Best 35 quotes of Leif Enger on MyQuotes

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Once torched by truth...a little thing like faith is 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.

Pride is the rope God allows us all.

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.

Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in medical literature.

Routine is worry's sly assassin.

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

So thoughtlessly we sling on our destinies.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

A person never knows what is next--I don't anyway. The surface of everything is thinner than we know. A person can fall right through, without any warning at all.

Before reaching Grassy Butte, though, Dad spied a farmhouse with two pumps in the drive and a red-and-white sign out front saying DALE'S OIL COMPANY. Another sign said CLOSED, but a light was on in the house and Dad pulled in, saying, "I believe we might prevail on Dale. What do you think?" "Prevail on Dale," I repeated to Swede. "To make a sale," she added. "And if we fail, we'll whale on Dale--" "Till he needs braille!" "Will you guys desist?" Dad asked.

Fair is whatever God wants to do.

....her life would be a giddy crossword, working down from some clues and across from others.

How could we not believe the Lord would guide us? How could we not have faith? For the foundation had been laid in prayer and sorrow. Since that fearful night, Dad has responded with the almost impossible work of belief. He had burned with repentence as though his own hand had fired the gun. He had laid up prayer as if with a trowel.

SOON, he replied, which makes better sense under the rules of that country than ours. VERY SOON! he added, clasping my hands; then, unable to keep from laughing, he pushed off from the rock like a boy going for the first cold swim of spring; and the current got him. The stream was singing aloud, and I heard him singing with it until he dropped away over the edge.

We beat the drum slowly and played the fife lowly, and bitterly wept as we bore him along. For we all loved our comrade so brave, young and handsome, we all loved our comrade although he'd done wrong." The Cowboy's Lament

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

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