Quotes about grace (1320 quotes, page 2)

“As a community, you’ve inspired us, Newtown. In the face of indescribable violence, in the face of unconscionable evil, you’ve looked out for each other. You’ve cared for one another. And you’ve loved one another. This is how Newtown will be remembered, and with time and God’s grace, that love will see you through.
But we as a nation, we are left with some hard questions.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2012, Sandy Hook Prayer Vigil (December 2012)

Love , God , Communication , Question

“I am a material to be used that will not cost you any money. I am afraid to collect money from you because if I collect it, it will affect the gift and grace of God in my life.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

On collecting money - "I Told Jonathan He Would Lose - TB Joshua" http://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/top-news/180634-i-told-jonathan-he-would-lose-tb-joshua.html Premium Times, Nigeria (April 5 2015)

Life , Money , God

“Throughout your treatment you forget that you said that 'free-will' can do nothing without grace, and you prove that 'free-will' can do all things without grace! Your inferences and analogies "For if man has lost his freedom, and is forced to serve sin, and cannot will good, what conclusion can more justly be drawn concerning him, than that he sins and wills evil necessarily?”

Martin Luther book On the Bondage of the Will

Source: On the Bondage of the Will (1525), p. 149

Freedom , Evil , Forgetting

“Her majesty, being now in possession of her imperial crown and estate pertaining to it, cannot forsake that faith that the whole world knows her to have followed and practiced since her birth; she desires, rather, by God's grace, to preserve it till her death; and she desires greatly that her subjects may come to embrace the same faith quietly and with charity, whereby she shall receive great happiness.”

Mary I of England (1516–1558) Queen of England and Ireland

Proclamation concerning Religion (1553-08-18).

Death , God , World , Faith

“Monica Swinton, twenty-nine, of graceful shape and lambent eye, went and sat in her living room, arranging her limbs with taste. She began by sitting and thinking; soon she was just sitting. Time waited on her shoulder with the maniac slowth it reserves for children, the insane, and wives whose husbands are away improving the world.”

Brian W. Aldiss book Super-Toys Last All Summer Long

Super-Toys Last All Summer Long (1969)

Children , World , Thinking , Time

“These journeys have no visible ending in the world of time, but the severed wayfarer—if invisible confirmation descend upon him and the Guardian of the Cause assist him—may cross these seven stages in seven steps, nay rather in seven breaths, nay rather in a single breath, if God will and desire it. And this is of “His grace on such of His servants as He pleaseth.””

Bahá'u'lláh (1817–1892) founder of the Bahá'í Faith

The Seven Valleys Of Bahá’u’lláh

God , World , Time

“"Twas grace that taught
My heart to fear,
And grace my fears reliev'd;
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believ'd!"
And I want to feel sun on my face,
And I feel a shadow in its place,
With the sunlight shines through cloud,
When we're standing free, proud.”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, The Millennium Bell (1999)

Fear , Feeling , Appearance , Sun

“The point was living with grace, decency, and attention to the world, and breaking free of the artificial constructs in your own life.”

Scott Jurek (1973) American ultramarthon runner

Source: Eat and Run (2012), Ch. 12, p. 105

Life , World

“All the blessed teaching of our Lord was shewed by three parts: that is to say, by bodily sight, and by word formed in mine understanding, and by spiritual sight. For the bodily sight, I have said as I saw, as truly as I can; and for the words, I have said them right as our Lord shewed them to me; and for the spiritual sight, I have told some deal, but I may never fully tell it: and therefore of this sight I am stirred to say more, as God will give me grace.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 73

God , Understanding , Parting

“Just as the creative artist is not allowed to choose, neither is he permitted to turn his back on anything: a single refusal, and he is cast out of the state of grace and becomes sinful all the way through.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Letter to his wife, reprinted in Rilke’s Letters on Cézanne (1952, trans. 1985). (October 23, 1907)
Rilke's Letters

Way

“Whenever you make a figure of a man or of some graceful animal remember to avoid making it seem wooden; that is it should move with counterpoise and balance in such a way as not to seem a block of wood.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XXIX Precepts of the Painter

Way , Animals

“At this time of life even a day makes a difference, the only saving grace is that sometimes things improve.”

José Saramago book The Cave

Source: The Cave (2000), p. 43 (Vintage 2003)

Life , Time

“Every holy Mass, heard with devotion, produces in our souls marvelous effects, abundant spiritual and material graces which we, ourselves, do not know. It is easier for the earth to exist without the sun than without the holy Sacrifice of the Mass.”

Padre Pio (1887–1968) Italian saint, priest, stigmatist and mystic

Gerardo Di Flumeri, The Mystery of the Cross in Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, National Centre for Padre Pio, Barto, PA. p. 16.

Soul , Sun

“If thou knewest the whole Bible by heart, and the sayings of all the philosophers, what would it profit thee without the love of God and without grace?”

Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471) German canon regular

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 365.

Love , God , Heart

“Grace in women has more effect than beauty.”

William Hazlitt book The Round Table

"On Manner"
The Round Table (1815-1817)

Women , Beauty

“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the Glory of God. Not only so, but we rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who he has given us”

Paul of Tarsus book Epistle to the Romans

Romans 5:1-5
Epistle to the Romans

Love , God , Peace , Faith

“I firmly believe that the higher [spiritual] experience can to a certain extent be prepared for by absolute devotion in the material world to another human being. Thus from the most worldly point of view and with no comprehension of the higher life of the spirit, the lower, more terrestrial spirit makes us aware that all the treasures of this life, all that fame, wealth and health can bring are nothing beside the happiness which is created and sustained by the love of one human being for another… but as the joys of human love surpass all that riches and power may bring a man, so does that greater spiritual love and enlightenment, the fruit of that sublime experience of the direct vision of reality which is God's gift and grace, surpass all that the finest, truest human love can offer.”

Aga Khan III (1877–1957) 48th Imam of the Nizari Ismaili community

Memoirs of Aga Khan: World Enough & Time (1954)

Love , Life , God , Health

“The law of faith, being a covenant of free grace, God alone can appoint what shall be necessarily believed by everyone whom He will justify. What is the faith which He will accept and account for righteousness, depends wholly on his good pleasure. For it is of grace, and not of right, that this faith is accepted. And therefore He alone can set the measures of it: and what he has so appointed and declared is alone necessary. No-body can add to these fundamental articles of faith; nor make any other necessary, but what God himself hath made, and declared to be so. And what these are which God requires of those who will enter into, and receive the benefits of the new covenant, has already been shown. An explicit belief of these is absolutely required of all those to whom the gospel of Jesus Christ is preached, and salvation through his name proposed.”

John Locke (1632–1704) English philosopher and physician

§ 156
The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695)

God , Pleasure , Faith , Law

“Our world is being torn apart by wars and violence, and wounded by a widespread individualism which divides human beings, setting them against one another as they pursue their own well-being. In various countries, conflicts and old divisions from the past are re-emerging. I especially ask Christians in communities throughout the world to offer a radiant and attractive witness of fraternal communion. Let everyone admire how you care for one another, and how you encourage and accompany one another: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn 13:35). This was Jesus’ heartfelt prayer to the Father: “That they may all be one… in us… so that the world may believe” (Jn 17:21). Beware of the temptation of jealousy! We are all in the same boat and headed to the same port! Let us ask for the grace to rejoice in the gifts of each, which belong to all.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Section 99
2010s, 2013, Evangelii Gaudium · The Joy of the Gospel

Love , War , World , Jealousy

“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Upon proclaiming a National Fast Day (30 March 1863)
1860s

Wisdom , God , Peace , Feeling

“Without the support of your father (practically and metaphysically), without that behind you, without the knowledge of you as both a biological and cultural creature, with that depth of knowledge, you don't have the courage to do it, because you don't know what you are or what you could be. And so without that – because you're a historical creature, so you need all this collected wisdom, and all this dream-like information, and all this mythology and all this narrative, to inform you about what you are beyond what you see of yourself. And you're pummeled down, and people picked on you, and there's fifty things about you that are horrible, and you have a self-esteem problem, and you're sort of hunched over – you've got all these problems, and so it's not easy to see the divinity that lurks behind that. Unless you're aware of the heroic stories of the past – the metaphysics of consciousness – I don't think you can have the courage that regards yourself as the sort of creature that can stand up underneath that intense existential burden and move forward in courage and grace.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdrLQ7DpiWs "Biblical Series II: Genesis 1: Chaos & Order"

Wisdom , People , Dreams , Courage

“A kind of music far superior, in my opinion, to that of operas, and which in all Italy has not its equal, nor perhaps in the whole world, is that of the 'scuole'. The 'scuole' are houses of charity, established for the education of young girls without fortune, to whom the republic afterwards gives a portion either in marriage or for the cloister. Amongst talents cultivated in these young girls, music is in the first rank. Every Sunday at the church of each of the four 'scuole', during vespers, motettos or anthems with full choruses, accompanied by a great orchestra, and composed and directed by the best masters in Italy, are sung in the galleries by girls only; not one of whom is more than twenty years of age. I have not an idea of anything so voluptuous and affecting as this music; the richness of the art, the exquisite taste of the vocal part, the excellence of the voices, the justness of the execution, everything in these delightful concerts concurs to produce an impression which certainly is not the mode, but from which I am of opinion no heart is secure. Carrio and I never failed being present at these vespers of the 'Mendicanti', and we were not alone. The church was always full of the lovers of the art, and even the actors of the opera came there to form their tastes after these excellent models. What vexed me was the iron grate, which suffered nothing to escape but sounds, and concealed from me the angels of which they were worthy. I talked of nothing else. One day I spoke of it at Le Blond's; "If you are so desirous," said he, "to see those little girls, it will be an easy matter to satisfy your wishes. I am one of the administrators of the house, I will give you a collation [light meal] with them." I did not let him rest until he had fulfilled his promise. In entering the saloon, which contained these beauties I so much sighed to see, I felt a trembling of love which I had never before experienced. M. le Blond presented to me one after the other, these celebrated female singers, of whom the names and voices were all with which I was acquainted. Come, Sophia, — she was horrid. Come, Cattina, — she had but one eye. Come, Bettina, — the small-pox had entirely disfigured her. Scarcely one of them was without some striking defect.
Le Blond laughed at my surprise; however, two or three of them appeared tolerable; these never sung but in the choruses; I was almost in despair. During the collation we endeavored to excite them, and they soon became enlivened; ugliness does not exclude the graces, and I found they possessed them. I said to myself, they cannot sing in this manner without intelligence and sensibility, they must have both; in fine, my manner of seeing them changed to such a degree that I left the house almost in love with each of these ugly faces. I had scarcely courage enough to return to vespers. But after having seen the girls, the danger was lessened. I still found their singing delightful; and their voices so much embellished their persons that, in spite of my eyes, I obstinately continued to think them beautiful.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1765-1770; published 1782), On the musicians of the Ospedale della Pieta (book VII)

Love , Marriage , Age , World

“America, I believe we can build on the progress we've made and continue to fight for new jobs and new opportunity and new security for the middle class. I believe we can keep the promise of our founders, the idea that if you're willing to work hard, it doesn't matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or where you love. It doesn't matter whether you're black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight, you can make it here in America if you're willing to try. I believe we can seize this future together because we are not as divided as our politics suggests. We're not as cynical as the pundits believe. We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions, and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are and forever will be the United States of America. And together with your help and God's grace we will continue our journey forward and remind the world just why it is that we live in the greatest nation on Earth.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2012, Re-election Speech (November 2012)

Love , God , World , Idea

“Will is to grace as the horse is to the rider.”

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher

De Libero Arbitrio (388 - 395)

Horse

“I used to look at homeless peopleand try to imagine what they had once looked like. It's not easy. Beneath the grime and degradation is a face once adored by someone. It's a truth that tricks the eye; our glances slide away. But something happened to ruin that life, to strip it bare; and it was something small, something that but for the grace of God could take us, too.”

John Hart (1965) American author with multiple books and awards

Source: The King of Lies (2006), Ch. 2.

Life , God , Truth , Imagination

“These philosophers of the world place contrarieties in the same subject; for the one attributed greatness to nature and the other weakness to this same nature, which could not subsist; whilst faith teaches us to place them in different subjects: all that is infirm belonging to nature, all that is powerful belonging to grace. Such is the marvelous and novel union which God alone could teach, and which he alone could make, and which is only a type and an effect of the ineffable union of two natures in the single person of a Man-God.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

Conversation on Epictetus and Montaigne

God , World , Faith , Nature

“My style icon is none other than Grace Kelly. She was not only classy but was also a fantastic woman who had a lot of grace.”

Sukirti Kandpal (1987) Indian actress

On her favourite style icon http://www.tellychakkar.com/tv/features/tv-actresses-pick-their-favourite-style-icons-337/

“God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed, courage
to change the things which should be changed,
and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.”

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian

Niebuhr's preferred form, as declared by his widow
The Serenity Prayer (c. 1942)
Variant: God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

Courageous , Wisdom , God , Courage

“Any artist should be grateful for a naïve grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

Foreword to The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom (1987)
General sources

“Sin can read sin, but dimly scans high grace.”

John Henry Newman (1801–1890) English cleric and cardinal

Isaac http://www.newmanreader.org/works/verses/verse67.html (1833).

Reading

“As to why some are touched by the law and others not, so that some receive and others scorn the offer of grace…[this is the] hidden will of God, Who, according to His own counsel, ordains such persons as He wills to receive and partake of the mercy preached and offered.”

Martin Luther book On the Bondage of the Will

Source: On the Bondage of the Will (1525), p. 169

God , Law , Personality

“There are believers who by God's grace, have climbed the mountains of full assurance and near communion, their place is with the eagle in his eyrie, high aloft; they are like the strong mountaineer, who has trodden the virgin snow, who has breathed the fresh, free air of the Alpine regions, and therefore his sinews are braced, and his limbs are vigorous; these are they who do great exploits, being mighty men, men of renown.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 18.

Men , God , Mountain , Strong

“O most grateful burden, which comforts them that carry it! The burdens of earthly masters gradually wear out the strength of those who carry them; but the burden of Christ assists the bearers of it, because we carry not grace, but grace us.”

John Chrysostom (349–407) important Early Church Father

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 98

Christ

“Among all the studies of natural causes and reasons Light chiefly delights the beholder; and among the great features of Mathematics the certainty of its demonstrations is what preeminently (tends to) elevate the mind of the investigator. Perspective, therefore, must be preferred to all the discourses and systems of human learning. In this branch [of science] the beam of light is explained on those methods of demonstration which form the glory not so much of Mathematics as of Physics and are graced with the flowers of both.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), I Prolegomena and General Introduction to the Book on Painting

Flowers , Mathematics , Nature , Study

“We don’t earn grace. We're all sinners. We don't deserve it. But God gives it to us anyway. And we choose how to receive it. It's our decision how to honor it.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney (June 2015)

God , Decision

“They stand not aloof with the gaping vacuity of vulgar ignorance, nor bend with the cringe of sycophantic insignificance. The graceful pride of truth knows no extremes, and preserves, in every latitude of life, the right-angled character of man.”

Thomas Paine book Rights of Man

Part 1.3 Rights of Man
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)

Life , Truth

“I want you to have this,
all the beauty in my eyes,
and the grace of my mouth,
all the splendor of my strength,
all the wonder of the musk parts of my body,
for are we not talking about real love, real love?”

Meera Bai Hindu mystic poet

Meera Bai, in [ http://books.google.co.in/books?id=fpcvv5pGKWMC&pg=PA250 Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West], p. 250

Love , Beauty , Parting

“The light was faint, and soft the air
That breathed around the place;
And she was lithe, and tall, and fair,
And with a wayward grace
Her queenly head she bare.”

Lewis Carroll Three Sunsets and Other Poems

Stolen Waters (1862), st. 1
Three Sunsets and Other Poems (1898)

Light

“As woman was the first to be tempted, so did God's message of grace come first to a woman, and each time woman's assent determined the destiny of humanity as a whole.”

Edith Stein (1891–1942) Jewish-German nun, theologian and philosopher

Essays on Woman (1996), The Separate Vocations of Man and Woman According to Nature and Grace (1932)

God , Time

“Behold great Whitman, whose licentious line
Delights the rake, and warms the souls of swine;
Whose fever'd fancy shuns the measur'd pace,
And copies Ovid's filth without his grace.
In his rough brain a genius might have grown,
Had he not sought to play the brute alone;
But void of shame, he let his wit run wild,
And liv'd and wrote as Adam's bestial child.
Averse to culture, strange to humankind,
He never knew the pleasures of the mind.
Scorning the pure, the delicate, the clean,
His joys were sordid, and his morals mean.
Thro' his gross thoughts a native vigour ran,
From which he deem'd himself the perfect man:
But want of decency his rank decreas'd,
And sunk him to the level of the beast.
Would that his Muse had dy'd before her birth,
Nor spread such foul corruption o'er the earth.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Orignially written as part of an "Essay on Modern Poets" this was published as a "Fragment on Whitman” (c. 1912) in The Ancient Track (2001) edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 192
Non-Fiction

Pleasure , Soul , Birth , Swine

“The fullness of grace can transform the human heart and enable it to do something so great as to change the course of human history.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

2010s, Address to the United States Congress, Inauguration of the Jubilee Year of Mercy

History , Change , Heart

“I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.”

Richard Brautigan (1935–1984) American novelist, poet, and short story writer

"All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace"
The Pill Versus the Springhill Mining Disaster

Love , Nature , Thinking , Sister

“For a hundred years or more the world, our world, has been dying. And not one man, in these last hundred years or so, has been crazy enough to put a bomb up the asshole of creation and set it off. The world is rotting away, dying piecemeal. But it needs the coup de grace, it needs to be blown to smithereens.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer (1934), Chapter Two

World

“Faith is the champion of grace, and love the nurse; but humility is the beauty of grace.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

Source: Quotes from secondary sources, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers, 1895, P. 221.

Love , Faith , Beauty

“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 (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Source: The Freedom of a Christian (1520), pp. 78-79

Faith , Law , Forgiveness , Hell

“The only saving grace of the present is that it's too damned stupid to question the past very closely.”

H.P. Lovecraft book Pickman's Model

"Pickman's Model " - written 1926; first published in Weird Tales, Vol. 10, No. 4 (October 1927)
Fiction

Stupidity , Question , Past

“And it is clear that He does not abandon them the moment they fall, and that demons will not remain in their demonic state, and sinners (will not remain) in their sins; rather, He is going to bring them to a single equal state of perfection in relationship to His own Being — in a (state) in which the holy angels are now, in perfection of love and a passionless mind. He is going to bring them into that excellency of will, where it will not be as though they were curbed and not , or having stirrings from the Opponent then; rather, (they will be) in a (state of) excelling knowledge, with a mind made mature in the stirrings which partake of the divine outpouring which the blessed Creator is preparing in His grace; they will be perfected in love for Him, with a perfect mind which is above any aberration in all its stirrings.”

Isaac of Nineveh (640–700) Eastern Orthodox saint

XL, 4, p. 175
‘The Second Part’, Chapters IV-XLI

Love , Angels , Knowledge , Perfection

“This age above all ages is a period in history when it should be our prime duty to preach the Gospel of Grace to all our fellow men and women.”

Haile Selassie (1892–1975) Emperor of Ethiopia

Address to the World Evangelical Congress in Berlin (28 October 1966).
Context: This age above all ages is a period in history when it should be our prime duty to preach the Gospel of Grace to all our fellow men and women. The love shown in Christ by our God to mankind should constrain all of us who are followers and disciples of Christ to do all in our power to see to it that the Message of Salvation is carried to those of our fellows for whom Christ Our Saviour was sacrificed but who have not had the benefit of hearing the good news. Since nobody can interfere in the realm of God we should tolerate and live side by side with those of other faiths.

Women , Men , Age , History

“It’s not as if grace did one half of the work and free choice the other; each does the whole work, in its own peculiar contribution.”

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) French abbot, theologian

On Grace & Free Choice, chap 14.(de Gratia Et Libero Arbitrio), Daniel O'Donovan, trans., Introduction, Bernard McGinn, Cistercian Publications, 1988, p. 37. https://books.google.com/books?id=ODcqAAAAYAAJ&q=%22not+as+if+grace+did+one+half+of+the+work+and+free+choice+the+other%22&dq=%22not+as+if+grace+did+one+half+of+the+work+and+free+choice+the+other%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjT7I76jK_TAhUFNiYKHZrCB3gQ6AEIODAE (Note: Fr. Harry J. McSorley, C.S.P. Commenting on this teaching of Bernard, states: "We are indebted to Bernard of Clairvaux … for the clarification that grace and free will are not related as partial causes - which would be a false synergism - but as total causes of the act of justification, each on its own proper plane. Bernard maintains the Catholic-Augustinian tradition by insisting that man's natural freedom (liberum arbitrium) remains even after the fall. It is a wretched, but nonetheless integral free will. This natural freedom of the will, possessed by the just and sinners alike, enables us to will, but not to will what is good. It is grace alone that gives us good will." Luther, Right or Wrong, (1969), Newman Press / Augsburg Publishing House, p. 133 https://books.google.com/books?id=KaRAAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA133&dq=%22for+the+clarification+that+grace+and+free+will+are+not+related+as+partial+causes%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjX5fjGjK_TAhUKRSYKHdmfBCsQ6AEIIjAA#v=onepage&q=%22for%20the%20clarification%20that%20grace%20and%20free%20will%20are%20not%20related%20as%20partial%20causes%22&f=false
Context: It’s not as if grace did one half of the work and free choice the other; each does the whole work, in its own peculiar contribution. Grace does the whole work, and so does free choice – with this one qualification: That whereas the whole is done in free choice, so is the whole done of grace.

“As a nation, out of this terrible tragedy, God has visited grace upon us, for he has allowed us to see where we’ve been blind. He has given us the chance, where we’ve been lost, to find our best selves. We may not have earned it, this grace,”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney (June 2015)
Context: As a nation, out of this terrible tragedy, God has visited grace upon us, for he has allowed us to see where we’ve been blind. He has given us the chance, where we’ve been lost, to find our best selves. We may not have earned it, this grace, with our rancor and complacency, and short-sightedness and fear of each other -- but we got it all the same. He gave it to us anyway. He’s once more given us grace. But it is up to us now to make the most of it, to receive it with gratitude, and to prove ourselves worthy of this gift.

God , Chance

“I'm convinced that by acknowledging the pain and loss of others, even as we respect the traditions and ways of life that make up this beloved country -- by making the moral choice to change, we express God’s grace.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney (June 2015)
Context: For too long, we’ve been blind to the unique mayhem that gun violence inflicts upon this nation. Sporadically, our eyes are open: When eight of our brothers and sisters are cut down in a church basement, 12 in a movie theater, 26 in an elementary school. But I hope we also see the 30 precious lives cut short by gun violence in this country every single day; the countless more whose lives are forever changed -- the survivors crippled, the children traumatized and fearful every day as they walk to school, the husband who will never feel his wife’s warm touch, the entire communities whose grief overflows every time they have to watch what happened to them happen to some other place. The vast majority of Americans -- the majority of gun owners -- want to do something about this. We see that now. And I'm convinced that by acknowledging the pain and loss of others, even as we respect the traditions and ways of life that make up this beloved country -- by making the moral choice to change, we express God’s grace.

Life , God , Pain , Way

“His form combined in one the strength of a man and a woman's grace.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando: A Biography (1928), Ch. 3
Context: The sound of the trumpets died away and Orlando stood stark naked. No human being, since the world began, has ever looked more ravishing. His form combined in one the strength of a man and a woman's grace.

“He gave it to us anyway. He’s once more given us grace. But it is up to us now to make the most of it, to receive it with gratitude, and to prove ourselves worthy of this gift.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney (June 2015)
Context: As a nation, out of this terrible tragedy, God has visited grace upon us, for he has allowed us to see where we’ve been blind. He has given us the chance, where we’ve been lost, to find our best selves. We may not have earned it, this grace, with our rancor and complacency, and short-sightedness and fear of each other -- but we got it all the same. He gave it to us anyway. He’s once more given us grace. But it is up to us now to make the most of it, to receive it with gratitude, and to prove ourselves worthy of this gift.

Gratitude

“We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror. But the royal terrorists, the terrorists by the grace of God and the law, are in practice brutal, disdainful, and mean, in theory cowardly, secretive, and deceitful, and in both respects disreputable.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

The final issue of Neue Rheinische Zeitung (18 May 1849)'Marx-Engels Gesamt-Ausgabe, Vol. VI, p. 503,
Variant translation: We are ruthless and ask no quarter from you. When our turn comes we shall not disguise our terrorism.
Context: Did you not read our articles about the June revolution, and was not the essence of the June revolution the essence of our paper?
Why then your hypocritical phrases, your attempt to find an impossible pretext?
We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror. But the royal terrorists, the terrorists by the grace of God and the law, are in practice brutal, disdainful, and mean, in theory cowardly, secretive, and deceitful, and in both respects disreputable.

God , Secret , Law

“I'm also somebody who deeply believes that part of the bedrock strength of this country is that it embraces people of many faiths and no faith… that this is a country that is still predominantly Christian, but we have Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, and that their own path to grace is one that we have to revere and respect as much as our own.
That's part of what makes this country what it is.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Statement during National Prayer Breakfast (27 September 2010), "Obama 'Christian By Choice': President Responds To Questioner" by Charles Babington and Darlene Superville, Associated Press (28 September 2010) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/28/obama-christian-by-choice_n_742124.html?view=print - Video : President Obama: "I am a Christian By Choice" at ABC News (29 September 2010) http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/09/president-obama-i-am-a-christian-by-choicethe-precepts-of-jesus-spoke-to-me.html
2010
Context: I'm a Christian by choice. My family didn't — frankly, they weren't folks who went to church every week. And my mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew, but she didn't raise me in the church. So I came to my Christian faith later in life, and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead — being my brothers' and sisters' keeper, treating others as they would treat me. I think also understanding that Jesus Christ dying for my sins spoke to the humility we all have to have as human beings, that we're sinful and we're flawed and we make mistakes, and that we achieve salvation through the grace of God. But what we can do, as flawed as we are, is still see God in other people and do our best to help them find their own grace. That's what I strive to do. That's what I pray to do every day. I think my public service is part of that effort to express my Christian faith. … One thing I want to emphasize, having spoken about something that obviously relates to me very personally, as president of the United States I'm also somebody who deeply believes that part of the bedrock strength of this country is that it embraces people of many faiths and no faith… that this is a country that is still predominantly Christian, but we have Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, and that their own path to grace is one that we have to revere and respect as much as our own.
That's part of what makes this country what it is.

People , Faith , Parting , Country

“Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Ash-Wednesday (1930)
Context: Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.

Love

“This whole week, I’ve been reflecting on this idea of grace.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney (June 2015)
Context: This whole week, I’ve been reflecting on this idea of grace. The grace of the families who lost loved ones. The grace that Reverend Pinckney would preach about in his sermons. The grace described in one of my favorite hymnals -- the one we all know: Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I’m found; was blind but now I see. According to the Christian tradition, grace is not earned. Grace is not merited. It’s not something we deserve. Rather, grace is the free and benevolent favor of God as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings.

Idea

“A day of grace is yet held out to us.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe book Uncle Tom's Cabin

Final lines.
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Concluding Remarks
Context: A day of grace is yet held out to us. Both North and South have been guilty before God; and the Christian church has a heavy account to answer. Not by combining together, to protect injustice and cruelty, and making a common capital of sin, is this Union to be saved, — but by repentance, justice and mercy; for, not surer is the eternal law by which the millstone sinks in the ocean, than that stronger law, by which injustice and cruelty shall bring on nations the wrath of Almighty God!

“God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus”

Paul of Tarsus (5–67) Early Christian apostle and missionary

2:1-10 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians+2&version=KJV;SBLGNT (KJV)
Epistle to the Ephesians
Context: And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.
But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

Love , God , Christ , Dead

“By recognizing our common humanity by treating every child as important, regardless of the color of their skin or the station into which they were born, and to do what’s necessary to make opportunity real for every American -- by doing that, we express God’s grace.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney (June 2015)
Context: But I don't think God wants us to stop there. For too long, we’ve been blind to the way past injustices continue to shape the present. Perhaps we see that now. Perhaps this tragedy causes us to ask some tough questions about how we can permit so many of our children to languish in poverty, or attend dilapidated schools, or grow up without prospects for a job or for a career. Perhaps it causes us to examine what we’re doing to cause some of our children to hate. Perhaps it softens hearts towards those lost young men, tens and tens of thousands caught up in the criminal justice system and leads us to make sure that that system is not infected with bias; that we embrace changes in how we train and equip our police so that the bonds of trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve make us all safer and more secure. Maybe we now realize the way racial bias can infect us even when we don't realize it, so that we're guarding against not just racial slurs, but we're also guarding against the subtle impulse to call Johnny back for a job interview but not Jamal. So that we search our hearts when we consider laws to make it harder for some of our fellow citizens to vote. By recognizing our common humanity by treating every child as important, regardless of the color of their skin or the station into which they were born, and to do what’s necessary to make opportunity real for every American -- by doing that, we express God’s grace.

God , Color

“When Thou didst regard me,
Thine eyes imprinted in me Thy grace:”

John of the Cross (1542–1591) Spanish mystic and Roman Catholic saint

Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom
Context: When Thou didst regard me,
Thine eyes imprinted in me Thy grace:
For this didst Thou love me again,
And thereby mine eyes did merit
To adore what in Thee they saw. ~ 32

“The true wisdom is to be always seasonable, and to change with a good grace in changing circumstances.”

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

Crabbed Age and Youth.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)
Context: The true wisdom is to be always seasonable, and to change with a good grace in changing circumstances. To love playthings well as a child, to lead an adventurous and honourable youth, and to settle when the time arrives, into a green and smiling age, is to be a good artist in life and deserve well of yourself and your neighbour.

Wisdom , Change , Season

“The grace described in one of my favorite hymnals -- the one we all know: Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I’m found; was blind but now I see. According to the Christian tradition, grace is not earned. Grace is not merited. It’s not something we deserve. Rather, grace is the free and benevolent favor of God as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney (June 2015)
Context: This whole week, I’ve been reflecting on this idea of grace. The grace of the families who lost loved ones. The grace that Reverend Pinckney would preach about in his sermons. The grace described in one of my favorite hymnals -- the one we all know: Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I’m found; was blind but now I see. According to the Christian tradition, grace is not earned. Grace is not merited. It’s not something we deserve. Rather, grace is the free and benevolent favor of God as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings.

God

“Since Thou hast regarded me,
Grace and beauty hast Thou given me.”

John of the Cross (1542–1591) Spanish mystic and Roman Catholic saint

Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom
Context: Despise me not,
For if I was swarthy once
Thou canst regard me now;
Since Thou hast regarded me,
Grace and beauty hast Thou given me. ~ 33

Beauty

“A thousand graces diffusing
He passed through the groves in haste,
And merely regarding them
As He passed
Clothed them with His beauty. ~ 5”

John of the Cross (1542–1591) Spanish mystic and Roman Catholic saint

Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom

Beauty , Clothes

“Removing the flag from this state’s capitol would not be an act of political correctness; it would not be an insult to the valor of Confederate soldiers. It would simply be an acknowledgment that the cause for which they fought -- the cause of slavery -- was wrong -- the imposition of Jim Crow after the Civil War, the resistance to civil rights for all people was wrong. It would be one step in an honest accounting of America’s history; a modest but meaningful balm for so many unhealed wounds. It would be an expression of the amazing changes that have transformed this state and this country for the better, because of the work of so many people of goodwill, people of all races striving to form a more perfect union. By taking down that flag, we express God’s grace.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney (June 2015)
Context: For too long, we were blind to the pain that the Confederate flag stirred in too many of our citizens. It’s true, a flag did not cause these murders. But as people from all walks of life, Republicans and Democrats, now acknowledge -- including Governor Haley, whose recent eloquence on the subject is worthy of praise as we all have to acknowledge, the flag has always represented more than just ancestral pride. For many, black and white, that flag was a reminder of systemic oppression and racial subjugation. We see that now. Removing the flag from this state’s capitol would not be an act of political correctness; it would not be an insult to the valor of Confederate soldiers. It would simply be an acknowledgment that the cause for which they fought -- the cause of slavery -- was wrong -- the imposition of Jim Crow after the Civil War, the resistance to civil rights for all people was wrong. It would be one step in an honest accounting of America’s history; a modest but meaningful balm for so many unhealed wounds. It would be an expression of the amazing changes that have transformed this state and this country for the better, because of the work of so many people of goodwill, people of all races striving to form a more perfect union. By taking down that flag, we express God’s grace.

God , War , People , History

“But what we can do, as flawed as we are, is still see God in other people and do our best to help them find their own grace. That's what I strive to do. That's what I pray to do every day.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Statement during National Prayer Breakfast (27 September 2010), "Obama 'Christian By Choice': President Responds To Questioner" by Charles Babington and Darlene Superville, Associated Press (28 September 2010) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/28/obama-christian-by-choice_n_742124.html?view=print - Video : President Obama: "I am a Christian By Choice" at ABC News (29 September 2010) http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/09/president-obama-i-am-a-christian-by-choicethe-precepts-of-jesus-spoke-to-me.html
2010
Context: I'm a Christian by choice. My family didn't — frankly, they weren't folks who went to church every week. And my mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew, but she didn't raise me in the church. So I came to my Christian faith later in life, and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead — being my brothers' and sisters' keeper, treating others as they would treat me. I think also understanding that Jesus Christ dying for my sins spoke to the humility we all have to have as human beings, that we're sinful and we're flawed and we make mistakes, and that we achieve salvation through the grace of God. But what we can do, as flawed as we are, is still see God in other people and do our best to help them find their own grace. That's what I strive to do. That's what I pray to do every day. I think my public service is part of that effort to express my Christian faith. … One thing I want to emphasize, having spoken about something that obviously relates to me very personally, as president of the United States I'm also somebody who deeply believes that part of the bedrock strength of this country is that it embraces people of many faiths and no faith… that this is a country that is still predominantly Christian, but we have Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, and that their own path to grace is one that we have to revere and respect as much as our own.
That's part of what makes this country what it is.

God , People , Help

“If we can find that grace, anything is possible. If we can tap that grace, everything can change.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney (June 2015)
Context: Clem understood that justice grows out of recognition of ourselves in each other. That my liberty depends on you being free, too. That history can’t be a sword to justify injustice, or a shield against progress, but must be a manual for how to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past -- how to break the cycle. A roadway toward a better world. He knew that the path of grace involves an open mind -- but, more importantly, an open heart. That’s what I’ve felt this week -- an open heart. That, more than any particular policy or analysis, is what’s called upon right now, I think -- what a friend of mine, the writer Marilynne Robinson, calls “that reservoir of goodness, beyond, and of another kind, that we are able to do each other in the ordinary cause of things.” That reservoir of goodness. If we can find that grace, anything is possible. If we can tap that grace, everything can change.

Change

“Zeus, who guided mortals to be wise,
has established his fixed law—
wisdom comes through suffering.
Trouble, with its memories of pain,
drips in our hearts as we try to sleep,
so men against their will
learn to practice moderation.
Favours come to us from gods
seated on their solemn thrones—
such grace is harsh and violent.”

Aeschylus Agamemnon

Variant translations:
Zeus has led us on to know,
the Helmsman lays it down as law
that we must suffer, suffer into truth.
We cannot sleep, and drop by drop at the heart
the pain of pain remembered comes again,
and we resist, but ripeness comes as well.
From the gods enthroned on the awesome rowing-bench
there comes a violent love.
Robert Fagles, The Oresteia (1975)
God, whose law it is
that he who learns must suffer.
And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
and in our own despite, against our will,
comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.
Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way (1930), pp. 61 and 194 ( Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=D3QwvF3GWOkC&lpg=PA61&ots=BacvHvGm6e&dq=%22And%20in%20our%20own%20despite%2C%20against%20our%20will%2C%20Comes%20wisdom%22%20-kennedy&pg=PA194#v=onepage&q=%22our%20own%20despite%22&f=false)
Robert F. Kennedy quoted these lines in his speech announcing the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. on 4 April 1968. His version http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/rfkonmlkdeath.html:
Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart
until, in our own despair, against our will,
comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.
Variant translations of πάθει μάθος:
By suffering comes wisdom.
The reward of suffering is experience.
Wisdom comes alone through suffering.
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Agamemnon, lines 176–183, as translated by Ian Johnston ( Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=qz1HpBZ1fTwC&lpg=PA13&ots=C7aohrZRF1&dq=Drips%20in%20our%20hearts%20as%20we%20try%20to%20sleep%2C&pg=PA13#v=onepage&q=Drips%20in%20our%20hearts%20as%20we%20try%20to%20sleep,&f=false)

Wisdom , Men , God , Pain

“Thy grace, thy more than beauty,
Shall be an endless theme of praise,
And love — a simple duty.”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

" To Frances S. Osgood http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/595/" (1845).
Context: Thou wouldst be loved? — then let thy heart
From its present pathway part not!
Being everything which now thou art,
Be nothing which thou art not.
So with the world thy gentle ways,
Thy grace, thy more than beauty,
Shall be an endless theme of praise,
And love — a simple duty.

Love , Beauty

“And that’s the lesson of our past. That's the promise of tomorrow -- that in the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it. That when millions of Americans of every race and every region, every faith and every station, can join together in a spirit of brotherhood, then those mountains will be made low, and those rough places will be made plain, and those crooked places, they straighten out towards grace, and we will vindicate the faith of those who sacrificed so much and live up to the true meaning of our creed, as one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, "Let Freedom Ring" Ceremony (August 2013)
Context: p>Everyone who realizes what those glorious patriots knew on that day -- that change does not come from Washington, but to Washington; that change has always been built on our willingness, We The People, to take on the mantle of citizenship -- you are marching.And that’s the lesson of our past. That's the promise of tomorrow -- that in the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it. That when millions of Americans of every race and every region, every faith and every station, can join together in a spirit of brotherhood, then those mountains will be made low, and those rough places will be made plain, and those crooked places, they straighten out towards grace, and we will vindicate the faith of those who sacrificed so much and live up to the true meaning of our creed, as one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.</p

Love , God , People , Faith

“That is the mystery of grace: it never comes too late.”

Francois Mauriac (1885–1970) French author

“The marriage of those who have been baptized is, in addition, invested with the dignity of a sacramental sign of grace, for it represents the union of Christ and His Church.”

Pope Paul VI Humanae Vitae

Sacro autem baptismate ablutis, matrimonium eiusmodi praeditum est dignitate, ut gratiae sacramentale signum exsistat, cum Christi et Ecclesiae coniunctionem designet.
HUMANAE VITAE
Official Vatican translation.

Marriage , Christ

“He would confidently affirm that the grace of prayerfulness should be more desired than all others by the religious man, and, believing that without it no good could be wrought in the service of God, he would stir up his Brethren unto zeal therefore by all means that he could. For, whether walking or sitting, within doors or without, in toil or at leisure, he was so absorbed in prayer as that he seemed to have devoted thereunto not only his whole heart and body, but also his whole labor and time.”

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

The Life of Saint Francis of Assisi

God , Confidence , Time , Heart

“The Eternal has his designs from all eternity. If prayer is in accord with his immutable wishes, it is quite useless to ask of him what he has resolved to do. If one prays to him to do the contrary of what he has resolved, it is praying that he be weak, frivolous, inconstant; it is believing that he is thus, it is to mock him. Either you ask him a just thing, in which case he must do it, the thing being done without your praying to him for it, and so to entreat him is then to distrust him; or the thing is unjust, and then you insult him. You are worthy or unworthy of the grace you implore: if worthy, he knows it better than you; if unworthy, you commit another crime by requesting what is undeserved.
In a word, we only pray to God because we have made him in our image. We treat him like a pasha, like a sultan whom one may provoke or appease.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

"Prayers" (1770)
Questions sur l'Encyclopédie (1770–1774)
Original: (fr) L’Éternel a ses desseins de toute éternité. Si la prière est d’accord avec ses volontés immuables, il est très inutile de lui demander ce qu’il a résolu de faire. Si on le prie de faire le contraire de ce qu’il a résolu, c’est le prier d’être faible, léger, inconstant; c’est croire qu’il soit tel, c’est se moquer de lui. Ou vous lui demandez une chose juste; en ce cas il la doit, et elle se fera sans qu’on l’en prie; c’est même se défier de lui que lui faire instance ou la chose est injuste, et alors on l’outrage. Vous êtes digne ou indigne de la grâce que vous implorez: si digne, il le sait mieux que vous; si indigne, on commet un crime de plus en demandant ce qu’on ne mérite pas.
En un mot, nous ne faisons des prières à Dieu que parce que nous l’avons fait à notre image. Nous le traitons comme un bacha, comme un sultan qu’on peut irriter ou apaiser.

God

“Radical Islam, by the grace of God, is not spreading across Russia. These and other radically-minded people pose a huge danger to Russia. This is why everything that happens in the Middle East, in Syria, Iraq, Libya, concerns us very closely.”

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow (1946) primate of the Russian Orthodox Church

24 September 2015 http://www.pravmir.com/west-should-learn-from-russia-to-accept-muslim-refugees-patriarch-kirill/ at a meeting with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas at his residence in Peredelkino, Moscow Region.

God , People

“God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other. Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.”

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian

Full version of the original (ca. 1942)
The Serenity Prayer (c. 1942)

Courage , God , Peace , Time

“"God rebuke the proud
And gives grace to the humble".”

Manuel Archives

God

“Belief in eternal hell fire was an essential item of Christian belief until pretty recent times. In this country, as you know, it ceased to be an essential item because of a decision of the Privy Council, and from that decision the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York dissented; but in this country our religion is settled by Act of Parliament, and therefore the Privy Council was able to override Their Graces and hell was no longer necessary to a Christian. Consequently I shall not insist that a Christian must believe in hell.”

Bertrand Russell book Why I Am Not a Christian

What is a Christian? https://users.drew.edu/~jlenz/whynot.html (1927)
1920s, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)

Hell , Religion , Time , Country

“Be good, love the Lord, pray for those who do not know Him. What a great grace it is to know God!”

Josephine Bakhita (1868–1947) Italian saint and former slave

Quoted in "Josephine Bakhita (1869-1947)", The Holy See https://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/saints/ns_lit_doc_20001001_giuseppina-bakhita_en.html.

God , Love