Joan D. Chittister Quotes

Quotes about:

• I do not believe that just because you're opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Children, Believe, Thinking

  321 Copy quote

• The spiritual task of life is to feed hope. Hope is not something to be found outside of us. It lies in the spiritual life we cultivate within. The whole purpose of wrestling with life is to be transformed into the self we are meant to become, to step out of the confines of our false securities and allow our creating God to go on creating. In us.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Spiritual, Lying, Wrestling

  197 Copy quote

• There is no amount of darkness that can extinguish the inner light. The important thing is not to spend our lives trying to control the environment around us. The task is to control the environment within us.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Light, Darkness, Important

  178 Copy quote

• Contemplation is a very dangerous activity. It not only brings us face to face with God. It brings us, as well, face to face with the world, face to face with the self. And then, of course, something must be done. Nothing stays the same once we have found the God within…. We carry the world in our hearts: the oppression of all peoples, the suffering of our friends, the burdens of our enemies, the raping of the Earth, the hunger of the starving, the joy of every laughing child.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Children, Heart, Self

  166 Copy quote

• Hospitality means we take people into the space that is our lives and our minds and our hearts and our work and our efforts. Hospitality is the way we come out of ourselves. It is the first step towards dismantling the barriers of the world. Hospitality is the way we turn a prejudiced world around, one heart at a time.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Heart, Mean, Space

  133 Copy quote

• The moment a woman comes home to herself, the moment she knows that she has become a person of influence, an artist of her life, a sculptor of her universe, a person with rights and responsibilities who is respected and recognized, the resurrection of the world begins.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Women, Home, Responsibility

  192 Copy quote

• Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Inspirational, Life, Gratitude

  168 Copy quote

• Beware the religion that turns you against another one. It's unlikely that it's really religion at all.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Unlikely, Turns

  168 Copy quote

• Hope is not a matter of waiting for things outside of us to get better. It is about getting better inside about what is going on outside.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Hopeful, Waiting, Get Better

  133 Copy quote

• It is in community that we come to see God in the other. It is in community that we see our own emptiness filled up. It is community that calls me beyond the pinched horizons of my own life, my own country, my own race, and gives me the gifts I do not have within me.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Country, Race, Filled Up

  94 Copy quote

• The secret of life is to let every segment of it produce its own yield at its own pace. Every period has something new to teach us. The harvest of youth is achievement; the harvest of middle-age is perspective; the harvest of age is wisdom; the harvest of life is serenity.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Yield, Perspective, Serenity

  141 Copy quote

• It is precisely women’s experience of God that this world lacks. A world that does not nurture its weakest, does not know God the birthing mother. A world that does not preserve the planet, does not know God the creator. A world that does not honor the spirit of compassion, does not know God the spirit. God the lawgiver, God the judge, God the omnipotent being have consumed Western spirituality and, in the end, shriveled its heart.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Mother, Heart, Compassion

  79 Copy quote

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

  Joan D. Chittister

  Commitment, Responsibility, Compassion

  107 Copy quote

• We talk religion in a world that worships the bread but does not distribute it, that practices ritual rather than righteousness, that confesses but does not repent.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Practice, Religion, Doe

  121 Copy quote

• Oppressors do not get to be oppressors in a single sweep. They manage it because little by little, we make them that. We overlook too much in the beginning and wonder why we lost control in the end.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Littles, Too Much, Wonder

  103 Copy quote

• There is always new life trying to emerge in each of us. Too often we ignore the signs of resurrection and cling to part of life that have died for us.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Growth, Trying, New Life

  7 Copy quote

• Goodness is a process of becoming, not of being. What we do over and over again is what we become in the end.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Becoming, Goodness, Ends

  5 Copy quote

• My limitations make space for the gifts of other people. Without the grace of our limitations we would be isolated, dry, and insufferable creatures indeed.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Space, People, Grace

  60 Copy quote

• Find the thing that stirs your heart and make room for it

  Joan D. Chittister

  Heart, Rooms

  9 Copy quote

• I begin to understand as never before that holiness is made of dailiness, of living life as it comes to me, not as I insist it be.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Live Life, Holiness, Made

  43 Copy quote

• Grief is a sign that we loved something more than ourselves. . . . Grief makes us worthy to suffer with the rest of the world.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Grief, Suffering, World

  113 Copy quote

• Life is not meant to be a burden. Life is not a problem to be solved. It is a blessing to be celebrated.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Blessing, Problem, Life Is

  20 Copy quote

• When souls really touch, it is forever. Then space and time disappear, and all that remains is the consciousness that we are not alone in life.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Space, Forever, Soul

  106 Copy quote

• Too many times we insist on loving people the way we want to love them instead of the way they need to be loved.

  Joan D. Chittister

  People, Needs, Want

  39 Copy quote

• Just when summer gets perfect-fresh nights, soft sun, casual breezes, crushingly full and quietly cooling trees, empty beaches, and free weekends- it ends. Life is like that too. Just when we get it right, it starts to change. The job gets easy and we know just how to do it, and they tell us we're retired. The children grow up and get reasonable and they leave home, just when it's nice to have them around. . . . That's life on the edge of autumn. And that's beautiful-if we have the humility for it.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Life, Beautiful, Summer

  117 Copy quote

Page 1 of 6

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin