Joan D. Chittister

To insist on living until we die may be one of life's greatest virtues.

— Joan D. Chittister

We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is

— Joan D. Chittister

Life is the ability to start over again.

— Joan D. Chittister

Religion is pointing toward the moon

— Joan D. Chittister

Find the thing that stirs your heart and make room for it

— Joan D. Chittister

Hospitality is simply love on the loose.

— Joan D. Chittister

Fear is not the opposite of courage. Fear is the catalyst of courage.

— Joan D. Chittister

“Knowledge of God and knowlegde of self give birth to humility.”

— Joan D. Chittister

A hard heart makes for hard judgments; a compassionate heart understands the humanity of the one we presume to judge.

— 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…

— Joan D. Chittister

Never confuse desire with vision. Desire has to do with what we want. Vision has to do with what we need.

— Joan D. Chittister

Learning to celebrate joy is one of the great practices of the spiritual life.

— 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

Precisely because of the greatness of God, we don't have to be great at all. Just in awe.

— Joan D. Chittister

“But one thing I do know: life and time are ghosted creatures for us all. They belong to us - and are…

— Joan D. Chittister

To be enlightened is to know that heaven is not "coming." Heaven is here.

— 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…

— 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…

— 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…

— Joan D. Chittister

Today we live in a world that judges its achievements by speed and busyness. Â… We are so busy making things happen…

— 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…

— Joan D. Chittister

All of us wrestle with the angels of our inabilities all the time. We live in fear that our incapacities will be…

— 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…

— Joan D. Chittister

There is no amount of darkness that can extinguish the inner light. The important thing is not to spend our lives trying…

— 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…

— 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.…

— 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…

— 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…

— Joan D. Chittister

Just when summer gets perfect-fresh nights, soft sun, casual breezes, crushingly full and quietly cooling trees, empty beaches, and free weekends- it…

— 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…

— Joan D. Chittister

Happiness does not come quickly. It is not conferred by any single event, however exciting or comforting or satisfying the event may…

— Joan D. Chittister

“The service that the whole world needs from the elders is not the service of hours spent and time put in and…

— Joan D. Chittister

“Whatever happens to the body, what toll age takes on the physical, the spirit does not grow old. In our dreams, in…

— Joan D. Chittister

“We have made money our god and called it the good life. We have trained our children to go for jobs hat…

— Joan D. Chittister

“Like a great waterwheel, the liturgical year goes on relentlessly irrigating our souls, softening the ground of our hearts, nourishing the soil…

— Joan D. Chittister

“Women learn in such a system that, though they are usually tolerated in life and often loved, they are seldom respected for…

— Joan D. Chittister

Religious life is not going to go away. It will take a different form. Why am I so sure it's not going…

— Joan D. Chittister

“The symbolic evidence of women’s invisibility in the human race is most clear perhaps in her suppression, her camouflage, her negation even…

— Joan D. Chittister

Everything we do seeds the future. No action is an empty one.

— Joan D. Chittister

It is not our job to work miracles, but it is our task to try.

— Joan D. Chittister