Marilynne Robinson Quotes

I think that in our earlier history--the Gettysburg Address or something--there was the conscious se...

But there is something about human beings that too often makes our love for the world look very much...

We are supposed to believe [capitalist ideology] was the champion of freedom and prosperity in the e...

...when I see a man or woman alone, he or she looks mysterious to me, which is only to say that for ...

To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow.

Our humanity consists in the fact that we do more than survive, that a great part of what we do conf...

She was a music I no longer heard, that rang in my mind, itself and nothing else, lost to all sense,...

If we do not know the character of being itself - I have never seen anyone suggest that we do know i...

I've often been sorry to see a night end, even while I have loved seeing the dawn come.

To recognize our bias toward error should teach us modesty and reflection, and to forgive it should ...

If I had had this experience earlier in life, I would have been much wiser, much more compassionate....

This is not to say that joy is a compensation for loss, but that each of them, joy and loss, exists ...

A lot of Christian extremism has done a great deal to discredit religion the main religious traditio...

And I'd pray for them. And I'd imagine peace they couldn't expect and couldn't account for descendin...

There's a patter in these Commandments of setting things apart so that their holiness will be percei...

...when we condescend, when we act consistently with a sense of the character of people in general w...

I am grateful for all those dark years, even though in retrospect they seem like a long, bitter pray...

Families will not be broken. Curse and expel them send their children wandering drown them in floo...

There are a thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.

When I was a child, I read books. My reading was not indiscriminate. I preferred books that were old...

When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question...

There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, everyone of them sufficient

I am not the first to suggest that anthropology arose in Western thought in an inauspicious period, ...

The locus of the human mystery is perception of this world. From it proceeds every thought, every ar...

Any father…must finally give his child up to the wilderness and trust to the providence of God. It s...

Over the years I have collected so many books that, in aggregate, they can fairly be called a librar...

Glory had rehearsed angry outbursts in anticipation of his arrival. She began to hope he would come ...

Even as children they had been good in fact, but also in order to be seen as good. There was somethi...

There would be a general reclaiming of fallen buttons and misplaced spectacles, of neighbors and kin...

I'm a great admirer of secularism. At its best, I think it's one of the best things that we have. I ...

Say that we are a puff of warm breath in a very cold universe. By this kind of reckoning we are eith...

Over my life as a teacher, women have been too quiet. I'm quiet myself. I don't think I said three w...

We are in the process of disabling our most distinctive achievement - our educational system - in th...

Scatter the names of all those who have ever lived over the surface of the knowable cosmos, and it w...

There is a saying that to understand is to forgive, but that is an error, so Papa used to say. You m...

I think about things like the fact that nobody knows what time is. Time is what? Nobody can describe...

Earthly nature may be parsimonious, but the human mind is prodigal, itself an anomaly that in its we...

The twinkling of an eye. That is the most wonderful expression. I've thought from time to time it wa...

She kept saying, "My husband will be back soon. He went for help. He'll be back." But that's the kin...

Another factor that seems to me to be equally important is the great myth and rationale of 'the mode...

My reputation is largely the creature of the kindly imaginings of my flock, whom I chose not to disi...

I believe there are visions that come to us only in memory, in retrospect.

When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question...

Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I t...

Love is holy because it is like grace--the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.

I've developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, an...

It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it...

I could have married again while I was still young. A congregation likes to have a married minister,...

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

I've shepherded a good many people through their lives, I've baptized babies by the hundred, and all...

My point in mentioning this is only to say that people who feel any sort of regret where you are con...

I have decided the two choices open to me are (1) to torment myself or (2) to trust the Lord. There ...

I felt, as I have often felt, that my failing the truth could have no bearing at all on the Truth it...

I have been thinking about existence lately. In fact, I have been so full of admiration for existenc...

Well, but you two are dancing around in your iridescent little downpour, whooping and stomping as sa...

His lovely wife tends her zinnias in the mild morning light and his find young man comes fondly mish...

In eternity this world will be like Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic o...

Avoid transgression. How's that for advice.

The word "preacher" comes from an old French word, predicateur, which means prophet. And what is the...

it's hard to find time to think about Kansas.

A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and...

I'll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country. I will pray you find a way to be useful.I...

It is worth living long enough to outlast whatever sense of grievance you may acquire.

The parents of these young soldiers would come to me and ask how the Lord could allow such a thing. ...

Adulthood is a wonderful thing and brief. You must be sure to enjoy it while it lasts. I believe the...

People talk about how wonderful the world must seem to children, and that's true enough. But childre...

It seems to me some people just go around lookin' to get their faith unsettled. That has been the fa...

I believe there is dignity in sorrow simply because it is God's good pleasure that there should be. ...

That is to say, I pray for you. And there's an intimacy in it. That's the truth.

You see how it is godlike to love the being of someone. Your existence is a delight to us. I hope yo...

I felt just the way I imagine the shade of poor old Samuel must have felt when the witch dragged him...

These people who can see right through you never quite do you justice, because they never give you c...

How I wish you could have known me in my strength.

. . . there is an absolute disjunction between our Father's love and our deserving.

It is one of the best traits of good people that they love where they pity. And this is truer of wom...

That's the strangest thing about this life, about being in the ministry. People change the subject w...

When you encounter another person…it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, Wha...

We lost track of which was which, but we were fairly sure that some of the creatures had been borne ...

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

I feel as if I am being left out, as though I’m some straggler and people can’t quite remember to st...

remembering and forgiving can be contrary things

It seems to me people tend to forget that we are to love our enemies, not to satisfy some standard o...

It seems to me there is less meanness in atheism, by a good measure. It seems that the spirit of rel...

Memory can make a thing seem to have been much more than it was.

That is how life goes- we send our children into the wilderness. Some of them on the day they are bo...

There is more beauty than our eyes can bear, precious things have been put into our hands and to do ...

There's a pattern in these Commandments of setting things apart so that their holiness will be perce...

Christianity is a life, not a doctrine . . . I'm not saying never doubt or question. The Lord gave y...

I wish I could leave you certain of the images in my mind, because they are so beautiful that I hate...

It has been my experience that guilt can burst through the smallest breach and cover the landscape, ...

You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his ...

When something ought to be true then it proves to be a very powerful truth.

I think the attempt to defend belief can unsettle it, in fact, because there is always an inadequacy...

My grandfather once told her if you couldn't read with cold feet, there wouldn't be a literate soul ...

There is no justice in love, no proportion in it, and there need not be, because in any specific ins...

i know more than i know and must learn it from myself

Our dream of life will end as dreams do end, abruptly and completely, when the sun rises, when the l...

So she prayed, Lord, give me patience. She knew that was not an honest prayer, and she did not linge...

There is a saying that to understand is to forgive, but that is an error, so Papa used to say. You m...

Glory went to look in on her father. He lay on his right side, his face composed, intent on sleep. H...

I should leave, she told herself once or twice, to savor the thought of their surprise, their regret...