Margaret Craven Quotes

There was nothing but a lonely magnificence of sea and islands

What a shame that Christianity had come here!If the white man had not intruded where he was not wanted, where he did not belong, even now protected by the mountains and the river,the village would have remained a last stronghold of a culture which was almost gone.Mark tried to say that no village,no culture can remain static. I have often thought that if this lively and magnificent land belongs to anyone,it's to the birds and the fish.They were here long before the first Indian and when the last man is gone from the Earth,it will be theirs again.

How must he prove himself? What was it they wished to know of him? And what did he know of himself here where loneliness was an unavoidable element of life, and a man must rely solely on himself?

If you grow up where a snow mountain lifts its proud crown on the home horizon, in some strange way it becomes a member of the family.

You are worrying because day after tomorrow the tribe will be able to buy liquor?" the Bishop asked Mark as he climbed on the plane.
" A little, my lord; I'm afraid some of my best parishioners will end up in the gutter.
" The church belongs in the gutter. It is where it does some of its best work.

We are glad you have been ordained as the first priest of your people. Now you can help us with their problem.' Tagoona asked, 'What is a problem?' and the white man said, 'Tagoona, if I held you by your heels from a third-story window, you would have a problem.' Tagoona considered this long and carefully. Then he said, 'I do not think so. If you saved me, all would be well. If you dropped me, nothing would matter. It is you who would have the problem.

For me it has always been easier here, where only the fundamentals count, to learn what every man must learn in this world."
"And that, my lord?"
"Enough of the meaning of life to be ready to die.

When he had first come to the village,it was the future that loomed huge.So much to plan.So much to learn. Then it was the present that had consumed him-each day with all its chores and never enough hours to do them.

I ain't much of a church man, Mark. Guess you might say I'm an agnostic. I don't know."
"There's a good bit of agnostic in all of us, Calamity. None of us knows how much - only enough to trust to reach out a hand in the dark.

There is a strange depression that hangs over every little town that is no longer in the mainstream of life.

He watched their faces, and he knew each meant desperately what she said because they loved each other, and deep inside surely each knew the words were false, that the true words were those unspoken.