Marilynne Robinson: Trending quotes (page 2)

“Christianity is a life, not a doctrine… I'm not saying never doubt or question. The Lord gave you a mind so that you would make honest use of it. I'm saying you must be sure that the doubts and questions are your own.”

“Memory is the sense of loss, and loss pulls us after it.”

“… but it's your existence I love you for, mainly. Existence seems to me now the most remarkable thing that could ever be imagined.”

“Rejoice with those who rejoice." I have found that difficult too often. I was much better at weeping with those who weep.”

“It was a source of both terror and comfort to me then that I often seemed invisible — incompletely and minimally existent, in fact. It seemed to me that I made no impact on the world, and that in exchange I was privileged to watch it unawares.”

“Any human face is a claim on you, because you can't help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it. But this is truest of the face of an infant. I consider that to be one kind of vision, as mystical as any.”

“Well, but you two are dancing around in your iridescent little downpour, whooping and stomping as sane people ought to do when they encounter a thing so miraculous as water.”

“I think hope is the worst thing in the world. I really do. It makes a fool of you while it lasts. And then when it's gone, it's like there's nothing left of you at all… except what you can't be rid of.”

“And often enough, when we think we are protecting ourselves, we are struggling against our rescuer.”

“Weary or bitter of bewildered as we may be, God is faithful. He lets us wander so we will know what it means to come home.”

“Families will not be broken. Curse and expel them, send their children wandering, drown them in floods and fires, and old women will make songs of all these sorrows and sit on the porch and sing them on mild evenings.”

“It is a good thing to know what it is to be poor, and a better thing if you can do it in company.”

“You never know when you might be seeing someone for the last time.”

“There is more beauty than our eyes can bear, precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm.”

“I experience religious dread whenever I find myself thinking that I know the limits of God’s grace, since I am utterly certain it exceeds any imagination a human being might have of it. God does, after all, so love the world.”

“I think the attempt to defend belief can unsettle it, in fact, because there is always an inadequacy in argument about ultimate things.”

“There is a saying that to understand is to forgive, but that is an error, so Papa used to say. You must forgive in order to understand. Until you forgive, you defend yourself against the possibility of understanding.”

“A little too much anger, too often or at the wrong time, can destroy more than you would ever imagine.”

“It felt very good to have him walking beside her. Good like rest and quiet, like something you could live without but you needed anyway. That you had to learn how to miss, and then you'd never stop missing it.”