If I had had this experience earlier in life, I would have been much wiser, much more compassionate. I really didn't understand what it was that made people who came to me so indifferent to good judgement, to common sense, or why they would say "I know, I know" when I urged a little reasonableness on them, and why it meant "It doesn't matter, I just don't care." That's what the saints and the martyrs say. And I know now that it is passion that moves them to their prodigal renunciations. I might seem to be comparing something great and holy with a minor and ordinary thing, that is, love of God with mortal love. But I just don't see them as separate things at all. If we can be divinely fed with a morsel and divinely blessed with a touch, then the terrible pleasure we find in a particular face can certainly instruct us in the nature of the very grandest love. I devoutly believe this to be true. I remember in those days loving God for the existence of love and being grateful to God for the existence of gratitude, right down in the depths of my misery. I realized many things that I am at a loss to express. And of course those feelings become milder with time, which is a mercy. .Marilynne Robinson
About This Quote
In the first part of this quote, written by Anne Frank, she shows a very deep expression of love and gratitude from someone who was about to die. She expresses her feelings for those around her as well as those who may have been far from her but were there for her. In the latter part of the quote she expresses how compassion is something that can only be found in people who have experienced great suffering. If she had not been able to see all that suffering, she would not have been able to understand what it was that moved those who came to her with little reason, and said “I do not care.”
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More Quotes By Marilynne Robinson
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