Quotes About Connection

Our hands imbibe like roots, so I place them on what is beautiful in this world. —Francis of Assisi

Birds will give you a window, if you allow them. They will show you secrets from another world– fresh vision that, though it is avian, can accompany you home and alter your life. They will do this for you even if you don't know their names– though such knowing is a thoughtful gesture. They will do this for you if you watch them.

As we work to know the life that surrounds us, we stand in a lineage of naturalists — past, present, and even future. We join the "cloud of witnesses" who refuse to let the more-than-human world pass unnoticed.

Perhaps the corollary would be just as good an opening for a tale; not "long ago, when animals could speak," but "Long ago, when people could listen.

The cure for all the ills and wrongs, the cares, the sorrows, and the crimes of humanity, all lie in that one word Love. It is the divine vitality that everywhere produces and restores life.

No one is calling me. I can't check the answering machine because I have been here all this time. If I go out, someone may call while I'm out. Then I can check the answering machine when I come back in.

The people in your happy memories have to be the same people who want to have you in their own happy memories.

There was no confusion of our bodies. I knew which arm was his and which mine, and which leg, and which shoulder. I did not lose track and kiss my own arm, or whatever came near my mouth. THe smallest motion did not immediately lead to another motion. It was not endless, I did not go more and more deeply into my body and his body as though to go as far as possible from my mind, and his mind, so conscious, so unrelenting. It did not end while it was still in the middle.

And, everyone knows, to tolerate a person telling you about his childhood it is necessary to be in love with him.

But near the end of the hour I was also telling him how face-to-face with another person I couldn't speak. There was always a wall.

This woman had a loving heart and a capacity to understand another fallible human being.

The people of the town, though, remained strangers: I could not realize that I must be seeing some of them over and over again, it was as though each passed through only once, as though there were always new strangers coming here. And I felt so much a stranger myself that when, as rarely happened, I crossed the path of someone who knew me, and who spoke to me, I was startled and could hardly answer.

I will tell him something one of the characters said and I can see he is ready to laugh even before I tell it, though so often, in the case of other subjects, he is not terribly interested in what I say to him, especially when he sees that I am becoming enthusiastic.

I should check now and then to make sure I am not alone too much, or unhappy with other people too often.

In a simple way, that same night, like two hungry and thirsty people, we could decide we wanted to find a place to be alone together and remain together long enough to satisfy our appetite.

If I am playing a board game with people close to me and we are happy, I must be sure we don't quarrel before the end of it. I must be sure that at some later time we don't play another board game that is unhappy. I should check now and then to make sure I am not alone too much, or unhappy with other people too often. I should add them up, now and then: what are my happy memories so far?

Eleven years—that is long. Long enough so that the roots of love, if the tree is robust, plunge so deep that they will subsist always, even dried up.

Color these fish. Cut them out. Punch a hole in the top of each fish. Put a ribbon through all the holes. Tie these fish together. Now read what is written on these fish: Jesus is a friend. Jesus gathers friends. I am a friend of Jesus.

Art is not in some far-off place.

She found it an interesting exercise to explore a place with a person she did not know well, following not only her own impulses but also his.

The cure for all the ills and wrongs, the cares, the sorrows, and the crimes of humanity, all lie in the one word 'love'. It is the divine vitality that everywhere produces and restores life.

No music is so pleasant to my ears as that word—father.

The cure for all ills and wrongs, the cares, the sorrows and the crimes of humanity, all lie in the one word 'love.' It is the divine vitality that everywhere produces and restores life.

The rooms of his apartment were full with the dog home again, convalescing. He was satisfied to know, even when she was out of sight, that somewhere in the apartment she was sleeping or eating or sitting watchfully. It was family, he guessed, more or less. Did most people want a house of living things at night, to know that in the dark around them other warm bodies slept? Such a house could even be the whole world.