Quote

. . . [T]o live not with hands clenched to grasp, to strike, to hold tight to a life that is always slipping away the more tightly we hold it, but . . . to live with the hands stretched out both to give and receive with gladness.

Frederick Buechner

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Frederick Buechner
Age: 98
Born: 1926
Born: July 11
Autobiographer
Novelist
Poet
Theologian
Writer
New York City
New York
Carl Frederick Buechner
Hands
Tight
Give
Grasp
Live
Strike
Giving
Strikes
Clenched
Always
Receive
Tightly
Life
Hold
Stretched
Peace
Gladness
Away
Slipping

More quotes by Frederick Buechner

Image
God himself does not give answers. He gives himself.
Frederick Buechner
Image
Lord, catch me off guard today. Surprise me with some moment of beauty or pain so that at least for the moment, I may be startled into seeing that you are here in all your splendor, always and everywhere, barely hidden, beneath, beyond, within this life I breathe.
Frederick Buechner
Image
The best moments any of us have as human beings are those moments when for a little while it is possible to escape the squirrel-cage of being me into the landscape of being us.
Frederick Buechner
Image
When [our secrets] are sad and hurtful secrets, like my father's death, we can in a way honor the hurt by letting ourselves feel it as we never let ourselves feel it before, and then, having felt it, by laying it aside we can start to take care of ourselves the way we take care of people we love.
Frederick Buechner
Image
Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.
Frederick Buechner
Image
if you don't have doubts you're either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants-in-the-pants of faith. They keep it alive and moving.
Frederick Buechner
Image
If preachers decide to preach about hope, let them preach out of what they themselves hope for.
Frederick Buechner
Image
Envy is the consuming desire to have everybody else as unsuccessful as you are.
Frederick Buechner
Image
Go where your best prayers take you.
Frederick Buechner
Image
To journey for the sake of saving our own lives is little by little to cease to live in any sense that really matters, even to ourselves, because it is only by journeying for the world's sake - even when the world bores and sickens and scares you half to death - that little by little we start to come alive.
Frederick Buechner
Image
To believe in Christ is to give your heart to Christ, which means not to affirm things about Christ, but it's like what you mean when you say, I believe in my friend.
Frederick Buechner
Image
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
Image
Faith in God is less apt to proceed from miracles than miracles from faith in God.
Frederick Buechner
Image
the story of any one of us is in some measure the story of us all
Frederick Buechner
Image
Thus, when you wake up in the morning, called by God to be a self again, if you want to know who you are, watch your feet. Because where your feet take you, that is who you are.
Frederick Buechner
Image
It is as impossible for man to demonstrate the existence of God as it would be for even Sherlock Holmes to demonstrate the existence of Arthur Conan Doyle.
Frederick Buechner
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I suspect that Jesus spoke many of his parables as a kind of sad and holy joke and that that may be part of why he seemed reluctant to explain them because if you have to explain a joke, you might as well save your breath.
Frederick Buechner
Image
The past is the place we view the present from as much as the other way around.
Frederick Buechner