Abide with Me Quotes

“I suspect the most we can hope for, and it's no small hope, is that we never give up, that we never stop giving ourselves permission to try to love and receive love.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“ANYONE WHO HAS EVER GRIEVED knows that grieving carries with it a tremendous wear and tear to the body itself, never mind the soul. Loss is an assault; a certain exhaustion, as strong as the pull of the moon on the tides, needs to be allowed for eventually.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“No one, to my knowledge, has figured out the secret to love. We love imperfectly, Tyler. We all do. Even Jesus wrestled with that. But I think - I think the ability to receive love is as important as the ability to give it. It's one and the same really.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“You just stood up to your mother.... I should think now you could take on the world.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“Now the dismal autumn days have begun and one has to try and get light from within.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“Loss is an assault; a certain exhaustion, as strong as the pull of the moon on the tides, needs to be allowed for eventually.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“When other helpers fail and comforts flee . . . O Lord, abide with me.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“You've been through a great deal," his mother conceded. "But the back strengthens to the burdens it has to bear, and I'd like to see a little more backbone in you.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“What I didn’t know about death,” Tyler said, squinting at his fingernails, “was that it was not just the death of my father, but the death of my childhood, the death of the family as I’d known it. It reminds me of Glenn Miller’s plane disappearing above the channel. Not just the death of a bandleader, you see, but the death of a band.” He looked out the window. “That’s what death does. If that makes any sense.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“He knew one could say—perhaps Rhonda Skillings might say—that this was merely the plea of a frightened child reaching up in the dark to hold the hand of Parent God. But Tyler, softly humming the tune as he stood beneath the elm—fast falls the eventide; The darkness deepens, Lord with me abide—thought God existed in the hymn itself, in the yearning and sorrowful acknowledgment of the loneliness and fears that arrived in life.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“She’ll get over it,” Belle said. “She’s not going to cut you out of her life. Meanwhile, welcome to grown-up land.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“to your mother, Tyler. I should think now you could take on the world.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“He was a man grieving, and she was ashamed at the kind of pleasure she had experienced in excoriating him to her friends and husband.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“When they hung up, Jane called Alison back. “Do you need a doctorate in psychology to know that killing someone is an angry thing to do?” The two women laughed until tears came to their eyes.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“And then the unthinkable, unimaginable thing that he did: He left the bottle of pills by her side while she slept. He went downstairs to sit with his mother, listening for any motion above. In a few hours he walked slowly, slowly up the carpeted stairs. His young wife was dead.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“You know what, Tyler?” said his big-stomached, beautiful wife. “You are aggressively naïve.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“that Carol happened to notice her little pot of rouge was gone.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“the dreary fact was that Lauren’s intemperance had left Tyler in debt.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“Abide with me; fast falls the eventide . . . Odd to think that had been his favorite hymn for years, because what had he really known until this year about the sadness and pleading tone of that hymn? The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide. Tyler started the car, drove down the hill, past the church where he’d been married. When other helpers fail and comforts flee . . . O Lord, abide with me.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“The affability that had seemed his natural gift since early childhood—and that had only taken one swift, ferocious hit when he was in the navy—had deserted him when first on this campus. The older men tended to be taciturn as they juggled the responsibilities of books, children, and wives, and some were competitive with Tyler, as though they thought he was a show-off.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“The idea that there might be an afterlife horrified Connie. She had a hard enough time with this one.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“ANYONE WHO HAS EVER GRIEVED knows that grieving carries with it a tremendous wear and tear to the body itself, never mind the soul. Loss is an assault; a certain exhaustion, as strong as the pull of the moon on the tides, needs to be allowed for eventually”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“Do you think,” Tyler wrote, “that because we have learned the sun does not go down, that in fact we are going around at a dizzying speed, that the sun is not the only star in the heavens—do you think this means we are any less important than we thought we were? Oh, we are far less important than we thought we were, and we are far, far more important than we think we are. Do you imagine that the scientist and the poet are not united? Do you assume you can answer the question of who we are and why we are here by rational thought alone? It is your job, your honor, your birthright, to bear the burden of this mystery. And it is your job to ask, in every thought, word, and deed: How can love best be served? “God is not served when you speak with relish of rumors about those who are poor in spirit and cannot be defended; God is not served when you ignore the poverty of spirit within yourselves.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“George shrugged. “You just stood up to your mother, Tyler. I should think now you could take on the world.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“You always find that, Mary. When the kid’s in trouble, there’s trouble at home.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“As a matter of fact, I could argue that none of us has a center of gravity. That we're tugged and pulled by competing forces every minute and we hold on as best we can.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“He thought of the words of the hymn he had always loved: Help of the helpless, O abide with me. He knew one could say - perhaps Rhonda Skillings might say - that this was merely the plea of a frightened child reaching up in the dark to hold the hand of Parent God. But Tyler, softly humming the tune as he stood beneath the elm - fast falls the eventide; the darkness deepens, Lord with me abide - thought God existed in the hymn itself, in the yearning and sorrowful acknowledgment of the loneliness and fears that arrived in life.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“In this room he had once said to his wife that he liked that Kierkegaard's name meant 'churchyard.' Lauren had rolled her large eyes and said, 'That's so like you, Tyler. The name means graveyard.' Remembering this, he frowned. They'd had a real squabble about it. What was a churchyard, after all, he had argued. A graveyard, yes, but what was wrong with preferring the sound of the word 'churchyard'? Why did she have to insist on 'graveyard'? And what had she meant?”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“it was not love that sustained a marriage but the marriage that would sustain the love.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“The idea that there might be an afterlife horrified Connie. She had a hard enough time with this one. What if death was a big garbage bag where the body went, but the mind was left to hang on forever, suspended with its thoughts? That was Connie’s idea of hell.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me