Quotes About Growth

If the wrestler doesn't fight with stronger opponents, he will not become stronger himself. So when you face all your difficulties bravely, with spiritual strength, you become even stronger and more powerful. By conquering when you are tested, you will revive the forgotten image of God within you, and become consciously one with the Father again. So we must remember to use our God-given strength to overcome our trials, and thereby strengthen our inner lives.

Is the whole world going to change for you? Change yourself:

I used to act dumb. It was an act. I am 26 years old, and that act is no longer cute. It is not who I am, nor do I want to be that person for the young girls who looked up to me. I know now that I can make a difference, that I have the power to do that. I have been thinking that I want to do different things when I am out of here. I have become much more spiritual. God has given me this new chance.

Some friendships just have their seasons, and that's ok.

By choosing integrity, I become more whole, but wholeness does not mean perfection. It means becoming more real by acknowledging the whole of who I am.

Each time a door closes, the rest of the world opens up.

If we want to grow as teachers -- we must do something alien to academic culture: we must talk to each other about our inner lives -- risky stuff in a profession that fears the personal and seeks safety in the technical, the distant, the abstract.

In my own life, as winters turn into spring, I find it not only hard to cope with mud but also hard to credit the small harbingers of larger life to come, hard to hope until the outcome is secure. Spring teaches me to look more carefully for the green stems of possibility; for the intuitive hunch that may turn into a larger insight, for the glance or touch that may thaw a frozen relationship, for the stranger's act of kindness that makes the world seem hospitable again.

Our deepest calling is to grow into our own authentic self-hood, whether or not it conforms to some image of who we ought to be. As we do so, we will not only find the joy that every human being seeks--we will also find our path of authentic service in the world.

Rivers knew only too well how often the early stages of change or cure may mimic deterioration. Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly, a fit emblem of the human soul, for those whose cast of mind leads them to seek such emblems. No, the proces of transformation consists almost entirely of decay.

It was one of those moments that I think everybody experiences - and they don't have to be dramatic - when things begin to change; and you know there's no point ruminating about it, because thinking isn't going to help you understand. You're not ready to understand it yet; you have to live your way into the meaning.

The process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay.

how often the early stages of change of cure may mimic deterioration. Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar...the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay.

Insisting on maintaining dignity at all costs is paralyzing. Mistakes are informative, and so is playing the fool

There is no teacher more discriminating or transforming than loss.

Even today, I hunt for the fabulous books that will change me utterly. I find myself happiest in the middle of a book which I forget that I am reading, but am instead immersed in a made-up life lived at the highest pitch.

The human soul can always use a new tradition. Sometimes we require them.

The fruit tasted foreign but indigenous, like sunlight a tree had changed through patience.

Like many men and women who make egregious and irretrievable mistakes with their own children, she would redeem herself by becoming the perfect grandmother.

You do not learn how to write novels in a writing program. You learn how by leading an interesting life. Open yourself up to all experience. Let life pour through you the way light pours through leaves.

Comely was the town by the curving river that they dismantled in a year's time. Beautiful was Colleton in her last spring as she flung azaleas like a girl throwing rice at a desperate wedding. In dazzling profusion, Colleton ripened in a gauze of sweet gardens and the town ached beneath a canopy of promissory fragrance.

Hurt is a great teacher, maybe the greatest of all.

Because we're human. Like everyone else. And the older we get, the more human we get. The more human we get, the more painful everything becomes.

Every athlete learns by theft and mimicry.