Gilead Quotes

“I have decided the two choices open to me are (1) to torment myself or (2) to trust the Lord. There is no earthly solution to the problems that confront me. But I can add to my problems, as I believe I have done, by dwelling on them. So, no more of that.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“It is one of the best traits of good people that they love where they pity. And this is truer of women than of men.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“Adulthood is a wonderful thing, and brief. You must be sure to enjoy it while it lasts.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“I felt, as I have often felt, that my failing the truth could have no bearing at all on the Truth itself, which could never conceivably be in any sense dependent on me or on anyone.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“You see how it is godlike to love the being of someone. Your existence is a delight to us. I hope you never have to long for a child as I did, but oh, what a splendid thing it has been that you came finally, and what a blessing to enjoy you now for almost seven years.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“My point in mentioning this is only to say that 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 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.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“The Lord gave you a mind so that you can make honest use of it. I'm saying you must be sure that the doubts and questions are your own, not, so to speak, the mustache and walking stick that happen to be the fashion of any particular moment.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“For me, writing has always felt like praying, even when I wasn't writing prayers, as I was often enough. You feel that you are with someone.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“So my advice is this - don’t look for proofs. Don’t bother with them at all. They are never sufficient to the question, and they’re always a little impertinent, I think, because they claim for God a place within our conceptual grasp. And they will likely sound wrong to you even if you convince someone else with them. That is very unsettling over the long term. “Let your works so shine before men,” etc. It was Coleridge who said Christianity is a life, not a doctrine, words to that effect. I’m not saying never doubt or question. The Lord gave you a mind so that you would make honest use of it. I’m saying you must be sure that the doubts and questions are your own, not, so to speak, the mustache and walking stick that happen to be the fashion at any particular moment.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“When something ought to be true then it proves to be a very powerful truth.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“They say an infant can't see when it is as young as your sister was, but she opened her eyes, and she looked at me. She was such a little bit of a thing. But while I was holding her, she opened her eyes. I know she didn't really study my face. Memory can make a thing seem to have been much more than it was. But I know she did look right into my eyes. That is something. And I'm glad I knew it at the time, because now, in my present situation, not that I am about to leave this world, I realize there is nothing more astonishing than a human face...You feel your obligation to a child when you have seen it and held it. Any human face is a claim on you, because you can't help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it. But this is truest of the face of an infant. I consider that to be one kind of vision, as mystical as any.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“If the Lord chooses to make nothing of our transgressions, then they are nothing. Or whatever reality they have is trivial and conditional beside the exquisite primary fact of existence. Of course the Lord would wipe them away, just as I wipe dirt from your face, or tears. After all, why should the Lord bother much over these snitches that are no part of His Creation? Well, there are a good many reasons why He should. We human beings do real harm. History could make a stone weep.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“Behold how much wood is kindled by how small a fire, and the tongue is fire.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“My grandfather once told her if you couldn't read with cold feet, there wouldn't be a literate soul in the state of Maine.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“As I have told you, I myself was the good son, so to speak, the one who never left his father's house -- even when his father did, a fact which surely puts my credentials beyond all challenge. I am one of those righteous for whom the rejoicing in heaven will be comparatively restrained. And that's all right. 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 a 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 and consequence?”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“I’m not going to force some theory on a mystery and make foolishness of it, just because that is what people who talk about it normally do.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“To be useful was the best thing the old men ever hoped for themselves, and to be aimless was their worst fear”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“You can love a bad book for its haplessness or pomposity or gall, if you have that starveling appetite for things human which I devoutly hope you never will have. "The full soul loatheth an honeycomb; but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet." There are pleasures to be found where you would never look for them. That’s a bit of fatherly wisdom, but it’s also the Lord’s truth, and a thing I know from my own long experience”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“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)”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“So my advice is this—don’t look for proofs. Don’t bother with them at all. They are never sufficient to the question, and they’re always a little impertinent, I think, because they claim for God a place within our conceptual grasp. And they will likely sound wrong to you even if you convince someone else with them.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“How I wish you could have known me in my strength.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“It is worth living long enough to outlast whatever sense of grievance you may acquire.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“There is a reality in blessing, which I take baptism to be, primarily. It doesn’t enhance sacredness, but it acknowledges it, and there is a power in that.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“All this seems preposterous. But in fact one lapse of judgment can quickly create a situation in which only foolish choices are possible.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“And old Boughton, if he could stand up out of his chair, out of his decrepitude and crankiness and sorrow and limitation, would abandon all those handsome children of his, mild and confident as they are, and follow after that one son whom he has never known, whom he has favored as one does a wound, and he would protect him as a father cannot, defend him with a strength he does not have, sustain him with a bounty beyond any resource he could ever dream of having.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“Our dream of life will end as dreams do end, abruptly and completely, when the sun rises, when the light comes. And we will think, all that fear and all that grief were about nothing. But that cannon be true. I can't believe we will forget our sorrows altogether. That would mean forgetting that we had lived, humanly speaking. Sorrow seems to me to be a great part of the substance of human life.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“--"There is no justice in love...it is only the glimpse or parable of an incomprehensible reality... the eternal breaking in on the the temporal.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“We fly forgotten as a dream, certainly, leaving the forgetful world behind us to trample and mar and misplace everything we have ever cared for. That is just the way of it, and it is remarkable.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“But I believe also the rewards of obedience are great, because at the root of real honor is always a sense of the sacredness of the person who is the object... When you love someone to the degree you love her, you see her as God sees her, and that is an instruction in the nature of God and humankind and of Being itself.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“The moon looks wonderful in this warm evening light, just as a candle flame looks beautiful in the light of morning. Light withing light. It seems like a metaphor for something. So much does. Ralph Waldo Emerson is excellent on this point.
It seems to me to be a metaphor for the human soul, the singular light within the great general light of existence. Or it seems like poetry within language. Perhaps wisdom within experience. Or marriage within friendship and love. I'll try to remember to use this. I believe I see a place for it in my thoughts on Hagar and Ishmael. Their time in the wilderness seems like a specific moment of divine Providence within the whole providential regime of Creation.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead