Carl Frederick Buechner is an American writer, novelist, poet, autobiographer, essayist, preacher, and theologian. He is an ordained Presbyterian minister and the author of more than thirty published books. These Frederick Buechner quotes will motivate you.
Best Frederick Buechner Quotes
- “When you remember me, it means you have carried something of who I am with you, that I have left some mark of who I am on who you are. It means that you can summon me back to your mind even though countless years and miles may stand between us. It means that if we meet again, you will know me. It means that even after I die, you can still see my face and hear my voice and speak to me in your heart.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “Whatever you do with your life-whatever you end up achieving or not achieving-the great gift you have in you to give to the world is the gift of who you alone are; your way of seeing things, and saying things, and feeling about things, that is like nobody else’s. If so much as a single one of you were missing, there would be an empty place at the great feast of life that nobody else in all creation could fill.” ~ Frederick Buechner
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“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “One life on this earth is all that we get, whether it is enough or not enough, and the obvious conclusion would seem to be that at the very least we are fools if we do not live it as fully and bravely and beautifully as we can.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you I created the universe. I love you. There’s only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you’ll reach out and take it. Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.” ~ Frederick Buechner Quotes
- “Lord, catch me off guard today. Surprise me with some moment of beauty or pain so that at least for the moment, I may be startled into seeing that you are here in all your splendor, always and everywhere, barely hidden, beneath, beyond, within this life I breathe.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “Pay attention to the things that bring a tear to your eye or a lump in your throat because they are signs that the holy is drawing near.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “In the entire history of the universe, let alone in your own history, there has never been another day just like today, and there will never be another just like it again. Today is the point to which all your yesterdays have been leading since the hour of your birth. It is the point from which all your tomorrows will proceed until the hour of your death. If you were aware of how precious today is, you could hardly live through it. Unless you are aware of how precious it is, you can hardly be said to be living at all.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “Jesus is apt to come, into the very midst of life at its most real and inescapable moments. Not in a blaze of unearthly light, not in the midst of a sermon, not in the throes of some kind of religious daydream, but…at supper time, or walking along a road…He never approached from on high, but always in the midst, in the midst of people, in the midst of real life and the questions that real life asks.” ~ Frederick Buechner
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“Your vocation in life is where your greatest joy meets the world’s greatest need.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.” ~ Frederick Buechner Quotes
- “We find by losing. We hold fast by letting go. We become something new by ceasing to be something old.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “Grace is something you can never get but can only be given. There’s no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about anymore than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks. A good night’s sleep is grace and so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace.” ~ Frederick Buechner
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“Justice is the grammar of things. Mercy is the poetry of things.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back–in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “Wherever people love each other and are true to each other and take risks for each other, God is with them and for them and they are doing God’s will.” ~ Frederick Buechner
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“Resurrection means that the worst thing is never the last thing.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “A Christian is one who points at Christ and says, ‘I can’t prove a thing, but there’s something about his eyes and his voice. There’s something about the way he carries his head, his hands, the way he carries his cross-the way he carries me.'” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “Our stories are all stories of searching. We search for a good self to be and for good work to do. We search to become human in a world that tempts us always to be less than human or looks to us to be more. We search to love and to be loved. And in a world where it is often hard to believe in much of anything, we search to believe in something holy and beautiful and life-transcending that will give meaning and purpose to the lives we live.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “Stop trying to protect, to rescue, to judge, to manage the lives around you… Remember that the lives of others are not your business. They are their business. They are God’s business… Even your own life is not your business. It also is God’s Business. Leave it to God.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “The world says, The more you take, the more you have. Christ says, the more you give, the more you are.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.” ~ Frederick Buechner Quotes
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“Faith is stepping out into the unknown with nothing to guide us but a hand just beyond our grasp.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “Words spoken in deep love or deep hate set things in motion in the human heart that can never be reversed.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “Being a good steward of your pain. . . . It involves being alive to your life. It involves taking the risk of being open, of reaching out, of keeping in touch with the pain as well as the joy of what happens because at no time more than at a painful time do we live out of the depths of who we are instead of out of the shallows.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “Faith is not being sure where you’re going, but going anyway.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else’s skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “Jesus didn’t come to merely speak words that were true, He is the Word that makes us true.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “When someone we love suffers, we suffer with that person, and we would not have it otherwise, because the suffering and the love are one, just as it is with God’s love for us.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.” ~ Frederick Buechner
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“If you want to be holy, be kind.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “Part of the inner world of everyone is this sense of emptiness, unease, incompleteness, and I believe that this in itself is a word from God, that this is the sound that God’s voice makes in a world that has explained him away. In such a world, I suspect that maybe God speaks to us most clearly through his silence, his absence, so that we know him best through our missing him.” ~ Frederick Buechner Quotes
- “Go where your best prayers take you.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “To forgive somebody is to say one way or another, “You have done something unspeakable, and by all rights I should call it quits between us. Both my pride and my principles demand no less. However, although I make no guarantees that I will be able to forget what you’ve done, and though we may both carry the scars for life, I refuse to let it stand between us. I still want you for my friend.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “To confess your sins to God is not to tell [God] anything [God] doesn’t already know. Until you confess them, however, they are the abyss between you. When you confess them, they become the bridge.” ~ Frederick Buechner
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“For as long as you remember me, I am never entirely lost.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are but, more often than not, God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go to next.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “Faith is better understood as a verb than as a noun, as a process than as a possession. It is an on-again-off-again rather than once-and-for-all. Faith is not being sure where you’re going but going anyway. A journey without maps. Tillich says that doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.” ~ Frederick Buechner
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“Grace is something you can never get but only be given.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “Joy is a mystery because it can happen anywhere, anytime, even under the most unpromising circumstances, even in the midst of suffering, with tears in its eyes.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “True faith, a simple life, a helping hand- the three things prized most in Heaven.” ~ Frederick Buechner
- “The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you.” ~ Frederick Buechner Quotes
- “. . some moment happens in your life that you say yes right up to the roots of your hair, that makes it worth having been born just to have happen. laughing with somebody till the tears run down your cheeks. waking up to the first snow. being in bed with somebody you love… whether you thank god for such a moment or thank your lucky stars, it is a moment that is trying to open up your whole life. If you turn your back on such a moment and hurry along to business as usual, it may lose you the ball game. if you throw your arms around such a moment and hug it like crazy, it may save your soul.” ~ Frederick Buechner
