Faith Baldwin Quotes

The Creator of all men and all things has provided the challenge of change, the necessity for acceptance, and variations of all patterns. We live by change, by struggle and the unexpected; for only in change, struggle, and the unexpected can we achieve growth.

Acceptance is a far better word and denotes a more positive attitude than resignation; I've always known that, but in recent days I've found one which is better still; it is consent.

Every generation proclaims that each must lead his own life, but seldom grants the subsequent generation the right to lead theirs.

You cannot contribute anything to the ideal condition of mind and heart known as Brotherhood, however much you preach, posture, or agree, unless you live it.

One of the dreariest spots on life's road is the point of conviction that nothing will ever again happen to you.

Very little, really, in life is lost; material things, now and then; money which is material but necessary, often; friends, relatives, sometimes through estrangements. True love never, I believe. Death does not rob us of the essential person we have loved and still love. It deprives us of the physical presence, but never of the spiritual closeness, or of memories.

Praying, we usually ask too much. I know I do. Sometimes we even demand. I think I am learning to ask enough for the moment
not for the whole year, utterly veiled in mystery; not even for the week, the month ahead; but just for today.
Jesus said it all when He told us to pray: 'Give us this day our daily bread.'
That bread is not only material, it is spiritual; in asking for it, we ask for a sufficiency of strength, courage, hope and light. Enough courage for the step ahead
not for the further miles. Enough strength for the immediate task or ordeal. Enough material gain to enable us to meet our daily obligations. Enough light to see the path
right before our feet.

Life is rather like a long train ride; you may encounter a great many people, but looking out from your own small compartment of self you catch only a glimpse of other people's joy or despair.

I see now how things even up, how they are squared away, and how they balance under the law of love and justice. No year of life is emotionally, spiritually or even materially, all drought or all rainfall; nor is it all sun. The road turns a little every day, and one day there's a sudden twist we didn't dream was there, and for every loss there is somewhere a gain, for every grief a happiness, for every deprivation a giving.

I've known a lot of alleged failures in my time and many of them, in losing what the world has always considered success, have achieved in facing up to failure, more than they ever achieved when they were considered successful.

Faith is the spiritual house in which we live.

Men's private self-worlds are rather like our geographical world's seasons, storm, and sun, deserts, oases, mountains and abysses, the endless-seeming plateaus, darkness and light, and always the sowing and the reaping.

We may differ widely in environments, education, learning, knowledge, or lack of it, and in our personalities, our likes and dislikes. But if we set ourselves the task, we'll find a meeting place somehow and somewhere.

Most of us forget to take time for wonder, praise and gratitude until it is almost too late. Gratitude is a many-colored quality, reaching in all directions. It goes out for small things and for large; it is a God-ward going.

I think one should forgive and remember ... If you forgive and forget in the usual sense, you're just driving what you remember into the subconscious; it stays there and festers. But to look, even regularly, upon what you remember and know you've forgiven is achievement.

I have learned over a period of time to be almost unconsciously grateful
as a child is
for a sunny day, blue water, flowers in a vase, a tree turning red. I have learned to be glad at dawn and when the sky is dark. Only children and a few spiritually evolved people are born to feel gratitude as naturally as they breathe, without even thinking. Most of us come to it step by painful step, to discover that gratitude is a form of acceptance.

Late last year, I spoke to a group of young married people, all its members very perturbed about the world in which we live, about problems which, of course, might affect their private worlds. I could give them no easy answers. Having lived for a few months past sixty-eight years, and having been a professional writer for over forty of them, has not endowed me with special wisdom. I don't know any how-to-do or solve-it-yourself formulas. I know as little as these young folks about the future, and I could tell them only to bend with the wind and lean upon the spirit.

We learn from joy but also from grief; we learn from achievement, but just as much from failure; and what we learn from grief and failure is, after a while, to be grateful... All of us, young and old, learn more from obstacles than from the smooth path and from bracing ourselves against sudden harsh winds than from the undisturbed weather.

Occasionally the impossible happens; this is a truism that accounts for much of what we call good luck; and also, bad.

What I have learned from the year past is something about miracles
miracles of healing and answered prayer and unexpected happy endings. Each came quietly and simply, on tiptoe, so that I hardly knew it had occurred.
All this makes me realize that miracles are everyday things. Not only the sudden, great good fortune, wafting in on a new wind from the sky. They are almost routine, yet miracles just the same.
Every time something hard becomes easier; every time you adjust to a situation which, last week, you didn't know existed; every time a kindness falls as softly as the dew; or someone you love who was ill grows better; every time a blessing comes, not with trumpet and fanfare, but silently as night, you have witnessed a miracle.

A joy in living, a natural expression of the will to survive all personal disaster, can be constant despite whatever changes take place. Some fortunate people are born with it and others acquire it through learning and growth.

The great minds, which from time to time have existed in this world, were like doors thrown wide to understanding. I don't mean just their brilliance or philosophy or even psychology. I mean that the spoken words that have endured are those uttered by men who understood with their hearts.

No one on earth understands everything; that all-comprehensive function belongs to God alone. But we all try to understand a little. Most of us realize that too late. We look back and think: If only I'd tried to understand. Many failures in human relationships derive from this common failure.

Watching the birds flock to discuss their travels among the brilliant leaves, listening to the slow turning of the earth upon her axis, meditating on Nature herself, never uncertain no matter how uncertain her manifestations may be, I think of the instinct that sends the birds from one locality to another, of the lengthening shadows as we face toward autumn, and of the marvelous system that encourages the leaf to fall and nurture the soil. In the single flame of October it begins the lullaby that will put the roots of grass and flowers to sleep. This system, in the four seasons of my little world, will cover the ground with silent snow, and at a later date will shout that spring is coming and awaken sleepers to new life.

The sun in his glory, the moon in her phases, the stars in their courses, all these are part of the system; and Nature, turning the wheel of the seasons

Some time ago my friend, Father Gilbert, sent me from Maryland a small leaflet, and on it it a sketch of water, sky, a boat and a solitary man, in blues and greens, and, a prayer.

...The few words are called "Breton Fishermen's Prayer' and they read:

Dear God be good to me,
The sea is so wide
And my boat is so small.

This is a prayer for us all, for the world is a wide sea and the vessel of our lives is small and vulnerable and there are reefs and rocks, tides and storms which we must encounter.

But on the wide sea there is light...

Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations

No matter how shut in we are by weather, by physical handicaps or by such mental conditions as we manufacture for ourselves, we are still free people as long as the mind functions, the imagination is stirred and the desire to reach out, to experience, feel and know, is with us; as long as the heart beats and with it the pulses of love, interest, and empathy for and with other people.

Gratitude is a humble emotion. It expresses itself in a thousand ways, from a sincere thank you to friend or stranger, to the mute, up-reaching acknowledgment to God
not for the gifts of this day only, but for the day itself; not for what we believe will be ours in the future, but for the bounty of the past.

The first flash of color always excites me as much as the first frail, courageous bloom of spring. This is, in a sense, my season
sometimes warm and, when the wind blows an alert, sometimes cold. But there is a clarity about September. On clear days, the sun seems brighter, the sky more blue, the white clouds take on marvelous shapes; the moon is a wonderful apparition, rising gold, cooling to silver; and the stars are so big. The September storms
the hurricane warnings far away, the sudden gales, the downpour of rain that we have so badly needed here for so long
are exhilarating, and there's a promise that what September starts, October will carry on, catching the torch flung into her hand.

The spirit within each human being is a small fragment of the Divine and Eternal, and if we give it the opportunity to speak, it will do so - but only when we keep our engagement to dismiss everyday difficulties, be quiet, and listen.

In my belief, a harvest is also a legacy, for very often what you reap is, in the way of small miracles, more than you consciously know you have sown.

Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees.