“This book is begun by God’s gift and His grace, but it is not yet performed, as to my sight.”

“What then? For all my sins, His pardoning grace; For all my wants and woes, His loving-kindness; For darkest shades, the shining of God's face; And Christ's own hand to lead me in my blindness. When Caesar gave one a great reward, "This," said he, "is too great a gift for me to receive;" but said Caesar, "It is not too great a gift for me to give." So, though the least gift that Christ gives, in one sense, is too much for us to receive, yet the greatest gifts are not too great for Christ to give.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

“He wrote his mother that he had begun to hate the sight of his typewriter.”

William McKeen (1954) American academic

“God gives his grace freely, in the strictest sense of the word, and without merit on the part of man. For if God did not bestow his grace in this perfectly gratuitous manner, but on account of some subordinate contingent uncertain cause, he could not possibly foresee how he should bestow his free gifts.”

Thomas Bradwardine (1300–1349) Theologian; Archbishop of Canterbury

“Of all God's gifts to the sight of man, colour is the holiest, the most divine, the most solemn.”

John Ruskin book The Stones of Venice

“The love of books is among the choicest gifts of the gods.”

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish physician and author

“The virtue of gratitude is extremely commendable and pleasing in the sight of God, as its opposite is a detestable vice before him. Of which subject, thus speaks St. Bernard: Learn to be thankful for every grace received. Consider diligently the favors heaped upon you, that no gift of God be defrauded of the due return of gratitude and thanksgiving you ought to make, whether the gift be great, middling, or little.”

Bonaventure (1221–1274) franciscan, bishop, cardinal, Doctor of the Church, catholic saint

“Though there is not always grace where there is the fear of hell, yet, to be sure, there is no grace where there is no fear of God.”

John Bunyan (1628–1688) English Christian writer and preacher

“Above all the grace and the gifts that Christ gives to his beloved is that of overcoming self.”

Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) Catholic saint and founder of the Franciscan Order

“Of courtesy it is much less
Than courage of heart or holiness
Yet in my walks it seems to me
That the Grace of God is in courtesy.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer