Cheryl Strayed Quotes

The hardest times to choose love are the very times when you can most grow spiritually. In fact, they are the only times you can grow spiritually!

Humility and patience are the surest proofs of the increase of love.

Experience is how life catches up with us and teaches us to love and forgive each other.

I saw that we're all doing the best we can. This is how a lifetime of humility begins.

Do you have the courage for it? Do you have the love? If you have enough of one, you will develop the other.

The giving of love is an education in itself.

Ultimately, knowing God and reading the Word, it helps with patience with people, understanding, empathy and sympathy that they might not have that I have. If God gave it to me, why not exercise it?

All we will ever know and share about love, humility, compassion, and sacrifice - the secrets that will reveal and then resolve old sorrows - awaits us within ourselves.

Compassion is the key to living outside the confines of your lower self.

In retrospect, I'm grateful for the break-up of my marriage because it forced me to deal with all the buried issues I probably wouldn't have otherwise faced. I'm a better, kinder, happier person today because of the spiritual and emotional growth I've experienced.

We are each made for goodness, love and compassion. Our lives are transformed as much as the world is when we live with these truths.

Whenever you're going through a tough time, generally, you become more compassionate, you become softer, you become more thoughtful, kinder. These are all spiritual qualities that will help you to align yourself with God and God consciousness rather than with a split fear-based consciousness.

I think the most that I've learned has been, how do I put this? The innate goodness inside of all of us.

Love lights more fires than hate extinguishes, and men grow better as the world grows old.

We experience God to the extent to which we love, forgive, and focus on the good in others and ourselves.

You can't forgive without loving. And I don't mean sentimentality. I don't mean mush. I mean having enough courage to stand up and say, 'I forgive. I'm finished with it.'

In order to deserve, we must pay our dues and steadily work for perfection. We must relish in struggle, and relinquish pride. We must dispel fear and seek enlightenment. We must shun division and honor love. We must know our hearts and seek to understand others. We must try, live, create, feel, grow and love.

Have only love in your heart for others. The more you see the good in them, the more you will establish good in yourself.

For a person who cherishes compassion and love, the practice of tolerance is essential, and for that, and enemy is indispinsable. So we should be grateful to our enemies, for it is they who can best help us to develop a tranquil mind.

What I know for sure is that your life is a multipart series of all your experiences- and each experience is created by your thoughts, intentions, and actions to teach you what you need to know. Your life is a journey of learning to love yourself first and then extending that love to others in every encounter.

May I be given the appropriate difficulties so that my heart can truly open with compassion. Imagine asking for that.

Don't ever let anyone pull you so low as to hate them. We must use the weapon of love. We must have the compassion and understanding for those who hate us. We must realize so many people are taught to hate us that they are not totally responsible for their hate. But we stand in life at midnight; we are always on the threshold of a new dawn.

Goodness, generosity, or love does not come into being save through the search for reality.

There is nothing noble about suffering except the love and forgiveness with which we meet it. Many believe that if they are suffering they are closer to God, but I have met very few who could keep their heart open to their suffering enough for that to be true. (124)