Jo Robinson Quotes

It is possible to know the great truths without feeling the truth of them.

A letter makes ordinary things seem important.

That's one good thing about the way life is, that no one can know you if you don't let them.

It is hardship that makes clear who the "fighters" are.

...not deciding to act would be identical with deciding not to act.

Salvation was universally considered to be much more becoming in women than in men.

You have to live with your mind your whole life.

When my mother left me waiting for her, [she] established in me the habit of waiting and expectation which makes any present moment most significant for what it does not contain.

Boughton says he has more ideas about heaven every day. He said, "Mainly I just think about the splendors of the world and multiply by two. I'd multiply by ten or twelve if I had the energy.

Two questions I can't really answer about fiction are 1) where it comes from, and 2) why we need it. But that we do create it and also crave it is beyond dispute.

It saddens me that Christians need to be reminded that awe is owed also to those who disagree with them, who believe otherwise than they do.

I listen to Bach a great deal. In general I like to listen to hymns and liturgical music.

Cultures cherish artists because they are people who can say, Look at that.

The great truth that is too often forgotten is that it is in the nature of people to do good to one another.

People don't acknowledge loneliness in themselves, and don't appreciate its benefits, the reflection and attentiveness that come with it, the deepened acquaintance with oneself.

I like a book to be full of the memory of what it is, a voice in an endless conversation, and yet at the same time to be new.

Light is constant, we just turn over in it.

Fiction that does not acknowledge this at least tacitly is not true.

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

When we accept dismissive judgments of our community we stop having generous hope for it. We cease to be capable of serving its best interests.

I would advise you against defensiveness on priciple. it precludes the best eventualities along with the worst. At the most basic level it expresses a lack of faith.

pity and charity may be at root an attempt to propitiate the dark powers that have not touched us yet.

I do have an impulse to sort of leverage what I say against something I disagree with.

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

I hated waiting. If I had one particular complaint, it was that my life seemed composed entirely of expectation.

...if you ever wonder what you've done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God's grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle.

What an embarrassment that was, being somewhere because there was nowhere else for you to be.

The old man always said we should attend to the things we have some hope of understanding, and eternity isn't one of them. Well, this world isn't one either.

It is diversity that makes any natural system robust, and diversity that stabilizes culture against the eccentricity and arrogance that have so often called themselves reason and science.

The best essays come from the moment in which people really need to work something out.

Faith takes a great many forms, suited to a variety of sensibilities, and mine happens to suit me very well.

The mind has a complex life that can seem quite autonomous - dreams, obsessions, unwilled memory are all instances of this.

Limitation is a good discipline because it discourages inappropriate generalization, which distracts attention from the profound, particular complexity that characterizes anything at all.

More generally, people who lived in a period when maternal, infant and childhood mortality were still high would have been tougher than most of us can imagine.

Sharing experience and building public support for the full range of rights is more powerful than legal cases.

It's only after their death that people are truly appreciated. It's because they are true to values.

One of the richest countries in the world - the United States of America - is facing a real ethical dilemma in terms of providing equitable access to health care.

Finance ministers must realize that the health budget can save them money if it's applied well.

Many people think that we have no shared value system in the world today but we actually do.

You can convene a wider cross-section if you have no turf to defend, because then you don't cut across anyone else's agenda and you can achieve a great deal.

I want to see a UN that enables a gathering of energies in which business plays its proper role.

If the Chinese business community takes the Declaration of Human Rights, core labor standards, and environmental standards seriously, the government of China will take them far more seriously, too.

Particularly here in the United States there is a lack of comprehension about anything to do with the United Nations.

Ireland is not in a good place at the moment. We have our own humiliation of losing our economic sovereignty, and we're now regaining it slowly and painfully.

The question now is how best to help the Iraqi people build a democratic and free Iraqi society that ensures respect for the rights of all Iraqis.

Using human rights commitments more effectively, either as part of negotiations in the WTO or as part of the trade policy review process, poses issues of equality in a practical venue.

When a genocidal killing occurs, as happened in Rwanda, it is not just an internal domestic matter.

The new century will see unimaginable levels of wastefulness and extravagance, but it will also be an age in which the individual human being acquires a true and universally recognised value.

What is central to business is the joy of creating.

I keep to a minimum dialect, in-jokes about football (soccer) teams and soap opera characters, so as not to lose North American readers.