“Grace is something you can never get but only be given.”

—  Frederick Buechner

Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC's of Faith (1979)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Grace is something you can never get but only be given." by Frederick Buechner?
Frederick Buechner photo
Frederick Buechner 67
Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian 1926

Related quotes

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“All you can do is hope for a pattern to emerge, and sometimes it never does. Still, with a plan, you only get the best you can imagine. I'd always hoped for something better than that.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby

Anne Lamott photo

“You want to protect your child from pain, and what you get instead is life, and grace; and though theologians insist that grace is freely given, the truth is that sometimes you pay for it through the nose. And you can't pay your child's way.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

Edward Everett Hale photo

“I am only one, but I am one. I can't do everything, but I can do something. The something I ought to do, I can do. And by the grace of God, I will”

Edward Everett Hale (1822–1909) American author and Unitarian clergyman

Statement published in A Year of Beautiful Thoughts‎ (1902) by Jeanie Ashley Bates Greenough, p. 172, Third statement for June 11. This has often been misattributed to Helen Keller in some published works since at least 1980, perhaps because she somewhere quoted it.
Variant:
I am only one,
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
The Book of Good Cheer : A Little Bundle of Cheery Thoughts‎ (1909) by Edwin Osgood Grover, p. 28; also in Masterpieces of Religious Verse (1948) by James Dalton Morrison, p. 416, where it is titled "Lend a Hand"

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, The Drum Major Instinct (1968)
Context: And so Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness. If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That's a new definition of greatness. And this morning, the thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, (Everybody) because everybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.

“One of the few graces of getting old — and God knows there are few graces — is that if you’ve worked hard and kept your nose to the grindstone, something happens: The body gets old but the creative mechanism is refreshed, smoothed and oiled and honed. That is the grace. That is the splendid grace. And I think that is what’s happening to me.”

Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) American illustrator and writer of children's books

As quoted in "Interview: Why Is Maurice Sendak So Incredibly Angry?" by Leonard S. Marcus in Parenting (October 1993); also in Ways of Telling : Conversations on the Art of the Picture Book (2002) by Leonard S. Marcus, p. 181

Martin Luther photo

“All the passages in the Holy Scriptures that mention assistance are they that do away with "free-will", and these are countless…For grace is needed, and the help of grace is given, because "free-will" can do nothing.”

Martin Luther book On the Bondage of the Will

Source: On the Bondage of the Will (1525), p. 270

P. D. Ouspensky photo

“Two things can get people to make efforts: if people want to get something, or if they want to get rid of something. Only, in ordinary conditions, without knowledge, people do not know what they can get rid of or what they can gain.”

P. D. Ouspensky (1878–1947) Russian esotericist

The Fourth Way (1958)

Frederick Buechner photo

“The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

“Kneecaps only exist to get hit with claw-hammers; grace only exists to be fallen from.”

Glen Duncan book I, Lucifer

Source: I, Lucifer

Eric Schmidt photo

“Playing catch-up with the competition can only ever help you make incremental gains. It will never help you create something new.”

Eric Schmidt (1955) software engineer, businessman

Eric Schmidt: 'Playing catch-up with the competition will never help you create something new' http://macdailynews.com/2014/08/27/eric-schmidt-playing-catch-up-with-the-competition-will-never-help-you-create-something-new in MacDailyNews (28 August 2014).

Related topics