Leif Enger famous quotes

Love is a strange fact - it hopes all things, believes all things, endures all things. It makes no sense at all.
-- Leif Enger

#Believe #Love Is #Facts

Sometimes heroism is nothing more than patience, curiosity, and a refusal to panic.
-- Leif Enger

#Curiosity #Heroism #Panic

I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, the air gold and so clean it quivers.
-- Leif Enger

#Air #Gold #October

Fair is whatever God wants to do.
-- Leif Enger

#Want

Where do you think you’re going?” Dr. Nokes demanded…. “What do you have for directions?” And Dad… said, “I have the substance of things hoped for. I have the anticipation of things unseen
-- Leif Enger

#Dad #Thinking #Unseen

Pride is the rope God allows us all.
-- Leif Enger

#Pride #Rope

Why is it our failures only show us more clearly the people we are failing?
-- Leif Enger

#People #Failing #Shows

It is one thing to say you're at war with this whole world and stick your chest out believing it, but when the world shows up with it's crushing numbers and its predatory knowledge, it is another thing completely.
-- Leif Enger

#Crush #War #Believe

Many a night I woke to the murmer of paper and knew (Dad) was up, sitting in the kitchen with frayed King James - oh, but he worked that book; he held to it like a rope ladder.
-- Leif Enger

#Kings #Dad #Book

What else exhausts like sustained deception?
-- Leif Enger

#Deception

When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. A miracle contradicts the will of earth.
-- Leif Enger

#Miracle #Earth #Persons

Routine is worry's sly assassin.
-- Leif Enger

#Worry #Routine #Assassins

My sister, Swede, who often sees to the nub, offered this: People fear miracles because they fear being changed--though ignoring them will change you also. Swede said another thing, too, and it rang in me like a bell: No miracle happens without a witness. Someone to declare, Here's what I saw. Here's how it went. Make of it what you will.
-- Leif Enger

#People #Miracle #Saws

You can embark on new and steeper versions of your old sins, you know, and cry tears while doing it that are genuine as any.
-- Leif Enger

#Tears #Cry #Sin

It is one thing to be sick of your own infirmities and another to understand that the people you love most are sick of them also. You are very near then to being friendless in the world.
-- Leif Enger

#People #Sick #World

Let me say something about that word: miracle. For too long it's been used to characterize things or events that, though pleasant, are entirely normal. Peeping chicks at Easter time, spring generally, a clear sunrise after an overcast week--a miracle, people say, as if they've been educated from greeting cards.
-- Leif Enger

#Easter #Spring #Long

We see a newborn moth unwrapping itself and announce, Look, children, a miracle! But let an irreversible wound be knit back to seamlessness? We won't even see it, though we look at it every day.
-- Leif Enger

#Children #Miracle #Looks

So thoughtlessly we sling on our destinies.
-- Leif Enger

#Destiny #Our Destiny

Be careful whom you choose to hate. The small and the vulnerable own a protection great enough, if you could but see it, to melt you into jelly. Beware those who reside beneath the shadow of the Wings.
-- Leif Enger

#Hate #Wings #Shadow

Of all facial expressions, which is the worst to have aimed at you? Wouldn't you agree it's disgust?
-- Leif Enger

#Expression #Worst #Disgusting

Fresh peach pie can lift a bullying reprobate into apologetic courtesy; I have watched it happen.
-- Leif Enger

#Bullying #Pie #Peaches

I prayed the Lord would sort (my prayers) out and answer as needed. Above all that he would hurry.
-- Leif Enger

#Prayer #Answers #Lord

Good advice is a wise man's friend, of course; but sometimes it just flies on past, and all you can do is wave.
-- Leif Enger

#Wise #Past #Men

We and the world, my children, will always be at war. Retreat is impossible. Arm yourselves.
-- Leif Enger

#Children #War #Retreat

Is there a single person on whom I can press belief? No sir. All I can do is say, Here's how it went. Here's what I saw. I've been there and am going back. Make of it what you will.
-- Leif Enger

#Saws #Belief #Single Person

Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in medical literature. It's true: They rebut every rule all we good citizens take comfort in. Lazarus obeying orders and climbing up out of the grave - now there's a miracle, and you can bet it upset a lot of folks who were standing around at the time. When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. A miracle contradicts the will of the earth.
-- Leif Enger

#Pain #Real #Order

Once in my life I knew a grief so hard I could actually hear it inside, scraping at the lining of my stomach, an audible ache, dredging with hooks as rivers are dredged when someone's been missing too long. I have to think my mother felt something like that.
-- Leif Enger

#Mother #Grief #Thinking

Hope is like yeast, you know, rising under warmth.
-- Leif Enger

#Rising #Yeast #Warmth

You can’t kill history. You can’t shoot it with a bullet and watch it recede into whatever lies outside of memory. History is tougher than that—if it’s going to die, it has to die on its own
-- Leif Enger

#Memories #Lying #Watches

Once torched by truth...a little thing like faith is easy.
-- Leif Enger

#Littles #Little Things #Easy

Once traveling, it's remarkable how quickly faith erodes. It starts to look like something else--ignorance, for example. Same thing happened to the Israelites. Sure it's weak, but sometimes you'd rather just have a map.
-- Leif Enger

#Ignorance #Erode #Example