Quotes about grace
page 11

William Gibson photo

“Your saving grace, Danielle, is that you make the rest of your kind look vaguely human.”

Source: Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988), Ch. 25

John Dryden photo

“Thus all below is strength, and all above is grace.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

Epistle to Congreve (1693), line 19.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Paul Cézanne photo

“And art puts us, I believe, in a state of grace in which we experience a universal emotion in an, as it were, religious but in the same time perfectly natural way. General harmony, such as we find in colour, is located all around us.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Source: Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900, Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations, (1897 - 1906), p. 151, in: 'What he told me – I. The motif'

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen photo
Henri Matisse photo
Robert Ley photo

“Always when I look at anyone's art, I get flashes of the person. If I walk into a room and there's a painting by Joan Mitchell, I say, "There's Joannie." Or Grace, if it's Grace Hartigan. And to me all art is self-portraits.”

Elaine de Kooning (1918–1989) American painter

Quote in: an tape-recorded interview with Elaine de Kooning on August 27, 1981 http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-elaine-de-kooning-11999; conducted by Phyllis Tuchman, for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution: Oral Histories.
1972 - 1989

Vālmīki photo
Theodore L. Cuyler photo
Bob Barr photo
Gerard Manley Hopkins photo

“On this day by God's grace I resolved to give up all beauty until I had His leave for it.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

Journal entry (6 November 1865), as reported in In Extremity: A Study of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1978) by John Robinson, p. 1

Ahmad Sirhindi photo

“Every person cherishes some longing in his heart. The only longing which this recluse (meaning himself) cherishes is that the enemies of Allah and his Prophet should be roughed up. The accursed ones should be humiliated, and their false gods disgraced and defiled. I know that Allah likes and loves no other act more than this. That is why I have been encouraging you again and again to act in this way. Now that you have yourself arrived at that place, and have been appointed to defile and insult that dirty spot and its inhabitants, I feel grateful for this grace (from Allah). There are many who go to this place for pilgrimage. Allah in his kindness has not inflicted this punishment on us. After giving thanks to Allah, you should do your best to ruin that place and their false gods… whether the idols are carved or uncarved. Let us hope that you will not act slow. Physical weakness and severity of the cold weather, comes in my way. Otherwise, I would have presented myself, and helped you in doing the job. I would have liked to participate in the ceremony and mutilate the stones…”

Ahmad Sirhindi (1564–1624) Indian philosopher

Maktubat-i-Imam Rabbani translated into Urdu by Maulana Muhammad Sa’id Ahmad Naqshbandi, Deoband, 1988, Volume III pp.707. This letter was also written to Shaikh Farid alias Nawab Murtaza Khan who had reached Kangra in November 1620 to conquer the fort and desecrate its temples. Jahangir had followed the Nawab in order to celebrate the victory by sacrificing cows and building a mosque where none had existed before.
From his letters

Christopher Hitchens photo
Ray Bradbury photo

“Joy is the grace we say to God.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

As quoted in "Sci-fi legend "Ray Bradbury on God, 'monsters and angels'" by John Blake, CNN : Living (2 August 2010), p. 2

Auguste Rodin photo
Lata Mangeshkar photo
Gaio Valerio Catullo photo

“Mourn, ye Graces and Loves, and all you whom the Graces love. My lady's sparrow is dead, the sparrow my lady's pet, whom she loved more than her own eyes.”
Lugete, O Veneres Cupidinesque, Et quantum est hominum venustiorum. Passer mortuus est meae puellae, Passer, deliciae meae puellae.

III, lines 1–4
Lord Byron's translation:
Ye Cupids, droop each little head,
Nor let your wings with joy be spread:
My Lesbia's favourite bird is dead,
Whom dearer than her eyes she loved.
Carmina

Thomas Carlyle photo
Yvette Cooper photo
Pope Benedict XVI photo

“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

Dave Matthews photo
Paul Morphy photo

“So still was he, that but for the searching intellect which glittered in his full dark eye, you might have taken him for a carven image as he pondered his moves. His bearing was mild and that of a refined gentleman, and he dealt the most crushing blows on his adversary with an almost womanly ease and grace.”

Paul Morphy (1837–1884) American chess player

Hugh Alexander Kennedy, quoted in The Westminster Papers: A Monthly Journal of Chess, Whist, Games of Skill and the Drama, Volume X https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=Bs9eAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.RA1-PA40
About

Robert Charles Wilson photo
Siegfried Sassoon photo
Báb photo

“It behooveth you to proclaim the Cause of God unto all created things as a token of grace from His presence; no God is there but Him, the Most Generous, the All-Compelling.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

Tablet to the First Letter of the Living

Robert Louis Stevenson photo

“Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind, spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies.”

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer

Prayer, inscribed on the bronze memorial to Stevenson in St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, Scotland

Kent Hovind photo
Franz Werfel photo

“Happiness is … the grace of being permitted to unfold … all the spiritual powers planted within us.”

Franz Werfel (1890–1945) Austrian-Bohemian author

As quoted in Journey to New Beginnings : Finding Peace Within (2006) by Debbie Ziemann, p. 167

Karl Barth photo
Muhammad bin Tughluq photo
Francis Escudero photo

“I thank and commend the Supreme Court for issuing the TRO and for upholding justice, truth and the fact that Senator Grace Poe is a candidate for President!”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Escudero, F. [Francis]. (2015, December 28). Retrieved from Official Facebook Page of Francis Escudero https://www.facebook.com/senchizescudero/posts/10153773901445610/
2015, Facebook

Jane Roberts photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Horace Bushnell photo
Cornstalk photo

“When Cornstalk arose, he was in no wise confused or daunted, but spoke in a distinct and audible voice, without stammering, or repetition, and with peculiar emphasis. His looks while addressing Dunmore were truly grand, yet graceful and attractive.”

Cornstalk (1720–1777) Native American in the American Revolution

Colonel Benjamin Wilson (1777), on Cornstalk's speech after the battle of Point Pleasant, as quoted in "Cornstalk, the Shawanee Chief" by Rev. William Henry Foote, in The Southern Literary Messenger Vol. 16, Issue 9, (September 1850) pp. 533-540 http://victorian.fortunecity.com/rothko/420/aniyuntikwalaski/cornstalk.html

Jonathan Haidt photo
`Abdu'l-Bahá photo

“Love is the mystery of divine revelations!
Love is the effulgent manifestation!
Love is the spiritual fulfillment!
Love is the breath of the Holy Spirit inspired into the human spirit!
Love is the cause of the manifestation of the Truth (God) in the phenomenal world!
Love is the necessary tie proceeding from the realities of things through divine creation!
Love is the means of the most great happiness in both the material and spiritual worlds!
Love is a light of guidance in the dark night!
Love is the bond between the Creator and the creature in the inner world!
Love is the cause of development to every enlightened man!
Love is the greatest law in this vast universe of God!
Love is the one law which causeth and controleth order among the existing atoms!
Love is the universal magnetic power between the planets and stars shining in the loft firmament!
Love is the cause of unfoldment to a searching mind, of the secrets deposited in the universe by the Infinite!
Love is the spirit of life in the bountiful body of the world!
Love is the cause of the civilization of nations in this mortal world!
Love is the highest honor to every righteous nation!
The people who are confirmed therein are indeed glorified by the Supreme Concourse, the angels of heaven and the dwellers of the Kingdom of El-Abha! But if the hearts of the people become devoid of the Divine Grace — the Love of God — they wander in the desert of ignorance, descend to the depths of ruin and fall to the abyss of despair where there is no refuge! They are like insects living in the lowest plane.
O beloved of God! Be ye the manifestations of God and the lamps of guidance throughout all regions shining with the light of love and union!
How beautiful the effulgence of this light!”

`Abdu'l-Bahá (1844–1921) Son of Bahá'u'lláh and leader of the Bahá'í Faith

“O thou who art attracted by the Fragrances of God!…” in Tablets of Abdul-Baha Abbas (1909), p. 730 http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/ab/TAB/tab-573.html

Margaret Atwood photo

“As I was writing about Grace Marks, and about her interlude in the Asylum, I came to see her in context — the context of other people's opinions, both the popular images of madness and the scientific explanations for it available at the time. A lot of what was believed and said on the subject appears like sheer lunacy to us now. But we shouldn't be too arrogant — how many of our own theories will look silly when those who follow us have come up with something better? But whatever the scientists may come up with, writers and artists will continue to portray altered mental states, simply because few aspects of our nature fascinate people so much. The so-called mad person will always represent a possible future for every member of the audience — who knows when such a malady may strike? When "mad," at least in literature, you aren't yourself; you take on another self, a self that is either not you at all, or a truer, more elemental one than the person you're used to seeing in the mirror. You're in danger of becoming, in Shakespeare's works, a mere picture or beast, and in Susanna Moodie's words, a mere machine; or else you may become an inspired prophet, a truth-sayer, a shaman, one who oversteps the boundaries of the ordinarily visible and audible, and also, and especially, the ordinarily sayable. Portraying this process is deep power for the artist, partly because it's a little too close to the process of artistic creation itself, and partly because the prospect of losing our self and being taken over by another, unfamiliar self is one of our deepest human fears.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Ophelia Has a Lot to Answer For (1997)

David Bentley Hart photo
Mata Amritanandamayi photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Sara Teasdale photo
William Saroyan photo

“Merely to survive is to keep the hope greatness, accuracy, and the grace alive.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952)

“A sweet attractive kinde of grace,
A full assurance given by lookes,
Continuall comfort in a face
The lineaments of Gospell bookes.”

Mathew Roydon (1583–1622) English poet

An Elegie; or Friend's Passion for his Astrophill, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). This piece was errantly ascribed to Edmund Spenser, and was printed in The Phœnix' Nest (1593), where it is anonymous. Todd has shown that it was written by Mathew Roydon.

John Bradford photo

“There, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford.”

John Bradford (1510–1555) English Protestant Reformer and martyr

On seeing prisoners being led to their execution, as quoted in Problems in the Relations of God and Man (1911) by Clement Charles Julian Webb, p. 107.
Paraphrased variant: There, but for the grace of God, go I.
This paraphrase has become a proverbial expression, and one further paraphrased by Phil Ochs in his protest song "There But For Fortune" (1963): There but for fortune, go you or I. It also led to the sardonic expression "There, but for the grace of God, goes God" which has been variously attributed to Herman J. Mankiewicz, in reference to Orson Welles while he was directing Citizen Kane, and to Winston Churchill regarding Stafford Cripps.

Julian of Norwich photo
Goh Chok Tong photo
James Freeman Clarke photo
William Wordsworth photo

“Thou unassuming Common-place
Of Nature, with that homely face,
And yet with something of a grace,
Which Love makes for thee!”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

To the Same Flower (the Daisy), st. 1 (1805).

Báb photo
Thomas Brooks photo

“Such as have made a considerable improvement of their gifts and graces, have hearts as large as their heads; whereas most men's heads have outgrown their hearts.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

Quotes from secondary sources, Smooth Stones Taken From Ancient Brooks, 1860

Muhammad Ali Jinnah photo
John Flavel photo
Julian of Norwich photo
William Penn photo
Angela of Foligno photo
Sinclair Lewis photo

“The doctor asserted, 'Sure religion is a fine influence—got to have it to keep the lower classes in order—fact, it's the only thing that appeals to a lot of these fellows and makes 'em respect the rights of property. And I guess this theology is O. K.; lot of wise old coots figured it out, and they knew more about it than we do.' He believed in the Christian religion, and never thought about it; he believed in the church, and seldom went near it; he was shocked by Carol's lack of faith, and wasn't quite sure what was the nature of the faith that she lacked. Carol herself was an uneasy and dodging agnostic. When she ventured to Sunday School and heard the teachers droning that the genealogy of Shamsherai was a valuable ethical problem for children to think about; when she experimented with the Wednesday prayer-meeting and listened to store-keeping elders giving unvarying weekly testimony in primitive erotic symbols and such gory Chaldean phrases as 'washed in the blood of the lamb' and 'a vengeful God…' then Carol was dismayed to find the Christian religion, in America, in the twentieth century, as abnormal as Zoroastrianism—without the splendor. But when she went to church suppers a felt the friendliness, saw the gaiety with which the sisters served cold ham and scalloped potatoes; when Mrs. Champ Perry cried to her, on an afternoon call, 'My dear, if you just knew how happy it makes you to come into abiding grace,' then Carol found the humanness behind the sanguinary and alien theology.”

Main Street (1920)

Meister Eckhart photo
Malcolm Muggeridge photo
Tryon Edwards photo

“A tiger is a powerful, graceful animal simply by doing what a tiger does. This practical, real world approach is what we have lost, and what natural movement can restore.”

Gregory Ripley (2016). Tao of Sustainability: Cultivate Yourself to Heal the Earth, Three Pines Press.

Algernon Charles Swinburne photo
William Carey (missionary) photo

“The most glorious works of grace that have ever took place, have been in answer to prayer; and it is in this way, we have the greatest reason to suppose, that the glorious out-pouring of the Spirit, which we expect at last, will be bestowed.”

William Carey (missionary) (1761–1834) English Baptist missionary and a Particular Baptist minister

Sect. V : An Enquiry into the Duty of Christians in general, and what Means ought to be used, in order to promote this Work.
An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians (1792)

“Perhaps the attempt to achieve grace by identification with the animals was the most sensitive thing which was tried in the whole bloody history of religion.”

Gregory Bateson (1904–1980) English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist

Attributed to Bateson (1980) in: David N. Perkins, Jack Lochhead, John Christopher Bishop (1987) Thinking: The Second International Conference. Vol 2, p. .124

Thomas Aquinas photo

“Down in adoration falling,
Lo! the sacred Host we hail;
Lo! o'er ancient forms departing,
Newer rites of grace prevail;
Faith for all defects supplying,
Where the feeble senses fail.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Pange, Lingua, stanza 5 (Tantum Ergo)

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen photo
Thomas Guthrie photo
Robert Graves photo

“Christ of His gentleness
Thirsting and hungering,
Walked in the wilderness;
Soft words of grace He spoke
Unto lost desert-folk
That listened wondering.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"In the Wilderness," lines 1-6, from Over the Brazier (1916), Part I: Poems Written Mostly at Charterhouse 1910-1914.
Poems

“And as for their piety towards God, it is very extraordinary; for before sun-rising they speak not a word about profane matters, but put up certain prayers which they have received from their forefathers, as if they made a supplication for its rising. After this every one of them are sent away by their curators, to exercise some of those arts wherein they are skilled, in which they labor with great diligence till the fifth hour. After which they assemble themselves together again into one place; and when they have clothed themselves in white veils, they then bathe their bodies in cold water. And after this purification is over, they every one meet together in an apartment of their own, into which it is not permitted to any of another sect to enter; while they go, after a pure manner, into the dining-room, as into a certain holy temple, and quietly set themselves down; upon which the baker lays them loaves in order; the cook also brings a single plate of one sort of food, and sets it before every one of them; but a priest says grace before meat; and it is unlawful for any one to taste of the food before grace be said. The same priest, when he hath dined, says grace again after meat; and when they begin, and when they end, they praise God, as he that bestows their food upon them; after which they lay aside their [white] garments, and betake themselves to their labors again till the evening; then they return home to supper, after the same manner; and if there be any strangers there, they sit down with them. Nor is there ever any clamor or disturbance to pollute their house, but they give every one leave to speak in their turn; which silence thus kept in their house appears to foreigners like some tremendous mystery; the cause of which is that perpetual sobriety they exercise, and the same settled measure of meat and drink that is allotted them, and that such as is abundantly sufficient for them.”

Jewish War

John Knox photo
Marguerite Bourgeoys photo

“When the heart is open to the sun of grace, we see flowers blossom in their fragrance; these are seen to have profited by the word of God.”

Marguerite Bourgeoys (1620–1700) French colonist and foundress

The Writings of Marguerite Bourgeoys, p. 205

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen photo
Edmund Blunden photo

“Where the light is, and each thing clear,
Separate from all others, standing in its place,
I drink the time and touch whatever's near, And hope for day when the whole world has that face:
For what assures her present every year?
In dark accidents the mind's sufficient grace.”

Delmore Schwartz (1913–1966) American poet

"The Beautiful American Word, Sure" http://www.pbs.org/hollywoodpresents/collectedstories/writing/write_ds_poetry.html
Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge (1959)

Julian of Norwich photo
David Bowie photo

“Let's dance for fear your grace should fall
Let's dance for fear tonight is all”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

Let's Dance
Song lyrics, Let's Dance (1983)

Dwight L. Moody photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Nancy Grace photo
Joseph Strutt photo
Thomas Guthrie photo
Julian of Norwich photo
John Ruysbroeck photo
Justin D. Fox photo
Justin Martyr photo
Alexander Maclaren photo
Erving Goffman photo
John Hoole photo

“For oft the grace
Of costly vest improves a beauteous face.”

John Hoole (1727–1803) British translator

Book XXVIII, line 82
Translations, Orlando Furioso of Ludovico Ariosto (1773)

“There is nothing more profoundly serious than real comedy, which is an affirmation of human communion, redemption and grace.”

Michael Malone (1942) American screenwriter, novelist

January Magazine (January 2002).

Stevie Nicks photo

“That’s the words: "So I’m back to the velvet underground"—which is a clothing store in downtown San Francisco, where Janis Joplin got her clothes, and Grace Slick from Jefferson Airplane, it was this little hole in the wall, amazing, beautiful stuff—”back to the floor that I love, to a room with some lace and paper flowers, back to the gypsy that I was."”

Stevie Nicks (1948) American singer and songwriter, member of Fleetwood Mac

(on the inspiration for "Gypsy") Leah Greenblatt, "Stevie Nicks On Her Favorite Songs: A Music Mix Exclusive", http://music-mix.ew.com/2009/03/31/stevie-nicks-in/ Entertainment Weekly, 31 March 2009