Quotes from Faith Baldwin

Sometimes there is a greater lack of communication in facile talking than in silence.

Character builds slowly, but it can be torn down within incredible swiftness.

Every generation proclaims that each must lead his own life, but seldom grants the subsequent generation the right to lead theirs.

There's nothing like fishing to pass the time and to incline toward a sort of magnificent stupidity in which nothing matters but tackle, bait, sunlight and the strike.

You cannot contribute anything to the ideal condition of mind and heart known as Brotherhood, however much you preach, posture, or agree, unless you live it.

Sometimes there is a greater lack of communication in facile talking than in silence.

I have learned over a period of time to be almost unconsciously grateful--as a child is--for a sunny day, blue water, flowers in a vase, a tree turning red. I have learned to be glad at dawn and when the sky is dark. Only children and a few spiritually evolved people are born to feel gratitude as naturally as they breathe, without even thinking. Most of us come to it step by painful step, to discover that gratitude is a form of acceptance.

I see now how things even up, how they are squared away, and how they balance under the law of love and justice. No year of life is emotionally, spiritually or even materially, all drought or all rainfall; nor is it all sun. The road turns a little every day, and one day there's a sudden twist we didn't dream was there, and for every loss there is somewhere a gain, for every grief a happiness, for every deprivation a giving.

Most of us forget to take time for wonder, praise and gratitude until it is almost too late. Gratitude is a many-colored quality, reaching in all directions. It goes out for small things and for large; it is a God-ward going.

Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees.

Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations

Each season is a forerunner of the next, and as the earth revolves, we learn to adjust, and consent to, the alterations.

Character builds slowly, but it can be torn down with incredible swiftness.

We learn from joy but also from grief; we learn from achievement, but just as much from failure; and what we learn from grief and failure is, after a while, to be grateful... All of us, young and old, learn more from obstacles than from the smooth path and from bracing ourselves against sudden harsh winds than from the undisturbed weather.

The Creator of all men and all things has provided the challenge of change, the necessity for acceptance, and variations of all patterns. We live by change, by struggle and the unexpected; for only in change, struggle, and the unexpected can we achieve growth.

When our personal world is dark, we seek to fix the blame on any one of a number of factors—heredity, parents, destiny, what is known as bad luck or the bad break, and occasionally even on God. It takes a long while to learn that sometimes we, ourselves, put out or, at least cloud over, our own sun, and that all things balance in the end. In nights of darkness we forget the shining days, though everyone experiences both.

I've known a lot of alleged failures in my time and many of them, in losing what the world has always considered success, have achieved in facing up to failure, more than they ever achieved when they were considered successful.

All of us have a hundred faces, attitudes, and facets of personality. I don't think anyone is all of one piece. We're more like the patchwork quilts I love, little bits and pieces, bright or dark, sewed together with the sometimes uneven stitches of experience.

Very little, really, in life is lost; material things, now and then; money which is material but necessary, often; friends, relatives, sometimes through estrangements. True love never, I believe. Death does not rob us of the essential person we have loved and still love. It deprives us of the physical presence, but never of the spiritual closeness, or of memories.

From one hour to the next a life may change.... But as I have thought and said for years, acceptance is a key to strength and practice makes it easier.

A joy in living, a natural expression of the will to survive all personal disaster, can be constant despite whatever changes take place. Some fortunate people are born with it and others acquire it through learning and growth.

The spirit within each human being is a small fragment of the Divine and Eternal, and if we give it the opportunity to speak, it will do so—but only when we keep our engagement to dismiss everyday difficulties, be quiet, and listen.

The path we each travel can be very dark, indeed; it can turn unexpectedly, and we can't see around corners. Most of us, I think, pray for more light upon our personal roads—not to see far ahead or to foretell the future, but to illuminate the next step, which is all we can take. No one goes along his road in seven-league boots.

The light is always there; we ourselves cause the obscurity, for we cast very long shadows: selfishness, envy, vanity, fear, unkindness—the list is endless, and we can all add to it. . . . I do not think that in this world, we can help casting shadows, but perhaps by conscious effort—through prayer and hard work—we can, during our lifetimes, shorten the shadow and increase the light.