6 Quotes & Sayings By Robert Nathan

Robert Nathan was born in New York City. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University, and later earned a Master's degree in English from the University of Wisconsin. He was a professor at both Columbia University and New York University before becoming a full-time writer. He taught at the William Morris Institute in Los Angeles, California, and at private writing schools in New York City and Palm Beach, Florida Read more

His works include "The Visions of Robert Nathan", "My Life as An Experiment", "Shades", "A House Is Not a Home", "Cajun Comfort Food", "The Small Book Of Life Lessons" and others.

1
How little we have, I thought, between us and the waiting cold, the mystery, death--a strip of beach, a hill, a few walls of wood or stone, a little fire--and tomorrow's sun, rising and warming us, tomorrow's hope of peace and better weather . What if tomorrow vanished in the storm? What if time stood still? And yesterday--if once we lost our way, blundered in the storm--would we find yesterday again ahead of us, where we had thought tomorrow's sun would rise? . Robert Nathan
2
We’d like to think that our youth was madder, brighter, happier than it was. It comforts us as we grow older, to believe that once upon a time we danced at dawn in a fountain. Robert Nathan
3
Summer is the worst time of all to be alone. The earth is warm and lovely, free to go about in; and always somewhere in the distance there is a place where two people might be happy if only they were together. It is in the spring that one dreams of such places; one thinks of the summer which is coming, and the heart dreams of its friend. Robert Nathan
4
What is it which makes a man and a woman know that they, of all other men and women in the world, belong to each other? Is it no more than chance and meeting? no more than being alive together in the world at the same time? Is it only a curve of the throat, a line of the chin, the way the eyes are set, a way of speaking? Or is it something deeper and stranger, something beyond meeting, something beyond chance and fortune? Are there others, in other times of the world, whom we should have loved, who would have loved us? Is there, perhaps, one soul among all others--among all who have lived, the endless generations, from world's end to world's end--who must love us or die? And whom we must love, in turn--whom we must seek all our lives long--headlong and homesick--until the end? . Robert Nathan
5
Give thanks for sorrow that teaches you pity for pain that teaches you courage-and give exceeding thanks for the mystery which remains a mystery still-the veil that hides you from the infinite which makes it possible for you to believe in what you cannot see. Robert Nathan