Five Quotes Speaking To My Heart

I’ve been in Costa Rica this week with my family, and between chasing seagulls on the beach and flying down the water slide, I carved out some time to sit with one of my favorite companions—my book of quotes.

My book of quotes is hundreds of pages long, filled with lines of poetry, wisdom, and words that have moved me enough to keep.

I want to share five of them that are resonating with me in this season of life.

I hope they bless you as much as they do me.

1.Be crumbled. So wild flowers will come up where you are. You have been stony for too many years. Try something different. Surrender. — Rumi

Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet and mystic reminds me that sometimes the very thing we’re most afraid of—falling apart—is what life is actually asking of us.

We’ve spent years holding it together, staying strong, staying “stony,” but in all that effort we leave no room for new life to grow.

To crumble is not failure—it’s wisdom. It’s giving the soil of our lives a chance to breathe again, so something fresh, unexpected, and wildly alive can bloom.

2. There is death in life, and it astonishes me that we pretend to ignore this...We must learn to die. That is all of life. ― Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke, the Austrian poet, wrote often about the deeper currents of life and the transformations they demand of us.

When he says, “We must learn to die. That is all of life,” he is pointing to the truth that every season of growth requires a kind of death.

Not a physical one, but the death of old identities, outdated beliefs, and ways of being that no longer fit.

This is the heartbeat of my coaching work.

We all reach a point where what once carried us forward cannot take us any further. Expansion always asks for release.

And when we learn to let go, we don’t just lose—we step into a fuller, more aligned expression of who we are becoming.

3. Now that my ladder’s gone, I must lie down where all ladders start, in the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart. — William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats, the Irish poet and Nobel Prize winner, had a way of pointing us back to the heart of things.

This line speaks to the moment when achievement no longer satisfies, when the ladder we’ve been climbing disappears.

What’s left is the messy, unrefined work of turning inward.

The “rag-and-bone shop of the heart” is where the fragments of who we are live—the fears, the longings, the disappointments.

And paradoxically, it’s from this place that a deeper kind of success emerges. Not the success of climbing higher, but the success of becoming whole.

4. When it’s over, I want to say this: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. When its over,I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world. — Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver, the beloved American poet is reminding us that the point of life is not to play it safe or keep it tidy.

It is to live awake to wonder, to let ourselves be moved, and to embrace what is right in front of us.

She invites us to ask a very practical question.

At the end of it all, will I know that I gave myself fully to my life, or will I feel like I only skimmed the surface?

The deeper work here is choosing to be present.

To love the people in front of us, to marvel at small beauty, to give ourselves permission to belong here.

That is what it means to live, not just visit this world.

5. I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light. — Barbara Brown Taylor

Barbara Brown Taylor, an American Episcopal priest and one of my favorite writers names something we often try to avoid...

Darkness has its own kind of wisdom.

We usually want the light, the clarity, the breakthroughs. But the truth is, it’s in the dark seasons that we’re stripped down to what’s real.

That’s where we face ourselves, learn resilience, and uncover truths we would have missed in easier times.

Taylor reminds us to not rush through the dark. It may be carrying the very lessons that will save you again and again.

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If any of these resonated with you, I'd love to know which one! As always, I'm rooting for you.

We're in this together.

-Caleb

P.S. If you know someone who might resonate with it, feel free to pass it along!