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c4ddf57
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Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better.
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success
inspirational
goals
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Flannery O'Connor |
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af3f7c8
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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.
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religion
inspirational
beliefs
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Flannery O'Connor |
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2b66ebd
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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.
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Flannery O'Connor |
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901253f
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The mind serves best when it's anchored in the Word of God. There is no danger then of becoming an intellectual without integrity...
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the-habit-of-being
flannery-o-connor
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Flannery O'Connor |
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8422832
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Her name was Maude and she drank whisky all day from a fruit jar under the counter.
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Flannery O'Connor |
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2340b26
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Doctors always think anybody doing something they aren't is a quack; also they think all patients are idiots.
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Flannery O'Connor |
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09dd12a
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Those who have no absolute values cannot let the relative remain merely relative; they are always raising it to the level of the absolute.
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Flannery O'Connor |
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704f60d
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I don't think literature would be possible in a determined world. We might go through the motions but the heart would be out of it. Nobody could then 'smile darkly and ignore the howls.' Even if there were no Church to teach me this, writing two novels would do it. I think the more you write, the less inclined you will be to rely on theories like determinism. Mystery isn't something that is gradually evaporating. It grows along with knowled..
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Flannery O'Connor |
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1e0cd17
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For me it is the virgin birth, the Incarnation, the resurrection which are the true laws of the flesh and the physical. Death, decay, destruction are the suspension of these laws. I am always astonished at the emphasis the Church puts on the body. It is not the soul she says that will rise but the body, glorified.
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death
incarnation
catholicism
resurrection
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Flannery O'Connor |
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fbdf24b
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There was already a deep black wordless conviction in him that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin.
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Flannery O'Connor |
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d8b64e5
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free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply.
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Flannery O'Connor |
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2508257
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A working knowledge of the devil can be very well had from resisting him.
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Flannery O'Connor |
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461e077
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The black sky was underpinned with long silver streaks that looked like scaffolding and depth on depth behind it were thousands of stars that all seemed to be moving very slowly as if they were about some vast construction work that involved the whole universe and would take all time to complete. No one was paying attention to the sky.
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Flannery O'Connor |
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030998d
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He had the feeling that everything he saw was a broken-off piece of some giant blank thing that he had forgotten had happened to him.
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Flannery O'Connor |
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42156ff
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When you leave a man alone with his Bible and the Holy Ghost inspires him, he's going to be a Catholic one way or another, even though he knows nothing about the visible church. His kind of Christianity may not be socially desirable, but will be real in the sight of God.
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Flannery O'Connor |
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2f41d4a
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St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in instructing catechumens, wrote: "The dragon sits by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the Father of Souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon." No matter what form the dragon may take, it is of this mysterious passage past him, or into his jaws, that stories of any depth will always be concerned to tell, and this being the case, it requires considerable coura..
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Flannery O'Connor |
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322f7c8
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She was a talker, wasn't she?" Bobby Lee said, sliding down the ditch with a yodel. "She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life." "Some fun!" Bobby Lee said. "Shut up, Bobby Lee," The Misfit said. "It's no real pleasure in life."
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Flannery O'Connor |
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93ed7a0
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When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock -- to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.
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literature
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Flannery O'Connor |
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86fc7f7
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I'm a member and preacher to that church where the blind don't see and the lame don't walk and what's dead stays that way.
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faith
realism
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Flannery O'Connor |
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a963893
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She was a good Christian woman with a large respect for religion, though she did not, of course, believe any of it was true.
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b-a-s-s
greenleaf
o-henry-memorial
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Flannery O'Connor |
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efa6350
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Dear God, I don't want to have invented my faith to satisfy my weakness. I don't want to have created God to my own image as they're so fond of saying. Please give me the necessary grace, oh Lord, and please don't let it be as hard to get as Kafka made it.
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Flannery O'Connor |
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31738db
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I can smell the sin on your breath.
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Flannery O'Connor |
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816a5ef
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I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don't know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it again.
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Flannery O'Connor |
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af47f3a
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I have what passes for an education in this day and time, but I am not deceived by it.
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flannery-o-connor
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Flannery O'Connor |
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052ae83
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Give me the courage to stand the pain to get the grace.
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Flannery O'Connor |
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08e90c9
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It began to drizzle rain and he turned on the windshield wipers; they made a great clatter like two idiots clapping in church.
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Flannery O'Connor |
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a6c500c
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I distrust pious phrases, especially when they issue from my mouth. I try militantly never to be affected by the pious language of the faithful but it is always coming out when you least expect it. In contrast to the pious language of the faithful, the liturgy is beautifully flat.
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Flannery O'Connor |
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14c44b5
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We are now living in an age which doubts both fact and value. It is the life of this age that we wish to see and judge.
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writing
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Flannery O'Connor |
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561d810
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He knew that he was the stuff of which fanatics and madmen are made and that he had turned his destiny as if with his bare will. He kept himself upright on a very narrow line between madness and emptiness and when the time came for him to lose his balance he intended to lurch toward emptiness and fall on the side of his choice.
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Flannery O'Connor |
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3ccb9c4
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I don't have to run from anything because I don't believe in anything.
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Flannery O'Connor |
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115f3b4
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Everything that gave her pleasure was small and depressed him.
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Flannery O'Connor |
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4032dfc
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Let me make no bones about it: I write from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. Nothing is more repulsive to me than the idea of myself setting up a little universe of my own choosing and propounding a little immoralistic message. I write with a solid belief in all the Christian dogmas.
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postmodernism
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Flannery O'Connor |
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a45934e
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Lord, I believe; help my unbelief'... is the most natural and most human and most agonizing prayer in the gospels, and I think it is the foundation prayer of faith.
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prayer
faith
doubts
weakness
humility
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Flannery O'Connor |
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a56d26a
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When I think of all I have to be thankful for I wonder that You just don't kill me now because You've done so much for me already & I haven't been particularly grateful.
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Flannery O'Connor |
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69cdf94
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In most good stories it is the character's personalty that creates the action of the story.
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Flannery O'Connor |
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db05546
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The type of mind that can understand good fiction is not necessarily the educated mind, but it is at all times the kind of mind that is willing to have its sense of mystery deepened by contact with reality, and its sense of reality deepened by contact with mystery.
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literature
mystery
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Flannery O'Connor |
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7ea37b5
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I do not like the raw sound of the human voice in unison unless it is under the discipline of music.
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music
choruses
human-voice
crowds
shouting
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Flannery O'Connor |
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f3e2bc3
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If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw with the blind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to say, of faith. In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced-labor camps and in the fumes of the gas..
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tolerance
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Flannery O'Connor |
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b66cb65
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I do not know You God because I am in the way. Please help me to push myself aside.
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Flannery O'Connor |
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356fcd9
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Smugness is the Great Catholic Sin.
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smugness
pride
sin
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Flannery O'Connor |
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9835a08
|
Dogma is the guardian of mystery. The doctrines are spiritually significant in ways that we cannot fathom.
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dogma
mystery
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Flannery O'Connor |
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657782e
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In the greatest fiction, the writer's moral sense coincides with his dramatic sense, and I see no way for it to do this unless his moral judgement is part of the very act of seeing, and he is free to use it. I have heard it said that belief in Christian dogma is a hindrance to the writer, but I myself have found nothing further from the truth. Actually, it frees the storyteller to observe. It is not a set of rules which fixes what he sees i..
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Flannery O'Connor |
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4cb45b9
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Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead," The Misfit continued, "and He shouldn't have done it. He shown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it's nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but..
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Flannery O'Connor |
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652d153
|
That's the trouble with you preachers," he said. "You've all got too good to believe in anything," and he drove off with a look of disgust and righteousness." --
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righteousness
clergy
preachers
nihilism
|
Flannery O'Connor |