Flannery oconnor quotes education

Education Teacher Women. We are not judged by what we are basically. We are judged by how hard we use what we have been given. Success means nothing to the Lord. Mean Use Lord. You can't clobber any reader while he's looking. You divert his attention, then you clobber him and he never knows what hit him. Attention Reader Knows. I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe.

Believe Thinking Doubt. To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness. Life Views Too Much. We hear a great deal of lamentation these days about writers having all taken themselves to the colleges and universities where they live decorously instead of going out and getting firsthand information about life.

The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can't make something out of a little experience, you probably won't be able to make it out of a lot. The writer's business is to contemplate experience, not to be merged in it. Taken College Childhood. I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.

Eye Blessing I Can. I use the grotesque the way I do because people are deaf and dumb and need help to see and hear. People Dumb Needs. The mind serves best when it's anchored in the Word of God. There is no danger then of becoming an intellectual without integrity. Integrity Intellectual Mind. Every morning between 9 and 12 I go to my room and sit before a piece of paper.

Many times, I just sit for three hours with no ideas coming to me. But I know one thing. If an idea does come between 9 and 12 I am there ready for it. Morning Ideas Doe. The high-school English teacher will be fulfilling his responsibility if he furnishes the student a guided opportunity, through the best writing of the past, to come, in time, to an understanding of the best writing of the present.

He will teach literature, not social studies or little lessons in democracy or the customs of many lands. And if the student finds that this is not to his taste? Well, that is regrettable. Most regrettable. His taste should not be consulted; it is being formed. Teacher Writing School. Satisfy your demand for reason but always remember that charity is beyond reason, and God can be known through charity.

Charity Demand Remember. For me it is the virgin birth, the Incarnation, the resurrection which are the true laws of the flesh and the physical. Death, decay, destruction are the suspension of these laws. I am always astonished at the emphasis the Church puts on the body. It is not the soul she says that will rise but the body, glorified.

Law Soul Church. I suppose half of writing is overcoming the revulsion you feel when you sit down to it. Writing Overcoming Half. I am tired of reading reviews that call A Good Man brutal and sarcastic. The stories are hard but they are hard because there is nothing harder or less sentimental than Christian realism Christian Sarcastic Reading.

Only if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of the universe. Sides Belief Secure. She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick. Saint Martyr Ifs. Once the process [of conversion] is begun and continues I measure God by everything I am not. I begin with that. Faith Selfish Order.

Most of us have learned to be dispassionate about evil, to look it in the face and find, as often as not, our own grinning reflections with which we do not argue, but good is another matter. Few have stared at that long enough to accept that its face too is grotesque, that in us the good is something under construction. The modes of evil usually receive worthy expression.

The modes of good have to be satisfied with a cliche or a smoothing down that will soften their real look. Real Reflection Expression. I have also found that what I write is read by an audience which puts little stock either in grace or the devil. You discover your audience at the same time and in the same way that you discover your subject, but it is an added blow.

Reading Writing Blow. You don't serve God by saying: the Church is ineffective, I'll have none of it. Your pain at its lack of effectiveness is a sign of your nearness to God. We help overcome this lack of effectiveness simply by suffering on account of it. Pain Effectiveness Suffering. Conviction without experience makes for harshness.

Experience Conviction Harshness. I love a lot of people, understand none of them. All Quotes Add A Quote. Books by Flannery O'Connor. The Violent Bear It Away 14, ratings. Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Collected Works 3, ratings. His taste should not be consulted; it is being formed.

Add to Favorite List. The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally. The basic experience of everyone is the experience of human limitation. I am much younger now than I was at twelve or anyway, less burdened. If you do the same thing every day at the same time for the same length of time, you'll save yourself from many a sink.

Routine is a condition of survival. I am a writer because writing is the thing I do best. To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life, and this is a softness that ends in bitterness. It is better to be young in your failures than old in your successes. Quotes Authors Topics. Famous Quotes. Author Index. Then, too, any character in a serious novel is supposed to carry a burden of meaning larger than himself.

The novelist doesn't write about people in a vacuum; he writes about people in a world where something is obviously lacking, where there is the general mystery of incompleteness and the particular tragedy of our own times to be demonstrated, and the novelist tries to give you, within the form of the book, the total experience of human nature at any time.

For this reason, the greatest dramas naturally involve the salvation or loss of the soul. Where there is no belief in the soul, there is very little drama. There is no danger then of becoming an intellectual without integrity We might go through the motions but the heart would be out of it.

Flannery oconnor quotes education

Nobody could then 'smile darkly and ignore the howls. I think the more you write, the less inclined you will be to rely on theories like determinism. Mystery isn't something that is gradually evaporating. It grows along with knowledge. Death, decay, destruction are the suspension of these laws.