Mary Quotes

The nativity mystery “conceived from the Holy Spirit and born from the Virgin Mary”, means, that God became human, truly human out of his own grace. The miracle of the existence of Jesus , his “climbing down of God” is: Holy Spirit and Virgin Mary! Here is a human being, the Virgin Mary, and as he comes from God, Jesus comes also from this human being. Born of the Virgin Mary means a human origin for God. Jesus Christ is not only truly God, he is human like every one of us. He is human without limitation. He is not only similar to us, he is like us.

~ Karl Barth

Her (Mary's) Son first had to be the Child of the Father in order then to become man and be capable of taking up on his shoulders the burden of a guilty world.

~ Hans Urs Von Balthasar

Mary thus learns that the Most High has ever borne a Son in his bosom, and that this Son has now chosen her bosom as dwelling-place.

~ Hans Urs Von Balthasar

The only people who soul can truly magnify the Lord are...people who acknowledge their lowly estate and are overwhelmed by the condescension of the magnificent God.

~ John Piper

Do you not see the Madonna always beside the tabernacle?

~ Padre Pio

Think of what starlight And lamplight would lack Diamonds and fireflies If they couldn’t lean against Black. . . .

~ Mary O'neill

‎Determination, effort, and practice are rewarded with success.

~ Mary Lydon Simonsen

But we have no [Marian] apparitions cautioning the Church against, say, accepting the delusion of an Earth-centered Universe, or warning it of complicity with Nazi Germany — two matters of considerable moral as well as historical import....Not a single saint criticized the practice of torturing and burning “witches” and heretics. Why not? Were they unaware of what was going on? Could they not grasp its evil? And why is [the Virgin] Mary always admonishing the poor peasant to inform the authorities? Why doesn’t she admonish the authorities herself? Or the King? Or the Pope?

~ Carl Sagan

A woman's body is a sacred temple. A work of art, and a life-giving vessel. And once she becomes a mother, her body serves as a medicine cabinet for her infant. From her milk she can nourish and heal her own child from a variety of ailments. And though women come in a wide assortment as vast as the many different types of flowers and birds, she is to reflect divinity in her essence, care and wisdom. God created a woman's heart to be a river of love, not to become a killing machine.

~ Suzy Kassem

‎There is nothing sweeter than finding the right person to love and cherish and to share your hopes and dreams with.

~ Mary Lydon Simonsen

It is theologically and anthropologically important for woman to be at the center of Christianity. Through Mary, and the other holy women, the feminine element stands at the heart of the Christian religion.

~ Pope Benedict Xvi

‎Does anyone truly understand females? ...Their behavior is opposite of everything in the natural order and flies in the face of logic.

~ Mary Lydon Simonsen

One thing that became clear to me is that images of a divine mother are surprisingly important in the psychological wholeness of women, especially in the process of women taking up residence in their own authority.

~ Sue Monk Kidd

‎Women fancy admiration means more than it does.

~ Mary Lydon Simonsen

...Mary, fresh with feminist appropriations, has the potential to undergird women’s reformations.

~ Sue Monk Kidd

For a moment this day, for many moments this May, let us gape in awe at the strength of women, and look upon their sinewy courage with respect and humility, as the Lord looked on His Mother, and still does. Like Him we are of women born, and to women must pay our first respect, and owe our first love, for they are as strong as the very ribs of the earth.

~ Brian Doyle

In the world as it is, torn with agonies and dissensions, we need some direction for our souls which is never away from us; which, without enslaving us or narrowing our vision, enters into every detail of our life. Everyone longs for some such inward rule, a universal rule as big as the immeasurable law of love, yet as little as the narrowness of our daily routine. It must be so truly part of us all that it makes us all one, and yet to each one the secret of his own life with God.To this need, the imitation of Our Lady is the answer; in contemplating her we find intimacy with God, the law which is the lovely yoke of the one irresistible love.

~ Caryll Houselander

Christ must be born from every soul, formed in every life. If we had a picture of Our Lady's personality we might be dazzled into thinking that only one sort of person could form Christ in himself, and we should miss the meaning of our own being.Nothing but things essential for us are revealed to us about the Mother of God: the fact that she was wed to the Holy Spirit and bore Christ into the world.Our crowning joy is that she did this as a lay person and through the ordinary daily life that we all live; through natural love made supernatural, as the water at Cana was, at her request, turned into wine.

~ Caryll Houselander

We must live with our hearts in our hands - like Mary.We must hold the blood-red heart and no be disappointedwhen others look away.

~ Kelli Russell Agodon

When you are happy for other people's dreams, your dreams start jumping up with joy. Elizabeth was happy with Mary and her dream baby was jumping in her womb crazily for joy!

~ Israelmore Ayivor

Parents have to instill the right principles in their children, but then it's up to the children to live up to those principles.

~ Mary Lydon Simonsen

‎I cannot alter the past, but the future is very much in my hands.

~ Mary Lydon Simonsen

When also I am told that a woman, called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told him so, I have a right to believe them or not: such a circumstance required a much stronger evidence than their bare word for it: but we have not even this; for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such matter themselves. It is only reported by others that they said so. It is hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not chose to rest my belief upon such evidence.

~ Thomas Paine

Every relationship must have a starting point so that past errors may remain in the past.

~ Mary Lydon Simonsen

As for those who state that it is thanks to a woman, the lady Eve, that man was expelled from paradise, my answer to them would be that man has gained far more through Mary than he ever lost through Eve.

~ Christine De Pizan

You dreamed like all mothers do.Until he began to speak aloud,Your boy,calling for justice in the market place,Demanding integrity and fair playin the courts and halls of business.Declaring the Realm of GodImminent,Manifest . . .Jesus leapt into the swelling crowdslike an axe into wood,Uncompromising and unrelentingin his passionate callfor peace and justice.Jesus, your boy,causing havoc in public,critiquing and condemningthe status quo,breaking rule after rule . . .And with every speech, with every act of defiance, with every call to liberation, with every amazing deed,Your dreams of peace and liberation,Your dreams of a secure old age,Your dreams of grandchildren—Evaporated.

~ Edwina Gateley

O Sacred Heart of Mary! she murmured by his side, and he felt how that name was food and raiment, friend and mother to her. He received the miracle in her heart into his own, saw through her eyes, knew that his poverty was as bleak as hers. When the Kingdom of Heaven had first come into the world, into a cruel world of torture and slaves and masters, He who brought it had said, And whosoever is least among you, the same shall be first in the Kingdom of Heaven.

~ Willa Cather

She said, Right now, while we have this time, I'm not going to do any of that other stuff. I'm going to seize this moment and simply enjoy being with Jesus while I can. Mary made a deliberate choice. She wasn't being lazy and using company as an excuse to get out of helping her sister with chores. She was choosing to focus on what mattered the most.

~ Craig Groeschel

In the womb of the Virgin Mary, God “becomes” human, receiving from her the body that makes possible the “passion” of God; while on the Cross, through the Jewish flesh given of Mary, the divine Son is truly crucified. In the same way, in the Eucharist, Christians receive the very flesh the Logos received of Mary and united to himself, that “truly life-giving flesh of God the Word himself.” Only insofar as God receives the passability of human flesh does he become crucifiable and sacramentally givable.

~ Aaron Riches

Do everything with the greatest possible calm and serenity and out of the greatest, purest and holiest love of Jesus and Mary.

~ Father Jacques Philippe

Poor Mary. They married her to Jesus, and Jesus is an asexual circumcised revolutionary. What future is there to be had in that scenario?

~ Rawi Hage

Fortunately the essence of this revelation did not escape Mary despite the angel's obscure speech, and, much surprised, she asked him, So Jesus is my son and the son of the Lord, Woman, what are you saying, show some respect for rank and precedence, what you must say is the son of the Lord and me, Of the Lord and of you, No, of the Lord and of you, You're confusing me, just answer my question, is Jesus our son, You mean to say the Lord's son because you only served to bear the child, So the Lord didn't choose me, Don't be absurd (...) Is there any real proof that it was the Lord's seed which engendered my first-born, Well, it's a delicate matter, and what you're demanding is nothing less than a paternity test which in these mixed unions, no matter how many analyses, tests, and globule counts one carries out, can never give conclusive results.

~ José Saramago

The telescope destroyed the firmament, did away with the heaven of the New Testament, rendered the ascension of our Lord and the assumption of his Mother infinitely absurd, crumbled to chaos the gates and palaces of the New Jerusalem, and in their places gave to man a wilderness of worlds.

~ Robert G. Ingersoll

Lord, I'll embrace whatever it is you want me to do, but please, please let me know what it is. - Father Kevin Thrall.

~ Peter J. Tanous

Never refuse any who ask you for help; if your pockets are empty, give them hope. Your every action must be born of kindness, your every word spoken with love. Live as God would have you live, and others will be inspired to do the same.

~ Immaculée Ilibagiza

She [the Virgin Mary] was normal. She had already had other children. The Bible tells us that Jesus had two brothers. Virginity, as it relates to Jesus, is based on a different thing: Mary initiated a new generation of grace. A new era began. She is the cosmic bride, Earth, which opens to the heavens and allows itself to be fertilized.

~ Paulo Coelho

Don't you recognize me, Mary? It's your good friend Allie the Outcast - although it looks like you're the one who's the out-cast now. Then Allie realized something with far too much glee. Now that you're here - alive and all - there's something I've wanted to do for a very long time.Then Allie reached back, curled her fleshie's right hand into a fist, and swung it toward Mary with all her might.This was one strong fleshie!The punch connected with Mary's eye so hard, that Mary's entire body spun around, and she collapsed into a leopard chair. Allie's knuckles hurt, but it was a good kind of pain.My eye! wailed Mary. Oh! My eye.

~ Neal Shusterman

Think about the whole Biblical story of Mary. She wakes up and sees something with a lion, eagle, and human face that wants to inseminate her with the Holy Seed. She’s practically a saint just for not killing herself on the spot.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

One response was given by the innkeeper when Mary and Joseph wanted to find a room where the Child could be born. The innkeeper was not hostile; he was not opposed to them, but his inn was crowded; his hands were full; his mind was preoccupied. This§ is the answer that millions are giving today. Like a Bethlehem innkeeper, they cannot find room for Christ. All the accommodations in their hearts are already taken up by other crowding interests. Their response is not atheism. It is not defiance. It is preoccupation and the feeling of being able to get on reasonably well without Christianity.

~ Billy Graham

Who are we if not the stories we pass down? What happens when there's no one left to tell those stories? To hear them? Who will ever know that I existed? What if we are the only ones left -- who will know our stories then? Who will remember those?

~ Carrie Ryan