“You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.”
Source: Gilead
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Marilynne Robinson 51
American novelist and essayist 1943Related quotes

Alcun non può saper da chi sia amato,
Quando felice in su la ruota siede:
Però c'ha i veri e i finti amici a lato,
Che mostran tutti una medesma fede.
Se poi si cangia in tristo il lieto stato,
Volta la turba adulatrice il piede;
E quel che di cor ama riman forte,
Ed ama il suo signor dopo la morte.
Canto XIX, stanza 1 (tr. B. Reynolds)
Orlando Furioso (1532)
The Second Night.
The White Tiger (2008)

The Analects, Chapter I, Chapter IV

Source: On the Mystical Body of Christ, p.435

At a memorial in Norfolk Virginia for the 47 crew members killed in an explosion aboard the battleship USS Iowa (BB-61). - "Bush Fights Tears at Memorial", By Susan Page. Newsday Washington Bureau. Newsday. Long Island, N.Y.: April 25, 1989. pg. 04
Context: To all who mourn a son, a brother, a husband, a father, a friend — I can only offer you the gratitude of a nation, for your loved one served his country with distinction and honor." … "Your men are under a different command now, one that knows no rank, only love; knows no danger, only peace, May God bless them all.

“The best thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.”
Source: Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court