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"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."
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Exlpore more Philosophy quotes
"In the equation of life, the limit does not exist."
"Think independently and critically, but never forget to think with understanding and love."
"Our life on earth is and ought to be material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage our materialism and carnality properly they are still entangled with the desire for ownership."
"A philosopher is a lover and searcher of truth, beauty, meaning, and wisdom."
"There is nothing wrong or right, only our thoughts make it so."
"I am writing just to inspire you, encourage you, empower you, and give you hope when you are fighting your life's battle."
"I am not pretty, I am not ugly,I am not true, I am not false, I am just me, a reality, a conception not a misinterpretation."
"I can't tell you what consciousness is, but I know I can only think when I am conscious."
"I can resist everything but love."
"Opinion about religion might be different, but religion should be one and that is the well being of humanity."
Explore more quotes by Marilynne Robinson
"There is no justice in love, no proportion in it, and there need not be, because in any specific instance it is only a glimpse or parable of an embracing, incomprehensible reality. It makes no sense at all because it is the eternal breaking in on the temporal. So how could it subordinate itself to cause or consequence?"
"So she prayed, Lord, give me patience. She knew that was not an honest prayer, and she did not linger over it....it cost her tears to think that her situation might actually be that desolate, so she prayed again for patience, for tact, for understanding--for every virtue that might keep her safe from conflicts that would be sure to leave her wounded, every virtue that might at least help her to preserve an appearance of dignity, for heaven's sake."
"Having a sister or a friend is like sitting at night in a lighted house. Those outside can watch you if they want, but you need not see them. You simply say, "Here are the perimeters of our attention. If you prowl around under the windows till the crickets go silent, we will pull the shades. If you wish us to suffer your envious curiosity, you must permit us not to notice it." Anyone with one solid human bond is that smug, and it is the smugness as much as the comfort and safety that lonely people covet and admire."
"Language is music. Written words are musical notation. The music of a piece of fiction establishes the way in which it is to be read, and, in the largest sense, what it means. It is essential to remember that characters have a music as well, a pitch and tempo, just as real people do. To make them believable, you must always be aware of what they would or would not say, where stresses would or would not fall."
"In the First Epistle of Peter we are told to honor everyone, and I have never been in a situation where I felt this instruction was inappropriate. When we accept dismissive judgements of our community we stop having generous hopes for it. We cease to be capable of serving its best interests."
"I love the writers of my thousand books. It pleases me to think how astonished old Homer, whoever he was, would be to find his epics on the shelf of such an unimaginable being as myself, in the middle of an unrumored continent. I love the large minority of the writers on my shelves who have struggled with words and thoughts and, by my lights, have lost the struggle. All together they are my community, the creators of the very idea of books, poetry, and extended narratives, and of the amazing human conversation that has taken place across the millennia, through weal and woe, over the heads of interest and utility."
"A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension."
"I have never distinguished readily between thinking and dreaming. I know my life would be much different if I could ever say, This I have learned from my senses, while that I have merely imagined."
"A lot of Christian extremism has done a great deal to discredit religion the main religious traditions have abandoned their own intellectual cultures so drastically that no one has any sense of it other than the fringe."
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