Dark Night Of The Soul Quotes

If we never experience the chill of a dark winter, it is very unlikely that we will ever cherish the warmth of a bright summer’s day. Nothing stimulates our appetite for the simple joys of life more than the starvation caused by sadness or desperation. In order to complete our amazing life journey successfully, it is vital that we turn each and every dark tear into a pearl of wisdom, and find the blessing in every curse.

~ Anthon St. Maarten

Harvey wanted to dive into his ugliness; he intentionally reached for those long hours of soul desolation. He waited. He paced, ready to face down whatever was to come.Paulette’s, though, busted loose uninvited, catching her completely off guard when she was already hurting, feeling crumbled, and vulnerable. When all she really wanted was some quiet gentle feelings for a change. A few flowers. Some sunshine. A way out of all that inner torment for even just a moment.Had she had brought only nastiness out of her childhood? Hadn’t there been anything sweet she could remember instead?As she wandered back to her cabin, searching for even a single fond memory, light faded everywhere around her.Aw, c’mon, she thought. Everyone had some happy childhood memories. She had to have at least a couple.How about the coloring? Children enjoy coloring; how about that? She’d spent hours and days on her art. It was as close as she could remember to having her Mamma stand over her with anything even remotely resembling approval. Her books and comics could be tales of Jesus, but coloring books had to be Old Testament because “No child’s impure hand could touch a crayon to the sweet beautiful face of our beloved Lord and savior Christ Jesus.”So the little girl had scrunched down over Daniel in the lion’s den. Samson screaming in rage, pain, and terror as they blinded him with daggers and torches. The redder she made the flowing wounds of a man of God shot full of arrows, the richer the flames around those three men being burned in an iron box, the longer Mamma let her stay out of that closet.- From “The Gardens of Ailana

~ Edward Fahey

Enlightenment arrives like a thief in the middle of the dark night of the soul.

~ Stefan Emunds

There is a season for everything under the sun—even when we can’t see the sun.

~ Jared Brock

Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.

~ Philip K. Dick

The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality and my life, as I write this, is vital even when sad. I may wake up sometime next year without my mind again; it is not likely to stick around all the time. Meanwhile, however, I have discovered what I would have to call a soul, a part of myself I could never have imagined until one day, seven years ago, when hell came to pay me a surprise visit. It's a precious discovery.

~ Andrew Solomon

One thing is certain, whatever choices we make: we will not miss out on some critical purgation by seeking treatment for depression or any other form of physical suffering. If we are ripe for what the dark night brings, God will find a way to bring the process to fruition no matter how hard we try to avoid it.

~ Tim Farrington

You don't need to retire to a cloister or the desert for years on end to experience a true dark night; you don't even have to be pursuing any particular spiritual path. Raising a challenged child, or caring for a failing parent for years on end, is at least as purgative as donning robes and shaving one's head; to endure a mediocre work situation for the sake of the paycheck that sustains a family demands at least as much in the way of daily surrender to years of pristine silence in a monastery. No one can know in advance how and where the night will come, and what form God's darkness will take.

~ Tim Farrington

You necessarily have to be lost, before you’re found.

~ T. Scott Mcleod

do you dare to step in-to the vulnerable black, stripped to the soul with human blindness – when the full and weeping moon steps from the shade of a tumult of mountains – when, in the fragrant dim, day's tree stump transformsinto some nether-worldly other – when time's skin is thin and you arebared – when there is nothing between you and the Wildest Onewhose name is your own?

~ Beth Morey