Quotes from Peace Like a River

“Sometimes heroism is nothing more than patience, curiosity, and a refusal to panic.”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“Fair is whatever God wants to do.”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“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.”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“We and the world, my children, will always be at war.
Retreat is impossible.
Arm yourselves.”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, the air gold and so clean it quivers.”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“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.”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“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.”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“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.”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“Many a night I woke to the murmer of paper and knew (Dad) was up, sitting in the kitchen with frayed King James - oh, but he worked that book; he held to it like a rope ladder.”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“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.”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“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.”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“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”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“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.”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“Of all facial expressions, which is the worst to have aimed at you? Wouldn't you agree it's disgust?”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“So thoughtlessly we sling on our destinies.”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“Fresh peach pie can lift a bullying reprobate into apologetic courtesy; I have watched it happen.”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“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.”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. A miracle contradicts the will of earth.”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“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.”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“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.”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“Someday, you know, we're going to be shown the great ledger of our recorded decisions-a dread concept you nonetheless know in your deepest soul is true.”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“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.”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“Hope is like yeast, you know, rising under warmth.”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“You never like it to happen, for something as hopeful and sudden as a January thaw to come to an end, but end it does, and then you want to have some quilts around.”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“And now, from beneath the audible, came a low reverberation. It came up through the soles of my feet. I stood still while it hummed upward bone by bone. There is no adequate simile. The pulse of the country worked through my body until I recognized it as music. As language. And the language ran everywhere inside me, like blood; and for feeling, it was as if through time I had been made of earth or mud or other insensate matter. Like a rhyme learned in antiquity a verse blazed to mind: O be quick, my soul, to answer Him; be jubilant, my feet! And sure enough my soul leapt dancing inside my chest, and my feet sprang up and sped me forward, and the sense came to me of undergoing creation, as the land and the trees and the beasts of the orchard had done some long time before. And the pulse of the country came around me, as of voices lifted at great distance, and moved through me as I ran until the words came clear, and I sang with them a beautiful and curious chant.”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“When did it come to Davy Land that exile is a country of shifting borders, hard to quit yet hard to endure, no matter your wide shoulders, no matter your toughened heart?”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, golden and so clean it quivers.”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“I breathe deeply, and certainty enters into me like light, like a piece of science, and curious music seems to hum inside my fingers.
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.”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“Nothing could quiet a happy crowd of kids like Mr. Holgren's unannounced appearance -- he loved superintending; he was made for it. So when he marched in that morning with a determined look on his face, we froze. Boys and girls recognize sinister as handily as dogs do. Here it was. My best guess now is he'd got it in his head to try "relating" to us -- but when he produced a paper pilgrim's hat from behind his back and put it on his own head, I think we all nearly bolted.”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“Listening to Dad’s guitar, halting yet lovely in the search for phrasing, I thought: Fair is whatever God wants to do.”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

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Popular quotes

“But it is common knowledge that religions don’t want conviction, on the basis of reasons, but faith, on the basis of revelation. And the capacity for faith is at its strongest in childhood: which is why religions apply themselves before all else to getting these tender years into their possession. It is in this way, even more than by threats and stories of miracles, that the doctrines of faith strike roots: for if, in earliest childhood, a man has certain principles and doctrines repeatedly recited to him with abnormal solemnity and with an air of supreme earnestness such as he has never before beheld, and at the same time the possibility of doubt is never so much as touched on, or if it is only in order to describe it as the first step towards eternal perdition, then the impression produced will be so profound that in almost every case the man will be almost incapable of doubting this doctrine as of doubting his own existence, so that hardly one in a thousand will then possess the firmness of mind seriously and honestly to ask himself: is this true?”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, quote from Essays and Aphorisms

“Planning, gentlemen, is ‘What are you going to do next year that’s different from what you did this year?’” he told them. “All I want is five items.”
― Bryan Burrough, quote from Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco

“Pete was getting on the others’ nerves. It wasn’t that he did anything wrong: he was a nice guy and a good enough drummer. It was simply that his personality was different: he preferred to sit on his own rather than join in with the others’ non-stop banter.”
― Cynthia Lennon, quote from John

“—to wit, 'the sweat of the brow.”
― Frederick Marryat, quote from The Children of the New Forest

“Why, I don’t exactly know about that,’ replied Bob Sawyer. ‘I am—’ ‘Not buff, Mr. Pickwick,’ interrupted Pott, drawing back his chair, ‘your friend is not buff, sir?’ ‘No, no,’ rejoined Bob, ‘I’m a kind of plaid at present; a compound of all sorts of colours.’ ‘A waverer,’ said Pott solemnly, ‘a waverer. I should like to show you a series of eight articles, Sir, that have appeared in the Eatanswill Gazette. I think I may venture to say that you would not be long in establishing your opinions on a firm and solid blue basis, sir.’ ‘I dare say I should turn very blue, long before I got to the end of them,’ responded Bob.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from The Complete Works of Charles Dickens

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