Quote

If you talk about sin, you don't have to use the first person singular, but speak out of that part of yourself which knows what it means to become estranged from people you love. Speak in your own voice about things that you in your own life have in one way or another experienced.

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
First
Means
Mean
Speak
Estranged
Way
Another
Singular
Things
Become
Experienced
Love
Part
Sin
Life
Persons
Talk
People
Person
Voice
Firsts
Use

More quotes by Frederick Buechner

Image
The Jesus who is the one whom we search for even when we do not know that we are searching and hide from even when we do not know that we are hiding.
Frederick Buechner
Image
Speak in your own voice and speak about things that you have in some sense witnessed, not just things you read about or have been taught about in seminary. To talk about the resurrection, think about those moments where in some way you have been resurrected.
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
When someone we love suffers, we suffer with that person, and we would not have it otherwise, because the suffering and the love are one, just as it is with God's love for us.
Frederick Buechner
Image
Listen. Your life is happening. You are happening. Think back on your journey. The music of your life.
Frederick Buechner
Image
At the evening of our day, we shall be judged by our loving.
Frederick Buechner
Image
Beneath the worst the world can do, there is always the glimmer of the best.
Frederick Buechner
Image
She was right that reality can be harsh and that you shut your eyes to it only at your peril because if you do not face up to the enemy in all his dark power, then the enemy will come up from behind some dark day and destoy you while you are facing the other way.
Frederick Buechner
Image
The sacred moments, the moments of miracle, are often the everyday moments.
Frederick Buechner
Image
I was deeply influenced by an Episcopal laywoman named Agnes Sanford, who in her day was quite famous as a faith healer, which is a term I've always distrusted, because it conjures up charlatanry. She was not a charlatan. She was the real thing, and she had had remarkable healings.
Frederick Buechner
Image
The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.
Frederick Buechner
Image
If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors. With our imagination as well as our eyes, that is to say like artists, we must see not just their faces but the life behind and within their faces. Here it is love that is the frame we see them in.
Frederick Buechner
Image
I don't want to give the impression that I'm a great Bible reader. I don't sit down every day and read for an hour through the Bible. But I really do read it with a great deal of pleasure... which is the last thing I would have suspected. So I read it sometimes as a devotional, but really more, not for fun, but because it's fascinating.
Frederick Buechner
Image
If you want to be holy, be kind.
Frederick Buechner
Image
Each one of us could describe his or her life as a sacred journey. You are journeying from the beginning to the end, and what makes it sacred is that in the process of this journey you encounter the holy in various forms which, unless you have your eyes open, you might not even notice.
Frederick Buechner
Image
Sin and grace, absence and presence, tragedy and comedy, they divide the world between them and where they meet head on, the Gospel happens.
Frederick Buechner
Image
Almost nothing that makes any real difference can be proved.
Frederick Buechner
Image
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
Image
Even the saddest things can become, once we have made peace with them, a source of wisdom and strength.
Frederick Buechner
Image
Toleration is often just indifference in disguise.
Frederick Buechner