Saints Quotes

“Every saint has a bee in his halo.”
― Elbert Hubbard

“Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is possible that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never had much temptation to be human beings.”
― George Orwell

“There is a bench in the back of my garden shaded by Virginia creeper, climbing roses, and a white pine where I sit early in the morning and watch the action. Light blue bells of a dwarf campanula drift over the rock garden just before my eyes. Behind it, a three-foot stand of aconite is flowering now, each dark blue cowl-like corolla bowed for worship or intrigue: thus its common name, monkshood. Next to the aconite, black madonna lilies with their seductive Easter scent are just coming into bloom. At the back of the garden, a hollow log, used in its glory days for a base to split kindling, now spills white cascade petunias and lobelia.

I can't get enough of watching the bees and trying to imagine how they experience the abundance of, say, a blue campanula blosssom, the dizzy light pulsing, every fiber of being immersed in the flower. ...

Last night, after a day in the garden, I asked Robin to explain (again) photosynthesis to me. I can't take in this business of _eating light_ and turning it into stem and thorn and flower...

I would not call this meditation, sitting in the back garden. Maybe I would call it eating light. Mystical traditions recognize two kinds of practice: _apophatic mysticism_, which is the dark surrender of Zen, the Via Negativa of John of the Cross, and _kataphatic mysticism_, less well defined: an openhearted surrender to the beauty of creation. Maybe Francis of Assissi was, on the whole, a kataphatic mystic, as was Thérèse of Lisieux in her exuberant momemnts: but the fact is, kataphatic mysticism has low status in religious circles. Francis and Thérèse were made, really made, any mother superior will let you know, in the dark nights of their lives: no more of this throwing off your clothes and singing songs and babbling about the shelter of God's arms.

When I was twelve and had my first menstrual period, my grandmother took me aside and said, 'Now your childhood is over. You will never really be happy again.' That is pretty much how some spiritual directors treat the transition from kataphatic to apophatic mysticism.

But, I'm sorry, I'm going to sit here every day the sun shines and eat this light. Hung in the bell of desire.”
― Mary Rose O'Reilley, The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd

“Try your best to be a saint and see how far you'll fall.”
― Sai Marie Johnson

“Why is it that the saints of June are honored with fire?”
― Carolina Maria de Jesus, Child of the Dark: The Diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus, 50th Anniversary Edition

“My own understanding is that only idiots become saints. A man of intelligence cannot become a saint, because to be a saint you have to go against nature, against the body, against yourself. It is very strange that God has given you all these tendencies -- of love, of taste, of laughter. Who is the criminal?
If anybody is a criminal, it is God.”
― Osho, Christianity, the deadliest poison & Zen, the antidote to all poisons

“And what is England if not a farm with soil to be tilled and vines to tend?” Ned asked. “She needs a farmer to see to her needs, and nothing else will do. That’s why our patron saint shares the same name, because the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the faith.”
― Avellina Balestri, All Ye That Pass By: Book 1: Gone for a Soldier

“(15) Can it be wrong at any time or place to love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and to love your neighbour as yourself (Matt. 22:37, 39)?”
― Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

“Saintliness interests me for the delirium of self-aggrandizement hidden beneath its meekness, it's Will to Power masked by goodness. Saints have used their deficiencies to their best advantage. Yet their megalomania is undefinable, strange, and moving.”
― Emil M. Cioran, Tears and Saints

“Halfway home from Plaza Espana, I was in no rush and stopped by a quiet, closed little square on my way, called Plaza de Santa Madrona. I bought a Lucky Strike, “blando” softpack, “sin aditivos”, from a small bar's cigarette vending machine and ordered a cafe cortado, my favorite coffee in Spain. Both Adam and I smoked the same type of cigarettes in Spain; that was the best one.
In Italy, I preferred to smoke MS Azzurro and caffe corretto con La Vecchia Romagna - a short, strong espresso with a shot of Italian cognac. That could wake you up after a seventeen-hour roadtrip from Budapest to Gaeta, which was necessary as administrative duties had been added to my interpreter roles over time. If I made a mistake, I wouldn't receive a bonus. Indeed. There was speech. Only once or twice in almost 5 years by the end of 2014.
I knew I would end up at the Magalhaes and Radas corner, walking that way towards home anyhow. I was just sitting on that little square, surrounded by buildings; I was the only person sitting at the bar terrace. This was the first time I did not want to go home to Carrer Radas. There was a fountain in the middle; you could almost hear the water running down into a tub, echoing on the hidden little street which had no traffic whatsoever. It was almost like a holy moment - “Santa Madrona, help me,” I thought. I, the atheist, was asking for some miracle in that silent, peaceful, hidden little plazita where time seemed to stand still.”
― Tomas Adam Nyapi

“In my darkest days, I grew hope by pressing into the ancient stories. I followed the thread of love stretching from Mary Magdalene’s life, through the lives of the saints, and down into mine.”
― Amber C. Haines

“It is the abnegation of self-will that gives room for the gods to enter through saints.”
― Lois Mcmaster Bujold, The Hallowed Hunt

“That association by which significance of wealth is eliminated, the significance of sense pleasures is eradicated, and false ego is dissipated is called the association of saints.”
― Shri Hit Premanand Govind Sharan Ji Maharaj

“I agree that every saint has a past, but not that every sinner has a future. In this life we see a great many sinners dying precisely and directly because of sin.”
― Criss Jami

“His first destination, whenever he rose thus with ample time in hand, was always the altar of Saint Winifred, with its silver reliquary, where he stopped to exchange a little respectful and affectionate conversation with his countrywoman. He always spoke Welsh to her. The accents of his childhood and hers brought them into a welcome intimacy, in which he could ask her anything and never feel rebuffed. Even without his advocacy, he felt, her favor and protection would go with Hugh to Cambridge, but there was no harm in mentioning the need.”
― Ellis Peters (Edith Pargeter)

“Saints are not corporeal, but presences; they can reach and touch wherever their grace and generosity desire.”
― Ellis Peters (Edith Pargeter), The Potter's Field

“Let people take you for a fool; there is much truth in that.”
― Hadewijch of Antwerp

“Does man only possess immortality? The great words: ‘Behold, I make all things new’ are certainly related not to man only, but to all creation, to every creature. We have already said that the spirit of animals, even the smallest part of it, cannot be mortal, for it is from the Holy Spirit….In the new Jerusalem, the new universe, there will be a place for the animals, too….Eternal life for [non-human] creatures will be only quiet happiness and enjoyment of the new radiant nature full of light, in communication with man, who will no longer torture and exterminate it.”
― St Luke Of Simferopol, Spirit, Soul, Body

“The saint is a medicine because he is an antidote”
― G.K. Chesterton, Saint Thomas Aquinas

“He will generally be found restoring the world to sanity by exaggerating whatever the world neglects, which is by no means always the same element in every age. Yet each generation seeks its saint by instinct; and he is not what the people want, but rather what the people need.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Saint Thomas Aquinas

“They say your heart breaks to let the light in, but at some point some of our hearts break so hard and so often that they’re just filled with light, which has no choice but to shine back out. Maybe saints realize that before the rest of us do, which is why they’re always pointing to their hearts. They ask us not to harden against, but open to. They speak in tongues of trinkets, flowers and beads and glitter, small innocent things that insist throughout even the darkest times—bits of bright that are the philosophers’ stone. Strung up and clung to, shapeshifting the world itself.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

“O God, Thou who guidest the Saints and leadest them on Thy eternal way, who art everywhere with them and leavest them never, lead me on this way and direct my feet on the way of salvation and bring me to the place which I long for, that I may have intercourse with Thy Saints and serve Thee with them in holiness and praise Thee eternally.”
― A J and Albertus Schwengler: Wensinck, Legends of Eastern Saints Chiefly from Syriac Sources. Volume 1: Archelides; Volume 2: Hilaria. Bound with: Eusebii Pamphilii Historiae Ecclesiasticae Lib X, Ed A Schwegler.

“When a shrine, a temple, an altar room, a church, a sacred place of nature becomes legendary for a miracle by a prophet or a saint took place there; people flock there in search of the miraculous. Tell me, my child, have you found what you were in search of?”
― Dipa Sanatani, A Thousand Names

“He was showing how marriage is not a contract, involving merely an exchange of goods and services. Rather, marriage is a covenant, involving an exchange of persons. Kippley's argument was that every covenant has an act whereby the covenant is enacted and renewed; and the marital act is a covenant act. When the marriage covenant is renewed, God uses it to give new life. To renew the marital Covenant and use birth control to destroy the potential for new life is tantamount to receiving the Eucharist and spitting it on the ground.”
― Scott Hahn, Rome Sweet Home

“You don't need to be a saint to realize your sins.”
― Ezekiel Millinga, Love is Not a Feeling, It is a Choice

“I thought I could fit everything into tidy boxes and sort right from wrong. But now I see that sometimes a saint acts like a sinner. And sometimes a sinner acts like a saint.”
― Amanda Cox, The Bitter End Birding Society

“Love proves itself by deeds, so how am I to show my love? Great deeds are forbidden me. The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers and these flowers are every little sacrifice, every glance and word, and the doing of the least actions for love.”
― Thérèse of Lisieux, The Story of a Soul L'Histoire D'une Âme: The Autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux: With Additional Writings and Sayings of St. Thérès

“I cannot pretend I am not pleased by praise; but I am more delighted to have declared the truth than to be praised for it.”
― Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

“The saint isn’t someone who makes us think, ‘That looks hard; that’s a heroic achievement of will’ - with the inevitable accompanying thought, ‘That’s too hard for me’ - but someone who makes us think, ‘How astonishing! Human lives can be like that, behaviour like that can look quite natural’ - with perhaps the thought, ‘How can I find what they have?’

(Silence and Honeycakes)”
― Rowan Williams

“The saints are the people, weak and imperfect like ourselves, who said a total "Yes" to God's love. It is not that they were strong enough or virtuous enough to win his love, because that love is always freely given, but only those we call saints actually did that blessed taking, accepting the reality of being loved with all its consequences. ~Sister Wendy's Book of Saints”
― Sister Wendy Beckett