128 Quotes by Joan D. Chittister

The vision of a culture lies in what becomes its major institutions, in what it remembers as its most impacting events, in who it sees as its heroes.

It is not our job to work miracles, but it is our task to try.

Compassion is not sympathy. Compassion is mercy. It is a commitment to take responsibility for the suffering of others.

Living well has something to do with the spirituality of wholeheartedness, of seeing life more as a grace than as a penance, as time to be lived with eager expectation of its goodness, not in dread of its challenges.

To insist on living until we die may be one of life’s greatest virtues.

Real failure comes when we consider ourselves good enough at something to be able to repeat it rather than to develop it. “Success is dangerous,” the painter Pablo Picasso said. “One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.”

There is a built-in danger in old age which, if we give in to it, makes aging one of the most difficult periods of life, rather than one of the most satisfying – which it should be. Tye danger of old age is that we may start acting old.

Old age tells us that we ourselves have failed often, have never really done anything completely right, have never truly been perfect – anad that is completely all right. We are who we are – and so is everyone else.

Indeed, the big decisions in life are hardly ever clear – except for one. And that one is piercingly clear: life is a series of dilemmas, of options, of conundrums, of possibilities taken and not taken. Negotiating these moments well is of the essence of the life well lived.