Restoration Quotes

“I have to be alone very often. I'd be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That's how I refuel."

(Audrey Hepburn: Many-Sided Charmer, LIFE Magazine, December 7, 1953)”
― Audrey Hepburn

“A lonely day is God's way of saying that he wants to spend some quality time with you.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Action on behalf of life transforms. Because the relationship between self and the world is reciprocal, it is not a question of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

“Your dignity can be mocked, abused, compromised, toyed with, lowered and even badmouthed, but it can never be taken from you. You have the power today to reset your boundaries, restore your image, start fresh with renewed values and rebuild what has happened to you in the past.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“The ORDINARY RESPONSE TO ATROCITIES is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.

Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried. Equally as powerful as the desire to deny atrocities is the conviction that denial does not work. Folk wisdom is filled with ghosts who refuse to rest in their graves until their stories are told. Murder will out. Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims.

The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma. People who have survived atrocities often tell their stories in a highly emotional, contradictory, and fragmented manner that undermines their credibility and thereby serves the twin imperatives of truth-telling and secrecy. When the truth is finally recognized, survivors can begin their recovery. But far too often secrecy prevails, and the story of the traumatic event surfaces not as a verbal narrative but as a symptom.

The psychological distress symptoms of traumatized people simultaneously call attention to the existence of an unspeakable secret and deflect attention from it. This is most apparent in the way traumatized people alternate between feeling numb and reliving the event. The dialectic of trauma gives rise to complicated, sometimes uncanny alterations of consciousness, which George Orwell, one of the committed truth-tellers of our century, called "doublethink," and which mental health professionals, searching for calm, precise language, call "dissociation." It results in protean, dramatic, and often bizarre symptoms of hysteria which Freud recognized a century ago as disguised communications about sexual abuse in childhood. . . .”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

“Oh what a wonderful soul so bright inside you. Got power to heal the sun’s broken heart, power to restore the moon’s vision too.”
― Aberjhani, Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player

“Songs remain. They last...A song can last long after the events and the people in it are dust and dreams and gone. That's the power of songs.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“6 Ways To Give Your Mind A Break:

1. Stop stressing
2. Stop worrying
3. Give rest to the problems weighing you down
4. Lighten up
5. Forgive yourself
6. Forgive others”
― Germany Kent

“Connecting with those you know love, like and appreciate you restores the spirit and give you energy to keep moving forward in this life.”
― Deborah Day, BE HAPPY NOW!

“True confidence is not about what you take from someone to restore yourself, but what you give back to your critics because they need it more than you do.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Jesus is God's way of refusing to give up his dream for the world.”
― Rob Bell

“The work of restoration cannot begin until a problem is fully faced.”
― Dan Allender

“The weather is nature's disruptor of human plans and busybodies. Of all the things on earth, nature's disruption is what we know we can depend on, as it is essentially uncontrolled by men.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Murderers don't get forgiven just because we promise to be good from now on. We have to earn our way back. One hundred is the price. One hundred lives for each we took. That seems fair. That's how we get whole again and that's our work, from now until as long as it takes.”
― Bill Willingham, Fables, Vol. 18: Cubs in Toyland

“Romance is about putting things aright after some tragedy has put them asunder. It is about restoration of the right relations among things — and going home is where that restoration occurs because that is where it matters most.”
― A. Bartlett Giamatti, Take Time for Paradise: Americans and Their Games

“This in essence is my goal. To set an example by doing what is good. If I live openly and honestly, I set an example of virtue, humanness, restoration, and healing. I give others permission to join me on my journey despite the fear of failure or the rejection it might elicit when they know they are not alone in their experience. The more of us who amass the courage to embark openly on this path, the more normal this experience becomes, effectively eliminating the tactic of shame and isolation that the enemy so often uses to cause us to falter.”
― Riisa Renee, Breaking the Silence

“I will never say that progress is being made.
If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress.
If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. The progress is healing the wound that's below, that the blow made. And they haven't even begun to pull the knife out, much less pull, heal the wound...

They won't even admit the knife is there.”
― Malcolm X

“In a state of pseudo-death you restore your substance.”
― Marlene Van Niekerk, Agaat

“So much of what people suffer with is rooted in unresolved mental and emotional pain. People everywhere are addicted to false forms of comfort to manage their misery. If we would learn to ask the right questions and invite the Holy Spirit to share His truth, we would experience a multitude of miraculous healings.”
― Laura Gagnon, The Book Satan Doesn't Want You To Read

“The human being destroys so many things on his own, and it is not in his power to restore anything. Nature, by contrast, has all the power to heal as long one does not eavesdrop or interrupt it.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“If we allow the practice of restoration to become the exclusive domain of science, we will have lost its greatest promise, which is nothing less than a redefinition of human culture.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

“You can’t speak life to others if you don’t know how to speak life to yourself. Dead leaves can’t breathe.”
― Kemi Sogunle, On Becoming Restored

“Restoring ruined dreams and reclaiming wasted years is what God does best.”
― Allison Bottke, Setting Boundaries with Your Adult Children: Six Steps to Hope and Healing for Struggling Parents

“One of the weaknesses of the Evangelical church and the reason why it does not do restoration well is because it is theological, but it is not relational.”
― Darrin Patrick

“Environmentalists like to say that defeats are permanent, victories temporary. Extinction, like death, is forever, but protection needs to be maintained. But now, in a world where restoration ecology is becoming increasingly important, it turns out that even defeats aren't always permanent. Across the United States and Europe, dams have been removed, wetlands and rivers restored, once-vanished native species reintroduced, endangered species regenerated.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities

“Write a letter to your vigilante super-hero within and tell them what you want them to do.

Then, throw it up and hope it manifests. Then, remember, provisions take on many forms and it could be the reason you don't have a vigilante super-hero.

Vengeance is mine, says the lord.”
― Niedria D. Kenny

“We break off into the streets, repairing the cobblestones with our brisk allegro. The townsfolk step aside in awe as my allongés stitch the pastel wood back into cottages and storefronts. Flowers grow from my quick bourrée steps, breathing life back into Luna Island in shades of pink and purple. Rainbows rise from the sea with my grand jeté, summoning the dolphins to leap alongside our dance. Damien catches me in his arms before lifting me into the air as I paint the sky bright blue.
We laugh as the beauty of Luna Island blooms once again, running into the forest and turning the ash into lush green trees. Color bursts in the darkness as we chassé through the angels' village and past the glade where our story first began. With my pirouettes, I add extra pink petals to the garden where Damien and I once lay.
I break into a series of chaîné turns as we make our way back down to the beach, unleashing the magic Luna bestowed upon me. The townsfolk watch in awe in the midst of the commotion, and I dust them in a veil of starlight that follows my path, healing bruises and stitching wounds until no one bleeds. They gather around me as I finish my dance, thrumming with applause and tossing the freshly spun flowers at my feet.”
― Kiana Krystle, Dance of the Starlit Sea

“To rest is not to withdraw from your life completely, but to participate in it fully, deeply, wildly.”
― Emmie Rae

“You were not made to tend to the grave of your mistakes because God removed the coffin and backfilled the hole.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“It is easy to mistake the fallowness of winter for wasted time and space. But this view obscures the necessity of winter for sustaining the whole cycle, dismissing how crucial dormant times are for the growth and beauty that comes later. It ignores the critical work being done under the surface. It pretends that we can all go nonstop, all the time, working and living and loving at full capacity, unceasingly. But we can't, and there is much to be gained by not trying, and by gifting ourselves a season to restore.”
― Kari Leibowitz, How to Winter: Harness Your Mindset to Thrive on Cold, Dark, or Difficult Days