Quotes About Renewal

The back door of every tomb opens on a hilltop.

With every morn my life afresh must break The crust of self, gathered about me fresh; That thy wind-spirit may rush in and shake The darkness out of me, and rend the mesh The spider-devils spin out of the flesh- Eager to net the soul before it wake, That it may slumberous lie, and listen to the snake. George MacDonald

My soul was like a summer evening, after a heavy fall of rain, when the drops are yet glistening on the trees in the last rays of the down-going sun, and the wind of the twilight has begun to blow.

Low-sunk life imagines itself weary of life, but it is death, not life, it is weary of.

There is this difference between the growth of some human beings and that of others: in the one case it a continuous dying, in the other a continuous resurrection.

With every morn my life afresh must break The crust of self, gathered about me fresh.

the churchyard, in ruins, some of the people who used to pray there, go there still. they need help from each other to get their thinking done, and their feelings hatched, so they talk and sing together, and then, they say, the big thought floats out of their hearts like a great ship out of the river at high water.

Or, if needing years to wake thee From thy slumbrous solitudes, Come, sleep-walking, and betake thee To the friendly, sleeping woods. Sweeter dreams are in the forest, Round thee storms would never rave; And when need of rest is sorest, Glide thou then into thy cave.

We die daily. Happy those who daily come to life as well. [294] On Duty

One day it had rained before sunrise, and a soft spring wind had been blowing ever since, a soothing and persuading wind, that seemed to draw out the buds from the secret places of the dry twigs, and whisper to the roots of the rose-trees that their flowers would be wanted by and by.

There was the lamp--dead indeed, and so changed that she would never have taken it for a lamp but for the shape! No, it was not the lamp anymore now it was dead, for all that made it a lamp was gone, namely, the bright shining of it.

To be fit to receive his word implies being of his kind. No matter how his image may have been defaced in me: the thing defaced is his image, remains his defaced image—an image yet that can hear his word.

His marriage was of infinitely more salvation to the laird than if it had set him free from all his worldly embarrassments, for it set him growing again—and that is the only final path out of oppression.

Age is not all decay: it is the ripening, the swelling of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husk.

The cessation of labor affords but the necessary occasion; makes it possible, as it were, for the occupant of an outlying station in the wilderness to return to his Father's house for fresh supplies…. The child-soul goes home at night, and returns in the morning to the labors of the school.

God grant our new may inwrap our old!

when the children had made sparrows of clay, Thou mad'st them birds, with wings to flutter and fold: Take, Lord, my prayer in thy hand, and make it pray.

The year's fruit must fall that the next year's may come, and the winter is the only way to the spring.

He has not yet learned that the day begins with sleep! said the woman, turning to her husband. Tell him he must rest before he can do anything!

you will be dead, so long as you refuse to die.

Most of them would have nothing to do with a caterpillar, except watch it through its changes; but when at length it came from its retirement with wings, all would immediately address it as Sister Butterfly, congratulating it on its metamorphosis--for which they used a word that meant something like REPENTANCE--and evidently regarding it as something sacred.

The boy should enclose and keep, as his life, the old child at the heart of him, and never let it go. He must still, to be a right man, be his mother's darling, and more, his father's pride, and more. The child is not meant to die, but to be for ever fresh-born.

Of all children how can the children of God be old?

The birds in the trees were singing A song as old as the world, Of love and green leaves and sunshine, And winter folded and furled. They sang that never was sadness But it melted and passed away; They sang that never was darkness But in came the conquering day.