Top 140 Jan Karon Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “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

52. “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

53. “Boldly! That was the great and powerful key. Preach boldly! Love boldly! Jog boldly! And most crucial of all, do not approach God whining or begging, but boldly – as a child of the King. “I.”

— Jan Karon

54. “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

55. “Maybe the best way to honor the deceased was to laugh with the living.”

— Jan Karon

56. “Niebuhr spoke to that,” said Father Tim. “Indeed. He said, ‘Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.”

— Jan Karon

57. “The significant, life-forming times are the dull, in-between times.”

— Jan Karon

58. “I grew up hearing words like snakeroot, sassafras, mullein – things that had wondrous, mysterious sounds in their names.”

— Jan Karon

59. “But “common sense is not faith,” Oswald Chambers had written, “and faith is not common sense.”

— Jan Karon

60. “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

61. “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

62. “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

63. “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.”

— Jan Karon

64. “You could tell a lot about people who would stop what they were doing to watch the Almighty go about His business.”

— Jan Karon

65. “In the end, his mother’s memory could not be shamed by a gift from God. Don’t worry about me, she would say, and never worry what others may think. 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

66. “Men ate the bread of angels,” was how the psalmist described it. That appeared, somehow, to illustrate his marriage. Every day, with what seemed to be no effort at all on his part, he received God’s extraordinary provision of contentment – there it was, waiting for him at every dawn; all he had to do was gather it in.”

— Jan Karon

67. “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.” He.”

— Jan Karon

68. “My life is extremely full and wretchedly busy, and I feel that while my life drains energy from my work, my work in turn drains energy from my life. The result is, I am always playing catch-up spiritually. That is my thorn.”

— Jan Karon

69. “I thought you drove down here in a Buick,” said Absalom Greer, “but it looks like you’ve come drivin’ a hard bargain.”

— Jan Karon

70. “Not everything can be understood or resolved,” said Henry. “But it all has to be faced, I think.”

— Jan Karon

71. “How wonderful that it’s possible to ensure our own happiness of another. Is it our job to make a beloved happy? It is not. The other person always has a choice. It is our job to generously outdo, no matter what, and discover that the prize in this contest of generosity is more love.”

— Jan Karon

72. “Miss Louella says, ‘Love whoever God sets down in front of you. Even the mean ones, ’cause they can sho use it.”

— Jan Karon

73. “My grandmother influenced me so deeply.”

— Jan Karon

74. “I’ve put everything I had and I’ve given my readers 120 percent, and that’s the truth.”

— Jan Karon

75. “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.” He.”

— Jan Karon

76. “I remember the first time I held my book, my first book in my hands. I cannot tell you how it moved me.”

— Jan Karon

77. “Thank you for patience that you may reward it, thank you for brokenness that you may mend it, thank you for love that you may enlarge it above our most heartfelt expectations.”

— Jan Karon

78. “Cynthia came in quietly and set a cup of tea before him. He kissed her hand, inexpressibly grateful, and she went back into the kitchen. When we view the little things with thanksgiving, even they become big things.”

— Jan Karon

79. “I try to put my heart out there to everybody. They don’t have to be Christian. For example, I have lots of Jewish readers. I love my Jewish readers.”

— Jan Karon

80. “With my mother’s death,” Lewis wrote, “all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable, disappeared from my life. There was to be much fun, many pleasures, many stabs of Joy; but no more of the old security.”

— Jan Karon

81. “Bonhoeffer said it’s not about hero worship, but intimacy with God.”

— Jan Karon

82. “Deep in their roots,’ Roethke had said, ’all flowers keep the light.”

— Jan Karon

83. “I believe that’s when God first started speaking to my heart – the very day I started speaking to His!”

— Jan Karon

84. “To do it all and deprive others of doing is... a misguided notion.”

— Jan Karon

85. “Faith by its very nature must be tried... what God does with our faith must be something like workouts. He sees it to that our faith gets mushed and pulled, stretched and pounded, taken to it’s limits so its limits can expand... If it doesn’t get exercised, it becomes like a weak muscle that fails us when we need it.”

— Jan Karon

86. “I’d like you to know that I have forgiven him. Again and again. Once done, course, back comes the Enemy to persecute and persecute, and I must ante up to God and forgive yet again.”

— Jan Karon

87. “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

88. “Sometimes you have to gag on fancy before you can appreciate plain...”

— Jan Karon

89. “I think it means to go unfettered by cares, by the infernal bondage of the mortal. Go with a light heart, trusting God and giving thanks. Go and gather unto yourselves so you can pour out to others.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Go without looking back.”

— Jan Karon

90. “He had laughed today; he had been happy. He didn’t know why he had not counted more sunny hours in his life, but he hadn’t. God had clearly asked him to, but he was intent on having his own nature, and his own nature could be inward, even melancholy. He didn’t like it, but here it was.”

— Jan Karon

91. “Even the roughest character, underneath all that hurt, is someone who wants to love and be loved.”

— Jan Karon

92. “If you yield it up, God will make it enough.”

— Jan Karon

93. “We must stop listening to voices from the past – and we must stop immediately. – Father Tim.”

— Jan Karon

94. “In everything, give thanks.”

— Jan Karon

95. “And it can be a way of healing.”

— Jan Karon

96. “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

97. “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

98. “The dark book has been terribly popular. Dark characters, dysfunction, and all sorts of things from reality that are true in our world.”

— Jan Karon

99. “For a very long time, I wrote a book a year, and was eager and willing to do it, to put bread on the table, to have my work out there. Now I must write a book every two years, and that’s never enough time, either.”

— Jan Karon

100. “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