Anne Carson Quotes

Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are.

it is only to the extent that we are willing to expose ourselves again and again to annihilation that we are able to find that part of ourselves that is indestructible.

Sometimes what makes us insecure and vulnerable becomes the fuel we need to be overachievers. The antidote for a snakebite is made from the poison, and the thing that made you go backward is the same force that will push you forward.

Defeat may serve as well as victory To shake the soul and let the glory out. When the great oak is straining in the wind, The boughs drink in new beauty and the trunk Sends down a deeper root on the windward side. Only the soul that knows the mighty grief Can know the mighty rapture, Sorrows come To stretch out spaces in the heart for joy.

He’s stronger than this. He’s always been stronger… (Vane) Even the mightiest oak can be felled by a whisper of a wind if it comes on the heels of a powerful enough storm. (Carson)

You know what they say, the high trees get the wind.

The process of growth is, it seems, the art of falling down. Growth is measured by the gentleness and awareness with which we once again pick ourselves up, the lightness with which we dust ourselves off, the openness with which we continue and take the next unknown step, beyond our edge, beyond our holding, into the remarkable mystery of being.

Without you, without your onslaughts, without your uprootings of us, we should remain all our lives inert, stagnant, puerile, ignorant both of ourselves and of God. You who batter us and then dress our wounds, you who resist us and yield to us, you who wreck and build, you who shackle and liberate, the sap of our souls, the hand of God, the flesh of Christ: it is you, matter, that I bless.

Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.

Something very beautiful happens to people when their world's fallen apart: a humility, a nobility, a higher intelligence emerges at just the point when our knees hit the floor.

No matter how bad a state of mind you may get into, if you keep strong and hold out, eventually the floating clouds must vanish and the withering wind must cease.

Through every trial we grow. All suffering we experience has a meaning. Though it seems very cruel, it is like the fire that smelts the iron ore: the steel that emerges from that furnace is beautifully strong, useful for many purposes.

When danger is far off we may think of our weakness; when it is near we must not forget our strength.

Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you're alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another.

We all have to go through the tumbler a few times before we can emerge as a crystal.

Every time there are losses, there are choices to be made. You choose to live your losses as passages to anger, blame, hatred, depression and resentment, or you choose to let these losses be passages to something new, something wider, and deeper.

In the end what you don't surrender, well, the world just strips away.

Resistance, whether to one's appetites or to the ways of the world, is a chief factor in the shaping of character.

Problems are God's resistance to create spiritual muscles.

The rain would not have bothered Fernanda, after all, her whole life had been spent as if it were raining.

If the winds of fortune are temporarily blowing against you, remember that you can harness them and make them carry you toward your definite purpose, through the use of your imagination.

There is no sense in the struggle, but there is no choice but to struggle.

when the fierce, burning winds blow over our lives-and we cannot prevent them-let us, too, accept the inevitable. And then get busy and pick up the pieces.

The demon that you can swallow gives you it’s power, and the greater life’s pain, the greater life’s reply.