Flannery O'Connor Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Humorous, Credit, Tongue

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.86, Macmillan

  58 Copy quote

• A working knowledge of the devil can be very well had from resisting him.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Devil, Wells, Resisting

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.163, Macmillan

  29 Copy quote

• On the subject of the feminist business, I just never think...of qualities which are specifically feminine or masculine. I suppose I divide people into two classes: the Irksome and the Non-Irksome without regard to sex. Yes and there are the Medium Irksome and the Rare Irksome.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Sex, Thinking, Class

  14 Copy quote

• In most good stories, it is the character's personality that creates the action of the story. If you start with real personality, a real character, then something is bound to happen.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Real, Character, Personality

  7 Copy quote

• To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Hearing, Blind, Figures

  Flannery O'Connor (2012). “Flannery O'Connor: The Cartoons”, p.117, Fantagraphics Books

  32 Copy quote

• 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.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Law, Soul, Church

  10 Copy quote

• Unadaptability is often a virtue.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Virtue, Adaptability

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.365, Macmillan

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  Life, Fall, Writing

  5 Copy quote

• Dogma is the guardian of mystery. The doctrines are spiritually significant in ways that we cannot fathom.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Doctrine, Way, Dogma

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “Collected Works”, New York, NY : Library of America : Distributed to the trade in the U.S. and Canada by Viking Press

  11 Copy quote

• 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.... when I see these stories described as horror stories I am always amused because the reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Christian, Sarcastic, Reading

  23 Copy quote

• 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

  Integrity, Intellectual, Mind

  8 Copy quote

• If you don't hunt it down and kill it, it will hunt you down and kill you.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Down And, Hunts, Ifs

  Flannery O'Connor (2015). “Wise Blood”, p.92, Faber & Faber

  8 Copy quote

• The only way to the truth is through blasphemy.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Truth, Way, Truth Is

  Flannery O'Connor (2015). “Wise Blood”, p.82, Faber & Faber

  14 Copy quote

• It is hard to make your adversaries real people unless you recognize yourself in them - in which case, if you don't watch out, they cease to be adversaries.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Real, People, Watches

  7 Copy quote

• The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Despair, Way, Kind

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.78, Macmillan

  19 Copy quote

• Remember that you don't write a story because you have an idea but because you have a believable character.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Character, Ideas

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.363, Macmillan

  10 Copy quote

• Sickness is a place, ... and it's always a place where there's no company, where nobody can follow.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Sickness, Company

  30 Copy quote

• 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.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Real, Reflection, Expression

  8 Copy quote

• In the first place you can be so absolutely honest and so absolutely wrong at the same time that I think it is better to be a combination of cautious and polite

  Flannery O'Connor

  Thinking, Firsts, Honest

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “Collected Works”, New York, NY : Library of America : Distributed to the trade in the U.S. and Canada by Viking Press

  8 Copy quote

• To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Life, Views, Too Much

  14 Copy quote

• The trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them sparkled.

  Flannery O'Connor

  White, Tree, Silver

  Flannery O'Connor (2016). “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, p.5, Faber & Faber

  12 Copy quote

• I suppose half of writing is overcoming the revulsion you feel when you sit down to it.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Overcoming, Half

  13 Copy quote

• 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

  Art, Creativity, Effort

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.189, Macmillan

  11 Copy quote

• Satisfy your demand for reason but always remember that charity is beyond reason, and God can be known through charity.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Charity, Demand, Remember

  6 Copy quote

• St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in instructing catechumens, wrote: “The dragon sits by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the Father of Souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon.” No matter what form the dragon may take, it is of this mysterious passage past him, or into his jaws, that stories of any depth will always be concerned to tell, and this being the case, it requires considerable courage at any time, in any country, not to turn away from the storyteller.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Country, Father, Past

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.35, Macmillan

  32 Copy quote

Page 3 of 11

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin