On every level of life, from housework to heights of prayer, in all judgment and efforts to get things done, hurry and impatience are sure marks of the amateur.
Interpretation
Hurry and impatience indicate a lack of mastery and understanding in any endeavor.
Evelyn Underhill highlights that in all aspects of life, whether mundane tasks or spiritual practices, a sense of urgency and impatience reflects a lack of experience and depth. True proficiency and understanding come from patience and the willingness to engage fully with the task at hand, rather than rushing through it.
In practice
This quote can be used in a workshop on productivity to emphasize the importance of patience.
Nothing in all nature is so lovely and so vigorous, so perfectly at home in its environment, as a fish in the sea. Its surroundings give to it a beauty, quality, and power which are not its own. We take it out, and at once a poor, limp dull thing, fit for nothing, is gasping away its life. So the soul, sunk in God, living the life of prayer, is supported, filled, transformed in beauty, by a vitality and a power which are not its own.
As the beautiful does not exist for the artist and poet alone—though these can find in it more poignant depths of meaning than other men—so the world of Reality exists for all; and all may participate in it, unite with it, according to their measure and to the strength and purity of their desire.
God is always coming to you in the Sacrament of the Present Moment. Meet and receive Him there with gratitude in that sacrament.
Spiritual reading is a regular, essential part of the life of prayer, and particularly is it the support of adoring prayer.
As the genuine religious impulse becomes dominant, adoration more and more takes charge. 'I come to seek God because I need Him', may be an adequate formula for prayer. 'I come to adore His splendour, and fling myself and all that I have at His feet', is the only possible formula for worship.
I have an idea heaven will be both absolutely happy and absolutely dark, to protect us from the blaze of God.
If we can manage to refrain from harming others in our everyday actions and words, we can start to give more serious attention to actively doing good, and this can be a source of great joy and inner confidence. We can benefit others through our actions by being warm and generous toward them, by being charitable, and by helping those in need.
Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing of supreme quality is cheap, whatever the price one has to pay for it.
There are times in all of our lives when a reliance on gut or intuition just seems more appropriate - when a particular course of action just feels right.
Integrity is not something that grownups have and adolescents can aspire to. Integrity is something that all of us, at all ages, are constantly striving for.
The ability to perceive or think differently is more important than the knowledge gained.
I learned from him that often contradiction is the clearest way to truth
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