"God grant ... that he may learn to understand in time, that whoso is minded to do as he himself wills will soon enough see the day when he will find he has done that which he had never willed."
- Sigrid Undset
"Her heart felt as if it were breaking in her breast, bleeding and bleeding, young and fierce. From grief over the warm and ardent love which she had lost and still secretly mourned; from anguished joy..."
"All those wasted and squandered years when I did nothing but go around looking inside myself until I ended up alone even though I was surrounded by people. But I paid attention only to what was happen..."
"It seems to her [Saint Catherine of Siena] that the devil has this world in his power, not by his own will, for he is powerless, but through our help because we obey him. The evil aroma rising from th..."
"She [Catherine of Siena] found a place of refuge in a lonely wood, where some hermits lived. It is generally thought that this brotherhood was the community of hermits in Vallombrosa, founded by St. J..."
"I've done many things that I thought I would never dare to do because they were sins. But I didn't realize then that the consequence of sin is that you have to trample on other people."
"Do you know who 'twas that first knew our Lord had caused Himself to be born? 'Twas the cock; he saw the star, and so he said–all the beasts could talk Latin in those days; he cried: 'Christus natus e..."
"You tug and strain like a young horse when it's first tied up at the stake, whenever you are tied by your heartstrings."
"And when we give each other Christmas gifts in His name, let us remember that He has given us the sun and the moon and the stars, and the earth with its forests and mountains and oceans--and all that ..."
"No doing without some ruing."