Marilynne Robinson Quotes

Quotes about:

• We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass through this, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of it, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Pain, Thinking, Humanity

  47 Copy quote

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

  Marilynne Robinson

  Love Is, What Matters, Grace

  Marilynne Robinson (2004). “Gilead: A Novel”, p.209, Macmillan

  58 Copy quote

• You build your mind, so make it into something you want to live with.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Mind, Want

  14 Copy quote

• There is so little to remember of anyone - an anecdote, a conversation at a table. But every memory is turned over and over again, every word, however chance, written in the heart in the hope that memory will fulfill itself, and become flesh, and that the wanderers will find a way home, and the perished, whose lack we always feel, will step through the door finally and stroke our hair with dreaming habitual fondness not having meant to keep us waiting long.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Dream, Memories, Home

  37 Copy quote

• 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.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Eye, Men, Thinking

  Marilynne Robinson (2004). “Gilead: A Novel”, p.246, Macmillan

  45 Copy quote

• I want to overhear passionate arguments about what we are and what we are doing and what we ought to do. I want to feel that art is an utterance made in good faith by one human being to another. I want to believe there are geniuses scheming to astonish the rest of us, just for the pleasure of it.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Art, Believe, Genius

  Marilynne Robinson (2014). “The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought”, p.4, Picador

  39 Copy quote

• Weary or bitter of bewildered as we may be, God is faithful. He lets us wander so we will know what it means to come home.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Home, Mean, Faithful

  Marilynne Robinson (2008). “Home: A Novel”, p.102, Macmillan

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Eye, Hands, Honor

  Marilynne Robinson (2004). “Gilead: A Novel”, p.246, Macmillan

  23 Copy quote

• We are part of a mystery, a splendid mystery within which we must attempt to orient ourselves if we are to have a sense of our own nature.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Mystery, Splendid, Ifs

  24 Copy quote

• To recognize our bias toward error should teach us modesty and reflection, and to forgive it should help us avoid the inhumanity of thinking we ourselves are not as fallible as those who, in any instance, seem most at fault. Science can give us knowledge, but it cannot give us wisdom. Nor can religion, until it puts aside nonsense and distraction and becomes itself again.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Reflection, Thinking, Errors

  7 Copy quote

• There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, everyone of them sufficient

  Marilynne Robinson

  Inspiring, Reason, This Life

  14 Copy quote

• Sometimes I have loved the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday. It is like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain. You can feel the silent and invisible life.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Rain, Sunday, Garden

  Marilynne Robinson (2004). “Gilead: A Novel”, p.20, Macmillan

  39 Copy quote

• Ordinary things have always seemed numinous to me

  Marilynne Robinson

  Ordinary, Ordinary Things, Numinous

  18 Copy quote

• Nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Defense, Posture, Said

  Marilynne Robinson (2004). “Gilead: A Novel”, p.177, Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

• This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Giving, Interesting, Attention

  Marilynne Robinson (2004). “Gilead: A Novel”, p.28, Macmillan

  24 Copy quote

• Any father…must finally give his child up to the wilderness and trust to the providence of God. It seems almost a cruelty for one generation to beget another when parents can secure so little for their children, so little safety, even in the best circumstances. Great faith is required to give the child up, trusting God to honor the parents’ love for him by assuring that there will indeed be angels in that wilderness.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Children, Father, Angel

  4 Copy quote

• There is a saying that to understand is to forgive, but that is an error, so Papa used to say. You must forgive in order to understand. Until you forgive, you defend yourself against the possibility of understanding. ... If you forgive, he would say, you may indeed still not understand, but you will be ready to understand, and that is the posture of grace.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Errors, Order, Grace

  8 Copy quote

• 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?

  Marilynne Robinson

  Reality, Justice, Needs

  FaceBook post by Marilynne Robinson from Feb 14, 2014

  29 Copy quote

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

  Marilynne Robinson

  Memories, Has Beens, Seems

  Marilynne Robinson (2004). “Gilead: A Novel”, p.66, Macmillan

  12 Copy quote

• You never know when you might be seeing someone for the last time.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Time, Knowing, Might

  Marilynne Robinson (2004). “Housekeeping: A Novel”, p.88, Macmillan

  10 Copy quote

• I think to the degree writers are serious, there is a greater tendency for them to write to themselves, because they're trying to compose their own thoughts. They are trying to find out what is in their minds, which is the great mystery. Finding out who you are, what is in your head, and what kind of companion you are to yourself in the course of life. I do think people have very profound lives of which they say virtually nothing.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Writing, Thinking, People

  20 Copy quote

• To think that only faultless people are worthwhile seems like an incredible exclusion of almost everything of deep value in the human saga. Sometimes I can't believe the narrowness that has been attributed to God in terms of what he would approve and disapprove.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Believe, Thinking, People

  23 Copy quote

• It was a source of both terror and comfort to me then that I often seemed invisible - incompletely and minimally existent, in fact. It seemed to me that I made no impact on the world, and that in exchange I was privileged to watch it unawares.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Impact, Comfort, Watches

  "Housekeeping". Book by Marilynne Robinson, 1980.

  21 Copy quote

• There's so much to be grateful for, words are poor things.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Faith, Grateful, Be Grateful

  Marilynne Robinson (2009). “Home”, p.16, Hachette UK

  12 Copy quote

• Science can give us knowledge, but it cannot give us wisdom. Nor can religion, until it puts aside nonsense and distraction and becomes itself again.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Giving, Nonsense, Distraction

  14 Copy quote

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