Saint Joan Quotes

The truth sticks in our throats with all the sauces it is served with: it will never go down until we take it without any sauce at all. ~ George Bernard Shaw

A genius is a person who, seeing farther and probing deeper than other people, has a different set of ethical valuations from theirs, and has energy enough to give effect to this extra vision and its valuations in whatever manner best suits his or her specific talents. ~ George Bernard Shaw

I have seen the Virgin
in an appletree at Chartres
And Saint Joan burn
at the Bella Union.
I have seen giraffes in junglejims
their necks like love
wound around the iron circumstances
of the world.
I have seen the Venus Aphrodite
armless in her drafty corridor.
I have heard a siren sing
at One Fifth Avenue.
I have seen the White Goddess dancing
in the Rue des Beaux Arts
on the Fourteenth of July
and the Beautiful Dame Without Mercy
picking her nose in Chumley's. ~ Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The possible, as it was presented in her Health textbook (a mathematical progression of dating, "career," marriage, and motherhood), did not interest Harriet. Of all the heroes on her list, the greatest of them all was Sherlock Holmes, and he wasn't even a real person. Then there was Harry Houdini. He was the master of the impossible; more importantly, for Harriet, he was a master of escape. No prison in the world could hold him: he escaped from straitjackets, from locked trunks dropped in fast rivers and from coffins buried six feet underground.

And how had he done it? He wasn't afraid. Saint Joan had galloped out with the angels on her side but Houdini had mastered fear on his own. No divine aid for him; he'd taught himself the hard way how to beat back panic, the horror of suffocation and drowning and dark. Handcuffed in a locked trunk in the bottom of a river, he squandered not a heartbeat on being afraid, never buckled to the terror of the chains and the dark and the icy water; if he became lightheaded, for even a moment, if he fumbled at the breathless labor before him– somersaulting along a river-bed, head over heels– he would never come up from the water alive.

A training program. This was Houdini's secret. ~ Donna Tartt

A scholar's mind is tall. A saint's heart is wide. A sage's soul is deep. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

If a man has not, by the time he is thirty, yielded to the fascination of every form of extremism - I don't know whether he is to be admired or scorned, regarded as a saint or a corpse. ~ Emile M. Cioran

King of England, and you, duke of Bedford, who call yourself regent of the kingdom of France ... settle your debt to the king of Heaven; return to the Maiden, who is envoy of the king of Heaven, the keys to all the good towns you took and violated in France. ~ Joan Of Arc

What I want to tell you today is not to move into that world where you're alone with yourself and your mantra and your fitness program or whatever it is that you might use to try to control the world by closing it out. I want to tell you just to live in the mess. Throw yourself out into the convulsions of the world. I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't believe progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm telling you to live in it. Try and get it. Take chances, make your own work, take pride in it. Seize the moment. ~ Joan Didion

Only hinted at in some of these tales, and clearly stated in others, it is apparent that there was a long and continuing conflict between paganism and Christianity in the early centuries A.D. This may also be the explanation behind other well creation tales, such as the slaying by St Barry of a 'great serpent' in County Roscommon. The saint thrust his crozier at it before it disappeared into Lough Lagan, and where his knee touched the ground, a holy well, Tobar Barry, sprang up. Although the serpent may represent paganism, and the saint's victory is therefore the victory of Christianity over paganism, we cannot entirely ignore the possibility that some of the serpents in similar Irish tales may have been real water monsters, which are still seen from time to time in the lakes of Ireland and Scotland. These eerie, ugly monsters, with their aura of primeval mystery, appropriately symbolize the uncouth savagery which the Christians attributed to all non-Christian beliefs; but that is not to say that the monsters were totally symbolic and did not have a reality of their own. ~ Colin Bord

Yeah, I read history. But it doesn't make you nice. Hitler read history, too. ~ Joan Rivers

Touch screen voting is a fine thing so long as they have a voter-verified paper trail. ~ Joan Blades

When I met you you were oh so sweet, now you give me the bread and you take all the meat. ~ Joan Jett

You had to feel the swell change. You had to go with the change. He told me that. No eye is on the sparrow but he did tell me that. ~ Joan Didion

I wish I had a twin, so I could know what I'd look like without plastic surgery. ~ Joan Rivers

What concerns this dress is a small thing - less than nothing. I did not take it by the advice of any man in the world. I did not take this dress or do anything but by the command of Our Lord and of the Angels. ~ Joan Of Arc

Compassion is not sympathy. Compassion is mercy. It is a commitment to take responsibility for the suffering of others. ~ Joan D. Chittister

The history of saints is mainly the history of insane people. -Benito Mussolini (Chuck Palahniuk - Pygmy) ~ Benito Mussolini

Give me the life of the boy whose mother is nurse, seamstress, washerwoman, cook, teacher, angel, and saint, all in one, and whose father is guide, exemplar, and friend. No servants to come between. These are the boys who are born to the best fortune. ~ Andrew Carnegie

That values are always relative to time and place is the stand taken by Indian philosophy. And even their acceptance might be more theoretical than practical. For example, genocide is now recognized as an international crime and yet it is still committed and connived at. The great saint Tukaram admonished that 'Slaves be treated as kindly as one's own children'. A modern man instead of admiring the compassion behind this statement would be indignantly pointing out how Tukaram condoned a society which allowed a man to possess slaves! ~ Irawati Karve

I will make you a present of a secret. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

Geographically, Ireland is a medium-sized rural island that is slowly but steadily being consumed by sheep. ~ Dave Barry

Whatever you do to recover from a loss, people will be critical because they believe that the only way to recover is their way. And you will even run into some people who should be run into by rhinos because they actually don't want to see you get over your tragedy at all; grief is a spectator sport for them. ~ Joan Rivers

A bad man is worse when he pretends to be a saint. ~ Francis Bacon

One can't reach the Truth but trough Love. ~ Saint Augustine

The more I work, the more I want to work. ~ Joan Miro

I made so many jokes about poor Russell Crowe, he once knocked on my dressing room door, and told me he wanted to go out on this chat show we were on to laugh with me. Now he's ruined it. I can't make another joke about him. ~ Joan Rivers

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

Grandchildren can be annoying - how many times can you go: "And the cow goes moo and the pig goes oink"? It's like talking to a supermodel. ~ Joan Rivers

And naturally I was reading in the library a few days later from a book about the Indian saint Sri Ramakrishna, and I stumbled upon a story about a seeker who once came to see the great master and admitted to him that she feared she was not a good enough devotee, feared that she did not love God enough. And the saint said, "Is there nothing you love?" The woman admitted that she adored her young nephew more than anything else on earth. The saint said, "There, then. He is your Krishna, your beloved. In your service to your nephew, you are serving God. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

It's not you. It's anyone. Sometimes I don't want anyone around. Some afternoons I lie on my bed and the light comes through the shutters on the floor and I think I never want to leave my own room. ~ Joan Didion

Hate is nothing but a feeling that consumes us all in a moment of despair and sorrow; a moment of regret and envy. ~ Joan Ambu

If the road to social transformation can be paved only by saints who never make mistakes, the road will NEVER be built. ~ Van Jones

We've never heard
About a marvel quite so great,
For all the heroes who have lived
In history can't measure up
In bravery against the Maid. ~ Christine De Pizan

Did Genghis Khan take his coffee black?" Oberon asked me. After my bathtime story, he wanted to be the Genghis Khan of dogs. He wanted a harem full of French poodles, all of whom were named either Fifi or Bambi. It was an amusing habit of his: Oberon had, in the past, wanted to be Vlad the Impaler, Joan of Arc, Bertrand Russell, and any other historical figure I had recently told him about while he was getting a thorough cleansing. His Liberace period had been particularly good for my soul: You haven't lived until you've seen an Irish wolfhound parading around in rhinestone-studded gold lamé. ~ Kevin Hearne

We need a conversion of morals," the elderly man said. "Not just superficially, but profoundly. And in both races. We need a great saint - some enlightened common sense. Otherwise, we'll never have the right answers when the pressure groups - those racists, super-patriots, whatever you want to call them - tag every move toward racial justice as communist-inspired, Zionist-inspired, Illuminati-inspired, Satan-inspired ... part of some secret conspiracy to overthrow the Christian civilization. ~ John Howard Griffin

Perhaps one day I'd be made a saint - the patron saint of fools and lovers, if those terms were not exactly the same. ~ Rachel Caine

As no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

I would say I grew up listening a lot to Barbra Streisand and Judy Garland and Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell. I grew up listening to those because my parents were kind of into folk music. ~ Melora Hardin

You (God) have not only commanded continence, that is, from what things we are to restrain our love, but also justice, that is, on what we are to bestow our love. ~ Saint Augustine