Quotes by Lillian Smith

“The human heart dares not stay away too long from that which hurt it most. There is a return journey to anguish that few of us are released from making.”

“Faith and doubt both are needed - not as antagonists, but working side by side to take us around the unknown curve.”

“No journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within”

“Man, born of woman, has found it a hard thing to forgive her for giving him birth. The patriarchal protest against the ancient matriarch has borne strange fruit through the years.”

“Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mothers womb.”

“To find the point where hypothesis and fact meet; the delicate equilibrium between dream and reality; the place where fantasy and earthly things are metamorphosed into a work of art; the hour when faith in the future becomes knowledge of the past; to lay down ones power for others in need; to shake off the old ordeal and get ready for the new; to question, knowing that never can the full answer be found; to accept uncertainties quietly, even our incomplete knowledge of God; this is what mans journey is about, I think.”

“When you stop learning, stop listening, stop looking and asking questions, always new questions, then it is time to die.”

“For men tied fast to the absolute, bled of their differences, drained of their dreams by authoritarian leeches until nothing but pulp is left, become a massive, sick Thing whose sheer weight is used ruthlessly by ambitious men. Here is the real enemy of the people: our own selves dehumanized into the masses. And where is the David who can slay this giant?”

“Rich folks always talk hard times.”

The human heart does not stay away too long from that which hurt it most. There is a return journey to anguish that few of us are released from making.

When you stop learning stop listening stop looking and asking questions always new questions then it is time to die.

Faith and doubt both are needed not as antagonists but working side by side to take us around the unknown curve.

Faith is to believe in something not yet proved and to underwrite it with our lives: it is the only way we can leave the future open.

When you stop learning, stop listening, stop looking and asking questions, always new questions, then it is time to die.

Faith and doubt both are needed - not as antagonists, but working side by side to take us around the unknown curve.