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You can survive on your own you can grow strong on your own you can prevail on your own but you cannot become human on your own.

Frederick Buechner

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Frederick Buechner
Age: 98
Born: 1926
Born: July 11
Autobiographer
Novelist
Poet
Theologian
Writer
New York City
New York
Carl Frederick Buechner
Survive
Grow
Grows
Strong
Cannot
Become
Human
Humans
Prevail

More quotes by Frederick Buechner

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Remember Jesus of Nazareth, staggering on broken feet out of the tomb toward the Resurrection, bearing on his body the proud insignia of the defeat which is victory, the magnificent defeat of the human soul at the hands of God.
Frederick Buechner
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It's very easy in a way, horrible in some ways, but simply to give up the whole thing, to say, Well, the hell with it, as far as I'm concerned life is pointless and [so] live the fullest, most successfully self-fulfilling life you can and let the rest go hang - I've never reached that point in my life.
Frederick Buechner
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Words spoken in deep love or deep hate set things in motion in the human heart that can never be reversed.
Frederick Buechner
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What makes you, in the deepest sense of the word, happy? That's what you should be doing, if the other part is also met - if it is something the world needs.
Frederick Buechner
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To be commanded to love God at all, let alone in the wilderness, is like being commanded to be well when we are sick, to sing for joy when we are dying of thirst, to run when our legs are broken. But this is the first and great commandment nonetheless. Even in the wilderness - especially in the wilderness - you shall love him.
Frederick Buechner
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Laugh till you weep. Weep till there's nothing left but to laugh at your weeping. In the end it's all one.
Frederick Buechner
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For some people, going to church is going home. In a very profound sense, I would say the same thing. Home is where Christ is.
Frederick Buechner
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You can never be sure whether you are discovering the truth or inventing it.
Frederick Buechner
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Maybe at the heart of all our traveling is the dream of someday, somehow, getting Home.
Frederick Buechner
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We cannot make the Kingdom of God happen, but we can put out leaves as it draws near. We can be kind to each other. We can be kind to ourselves. We can drive back the darkness a little. We can make green places within ourselves and among ourselves where God can make his Kingdom happen.
Frederick Buechner
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Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom, the good thief said from his cross (Luke 23:42). There are perhaps no more human words in all of Scripture, no prayer we can pray so well.
Frederick Buechner
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The trouble with really seeing and really hearing is that then we really have to do something about what we have seen and heard.
Frederick Buechner
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the story of any one of us is in some measure the story of us all
Frederick Buechner
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Think of these pages as graffiti maybe, and where I have scratched up in a public place my longings and loves, my grievances and indecencies, be reminded in private of your own. In that way, at least, we can hold a kind of converse.
Frederick Buechner
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Listen. Your life is happening. You are happening. Think back on your journey. The music of your life.
Frederick Buechner
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Stop trying to protect, to rescue, to judge, to manage the lives around you... Remember that the lives of others are not your business. They are their business. They are God's busineess... Even your own life is not your business. It also is God's Business. Leave it to God.
Frederick Buechner
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Almost nothing that makes any real difference can be proved.
Frederick Buechner
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Not to love is, psychically, spiritually, to die. To live for yourself alone, hoarding your life for your own sake, is in almost every sense that matters to reduce your life to a life hardly worth the living, and thus to lose it.
Frederick Buechner
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It is important to tell our secrets too because ... it makes it easier for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own, and exchanges like that have a lot to do with what being a family is all about and what being human is all about.
Frederick Buechner
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ON HER DEATHBED, Gertrude Stein is said to have asked, 'What is the answer?' Then, after a long silence, 'What is the question?' Don't start looking in the Bible for the answers it gives. Start by listening for the questions it asks.
Frederick Buechner