Top 255 Quotes & Sayings by Ann Voskamp

Gratitude's not a natural posture. The prince of darkness is ultimately a spoiled ingrate, and I've spent most of my life as kin to the fist-shaker.

When we can't bottle our tears up anymore, God catches every one in His bottle. God's catching every falling tear because He won't let us fall apart.

By default, most of us have taken the dare to simply survive. Exist. Get through. For the most part, we live numb to life - we've grown weary and apathetic and jaded... and wounded.

Get this, kids - how a man proposes isn't what makes him romantic. It's how a man purposes to lay down his life that makes him romantic.

A simplified Christmas isn't about circumstances as much as it is about focus.

The real romantics are the boring ones - they let another heart bore a hole deep into theirs.

I came into this world the way every person on the planet does - with clenched fists.

Pick up a yardstick to measure your life against anyone else's, and you've just picked up a stick and beaten up your own soul.

I'm not a fast writer at all. I come empty and wait upon the Lord. So it really is all a waiting process, a patient process.

The real romantics imagine greying and sagging and wrinkling as the deepening of something sacred.

If I don't have words, it's a sign I'm not reading enough.

When grief is deepest, words are fewest.

Whatever I'm writing comes organically out of my life.

My husband is Dutch, and his family, when you sat down to eat food at the table, you never left the table until you ate living bread and drank living water. They never left the table until they'd read Scripture together. So morning, lunch, suppertime, Scripture was always read at the table, and then there was prayer to close.

I write a chapter, then edit it and edit it and edit it and edit it. I don't think we mine creativity from within. It's bestowed from on high, from God.

Giving thanks is that: making the canyon of pain into a megaphone to proclaim the ultimate goodness of God when Satan and all the world would sneer at us to recant.

I think the fall in Eden was ultimately a failure to give thanks.

Sometimes God answers our questions with questions.

Measuring sticks try to rank some people as big and some people as small - but we aren't sizes. We are souls. There are no better people or worse people - there are only God-made souls.

I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on summer humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives.

Really good writing, from my perspective, runs a lot like a visual on the screen. You need to create that kind of detail and have credibility with the reader, so the reader knows that you were really there, that you really experienced it, that you know the details. That comes out of seeing.

The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest Light to all the world.

Romance isn't measured by how viral your proposal goes. The Internet age may try to sell you something different, but don't ever forget that viral is closely associated with sickness - so don't ever make being viral your goal.

Scales always lie. They don't make a scale that ever told the truth about value, about worth, about significance.

Adults are tempted to produce and perform Christmas for their kids and their families, and they arrive at Christmas Day weary and disillusioned.

In a storm of struggles, I have tried to control the elements, clasp the fist tight so as to protect self and happiness. But stress can be an addiction, and worry can be our lunge for control, and we forget the answer to this moment is always yes because of Christ.

Comparison is a thug that robs your joy. But it's even more than that - Comparison makes you a thug who beats down somebody - or your soul.

Counting one thousand gifts, I discovered I could count on God.

...the secret to joy is to keep seeking God where we doubt He is.

We live in a broken world - and for the life of me I can't get it all right. But Jesus takes all our broken messes and He makes them, by His grace, into a mosaic of grace.

The moment when you are most repelled by a child's behavior, that is your warning light to draw the very closest to that child.

On the night He was betrayed Jesus broke bread and lifted it up and gave THANKS. If Jesus can give thanks in that, can we not give thanks in all?

Busy is a choice. Stress is a choice. Joy is a choice. Choose well.

Motherhood is a hallowed place because children aren’t commonplace. Co-laboring over the sculpting of souls is a sacred vocation, a humbling privilege. Never forget.

We give thanks to God not because of how we feel, but because of Who He is.

Real joy is not found in having the best of everything but in trusting that God is making the best of everything.

What was intended to harm, God intended it all for good. And no matter what intends to harm you, God's arms have you. You can never be undone.

The practice of giving thanks...eucharisteo...this is the way we practice the presence of God, stay present to His presence, and it is always a practice of the eyes. We don't have to change what we see. Only the way we see.

I know there is poor and hideous suffering, and I've seen the hungry and the guns that go to war. I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks for early light dappled through leaves and the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives.

It's habits that can imprison you and it's habits that can free you. But when thanks to God becomes a habit - so joy in God becomes your life.

Like the wind, Grace finds us wherever we are and won't leave us however we were found.

Instead of giving someone a piece of your mind, it turns out far better if you give them a piece of your heart.

Being joyful isn't what makes you grateful. Being grateful is what makes you joyful.

And the earth under your feet, the rain over your face upturned, the stars spinning all around you in the brazen glory: this is for you, you, you. These are for you-gifts-these are for you-grace-these are for you-God, so count the ways He loves, a thousand, more, never stop, that when you wake in the morning you can't help turn humbly to the east, unfold your hand to the heavens, and though you tremble and though you wonder, though the world is ugly, it is beautiful, and you can slow and you can trust and you can receive each moment as grace.

God’s purposes are not for me to understand His plans: His plan is for me to understand Who He is.

Joy is always a function of gratitude - and gratitude is always a function of perspective.

As long as thanks is possible, then joy is always possible.

You can give up the need to compete in the world- when you accept being complete in Christ.

A life contemplating the blessings of Christ becomes a life acting the love of Christ.

When the heart and mind focus on things unseen - that's when there's a visible change in us.

It is in the dark that God is passing by. The bridge and our lives shake not because God has abandoned, but the exact opposite: God is passing by. God is in the tremors. Dark is the holiest ground, the glory passing by. In the blackest, God is closest, at work, forging His perfect and right will. Though it is black and we can't see and our world seems to be free-falling and we feel utterly alone, Christ is most present to us.

There is unwavering peace today when an uncertain tomorrow is trusted to an unchanging God.

We can worship Christ in our sanctuaries and we can pray to God on our knees, but how we treat - or neglect - the person next door, the poor, every human being, this is how we truly speak to Christ and this is how we really treat Jesus.

I think God calls us to small things, to faithfulness right where we are, to just do the next thing.

Faith thanks God in the middle of the story.

Joy and pain, they are but two arteries of the one heart that pumps through all those who don't numb themselves to really living.

Holy joy lies in the habit of murmuring thanks to God for the smallest of graces.

Gratitude is not only a response to God in good times - it's ultimately the very will of God in hard times. Gratitude isn't only a celebration when good things happen. It's a declaration that God is good no matter what happens.

I don't want a Christmas you can buy. I don't want a Christmas you can make. What I want is a Christmas you can hold. A Christmas that holds me, remakes me, revives me. I want a Christmas that whispers, Jesus.

We only enter into the full life if our faith gives thanks. Because how else do we accept His free gift of salvation if not with thanksgiving? Thanksgiving is the evidence of our acceptance of whatever He gives. Thanksgiving is the manifestation of our Yes! to His grace.