Quotes About Change

As iron cast into fire loses its rust and becomes glowing white, so he who turns completely to God is stripped of his sluggishness and changed into a new man.

As long as you live, you will be subject to change, whether you will it or not - now glad, now sorrowful; now pleased, now displeased; now devout, now undevout; now vigorous, now slothful; now gloomy, now merry. But a wise man who is well taught in spiritual labor stands unshaken in all such things, and heeds little what he feels, or from what side the wind of instability blows.

If you gave more frequent thought to your death than to a long life, you would unquestionably be more eager to amend your life.

As iron cast into fire loses its rust and becomes glowing white, so he who turns completely to God is stripped of his sluggishness and changed into a new man. When a man begins to grow lax, he fears a little toil and welcomes external comfort, but when he begins perfectly to conquer himself and to walk bravely in the ways of God, then he thinks those things less difficult which he thought so hard before.

As often as I have been among men, I have returned home a lesser man.

Three things make people want to change. One is that they hurt sufficiently.

Repentance is a change of the mind, and regeneration is a change of the man.

Restlessness is discontent and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.

Discontent is the first necessity of progress.

Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress.

Thomas Anderson

It is absurd and a detestable shame, that we should suffer those traditions to be changed which we have received from the fathers of old.

I answer that, The will can be changed in two ways. First, from within; in which way, since the movement of the will is nothing but the inclination of the will to the thing willed, God alone can thus change the will, because He gives the power of such an inclination to the intellectual nature. For as the natural inclination is from God alone Who gives the nature, so the inclination of the will is from God alone, Who causes the will.

The alteration of a human law is right exactly so far as the alteration is conducive to the public interest. But the mere change of itself is in some measure prejudicial to that interest, because custom goes a long way towards getting the laws observed, so much so that enactments running counter to common custom, though light in themselves, seem burdensome. Hence, when the law is changed, the binding power of the law is diminished, inasmuch as a custom is set aside.

As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.

All the best sands of my life are somehow getting into the wrong end of the hourglass. If I could only reverse it! Were it in my power to do so, would I?

All the best sands of my life are somehow getting into the wrong end of the hourglass. If I could only reverse it!

How fugitive and brief is mortal life between the budding and the falling leaf.

Generally, it's better to understand that change is a matter of patience and persistence, setbacks and renewed effort, rather than sudden perfection.

What are you then? You are a pattern of energy flowing in the stream of time.

Though true repentance be never too late, yet late repentance is seldom true.

Generations passe while some trees stand, and old Families last not three Oaks.

We cannot hope to live so long in our names, as some have done in their persons, one face of Janus holds no proportion unto the other. 'Tis too late to be ambitious. The great mutations of the world are acted, or time may be too short for our designes...We whose generations are ordained in this setting part of time, are providentially taken off from such imaginations.

I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind & my eyes, refusing to be stamped & stereotyped. The thing is to free ones self; to let it find its dimensions, not be impeded. (Diary 4: 187)