Quotes about Exercises

Life was a series of complicated tactical exercises, as complicated as the alignments at Waterloo, thought out on a brass bedstead among the crumbs of sausage roll. [p107]

Love in fact is the spiritual life, and without it all the other exercises of the spirit, however lofty, are emptied of content and become mere illusions.

Let not the interest of religious thoughts and exercises deceive you; they very often take the place of waiting upon God.

All the exercises of the spiritual life, our reading and praying, our willing and doing, have their very great value. But they can go no farther than this, that they point the way and prepare us in humility to look to and to depend alone upon God Himself, and in patience to await His good time and mercy. The waiting is to teach us our absolute dependence upon God's might working, and to make us in perfect patience place ourselves at His disposal.

A good meditation, even when it is interrupted by occasional nodding, is much more beneficial than many outward religious exercises.