Marilynne Robinson, Gilead Quotes

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

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.

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

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

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

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

It seems to me people tend to forget that we are to love our enemies, not to satisfy some standard of righteousness but because God their Father loves them.

In eternity this world will be like Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets.

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

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

It seems to me some people just go around lookin' to get their faith unsettled. That has been the fashion for the last hundred years or so.

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

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

We lost track of which was which, but we were fairly sure that some of the creatures had been borne away still in the darkness of paganism, and that worried us a good deal.

It has been my experience that guilt can burst through the smallest breach and cover the landscape, and abide in it in pools and danknesses, just as native as water.

Avoid transgression. How's that for advice.

The word "preacher" comes from an old French word, predicateur, which means prophet. And what is the purpose of a prophet except to find meaning in trouble?

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

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

remembering and forgiving can be contrary things

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'll pray, and then I'll sleep.

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

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

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

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

I believe there is dignity in sorrow simply because it is God's good pleasure that there should be. He is forever raising up those who are brought low.

I felt, as I have often felt, that my failing the truth could have no bearing at all on the Truth itself, which could never conceivably be in any sense dependent on me or on anyone.