253 Quotes by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

we wish to make rage into a fire that cooks things rather than a fire of conflagration.

When we accept our own wild beauty, it is put into perspective, and we are no longer poignantly aware of it anymore, but neither would we forsake it or disclaim it either. Does a wolf know how beautiful she is when she leaps? Does a feline know what beautiful shapes she makes when she sits? Is a bird awed by the sound it hears when it snaps open its wings? Learning from them, we just act in our own true way and do not draw back from or hide our natural beauty. Like the creatures, we just are, and it is right.

If logic was anything, all men would ride sidesaddles..

The deterioration of symbols is natural. They wear out, needing to be reclaimed, recreated; returned to the spirit.

Three things differentiate living from the soul verses living from the ego only: the ability to sense and learn new ways, the tenacity to ride a rough road, and the patience to learn deep love over time.

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires.

Since time out of mind, a considered act of heroism has been the cure for stultifying ambivalence.

If you have never been called a defiant, incorrigible, impossible woman… have faith. There is yet time.

When women are relegated to moods, mannerisms, and contours that conform to a single ideal of beauty and behavior, they are captured in both body and soul, and are no longer free.