Quotessence
Home / Authors / Marilynne Robinson
Marilynne Robinson

Marilynne Robinson Quotes

Novelist

Filter quotes by topic

AllPeopleThinkingIfsKnowsWorldSeemsHumansHas BeensRealityFactsGraceFeelsKindLittlesSaidTheologyWayWellsChildrenCourses

Famous Marilynne Robinson Quotes

“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.”

PeopleThinkingWritingTryingMindKindCoursesGreaterMysterySeriousDegreesFindingsWho You AreProfoundTendenciesCompanionCourse Of Life
Author:Marilynne Robinson
Create image

“John Calvin's theology emphasizes the sanctity of conscience, the sanctity of companionate marriage, and the obligation of those in power to attend to the well-being of the people in general, especially the poor. Interestingly, for the interpretation of Hamlet, for example, he forbids even the thought of revenge. This is not the Calvin of myth, but when the Elizabethans read him there was no such myth, nor would there be now, if he were read.”

PeopleIfsWellsPoorExampleConscienceRevengeMythTheologyObligationWell BeingInterpretationSanctity
Author:Marilynne Robinson
Create image

“I am interested in Scripture and theology. This is an interest that I can assume I would share with a pastor, so that makes me a little bit prone to use that kind of character, perhaps, just at the moment. Then there is also the fact that, having been a church member for many years, I am very aware of how much pastors enrich people's experience, people for whom they are significant. I know that it's a kind of custom of American literature and culture to slang them. I don't think there is any reason why that needs to be persisted in.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsNeedsYearsKindLittlesI CanReasonMomentsCharacterFactsUseCultureLiteratureBitsInterestChurchShareMembersLittle BitAssumingScriptureSignificantTheologyReason WhyCustomsPastorRich PeopleAmerican LiteratureSlangChurch Members
Author:Marilynne Robinson
Create image

“One of the things that is nice about these old pastors - they were young at the time - who went into the Middle West is that they were real humanists. They were often linguists, for example, and the schools that they established were then, as they are now, real liberal arts colleges where people studied the humanities in a very broad sense. I think that should be reflected in his mind; appropriately, it is.”

PeopleThinkingShouldMindArtRealSchoolYoungHumanityNiceMiddleExampleCollegeWestBroadsPastorLiberal ArtsLinguistsLiberal Arts College
Author:Marilynne Robinson
Create image

“A sermon is a form that yields a certain kind of meaning in the same way that, say, a sonnet is a form that deals with a certain kind of meaning that has to do with putting things in relation to each other, allowing for the fact of complexity reversal, such things. Sermons are, at their best, excursions into difficulty that are addressed to people who come there in order to hear that.”

PeopleWayKindFactsFormCertainOrderDealsDifficultyRelationComplexityYieldAllowingSermonsSonnetReversalExcursions
Author:Marilynne Robinson
Create image

“A sermon is a valuable thing now and so impressive when you do hear a good one - and there is a lot of failure in the attempt; it's a difficult form - is because it's so seldom true now that you hear people speak under circumstances where they assume they are obliged to speak seriously and in good faith, and the people who hear them are assumed to be listening seriously and in good faith.”

PeopleFormSpeakDifficultListeningCircumstancesAssumingValuableSermonsImpressiveObligedGood FaithValuable Things
Author:Marilynne Robinson
Create image

“One of the things that is wonderful about hymns is that they are a sort of universally shared poetry, at least among certain populations. There isn't much of that anymore either. There are very few poems people can recite, but there are quite a few hymns that, if you hum a few bars, people can at least come up with two verses. Many of the older hymns are very beautiful.”

PeopleIfsTwoBeautifulCertainWonderfulPopulationCome UpBarsVersesHymnsVery Beautiful
Author:Marilynne Robinson
Create image

“Protestantism, of course, is much more explicitly divided into different traditions - the Pentecostals, the Anglicans. But there is the main tradition of Protestantism that comes out of the Reformation and that produced people like Kant and Hegel and so on, who are not normally thought of as being people writing in a theological tradition, although Hegel, of course, wrote theology his whole life.”

PeopleWritingDifferentWholeCoursesTraditionWhole LifeTheologyDividedReformationTheologicalHegelProtestantism
Author:Marilynne Robinson
Create image

“When the Reformation became established, one of the things that was a question between Catholicism and the Reformation traditions was whether there was a hierarchy of being. If you look at Thomas Aquinas, for example, you have hierarchies of angels and all the rest of it, and hierarchies even of saints and then subsaints - people who aren't quite there, that sort of thing. The Reformation rejected all of that and created a new metaphysics, in effect, that is not hierarchical.”

PeopleIfsLooksEffectsExampleAngelTraditionSaintCatholicismRejectedMetaphysicsHierarchyReformation
Author:Marilynne Robinson
Create image

“The idea that the universe itself is physically structured around hierarchy was sort of an integration of earlier science and theology that was made by people like Thomas Aquinas, that was assumed doctrinally in that tradition. The Reformation rejected that model of reality and created a highly individualistic metaphysics in the sense that it located everything normative that can be said about reality in human perception, there being, of course, no other avenue of knowing. There is Scripture, there is conscience, there is perception itself.”

PeopleHumansMadeSaidIdeasRealityUniverseCoursesKnowingPerceptionModelsConscienceTraditionScriptureTheologyRejectedMetaphysicsIntegrationHierarchyAvenuesReformationIndividualistic
Author:Marilynne Robinson
Create image

“We [Americans] inherited British law, which is like the new "reforms" that are being made now, in the sense that people are permanently entrapped in debt, if they once fall into bankruptcy. The reason that the law was changed in American history - the whole early period of the formation of the country was moving away from British law into a law that is generated here and that conforms to the sense of what is appropriate here.”

PeopleIfsMadeCountryReasonWholeMovingLawFallChangedPeriodsBritishDebtReformAppropriateAmerican HistoryConformFormationBankruptcyMoving Away
Author:Marilynne Robinson
Create image

“The model for our early bankruptcy laws was Deuteronomy, the idea that, under certain circumstances - in Deuteronomy, it is simply the passage of seven years' time - people are released from debt, simply because they are released from debt. No more debt. You start over again. This has been a very powerful model in this country. It's being destroyed now. People talk about how much new employment, new wealth, and so on are continuously generated in this country.”

PeopleYearsHas BeensIdeasCountryLawCertainWealthPowerfulCircumstancesModelsSevenDebtDestroyedEmploymentPassagesSeven YearsStarting OverVery PowerfulBankruptcy
Author:Marilynne Robinson
Create image

“The loss of seriousness seems to me to be, in effect, a loss of hope. I think that the thing that made people rise to real ambition, real gravity was the sense of posterity, for example - a word that I can remember hearing quite often when I was a child and I never hear anymore. People actually wanted to make the world good for people in generations that they would never see. It makes people think in very large terms to try to liberate women, for example, or to try to eliminate slavery.”

PeopleThinkingWorldTryingChildrenMadeI CanRealSeemsWantedRememberTermLossGenerationsEffectsExampleAmbitionSlaveryHearingGravityPosteritySeriousness
Author:Marilynne Robinson
Create image

“I'm really disturbed by the degree to which I don't hear people saying, "Are we leaving the world better than we found it?" I think we are a generation that perhaps could not answer in the affirmative, and it is the evasion of the larger responsibility of being only one generation in what one hopes will be an infinite series of fruitful generations. There is a selfishness in refusing to understand that we are passing through; others will come, and they deserve certain courtesies and certain considerations from us.”

PeopleThinkingWorldCertainFoundAnswersResponsibilityGenerationsDegreesDeserveInfiniteSeriesLeavingPassingPassingsSelfishnessConsiderationCourtesyDisturbedAffirmativePassing ThroughEvasion
Author:Marilynne Robinson
Create image

“I really don't know why people have so much trouble now writing about religious faith. It is true that clichés can override more interesting impulses. But the desire to find meaning, to be generous, to live well in an ethical and spiritual sense, is so widespread that it should not seem alien to people when it is expressed in the terms of traditional religion.”

PeopleWritingSpiritualDesireTermReligiousInterestingTroubleAliensImpulseGenerousEthicalFind MeReligious FaithLive Well
Author:Marilynne Robinson
Create image

“She conceived of life as a road down which one traveled, an easy enough road through a broad country, and that one's destination was there from the very beginning, a measured distance away, standing in the ordinary light like some plain house where one went in and was greeted by respectable people and was shown to a room where everything one had ever lost or put aside was gathered together, waiting.”

PeopleCountryEnoughLightTogetherHouseLostEasyWaitingRoomsOrdinaryStandingDistanceDestinationBroadsTraveledRespectable
Author:Marilynne Robinson
Create image

“People who feel any sort of regret where you are concerned will suppose you are angry, and they will see anger in what you do, even if you're just quietly going about a life of your own choosing. They will make you doubt yourself, which, depending on cases, can be a severe distraction and a waste of time. This is a thing I wish I had understood much earlier than I did.”

PeopleIfsFeelsWishCasesDoubtRegretWasteUnderstoodConcernedAngryWhere You AreDistractionWasting TimeSevere
Author:Marilynne Robinson
Create image

“It is an amazing thing to watch people laugh, the way it sort of takes them over. Sometimes they really do struggle with it . . . so I wonder what it is and where it comes from, and I wonder what it expends out of your system, so that you have to do it till you're done, like crying in a way, I suppose, except that laughter is much more easily spent.”

PeopleWaySometimesDoneWonderWatchesLaughingStruggleCryLaughterAmazing Things
Book:Gilead: A Novel
Create image

“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.”

PeopleIfsWantNeedsHumansNightSufferingHouseWishAttentionWatchesComfortSittingWindowLonelySafetySilentCuriosityAdmireShadePermitCricketEnviousLonely PeopleSmugnessPerimeter
Book:Housekeeping: A Novel
Create image

“That's the strangest thing about this life, about being in the ministry. People change the subject when they see you coming. And then sometimes those very same people come into your study and tell you the most remarkable things. There's a lot under the surface of life, everyone knows that. A lot of malice and dread and guilt, and so much loneliness, where you wouldn't really expect to find it, either.”

PeopleKnowsSometimesStudySubjectsLonelinessGuiltSurfaceThis LifeRemarkableDreadMinistryMalice
Book:Gilead: A Novel
Create image