Quotes about Growth

To say that I was born again, to use that traditional phrase, is to say too much because I remained in most ways as self-centered and squeamish after the fact as I was before, and God knows remain so still. And in another way to say that I was born again is to say too little because there have been more than a few such moments since, times when from beyond time something too precious to tell has glinted in the dusk, always just out of reach, like fireflies.

You've been a good steward of it. You've been a good steward of your pain.

Men talk much of a new birth. The fact is fundamental. But the mistake is in treating it as an incident which can only happen to a man once in a lifetime: whereas the whole journey of life is a succession of them. A new life springs up in the soul with the discovery of every new agency by which the soul is raised to a higher level of wisdom: goodness and joy.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

As life goes on, they become not two compatible beings who have learned to live together through self-suppression and patience, but one new and richer being, fused in the fires of God's love and tempered of the best of both. One by one, the veils of life's mysteries have been lifted. The flesh, they found, was too precocious to reveal its own mystery; then came the mystery of the other's inner life, disclosed in the raising of young minds and hearts in the ways of God;

By teaching the young, she remained young. Virtue does more to preserve youthfulness than all the pomades in Elizabeth Arden's.

We learn to speak through listening, and we grow in love of God through listening.

Under the guidance of the Spirit every trial enriches the soul... He best heals wounds who has felt a similar wound.

Truth does grow, but it grows homogeneously, like an acorn into an oak; it does not swing in the breeze, like a weathercock. The leopard does not change his spots nor the Ethiopian his skin, though the leopard be put in bars or the Ethiopian in pink tights. The nature of certain things is fixed, and none more so than the nature of truth. Truth may be contradicted a thousand times, but that only proves that it is strong enough to survive a thousand assaults.

The priest must not postpone this union with the Holy Spirit to a more convenient season (Acts 24:25). If he neglects growth, decay sets in. There comes a time when it is too late to repent, even to ask for a drop of water to 'cool my tongue' (Lk 16:24).

He who does not advance in perfection falls into imperfection. An unattended garden becomes full of weeds. Things do not remain the same by being left alone. White fences do not stay white; they gradually become gray and then black. There are no planes in the spiritual life. We go uphill or we go downhill. The moment we cease to row against the stream, the current carries us down river.

This I know. This I believe with all my heart. If we want a free and peaceful world, if we want to make the deserts bloom and man grow to greater dignity as a human being-we can do it! - Eleanor Roosevelt Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall at last unveil.- -John Ruskin Each of us makes his own weather, determines the color of the skies in the emotional universe which he inhabits.