620 Quotes by Marilynne Robinson

I have always liked the phrase “nursing a grudge ” because many people are tender of their resentments as of the thing nearest their hearts.

I’m amazed at what I have taken for granted. How to truly take in our situation I don’t know, but I wish I had started asking myself that question earlier than I did.

So often I have known, right there in the pulpit, even as I read the words, how far they fell short of any hopes I had for them.

Clean and acceptable. It would be something to know what that felt like, even for an hour or two.

Touch a limit of your understanding and it falls away, to reveal mystery upon mystery.

So many of earth’s grievances could be soothed by a little consideration.

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.

It felt very good to have him walking beside her. Good like rest and quiet, like something you could live without but you needed anyway. That you had to learn how to miss, and then you’d never stop missing it.

She used to ask herself, What more could I wish? But she always distrusted that question, because she knew there were limits to her experience that precluded her knowing what there was to be wished.