Quotes by Kathleen Norris

“Changing husbands is only changing troubles.”

“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”

“In any free society, the conflict between social conformity and individual liberty is permanent, unresolvable, and necessary”

“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”

“Hate is all a lie, there is no truth in hate”

“Perfection, in a Christian sense, means becoming mature enough to give ourselves to others.”

“There are men I could spend eternity with. but not this life.”

The Christian religion asks us to put our trust not in ideas, and certainly not in ideologies, but in a God Who was vulnerable enough to become human and die, and Who desires to be present to us in our ordinary circumstances.

This is a God who is not identified with the help of a dictionary but through a relationship.

I was taught that I had to master subjects. But who can master beauty, or peace, or joy?

Laundry, liturgy and womens 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.

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.

...the imagination works not so much through inspiration as through perseverance. One must slog through the false starts, spot the wrong words and hold out for the right ones, and above all, be vigilant about staying on the path of revision, no matter how uncomfortable or even painful the journey might become.

Disconnecting from change does not recapture the past. It loses the future.

At its Greek root, to believe simply means to give ones heart to. Thus, if we can determine what it is we give our heart to, then we will know what it is we believe.

What we perceive as dejection over the futility of life is sometimes greed, which the monastic tradition perceives as rooted in a fear of being vulnerable in a future old age, so that one hoards possessions in the present. But most often our depression is unexpressed anger, and it manifests itself as the sloth of disobedience, a refusal to keep up the daily practices that would keep us in good relationship to God and to each other. For when people allow anger to build up inside, they begin to perform daily tasks resentfully, focusing on the others as the source of their troubles. Instead of looking inward to find the true reason for their sadness - with me , it is usually a fear of losing an illusory control - they direct it outward, barreling through the world, impatient and even brutal with those they encounter, especially those who are closest to them.

I recall the passage in the letter to the Hebrews in which we are reminded that Christ has already done everything for us. It speaks of the Christ who offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins (Hebrews 10:12). And yet the church teaches, and our experience of faith confirms, that Christ continues to be with us and to pray for us. The paradox may be unraveled, I think, if we remember that when human beings try to do everything at once and for all and be through with it, we court acedia, self-destruction and death. Such power is reserved for God, who alone can turn what is already done into something that is ongoing and ever present. It is a quotidian mystery.

Because we are made in Gods image, in fleeing from a relationship with a loving God, we are also running from being our most authentic selves.

When you come to a place where you have to left or right, says Sister Ruth, go straight ahead.

For me, walking in a hard Dakota wind can be like staring at the ocean: humbled before its immensity, I also have a sense of being at home on this planet, my blood so like the sea in chemical composition, my every cell partaking of air. I live about as far from the sea as is possible in North America, yet I walk in a turbulent ocean. Maybe that child was right when he told me that the world is upside-down here, and this is where angels drown.