Quote

Your calling is where your own greatest joy intersects with the needs of the world.

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
Greatest
Needs
World
Intersects
Calling
Joy

More quotes by Frederick Buechner

Image
I'm a hopeless prayer. I think somewhere in there I spend a great deal of time at it.
Frederick Buechner
Image
You can never be sure whether you are discovering the truth or inventing it.
Frederick Buechner
Image
The difference to me is not between the believers on one hand and the nonbelievers on the other hand. It's between people who carry in their hearts some sense of what the word God, at least to me, means, which is a loving, creating, everlastingly renewing presence deeply concerned with the well-being of the earth and all its creatures.
Frederick Buechner
Image
Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention.
Frederick Buechner
Image
You enter the extraordinary by way of the ordinary
Frederick Buechner
Image
He [Jesus] speaks in parables, and though we have approached these parables reverentially all these many years and have heard them expounded as grave and reverent vehicles of holy truth, I suspect that many if not all of them were originally not grave at all but were antic, comic, often more than just a little shocking.
Frederick Buechner
Image
If you are going to proclaim the Christian faith, speak about those dimensions of it which you['ve] had some experience with.
Frederick Buechner
Image
I say, “You may be right, but don’t knock it until you’re tried it. Don’t say, ‘I think it’s worthless therefore I’m not going to spend any time looking into myself the way one who prays does.'” Maybe that’s an even worse mistake than praying might be.
Frederick Buechner
Image
If preachers decide to preach about hope, let them preach out of what they themselves hope for.
Frederick Buechner
Image
If you have never known the power of God's love, then maybe it is because you have never asked to know it - I mean really asked, expecting an answer.
Frederick Buechner
Image
To be wise is to be eternally curious.
Frederick Buechner
Image
For as long as you remember me, I am never entirely lost.
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
If you want to talk about grace, if you want to talk about revelation, talk about your life with some depth, which doesn't mean lurid revelations as much as simply looking at your own deep experiences and describing them as they are.
Frederick Buechner
Image
Becoming a Christian was terribly helpful to me. I can't imagine finding my way without it. I think it can be very crucially important to ally yourself with some religion.
Frederick Buechner
Image
What's lost is nothing to what's found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup.
Frederick Buechner
Image
I don't know that it makes any difference whether it's at this time or a hundred years before or a hundred years later. I think always it's a matter of simply listen[ing] to what is going on around you and in your own experience. Try to understand what's happening, or if not to understand it, at least to appreciate the reality of it.
Frederick Buechner
Image
Unbelief is as much of a choice as belief is. What makes it in many ways more appealing is that whereas to believe in something requires some measure of understanding and effort, not to believe doesn't require much of anything at all.
Frederick Buechner
Image
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
Image
That's five friends, one each for Jesu's wounds, and Godric bears their mark still on what's left of him as in their time they all bore his on them. What's friendship, when all's done, but the giving and taking of wounds?
Frederick Buechner