“I have tried as far as I could to be a comforter in the world, not through what I know, but what I don’t-and cannot-know. I have tried to suggest the mystery and the magic.”

– Robert Nathan


“There is no distance on this earth as far away as yesterday”

– Robert Nathan


“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.”

– Robert Nathan


“What I really want is to give comfort to people in this wilderness of death and trouble. And to myself, too. So, when I can, I take the poison and hate out of my books; but I hate, just the same. I hate violence, and tyranny, and vulgarity. I hate despair and destruction, and the writers who insist that that is all there is, there isn’t anything else.”

– Robert Nathan


“It seems to me that I have always wanted to say the same things in my books: that life is one, that mystery is all around us, that yesterday, 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.”

– Robert Nathan