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"A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension."
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Explore more quotes by Marilynne Robinson
"There's a patter in these Commandments of setting things apart so that their holiness will be perceived. Every day is holy, but the Sabbath is set apart so that the holiness of time can be experienced. Every human being is worthy of honor, but the conscious discipline of honor is learned from this setting apart of the mother and father, who usually labor and are heavy laden, and may be cranky or stingy or ignorant or overbearing. Believe me, I know this can be a hard Commandment to keep. But I believe also that the rewards of obedience are great, because at the root of real honor is always the sense of the sacredness of the person who is its object."
"She kept saying, "My husband will be back soon. He went for help. He'll be back." But that's the kind of lie people tell sometimes when they got only strangers to rely on. There's shame in that, so people lie."
"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."
"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."
"I've developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except, of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books."
"The embrace of essential beastliness, made scientific and respectable by a reading of Darwin that may or may not have done justice to his intentions, thrilled and enthralled Western thought in certain quarters and in fact still does enthrall persons and groups that experience live in society as a barely tolerable constraint on a kind of freedom they consider a birthright. This freedom appears to have most of the essential features of a war of each against all, whether a hot war that compels them to go armed to Starbucks or to church or a cold war that makes a virtue of craftiness and guile, the ability to loot and wreck the national economy without getting caught."
"Scatter the names of all those who have ever lived over the surface of the knowable cosmos, and it would remain, for all purposes, as unnamed as it was before the small, anomalous flicker of human life appeared on this small, wildly atypical planet."
Exlpore more Relationship quotes
"A kind stranger is better than an uncaring friend."
"The more you are able to forgive then the more you are able to love."
"If you take a stand [for God] and mean it, you may suffer persecution. Some of your friends will drift away. They don't want to be with people like you. You speak to their conscience. They feel uncomfortable in your presence because you live for God."
"Trying to engage with an unapproachable person can lead to embarrassment, alienation, and resistance. Why would we set ourselves up for that kind of pain and failure? It's no wonder that people may avoid them-the risk of rejection is too great."
"When choosing your relationships, be guided by your life's purpose, your vision and your dreams."
"Love is such a tremendous force of feeling! When you can't stop loving, you simply cannot stop it."
"For few matters you need to be solo, for some matters you need soul mate and for many matters you need society."
"Our relationship must be right with God before it can be right with man."
"Was Deirdre right about me purposely wanting relationships that were impossible?"
"Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn't matter only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you-that would be the real betrayal."
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