Flannery O'Connor Quotes

I think it's really important to find out why people hurt you or try to oppose you or whatever.

Sometimes the worst things that you can say really teach you a lot about what you can learn.

One can win the attention and time and cooperation of even the most sought-after people by becoming genuinely interested in them.

We do not find happiness by being assertive. We don't find happiness by running over people because we see what we want and they are in the way of that happiness so we either abandon them or we smash them. The Scriptures don't teach us to be assertive. The Scriptures teach us — and this is remarkable — the Scriptures teach us to be submissive. This is not a popular idea.

I feel like I can get a good feel for people.

The more that we self-analyze ourselves, the nicer we are to people and to ourselves, and the more we understand each other.

I think that if we don't learn to inhabit other people's perspectives, then we're never going to understand why people do what they do.

Wise men are able to make a fitting use even of their enmities.

Explore your web: the needs, the beliefs, and the emotions that are controlling you so there's more of you to give and so you can appreciate what's driving other people. It's the only way our world's going to change.

I think one of the ways you avoid being angry is to avoid being angry at the people in power. They might do crappy things, and piss you off, and make bad decisions, but they shouldn't be hated simply because they're in power. And I thought it was important to humanize them if the book was going to be even-handed to all the different ways you encounter people at work.

There’s nothing to it. All you have to do is take a close look at yourself and you will understand everyone else. We’re in no way different ourselves... You show me someone who can’t understand people and I’ll show you someone who has built up a false image of himself.

I read to see myself in other people's lives.

We don't live in a shared reality, we each live in a reality of our own, and causing upset is often the price of trying to reach each other. It's always easier to dismiss other people than to go through the awkward and time consuming process of understanding them. We have given 'taking offense' a social status it doesn't deserve: it's not much more than a way of avoiding difficult conversations.

I wouldn't say that I have overcome opposition so much as I have tried to understand it. The lash of judgment carries a wounding sting, and there's a deeply instinctual tendency to want to respond in kind. I am not proud that my thoughts were blackened with vile opinions about the nature of those who were attacking me.

It doesn't do you any service to demonize any group of people. It's much better to try and understand from the inside.

I'm not afraid to upset people. But I am not as upset because I understand what I'm up against.

If you want to study yourself, look into the hearts of other people. If you want to study other people, look into your own heart.

Villains are kind of hard to really know on a personal level when you see them as mean, unsensitive-type people.

My whole work drive has been aimed at making people understand each other. . .

When another blames you or hates you, or people voice similar criticisms, go to their souls, penetrate inside and see what sort of people they are. You will realize that there is no need to be racked with anxiety that they should hold any particular opinion about you.

You have to start knowing yourself so well that you begin to know other people. A piece of us is in every person we can ever meet.

We can teach a good, formal lesson on forgiveness as a Christian virtue and all the doctrines that are attached to it. But to be in a real-life situation, a work camp or a trip or some other activity with young people where real forgiveness needs to happen, that's a different situation altogether. And that is where the deepest learning will occur.

It is the best thing to blame ourselves when people cannot get on well with us. Boundless charity necessarily includes all or it ceases to be boundless. We must be strict with ourselves and lenient with our neighbors. For we know not their difficulties and what they overcome.

We should be slower to think that the man at his worst is the real man, and certain that the better we are ourselves the less likely is he to be at his worst in our company. Every time he talks away his own character before us he is signifying contempt for ours.

... I think that I was too self-centered to ever develop good skills as a peacemaker. In my younger days, I assumed that it was because I was smarter than everyone else, with no patience for explaining things in short words for mouthbreathers who just didn't get it.