quotations about grace
Grace is only nature blossomed out; nature won and warmed into its true growth.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Our preaching does not stop with the law. That would lead to wounding without binding up, striking down and not healing, killing and not making alive, driving down to hell and not bringing back up, humbling and not exalting. Therefore, we must also preach grace and the promise of forgiveness--this is the means by which faith is awakened and properly taught. Without this word of grace, the law, contrition, penitence, and everything else are done and taught in vain.
MARTIN LUTHER
The Freedom of a Christian
Let grace conduct thee to the paths of peace.
FRANCIS QUARLES
Emblems
For grace may only be found briefly, and always in the midst of madness.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Palimpsest
I rejected the church for a time because I found so little grace there. I returned because I found grace nowhere else.
PHILIP YANCEY
What's So Amazing About Grace?
All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
letter to Cecil Dawkins, Dec. 9, 1958
Grace has been defined, the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
"On Manner", The Round Table
T'was Grace that taught my heart to fear
And Grace, my fears relieved
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed.
JOHN NEWTON
"Amazing Grace"
You can have the other words--chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll take it.
MARY OLIVER
"Sand Dabs, Five"
Every time your enemy fires a curse, you must fire a blessing, and so you are to bombard back and forth with this kind of artillery. The mother grace of all the graces is Christian good-will.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts, Gathered from the Extemporaeous Discourses
Un-winged and naked, sorrow surrenders its crown to a throne called grace.
ABERJHANI
The River of Winged Dreams
Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.
EUGENE O'NEILL
The Great God Brown
Grace in women is the secret charm that draws the soul into its circle and binds a spell round it forever.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
I do not at all understand the mystery of grace--only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.
ANNE LAMOTT
Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
Life is grace. Sleep is forgiveness. The night absolves. Darkness wipes the slate clean, not spotless to be sure, but clean enough for another day's chalking.
FREDERICK BUECHNER
The Alphabet of Grace
Amazing Grace, How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now am found
T'was blind but now I see.
JOHN NEWTON
"Amazing Grace"
A really sublime moment is that when the last ray of light breaks in upon the soul, and marshals into a single group all the scattered disconnected truths there. There is such a vast difference between the moment which follows, and the moment which precedes this one, between what we were before, and what we are after, that the word grace has been invented to convey the idea of this magic stroke, of this light from on high.
HENRI-DOMINIQUE LACORDAIRE
Letters to Young Men
Grace doesn't depend on suffering to exist, but where there is suffering you will find grace in many facets and colors.
WM. PAUL YOUNG
The Shack
The Christian graces are like perfumes, the more they are pressed by affliction, the sweeter they smell.
J. BEAUMONT
attributed, Day's Collacon
Grace is like the summer ocean that calls to the bather; but the bather must go in.
FREDERICK FRANKLIN SHANNON
The Soul's Atlas and Other Sermons