Marilynne Robinson - People Quotes

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It is an amazing thing to watch people laugh, the way it sort of takes them over. Sometimes they really do struggle with it... so I wonder what it is and where it comes from, and I wonder what it expends out of your system, so that you have to do it till you're done, like crying in a way, I suppose, except that laughter is much more easily spent.

Marilynne Robinson
It seems to me people tend to forget that we are to love our enemies, not to satisfy some standard of righteousness but because God their Father loves them.

Marilynne Robinson
Well, but you two are dancing around in your iridescent little downpour, whooping and stomping as sane people ought to do when they encounter a thing so miraculous as water.

Marilynne Robinson
She conceived of life as a road down which one traveled, an easy enough road through a broad country, and that one's destination was there from the very beginning, a measured distance away, standing in the ordinary light like some plain house where one went in and was greeted by respectable people and was shown to a room where everything one had ever lost or put aside was gathered together, waiting.

Marilynne Robinson
The basis of democracy is the willingness to assume well about other people.

Marilynne Robinson
People talk about how wonderful the world seems to children, and that's true enough. But children think they will grow into it and understand it, and I know very well that I will not, and would not if I had a dozen lives.

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.

Marilynne Robinson
The great truth that is too often forgotten is that it is in the nature of people to do good to one another.

Marilynne Robinson
That's the strangest thing about this life, about being in the ministry. People change the subject when they see you coming. And then sometimes those very same people come into your study and tell you the most remarkable things. There's a lot under the surface of life, everyone knows that. A lot of malice and dread and guilt, and so much loneliness, where you wouldn't really expect to find it, either.

Marilynne Robinson
People who feel any sort of regret where you are concerned will suppose you are angry, and they will see anger in what you do, even if you're just quietly going about a life of your own choosing. They will make you doubt yourself, which, depending on cases, can be a severe distraction and a waste of time. This is a thing I wish I had understood much earlier than I did.

Marilynne Robinson
These people who can see right through you never quite do you justice, because they never give you credit for the effort you're making to be better than you actually are, which is difficult and well meant and deserving of some little notice.

Marilynne Robinson
The twinkling of an eye. That is the most wonderful expression. I've thought from time to time it was the best thing in life, that little incandescence you see in people when the charm of a thing strikes them, or the humor of it. 'The light of the eyes rejoiceth the heart.' That's a fact.

Marilynne Robinson
It seems to me some people just go around lookin' to get their faith unsettled. That has been the fashion for the last hundred years or so.

Marilynne Robinson
It is one of the best traits of good people that they love where they pity. And this is truer of women than of men.

Marilynne Robinson