War within ourselves is always a prelude to war outside ourselves. All war starts within our own hearts. When our egos are inflated or our desires insatiable, we go to war with the other for the sad joy of maintaining our one-dimensional worlds.

Joan D. Chittister
About This Quote

The greater the struggle within ourselves, whether it be a struggle with our own ego or a struggle with our desires, the greater the external struggle. When we struggle to keep a one-dimensional world, we go to war with others.

Source: Wisdom Distilled From The Daily: Living The Rule Of St. Benedict Today

Some Similar Quotes
  1. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. - Unknown

  2. Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grassthe world is too full to talk about. - Jalaluddin Rumi

  3. When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace. - Jimi Hendrix

  4. When I say it's you I like, I'm talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without... - Fred Rogers

  5. If someone thinks that peace and love are just a cliche that must have been left behind in the 60s, that's a problem. Peace and love are eternal. - John Lennon

More Quotes By Joan D. Chittister
  1. Beware the religion that turns you against another one. It's unlikely that it's really religion at all.

  2. Spirituality without a prayer life is no spirituality at all, and it will not last beyond the first defeats. Prayer is an opening of the self so that the Word of God can break in and make us new. Prayer unmasks. Prayer converts. Prayer impels....

  3. It is one thing to speak kindly to an irritating stranger on Monday. It is quite another thing to go on speaking kindly to the same irritating relative, or irritating employee, or irritating child day after day, week after week, year after year and come...

  4. Silence is a frightening thing. Silences leaves us at the mercy of the noise within us. We hear the fears that need to be faced. We hear, then, the angers that need to be cooled. <span style="margin:15px; display:block"></span>We hear the emptiness that needs to be...

  5. Humble people walk comfortably in every group. No one is either too beneath them or too above them for their own sense of well-being. They are who they are, people with as much to give as to get, and they know it. And because they're...

Related Topics