The 20 Best Quotes I Saved This Year

All about hope, clarity, trust, relationships, and the nature of God

Dec 19, 2024

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Reading Cole Arthur Riley’s book, *This Here Flesh.*

I love the practice of saving quotes that move, inspire, and challenge me and I know so many of you feel the same way. From books I read to conversations I’ve been part of, here are some of my favorite words other people have said about hope, clarity, trust, relationships, and the nature of God.

About hope:

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” —Arundhati Roy

This quote kept me afloat for several of my most difficult weeks this year. Listening for the life signs of new possibility saved me over and over again.

“An Advent faith is one that is buoyed by a generational hope, a long view of history combined with an equally long view of the future. It recalls that God spoke a word, and by divine fiat, there was light. But when God was clothed in human skin, navigating our terrestrial landscape, transformation took longer to enact. It is not impossible, as Gabriel said, just slower. So we join God with generational patience, knowing that making peace takes hard work and much time.”
—Kelley Nikondeha, The First Advent in Palestine

Kelley’s book directly inspired several of the reflections in this year’s Advent Collection called Peace inside The Quiet Collection app. I highly recommend her book.

“I've never written a song because I had an answer. I've always written songs because I have a question. And good questions generally return what matters most deeply and truly. When I pull back all the distractions of my life, what is at the heart? What do I love beyond words or measure? What is sustaining? What helps me maintain a sense of hope? Those good questions, they keep coming back and I'm more able to hear them and to explore them if I take time to listen.”
—Carrie Newcomer

This quote is from a conversation I had with Carrie on The Next Right Thing. You can listen to the entire conversation here: The Quaker Practice of Silence.

About clarity:

“When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it.”
—Boris Pasternak

“Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity. It is not always obvious when and where to take action. Some people spend their entire lives waiting for the time to be right to make an improvement.”
—James Clear

“When you speak from that deep, inner voice, you are really speaking from the unique tabernacle of your own presence. There is a voice within you that no one, not even you, has ever heard. Give yourself the opportunity of silence and begin to delve your listening in order to hear, deep within yourself, the music of your own spirit.” —John O’Donohue, Anam Cara

About being kindred:

"We stretch by reaching toward each other by reaching out from the solo act into the plural. We, the pronoun God loves most. Life is long, the feast is wide, and we are meant for keeping it together. Our hearts are a muscle made in the image of God made for connection, and there are so many ways of being kindred."
—Stephanie Duncan Smith, Even After Everything

“The things that I had forgotten, as my brain flooded with cortisol and my spirit with self-righteousness, turned out still to be true. Real human encounter across difference takes time, and trust, and the letting down of guards. Our first reactions don’t have to define our relationships.”
—Elizabeth Oldfield, Fully Alive

“What would it be like, I wondered, to live with that heightened sensitivity to the lives given for ours? To consider the tree in the Kleenex, the algae in the toothpaste, the oaks in the floor, the grapes in the wine; to follow back the thread of life in everything and pay it respect? Once you start, it’s hard to stop, and you begin to feel yourself awash in gifts.”
—Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

“People are not hurdles on the road to God. They are the road.”
—Martin Buber, Between Man and Man

"We live among ordinary people doing ordinary things in ordinary places. We are families and we are neighbors. We worship and we work. We laugh, and we cry. We hope, and we love. The stuff of life for everyone everywhere.
But it is also true that whether our vocations are as butchers, bakers, or candlestick makers or people drawn into the worlds of business or law, agriculture or education, architecture or construction, journalism or International development, healthcare or the arts, in our own different ways, we are responsible for love's sake for the way the world is and ought to be.
We are called to be common grace for the common good.”
—Stephen Garber, Visions of Vocation

“Let people make wrong choices and indulge their false selves if they must. But let us, meanwhile, stand beside the door of their true selves, inviting them to come home.”
—Mike Mason, Practicing the Presence of People

About trust:

“Trust is a process, not an event.” —Dr. Hilary L. McBride

“Sometimes, the circumstances at hand force us to be braver than we actually are, and so we knock on doors and ask for assistance. Sometimes, not having any idea where we're going works out better than we could have possibly imagined.”
—Ann Patchett, What Now?

“I'll never stop being surprised by the things I've held onto and the things I've learned to release.” —Sarah Bessey, Field Notes from the Wilderness

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
—The Serenity Prayer

About the nature of God:

“Delight is the premise of a sound epistemology.” —Dr. Esther Lightcap Meek

The guest lecturer at Friends University this fall (where I teach twice a year) was Dr. Esther Lightcap Meek and she taught from her book, Loving to Know. She said this quote in one of her lectures, submitting that knowledge is not just the acquisition of facts, but is “an unfolding interpersonal relationship between the knower and the yet-to-be-known.” And the premise of it all is delight. (!!)

“You put the real, living Jesus in the middle of ‘God, Country, and Guns’ and he’s gonna start turning over some tables.”
—Dr. Keas Keasler

"I hope that having come this far in exploring your journey with God, you will have discovered something of God's midwifery skills and his urgent insistent call to freedom in your life. Not the freedom that is the anarchy of lawlessness, but the freedom of the baby who leaves the restricting spaces of the womb to enter the immensity of life. Of course, all our images of God are inadequate and some can be dangerously wrong, but I find the midwife picture one of the more helpful ones. Perhaps we can let it lead us on into our reflections on what detachment might mean and how we can get closer to it.” —Margaret Silf, Inner Compass

“God is calling us lovingly always, if we will only stop the noise within us long enough to hear.” —Joan Chittister, Monastery of the Heart

As I looked through the quotes I’ve saved this year I didn’t realize how many of them were connected. That’s the beauty of reflection: when we look back we can see patterns and connect the dots.

Do you have any memorable quotes or lines that have stuck with you this year? I’d love to hear in the comments!