9 Quotes by Roger Housden

That is what happens when the heart door opens- you become less yourself than part of everything.' Many are the sentinels who guard that door: our fears, our self-importance, our meanness, our greed, our bitterness, and others.

Faith, not belief, carries us forward; for a belief is a thought, whereas faith is a knowing, a certainty which grows in the marrow.

When the heart opens, we forget ourselves and the world pours in: this world, and also the invisible world of meaning that sustains everything that was and ever shall be.

Love, like everything else, exists in a spectrum. Love of another, love of the world, love of God, all these loves are really one love in different degrees of light and density.

The greatest gift and expression of love is the gesture of open arms – let come what comes – not because you don’t care, or because you hope to steel yourself against pain, but because you care so much that you are helpless to do anything else.

Layton once said that “a poet is deeply conflicted and it is in his work that he reconciles those deep conflicts. It doesn’t set the world in order, it doesn’t really change anything. It is just a kind of harbor, it’s the place of reconciliation, the kiss of peace.

But it happens, and I am thankful enough for that, for those fleeting, wakeful moments of beauty and truth. They are the real joy of being human, brief matches that flare in the dark.

The willingness to let go of what we know you might even call an expression of faith. Faith: not that things will work out as we hope, but faith, simply, in life and its extraordinary intelligence that never fails to surprise. While belief holds on tightly, faith lets go.

His priorities for a rich and contented life were friendship, freedom, the pleasures of an examined life, and enough food and shelter to keep body and soul together.