Rick Bass Quotes

I wanted to understand pain and the human condition, which is full of pain and regret and sadness - and some happiness, if you're lucky.

Though love repine, and reason chafe, There came a voice without reply,- "'Tis man's perdition to be safe, When for the truth he ought to die."

Vengeance taken will often tear the heart and torment the conscience.

God, how I ricochet between certainties and doubts.

fanaticism is the only way to put an end to the doubts that constantly trouble the human soul.

And so, irritants, it is with this that I leave you. You are spared so that you can think of what it really is to live in a world that engenders a pain for which there is no comfort. Here is your product! You have the rest of your lives to think of this. And I suggest you think quickly, for a long life is never a guarantee.

The devout belief that the world is explainable is both a terrible vulnerability and a stout shield.

Did I help you toward a fate you didn't want, Alaska, or did I just assist in your willful self-destruction?

I can't go around believing in a God that believes suffering is good for me.

I choose to believe in God, but I have serious doubts.

There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our sad humanity must assume the aspect of Hell.

If ye never had a sick night and a pained soul for sin, ye have not yet lighted upon Christ.

Digory never spoke on the way back, and the others were shy of speaking to him. He was very sad and he wasn't even sure all the time that he had done the right thing; but whenever he remembered the shining tears in Aslan's eyes he became sure.

For me, George Saunders novel [Lincoln in the Bardo] is about a problem of pain.

You can't just say there is a god because the world is beautiful. You have to account for bone cancer in children

You may pluck out my eyes, but that cannot kill me. You may chop off my nose, but that will not kill me. But blast my belief in God, and I am dead.

By retaliating our sufferings on the heads of those we love, we get rid of a present uneasiness and incur lasting remorse. With the accomplishment of our revenge our fondness returns; so that we feel the injury we have done them, even more than they do.

I am a strange compound of weakness and resolution! However, if I must suffer, I will endeavour to suffer in silence. There is certainly a great defect in my mind my wayward heart creates its own misery Why I am made thus I cannot tell; and, till I can form some idea of the whole of my existence, I must be content to weep and dance like a child long for a toy, and be tired of it as soon as I get it.

Excess of trouble may, for a time, distract and overwhelm the soul. Our Lord himself seems to have experienced somewhat of this. Our prayers, perhaps, are never more acceptable, than when they are offered in broken accents, in sighs, and groans.

Is it courage in a dying man to go, in weakness and in agony, to affront an almighty and eternal God?

Ethan thought he was doing the right thing. He knew it was crazy. And he didn’t want to go, but he had to anyway. Ethan was like that. Even if he was dead. He saved the world, but he shattered mine. What now?

The birth of a doubt that was once your belief is drowning in the tears that you cry.

Life is, I think, a blunder and a shame.

I never meant it," he was saying. "Never meant it to happen. Can't stand it, seeing her suffer. Must do something, do something... What do I do? What can I do...?

Testimony is not something you have today, and you are going to have always. A testimony is fragile. It is as hard to hold as a moonbeam. It is something you have to recapture every day of your life.