Flannery O'Connor Quotes

This is one of the great paradoxes of suffering. Those who don't suffer much think suffering should keep people from God, while many who suffer a great deal turn to God, not from him.

How soon would faith freeze without a cross!

Why should we think that we wouldn't have a cross to carry? Are we somehow more deserving than our Lord?

People invent gods to explain their suffering.

There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may one day be required to suffer.

I want to tell people about the meaning of the cross.

I do not think our successes can compete with those of Lourdes. There are so many more people who believe in the miracles of the Blessed Virgin than in the existence of the unconscious.

Went to church and fasted all day.

We must do something about the cross, and there’s only one of two things we can do- flee it or die upon it!

Religion is the one and sole interest of the people of India.

I've come to learn that theology matters. It matters not because we want to impress people, but because what we know about God shapes the way we think and live. Theology matters because if we get it wrong then our whole life will be wrong.

Prayer is to religion what thinking is to philosophy. To pray is to make religion.

Many great people over the centuries have depended on their faith- it is a sign of great strength to need Jesus in your life.

You're born in pain and pain is what we're in most of the time. And I think that the bigger the pain, the more gods we need.

Have you been called to go out on a limb for God? You can bet it won't be easy. Limb-climbing has never been easy. Ask Joseph. Or, better yet, ask Jesus. He knows better than anyone the cost of hanging on a tree.

Adversity reminds men of religion.

Trials can be hard, if you don't know God.

At the very center of our culture is a crucified man, a tortured man hanging on a cross of wood. You have an image of violence at the very center of our spiritual investigation.

I don’t understand how people can believe in God, even when I myself think of him everyday.

With life and all I've been through, I do have a belief in goodness, a good spirit. I think what people have done with religion is personified good and evil, so good's become God with 'o' out, and evil's become Devil with a 'd' added. That's my theory of religion.

Faith is never identical with piety even if it were the purest and finest.

A religion that costs nothing is worth nothing. A cheap Christianity, without a cross, will prove in the end a useless Christianity, without a crown.

I b'lieve in religion, and one of these days, when I've got matters tight and snug, I calculates to tend to my soul.

I think being really connected to a higher power, of having a spirituality to me, has been really good for me and I pray all the time.

My wife converted me to religion. I never believed in hell until I married her.