Top 82 Quotes & Sayings by Glennon Doyle Melton

We're told that to be successful girls, we have to be small and quiet. Yet to be successful humans, we have to become big and have a voice. There's an inherent contradiction.

If you ask a woman who she is, she'll tell you who she serves and sometimes what she does. But that isn't the whole story.

Your body is not your art - it's your paintbrush. Whether your paintbrush is a tall paintbrush or a thin paintbrush or a stocky paintbrush or a scratched up paintbrush is completely irrelevant.

Sometimes when you love someone like a mother loves her child, that love can turn into fear. It happens to me all the time. I am so afraid that the world will not be kind to my children.

Over time, I have come to believe that 'brave' does not mean what we think it does. It does not mean 'being afraid and doing it anyway.' Nope. Brave means listening to the still small voice inside and doing as it says. Regardless of what the rest of the world is saying.

We all have this misunderstanding about heartbreak, which is we think we should avoid it. But what I think is that heartache is a clue toward the work we're supposed to be doing in the world. What breaks each person's heart is different - be it racial injustice, war, or animals. And when you figure out what it is that breaks yours, go toward it.

Sometimes the rewards of risk don't leave us wrecked. Sometimes we find our passion, our purpose, courage, connection, and comfort. Every good thing in our lives is a direct result of risk.

It makes no sense to me that my gay friends cannot get married to each other because a certain slice of Christianity doesn't believe in gay marriage.

Being a mother is a little like 'Groundhog's Day.' It's getting out of bed and doing the exact same things again and again and yet again - and it's watching it all get undone again and again and yet again. It's humbling, monotonous, mind-numbing, and solitary.

When we shrug and say we don't care, it's usually a lie. Every girl cares. We've just been taught not to expose ourselves by showing it. What the world needs now is girls and women who aren't afraid to care - who are done saying, 'Whatever.'

We are all trained by Disney to believe that the wedding is the finish line, but the wedding is just another starting line. In light of this fact, we should quit the huge, fancy, debt-inducing weddings.

You can be shattered, and then you can put yourself back together piece by piece. But what can happen over time is this: You wake up one day and realize that you have put yourself back together completely differently. That you are whole, finally, and strong - but you are now a different shape, a different size.

Often, we need to ignore the words people say and attend to their underlying, urgent, life or death questions: Am I valuable? Am I loved? The great thing is that the answer is easy: Yes! The answer is always yes. We don't have to think too hard.

Love is kind, right? It's not about calling someone out on every little thing you feel.

Christianity asserts that God made himself human. Those are two different categories - two different levels of worthiness. God is one category, and human is another. That's a downgrade. After that jump, there are no more categories - no more downgrades. There are no human levels of worthiness. There is no hierarchy in God's eyes.

When in doubt, I choose love above any particular ideas offered to me about faith.

If we are going to ask for our daily bread, we've got to take the time to receive it and eat it. God provide, but we've got to slow down long enough to taste and see.

One of the reasons we stay so alone in our lives is because we're ashamed to talk about the hard stuff. It's as simple as that. We're all in pain in different ways, and we don't get the help we need because we're too ashamed to talk about the pain.

I'm not big on faith rules, but if I had to choose one, it would be that every person must choose a faith issue upon which to hang her hat that requires her to change - not somebody else.

Life is a conversation. Make it a good one.

I can't even carpe 15 minutes in a row. So a whole diem is out of the question.

We need to make friends with ourselves. We are stuck with our self all day, so let's be kinder, gentler, more amusing company. Let's take our own hand and say, 'There, there, sister. You're doing a good job. I'm proud of how you're handling all this craziness down here. Don't give up. Carry on, warrior.'

I'm nothing if not a tangled, colorful ball of contradictions.

When people express opinions that differ from yours, take it as a chance to grow. Seek to understand over being understood. Be curious, not defensive. The only way to disarm another human being is by listening.

Life is not safe, and so our task is not to promise our kids there will be no turbulence. It's to assure them that when the turbulence comes, we will all hold hands and get through it together.

Compassion does not just happen. Pity does, but compassion is not pity. It's not a feeling. Compassion is a viewpoint, a way of life, a perspective, a habit that becomes a discipline - and more than anything else, compassion is a choice we make that love is more important than comfort or convenience.

I am not bound to spend my precious days on Earth trying to keep up with the Joneses - because the Joneses are really just a bunch of folks in conference rooms changing 'trends' rapidly to create fake monthly emergencies for us.

If grace isn't shocking and countercultural and scandalous and a little ridiculous, then it's not Grace.

I know how I like my house. I like it cute and cozy and a little funky, and I like it to feel lived in and worn, and I like the things inside of it to work. That's all. And for me, it's fine that my house's interior suggests that I might not spend every waking moment thinking about how it looks.

We should live out our particular brand of faith, sure - but we should never force our brand of faith upon anyone else. All violence starts with the desire to change others and then never, ever ends.

Integrity means there is not a real-life you and an internet you. The two are one and the same. If you're not kind on the Internet, you're not kind.

Young people: marry simply, start your life, and party later. Think of how much babysitting for your future colicky baby you could buy with that wedding budget. Think of how much marriage therapy you could buy. Invest in your marriage, not your wedding.

My greatest fear is that I'll fail my kids.

You need to remember that being rejected by church is not the same as being rejected by God. God did not kick you out of church, honey. The church kicked God out of church.

Parenting is the most important thing to many of us, and so it's also the place we're most vulnerable. We're all a little afraid we're doing it wrong.

One day we will finally see that when we reject any person or group of people, we reject a part of our very selves. All are one. All are in. All are God's beloved children with a place at the table.

The fact that we define ourselves by our roles can be an admirable thing - it's how we build a life and make a living. But it's also precarious. Roles change. Sometimes overnight.

Do not measure your marriage by how much love you feel today: measure it by how much love you've offered today.

I've seen my name on marquees and bowed to standing ovations. I've also been called a fraud, a mental case, a heretic. People all over the country wait in line to hug me or curse me.

Making sensible family rules around cell phones and driving is a way to love yourself, your marriage, your children, and the world well.

It blows my mind when I actually consider that men are as human as I am. How can you possibly be as human and have all of the thoughts and feelings that I have and never be able to talk about it, ever? Guys are in desperate need of truth telling. They are in desperate need of a revolution.

I believe in people because I believe in God. I think God knew what God was doing when God made each of us.

When folks decide they love any institution more than the individual souls inside them, they're missing the mark.

I think of love and marriage in the same way I do plants: We have perennials and annuals. The perennial plant blooms, goes away, and comes back. The annual blooms for just a season, and then winter arrives and takes it out for good. But it's still enriched the soil for the next flower to bloom. In the same way, no love is wasted.

I don't think that I'm broken at all. I no longer think that I'm a mess. I just think I'm a deeply feeling person in a messy world.

Rock bottom is a crisis... and everyone wants to avoid crisis. But what 'crisis' means literally is 'to sift' - like a child who goes to the beach, lifts up the sand, and watches all the sand fall away, hoping that there's treasure left over. That's what crisis does.

The amazing thing about love and attention and encouragement and grace and success and joy is that these things are infinite. We get a new supply every single morning, and so we can give it away all day. We never, ever have to monitor the supply of others or grab or hoard.

I wrote in my first book that I was broken, and now it just makes me mad every time. This is why writing words in books is so precarious. This is why Jesus only wrote in the sand, right? I just - I hate that I wrote that.

If you're not okay, you might as well not pretend you are, especially since life has a way of holding us down until we utter that magic word: help! That's when angels rush to your side.

We can be shiny and perfect and admired, or we can be real and honest and vulnerable and loved. But we actually do have to choose.

I used to choose friends based on similarity in age and life stage, but I've learned that those were the wrong criteria. Trying to live life exclusively alongside others our own age is like attempting to climb Mt. Everest without a Sherpa. It's a little dangerous.

I've never believed in or understood romantic love. Love at first sight was always a complete joke to me.

Pain is mandatory for all of us. It's what teaches us. Suffering is what's optional. That's what happens when we try to skip over the pain.

'Brave' is very specific and extremely personal. It can't be judged by people on the outside. Just can't. Sometimes brave means letting everyone else think you're a coward. Sometimes brave is letting everyone else down but yourself.

I realized I didn't just want to parent children in my own little home but to mother the whole world. What's the point of gaining influence if you're not going to use it?

If no pain, then no love. If no darkness, no light. If no risk, then no reward. It's all or nothing. In this damn world, it's all or nothing.

I ask only child-free pals for parenting advice because they're the only ones sane and well-rested enough to have any real insight.

I hated writing 'Love Warrior.' It's the hardest thing I've every written. I cried.

We'll tell fear it can come along with us in our minivan, okay? But we'll just tell fear it can't drive. Sometimes we'll tell it to not even talk. Like when we tell our kids, 'Enough. No words.' We're going to play the quiet game with fear. Fear is not the boss of us.

The most important thing on Earth is for all of us to make this sentence true: Compassion is what people do.