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Justice is the grammar of things. Mercy is the poetry of things.

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
Things
Grammar
Mercy
Poetry
Justice

More quotes by Frederick Buechner

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If it seems a childish thing to do, do it in remembrance that you are a child.
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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Being a good steward of your pain. . . . It involves being alive to your life. It involves taking the risk of being open, of reaching out, of keeping in touch with the pain as well as the joy of what happens because at no time more than at a painful time do we live out of the depths of who we are instead of out of the shallows.
Frederick Buechner
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Pay attention to the things that bring a tear to your eye or a lump in your throat because they are signs that the holy is drawing near.
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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Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is better than we ever dared hope, and that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good news, is of all glad things in this world the gladdest thing of all. Amen, and come Lord Jesus.
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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Life is grace. Sleep is forgiveness. The night absolves. Darkness wipes the slate clean, not spotless to be sure, but clean enough for another day's chalking.
Frederick Buechner
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Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.
Frederick Buechner
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To be bored to death is a form of suicide.
Frederick Buechner
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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
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The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done....the place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet
Frederick Buechner
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The world needs people who save lives.
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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The magic of words is that they have power to do more than convey meaning not only do they have the power to make things clear, they make things happen.
Frederick Buechner
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Beneath the worst the world can do, there is always the glimmer of the best.
Frederick Buechner
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We have God's joy in our blood.
Frederick Buechner
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There is no event so common place but that God is present within it, always hidden, always leaving you room to recognize Him or not to recognize Him.
Frederick Buechner
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But it has been my experience that the risks are faroutweighed by the rewards, chief of which is when you speak to strangers as though they are friends, more often than not, if only for as long as the encounter lasts, they become friends, and if in the process they also think of you as a little peculiar, who cares?
Frederick Buechner
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You can never be sure whether you are discovering the truth or inventing it.
Frederick Buechner