Quotes About Transformation

Instead, he had given me a new term to describe the heavy layers that I had built in the Land of Beauty, one on top of the other: pentimenti. "It's from the Latin," he had said in that growly voice of his. "To repent. And correct.

those before-and-after shots of women undergoing the knife and accepting poison to change themselves — the lines on their faces repaved like old roads, their bulbous noses whittled into aristocratic ridges.

There must be a few times in life when you stand at a precipice of a decision. When you know there will forever be a Before and an After...I knew there would be no turning back if I designated this moment as my own Prime Meridian from which everything else would be measured.

You raze the old to raise the new.

But even quashed rebellions leave us different. Because freedom may be a forbidden fruit in tyrannies, but once tasted, it is unforgettable.

I understood now: how nothing looked more beautiful than that scar of his, that borderline that separated what Jacob could have been had he stayed in that orphanage from who he is.

There must be a few times in life when you stand at a precipice of a decision. When you know there will forever be a Before and an After.

That Word, which had created the world out of nothing, was certainly capable of producing the reformation the entire church needed, and to which the Protestant movement remained a preamble.

No one becomes depraved in a moment.

Think of a potter taking a misshapen bowl from his wheel and pounding it back into the tub of clay. A soul suffers while it is being pounded in this way, and suffers until it ceases to be. You are pounded down, and that which was you gets into something else. God tries again, and tries until the Work is complete. Meanwhile you, my son, are long gone

I mention this because that's how the world changes. It's either so quick that we never know what hit us, or so gradual that we don't notice.

It's how I do things. First, despair. Then hope.

When you come to rely on the written word, it's time to light the fire with it.

My life has been so universally shitty that either I lose it or improve it, I'm not really bothered which, just so long as it doesn't carry on the way it's been so far.

I'd finally given her what she wanted, the elixir of eternal youth, effected by the removal of her internal fire (the catalyst of change) through the agency of death.

The way I see it, the truth is just barren moorland, all useless bog and heather. It's only when you break it up and turn it over with the ploughshare of the Good Lie that you can screw a livelihood out of it. Isn't that what humans do? They take a dead landscape and reshape it into what they need, and want, and can use. I've never hesitated to adapt the world to suit me, when I can get away with it.

The way I see it, the truth is just barren moorland, all useless bog and heather. It's only when you break it up and turn it over with the ploughshare of the Good Lie that you can screw a livelihood out of it. Isn't that what humans do? They take a dead landscape and reshape it into what they need, and want, and can use.

It was good to know that memory could be melted down and recast if it came out flawed the first time around, just like a bell.

The idea that he and Scott could get away together, maybe hang out for the hour before he has to rush back to get picked up by his mother in front of the school—when he thinks of that, he feels almost hungry. He's aware of his own brain working in ways it never used to: a switch has been flicked and he is now a stranger to himself—a stranger he has not yet decided he wants to be.

All of this beauty comes because we are broken. We no longer have anything to fight for because our lives have been crucified with Christ. We no longer have anything to boast in because our outer man is crushed, our strength is done away with, our reputation insignificant. It is only Christ within us that matters now. And it is only Christ within us, in all His beauty and grace, who can be seen now. His living water is free to flow out of us and bless others.

I rather think the world is like sand. The fundamental nature of sand is very difficult to grasp when you think of it in its stationary state. Sand not only flows, but this very flow is the sand.

A bee may be born in a hole in a tree, but she likes the honey of the lotus.

Kako lahko nekdo, ki je v okovih, osvobodi okovanega ?loveka? Odrešitev pri?akuj le od nekoga, ki je že svoboden.

For work has no other aim than the getting of knowledge: When that comes, then work is put away.  The flower blooms for the fruit: when the fruit comes, the flower withers. The musk is in the deer, but it seeks it not within itself: it wanders in quest of grass.