Kathleen Norris Quotes

86 Sourced Quotes

When you are unhappy or dissatisfied, is there anything in the world more maddening than to be told that you should be contented with your lot?

Kathleen Norris
Maybe the desert wisdom of the Dakotas can teach us to love anyway, to love what is dying, in the face of death, and not pretend that things are other than they are. The irony and wonder of all of this is that it is the desert's grimness, its stillness and isolation, that brings us back to love.

Kathleen Norris
Spring seems far off, impossible, but it is coming. Already there is dusk instead of darkness at five in the afternoon; already hope is stirring at the edges of the day.

Kathleen Norris
Any life lived attentively is disillusioning as it forces us to know us as we are.

Kathleen Norris
We can't give our children the future, strive though we may to make it secure. But we can give them the present.

Kathleen Norris
But in order to have an adult faith, most of us have to outgrow and unlearn much of what we were taught about religion.

Kathleen Norris
I sense that striving for wholeness is, increasingly, a countercultural goal, as fragmented people make for better consumers…

Kathleen Norris
Men are more conventional than women and much slower to change their ideas.

Kathleen Norris
The often heard lament, 'I have so little time,' gives the lie to the
delusion that the daily is of little significance.

Kathleen Norris
The feast had all the elements of perfection: good company, firelight, and appetite.

Kathleen Norris
I couldn't see what repaid her, do you see? What made up to her for the unending, unending effort, and sacrifice, the pouring out of love and sympathy and help — year after year after year.

Kathleen Norris
When you come to a place where you have to left or right,' says Sister Ruth, 'go straight ahead.

Kathleen Norris
When one has an insatiable appetite for trouble all sorts will serve. The accident of losing a hairpin, or a child, or a train, or a tooth are all trouble, and certain natures will harp upon the one quite as seriously as upon the other.

Kathleen Norris
Before you begin a thing, remind yourself that difficulties and delays quite impossible to foresee are ahead. If you could see them clearly, naturally you could do a great deal to get rid of them but you can't. You can only see one thing clearly and that is your goal. Form a mental vision of that and cling to it through thick and thin.

Kathleen Norris
When one has an honest appetite all food tastes good: shrimps Newburg with hot rolls and alligator pear salad, or black bread and sour cheese.

Kathleen Norris
It isn't the things that happen to us, it's the things we think are going to happen to us that drive us almost crazy...

Kathleen Norris
When they're little, they break your back, and when they're big they break your heart.

Kathleen Norris
Waste is a spiritual thing and harms the soul as well as the pocketbook.

Kathleen Norris
Men are the limit!... it's a great pity there ain't nothing else to do but marry, and nothing to marry but men!

Kathleen Norris
In every marriage there are the elements of success, and in every one the makings of a perfectly justifiable divorce.

Kathleen Norris
Hate is all a lie, there is no truth in hate...

Kathleen Norris
Don't be bitter... One may have been a fool, but there's no foolishness like being bitter.

Kathleen Norris
When they were going to be flagrantly, brutally selfish, how men did love to talk of being fair!

Kathleen Norris
The lover of books is a miner, searching for gold all his life long. He finds his nuggets, his heart leaps in his breast; he cannot believe in his good fortune. Traversing a slow page, to come upon a lode of the pure shining metal is to exult inwardly for greedy hours. It belongs to no one else; it is not interchangeable.

Kathleen Norris
Unkindness is death to the home. One unkind, unsocial, critical, eternally dissatisfied member can destroy any family.

Kathleen Norris
We raked books off the shelves by the dozen and hauled them along on picnics, to haylofts, up oak trees, to bath and to bed. The one terrifying possibility was to find oneself without a book.

Kathleen Norris
If, at the end of the saddest, the most disappointing and hurtful day, each one of us may come to a quiet room somewhere, and that room his own, if there is a light burning above white pillows, and a pile of books waiting under the light, then indeed we may still praise Allah, that He has not terminated all the Delights.

Kathleen Norris
Just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier.

Kathleen Norris
Any rules that are made for everybody hurt somebody, sometimes.

Kathleen Norris
Jealousy can be like that, as anxious to be near to its object as love can be.

Kathleen Norris