Inspirational thoughts

“What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.” — 

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” — Mark Twain

“Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” ― Saint Augustine

“The really great man is the man who makes every man feel great.” – G. K. Chesterton

“There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.” Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, ‘Wait and Hope.”
― Alexandre Dumas

“Feeling sorry for ourselves is the most useless waste of energy on the planet. It does absolutely no good. We can’t let our circumstances or what others do or don’t do control us. We can decide to be happy regardless.” Joyce Meyer

“As our prayer life matures, we become more aware of being the clay in the hands of the potter. The clay can do nothing to transform itself into an object of beauty. But it can be soft, pliable, sensitive to the potter’s touch. The clay is never broken by anything the potter may do to it, unless the clay has become hard and rigid. Once it begins to resist the potter’s touch, to push against his shaping, it will be in danger of breaking. As long as we are content with our hardened shape, the attempts of the potter to refashion us and to transform our ugliness will seem very threatening and frightening to us. But as we begin to realize what we really are and what we might be, the breaking which is necessary for transformation, while still painful, is no longer threatening.” Fr. Thomas Green- When the Well Runs Dry

“Silence before a God who is now more hidden seems to imply being alone simply with self. Contemplative prayer can seem at first like a conversation that arrives at a sudden awkward silence, without words or thoughts. We are unaccustomed to this absence of speech and at first dislike it. The emptiness can seem without purpose. But all those confusions are simply symptoms. They await an insight. Our own silence is not disagreeable to God, it does not repel Him. He listens to the longing deep within our soul. With God we must learn a new language of love in which words are often unnecessary. Contemplative Provocations” – Fr. Donald Haggerty

“We can ‘work for Him’ that is, we can choose what we want to give Him, what we want Him to like, what we think He needs and desires from us. Or we “do His work”, meaning, we can ask Him what He would like and do what He desires. ‘Do His work’, no matter how repugnant it may be to us.” Fr. Thomas Green – Darkness in the Marketplace.

“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”
― William Faulkner