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People don't acknowledge loneliness in themselves, and don't appreciate its benefits, the reflection and attentiveness that come with it, the deepened acquaintance with oneself.

Marilynne Robinson

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Marilynne Robinson
Age: 80
Born: 1943
Born: November 26
Essayist
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Sandpoint
Idaho
Marilynne Summers Robinson
Marilynne S. Robinson
Reflection
Oneself
Benefits
Appreciate
Attentiveness
Come
Deepened
People
Acquaintance
Acknowledge
Loneliness

More quotes by Marilynne Robinson

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Sometimes my doubt seems intuitive, but most likely it derives from an implausibility or a logical problem I may at first find difficult to identify and articulate. It is interesting to me to work through questions that arise in this way.
Marilynne Robinson
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These people who can see right through you never quite do you justice, because they never give you credit for the effort you're making to be better than you actually are, which is difficult and well meant and deserving of some little notice.
Marilynne Robinson
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It seems to me some people just go around lookin' to get their faith unsettled. That has been the fashion for the last hundred years or so.
Marilynne Robinson
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When we accept dismissive judgments of our community we stop having generous hope for it. We cease to be capable of serving its best interests.
Marilynne Robinson
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Cultures cherish artists because they are people who can say, Look at that.
Marilynne Robinson
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I think hope is the worst thing in the world. I really do. It makes a fool of you while it lasts. And then when it's gone, it's like there's nothing left of you at all . . . except what you can't be rid of.
Marilynne Robinson
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I have always liked the phrase nursing a grudge because many people are tender of their resentments as of the thing nearest their hearts.
Marilynne Robinson
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Rejoice with those who rejoice. I have found that difficult too often. I was much better at weeping with those who weep.
Marilynne Robinson
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There is more beauty than our eyes can bear, precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm.
Marilynne Robinson
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[John] Calvin treats experience as essentially visionary and revelatory from moment to moment, addressed to the individual perceiver, the individual soul. Where this is assumed preconceptions can only distract and obscure, though, of course, as human beings we can never wholly free ourselves of them.
Marilynne Robinson
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I don't think I would worry about an oversaturation of information if it was indeed information. It is the slovenly, hasty traffic in cliché and sensationalism and bad reasoning that bothers me. I love finding arcane primary texts on the web. The people who think to put them up are heroes of mine.
Marilynne Robinson
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I want to feel that art is an utterance made in good faith by one human being to another.
Marilynne Robinson
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I think the essence of family is that you have to agree to it, and then supply, out of your imagination and capacity for loyalty, the contents of it.
Marilynne Robinson
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It was a source of both terror and comfort to me then that I often seemed invisible - incompletely and minimally existent, in fact. It seemed to me that I made no impact on the world, and that in exchange I was privileged to watch it unawares.
Marilynne Robinson
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It is one of the best traits of good people that they love where they pity. And this is truer of women than of men.
Marilynne Robinson
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You never know when you might be seeing someone for the last time.
Marilynne Robinson
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Now that I look back, it seems to me that in all that deep darkness a miracle was preparing. So I am right to remember it as a blessed time, and myself as waiting in confidence, even if I had no idea what i was waiting for.
Marilynne Robinson
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She knew that was not an honest prayer, and she did not linger over it. The right prayer would have been, Lord . . . I am miserable and bitter at heart, and old fears are rising up in me so that everything I do makes everything worse.
Marilynne Robinson
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I would advise you against defensiveness on priciple. it precludes the best eventualities along with the worst. At the most basic level it expresses a lack of faith.
Marilynne Robinson
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A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.
Marilynne Robinson