Best 29 quotes of Faith Baldwin on MyQuotes

Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees.

Character builds slowly, but it can be torn down with incredible swiftness.

Gratitude is a humble emotion. It expresses itself in a thousand ways, from a sincere thank you to friend or stranger, to the mute, up-reaching acknowledgment to God--not for the gifts of this day only, but for the day itself; not for what we believe will be ours in the future, but for the bounty of the past.

I have learned over a period of time to be almost unconsciously grateful--as a child is--for a sunny day, blue water, flowers in a vase, a tree turning red. I have learned to be glad at dawn and when the sky is dark. Only children and a few spiritually evolved people are born to feel gratitude as naturally as they breathe, without even thinking. Most of us come to it step by painful step, to discover that gratitude is a form of acceptance.

In my belief, a harvest is also a legacy, for very often what you reap is, in the way of small miracles, more than you consciously know you have sown.

I see now how things even up, how they are squared away, and how they balance under the law of love and justice. No year of life is emotionally, spiritually or even materially, all drought or all rainfall; nor is it all sun. The road turns a little every day, and one day there's a sudden twist we didn't dream was there, and for every loss there is somewhere a gain, for every grief a happiness, for every deprivation a giving.

I think one should forgive and remember .... If you forgive and forget in the usual sense, you're just driving what you remember into the subconscious; it stays there and festers. But to look, even regularly, upon what you remember and know you've forgiven is achievement.

I've always thought that the most perfect fate which could befall any woman would be to be born a rich widow.

Kissing tends to bring on woolgathering, even amnesia.

Men's private self-worlds are rather like our geographical world's seasons, storm, and sun, deserts, oases, mountains and abysses, the endless-seeming plateaus, darkness and light, and always the sowing and the reaping.

Most of us forget to take time for wonder, praise and gratitude until it is almost too late. Gratitude is a many-colored quality, reaching in all directions. It goes out for small things and for large; it is a God-ward going.

Occasionally the impossible happens; this is a truism that accounts for much of what we call good luck; and also, bad.

One of the dreariest spots on life's road is the point of conviction that nothing will ever again happen to you.

Sometimes there is a greater lack of communication in facile talking than in silence.

There's nothing like fishing to pass the time and to incline toward a sort of magnificent stupidity in which nothing matters but tackle, bait, sunlight and the strike.

The shadow of fear and uncertainty lies over most of us; for us the future seems far from being as clear and open as we believed it would be.

Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations.

We may differ widely in environments, education, learning, knowledge, or lack of it, and in our personalities, our likes and dislikes. But if we set ourselves the task, we'll find a meeting place somehow and somewhere.

You cannot contribute anything to the ideal condition of mind and heart known as Brotherhood, however much you preach, posture, or agree, unless you live it.

Each season is a forerunner of the next, and as the earth revolves, we learn to adjust, and consent to, the alterations.

I've known a lot of alleged failures in my time and many of them, in losing what the world has always considered success, have achieved in facing up to failure, more than they ever achieved when they were considered successful.

Look back upon winter with gratitude. Spring is the harvest of the darker months—everything you know starts to grow in darkness. Don't write and tell me that winter brought you only colds or the ubiquitous virus. Perhaps it did bring those (and to me as well). Who goes through the chilly months unscathed? But it also brought things not to be forgotten—silver moons and snow, brilliant under stars; it brought Christmas and a new year, and to each of us something happy, something unexpected, which was not another problem but a joy. For the pendulum swings; nothing is static; and the road, however long, does turn.

Praying, we usually ask too much. I know I do. Sometimes we even demand. I think I am learning to ask enough for the moment--not for the whole year, utterly veiled in mystery; not even for the week, the month ahead; but just for today. Jesus said it all when He told us to pray: 'Give us this day our daily bread.' That bread is not only material, it is spiritual; in asking for it, we ask for a sufficiency of strength, courage, hope and light. Enough courage for the step ahead--not for the further miles. Enough strength for the immediate task or ordeal. Enough material gain to enable us to meet our daily obligations. Enough light to see the path--right before our feet.

The Creator of all men and all things has provided the challenge of change, the necessity for acceptance, and variations of all patterns. We live by change, by struggle and the unexpected; for only in change, struggle, and the unexpected can we achieve growth.

The first flash of color always excites me as much as the first frail, courageous bloom of spring. This is, in a sense, my season--sometimes warm and, when the wind blows an alert, sometimes cold. But there is a clarity about September. On clear days, the sun seems brighter, the sky more blue, the white clouds take on marvelous shapes; the moon is a wonderful apparition, rising gold, cooling to silver; and the stars are so big. The September storms--the hurricane warnings far away, the sudden gales, the downpour of rain that we have so badly needed here for so long--are exhilarating, and there's a promise that what September starts, October will carry on, catching the torch flung into her hand.

The great minds, which from time to time have existed in this world, were like doors thrown wide to understanding. I don't mean just their brilliance or philosophy or even psychology. I mean that the spoken words that have endured are those uttered by men who understood with their hearts. No one on earth understands everything; that all-comprehensive function belongs to God alone. But we all try to understand a little. Most of us realize that too late. We look back and think: If only I'd tried to understand. Many failures in human relationships derive from this common failure. Watching the birds flock to discuss their travels among the brilliant leaves, listening to the slow turning of the earth upon her axis, meditating on Nature herself, never uncertain no matter how uncertain her manifestations may be, I think of the instinct that sends the birds from one locality to another, of the lengthening shadows as we face toward autumn, and of the marvelous system that encourages the leaf to fall and nurture the soil. In the single flame of October it begins the lullaby that will put the roots of grass and flowers to sleep. This system, in the four seasons of my little world, will cover the ground with silent snow, and at a later date will shout that spring is coming and awaken sleepers to new life. The sun in his glory, the moon in her phases, the stars in their courses, all these are part of the system; and Nature, turning the wheel of the seasons, understands what she must accomplish. Each in our own way, I suppose, we try to understand what we must accomplish. Perhaps the most important thing of all is the attempt to understand others.

The lesson of acceptance is one of the hardest to learn. I've been working on it for quite a spell, and cannot yet rate myself as A or even B. To accept changes, slow or sudden, to accept the inevitable alterations in one's life, even in one's way of living or thinking, isn't easy; and to accept other people's inviolable right to opinions other than your own is hard, too. To accept God's will, even if you do not understand it—and few of us do—is the most difficult, yet rewarding of all acceptances. Those of us who say the Lord's Prayer—formally at religious gatherings, aloud in a quiet room, or mentally to ourselves—rarely stop to think about each word and sentence or ponder on its strong core of inner meaning. To me the four words, Thy Will be done, are the most important; and they are valid in every creed. Blind faith is something we've heard about as long as we remember. I do not think this is the ultimate in belief. Unless his small personal world has been shattered, the faith of a child in his parents and in his total security is blind until he begins to think for himself, at which point reason gives blind faith its sight. An adult's faith must be logical and based upon an immutable foundation, which gives him the capacity, when for him the world is shattered, to go a step beyond the bewildered child and accept loss or alteration.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, . . ." ~Lord Byron So walk with me a little while in the pathless woods and reflect upon the unknown.... ...I find myself enchanted by Byron's "pathless woods," and it isn't hard to visualize them: tall, crowding trees, between which you make your way; the scent of earth and foliage and of evergreens. And, looking up, a patch of bright blue sky.... And, unless a leaf fell or a bird sang, there would be silence in the woods except for one's own footsteps which would, I dare say, be hushed also. In the woods there must be a sense that time has ceased and that for a moment we pause on the edge of some extraordinary discovery, that for the space of a heartbeat we are close to knowledge, on the verge of the solution to all problems, on the threshold of an answer. Pathless woods, steeped in peace and towering between heaven and earth would, I think, have that answer waiting for us if we were receptive enough to hear it. ...Here in the woods, perhaps we can listen with the heart and with the spirit, and hear the trees speak of growth, and the earth of seeds and silence, and looking up to the sky, hear sunlight singing.

What I have learned from the year past is something about miracles--miracles of healing and answered prayer and unexpected happy endings. Each came quietly and simply, on tiptoe, so that I hardly knew it had occurred. All this makes me realize that miracles are everyday things. Not only the sudden, great good fortune, wafting in on a new wind from the sky. They are almost routine, yet miracles just the same. Every time something hard becomes easier; every time you adjust to a situation which, last week, you didn't know existed; every time a kindness falls as softly as the dew; or someone you love who was ill grows better; every time a blessing comes, not with trumpet and fanfare, but silently as night, you have witnessed a miracle.