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"There's so much to be grateful for, words are poor things."
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"Walking was not fast enough so we ran. Running was not fast enough, so we galloped. Galloping was not fast enough, so we sailed. Sailing was not fast enough, so we rolled merrily along on long metal tracks. Long metal tracks were not fast enough, so we drove. Driving was not fast enough, so we flew.Flying isn't fast enough, not fast enough for us. We want to get there faster. Get where? Wherever we are not. But a human soul can go only as fast as a man can walk, they used to say. In that case, where are all the souls? Left behind. They wander here and there, slowly, dim lights flickering in the marshes at night, looking for us. But they're not nearly fast enough, not for us, we're way ahead of them, they'll never catch up. That's why we can go so fast: our souls don't weigh us down."
"Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity."
"I have wished a bird would fly away,And not sing by my house all day;Have clapped my hands at him from the doorWhen it seemed as if I could bear no more.The fault must partly have been in me.The bird was not to blame for his keys.And of course there must be something wrongIn waiting to silence any song."
"Those things that take my breath away become the ocean-complex and deep-and I'm prone to drowning in beautiful things. Like you."
"She could smell damprot, high, sweet, and cloying. She could smell madness like dead vegetables in a dark cellar."
Explore more quotes by Marilynne Robinson
"My reputation is largely the creature of the kindly imaginings of my flock, whom I chose not to disillusion, in part because the truth had the kind of pathos in it that would bring on sympathy in its least bearable forms."
"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."
"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."
"Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave - that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm. And therefore, this courage allows us, as the old men said, to make ourselves useful. It allows us to be generous, which is another way of saying exactly the same thing."
"Dawn and its excesses always reminded me of heaven, a place where I have always known I would not be comfortable."
"I've often been sorry to see a night end, even while I have loved seeing the dawn come."
"I have mentioned the qualitative difference between Christianity as an ethic and Christianity as an identity. Christian ethics goes steadfastly against the grain of what we consider human nature: the first will be last, to him who asks give, turn the other cheek, judge not. Identity on the other hand appeals to a constellation of the worst human impulses. It is worse than ordinary tribalism because it assumes a more than virtuous "us on one side and on the other a "them who are very doubtful indeed, who are in fact a threat to all we hold dear."
"There is clearly a feeling abroad that God smiled on our beginnings, and that we should return to them as we can. If we really did attempt to return to them, we would find Moses as well as Christ, Calvin, and his legions of intellectual heirs. And we would find a recurrent, passionate, insistence on bounty or liberality, mercy and liberality, on being kind and liberal, liberal and bountiful, and enjoying the great blessings God has promised to liberality to the poor."
"We are supposed to believe [capitalist ideology] was the champion of freedom and prosperity in the epic struggle called the Cold War. If there was such a champion, might it not have been freedom itself, as realized in the institutional forms of democracy? This is not how the story has been told. We are t believe it was an economic system, capitalism, that arrayed its forces against its opposite, communism, and rescued all we hold dear. Yet in the new era... [capitalism] has shown itself very ready to devour what we hold dear, if the list can be taken to include culture, education, the environment, and the sciences, as well as the peace and well-being of our fellow citizens."
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