Quotes from Kathleen Norris

If ambition doesn't hurt you, you haven't got it.

There is no solitude in the world like that of the big city.

Before you begin a thing remind yourself that difficulties and delays quite impossible to foresee are ahead. ... You can only see one thing clearly, and that is your goal. Form a mental vision of that and cling to it through thick and thin.

Marriage: a job. Happiness or unhappiness has nothing to do with it.

Men are more conventional than women and much slower to change their ideas.

When you are unhappy, is there anything more maddening than to be told that you should be contented with your lot?

But in order to have an adult faith, most of us have to outgrow and unlearn much of what we were taught about religion.

Friendship is an art and very few persons are born with a natural gift for it.

Disconnecting from change does not recapture the past. It loses the future.

We can't give our children the future, strive though we may to make it secure. But we can give them the present.

In middle age we are apt to reach the horrifying conclusion that all sorrow, all pain, all passionate regret and loss and bitter disillusionment are self-made.