Quotes by Flannery O'Connor
Flannery O'Connor (1925–1964) — Schriftstellerin · Katholisch · USA
Mary Flannery O’Connor war eine katholische US-amerikanische Schriftstellerin, die Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts in Georgia wirkte. Bekannt wurde sie durch ihre dem „Southern Gothic“ zugerechneten Kurzgeschichten und Romane, in denen sie mit grotesken Figuren und dramatischen Wendungen das radikale Einbrechen göttlicher Gnade in eine gefallene Welt darstellte. Für Bibellesende bietet ihr Werk eine scharfkantige Auseinandersetzung mit Sünde und Erlösung jenseits frommer Sentimentalität, während rassistische Äußerungen in ihren privaten Briefen heute Gegenstand kritischer Diskussionen sind.
Era: The 20th Century
Recurring topics: Wisdom & Understanding, Faith & Trust, Freedom & Truth, Suffering & the Question of God, Temptation & Struggle, Humility & Pride, Doubt & Hard Questions, Grace & Redemption
Quotes by Flannery O'Connor
Faith comes and goes. It rises and falls like the tides of an invisible ocean. If it is presumptuous to think that faith will stay with you forever, it is just as presumptuous to think that unbelief will.
Flannery O'Connor
"Lord, I believe; help my unbelief" is the most natural and most human and most agonizing prayer in the gospels, and I think it is the foundation prayer of faith.
Flannery O'Connor
All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.
Flannery O'Connor
What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.
Flannery O'Connor
Your beliefs will be the light by which you see, but they will not be what you see and they will not be a substitute for seeing.
Flannery O'Connor
Conviction without experience makes for harshness.
Flannery O'Connor
Give me the courage to stand the pain to get the grace.
Flannery O'Connor
Dear God, I don't want to have invented my faith to satisfy my weakness. I don't want to have created God to my own image as they're so fond of saying. Please give me the necessary grace, oh Lord.
Flannery O'Connor
I do not know You God because I am in the way. Please help me to push myself aside.
Flannery O'Connor
Children know by instinct that hell is an absence of love, and they can pick out theirs without missing.
Flannery O'Connor
I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.
Flannery O'Connor
I come from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation. In some this tendency produces hives, in others literature, in me both.
Flannery O'Connor
To know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility.
Flannery O'Connor
Satisfy your demand for reason but always remember that charity is beyond reason, and God can be known through charity.
Flannery O'Connor
Hell seems a great deal more feasible to my weak mind than heaven.
Flannery O'Connor
Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.
Flannery O'Connor
I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.
Flannery O'Connor
When there is a tendency to compartmentalize the spiritual and make it resident in a certain type of life only, the spiritual is apt gradually to be lost.
Flannery O'Connor
The mind serves best when it's anchored in the Word of God. There is no danger then of becoming an intellectual without integrity.
Flannery O'Connor
A working knowledge of the devil can be very well had from resisting him.
Flannery O'Connor
Virtue must be the only vigorous thing in our lives. Sin is large and stale. You can never finish eating it nor ever digest it. It has to be vomited.
Flannery O'Connor
Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.
Flannery O'Connor
Smugness is the Great Catholic Sin.
Flannery O'Connor
Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.
Flannery O'Connor
Our age not only does not have a very sharp eye for the almost imperceptible intrusions of grace, it no longer has much feeling for the nature of the violences which precede and follow them.
Flannery O'Connor
No one can be an atheist who does not know all things. Only God is an atheist. The devil is the greatest believer and he has his reasons.
Flannery O'Connor
Dogma is the guardian of mystery. The doctrines are spiritually significant in ways that we cannot fathom.
Flannery O'Connor
When something is finished, it cannot be possessed. Nothing can be possessed but the struggle.
Flannery O'Connor
Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it.
Flannery O'Connor
There is no excuse for anyone to write fiction for public consumption unless he has been called to do so by the presence of a gift. It is the nature of fiction not to be good for much unless it is good in itself.
Flannery O'Connor
Sources: bittersoutherner.com, georgetown.edu, broadview.org, patheos.com
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