I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little further down our particular path than we have yet gone ourselves.
It's a very hard thing for all of us to accept ourselves at all the different stages - the horrible side, the wonderful side, the adorable side - and who you are as a grownup. And then to bring what you learned as a child to that grownup: that is the...
I find male singers and what they sing about fascinating. It makes me realize how little we know about ourselves and how little I know about myself. It's interesting to see the male perspective.
It is precisely by binding things together that traditional visions perpetuate themselves and the prejudgments contained within them; and it is by insisting on prising things apart that we have liberated ourselves from them
After all, we are not French and never can be, and any attempt to be so is to deny our inheritance and to try to impose upon ourselves a character that can be nothing but a veneer upon the surface.
God had assigned us with our dreams, visions and callings before the foundations of the earth; it's up to us to allow ourselves to have an access to those dreams, visions and callings.
Why do we tend to consider ourselves happier than homeless street dwellers? If there is no money, no gold, no private property, no marriage, no religion, no government, there is absolutely nothing to trouble about.
To inquire into the intricacies of a distant landscape, then, is to provoke thoughts about one’s own interior landscape, and the familiar landscapes of memory. The land urges us to come around to an understanding of ourselves.
They got word that the Japanese planes were coming back, so we sunk her ourselves so the Japanese wouldn't get it. We didn't want the Japanese to get it intact.
Even though we're not the most punk rock band, the way we've done things is pretty punk rock. Just kinda say it with a big middle finger to the record labels and do it ourselves.
It doesn't matter who started it or what it's really about...war usually ends up sucking most for women. Even when we're not fighting the battles ourselves, we somehow always end up with the lion's share of the suffering.
Democracy is not something you put away for ten years, and then in the 11th year you wake up and start practicing again. We have to begin to learn to rule ourselves again.
We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community... Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own.
If there is a single factor that makes spiritual direction effective as a change agency for the soul, it is this: spiritual direction holds our shame at bay long enough for us to see ourselves as God sees us in Christ.
The self is just our operation center, our consciousness, our moral compass. So, if we want to act more effectively in the world, we have to get to know ourselves better.
We are evolving as one species - not only as Americans, Syrians, Russians, Chinese, and jihadists. We cannot attack one without inflicting forms of violence and destruction upon ourselves. This is our new reality.
I think that we have to be constantly asking ourselves, 'How do we calculate the risk?' And sometimes we don't calculate it correctly; we either overstate it or understate it.
Globalization means we have to re-examine some of our ideas, and look at ideas from other countries, from other cultures, and open ourselves to them. And that's not comfortable for the average person.
There are a lot of people who like to think they don't have prejudices and that they're open people, and yet, we all have that in ourselves, oftentimes against people of our own race or our own gender or whatever.
Worry and reasoning are two of Satan's most successful tools. He'll get us started with one negative thought and then sit back and watch us finish ourselves off.
There are many things that happen every day that we could murmur about if we let ourselves go there. But they really aren't worth the effort it takes to get upset and gripe about it.
