Your beliefs will be the light by which you see, but they will not be what you see and they will not be a substitute for seeing .

...the only thing that makes the Church endurable is that it is somehow the body of Christ and that on this we are fed. It seems to be a fact that you have to suffer as much from the Church as for it but if you believe in the divinity of Christ, you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it. 

~ Flannery O'Connor 

Once the process [of conversion] is begun and continues...you are continually turning inward toward God and away from your own egocentricity...you have to see this selfish side of yourself in order to turn away from it. I measure God by everything I am not. I begin with that. 

~ Flannery O'Connor 

We are not judged by what we are basically. We are judged by how hard we use what we have been given. Success means nothing to the Lord. 

~ Flannery O'Connor 

I am no disbeliever in spiritual purpose and no vague believer. I see from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. This means that for me the meaning of life is centered in our Redemption by Christ and what I see in the world I see in relation to that. 

~ Flannery O'Connor 

In a sense sickness is a place, more instructive than a long trip to Europe, and it's always a place where there's no company, where nobody can follow. Sickness before death is a very appropriate thing and I think those who don't have it miss one of God's mercies. 

~ Flannery O'Connor 

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally. A higher paradox confounds emotion as well as reason and there are long periods in the lives of all of us, and of the saints, when the truth as revealed by faith is hideous, emotionally disturbing, downright repulsive. Witness the dark night of the soul in individual saints. Right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul. 

~ Flannery O'Connor 

The mind serves best when it's anchored in the Word of God. There is no danger then of becoming an intellectual without integrity.