D Joan Quotes & Sayings

Living well has something to do with the spirituality of wholeheartedness, of seeing life more as a grace than as a penance, as time to be lived with eager expectation of its goodness, not in dread of its challenges. — Joan D. Chittister

Benedictine spirituality, after all,
is life lived to the hilt.
It is a life of concentration
on life's ordinary dimensions.
It is an attempt to do
the ordinary things of life
extraordinarily well. — Joan D. Chittister

I don't think there'd be a Tina Fey now if I hadn't tried to look good in the beginning. — Joan Rivers

He flicked through the yellowed rough-cut pages and breathed its musty smell. It filled him with a strange excitement, as if he'd caught a whiff of ancient, buried cities. — Joan London

I have six sisters, so I assumed I'd have a girl. Learning I was having a boy was really weird. — Melissa Joan Hart

for beginners. After that, you can set out for — Joan D. Chittister

It is one thing to speak kindly to an irritating stranger on Monday. It is quite another thing to go on speaking kindly to the same irritating relative, or irritating employee, or irritating child day after day, week after week, year after year and come to see in that what God is asking of me, what God is teaching me about myself in this weary, weary moment. — Joan D. Chittister

Every part I've done has been for one reason or another-money, or the part, or the director, or the location. I'd like to get one thing that's all of those combined. — Joan Severance

Humans are upsetting a fragile balance that their own human ancestors established. — Joan D. Vinge

I had a friend who was a plastic surgeon, so he would do little things. I never had, like, a full thing. So I would go in maybe once every two or three years, and he'd do a little here, a little there; tweak you, like you tweak your car. Then I became the plastic surgery poster girl. — Joan Rivers

When I know and accept myself-all my strengths and all my limitations- I am immediately respectful of everyone else because I know they have something beautiful within them that I do not have. — Joan D. Chittister

For the Jew, Passover is a sign of salvation, of "God with us" at a particular historical moment in the past. For the Christian, Easter is a sign of "God with us" in the past, but with us now also and at a time to come, as well. — Joan D. Chittister

Beyond that, I seem to be compelled to write science fiction, rather than fantasy or mysteries or some other genre more likely to climb onto bestseller lists even though I enjoy reading a wide variety of literature, both fiction and nonfiction. — Joan D. Vinge

We don't change as we get older - we just get to be more of what we've always been. — Joan D. Chittister

You don't have to be rich and famous. You just have to be an ordinary person, doing extraordinary things. I'd like more people to know that it's there. Women's achievements still aren't recognised enough in many areas. — Joan Armatrading

preoccupation with fantasies of success; exhibitionism and insatiable attention-getting maneuvers; — Joan D. Chittister

L.A. ispolluted. It's overpopulated. But it is very much home. It was inevitable for me, the moving back. I was living in San Francisco, and Joan broke it off with me, and I needed a place to live. I'd been divorced. And I needed to write movies and TV shows to earn a living. Alimony. All that. So I figured what the hell, I'll go back to L.A. — James Ellroy

Everywhere I looked, hope existed - but only as some kind of green shoot in the midst of struggle. It was a theological concept, not a spiritual practice. Hope, I began to realize, was not a state of life. It was at best a gift of life. — Joan D. Chittister

To be contemplative we must remove the clutter from our lives, surround ourselves with beauty, and consciously, relentlessly, persistently, give clutter away until the tiny world for which we ourselves are responsible begins to reflect the raw beauty that is God. — Joan D. Chittister

Joan commented, upon sentence, My body is your property, but my love is not. My love is my own, and I shall love you fiercely while you kill me. — Cordwainer Smith

Humble people walk comfortably in every group. No one is either too beneath them or too above them for their own sense of well-being. They are who they are, people with as much to give as to get, and they know it. And because they're at ease with themselves, they can afford to be open with others... Having discovered who we are and having opened ourselves to life and having learned to be comfortable with it, we know that God is working in us. We know, most of all, that whatever happens we have nothing to fear... we are free of the false hopes and false faces and false needs that once held us down. We can fly now. Let all the others scratch and grapple for the plastic copy of life. We have found the real thing. — Joan D. Chittister

The moment a woman comes home to herself, the moment she knows that she has become a person of influence, an artist of her life, a sculptor of her universe, a person with rights and responsibilities who is respected and recognized, the resurrection of the world begins. — Joan D. Chittister

Too many times we insist on loving people the way we want to love them instead of the way they need to be loved. — Joan D. Chittister

I learned that the Italians are right. It isn't what happens to us that counts. It's what we do with what happens to us that makes all the difference — Joan D. Chittister

Things change all the time; but how much of it is real? Does any choice any of us ever makes, no matter how important it seems, really cause a ripple in the greater scheme of things? — Joan D. Vinge

To be alive was to be disappointed. You tried and failed and kept on trying, never knowing whether you'd ever get what you wanted. But sometimes we get what we need. — Joan D. Vinge

Getting to know ourselves and learning to control ourselves are the two great tasks of life. Don't make up strange and exotic 'penances.' Simply say no to yourself once a day, and you will be on the road to sanctity for the rest of your life. — Joan D. Chittister

I love you,' he whispered again, wonderingly, as he understood at last how a lifetime together with someone that you loved could seem like an eternity, and yet not be long enough. — Joan D. Vinge

My gods or your gods, who know which are stronger?' That's why we honor them all - just in case. There are more cultures even than Gods in the Eight Worlds, and among them you'll find people who are willing to kill you, or each other, over any difference in belief or lifestyle or physical appearance you can imagine - and some you can't. They all think they're right. There's no Truth, Tammis, only differences of opinion. — Joan D. Vinge

And so The Snow Queen also became a story about the need to seek equilibrium, in our own lives, with the natural world, even within the universe at large. — Joan D. Vinge

My parents instilled in me that life was going to be very difficult and that I'd have to work for everything. — Joan Collins

In the far corner, a tenor began to sing, Zsadist's crystal-clear voice sailing up toward the warrior paintings on the ceiling far, far above them all. At first John didn't know what the song was ... although if he'd been asked what his name was, he would have said Santa Claus, or Luther Vandross, or Teddy Roosevelt.
Maybe even Joan Collins. — J.R. Ward

My limitations make space for the gifts of other people. Without the grace of our limitations we would be isolated, dry, and insufferable creatures indeed. — Joan D. Chittister

Assuming that tomorrow will be the same as today is poor preparation for living. It equips us only for disappointment or, more likely, for shock. To live well, to be mentally healthy, we must learn to realize that life is a work in process. — Joan D. Chittister

Perhaps the thing that makes humans truly unique on Earth is that we are never satisfied with our situation; maybe that is what's taken us so far. — Joan D. Vinge

All of us wrestle with the angels of our inabilities all the time. We live in fear that our incapacities will be exposed. We posture and evaluate and assess and criticize mercilessly. — Joan D. Chittister

Goodness is a process of becoming, not of being. What we do over and over again is what we become in the end. — Joan D. Chittister

Hope is what sits by the window and waits for one more dawn, despite the fact that there isn't an ounce of proof in tonight's black, black sky that it can possible come. — Joan D. Chittister

I have no sex appeal; if my husband didn't toss and turn, we'd never have had the kid. — Joan Rivers

In scripture God brings the animals to the human for naming. In that simple act the human is brought to recognize the particular personality and worth of each living creature. Too bad we forget so often. — Joan D. Chittister

It is what we do routinely, not what we do rarely, that delineates the character of a person. — Joan D. Chittister

It is in community that we come to see God in the other. It is in community that we see our own emptiness filled up. It is community that calls me beyond the pinched horizons of my own life, my own country, my own race, and gives me the gifts I do not have within me. — Joan D. Chittister

Happiness does not come quickly. It is not conferred by any single event, however exciting or comforting or satisfying the event may be. It cannot be purchased, whatever the allure of the next, the newest, the brightest, the best. Happiness, like Carl Sandburg's fog, "comes on little cat feet," often silently, often without our knowing it, too often without our noticing. — Joan D. Chittister

I've always thought - and I don't even know if I'd be right for the part - that Jean Seberg would make a great biopic. She was in Jean-Luc Godard's 'Breathless,' she played Joan of Arc. She had this eventful and traumatic adulthood, she thought the FBI was after her, and she became a darling of the French New Wave. — Gillian Jacobs

Peace comes from living a measured life. Peace comes from attending to every part of my world in a sacramental way. My relationships are not what I do when I have time left over from my work ... Reading is not something I do when life calms down. Prayer is not something I do when I feel like it. They are all channels of hope and growth for me. They must all be given their due. — Joan D. Chittister

Sometimes we exclude things in ourselves in order to be like everybody else around us-our ethnicity, our social backgrounds, our ideas. What kind of world is it that will not allow me to be myself, and is it really good for me to be there? What part of me will die a slow death if I stay? — Joan D. Chittister

Beware of your definition of success: If it has more to do with what other people think of you than it does with what you know of your own abilities, you may be confusing applause with achievement. — Joan D. Chittister

When souls really touch, it is forever. Then space and time disappear, and all that remains is the consciousness that we are not alone in life. — Joan D. Chittister

If people have to put labels on me, I'd prefer the first label to be human being, the second label to be pacifist, and the third to be folk singer. — Joan Baez

I find suggestion a hell of a lot more provocative than explicit detail. You didn't see Clark[Gable] and Vivien[leigh] rolling around in bed in Gone With The Wind, but you saw that shit eating grin on her face the next morning and you knew damned well she'd gotten properly laid. — Joan Crawford

To be a presence of perpetual thanksgiving may be the ultimate goal of life. The thankful person is the one for whom life is simply one long exercise in the sacred. — Joan D. Chittister

Mystery is what happens to us when we allow life to evolve rather than having to make it happen all the time. It is the strange knock at the door, the sudden sight of an unceremoniously blooming flower, an afternoon in the yard, a day of riding the midtown bus. Just to see. Just to notice. Just to be there. — Joan D. Chittister

Failure is the foundation of truth. It teaches us what isn't true, and that is a great beginning. To fear failure is to fear the possibility of truth. — Joan D. Chittister

Moon is also a naive native girl when she sets out for Carbuncle. — Joan D. Vinge

Two ideas militate against our consciously contributing to a better world. The idea that we can do everything or the conclusion that we can do nothing to make this globe a better place to live are both temptations of the most insidious form. One leads to arrogance; the other to despair. — Joan D. Chittister

Guys don't understand great art. They don't care that sometimes the camera has power beyond the photographer to record emotion that only the heart can see. They're threatened when the camera jumps ahead of me. Todd Kovich was pissed when I brought my Nikon to the prom, but I'd missed too many transcendent shots over the years to ever take a chance of missing one again. A prom, I told him, had a boundless supply of photogenic bozos who could be counted on to do something base. — Joan Bauer

Benedict sets up a community, a family. And families, the honest among us will admit, are risky places to be if perfection is what y ou are expecting in life. — Joan D. Chittister

The ecosystem of our world is a closed system: it would run out of gas, collapse of its own weight. — Joan D. Vinge

We punish the body and strip the earth. And we do it in pursuit of a so-called holiness that smacks of the bogus, that denies the gifts of God, that makes us marauders on the earth. — Joan D. Chittister

Longing is a compass that guides us through life. We may never get what we really want, that's true, but every step along the way will be determined by it. — Joan D. Chittister

A seeker searched for years to know the secret of achievement and success in human life. One night in a dream a sage appeared bearing the answer to the secret. The sage said simply: "Stretch out your hand and reach what you can." "No, it can't be that simple," the seeker said. And the sage said softly, "You are right, it is something harder. It is this: Stretch out your hand and reach what you cannot." Now that's vision. — Joan D. Chittister

Imagine how happy, how holy, life would be if we ever really learn to see beauty. — Joan D. Chittister

This had to be Finn Dalton's mother. It simply had to be. From the moment Nash had given Carrie what seemed like the impossible assignment of interviewing Finn, she'd looked for out-of-the-box ways to locate him. Her mother's mention of work on the Alaskan pipeline and that many of those employed came from Washington State had led to a breakthrough. At least she hoped so. The search led Carrie to the birth record for a Finnegan Paul Dalton, not in Alaska but in her own birth state of Washington. That record revealed his mother's name - Joan Finnegan Dalton - which then led to a divorce decree, along with a license for a second marriage several years later. Tax records indicated that Joan, whose married name was now Reese, continued to reside in Washington State. Her hope was that Joan Dalton Reese would be willing to help Carrie find Finn. — Debbie Macomber

I'd like to just be a little bit more open to making mistakes and not worrying about it so much. — Joan Jett

Life is a series of lessons, some of them obvious, some of them not. We learn as we go that dreams end, that plans get changed, that promises get broken, that our idols disappoint us. — Joan D. Chittister

I sure saw a lot of kids that I'm sure didn't know a lot about us, or we were definitely new to them. The kids who came up to me afterward, we'd talk about music, sign a lot of autographs. So I'm sure we made a lot of new fans. — Joan Jett

I had taken the photograph from afar (distance being the basic glitch in our relationship), using my Nikon and zoom lens while hiding behind a fake marble pillar. I was hiding because if he knew I'd been secretly photographing him for all these months he would think I was immature, neurotic and obsessive.
I'm not.
I'm an artist.
Artists are always misunderstood.(Thwonk) — Joan Bauer

Life with someone else, in other words, doesn't show me nearly as much about his or her shortcomings as it does about my own.... That's how relationships sanctify me. They show me where holiness is for me. That's how relationships develop me. They show me where growth is for me. If I'm the passive-victim type, then assertiveness may have something to do with coming to wholeness. If I'm the domineering character in every group, then a willingness to listen and to be led may be my call to life. Alone, I am what I am, but in community I have the chance to become everything I can be. — Joan D. Chittister

Every dimension of life, its gains and its losses, are reason for celebration because each of them brings us closer to wisdom and fullness of understanding. — Joan D. Chittister

We are each called to go through life reclaiming the planet an inch at a time until the Garden of Eden grows green again. — Joan D. Chittister

One of the functions of leadership is to lead, and weak managers may simply check and check and check with others because they are not capable of leading when it is required of them to lead. Benedict says that in matters of importance the abbot or prioress is to ask everyone in the community, 'starting with the youngest,' and then the abbot or prioress is to 'do what seems best. — Joan D. Chittister

Life is the ability to start over again. — Joan D. Chittister

On the set you just have to listen very closely, listen to everyone around you, absorb everything and try to be what they want you to be with the little bitty line that you'd have to say. If it was a good line, it would be such fun to say it with vigor. — Joan Leslie

Each time, storytellers clothed the naked body of the myth in their own traditions, so that listeners could relate more easily to its deeper meaning. — Joan D. Vinge

Fear of the unknown is a terrible fear. — Joan D. Vinge

What is the spirituality we need for the 21st century? We face a choice: to retire from this fray into some marshmallow paradise where we can massage away the heat of the day, the questions of the time, the injustice of the age, and live like pious moles in the heart of a twisted world. Or, we can gather our strength - our spiritual strength - for the struggle it will take to wake up from this pious sleep. — Joan D. Chittister

Learning to celebrate joy is one of the great practices of the spiritual life. — Joan D. Chittister

I was thinking about what I wanted to write next, after my first novel, and had decided that I wanted to write a story with a lot of strong female characters in it. — Joan D. Vinge

I'd hear a tune in my head and the words would come. And then, very suddenly it just stopped. It seemed too stilted to try and learn how to write a song, to go to round robins and to learn things from other people on how to write a song. So I just stopped and did other things. — Joan Baez

Only ideas keep ideas flowing. When we close our minds to what is new, simply because we decide not to bother with it, we close our minds to our responsibility to ourselves - and to others - to keep on growing. — Joan D. Chittister

I celebrate myself," the poet Walt Whitman wrote. The thought is so delicious it is almost obscene. Imagine the joy that would come with celebrating the self - our achievements, our experiences, our existence. Imagine what it would be like to look into the mirror and say, as God taught us, "That's good. — Joan D. Chittister

There's no such thing as a free lunch, at least on the karmic level. — Joan D. Vinge

Prayer restores the soul that is dry and dulled by years of trying to create a world that never completely comes. — Joan D. Chittister

Indeed, the big decisions in life are hardly ever clear - except for one. And that one is piercingly clear: life is a series of dilemmas, of options, of conundrums, of possibilities taken and not taken. Negotiating these moments well is of the essence of the life well lived. — Joan D. Chittister

While making "Possessed", I wept each morning on my drive to the studio, and I wept all the way back home. I found it impossible to sleep at night, so I'd lie in bed contemplating the future. I fear it with all my heart and soul even as I fear the dark. — Joan Crawford

There is no amount of darkness that can extinguish the inner light. The important thing is not to spend our lives trying to control the environment around us. The task is to control the environment within us. — Joan D. Chittister

We gain the insight to see ourselves through the friendships we make. They mirror us to ourselves. In them we see clearly what we do not have as well as what the world cannot do without. They do not judge us or condemn us or reject us. They hold us up while we grow, laughing and playing as we go. They bring us to the best of ourselves. "One's friends," George Santayana wrote, "are that part of the human race with which one can be human. — Joan D. Chittister

Life is not meant to be a burden. Life is not a problem to be solved. It is a blessing to be celebrated. — Joan D. Chittister

We must learn to pray out of our weaknesses so that God can become our
strength. — Joan D. Chittister

We must now surrender to the obligation to understand and to care. We must surrender ourselves to becoming conscious, thinking members of the human race. We must put down the temptation to powerlessness and surrender to the questions of the moment. — Joan D. Chittister

It's the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us. — Joan D. Chittister

I was never the 'babe,' so I knew I'd never get those big roles. I'd always be the best friend or the quirky sidekick. — Joan Cusack

The Christmas season is a gift in itself. It releases us from the priorities of ordinary time and gives us the right to party more and pray more and love more. — Joan D. Chittister

I wanted to show those characters discovering it is possible to find common ground, as they make their way through a plotline that I hope is engrossing enough to keep the reader a willing participant. — Joan D. Vinge

All [people] are intolerant ... Only they're intolerant of different things. — Joan D. Vinge

Persistence may not solve everything - at least in our lifetime - but it is truer to the meaning of life for us to wait for another plowing, another seeding, another harvest, then not. — Joan D. Chittister

What I do not want to write is didactic political tracts. — Joan D. Vinge

Don't worry about wearing the sign; be the sign. You don't have to wear a sandwich board saying, "I am religious and spiritual and know what you should do." You do have to be the best of the mystical presence that your tradition brings. Certainly in Christianity, that means that you begin to go through life putting on the mind of Jesus, trying to see the world as Jesus saw the world. — Joan D. Chittister

I really think the mind of someone who hasn't been welded into place by their work or studios or actors or this whole society is a wonderful mind to work with, so I'd like to do a big picture with an unknown director. — Joan Severance

Mom put dense cheddar bread into a bag for a man who said this was his wife's favorite - he'd driven all the way from New Jersey to buy it because today was their anniversary. Several women in the store jabbed their husbands on hearing this. I hung my head - Peter Terris wouldn't cross the street to buy me a Twinkie. — Joan Bauer