Marilynne Robinson
American · 1943–
American novelist and essayist whose meditations on faith, consciousness, and the American intellectual tradition champion the sacredness of ordinary existence with rare philosophical depth.
Wikipedia ↗“The great irony of the modern period is that the "disenchantment of the world" that supposedly came with the rise of science was actually an impoverishment of thought, a collapse of attention.”
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“There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.”
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“It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance momentarily — all that is alive. Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration.”
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“I feel sometimes as if I were a child who opens its eyes on the world once and sees amazing things it will never know any names for and then has to close its eyes again.”
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“When do we ever get to the point where we can be content with what we have given to the world? We are dissatisfied creatures, and that is our glory.”
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“A culture that does not grasp the vital interplay between morality and power, that does not understand that the only safeguard against being combative and aggressive is being generous — that culture has no future.”
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“Grace has a grand laughter in it. It is a series of startlements; none of the certainties of religion, but all the surprise of grace.”
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“The mind, whatever else it might be, is a constant of self-surpassing, a slipping of the ordinary constraints of nature. This is what we are as a species — the creatures who can be astonished by our own existence.”
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