Build a cell inside your mind, from which you can never flee.
Interpretation
The quote suggests creating a mental safe space that provides comfort and stability in difficult times.
Catherine of Siena encourages individuals to cultivate an inner sanctuary within their minds, emphasizing the importance of having a mental refuge that offers peace and resilience in facing challenges. This concept highlights the power of mindfulness and self-awareness, enabling one to remain grounded regardless of external circumstances.
In practice
In a motivational speech on mental health, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of self-care.
The soul, who is lifted by a very great and yearning desire for the honor of God and the salvation of souls, begins by exercising herself, for a certain space of time, in the ordinary virtues, remaining in the cell of self-knowledge, in order to know better the goodness of God towards her.
You, Eternal Trinity, are my Creator, and I am the work of Your hands, and I know through the new creation which You have given me in the blood of Your Son, that You are enamored of the beauty of Your workmanship.
The danger that keeps me just a little frightened with every book I write, however, is that I'll overreach myself once too often and try to write a story that I'm just plain not talented or skilful enough to write. That's the dilemma every storyteller faces. It is painful to fail. But it is far sadder when a storyteller stops wanting to try.
Like it or not, i was already learning that in the worst and darkest time, I would find specks of light, moments of joy. What I didn't want to learn was the other, harsher lesson - that in life's brightest moments there would also be unbearable pain. p 87
No great work can be achieved by humbug. It is through love, a passion for truth, and tremendous energy, that all undertakings are accomplished.
Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.
We learn best to listen to our own voices if we are listening at the same time to other women-whose stories, for all our differences, turn out, if we listen well, to be our stories also.
We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can. . . . The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work.
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