Mildly Enlarged Heart Quotes

A mother's heart is a vast and glorious thing. My mother's heart was expansive, having been enlarged by suffering and years of clinging to Jesus while being misunderstood, dismissed, and judged by those she loved most. Me included. It had cost her to love, had cost her much to mother. It always does. But she would tell you that it's worth it, that there is no other way. ~ Stasi Eldredge

It was funny the way memory obliged the heart. His happy recollections were always afloat in his soupy subconscious where so many of his darker memories had sunk to the underbelly of his past and been as good as lost forever. But without conscious instruction, memory had edited and enlarged the finest moments of his life and stored them like masterpieces in the private gallery of his personal history. ~ Nanci Kincaid

My soul, if thou wouldst be enlarged into human sympathy, thou must be narrowed into limits of human suffering. Joseph's dungeon is the road to Joseph's throne. Thou canst not lift the iron load of thy brother if the iron hath not entered into thee. It is thy limit that is thine enlargement. It is the shadows of thy life that are the real fulfillment of thy dreams of glory. Murmur not at the shadows; they are better revelations than thy dreams. Say not that the shades of the prison-house have fettered thee; thy fetters are wings -- wings of flight into the bosom of humanity. The door of thy prison-house is a door into the heart of the universe. God has enlarged thee by the binding of sorrow's chain ~ George Matheson

A love of flowers would beget early rising, industry, habits of close observation, and of reading. It would incline the mind to notice natural phenomena, and to reason upon them. It would occupy the mind with pure thoughts, and inspire a sweet and gentle enthusiasm; maintain simplicity of taste; and ... unfold in the heart an enlarged, unstraightened, ardent piety. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

He is inviting you - and me - to come home, to come home to where we belong, to come home to that for which we were created. His arms are stretched out wide to receive us. His heart is enlarged to take us in. ~ Richard J. Foster

He had his one life. In June 1942 he went to Lazarevo holding it in his hands. By the shores of the Kama, he found her gorgeous and restored, and not just restored to her original shining brilliance but enlarged and clarified. Light reflected off her, no matter which way she turned. They ran down to the almighty river. She never even looked back. She would never know what it meant to him, an unremitting sinner, after all the unsacred things he had seen and done, to have her innocence. He held her to him. He had dreamed of it too long, touching her. Dreamed of seeing her naked too long, beautiful, bare, ready for him. He was afraid to hurt her. He had never been with an untouched girl before; he wasn't sure if he was supposed to do something first. In the end, he did nothing first, but she baptized him with her body. There was no Alexander anymore; the man he knew had died and was reborn inside a perfect heart, given to him straight from God, to him and for him. ~ Paullina Simons

We should study Christ, and praise and bless God, and have our hearts enlarged for Jesus Christ. This is the duty of believers to whom God has revealed Christ as wonderful, that in their conversations they should hold out the wonderful glory of Jesus Christ. You should so walk before men as to manifest to all the world that your Savior is a wonderful Savior ~ Jeremiah Burroughs

O that our hearts were enlarged in love to God, that we might turn inward, to the blessed comforter, that the blessed Jesus said the Father would send. ~ Elias Hicks

The Broken Beauty
I see compassion in your eyes,
And I wonder,
What agony has taught you such tenderness?
I see kindness in your soul,
And I wonder,
What grief has taught you such gentleness?

I see light in your eyes,
And I wonder,
What suffering has broken into light?
I see wholeness rising in your heart,
And I wonder,
What brokenness has taught you such healing in life?

I see smiles blooming in your face,
And I wonder,
What bruise has brought you such beauty?
I smell fragrance of your soul.
And I wonder,
What murk has taught you to unfold?

I see kindness in your face,
And I wonder,
What severity has taught you such softness?
I see gratitude lighting your cheeks,
And I wonder,
What loss has taught you such humbleness?

I sense peace in your soul,
And I wonder,
What struggles have taught you to surrender?
I see shimmer in your eyes,
And I wonder,
What darkness has brought you to such light?

I sense peace in your heart,
And I wonder,
What defeat has taught you such a submission?
I see humility in your face,
And I wonder,
What trials have taught you such a gratitude?

I sense freedom in your breath,
And I wonder,
What restraint has brought such a release?
I see soaring of your wings,
And I wonder,
~ Jayita Bhattacharjee

There was apparent in all a sort of anxiety, a softening of the heart, and a consciousness of some great, unfathomable mystery being accomplished ... the most solemn mystery in the world was being accomplished. Evening passed, night came on. And the feeling of suspense and softening of the heart before the unfathomable did not wane, but grew more intense. No one slept. ~ Leo Tolstoy

[O]ften one listens and hears nothing, if it is a piece of music at all complicated to which one is listening for the first time. And yet when, later on, this sonata had been played over to me two or three times I found that I knew it quite well. And so it is not wrong to speak of hearing a thing for the first time. If one had indeed, as one supposes, received no impression from the first hearing, the second, the third would be equally 'first hearings' and there would be no reason why one should understand it any better after the tenth. Probably what is wanting, the first time, is not comprehension but memory. For our memory, compared to the complexity of the impressions which it has to face while we are listening, is infinitesimal, as brief as the memory of a man who in his sleep thinks of a thousand things and at once forgets them, or as that of a man in his second childhood who cannot recall, a minute afterwards, what one has just been saying to him. Of these multiple impressions our memory is not capable of furnishing us with an immediate picture. But that picture gradually takes shape, and, with regard to works which we have heard more than once, we are like the schoolboy who has read several times over before going to sleep a lesson which he supposed himself not to know, and finds that he can repeat it by heart next morning. It was only that I had not, until then, heard a note of the sonata, whereas Swann and his wife could make out a distinct phrase that was as far bey ~ Marcel Proust

He'd said all the words I'd ever hoped to hear: queen, wife, adore. The dreams I'd stored in my heart were actually comint true. ~ Kiera Cass

I've already got the Kingdom of Heaven in my heart! That's my nationality, my citizenship, my Country!-A Country that's never persecuted the poor or oppressed the weak or destroyed small peoples of the World like America has. It's a Country that's never lost a battle and never fought a war for the wrong reason. ~ David Berg

Dear Valentine,' said the young man, 'you are too far above my love for me to dare speak of it to you, yet every time that I see you I need to tell you that I adore you, so that the echo of my own words will gently caress my heart when I am no longer with you. ~ Alexandre Dumas

He did not have to read the careful number to know the weight of Emily's heart; he'd held it for years ~ Jodi Picoult

Love is a contradiction... Jace to Clary ~ Cassandra Clare

You can only hold someone's hand for a moment, but you can hold someone's heart for a lifetime. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

I won't defile my blessings by imagining that I deserve them. Until every human receives the dignity I casually enjoy, I pray my heart aches with tension and my belly rumbles for injustice. ~ Jen Hatmaker

Love is the gentle breeze that tingles in your heart when your mind floats into the abyss of unspoken words ~ Bluenscottish

Before you commit to loving someone,
make effort to understand their heart,
make effort to understand their soul,
be open to seeing even their darkest
corners, without prejudice.

If you have understood, accepted and
loved their heart and soul, you will love them just as they are without ever wanting to change them. ~ Wordions

A Gift for You
I send you ...
The gift of a letter from your wise self. This is the part of you that sees you with benevolent, loving eyes. You find this letter in a thick envelope with your name on it, and the word YES written boldly above your name.
My Dear,
I am writing this to remind you of your 'essence beauty.' This is the part of you that has nothing to do with age, occupation, weight, history, or pain. This is the soft, untouched, indelible you. You can love yourself in this moment, no matter what you have, or haven't done or been.
See past any masks, devices, or inventions that obscure your essence.
Remember your true purpose, WHICH is only Love.
If you cannot see or feel love, lie down now and cry; it will cleanse your vision and free your heart.
I love you; I am you. ~ SARK

Children, you must understand, are monsters. They are ravenous, ravening, they lope over the countryside with slavering mouths, seeking love to devour. Even when they find it, even if they roll about in it and gorge themselves, still it will never be enough. Their hunger for it is greater than any heart to satisfy. You mustn't think poorly of them - we are all monsters that way, it is only that when we are grown, we learn more subtle ways to snatch it up, and secretly slurp our fingers clean in dark corners, relishing even the last dregs. All children know is a sort of clumsy pouncing after love. They often miss, but that is how they learn. ~ Catherynne M Valente

Stay, stay at home, my heart and rest;
Home-keeping hearts are happiest. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The answer is that each of us has two minds: a waking mind and a sleeping mind. Our waking mind is what talks and reasons. But the sleeping mind is more powerful. It sees deeply to the heart of things, It is the part of us that dreams. It remembers everything. it gives us intuition. Your waking mind does not understand the nature of names. Your sleeping kind does. It already knows many things your waking mind does not. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

Take heart, Maya. As a bookseller, I assure you that prizewinning can be somewhat important for sales but rarely matters much in terms of quality. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

It is better to desire than to enjoy, to love than to be loved. ~ William Hazlitt

Keep your heart alive so the Spirit I send will find you-He'll comfort you, guide you into all truth, and show you when you wander. Let hope prompt your vision of the day of My return. I am out of reach now, but I will give My Spirit to you as a taste of the day when I will consummate My commitment to you. I will find you, no matter how long it takes. ~ Jan Meyers Proett

Hatred for mediocrity is unworthy of a philosopher: it is almost a question mark against his right to philosophy. Precisely because he is an exception he has to take the rule under his protection, he has to keep the mediocre in good heart. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Blest is he whose heart is the home of the great dead and their great thoughts. ~ Philip James Bailey

In an attempt to fix a crooked world, she broke herself, her heart, and her sanity. ~ Simmy Kors

Men's lives are short .
The hard man and his cruelties will be
Cursed behind his back and mocked in death.
But one whose heart and ways are kind - of him
strangers will bear report to the whole wide world,
and distant men will praise him.

- Penelope in Robert Fitzgerald trans. THE ODYSSEY (364) ~ Robert Fitzgerald

Nothing, except what flows from the heart, can render even external manners truly pleasing. ~ Hugh Blair

If our hearts are ready for anything, we can open to our inevitable losses, and to the depths of our sorrow. We can grieve our lost loves, our lost youth, our lost health, our lost capacities. This is part of our humanness, part of the expression of our love for life. ~ Tara Brach

The most perfect steersman that you can have, and the best helm, lies in the triumphal gateway of copying from nature. And this outdoes all other models; and always rely on this with a stout heart, especially as you begin to gain some judgment in draftsmanship. ~ Cennino Cennini

When she asked him to play a song while she finished, he had to strum chords for a while and pretend to be tuning up until he settled down. He didn't want her to see how unsettled he'd been by the whole thing. How unsettled he still was. He had thought he was the fisherman, but he saw now - She had pronged him, with a single stroke, pronged him through the heart and he was caught. Just like with Melody, caught. But this wasn't Melody, Dicey wasn't. And besides, he didn't feel pronged, he felt - overwhelmed, out of breath, breathless. ~ Cynthia Voigt

He was way stronger than me. All I could do, for seven years, was run away from the thought that my sister died. There were times I wished I could forget the both of them. I tried to lock them away somewhere in my mind and live normally, ignoring the fact that half of my heart was gone. I was trying to kill what he was trying to keep alive. ~ Elen Chase

Imagine if Congress always put the interests of polluters ahead of the health of our families. Our rivers and lakes would be choked with sewage. Acid rain would pour down from smog-filled skies. Hundreds of thousands more of our neighbors, friends, and loved ones would be victims of cancer, heart disease, and asthma. ~ Jeff Merkley

Spirit and his solitude, and for ten years did not weary of it. But finally he had a change of heart ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I only wanted to . . . I mean, just now, when Mr. George interrupted us, there was something very important I wanted to say to you."
"It is about what I told you in the church yesterday? I mean, I can understand that you may think me crazy because I see these beings, but a psychiatrist wouldn't make any difference."
Gideon frowned. "Just keep quiet for a moment, would you? I have to pluck up all my courage to make you a declaration of love . . . I've had absolutely no practice in this kind of thing."
"What?"
"Gwyneth," he said, perfectly seriously, "I've fallen in love with you."
My stomach muscles contracted as if I'd had a shock. But it was joy. "Really?"
"Yes, really!" In the light of the torch I saw Gideon smile. "I do realize we've known each other for less than a week, and at first I thought you were rather . . . childish, and I probably behaved badly to you. But you're terribly complicated, I never know what you'll do next, and in some ways you really are terrifyingly . . . er. . . naïve. Sometimes I just want to shake you."
"Okay, I can see you were right about having no practice in making declarations of love," I agreed.
"But then you're so amusing, and clever, and amazingly sweet," Gideon went on, as if he hadn't heard me. "And the worst of it is, you only have to be in the same room and I need to touch you and kiss you . . ."
"Yes, that's really too bad," I whispered, and my heart turned over as Gideon took the hatpin ou ~ Kerstin Gier

Stop it, Misha. Stop being so frightened of everything. But she couldn't stop. She carried fear with her like a little animal, curled in the nook behind her heart, and it whispered to her. You are weak, you are frightened, and you will never dare do anything at all. ~ Stefan Bachmann

As humans, we often let our egos rule our decisions. We let fear stop us from reaching our true potential. We forget about love. But the heart, it never forgets. No matter what happens, no matter how hard things get, it always remembers. ~ Liz Fenton

If you sing of beauty though alone in the heart of the desert you will have an audience. ~ Kahlil Gibran

When our eyes see our hands doing the work of our hearts, the circle of Creation is completed inside us, the doors of our souls fly open and love steps forth to heal everything in sight. ~ Michael Bridges

He wished he had some witty, romantic comeback. But he was the man he was, and words had never been a gift. "How about Delgado? I want to marry you. I want to be a daddy to this baby." He touched his forehead to hers and his heart spilled out. "I want… Oh, God, Jose… I love you so much. I love this baby. I was so scared I was going to lose you and I was never going to get the chance to tell you that I finally wised up and believed what you knew all along."

She lifted one hand to stroke his jaw with her soothing touch. "That we were meant to be together?"

"That I can love - that I do love. You." He turned his face to press a kiss into her palm. "Hell, honey, I've got nothing without you. I am nothing without you. ~ Julie Miller

Every word she uttered set fire in me, and I was falling for her. I started wanting her, and I didn't know what kind of sign it was. She was a secret covered with skin, and her eyes were flitting to and from my heart. She was the enigma whose beauty lay in the mystery, the one you would rather leave unsolved. ~ Kavipriya Moorthy