A Prayer Journal Quotes

“Give me the courage to stand the pain to get the grace.”
― Flannery O'Connor, A Prayer Journal

“Dear God, I don’t want to have invented my faith to satisfy my weakness. I don’t want to have created God to my own image as they’re so fond of saying. Please give me the necessary grace, oh Lord, and please don’t let it be as hard to get as Kafka made it.”
― Flannery O'Connor, A Prayer Journal

“I do not know You God because I am in the way. Please help me to push myself aside.”
― Flannery O'Connor, A Prayer Journal

“no one can be an atheist who does not know all things. Only God is an atheist. The devil is the greatest believer and he has his reasons.”
― Flannery O'Connor, A Prayer Journal

“When I think of all I have to be thankful for I wonder that You just don't kill me now because You've done so much for me already & I haven't been particularly grateful.”
― Flannery O'Connor, A Prayer Journal

“When something is finished, it cannot be possessed. Nothing can be possessed but the struggle.”
― Flannery O'Connor, A Prayer Journal

“Man's desire for God is bedded in his unconscious & seeks to satisfy itself in physical possession of another human. This necessarily is a passing, fading attachment in its sensuous aspects since it is a poor substitute for what the unconscious is after.”
― Flannery O'Connor, A Prayer Journal

“Two people can remain "in love"-- a phrase made practically useless by stinking romanticism--only if their common desire for each other unites in a greater desire for God.”
― Flannery O'Connor, A Prayer Journal

“Dear God please give me some place, no matter how small, but let me know it and keep it. If I am the one to wash the second step everyday, let me know it and let me wash it and let my heart overflow with love washing it.”
― Flannery O'Connor, A Prayer Journal

“Virtue must be the only vigorous thing in our lives. Sin is large and stale. You can never finish eating it nor ever digest it. It has to be vomited.”
― Flannery O'Connor, A Prayer Journal

“But learned people can analyze for me why I fear hell and their implication is that there is no hell. But I believe in hell. Hell seems a great deal more feasible to my weak mind than heaven. No doubt because hell is a more earth-seeming thing. I can fancy the tortures of the damned but I cannot imagine the disembodied souls hanging in a crystal for all eternity praising God.”
― Flannery O'Connor, A Prayer Journal

“I must write down that I am to be an artist. Not in the sense of aesthetic frippery but in the sense of aesthetic craftsmanship; otherwise I will feel my loneliness continually—like this today. The word craftsmanship takes care of the work angle & the word aesthetic the truth angle.”
― Flannery O'Connor, A Prayer Journal

“Hell seems a great deal more feasible to my weak mind than heaven.”
― Flannery O'Connor, A Prayer Journal

“About hope, I am somewhat at a loss. It is so easy to say I hope to—the tongue slides over it. I think perhaps hope can only be realized by contrasting it with despair. And I am too lazy to despair. Please don’t visit me with it, dear Lord, I would be so miserable. Hope, however, must be something distinct from faith. I unconsciously put it in the faith department. It must be something positive that I have never felt. It must be a positive force, else why the distinction between it and faith? I would like to order things so that I can feel all of a piece spiritually. I don’t suppose I order things. But all my requests seem to melt down to one for grace—that supernatural grace that does whatever it does. My mind is in a little box, dear God, down inside other boxes and on and on. There is very little air in my box. Dear God, please give me as much air as it is not presumptuous to ask for. Please let some light shine out of all the things around me so that I can what it amounts to I suppose is be selfish. Is there no getting around that dear God? No escape from ourselves?”
― Flannery O'Connor, A Prayer Journal

“The nearness I mean comes after death perhaps. It is what we are struggling for and if I found it either I would be dead or I would have seen it for a second and life would be intolerable.”
― Flannery O'Connor, A Prayer Journal

“I suppose that is what we have to have to get grace. Give me the courage to stand the pain to get the grace, Oh Lord. Help me with this life that seems so treacherous, so disappointing.”
― Flannery O’Connor, A Prayer Journal

“If I even do get to be a fine writer it will not be because I am a fine writer, but because God has given me credit for a few of the things He kindly wrote for me.”
― Flannery O'Connor, A Prayer Journal

“Give me the grace to be impatient for the time when I shall see You face to face and need no stimulus than that to adore You.”
― Flannery O'Connor, A Prayer Journal

“Two people can remain 'in love'—a phrase made practically useless by stinking romanticism—only if their common desire for each other unites in a greater desire for God—i.e., they do not become satisfied but more desirous together of the supernatural love in union with God.”
― Flannery O'Connor, A Prayer Journal

“Sin is a great thing as long as it's recognized. It leads a good many people to God who wouldn't get there otherwise.”
― Flannery O'Connor, A Prayer Journal

“It is natural that I should not imagine this. If we could accurately map heaven some of our up-&-coming scientists would begin drawing blueprints for its improvement, and the bourgeois would sell guides 10¢ the copy to all over 65.”
― Flannery O'Connor, A Prayer Journal

“My dear God, I am impressed with how much I have to be thankful for in a material sense; and in a spiritual sense I have the opportunity of being even more fortunate. But it seems apparent to me that I am not translating this opportunity into fact.”
― Flannery O'Connor, A Prayer Journal

“There a series of Catholic rituals and teachings had offered her young life a coherent universe. By 1946, Savannah had for O’Connor ceded to the university world of Iowa, where new influences, including intellectual joys, brought with them questions and skepticism.”
― Flannery O'Connor, A Prayer Journal

“The reality of death has come upon us and a consciousness of the power of God has broken our complacency like a bullet in the side. A sense of the dramatic, of the tragic, of the infinite, has descended upon us, filling us with grief, but even above grief, wonder...”
― Flannery O'Connor, A Prayer Journal

“Flannery O’Connor considered herself “a very innocent speller.” Spelling has therefore been corrected in this transcription of A Prayer Journal, so that the reader is not distracted.”
― Flannery O'Connor, A Prayer Journal

“Freud, Proust y Lawrence han situado el amor en lo humano y no vamos a cuestionar donde lo han puesto: sin embargo, tampoco se tiene que definir el amor como lo hacen ellos, sólo como deseo, porque eso excluye el Amor Divino, que, aunque también puede ser deseo, deseo Divino, es otro tipo de deseo que está fuera del hombre y puede elevarlo. El deseo del hombre por Dios está asentado en su inconsciente y busca satisfacción en la posesión física de otro ser humano. Este apego a los aspectos sensuales es necesariamente pasajero y se desvanece, puesto que es un pobre sustituto de lo que el inconsciente busca. Cuanto más consciente se vuelve el deseo de Dios, más satisfactoria es la unión con la otra persona, porque la inteligencia entiende esa relación en relación con un deseo mayor, y si esa inteligencia está presente en las dos partes, la fuerza motriz hacia el deseo de Dios se vuelve doble y consigue parecerse a Dios. El hombre moderno, que vive al margen de la fe, de la posibilidad de convertir su deseo de Dios en un deseo consciente, se ahoga en su propio planteamiento, que ve el amor físico como un fin en sí mismo. De ahí que lo sentimentalice, se regodee y luego lo trate con cinismo.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Diario de oración (Literaria nº 13)