WIST

Faith and doubt both are needed — not as antagonists, but working side by side — to take us around the unknown curve.

Lillian Smith (1897-1966) American author
(Attributed)

When you stop learning, stop listening, stop looking and asking questions, always new questions, then it is time to die.

Lillian Smith (1897-1966) American author
(Attributed)

From the day I was born, I began to learn my lessons. I learned it is possible to be a Christian and a white southerner simultaneously; to be a gentlewoman and an arrogant callous creature in the same moment; to pray at night and ride a Jim Crow car the next morning and to feel comfortable doing both. I learned to believe in freedom, to glow when the word democracy was used, and to practice slavery from morning to night. I learned it the way all of my southern people learn it: by closing door after door until one’s mind and heart and conscience are blocked off from each other and from reality.

Lillian Smith (1897-1966) American author
Killers of the Dream, ch. 1 “When I Was a Child” (1949)

The human heart dares not stay away too long from that which hurt it most. There is a return journey to anguish that few of us are released from making.

Lillian Smith (1897-1966) American author
Killers of the Dream, Pt. 1, ch. 1 (1949, rev. 1961).

To believe in something not yet proved and to underwrite it with our lives: it is the only way we can leave the future open. Man, surrounded by facts, permitting himself no surmise, no intuitive flash, no great hypothesis, no risk, is in a locked cell. Ignorance cannot seal the mind and imagination more surely.

Lillian Smith (1897-1966) American author
The Journey, ch. 15 (1954)

To find the point where hypothesis and fact meet; the delicate equilibrium between dream and reality; the place where fantasy and earthly things are metamorphosed into a work of art; the hour when faith in the future becomes knowledge of the past; to lay down one’s power for others in need; to shake off the old ordeal and get ready for the new; to question, knowing that never can the full answer be found; to accept uncertainties quietly, even our incomplete knowledge of God; this is what man’s journey is about, I think.

Lillian Smith (1897-1966) American author
The Journey, ch. 15 (1954)