As a thought leader and activist, it’s safe to say that Glennon Doyle is full of wisdom. Doyle has quite a resume: In addition to writing three bestselling books including Untamed, Love Warrior, Carry On, Warrior, and more, Doyle is the host of the popular podcast “We Can Do Hard Things.”
Over the years, Doyle has inspired millions of people to, well, do hard things—and to live their lives to the fullest potential. Whether you know everything there is to know about her or you’re new to her work and wisdom, let these 50 quotes inspire and instill bravery in you, and help you reach for the stars.
1.“The only meaningful thing we can offer one another is love. Not advice, not questions about our choices, not suggestions for the future, just love.”
2. “Reading is my inhale and writing is my exhale.”
3. “Kind people are brave people. Brave is not something you should wait to feel. Brave is a decision. It is a decision that compassion is more important than fear, than fitting in, than following the crowd.”
4.“The journey is learning that pain, like love, is simply something to surrender to. It's a holy space we can enter with people only if we promise not to tidy up.”
5. “Here's my hunch: nobody's secure, and nobody feels like she completely belongs. Those insecurities are just job hazards of being human. But some people dance anyway, and those people have more fun.”
6. “Life is hard—not because we’re doing it wrong, just because it’s hard.”
7. If there's a silver lining to the emptiness, here it is: the unfillable is what brings people together. I've never made a friend by bragging about my strengths, but I've made countless by sharing my weakness and my emptiness.”
8. “The sun shows up every morning, no matter how bad you’ve been the night before. It shines without judgment. It never withholds. It warms the sinners, the saints, the druggies, the cheerleaders- the saved and the heathens alike. You can hide from the sun, but it won’t take you personally.
9. “What if in skipping the pain, I was missing my lessons?”
10. “I have met myself and I am going to care for her fiercely.”
11. “What if pain—like love—is just a place brave people visit?
12. “People who need help sometimes look a lot like people who don’t need help.”
13. “If our goal is to be tolerant of people who are different than we are, then we really are aiming quite low. Traffic jams are to be tolerated. People are to be celebrated.”
14. “No woman on earth doesn’t give a fuck—no woman is that cool—she’s just hidden her fire. Likely, it’s burning her up.”
15. “Grief is love's souvenir. It's our proof that we once loved. Grief is the receipt we wave in the air that says to the world: Look! Love was once mine. I love well. Here is my proof that I paid the price.”
16. “Since brokenness is the way of folks, the only way to live peacefully is to forgive everyone constantly, including yourself.”
17. “Recovery is an unbecoming. My healing has been a peeling away of costume after costume until here I am, still and naked before God, stripped down to my real identity.”
18. “I don’t want to take anything to the grave. I want to die used up and emptied out. I don’t want to carry around anything that I don’t have to. I want to travel light.”
19. “I am loved and have always been loved and will always, always be loved. I have never been separated from this love, I have only convinced myself I was.”
20. “Every girl must decide whether to be true to herself or true to the world. Every girl must decide whether to settle for adoration or fight for love.”
21. “When a woman finally learns that pleasing the world is impossible, she becomes free to learn how to please herself.”
22. “I will not stay, not ever again—in a room or conversation or relationship or institution that requires me to abandon myself.”
23. “Being human is not hard because you're doing it wrong, it's hard because you're doing it right.”
24. “Be careful with the stories you tell about yourself.”
25. “The only thing that was ever wrong with me was my belief that there was something wrong with me."
26. “I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.”
27. “When one is burying a dream, one might as well plant another dream.”
28. “Perhaps imagination is not where we go to escape reality but where we go to remember it.”
29. “I've only begun the work that needs to be done here. Not yet, the voice says. Not yet. See this through. Unbecome, Glennon. Unbecome until you uncover who you really are.”
30. “Hard work is important. So are play and non-productivity. My worth is tied not to my productivity but to my existence. I am worthy of rest.”
31. “Peace isn’t the absence of distraction or annoyance or pain. It’s finding Me, finding peace and calm, in the midst of those distractions and annoyances and pains.”
32 “If we empty our hearts every night, they won't get too heavy or cluttered. Our hearts will stay light and open with lots of room for good new things to come.”
33. “Be critical, fine, that’s fair. But don’t be cruel. Every damn one of us knows the difference.”
34. “These things will be hard to do, but you can do hard things."
35. “When you write your truth, it is a love offering to the world because it helps us feel braver and less alone.”
36. “That we are just scattered pieces of the same puzzle, so when we hurt each other, we hurt ourselves.”
37. “It's just that living with anxiety - living alarmed - makes it impossible to enter the moment, to land inside my body and be there. I cannot be in the moment because I am too afraid of what the next moment will bring. I have to be ready.”
38. “It is a blessing to know a free woman. Sometimes she will stop by and hold up a mirror for you. She will help you remember who you are.”
39. “Just do the next right thing, one thing at a time.”
40. “If you can’t beat fear, just do it scared.”
41. “Faith is not a club to belong to, but a current to surrender to.”
42. “If I want to know: Is there anyone on earth who won’t betray me? I must answer myself: Yes. Look in the mirror. She won’t betray you.”
43. “When reentering society and risking rejection, the library is a good place to start. They have low expectations. I love the library. Also church. Both have to take you in.”
44. “Books are how I learned to disappear, to live in a world other than the uncomfortable physical one.”
45. “Life is brutal, but it’s also beautiful. Life is Brutiful.”
46. “Grief is nothing but a painful waiting, a horrible patience. Grief cannot be torn down or scaled or overcome or outsmarted. It can only be outlasted. Survival is surrendering to the brick wall. There”
47. “I’m not big on advice, mainly because most days I learn what an idiot I was yesterday.”
48. “Happiness is low expectations paired with a short-term memory problem.”
49. “Be messy and complicated and afraid and show up anyways."
50. “The only constant family rule is that everyone has to keep showing up.”
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2 comments
Love these…..my fave is number 42.
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Silk + Sonder replied:
So glad to hear it!
Impressive. Pithy and so smart
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Silk + Sonder replied:
Glad you liked it!