Normal, in our house, is like a blanket too short for a bed--sometimes it covers you just fine, and other times it leaves you cold and shaking; and worst of all, you never know which of the two it's going to be.
Jodi PicoultRead
Religion was supposed to be a blanket drawn up to your chin to keep you warm, a promise that when it came to the end, you wouldn't die alone - but it could just as easily leave you shivering out in the cold, if WHAT you believed became more important than the fact THAT you believed.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the duality of religion as both a source of comfort and a potential source of division based on dogma.
Jodi Picoult's quote captures the essence of how religion is meant to provide solace and connection, suggesting that faith should bring people together rather than create friction. However, when the emphasis shifts from the act of believing to the specific beliefs themselves, it can lead to alienation and conflict, leaving individuals feeling isolated rather than embraced by their faith.
Themes
ReligionFaithBeliefComfortDivision
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the role of religion in society, one might refer to this quote to illustrate how faith can have both positive and negative impacts.
More from Jodi Picoult
All quotes →Whether it was power they sought, or revenge, or love-well, those were all just different forms of hunger. The bigger the hole inside you, the more desperate you became to fill it.
Jodi PicoultRead
she told me she'd be a phoenix." The image of the mythical creature rising from the ashes glitters in my mind. "They don't really exist." "She said that depends on whether or not there's someone who can see them.
Jodi PicoultRead
for 100,000 (dollars), you [can] flatten a house with a wrecking ball. Imagine how much less it [takes] to destroy something than it [does] to build it in the first place.
Jodi PicoultRead
But if you seek forgiveness, doesn't that automatically mean you cannot be a monster? By definition, doesn't that desperation make you human again?
Jodi PicoultRead
when you [lose someone], it feels like the hole in your gum when a tooth falls out. You can chew, you can eat, you have plenty of other teeth, but your tongue keeps going back to that empty place, where all nerves are still a little raw
Jodi PicoultRead
Similar quotes
We must stress that the basis for our faith is neither experience nor emotion but the truth as God has given it in verbalized, prepositional form in the Scripture and which we first of all apprehend with our minds.
Francis SchaefferRead
We have to keep asking ourselves: 'What does it all mean? What is God trying to tell us? How are we called to live in the midst of all this?' Without such questions our lives become numb and flat.
Henri NouwenRead
When some state or other offered Alexander a part of its territory and half of all its property he told them that 'he hadn't come to Asia with the intention of accepting whatever they cared to give him, but of letting them keep whatever he chose to leave them.' Philosophy, likewise, tells all other occupations: 'It's not my intention to accept whatever time is leftover from you; you shall have, instead, what I reject.' Give your whole mind to her.
Seneca The YoungerRead
In Christian terms, evangelization and humanization are not alternatives. Nor are the 'vertical dimension' of faith and the 'horizontal dimension' of love for one's neighbor and political change.
Jurgen MoltmannRead
The State, on the other hand, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably held itself above justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing.
Albert J. NockRead
Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws.
William BlackstoneRead