Quote of the Day (Marilynne Robinson, on ‘Unhappy Societies’)

“Unhappy societies tend to blame and punish the weakest among them.” — Novelist-essayist Marilynne Robinson, “Modern Victorians,” Harper’s Magazine, July 1995

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Marilynne Robinson, on the Bible’s ‘Interest in the Human’)

“The remarkable realism of the Bible, the voices it captures, the characterization it achieves, are products of an interest in the human that has no parallel in ancient literature. The Lord stands back, so to speak. The text does not blur the unlikeness of the mortal and the divine by giving us demigods.” —American novelist-essayist Marilynne Robinson, Reading Genesis (2024)

The image accompanying this post, Abraham and Isaac (also known as The Sacrifice of Isaac), was created by the Venetian painter Titian (ca. 1488-1576).

Quote of the Day (Marilynne Robinson, on Wilderness and Secrecy)

“Idaho, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico. These names are all notorious among those who know anything at all about nuclear weapons. Wilderness is where things can be hidden, from foreign enemies, perhaps, but certainly from domestic critics. This effect is enhanced by the fact that wilderness dwellers everywhere are typically rather poor and scattered, not much in the public mind, not significant as voters. Wilderness is where things can be done that would be intolerable in a populous landscape. The relative absence of human populations obscures the nature and effect of programs which have no other object than to be capable of the most profound injury to human populations. Of course, even wilderness can only absorb such insult to the systems of life to a degree, for a while. Nature is very active—aquifers so vast, rivers so tireless, wind so pervading.”—American novelist-essayist Marilynne Robinson, “Surrendering Wilderness,” excerpted in The Wilson Quarterly, Autumn 1998, reprinted in The Death of Adam (1998)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Marilynne Robinson, on Why Love is Holy)

“Love is holy because it is like grace—the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.” —Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (2004)

Quote of the Day (Marilynne Robinson, on American Blindness and Courage)

Recurrences, atavisms, are by no means uniquely, or even especially, an American phenomenon. What are we to do? Prayer would be appropriate, and reflection. We should take very seriously what the dreadful past can tell us about our blindnesses and predilections. The haunting fact is that we are morally free. If everyone around us is calling for Barabbas, it is only probable, never necessary, that some of us join in. Since we have not yet burned the taper of earthly existence down to its end, we still have time to muster the dignity and graciousness and courage that are uniquely our gift. If we are making the last testament to the nature of human life, or if we are only one more beleaguered generation in a series whose end we cannot foresee, each of us and all of us know what human beauty would look like. We could let it have its moment. Fine, but would this solve the world’s problems? It might solve a good many of them, I think.”— Marilynne Robinson, “Awakening,” The Financial Times, Oct. 24-25, 2015

Quote of the Day (Marilynne Robinson, on ‘Reasons to Live This Life’)

“There are a thousand, thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.”-- Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (2004)

Quote of the Day (Marilynne Robinson, on ‘Punitive Severity Toward the Vulnerable’)

“It is not unusual now to hear that we have lost our values, that we have lost our way. In the desperations of the moment, justified or not, certain among us have turned on our heritage, the country that has emerged out of generations of attention to public education, public health, public safety, access to suffrage, equality under law. It turns out, by their reckoning, that the country they call the greatest on earth has spent most of its history acting against its own (great) nature, and that the enhancements of life it has provided for the generality of its people, or to phrase it more democratically, that the people have provided for themselves, have made its citizens weak and dependent. How the greatest nation on earth maintains this exalted status while burdened with a population these patriots do not like or respect is an interesting question, certainly. In any case, the return to traditional values seems to mean to them, together with a bracing and punitive severity toward the vulnerable among us, the establishment of a kind of religious mono-culture we have never had and our institutions have never encouraged.”-- Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child I Read Books: Essays (2012)