110+ Joan D. Chittister Quotes On Friendship, Joan Of Arc And Inspiring

Joan D. Chittister is a Benedictine nun, author, and international lecturer. She is a past president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and currently serves as executive director of Benetvision, a resource and research center for contemporary spirituality. She is known for her progressive views on topics such as gender, peace, social justice, and the role of religion in society. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Joan D. Chittister on friendship, love, life.

Top 10 Joan D. Chittister Quotes

1. We talk religion in a world that worships the bread but does not distribute it, that practices ritual rather than righteousness, that confesses but does not repent.
2. 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.
3. Compassion makes no distinction between friends and enemies, neighbors and outsiders, compatriots and foreigners. Compassion is the gate to human community.
4. Compassion is not sympathy. Compassion is mercy. It is a commitment to take responsibility for the suffering of others.
5. Oppressors do not get to be oppressors in a single sweep. They manage it because little by little, we make them that. We overlook too much in the beginning and wonder why we lost control in the end.
6. 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.
7. Learning to celebrate joy is one of the great practices of the spiritual life.
8. It's the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us.
9. Our role in life is to bring the light of our own souls to the dim places around us.
10. The purpose of leadership is not to make the present bearable. The purpose of leadership is to make the future possible.

Joan D. Chittister Short Quotes

• We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is
• Imagine how happy, how holy, life would be if we ever really learn to see beauty.
• Everything we do seeds the future. No action is an empty one.
• It is not our job to work miracles, but it is our task to try.
• Precisely because of the greatness of God, we don't have to be great at all. Just in awe.
• If anything diminishes a person, it is the cancer of constant complaining.
• Beauty scatters the seeds of hope in us.
• Find the thing that stirs your heart and make room for it
• To be enlightened is to know that heaven is not "coming." Heaven is here.
• Hope grows in us, despite our moments of darkness, regardless of our regular bouts of depression.

Joan D. Chittister Quotes About Love

In community we work out our connectedness to God, to one another and to ourselves...In human relationships I learn that theory is no substitute for love. It is easy to talk about the love of GOD; it is another thing to practice it — Joan D. Chittister

Hospitality is simply love on the loose. — Joan D. Chittister

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

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

Grief is a sign that we loved something more than ourselves. . . . Grief makes us worthy to suffer with the rest of the world. — Joan D. Chittister

Joan D. Chittister Quotes About Life

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

The secret of life is to let every segment of it produce its own yield at its own pace. Every period has something new to teach us. The harvest of youth is achievement; the harvest of middle-age is perspective; the harvest of age is wisdom; the harvest of life is serenity. — 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

Today we live in a world that judges its achievements by speed and busyness. … We are so busy making things happen that we have little time left to think about the value of what is happening. We urgently need people who concentrate on the meaning of life rather than simply the speed. — Joan D. Chittister

Superficial people are those who simply go along without a question in the world-asking nothing, troubled by nothing, examining nothing. Whatever people around them do, they do, too. That's a sad and plastic life-routine and comfortable, maybe, but still sad. — Joan D. Chittister

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

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

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

A life of value is not a series of great things well done; it is a series of small things consciously done. — Joan D. Chittister

Prophets are those who take life as it is and expand it. They refuse to shrink a vision of tomorrow to the boundaries of yesterday. — Joan D. Chittister

Joan D. Chittister Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

Hospitality means we take people into the space that is our lives and our minds and our hearts and our work and our efforts. Hospitality is the way we come out of ourselves. It is the first step towards dismantling the barriers of the world. Hospitality is the way we turn a prejudiced world around, one heart at a time. — Joan D. Chittister

Compassion for the other comes out of our ability to accept ourselves. Until we realize both our own weaknesses and our own privileges, we can never tolerate lack of status and depth of weakness in the other. — Joan D. Chittister

We have learned that the things we amassed to prove to ourselves how valuable, how important, how successful we were, didn't prove it at all. In fact, they have very little to do with it. It's what's inside of us, not what's outside of us that counts. — Joan D. Chittister

A bifurcation of loyalties that requires religious to put canon law above civil law and moral law puts us in a situation where the keepers of religion may themselves become one of the greatest dangers to the credibility - and the morality - of the church itself. — Joan D. Chittister

Acceptance is the universal currency of real friendship. . . .It does not warp or shape or wrench a person to be anything other than what they are. — Joan D. Chittister

Work is not slavery, then. Work is creativity. It is the expression of ourselves that no one else can duplicate. — Joan D. Chittister

Spirituality without a prayer life is no spirituality at all, and it will not last beyond the first defeats. Prayer is an opening of the self so that the Word of God can break in and make us new. Prayer unmasks. Prayer converts. Prayer impels. Prayer sustains us on the way. Pray for the grace it will take to continue what you would like to quit. — 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

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

Life is an exercise in the development of feeling. When we repress feelings, we become sour and judgmental. When we live awash in great feeling over small things, we become jaded long before we have even begun to enjoy. When feelings are in balance they sweeten long days and great distances with gratitude and hope. — Joan D. Chittister

Life is a thing of many stages and moving parts. What we do with ease at one time of life we can hardly manage at another. What we could not fathom doing when we were young, we find great joy in when we are old. Like the seasons through which we move, life itself is a never-ending series of harvests, a different fruit for every time. — Joan D. Chittister

"Ideals are like stars," Carl Schurz wrote. "You will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like seafarers on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny." Ideals do not determine what we do to make a living in life; They govern what we become as we do it. — Joan D. Chittister

Try saying this silently to everyone and everything you see for thirty days and see what happens to your own soul: I wish you happiness now and whatever will bring happiness to you in the future. — Joan D. Chittister

The kind of "blind obedience" once theologized as the ultimate step to holiness, is itself blind. It blinds a person to the insights and foresight and moral perspective of anyone other than an authority figure. — Joan D. Chittister

Benedictine spirituality is a consistent one: live life normally, live life thouhtfully, live life profouncly, live life well. Never neglect and never exaggerate. It is a lesson that a world full of cults and fads and workaholics and short courses in difficult subjects needs dearly to learn. — Joan D. Chittister

The question is not, do we go to church; the question is, have we been converted. The crux of Christianity is not whether or not we give donations to popular charities but whether or not we are really committed to the poor. — Joan D. Chittister

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

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

If life is really for the living, then the trick to living well is to learn to live it fully, to soak it up, to revel in it. — Joan D. Chittister

There is a built-in danger in old age which, if we give in to it, makes aging one of the most difficult periods of life, rather than one of the most satisfying - which it should be. Tye danger of old age is that we may start acting old. — Joan D. Chittister

We each should have 2 pockets: in 1 the message, 'I am dust & ashes;' in the other, 'For me the universe was made.' — Joan D. Chittister

Awareness of the sacred in life is what holds our world together, and the lack of awareness of the sacred is what is tearing it apart. — Joan D. Chittister

Old age tells us that we ourselves have failed often, have never really done anything completely right, have never truly been perfect - anad that is completely all right. We are who we are - and so is everyone else. — Joan D. Chittister

Anger is not bad. Anger can be a very positive thing, the thing that moves us beyond the acceptance of evil. — Joan D. Chittister

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

It is a pathetic moment in the history of the human condition when the outside world tells us who and what we are - and we start to believe it ourselves. Then, bent over from the weight of the negativity, we start to wither on the outside. — Joan D. Chittister

prayer can be an easy substitute for real spirituality. It would be impossible to have spirituality without prayer, of course, but it is certainly possible to pray without having a spirituality at all. How do you know? 'Am I becoming kinder?' is a good place to start. — 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

Hospitality is the key to new ideas, new friends, new possibilities. What we take into our lives changes us. Without new people and new ideas, we are imprisoned inside ourselves. — Joan D. Chittister

Nothing weighs more heavily on age than time. Nothing has more meaning … Now time becomes, with a kind of ruthless honesty, what it has always been: life's most precious commodity. The only difference is that, finally, we know it. — Joan D. Chittister

There is always new life trying to emerge in each of us. Too often we ignore the signs of resurrection and cling to part of life that have died for us. — Joan D. Chittister

Indifference is the acid of life. It erodes all the spirit that's in us and makes us useless to anyone else. We all have to stand for something, or our souls cease to breathe. — Joan D. Chittister

The spiritual task of life is to feed hope. Hope is not something to be found outside of us. It lies in the spiritual life we cultivate within. The whole purpose of wrestling with life is to be transformed into the self we are meant to become, to step out of the confines of our false securities and allow our creating God to go on creating. In us. — Joan D. Chittister

Temptations are part of life, part of growing up. We grapple with them often - in some instances for our lifetime - before we come to realize that it is not so much the victory as it is the struggle that is holy. — 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

Prophets are so dangerous because they cry in season and out of season, politely and impolitely, loud and long. — Joan D. Chittister

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

Solitude is not a way of running away from life ... from our feelings. On the contrary. This is the time we sort them out, air them, get over them, and go on without the burden of yesterday. — Joan D. Chittister

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

Fear is not the opposite of courage. Fear is the catalyst of courage. — Joan D. Chittister

Life always comes out of death. The present rises from the ashes of the past. The future is always possible for those who are willing to re-create it. — Joan D. Chittister

Lent is the time for trimming the soul and scrapping the sludge off a life turned slipshod. Lent is about taking stock of time, even religious time. Lent is about exercising the control that enables us to say no to ourselves so that when life turns hard of its own accord we have the stamina to yes to its twists and turns with faith and hope. Lent is the time to make new efforts to be what we say we want to be. — Joan D. Chittister

In our dreams lies our unfinished work for the world. — Joan D. Chittister

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

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

When I get on the internet and hide behind a false identity, and then allow that hiding to free me from the standards of decency, to begin to use language I would never use in front of my mother, all of a sudden, there's nothing between me and you, but worse than that, there's nothing between me and my worst self. — Joan D. Chittister

Memory is not about what went on in the past, it is about what is going on inside us right this moment. … It is made up of the stuff of life in the process of becoming the grist of the soul. — Joan D. Chittister

Compassion is the ability to understand how difficult it is for people to be the best of what they want to be at all times. — Joan D. Chittister

To be contemplative we must become converted to the consciousness that makes us one with the universe, in tune with the cosmic voice of God. — Joan D. Chittister

Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight. — 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

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

Beware the religion that turns you against another one. It's unlikely that it's really religion at all. — Joan D. Chittister

Freedom, in childhood, may be the right to be totally self-centered. … But freedom in old age is the ability to be the best of the self I have developed during all those years. — 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

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

The vision of a culture lies in what becomes its major institutions, in what it remembers as its most impacting events, in who it sees as its heroes. — Joan D. Chittister

For centuries the church has confronted the human community with role models of greatness. We call them saints when what we really often mean to say is 'icon,' 'star,' 'hero,' ones so possessed by an internal vision of divine goodness that they give us a glimpse of the face of God in the center of the human. They give us a taste of the possibilities of greatness in ourselves. — Joan D. Chittister

We may well be the ones Proverbs warns when it reminds us: "Kings take pleasure in honest lips; they value the one who speaks the truth." The point is clear: If the people speak and the king doesn't listen, there is something wrong with the king. If the king acts precipitously and the people say nothing, something is wrong with the people. — Joan D. Chittister

Feminism without spirituality runs the risk of becoming what it rejects: an elitist ideology, arrogant, superficial and separatist, closed to everything but itself. Without a spiritual base that obligates it beyond itself, calls it out of itself for the sake of others, a pedagogical feminism turned in on itself can become just one more intellectual ghetto that the world doesn’t notice and doesn’t need. — Joan D. Chittister

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

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

No one finds time for prayer. You either take time for it or you don't get it. — Joan D. Chittister

June is the time for being in the world in new ways, for throwing off the cold and dark spots of life. — Joan D. Chittister

An authentic spirituality does not cater to culture; it calls culture to accountability. — Joan D. Chittister

faith isn't faith until it's all we have to hold on to and knowledge fails us. When we pray for faith, we automatically pray for darkness. Think about it. — 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

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

I begin to understand as never before that holiness is made of dailiness, of living life as it comes to me, not as I insist it be. — Joan D. Chittister

But we are here to depart from this world as finished as we can possibly become. — Joan D. Chittister

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

Humor and laughter are not necessarily the same thing. Humor permits us to see into life from a fresh and gracious perspective. We learn to take ourselves more lightly in the presence of good humor. Humor gives us the strength to bear what cannot be changed, and the sight to see the human under the pompous. — Joan D. Chittister

If the people speak and the king doesn't listen, there is something wrong with the king. If the kings acts precipitously and the people say nothing, something is wrong with the people. — Joan D. Chittister

Imagination begins when it' s raining too hard to go out and play and you become really absorbed in something you would never have thought of doing had the sun come out as usual. In which case, thank God for the rain. — Joan D. Chittister

It's possible to have too much in life. Too many clothes jade our appreciation of new ones; too much money can out us out of touch with life; too much free time and dull the edge of the soul. We need sometimes to come very near the bone so tha we can taste the marrow of life, rather than its superfluities. — Joan D. Chittister

The liturgical year is the year that sets out to attune the life of the Christian to the life of Jesus, the Christ. It proposes, year after year, to immerse us over and over again into the sense and substance of the Christian life until, eventually we become what we say we are - followers of Jesus all the way to the heart of God — 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

Life Lessons by Joan D. Chittister

1. Joan D. Chittister teaches that we should strive to be compassionate and empathetic towards others, no matter their beliefs or backgrounds.
2. She also encourages us to be mindful of our own actions and to take responsibility for our own growth and development.
3. Finally, she emphasizes the importance of living a life of service, of working towards making the world a better place for all.