"For the Time Being" Quotes

There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end. It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage.

We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet.

We are here to abet creation and to witness it, to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed.

Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what's going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.

There are no events but thoughts and the heart's hard turning, the heart's slow learning where to love and whom. The rest is merely gossip, and tales for other times.

It is apparent that there are no clear answers to the questions we most care about. At best, we have surrounded them with maps.

The mind wants to live forever, or to learn a very good reason why not.

Why do people in church seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?

There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable.

There are many people who can do big things, but there are very few people who will do the small things.