Mary Caroline Richards Quotes

• All the arts we practice are apprenticeship. The big art is our life.

  Mary Caroline Richards

  Life, Spiritual, Art

  Mary Caroline Richards (2011). “Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person”, p.41, Wesleyan University Press

  24 Copy quote

• The imagination equips us to perceive reality when it is not fully materialized.

  Mary Caroline Richards

  Reality, Creating, Imagination

  Mary Caroline Richards (1989). “Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person”, p.74, Wesleyan University Press

  51 Copy quote

• And with listening, too, it seems to me, it is not the ear that hears, it is not the physical organ that performs the act of inner receptivity. It is the total person who hears. Sometimes the skin seems to be the best listener, as it prickles and thrills, say to a sound or a silence; or the fantasy, the imagination: how it bursts into inner pictures as it listens and then responds by pressing its language, its forms, into the listening clay. To be open to what we hear, to be open in what we say. .

  Mary Caroline Richards

  Imagination, Silence, Listening

  24 Copy quote

• Let no one be deluded that a knowledge of the path can substitute for putting one foot in front of the other.

  Mary Caroline Richards

  Time, Knowledge, Journey

  Mary Caroline Richards (2011). “Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person”, p.8, Wesleyan University Press

  19 Copy quote

• There is a creative spirit in you desiring to be free, and you may as well get out of its way for it will give you no peace until you do.

  Mary Caroline Richards

  Giving, Creative, May

  21 Copy quote

• From the seed grows a root, then a sprout; from the sprout, the seedling leaves; from the leaves, the stem; around the stem, the branches; at the top, the flower. . . We cannot say that the seed causes the growth, nor that the soil does. We can say that the potentialities for growth lie within the seed, in mysterious life forces, which, when properly fostered, take on certain forms.

  Mary Caroline Richards

  Lying, Flower, Roots

  13 Copy quote

• We have to trust these feelings. We have to trust the invisible gauges we carry within us. We have to realize that a creative being lives within ourselves, whether we like it or not, and that we must get out of its way, for it will give us no peace until we do.

  Mary Caroline Richards

  Believe, Creativity, Giving

  "Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person".

  28 Copy quote

• Love is not a doctrine, Peace is not an international agreement. Love and peace are beings who live as possibilities in us.

  Mary Caroline Richards

  Love, Peace, Agreement

  Mary Caroline Richards (2011). “Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person”, p.54, Wesleyan University Press

  29 Copy quote

• Am I willing to give up what I have in order to be what I am not yet? Am I willing to let my ideas of myself, of man be changed? Am I able to follow the spirit of love into the desert? To empty myself even of my concept of emptiness?

  Mary Caroline Richards

  Giving Up, Hero, Men

  Mary Caroline Richards (2011). “Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person”, p.141, Wesleyan University Press

  13 Copy quote

• We must be steady enough in ourselves, to be open and to let the winds of life blow through us, to be our breath, our inspiration . . .

  Mary Caroline Richards

  Inspiration, Blow, Wind

  Mary Caroline Richards (2011). “Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person”, p.12, Wesleyan University Press

  19 Copy quote

• To have character is to be big enough to take life on.

  Mary Caroline Richards

  Character, Enough, Bigs

  Mary Caroline Richards (1989). “Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person”, p.124, Wesleyan University Press

  27 Copy quote

• It helps, I think, to consider ourselves on a very long journey: the main thing is to keep to the faith, to endure, to help each other when we stumble or tire, to weep and press on.

  Mary Caroline Richards

  Perseverance, Journey, Thinking

  17 Copy quote

• For since most of our living is unconscious, play is like matchstrokes in the void, bringing into light the structures we behave by, illuminating for us, however briefly, our deep meanings.

  Mary Caroline Richards

  Fun, Light, Play

  Mary Caroline Richards (2011). “Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person”, p.63, Wesleyan University Press

  18 Copy quote

• Poetry often enters through the window of irrelevance.

  Mary Caroline Richards

  Life, Irrelevance, Window

  Mary Caroline Richards (2011). “Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person”, p.10, Wesleyan University Press

  20 Copy quote

• The big art is our life.

  Mary Caroline Richards

  Art, Healing, Teens

  Mary Caroline Richards (2011). “Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person”, p.41, Wesleyan University Press

  10 Copy quote

• It is part of our pedagogy to teach the operations of thinking, feeling, and willing so that they may be made conscious. For if we do not know the difference between an emotion and a thought, we will know very little . . . We need to understand the components (of emotions) at work . . . in order to free their hold.

  Mary Caroline Richards

  Thinking, Order, Differences

  15 Copy quote

• In a lethal world, poetry is necessary for survival.

  Mary Caroline Richards

  Survival, World, Poetry Is

  9 Copy quote

• The child takes in his world as if it were food. And his world nourishes or starves him. Nothing escapes his thirst. Secrets are impossible. He identifies with his surroundings and they live within him unconsciously; it is perhaps for this reason that the small child has been characterized as naturally religious.

  Mary Caroline Richards

  Religious, Children, Secret

  Mary Caroline Richards (1989). “Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person”, p.102, Wesleyan University Press

  9 Copy quote

• It is for each of us freely to choose whom we shall serve, and find in that obedience our freedom.

  Mary Caroline Richards

  Freedom, Obedience

  Mary Caroline Richards (2011). “Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person”, p.6, Wesleyan University Press

  14 Copy quote

• Our works and our play. All our pleasures experienced as the pleasure of love. What could be better that? To feel in one's work the tender and flushed substance of one's dearest concern.

  Mary Caroline Richards

  Love, Play, Substance

  Mary Caroline Richards (1989). “Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person”, p.134, Wesleyan University Press

  9 Copy quote

• People don't want to feel stuck, they want to be able to change.

  Mary Caroline Richards

  People, Want, Able

  Mary Caroline Richards (2011). “The Crossing Point: Selected Talks and Writings”, p.102, Wesleyan University Press

  7 Copy quote

• Who are enemies? Those who oppose each others will.

  Mary Caroline Richards

  Enemy

  Mary Caroline Richards (2011). “Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person”, p.142, Wesleyan University Press

  9 Copy quote

• Inhabit ourselves that we may indeed do what we want to do.

  Mary Caroline Richards

  Choices, May, Want

  Mary Caroline Richards (1989). “Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person”, p.137, Wesleyan University Press

  7 Copy quote

• Bear ye one another's burdens, the Lord said, and he was talking law.

  Mary Caroline Richards

  Talking, Law, Bears

  Mary Caroline Richards (2011). “Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person”, p.54, Wesleyan University Press

  7 Copy quote

• Compassion is an alternate perception

  Mary Caroline Richards

  Compassion, Perception

  4 Copy quote

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