Go Tell It on the Mountain quotes about disillusionment

It was he who, unforgivably, taught her that there are people in the world for whom ‘coming along’ is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.

The Lord had given her what she said she wanted, as was often, she had found, His bewildering method of answering prayer.

There was not, after all, a great difference between the world of the North and that of the South which she had fled; there was only this difference: the North promised more. And this similarity: what it promised it did not give, and what it gave, at length and grudgingly with one hand, it took back with the other.

This was the story of innumerable shepherds who failed, in their arrogance, to feed the hungry sheep; of many a father and mother who gave their children not bread but a stone, who offered not the truth of God but the tinsel of this world.

For him there was the back door, and the dark stairs, and the kitchen or the basement. This world was not for him. If he refused to believe, and wanted to break his neck trying, then he could try until the sun refused to shine; they would never let him enter.

But ain’t no use to try to take the whole world with you. You can’t change nothing, Gabriel.

Ten years. Their battle never ended; they never bought a home. He died in France.

These, God’s ministers, had indeed grown fat, and their dress was rich and various. They had been in the field so long that they did not tremble before God any more.