Jan Karon Quotes

Jan Karon

Jan Karon is an American novelist who writes for both adults and young readers. She is the author of the New York Times-bestselling Mitford novels, featuring Father Timothy Kavanagh, an Episcopal priest, and the fictional village of Mitford. (Jan Karon Quotes)

“A good shoe is a shoe you don’t notice… The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God. But every novelty prevents this. It fixes our attention on the service itself, and thinking about worship is a different thing from worshipping.”
Jan Karon
A New Song

“A loved one from us has gone, A voice we love is stilled. A place is vacant in our home, Which never will be filled. -Estelle Woodhouse”
Jan Karon
A New Song

“All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art. JL Borges”
Jan Karon
Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good

“All that I have seen,” Mr. Emerson said and I say with him, “teaches me to trust the Creator for all that I have not seen.”
Jan Karon
Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good

“All your circumstances are in the hand of God,” Chambers wrote, “so never think it strange concerning the circumstances you’re in.”
Jan Karon
Out to Canaan

“As far as I could tell, Mount Sherman had no ego, no desire to create its own destiny. It was surrendered, as all of nature is surrendered. The wilderness gives us that example continually.”
Jan Karon
To Be Where You Are

“At a time when his friends had stopped believing in Santa Claus, he was still believing in the powerful reality of the small tableau—in much the same way, he supposed, that a boy believes his action heroes to be living, and the battles on the parlor floor to be real.”
Jan Karon
Shepherds Abiding

“At times God puts us through the discipline of darkness to teach us to heed Him. Song birds are taught to sing in the dark, and we are put into the shadow of God’s hand until we learn to hear Him… Watch where God puts you into darkness, and when you are there keep your mouth shut. Are you in the dark just now in your circumstances, or in your life with God? Then remain quiet… When you are in the dark, listen, and God will give you a very precious message for someone else when you get into the light.”
Jan Karon
In This Mountain

“Be thankful for the smallest blessing,” Thomas à Kempis had written, “and you will deserve to receive greater. Value the least gifts no less than the greatest, and simple graces as especial favors. If you remember the dignity of the Giver, no gift will seem small or mean, for nothing can be valueless that is given by the most high God.”
Jan Karon
A New Song

“But “common sense is not faith,” Oswald Chambers had written, “and faith is not common sense.”
Jan Karon
At Home in Mitford

“Came pouring out, nor had he ever heard anything like it; it was so clear.”
Jan Karon
Jan Karon’s Mitford Years

“Charles Dickens said, It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens the temper—so cry away.”
Jan Karon
Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good

“Don’t feel totally, personally, irrevocably responsible for everything. That’s my job. Signed, God.”
Jan Karon
A New Song

“Don’t fear whatever God lays before you today.”
Jan Karon
Home to Holly Springs

“Every saint has a past, the sixteenth-century poet had said, and every sinner has a future.”
Jan Karon
Light from Heaven

“Everywhere I have sought rest and not found it, except sitting in a corner by myself with a book.”
Jan Karon
In the Company of Others

“Father, he prayed silently, thank you for sending this boy into my life. Thank you for the joy and the sorrow he brings. Be with him always, to surround him with right influences, and when tests of any kind must come, give him wisdom and strength to act according to your will. Look over his mother, also, and the other children, wherever they are. Feed and clothe them, keep them from harm, and bring them one day into a full relationship with your Son.”
Jan Karon
At Home in Mitford

“For one thing, telling a lie is like eating peanuts. One leads to another. In no time at all, you’ve gone through a bagful.” He rinsed the razor under the tap. “Worst of all, you become a slave to something that isn’t real.”
Jan Karon
At Home in Mitford

“Give me faith, Lord, to know Your Presence as surely as I know the beating of my own heart. I’ve felt so far from You.”
Jan Karon
In This Mountain

“God had been merciful. He wanted to be merciful, too. He was the only one who could open the channel between his children and their grandmother. If he could do this with his head, maybe later it would move to his heart.”
Jan Karon
To Be Where You Are

“God is in love with you, brother. He made you for himself.”
Jan Karon
To Be Where You Are

“God our Father, Lord and Savior, thank you for your love and favor, bless this food and drink we pray, and Irene who shares with me today. Amen.”
Jan Karon
Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good

“He eyed in the far corner of the room the carton of books they’d schlepped across the pond(ocean) They were both fearful of being stuck without a decent book, and who knew they would find everything from Virgil to Synge on the shelves of a fishing lodge?”
Jan Karon
In the Company of Others

“He leaned against the mantel and stretched, breathing the prayer he learned from his grandmother: Lord, make me a blessing to someone today.”
Jan Karon
These High, Green Hills

“He liked being in a place where everything from forgetfulness to homicide might be blamed on the heat.” (Jan Karon Quotes)
Jan Karon
Home to Holly Springs

“He liked familiar things, things that had been worn in by good people, people he could trust.”
Jan Karon
Come Rain or Come Shine

“He tucked her in with a quote from Victor Hugo. ‘“Sleep in peace, God is awake.”
Jan Karon
Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good

“He turned away for a moment, smacked by the beauty of complete surprise.”
Jan Karon
Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good

“He wanted to hold his boy and tease him and make him laugh, he wanted the chunk of him close.”
Jan Karon
To Be Where You Are

“He was miserably disappointed in his own everlasting inability to get up and go, to take strong action and seize control, and do all the things that other people seemed able to do, and which the world admired so much.”
Jan Karon
At Home in Mitford

“He was praying the Psalms, as he’d done in times past, with the enemies of King David translated into his own enemies of fear and remorse and self-loathing, which, in their legions, had become as armies of darkness.”
Jan Karon
In This Mountain

“He was used to her tears. They were a kind of language that needed expression.”
Jan Karon
These High, Green Hills

“Her mom said they were to pray for the people her dad and his colleagues were treating, pray for his sound health and safekeeping, and trust God in everything. She knew such wisdom in her head, but complete trust was, as her mother said, ‘yet to build a station in her heart and erect its flag of undisputed possession.”
Jan Karon
To Be Where You Are

“His feelings of panic had passed once before; it would pass again, he told himself. He must go forward on faith, not feeling.”
Jan Karon
A Light in the Window

“His style was to give the issue to God and haul it back again, ad infinitum, ’til the cows came home, until the thing finally wore itself out in him.”
Jan Karon
These High, Green Hills

“How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing, it’s irresistible. – C. S. Lewis”
Jan Karon
Patches of Godlight

“Human nature is what we were put on this earth to rise above. K. Hepburn in the African Queen”
Jan Karon
A Continual Feast

“I believe that’s when God first started speaking to my heart–the very day I started speaking to His!”
Jan Karon
A Light in the Window

“I can’t say I have any confidence in confidence. I have confidence that God is with us in all things, both tender and tough.”
Jan Karon
Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good

“I learned over a long period of trial and error to see in him what God made him to be. Wounded people use a lot of smoke and mirrors, they thrust the bitterness and rage out there like a shield. Then it becomes their banner, and finally, their weapon. But I stopped falling for the bitterness and rage. I didn’t stop knowing it was there and there for a very good reason but I stopped taking the bullet for it. With God’s help, I was able to start seeing through the smoke.”
Jan Karon
In the Company of Others

“I think you could say I came to the end of myself. I really did want a show all my own, and he had to hammer me pretty hard to make me see that it was all his. We don’t like relinquishing the power we never had anyway, even though running the show ourselves never works. I surrendered everything to him. What did I have to lose?”
Jan Karon
Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good

“I try to wait for Him to make the darkness light, then grow afraid and try to create the light on my own.”
Jan Karon
In This Mountain

“I worried too much about what others thought—I can tell you it’s a tragic waste of time and energy and pokes God in the eye.”
Jan Karon
Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good

“I’ve found that if one keeps pushing along during the mopes, out will flash the most exhilarating thought or idea—a way of doing something that I had never seen”
Jan Karon
A Light in the Window

“I’d like you to know that I’ve forgiven him. Again and again. Once done, of course, back comes the Enemy to persecute and prosecute, and I must ante up to God and forgive yet again.”
Jan Karon
Home to Holly Springs

“If God puts you there, He is amply sufficient.”
Jan Karon
A Light in the Window

“If his wife was happy and his boy was happy, he was happy.”
Jan Karon
To Be Where You Are

“If the trials of many years were gathered into one, he penned from an old book found on Marge’s shelf, they would overwhelm us; therefore, in pity to our little strength, He sends first one, and then an- other, then removes both, and lays on a third, heavier, perhaps, than either; but all is so wisely measured to our strength that the bruised reed is never broken. We do not enough look at our trials in this continuous and successive view. Each one is sent to teach us something, and altogether they have a lesson which is beyond the power of any to teach alone. H. E. Manning.”
Jan Karon
Light from Heaven

“In any decision making, he’d learned to wait for the peace; it was heedless to make a move without it. There was no time for waiting, and yet waiting was imperative.”
Jan Karon
These High, Green Hills

“In effect, a good marriage happens when the happiness of the other is essential to your own happiness. We might say that a good marriage is a contest of generosities.”
Jan Karon
Come Rain or Come Shine

“In Ireland there’s no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes.”
Jan Karon
In the Company of Others

“In the room splashed with golden autumn light, they had drawn together, as close as eggs in a nest.”
Jan Karon
A Light in the Window

“In World War One, they called it shell shock. Second time around, they called it battle fatigue. After ‘Nam, it was post-traumatic stress disorder.”
Jan Karon
Home to Holly Springs

“Indeed, it seemed to be the wont of most people in a distracted and frantic world to blast through an experience without savoring it or, later, reflecting upon it.”
Jan Karon
Shepherds Abiding

“Is asked of us in our time,’ the writer said, ‘is that we break open our blocked caves and find each other. Nothing less will heal the anguished spirit, nor release the heart to act in love.”
Jan Karon
A Light in the Window

“It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.”
Jan Karon
Home to Holly Springs

“It was a wonderful life. To have a stage play right in this room, with real people acting real parts.”
Jan Karon
Home to Holly Springs

“Keep a clear eye toward life’s end. Do not forget your purpose and testing as God’s creature. What you are in His sight is what you are and nothing more. Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take nothing that you have received… but only what you have given; a full heart enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice and courage. -Francis of Assisi”
Jan Karon
Patches of Godlight

“Let the peace of this place surround you as you sit or kneel quietly. Let the hurry and worry of your life fall away. You are God’s child. He loves you and cares for you, and is here with you now and always. Speak to Him thoughtfully, give yourself time for Him to bring things to mind.”
Jan Karon
A New Song

“Listening is among the most generous ways to give.”
Jan Karon
Come Rain or Come Shine

“Lord, make me a blessing to someone today.”
Jan Karon
At Home in Mitford

“Love is an act of endless forgiveness.”
Jan Karon
Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good

“Loving can be hard. Sometimes we don’t feel loving, but it isn’t all about feeling. Very often it is about will. Practice that if you can.”
Jan Karon
Home to Holly Springs

“Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.—George Bernard Shaw”
Jan Karon
Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good

“Many things I have tried to grasp, and have lost. That which I have placed in God’s hands I still have. – Martin Luther”
Jan Karon
Patches of Godlight

“Maybe it’s because he never had any control over what was happening to him as a boy. Being late was somehow a way of taking charge.”
Jan Karon
Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good

“Maybe the best way to honor the deceased was to laugh with the living.”
Jan Karon
To Be Where You Are

“Middle age is when you’ve met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else. Ogden Nash”
Jan Karon
A Continual Feast

“Miss Louella says, ‘Love whoever God sets down in front of you. Even the mean ones, ’cause they can use it.”
Jan Karon
To Be Where You Are

“My friend, if you keep your eyes on Christians, you will be disappointed every day of your life. Your hope is to keep your eyes on Christ.”
Jan Karon
At Home in Mitford

“My work is awfully labored just now. Sometimes it has the most wondrous life of its own, it fairly pulls me along—rather like wind surfing! At other times, it drags and mopes, so that I despair of ever writing another word or drawing another picture. I’ve found that if one keeps pushing along during the mopes, out will flash the most exhilarating thought or idea—a way of doing something that I had never seen before—and then, one is off again, and hold on to your hat!” (Jan Karon Quotes)
Jan Karon
A Light in the Window

“No matter how far we travel, the memories will follow in the baggage car.”
Jan Karon
Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good

“Nothing shows a man’s character more than what he laughs at. Goethe”
Jan Karon
A Continual Feast

“One must begin somewhere, sometime, to let go of the bitterness, or be eaten alive and the marrow sucked out.”
Jan Karon
In the Company of Others

“One of the things that makes a dead leaf fall to the ground is the bud of the new leaf that pushes it off the limb. When you let God fill you with His love and forgiveness, the things you think you desperately want to hold on to start falling away… and we hardly notice their passing.”
Jan Karon
At Home in Mitford

“Only he who gives thanks for little things receives the big things.”
Jan Karon
These High, Green Hills

“Paul said in the second epistle…the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine…they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn from the truth and wander away to myths.”
Jan Karon
Out to Canaan

“People who keep dogs… are cowards who haven’t got the guts to bite people themselves. August Strindberg”
Jan Karon
A Continual Feast

“Perhaps, he thought, we should all live as if we’re dying.”
Jan Karon
At Home in Mitford

“Rejoice! Know that I am with you and for you and will never leave you; take courage that I will fight for you and be your shield and buckler and provide for you when you are old; I will supply your every need, I will give you victory over death, I have prepared a place for you in heaven”
Jan Karon
Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good

“She thought that one of the hardest parts of marriage was being loving when both partners were exhausted or wounded at the same time. When you had the least strength, that’s when you had to dig beyond your limits and grab whatever could be found and give it away.”
Jan Karon
To Be Where You Are

“Sorrow and joy, he thought, so inextricably entwined that he could scarcely tell where one left off and the other began.”
Jan Karon
At Home in Mitford

“That was his favorite thing about books—they took you off to other people’s lives an’ places, but you could still set in your own chair by th’oil heater, warm as a mouse in a churn.”
Jan Karon
Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good

“That’s why growing old together is lovely. You have someone to complain to.”
Jan Karon
To Be Where You Are

“The firefly only shines when on the wing, So it is with us–when we stop, we darken.”
Jan Karon
At Home in Mitford

“The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit,” he exclaimed, his breath vaporizing on the frosty air. “The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are!”
Jan Karon
Shepherds Abiding

“The height of the mountaintop is measured by the drab drudgery of the valley.”
Jan Karon
In This Mountain

“The rector wondered if the joy that people seemed so expert at containing somehow transferred to their dogs, who had nothing at all to hide.”
Jan Karon
Out to Canaan

“The right seminary gives you tools. The Holy Spirit gives you the user’s manual. How the tools are used is different with everybody. A thousand priests, a thousand ministries. All glorifying one God.”
Jan Karon
To Be Where You Are

“The sin life in us must be transformed into the spiritual life.” “How?” “Through sacrifice and obedience.”
Jan Karon
At Home in Mitford

“The standing fields [ready to harvest]were the legions who hadn’t filled their God-vacuum with the One who was born to fill it; the standing fields were those who waited for someone to reach out and speak the truth, and tell them how they might be saved.”
Jan Karon
Out to Canaan

“The waters hold all heaven within their heart.”
Jan Karon
In the Company of Others

“The windows were open to morning air embroidered with birdsong.”
Jan Karon
Jan Karon’s Mitford Years

“Then he turned and went home to the yellow house where he had been given everything and more, none of it especially deserved.”
Jan Karon
Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good

“There are three stages in the work of God: impossible, difficult, done.”
Jan Karon
Light from Heaven

“There is no such thing as too many deviled eggs.”
Jan Karon
Come Rain or Come Shine

“There may be circumstances in this life that God uses to keep bringing us back to Him, looking for His grace.”
Jan Karon
Home to Holly Springs

“There’ll be times when you wonder how you can possibly thank Him for something that turns your life upside down; certainly there will be such times for me. Let us, then, at times like these, give thanks on faith alone… obedient, trusting, hoping, believing.”
Jan Karon
In This Mountain

“To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard ; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common—this is my symphony.
Jan Karon
A Continual Feast

“To see the world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wild flower,’ ” he quoted from Blake. “ ‘Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour,’ ” she replied.” (Jan Karon Quotes)
Jan Karon
At Home in Mitford

“We are not citizens of this world trying to make our way to heaven; we are citizens of heaven trying to make our way through this world.”
Jan Karon
Patches of Godlight

“We are not necessarily doubting,” said C. S. Lewis, “that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.”
Jan Karon
A Light in the Window

“We are, finally, all wanderers in search of knowledge. Most of us hold the dream of becoming something better than we are, something larger, richer, in some way more important to the world and ourselves. Too often, the way taken is the wrong way, with too much emphasis on what we want to have, rather than what we wish to become.”
Jan Karon
A New Song

“We decided he might like to know about the people and places that belong to him now so he can begin a story all his own.”
Jan Karon
Come Rain or Come Shine

“We don’t have to do great things to make a difference. We can make a great difference by doing small things graciously.”
Jan Karon
To Be Where You Are

“We look for visions of heaven,” Oswald Chambers had written, “and we never dream that all the time God is in the commonplace things and people around us.”
Jan Karon
These High, Green Hills

“We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.”
Jan Karon
Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good

“We must stop listening to voices from the past and we must stop immediately.-Father Tim”
Jan Karon
Home to Holly Springs

“We think we dare not be satisfied with the small measure of spiritual knowledge, experience and love that has been given to us, and that we must constantly be looking forward eagerly for the highest good.”
Jan Karon
Out to Canaan

“What is your hope,’ said Paul, ‘for any ministry you may undertake?’ ‘To help people love God so they can learn to love themselves and each other.”
Jan Karon
To Be Where You Are

“When his flock thronged into the midnight service, there was wonder on every face at the newly hung greens and the softly flickering candles on each windowsill. To the simple beauty of the historic church was added fresh, green hope, the lush scent of flowers in winter, and candle flame that cast its flickering shadows over the congregation like a shawl.”
Jan Karon
These High, Green Hills

“When I speak of God’s will, it helps to know that he wants the best for us. If you can’t believe he’s there, pray anyway. If you feel he’s cheap and withholding, thank him anyway. There will come a time when you’ll thank him even for the hard places.”
Jan Karon
Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good

“When things worked, they were theirs; when they failed, they were his.”
Jan Karon
To Be Where You Are

“When we turn from our sin, and have the blessed forgiveness of the Almighty, then we can ask Him to run things, and let Him be in charge.”
Jan Karon
These High, Green Hills

“When you go to court, you’re putting yourself in the hands of 12 people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty!”
Jan Karon
Come Rain or Come Shine

“While most people understandably took family for granted, he took it for grace.”
Jan Karon
Come Rain or Come Shine

“Yet in all this, she was to trust God—and more than that, yes, truly more than that, she was to thank him.”
Jan Karon
To Be Where You Are

“You could tell a lot about people who would stop what they were doing’ to watch the Almighty go about his business.”
Jan Karon
Come Rain or Come Shine

“You never had a clue about anything till it happened and you learned the truth about yourself.”
Jan Karon
Come Rain or Come Shine

“Your goodness to me has been overwhelming. How tender you are, though I am often as tough as gristle. How patiently you have loved me since you made up your mind to love me always.”
Jan Karon
Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good