Carol > Carol's Quotes

“And this is one of the most crucial definitions for the whole of Christianity; that the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening

“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.”
― Margaret Atwood, Bluebeard's Egg

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Flannery O'Connor: Collected Works

“Only if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of the universe.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“Total non-retention has kept my education from being a burden to me.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood

“I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe. I know what torment this is, but I can only see it, in myself anyway, as the process by which faith is deepened. A faith that just accepts is a child's faith and all right for children, but eventually you have to grow religiously as every other way, though some never do.

What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe. If you feel you can't believe, you must at least do this: keep an open mind. Keep it open toward faith, keep wanting it, keep asking for it, and leave the rest to God.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“Your beliefs will be the light by which you see, but they will not be what you see and they will not be a substitute for seeing.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

“The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“Conviction without experience makes for harshness. ”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“The operation of the Church is entirely set up for the sinner; which creates much misunderstanding among the smug.”
(August 9, 1955)”
― Flannery O'Connor

“...the only thing that makes the Church endurable is that it is somehow the body of Christ and that on this we are fed. It seems to be a fact that you have to suffer as much from the Church as for it but if you believe in the divinity of Christ, you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it. ”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“Satisfy your demand for reason but always remember that charity is beyond reason, and God can be known through charity.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“You don't serve God by saying: the Church is ineffective, I'll have none of it. Your pain at its lack of effectiveness is a sign of your nearness to God. We help overcome this lack of effectiveness simply by suffering on account of it. ”
― Flannery O'Connor

“I have almost no capacity for worship. What I have is the knowledge that it is my duty to worship and worship only what I believe to be true.”

May 19, 1962”
― Flannery O'Connor

“No art is sunk in the self, but rather, in art the self becomes self-forgetful in order to meet the demands of the thing seen and the thing being made.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“To know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility . . .”
― Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

“What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“Anyone who survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his life.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
― Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades

“it is always the person not in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it, and would unquestionably have done it too”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

“There are some upon this earth of yours who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name; who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

“We are saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone.”
― Martin Luther

“Earth's crammed with heaven...
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes.”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh

“Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.”
― John Benfield

“...The means of choice:
She might choose to ascend
The falling dream,
By some angelic power without a name
Reverse the motion, plunge into upwardness,
Know height without an end,
Density melt to air, silence yield a voice--
Within her fall she felt the pull of Grace.”
― May Sarton, Selected Poems

“Breath (from the book Blue Bridge)

Whispering to myself
With every step I take,
Trying out names, for I know
There is something yet to be called …..

I know it, something up ahead
Just around the bend
Or over the rise –
A bird taking to the sky
From the edge of a jagged cliff –
A bird floating outwards
In silence ……. A silence
Waiting for a footstep
To crunch on stones,
For a voice to fling upward
Through sharp sunlight
With a name…… calling
Before the bird could call
Before the bird called.

Oh the bird was there alright
And sure it took flight
When it heard me approach
But it broke my heart
With a mighty croak!

So I’m sitting here playing
With a purple flower
Slender stem, no leaves
Purple fizz –

And it’s quiet again.
I am still
I am nothing
And the hill
Is a long, long slope
Down, down, down to the sea
Far below.

I could roll
I could run
I could scream
But I am nothing.

A cool wind blows
And the light is naked and nameless
And the rocks are faces of angels
And the bird in the sky wheels
And cries to forget the earth
And its ancient bones –
Oh, sensual pain –
Wings…. Wings…. Wings,
Singing wings.

If only I could begin
To describe the emptiness
Which fills me to the brim
With new breath

I might almost lose my name
And take instead a feather for my soul.”
― Jay Woodman