Kathleen Norris Quotes

Friendship is an art, and very few persons are born with a natural gift for it.

Just the knowledge that a good book is waiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier.

Prayer is not asking for what you think you want, but asking to be changed in ways you can't imagine.

I wonder if children don't begin to reject both poetry and religion for similar reasons, because the way both are taught takes the life out of them.

Not money, or success, or position or travel or love makes happiness,--service is the secret.

In spite of the cost of living, it's still popular.

But hope has an astonishing resilience and strength. Its very persistence in our hearts indicates that it is not a tonic for wishful thinkers but the ground on which realists stand.

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

They are fruit and transport: ripening melons, prairie schooners journeying under full sail.

Peace - that was the other name for home.

Only Christ could have brought us all together, in this place, doing such absurd but necessary things.

Spring seems far off, impossible, but it is coming. Already there is dusk instead of darkness at five in the afternoon; already hope is stirring at the edges of the day.

But in order to have an adult faith, most of us have to outgrow and unlearn much of what we were taught about religion.

One may have been a fool, but there's no foolishness like being bitter.

I am learning to see loneliness as a seed that, when planted deep enough, can grow into writing that goes back out into the world.

There seems to be so much more winter than we need this year.

Pay close attention to objects, events and natural phenomenon that would otherwise get chewed up in the daily grind.

Men are more conventional than women and much slower to change their ideas.

I sense that striving for wholeness is, increasingly, a countercultural goal, as fragmented people make for better consumers.

I've come to see conspiracy theories as the refuge of those who have lost their natural curiosity and ability to cope with change.

If we are lucky, we can give in and rest without feeling guilty. We can stop doing and concentrate on being.

You can only see one thing clearly, and that is your goal. Form a mental vision of that, and cling to it through thick and thin.

The ordinary activities I find most compatible with contemplation are walking, baking bread, and doing laundry.

Changing husbands is only changing troubles.

Wariness about change is a kind of prairie wisdom.

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?

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

Poets and monks... We're both sort of peripheral to the world.

To be an American is to move on, as if we could outrun change. To attach oneself to place is to surrender to it, and suffer with it.

The High Plains, the beginning of the desert West, often act as a crucible for those who inhabit them.

We can't give our children the future, strive though we may to make it secure. But we can give them the present.

Any life lived attentively is disillusioning as it forces us to know us as we are.

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

It's all so beautiful . . . the spring . . . and books and music and fires. . . . Why aren't they enough?

Traversing a slow page, to come upon a lode of the pure shining metal is to exult inwardly for greedy hours.

I write what I would like to read.

Over and over again mediocrity is promoted because real worth isn't to be found.

The often heard lament, 'I have so little time,' gives the lie to the delusion that the daily is of little significance.

There are men I could spend eternity with. But not this life.

When you are unhappy, is there anything more maddening than to be told that you should be contented with your lot?

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

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

More than ever, I've come to see conspiracy theories as the refuge of those who have lost their natural curiosity to cope with change.

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

It is the community that suffers when it refuses to validate any outside standards, and won't allow even the legitimate exercise of authority by the professionals it has hired.

All that is necessary is to accept the impossible do without the indispensable and bear the intolerable.

None of us knows what the next change is going to be what unexpected opportunity is just around the corner waiting to change all the tenor of our lives.

One may have been a fool but there's no foolishness like being bitter.

Hate is all a lie there is no truth in hate.