Frederick Buechner

"In the silence of a midwinter dusk, there is a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself. You hold your breath to listen. You are aware of the beating of your heart. The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment."

- Frederick Buechner

"Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else’s skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peached and joy finally for you too."

- Frederick Buechner

"The birth of Jesus made possible not just a new way of understanding life but a new way of living it."

- Frederick Buechner

""Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.""

- Frederick Buechner

"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid."

- Frederick Buechner

"Go where your best prayers take you"

- Frederick Buechner

"For outlandish creatures like us, on our way to a heart, a brain, and courage, Bethlehem is not the end of our journey but only the beginning―not home but the place through which we must pass if ever we are to reach home at last."

- Frederick Buechner

"It is impossible to conceive how different things would have turned out if that birth had not happened whenever, wherever, however it did….for millions of people who have lived since, the birth of Jesus made possible not just a new way of understanding life but a new way of living it. It is a truth that, for twenty centuries, there have been untold numbers of men and women who, in untold numbers of ways, have been so grasped by the child who was born, so caught up in the message He taught and the life He lived, that they have found themselves profoundly changed by their relationship with Him."

- Frederick Buechner

"If you have never known the power of God's love, then maybe it is because you have never asked to know it - I mean really asked, expecting an answer."

- Frederick Buechner

"You can kiss your family and friends goodbye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you."

- Frederick Buechner

"Vocation is the place where your deep gladness meets the world's deep need."

- Frederick Buechner

"Pay mind to your own life, your own health, and wholeness. A bleeding heart is of no help to anyone if it bleeds to death."

- Frederick Buechner

"We find by losing. We hold fast by letting go."

- Frederick Buechner

"You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you."

- Frederick Buechner

"Purpose is the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s needs."

- Frederick Buechner