know. Don’t sell yourself short. You may never have proof of your importance, but you are more important than you think.”

“Our problem as Americans -- at least, among my race and gender -- is that we resist the very idea of limits, regarding limits of all sorts as temporary and regrettable impositions on our lives.”

“If we define the nature of our lives by the mistake of the moment or the defeat of the hour or the boredom of the day, we will define it wrongly. We need roots in the past to give obedience ballast and breadth; we need a vision of the future to give obedience direction and goal. And they must be connected. There must be an organic unity between them.”

“Our lives are lived well only when they are lived on the terms of their creation, with God loving and us being loved, with God making and us being made, with God revealing and us understanding, with God commanding and us responding.”

“A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting. ”

“If men only felt about death as they do about sleep, all terrors would cease. . . Men sleep contentedly, assured that they will wake the following morning. They should feel the same about their lives.”

“If there’s one thing the AT teaches, it is low-level ecstasy-something we could all do with more of in our lives.”

“We have some say over the size of our own lives—we have the agency and authority and freedom to make them smaller or larger, heavier or lighter”

″What would our lives be like if our days were studded by tiny, completely unproductive, silly, nonstrategic, wild and beautiful five-minute breaks,reminders that our days are for loving and learning and laughing, not for pushing and planning, reminders that it’s all about the heart, not about the hustle?″

“What is falling in love? A series of small coincidences that we say means everything because we want to believe that our tiny lives matter on a galactic scale. But falling in love doesn’t even begin to compare on the formation of the universe.”

“If by setting one’s heart right every morning and evening, one is able to live as though his body were already dead, he gains freedom in the Way.”

“Too often the people complain that they have done nothing with their lives and then they wait for somebody to tell them that this isn’t so.”

“It’s hard to believe now, but my family, like the vast majority of people, went about our daily lives as if the most monumentally mind-blowing thing in human history wasn’t happening right over our heads.”

“As sleep crept up on me I turned my mind to my evening ritual […] a movie that I ran in my head every night. In the movie I watched my parents going about their normal lives. […] I didn’t know if I was making myself feel bad by trying to make myself feel good, thinking about my parents, but it was my way of keeping them alive and in my thoughts.”

“Their daily lives of arguing about whose turn it is to milk, pony rides, and free range exploration of a wonderfully beautiful bit of the English countryside are fascinatingly different from modern American life.”

“The adventures of five little girls (Gertie, Charlotte, Sarah, Henny and Ella) aged between four and twelve living with their mama who looks after the home, and papa who runs a junk shop in the East Side in New York City.”