Quotessence
Home / Authors / Marilynne Robinson
Marilynne Robinson

Marilynne Robinson Quotes

Novelist

Filter quotes by topic

AllPeopleThinkingIfsKnowsWorldSeemsHumansHas BeensRealityFactsGraceFeelsKindLittlesSaidTheologyWayWellsChildrenCourses

Famous Marilynne Robinson Quotes

“The classic theology of my tradition comes from the French Renaissance. [William] Shakespeare was born in 1564, the year [John] Calvin died, and that theology was very influential in England in his lifetime. I think Shakespeare was attentive to questions raised by it, about human nature, history, reality itself. I find the two literatures to be mutually illuminating.”

ThinkingYearsHumansTwoRealityLiteratureBornHuman NatureTraditionEnglandDiedLifetimeRaisedTheologyClassicInfluentialRenaissanceIlluminating
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

“Often, when I want to read something that is satisfying to me as theology, what I actually read is string theory, or something like that - popularizations, inevitably, of scientific cosmologies - because their description of the scale of things and the intrinsic, astonishing character of reality coincides very beautifully with the most ambitious theology. It is thinking at that scale, and it is thinking that is invested with meaning in a humanly evocative form. That's theology.”

ThinkingWantCharacterRealityFormTheoryScalesTheologyDescriptionStringsSatisfyingAmbitiousAstonishingCosmologyVery BeautifulString Theory
Author:Marilynne Robinson
Create image

“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

“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

“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

“Oddly enough, my favorite genre is not fiction. I'm attracted by primary sources that are relevant to historical questions of interest to me, by famous old books on philosophy or theology that I want to see with my own eyes, by essays on contemporary science, by the literatures of antiquity.”

WantBookEnoughPhilosophyEyeLiteratureInterestMy OwnFictionSourceHistoricalMy FavoriteTheologyContemporaryPrimariesGenreRelevantEssaysAntiquityOld BooksGenre IsPrimary Source
Author:Marilynne Robinson
Create image