Quotes about Growth

Learn the discipline of being surprised not by suffering but by joy. As we grow old, there is suffering ahead of us, immense suffering, a suffering that will continue to tempt us to think that we have chosen the wrong road. But don't be surprised by pain. Be surprised by joy, be surprised by the little flower that shows its beauty in the midst of a barren desert, and be surprised by the immense healing power that keeps bursting forth like springs of fresh water from the depth of our pain.

Teaching, therefore, asks first of all the creation of a space where students and teachers can enter into a fearless communication with each other and allow their respective life experiences to be their primary and most valuable source of growth and maturation. It asks for a mutual trust in which those who teach and those who want to learn can become present to each other, not as opponents, but as those who share in the same struggle and search for the same truth.

Solitude is the furnace in which transformation takes place.

You have come to realize that you must leave it (the old country) and enter the new country, where your Beloved dwells. You know that what helped and guided you in the old country no longer works, but what else do you have to go by? You are being asked to trust that you will find what you need in the new country. That requires the death of what has become so precious to you: influence, success, yes, even affection and praise.

The years that lie behind you, with all their struggles and pains, will in time be remembered only as the way that led you to your new life.

If you are on the right path, it will always be uphill.

We can follow a steady upward course in a world of change without fear, welcoming opportunities

You show your trust in Him when you listen with the intent to learn and repent and then you go and do whatever He asks…..And if you then go and do what He would have you do, your power to trust Him will grow, and in time you will be overwhelmed with gratitude to find that He has come to trust you.

All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.

I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.

I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse.