Quotes from Robert Nathan

There is no distance on this earth as far away as yesterday.

Where I come from Nobody knows; And where I'm going Everything goes. The wind blows, The sea flows - And nobody knows.

How little we have, I thought, between us and the waiting cold, the mystery, death--a strip of beach, a hill, a few walls of wood or stone, a little fire--and tomorrow's sun, rising and warming us, tomorrow's hope of peace and better weather . . . What if tomorrow vanished in the storm? What if time stood still? And yesterday--if once we lost our way, blundered in the storm--would we find yesterday again ahead of us, where we had thought tomorrow's sun would rise?

She has a look," I said, "of not altogether belonging to today.

Give thanks for sorrow that teaches you pity; for pain that teaches you courage - and give exceeding thanks for the mystery which remains a mystery still - the veil that hides you from the infinite, which makes it possible for you to believe in what you cannot see.

What trouble we go to, trying to fool people who see right through us anyhow.

Summer is the worst time of all to be alone. The earth is warm and lovely, free to go about in; and always somewhere in the distance there is a place where two people might be happy if only they were together. It is in the spring that one dreams of such places; one thinks of the summer which is coming, and the heart dreams of its friend.

Art is a communication informing man of his own dignity, and of the value of his life, whether in joy or grief, whether in laughter or indignation, beauty or terror...Man needs the comfort of his own dignity...And that's what the artisf is for. To give him that comfort.

ONE must sometimes believe what one cannot understand. That is the method of the scientist as well as the mystic: faced with a universe which must be endless and infinite, he accepts it, although he cannot really imagine it. For there is no picture in our minds of infinity; somewhere, at the furthermost limits of thought, we never fail to plot its end. Yet—if there is no end? Or if, at the end, we are only back at the beginning again?

My duties led me into the darkest cellars as well as the most beautiful cathedrals; often I found the cellar illuminated with a holy light, and the cathedral dark.

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, men thought that the earth was flat, and that where earth and heaven met, the world ended. Yet when they finally set sail for that tremendous place, they sailed right through it, and found themselves back again where they had started from. It taught them only that the earth was round. It might have taught them more.

Yellow is the true color of spring, not green; the new grass, the clouds, the misty, sunny air, the sticky buds like little feathers on the trees, all are mixed with yellow tone, with the haze of sun and earth and water. Green is for summer; blue, for fall.

I'm thinking how beautiful the world is, Eben; and how it keeps on being beautiful--no matter what happens to us. The spring comes year after year, for us, or Egypt; the sun goes down in the same green, lovely sky; the birds sing...for us, or yesterday...or for yesterday...or for tomorrow. It was never made for anything but beauty, Eben--whether we lived now, or long ago.

She was named Juliet, after his wife, the bishop thought, but that was not what Julia meant at all. She was far too modest to think of calling her child after herself. Juliet, for her, was the name of that young girl of Verona whose tragic love has everywhere helped make youth and sorrow better friends.

For friends and lovers are quick to wound, quicker than strangers, even; the heart that opens itself to the world, opens itself to sorrow.

It seems to me that I have always wanted to say the same thing in my books: that life is one, that mystery is all around us, that yeterday, today and tomorrow are all spread out in the pattern of eternity, together, and that although love may wear many faces in the incomprehensible panorama of time, in the heart that loves, it is always the same.

How little we have, I thought, between us and the waiting cold, the mystery, death—a strip of beach, a hill, a few walls of wood or stone, a little fire—and tomorrow's sun, rising and warming us, tomorrow's hope of peace and better weather

There was nothing meek about her. She supposed that God loved her, but in a personal way; she took it for granted that He admired her.

The moment when the battle ends is not always a happy one: to fret and strain against evil is an act itself dear to a hearty spirit with convictions.

I stared at her, thinking: of course, how would she know about bitterness, how would she know about the artist at all? caught in a mystery for which he must find some answer, both for himself and for his fellow men, a mystery of good and evil, of blossom and rot — the mystery of a world which learns too late, which is the mold, and which the bloom . . .

We were rebels; and embraced freedom; yet we committed ourselves to love, and we were hopeful. Of what, I cannot exactly say: perhaps of a better way of life on earth. Well, we had reason: the last trump was not as close then as it is today.

At that moment I saw my duty. 'I will assist.' I exclaimed, 'this good divine in his struggle to uphold those domestic virtues without which the arts decay, religions decline, and nations disappear.

I don't think I care very much about being rich, Jennie. I just want to paint--and to know what I'm painting. That's what's so hard--to know what you're painting; to reach to something beyond these little, bitter times...

It is innocence which wakes us each morning to a new day, a fresh day, another day in a long chain of days; it is ignorance which makes each of our acts appear to be a new one, and the result of an exercise of will. Without such ignorance, we should perish of terror, frozen and immobile; or, like the old saints who learned the true name of God, go up in a blaze of unbearable vision.