Margaret Lee Runbeck Quotes

61 Sourced Quotes

But it is the assignment of the soul to keep all questions precariously unresolved, up to the very brink of the absolute. As soon as solid ground lies under us, our eyes desert the safety of each peak of certitude, to scale the rising doubt beyond.

Margaret Lee Runbeck
Some people are born into their religions, as they are born into being blondes, or French, or inhabitants of the upper brackets of wealth. This inherited religion is often too perfunctory to be of much practical use. As in most other values, the intimately important religion is the one which has been chosen voluntarily.

Margaret Lee Runbeck
A man does not steal from one victim only, but from everyone who comes near to the theft.

Margaret Lee Runbeck
I believe anyone who momentarily perceives the Absolute will never again need any other circumstance for happiness.

Margaret Lee Runbeck
The people who are willing to talk about imagination seldom have much. Imagination is a guilty secret, usually, a possession best kept inside the privacy of one's own skull.

Margaret Lee Runbeck
Fairst's way is not to rush at you with an outstretched hand. His chestnuts wait within burrs.

Margaret Lee Runbeck
So, a baby had been born to them at last. Not circumstantially of their bodies, but desirously of their hearts. They had both borne this child, as Tom had facetiously said; they had looked for it and waited, looking and looking until at last they found their own.

Margaret Lee Runbeck
We can always explain away miracles — afterward.

Margaret Lee Runbeck
Dust, heat, perspiration, and perfume swirl in clouds. Everything that can move, vibrates; everything that can utter a sound, yells; everything that can give off an aroma, broadcasts itself. The bullfight is a carnival of the senses. All the fives senses indulge in a paroxysm of reaction, and must go home prostrated and stunned for another week.

Margaret Lee Runbeck
When the great joys are stilled, the minor ones must sing.

Margaret Lee Runbeck
I showed no surprise, for my first principle of getting along with the young is never to be amazed at anything.

Margaret Lee Runbeck
A silver lining is usually pretty wistful optimism. In fact, the chances are, you have to find a silver lining to the silver lining, if you know what I mean. As for me, I like my silver without any cloud.

Margaret Lee Runbeck
Happiness is a habit, to be established early. It is like the magnetic beam by which the pilots fly.

Margaret Lee Runbeck
When one learns that the abundance of beauty is unlimited, one wants constantly less, and that less more perfected.

Margaret Lee Runbeck
Conversation was a kind of little flashlight, with which you explored caves you had never been in before. You never could guess, when you started, what you would find.

Margaret Lee Runbeck
Youth, in most ways, is a grossly overadvertised commodity. It is supposed to be the best part of life; but actually it is a jungle and a swamp and a desert. Everything is too terribly important to be borne; that is why we have to appear irresponsible and downright silly. We just couldn't bear caring so much about everything, if we didn't.

Margaret Lee Runbeck
The pages of our living turn so silently we scarcely hear them, and it is only afterward that we can look back and say, 'That was one chapter.'

Margaret Lee Runbeck
Metaphors are as tactful as they are informative, for if you know nothing at all about the subject, you are not offended or rebuked, because they offer your eye an agreeable still life, valuable for itself. Metaphors are the diplomats of rhetoric; they lead you urbanely to the brink, but it is you who states some unique conclusion to your own discovering self.

Margaret Lee Runbeck
The distance she traveled in that hour is the longest in human experience. It may take a decade, or a generation, or a century; yet sometimes it seems as if it is made in a single brave leap. It is the distance between being enslaved and becoming free. The trip cannot be given; it must be taken.

Margaret Lee Runbeck
We have our own front page, as all people do who live in the country. It is the sky and the earth, with headlines new every morning. We wake to take in its news as city dwellers reach across thresholds for their newspapers.

Margaret Lee Runbeck
Value is never in the object, as heat is not in the thermometer, but value is only the mercury running up and down and registering the temperature of the wanter.

Margaret Lee Runbeck
If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything.

Margaret Lee Runbeck
Apology is a lovely perfume; it can transform the clumsiest moment into a gracious gift.

Margaret Lee Runbeck
You can't cheat a praying man. If he comes to hear a sermon, he hears a sermon.

Margaret Lee Runbeck
You can't defeat a praying man. He finds his answers everywhere he looks.

Margaret Lee Runbeck
Strangers... are just your friends that you don't know yet.

Margaret Lee Runbeck
Even when we love people, we're fairly philosophical about their suffering and what it will bring them!

Margaret Lee Runbeck
The best things in life are secret. And must stay that way, until we find them for ourselves.

Margaret Lee Runbeck
The art of keeping oneself acceptable may lie in the nimble ability to confirm what others think they know about us.

Margaret Lee Runbeck
He received most of his early schooling alone. In this way he may have escaped some educational dogmas and biases which often standardize a lively intellect.

Margaret Lee Runbeck