Inspirational Quotes by Frederick Buechner
“We are in constant danger of being not actors in the drama of our own lives but reactors.”
“Lying to God is like sawing the branch you're sitting on. The better you do it, the harder you fall.”
― Frederick Buechner ,
from Peculiar Treasures
“I would go so far as to say that it may even have caused him to think the more highly of them because their unbelief grew from a far more honest view of the wretchedness of things than the belief of the devout who see only what they choose to see and turn a blind eye on the rest.”
“Podes despedir-te da tua família e dos teus amigos e afastar-te milhares de quilómetros, mas, ao mesmo tempo, leva-los no teu coração, na tua mente, no teu estomâgo, pois não só vives no mundo, mas o mundo vive em ti”
“No one can be an atheist who does not know all things. Only God is an atheist.”
topics: spirituality
“Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past ... to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back -- in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”
topics: Anger
“Many an atheist is a believer without knowing it just as many a believer is an atheist without knowing it. You can sincerely believe there is no God and live as though there is. You can sincerely believe there is a God and live as though there isn't.”
topics: Atheism
“Believing in him is not the same as believing things about him such as that he was born of a virgin and raised Lazarus from the dead. Instead, it is a matter of giving our hearts to him, of come hell or high water putting our money on him, the way a child believes in a mother or a father, the way a mother or a father believes in a child.”
topics: Believing
“It is impossible to conceive how different things would have turned out if that birth had not happened whenever, wherever, however it did ... for millions of people who have lived since, the birth of Jesus made possible not just a new way of understanding life but a new way of living it. It is a truth that, for twenty centuries, there have been untold numbers of men and women who, in untold numbers of ways, have been so grasped by the child who was born, so caught up in the message he taught and the life he lived, that they have found themselves profoundly changed by their relationship with him.”
“Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else's skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.”
“To confess your sins to God is not to tell [God] anything [God] doesn't already know. Until you confess them, however, they are the abyss between you. When you confess them, they become the bridge.”
topics: Confession
“We must be careful with our lives, for Christ's sake, because it would seem that they are the only lives we are going to have in this puzzling and perilous world, and so they are very precious and what we do with them matters enormously.”
“You can't be too careful what you tell a child because you never know what he'll take hold of and spend the rest of his life remembering you by.”
“Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”
topics: Doubt
“The life that I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.”
topics: Examples
“I not only have my secrets, I am my secrets. And you are yours. Our secrets are human secrets, and our trusting each other enough to share them with each other has much to do with the secret of what it means to be human.”
topics: Friendship
“It's less the words they say than those they leave unsaid that split old friends apart.”
topics: Friendship
“Avarice, greed, concupiscence and so forth are all based on the mathematical truism that the more you get, the more you have. The remark of that it is more blessed to give than to receive is based on the human truth that the more you give away in love, the more you are. It is not just for the sake of other people that tells us to give rather than get, but for our own sakes too.”
topics: Giving
“In his holy flirtation with the world, God occasionally drops a handkerchief. These handkerchiefs are called saints.”
topics: God
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Carl Frederick Buechner is an American writer and theologian. Born July 11, 1926 in New York City, he is an ordained Presbyterian minister and the author of more than thirty published books thus far. His work encompasses different genres, including fiction, autobiography, essays and sermons, and his career has spanned six decades. Buechner's books have been translated into many languages for publication around the world.
Frederick Buechner is among the most widely read contemporary Christian authors. His popularity is attested by numerous awards and honorary degrees. Buechner's work has often been praised for its ability to inspire readers to see the grace in their daily lives.