Flannery O'Connor Quotes

Man tells his aspiration in his God; but in his demon he shows his depth of experience.

A religious life is a struggle and not a hymn.

Most of the characters I write with don't think an awful lot about their faith. They're not always questioning the church or feeling confined by the church or rebelling against the church.

I am simply trying to struggle through life; trying to do God's bidding.

I think that when you follow Christ, one of the things that happens when you start listening to His voice is that you really are alone.

I am shy to admit that I have followed the advice given all those years ago by a wise archbishop to a bewildered young man: that moments of unbelief 'don't matter,' that if you return to a practice of the faith, faith will return.

I spend a lot of time balancing between faith and disbelief.

I am keen on a spiritual life and have struggled to find a place for my heart in a religious community.

I don't pass myself off as a Bible scholar or a pastor or someone who knows all the biblical facts cover-to-cover. I'm just a guy whose life was changed by it. And that's about the extent of it. So I'm not easily offended when people struggle about where they're at with their faith at all.

It's been a constant struggle with my athletic career to identify myself as a child of God and understand that His love is unconditional for us; it's not conditional like fans, or coaches, or even myself.

Faith is not merely a journey for the feet, but it is also a journey for the heart.

I think a lot of times God takes away your feelings, so you have to depend on faith. And faith is kind of like a tide. It rolls in and rolls out.

GodQuest is a awesome resource to explore life's most important questions in a authentic way. It's filled with practical and useful information for both individuals and groups and encourages taking honest steps on the journey with God. I believe many will read it and discover, or re-discover, the God who is our hope!

I believe God lets us go through all of what we go through for a reason and it's all part of a continued learning curve and journey of revelation and knowledge.

The man of faith who has never experienced doubt is not a man of faith.

All spiritual journeys are martyrdoms

I thought when I became a Christian I had nothing to do but just to lay my oars in the bottom of the boat and float along. But I soon found that I would have to go against the current.

I used to think the Lord's Prayer was a short prayer; but as I live longer, and see more of life, I begin to believe there is no such thing as getting through it. If a man, in praying that prayer, were to be stopped by every word until he had thoroughly prayed it, it would take him a lifetime.

It's often said that God works in mysterious ways. You have to really think about what He's trying to do. You can't be lazy and believe in God; He doesn't make it that easy. It takes spirit and faith and passion to really believe. Like most things worthwhile in life, you get back what you put into it. Only with faith, you get back a lot more.

Saw so much of the wickedness of my heart that I longed to get away from myself...I felt almost pressed to death with my own vileness. Oh what a body of death is there in me...Oh the closest walk with God is the sweetest heaven that can be enjoyed on earth!

That's what this thing called Christian life is all about, isn't it. Going . . . yet not knowing. As followers of our Lord we believe He leads us in a certain direction . . . or in pursuit of a precise goal.

My fear is greater than my faith, but I walk the missionary way.

In order to obey God, one must receive his commands. How did it happen that I received them in adolescence, while I was professing atheism? To believe that the desire for good is always fulfilled - that is faith, and whoever has it is not an atheist.

Oh, hell, I can’t go on a spiritual journey—I'm constipated.

If you no longer believe in the God in whom you believed in before, this comes from the fact that there was something wrong with your belief, and you must strive to understand better that which you call God.