Quotes About Transformation

A kind of love to the cheerful little stream arose in my heart. It was born in a desert; but it seemed to say to itself, I will flow, and sing, and lave my banks, till I make my desert a paradise.

I am a beast until I love as God doth love.

What if I should look ugly without being bad - look ugly myself because I am making ugly things beautiful? - What then?

There is no forgetting of ourselves but in the finding of our deeper, our true self—God's idea of us when he devised us—the Christ in us. Nothing but that self can displace the false, greedy, whining self, of which, most of us are so fond and proud. And that self no man can find for himself; seeing of himself he does not even know what to search for. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God.

All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come.

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.

Nobody who has not been tried knows how difficult it is; but whoever has come out well of it - and those who do not overcome never do come out of it - always looks back with horror, not on what she has come through, but on the very idea of the possibility of having failed and being still the same miserable creature as before.

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

It matters little where a man may be at this moment; the point is whether he is growing.

The very fact that anything can die, implies the existence of something that cannot die; which must either take to itself another form, as when the seed that is sown dies, and arises again; or, in conscious existence, may, perhaps, continue to lead a purely spiritual life.

Suddenly pressing both hands on her heart, she fell to the ground, and the mist rose from her and melted in the air. I ran to her. But she began to writhe in such torture that I stood aghast. A moment more and her legs, hurrying from her body, sped away serpents. From her shoulders fled her arms as in terror, serpents also. Then something flew up from her like a bat, and when I looked again, she was gone.

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

The question is not at present, however, of removing mountains, a thing that will one day be simple to us, but of waking and rising from the dead now.

Jesus tells us we must leave the self altogether-yield it, deny it, refuse it, lose it. Thus only shall we save it.... The self is given us that we may sacrifice it. It is ours in order that we, like Christ, may have something to offer- not that we should torment it, but that we should deny it; not that we should cross it, but that we should abandon it utterly.

There is endless room for rebellion against ourselves.

There had been a time in Godfrey's life when, had she stood before him in all her splendor, he would have turned from her, because of her history, with a sad disgust. Was he less pure now? He was more pure, for he was humbler.

Sad-hearted, be at peace: the snowdrop lies     Buried in sepulchre of ghastly snow;

My prayers, my God, flow from what I am not; I think thy answers make me what I am. Like weary waves thought follows upon thought, But the still depth beneath is all thine own, And there thou mov'st in paths to us unknown.

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.

it is not because of God's poverty that the world is so slowly redeemed. Not the most righteous expenditure of money will save it, but that of life and soul and spirit—it may be, to that, of nerve and muscle, blood and brain. All these our Lord spent—but no money. Therefore I say, that of all means for saving the world, or doing good, as it is called, money comes last in order, and far behind.

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.

The second childhood, at which the fool jeers, is the better, the truer, the fuller childhood, growing strong to cast off altogether, with the husk of its own enveloping age, that of its family, its country, its world as well. Age is not all decay. It is the ripening, the swelling of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husk.

Thus I, who set out to find my Ideal, came back rejoicing that I had lost my Shadow.

It is possible to grow and not to grow, to grow less and to grow bigger, both at once—yes, even to grow by means of not growing!