128 Quotes by Joan D. Chittister

But one thing I do know: life and time are ghosted creatures for us all. They belong to us – and are not ours at the same time.

Assuming that tomorrow will be the same as today is poor preparation for living. It equips us only for disappointment or, more likely, for shock. To live well, to be mentally healthy, we must learn to realize that life is a work in process.

The spiritual life, in other words, is not achieved by denying one part of life for the sake of another. The spiritual life is achieved only by listening to all of life and learning to respond to each of its dimensions wholly and with integrity.

As Albert Camus put it: “In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.

Prophets are so dangerous because they cry in season and out of season, politely and impolitely, loud and long.

Getting to know ourselves and learning to control ourselves are the two great tasks of life. Don’t make up strange and exotic ‘penances.’ Simply say no to yourself once a day, and you will be on the road to sanctity for the rest of your life.

A hard heart makes for hard judgments; a compassionate heart understands the humanity of the one we presume to judge.

God’s will for us is what’s left over when we have done everything we can possibly do to get out of doing what we’re doing rigth now.

We struggle to maintain a dead past in the name of peace and refuse the new life that running water brings to everything. We confuse “stagnant” with “calm” and call it holiness. We miss the power of the paradox that peace is not passivity and that a living death is neither death nor life.