Quotessence
Home / Authors / Frederick Buechner
Frederick Buechner

Frederick Buechner Quotes

Writer

Filter quotes by topic

AllIfsWayWorldPeopleKnowsJesusGivingThinkingHeartHumansMeanBelieveLastsWellsGraceHappensJoyMomentsSpeakNeeds

Famous Frederick Buechner Quotes

“In the Christian sense, love is not primarily an emotion but an act of the will. When Jesus tells us to love our neighbors, he is not telling us to love them in the sense of responding to them with a cozy emotional feeling. You can as well produce a cozy emotional feeling as you can a cough or sneeze. On the contrary, he is telling us to love our neighbors in the sense of being willing to work for their well-being even if it means sacrificing our well-being to that end.”

IfsWellsMeanEndsFeelingsChristianJesusLove IsEmotionSacrificeProduceEmotionalWillingNeighborContraryWell BeingRespondingCozy
Book:Wishful thinking: a theological ABC.
Create image

“I think most people, if I asked, would say, "Yes, of course I believe." But I think for a great many of them it doesn't really make much difference in terms of either what they do with their lives or with their own inner well-being. They believe because so did grandfather, and that's the same church they've been going to all these years.”

PeopleIfsThinkingYearsBelieveWellsCoursesI BelieveTermDifferencesChurchWell BeingGreat MenGrandfather
Author:Frederick Buechner
Create image

“What's prayer? It's shooting shafts into the dark. What mark they strike, if any, who's to say? It's reaching for a hand you cannot touch. The silence is so fathomless that prayers like plummets vanish into the sea. You beg. You whimper. You load God down with empty praise. You tell him sins that he already knows full well. You seek to change his changeless will. Yet Godric prays the way he breathes, for else his heart would wither in his breast. Prayer is the wind that fills his sail. Else drift with witless tides. And sometimes, by God's grace, a prayer is heard.”

IfsKnowsWayWellsHeartSometimesHandsDarkPrayerSinSilenceGraceHeardSeaWindPrayingEmptyMarkPraiseBreatheStrikesShootingReachingBreastsTidesLoadSailSilence IsGod's Grace
Author:Frederick Buechner
Create image

“The worst isn't the last thing about the world. It's the next to the last thing. The last thing is the best. It's the power from on high that comes down into the world, that wells up from the rock-bottom worst of the world like a hidden spring. Can you believe it? The last, best thing is the laughing deep in the hearts of the saints, sometimes our hearts even. Yes. You are terribly loved and forgiven. Yes. You are healed. All is well.”

WorldBelieveWellsHeartSometimesLastsNextLaughingWorstRocksSpringBottomSaintBest ThingsForgivenHealed
Author:Frederick Buechner
Create image

“Being a good steward of your pain. . . . It involves being alive to your life. It involves taking the risk of being open, of reaching out, of keeping in touch with the pain as well as the joy of what happens because at no time more than at a painful time do we live out of the depths of who we are instead of out of the shallows.”

WellsHappensPainJoyAliveRiskDepthPainfulWho We AreReachingReach OutStewardsPainful Times
Book:The Clown in the Belfry: Writings on Faith and Fiction
Create image

“Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are but, more often than not, God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go to next.”

IfsShouldWellsSoulEyeNextPaySecretAttentionMysteryTearsWho You AreSavedYour SoulUnexpectedClosestSummoningTears In Your Eyes
Book:A Crazy, Holy Grace: The Healing Power of Pain and Memory
Create image