growing pains Quotes

“It takes courage…to endure the sharp pains of self discovery rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives.”

“It’s as though my life was a house, and I thought God would give it a wonderful paint job—new shutters perhaps, a pretty portico, new roof. Instead, it felt as though, as soon as I gave the House to God , He hit it with a giant wrecking ball. ‘Sorry honey,’ he seemed to say, ‘There were cracks in the foundation, not to mention the rats in the bedroom. I thought we better just start all over.‘”

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”

“And then she groaned, deep in her chest, her mouth still closed. It was a sound so painful, Conor could barely keep himself from putting his hands over his ears.”

″‘You are young,’ replied Athos, ‘and your bitter recollections have time to be changed into sweet remembrances.‘”

“If it wasn’t painfully difficult, you did it wrong!”

“If your goal is to avoid pain and escape suffering, I would not advise you to seek higher levels of consciousness or spiritual evolution. First, you cannot achieve them without suffering, and second, insofar as you do achieve them, you are likely to be called on to serve in ways more painful to you, or at least demanding of you, than you can now imagine. Then why desire to evolve at all, you may ask. If you ask this question, perhaps you do not know enough of joy.”

“Without the dark there isn’t light. Without the pain there is no relief.”

“Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.”

“The pain of it slashed through my body in nauseating waves before settling heavily in the pit of my belly. I tried to hold it together, to hold it down, but I couldn’t.”

“Last of all Hurin stood alone. Then he cast aside his shield, and wielded an axe two-handed; and it is sung that the axe smoked in the black blood of the troll-guard of Gothmog until it withered, and each time that he slew Hurin cried: ‘Aure entuluva! Day shall come again!’ Seventy times he uttered that cry; but they took him at last alive...”

“This is so because a shared pain is no longer paralyzing but mobilizing, when understood as a way to liberation.”