Quotessence
Home / Authors / Marilynne Robinson
Marilynne Robinson

Marilynne Robinson Quotes

Novelist

Filter quotes by topic

AllPeopleThinkingIfsKnowsWorldSeemsHumansHas BeensRealityFactsGraceFeelsKindLittlesSaidTheologyWayWellsChildrenCourses

Famous Marilynne Robinson Quotes

“I think the connection between poetry and theology, which is profound in Western tradition - there is a great deal of wonderful religious poetry - both poetry and theology push conventional definitions and explore perceptions that might be ignored or passed off as conventional, but when they are pressed yield much larger meanings, seem to be part of a much larger system of reality.”

ThinkingRealitySeemsMightReligiousDealsWonderfulPerceptionTraditionConnectionsProfoundWesternDefinitionsTheologyYieldConventionalIgnored
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

“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.”

GivingChildrenLittlesSeemsFatherParentGenerationsHonorCircumstancesAngelSafetyCrueltySecureWildernessTrust In GodProvidenceBegetsGreat FaithParents Love
Author:Marilynne Robinson
Create image

“I’m writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you’ve done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God’s grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle. You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you.”

IfsMenWritingWellsMayChildrenLittlesDoeHas BeensDoneSeemsRememberBehindsWonderDoubtGraceMiracleTownsGreat ThingsNo DoubtOld ManSooner Or LaterGod's GraceRemember MeShabbyLittle Towns
Book:Gilead: A Novel
Create image

“That is how life goes--we send our children into the wilderness. Some of them on the day they are born, it seems, for all the help we can give them. Some of them seem to be a kind of wilderness unto themselves. But there must be angels there, too, and springs of water. Even that wilderness, the very habitation of jackals, is the Lord's.”

GivingKindChildrenHelpingSeemsWaterBornLordSpringAngelOur ChildrenWildernessJackals
Book:Gilead: A Novel
Create image

“It seems to me there is less meanness in atheism, by a good measure. It seems that the spirit of religious self-righteousness this article deplores is precisely the spirit in which it is written. Of course he's right about many things, one of them being the destructive potency of religious self-righteousness. (p. 146)”

SelfSeemsSpiritCoursesReligiousWrittenAtheismAtheistDestructiveRighteousnessArticlesMeannessSelf RighteousnessPotency
Author:Marilynne Robinson
Create image

“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.”

ThinkingGivingShouldHelpingSeemsTeachReflectionForgivingErrorsFaultsInstanceNonsenseDistractionModestyBiasInhumanity
Author:Marilynne Robinson
Create image