Flannery O'Connor Quotes

Quotes about:

• You will have found Christ when you are concerned with other people’s sufferings and not your own.

  Flannery O'Connor

  People, Suffering, Christ

  132 Copy quote

• Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Hell, Wells, Symbols

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.125, Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

• A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell them to read the story. The meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning but experienced meaning.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Would Be, Fiction

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.96, Macmillan

  100 Copy quote

• All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Catholic, Grace, Human Nature

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.307, Macmillan

  50 Copy quote

• I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Inspiring, Writing, Thinking

  26 Copy quote

• The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Funny, Life, Change

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.100, Macmillan

  119 Copy quote

• You shall know the truth, and it will make you odd.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Funny, Truth, Humorous

  125 Copy quote

• [To] know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility . . .

  Flannery O'Connor

  Humility, Self, Way

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.35, Macmillan

  81 Copy quote

• ...you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Struggle, World, Cherish

  Flannery O'Connor (1993). “"A Good Man is Hard to Find"”, p.129, Rutgers University Press

  96 Copy quote

• What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Thinking, People, Religion

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “Collected Works”, New York, NY : Library of America : Distributed to the trade in the U.S. and Canada by Viking Press

  89 Copy quote

• One of the effects of modern liberal Protestantism has been gradually to turn religion into poetry and therapy, to make truth vaguer and vaguer and more and more relative, to banish intellectual distinctions, to depend on feeling instead of thought, and gradually to come to believe that God has no power, that he cannot communicate with us, cannot reveal himself to us, indeed has not done so, and that religion is our own sweet invention.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Sweet, Women, Believe

  100 Copy quote

• A God you understood would be less than yourself.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Would Be, Understood

  19 Copy quote

• Anyone who survives a southern childhood has enough material to last a lifetime.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Southern, Childhood, Lasts

  52 Copy quote

• Right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Dark, Night, Soul

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.175, Macmillan

  114 Copy quote

• It is the business of the artist to uncover the strangeness of truth

  Flannery O'Connor

  Artist, Strangeness

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.343, Macmillan

  80 Copy quote

• Even in the life of a Christian, faith rises and falls like the tides of an invisible sea. It's there, even when he can't see it or feel it, if he wants it to be there. You realize, I think, that it is more valuable, more mysterious, altogether more immense than anything you can learn or decide upon It will keep you free - not free to do anything you please, but free to be formed by something larger than your own intellect or the intellects around you.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Christian, Fall, Thinking

  67 Copy quote

• Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Life, Happiness, Success

  13 Copy quote

• Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Southern, Able

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.44, Macmillan

  103 Copy quote

• I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Reading, Writing, Grace

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.118, Macmillan

  38 Copy quote

• Writing is like giving birth to a piano sideways. Anyone who perseveres is either talented or nuts.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Nuts, Piano

  11 Copy quote

• In a sense sickness is a place, more instructive than a long trip to Europe, and it's always a place where there's no company, where nobody can follow. Sickness before death is a very appropriate thing and I think those who don't have it miss one of God's mercies.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Thinking, Europe, Long

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.163, Macmillan

  19 Copy quote

• The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally. A higher paradox confounds emotion as well as reason and there are long periods in the lives of all of us, and of the saints, when the truth as revealed by faith is hideous, emotionally disturbing, downright repulsive. Witness the dark night of the soul in individual saints. Right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Dark, Night, Long

  9 Copy quote

• Total non-retention has kept my education from being a burden to me.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Burden, Retention

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.165, Macmillan

  41 Copy quote

• The only way to the truth is through blasphemy.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Truth, Way, Truth Is

  Flannery O'Connor (2015). “Wise Blood”, p.82, Faber & Faber

  13 Copy quote

• Faith comes and goes. It rises and falls like the tides of an invisible ocean. If it is presumptuous to think that faith will stay with you forever, it is just as presumptuous to think that unbelief will.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Ocean, Fall, Thinking

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “Collected Works”, New York, NY : Library of America : Distributed to the trade in the U.S. and Canada by Viking Press

  61 Copy quote

Page 1 of 11

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin