He will wipe the tears from all faces.' It takes nothing from the loveliness of the verse to say that is exactly what will be required
...if you ever wonder what you've done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God's grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote expresses a deep appreciation for someone's presence and impact in one's life, likening it to a divine blessing.
In this quote, Marilynne Robinson conveys the profound gratitude one feels for a loved one's existence, suggesting that such a relationship transcends ordinary experiences and can be perceived as a miraculous event. The idea that individuals might question their life's significance is counterbalanced by the recognition of the profound and positive influence their loved ones can have, making them feel as if they possess the grace of a higher power.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a wedding speech, one might say this quote to highlight the importance of love in a marriage.
More from Marilynne Robinson
All quotes →It seems to me there is less meanness in atheism, by a good measure. It seems that the spirit of religious self-righteousness this article deplores is precisely the spirit in which it is written. Of course he's right about many things, one of them being the destructive potency of religious self-righteousness. (p. 146)
A narrow pond would form in the orchard, water clear as air covering grass and black leaves and fallen branches, all around it black leaves and drenched grass and fallen branches, and on it, slight as an image in an eye, sky, clouds, trees, our hovering faces and our cold hands.
The moon looks wonderful in this warm evening light, just as a candle flame looks beautiful in the light of morning. Light within light...It seems to me to be a metaphor for the human soul, the singular light within that great general light of existence.
There are worries that seem to me sustained by the love of worry. For example, that people are reading from screens, or listening to recorded books. Why scold the impulse to enjoy language and narrative in whatever form it takes?
Teaching is a distraction and a burden, but it's also an incredible stimulus. And a reprieve, in a way. When you're trying to work on something and it's not going anywhere, you can go to school and there's a two-and-a-half-hour block of time in which you can accomplish something.
Similar quotes
Love is the sole impulse for creation; and the man who does not have it as the greatest incentive in his life has never developed the real creative instinct. No one can swing out into the Universal without love, for the whole universe is based upon it.
We forget some of the oldest medicines we have are love and compassion, and they can be deployed by everyone.
She stood a moment before my eyes, clearly and painfully, loved and deeply woven into my destiny; then fell away again in a deep oblivion, at a half regretted distance.
Horror jolts me when I look at one of you and see a pair of beautiful eyes that make me think your mind might contain a world that could hold me as the bolts shake loose and fly from my frame.
Do not waste time bothering whether you "love" your neighbor; act as if you did.
He wanted to appear suddenly to her in novel and heroic colors. He wanted to stir her from that casualness she showed toward everything except herself.