Quotes
Quotes about Grace
The Thief and His Mother A boy stole a lesson-book from one of his schoolfellows and took it home to his Mother. She not only abstained from beating him, but encouraged him. He next time stole a cloak and brought it to her, and she again commended him. The Youth, advanced to adulthood, proceeded to steal things of still greater value. At last he was caught in the very act, and having his hands bound behind him, was led away to the place of public execution. His Mother followed in the crowd and violently beat her breast in sorrow, whereupon the young man said, I wish to say something to my Mother in her ear. She came close to him, and he quickly seized her ear with his teeth and bit it off. The Mother upbraided him as an unnatural child, whereon he replied, Ah! if you had beaten me when I first stole and brought to you that lesson-book, I should not have come to this, nor have been thus led to a disgraceful death.
O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountains majesties Above the fruited plain. America! America! God shed His grace on thee, And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea.
It is disgraceful when the passers-by exclaim, "O ancient house! alas, how unlike is thy present master to thy former one." [Lat., Odiosum est enim, cum a praetereuntibus dicatur:--O domus antiqua, heu, quam dispari dominare domino.]
Few sons attain the praise Of their great sires and most their sires disgrace.
See where she comes, apparelled like the spring, Graces her subjects, and her thoughts the king Of every virtue gives renown to men!
O fair undress, best dress! it checks no vein, But every flowing limb in pleasure drowns, And heightens ease with grace.
Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas Of wheat, rye, barley, fetches, oats, and pease; Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep, And flat meads thatched with stover, them to keep; Thy banks with pioned and twilled brims, Which spongy April at thy hest betrims To make cold nymphs chaste crowns; and thy broom groves, Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves, Being lasslorn; thy pole-clipt vineyard; And thy sea-marge, sterile and rocky-hard, Where thou thyself dost air--the queen o' th' sky, Whose wat-ry arch and messenger am I, Bids thee leave these, and with her sovereign grace, Here on this grass-plot, in this very place, To come and sport: her peacocks fly amain. Approach, rich Ceres, her to entertain.
Each of the arts whose office is to refine, purify, adorn, embellish and grace life is under the patronage of a muse, no god being found worthy to preside over them.
No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace As I have seen in one autumnal face; Young beauties force our love, and that's a rape; This doth but counsel, yet you cannot scape.
The light of love, the purity of grace, The mind, the Music breathing from her face, The heart whose softness harmonized the whole, And, oh! the eye was in itself a Soul!
Nothing makes a woman more beautiful than the belief she is beautiful. â¢Sophia Loren Nothing's beautiful from every point of view. â¢Horace Beauty is the first present nature gives to women and the first it takes away. â¢George Brossin Méré ...It's a sort of bloom on a woman. If you have it you don't need to have anything else; and if you don't have it, it doesn't much matter what else you have. â¢James Matthew Barrie In every man's heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty. â¢Christopher Morley Beauty is power; a smile is its sword. â¢Charles Reade Beauty is only skin deep, but it's a valuable asset if you're poor or haven't any sense. â¢Kin Hubbard Beauty is not caused. It is. â¢Emily Dickinson Beauty is an outward gift which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused. â¢Edward Gibbon My heart that was rapt away by the wild cherry blossomsâwill it return to my body when they scatter? â¢Kotomichi Beauty's tears are lovelier than her smile. â¢Campbell Champagne is the only wine a woman can drink and still remain beautiful. â¢Mme. de Pompadour Conceit is to nature what paint is to beauty; it is not only needless, but impairs what it would improve. â¢Pope Delusions are often functional. A mother's opinions about her children's beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad nauseam, keep her from drowning them at birth. â¢Lazarus Long Honesty coupled to beauty is to have honey a sauce to sugar. â¢Shakespeare It is good that the young are beautiful; it is the only advantage they have. â¢The Duchess of Windsor Love that has nothing but beauty to keep it in good health is short lived, and apt to have ague fits. â¢Erasmus The beautiful are never desolate, But someone always loves them. â¢Bailey Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband. â¢Ambrose Bierce Everything beautiful has its moment and then passes away. â¢Luis Cernuda Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait. â¢Ralph Waldo Emerson Plain women know more about men than beautiful ones do. But beautiful women don't need to know about men. It's the men who have to know about beautiful women. â¢Katherine Hepburn A bachelor never quite gets over the idea that he is a thing of beauty and a boy forever. â¢Helen Rowland There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness. â¢Countess of Blessington Truth exists for the wise, beauty for the feeling heart. â¢Johann von Schiller When a girl ceases to blush, she has lost the most powerful charm of her beauty. â¢Gregory I The average man is more interested in a woman who is interested in him than he is in a woman, any woman, with beautiful legs. â¢Marlene Dietrich Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. â¢John Keats I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin deep. That's deep enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas? â¢Jean Kerr The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt. â¢Anonymous What ever beauty may be, it has for its basis order, and for its essence unity. â¢Father Andre Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference. â¢Aristotle I'm not ugly, but my beauty is a total creation. â¢Tyra Banks Exuberance is beauty. â¢William Blake Even with all my wrinkles! I am beautiful! â¢Bessie Delanay As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker. â¢Ralph Waldo Emerson Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. â¢Kahlil Gibran Beauty is worse than wine, it intoxicates both the holder and beholder. â¢Immermann Beauty is a short-lived tyranny. â¢Socrates Beauty is the bait which with delight allures man to enlarge his kind.
I pity bashful men, who feel the pain Of fancied scorn and undeserved disdain, And bear the marks upon a blushing face, OF needless shame, and self-impos'd disgrace.
From every blush that kindles in thy cheeks, Ten thousand little loves and graces spring To revel in the roses.
Gracefully, gracefully glides our bark On the bosom of Father Thames, And before her bows the wavelets dark Break into a thousand gems.
Thou should'st be carolling thy Maker's praise, Poor bird! now fetter'd, and here set to draw, With graceless toil of beak and added claw, The meagre food that scarce thy want allays! And this--to gratify the gloating gaze Of fools, who value Nature not a straw, But know to prize the infraction of her law An hard perversion of her creatures' ways! Thee the wild woods await, in leaves attired, Where notes of liquid utterance should engage Thy bill, that now with pain scant forage earns. - Julian C.H. Fane,
Joy comes and goes, hope ebbs and flows Like the wave; Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men. Love tends life a little grace, A few sad smiles; and then, Both are laid in one cold place, In the grave.
In silence, . . . Steals on soft-handed Charity, Tempering her gifts, that seem so free, By time and place, Till not a woe the bleak world see, But finds her grace.
Feast of Aidan, Bishop of Lindisfarne, Missionary, 651 Commemoration of Cuthburga, Founding Abbess of Wimborne, c.725 Commemoration of John Bunyan, Spiritual Writer, 1688 [John Bunyan] had to live through that obscure nightâ"wide, vast, and lonely"âwhich fell upon St. John of the Cross before; like him, he knew that grace would enter "the dark caverns where the senses live". In the meantime, Bunyan tossed to and fro, as it were between heaven and hell. It has been said that he paints too dark a picture of his moral condition when a young man, that he exaggerates his wickedness at this period, and afterwards wrestles with phantoms of his vivid imagination. But spiritual sins, though not so obvious as those that are sensual, may be just as real; and Bunyan's intensity of feeling and expression arose from the intensity of his spiritual nature.
Feast of Harriet Monsell of Clewer, Religious, 1883 It was not the pleasant things in the world that came from the devil, and the dreary things from God! It was "sin brought death into the world and all our woe"; as the sin vanishes the woe will vanish too. God Himself is the ever-blessed God. He dwells in the light of joy as well as of purity, and instead of becoming more like Him as we become more miserable, and as all the brightness and glory of life are extinguished, we become more like God as our blessedness becomes more complete. The great Christian graces are radiant with happiness. Faith, hope, charity, there is no sadness in them; and if penitence makes the heart sad, penitence belongs to the sinner, not to the saint.
The experiencing of divine sonship, of adoption, is the act of the Spirit in our hearts crying Abba, Father (Gal. 4:6; Rom. 8:15,16)... Liberty, peace, and joy are correlative factors in the same moment of experience, and they are all attributed to the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:2,6; 14:17; Gal. 5:22,23; 1 Thess. 1:6). In the allegory of Abraham's two sons, Paul contrasts the state of bondage under the Law with that of liberty under grace, and defines the one as being after the flesh, but the other after the Spirit (Gal. 4:21-29)... The first great moment of the new life, whether it be called justification by faith, the realization of sonship, or peace with God, is a work of the Holy Spirit, through the preaching of the Word. But [Paul] does not indicate... the exact logical or historical sequence of the various elements in the experience, and it may be doubted whether he would have entertained any idea of sequence within the complex experience of justification. (Continued tomorrow).
That Paul regarded the subsequent development of Christian life and character as in its totality the work of the Spirit is not questioned. All the Christian virtues are the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22,23). He is the Spirit of holiness (Rom. 1:4), of sanctification (II Thess. 2:13), and of a new life (Rom. 7:6). Love, the greatest of the Christian graces, is the pre-eminent gift of the Spirit (I Cor. 13; Col. 1:8; Rom. 15:30), not only as the grace of character, but also as a principle of unity in the Church (Eph. 4:1-6; cf. 2:18, 22). The Spirit bestows wisdom and knowledge on the individual and in the Church. Paul spoke "God's wisdom in a mystery... through the Spirit, for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God" (I Cor. 2:7-10). "For to one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, and to another the word of knowledge, according to the same Spirit" (I Cor. 12:8). All Christian knowledge was derived from the Spirit, both by Paul and [the Apostle] John (Eph. 1:17, 23; 3:16-19; John 16:13; I John 2:20, 27; cf. James 1:5, 3:15, 17). (Continued tomorrow).
This is our Lord's will, ... that our prayer and our trust be, alike, large. For if we do not trust as much as we pray, we fail in full worship to our Lord in our prayer; and also we hinder and hurt ourselves. The reason is that we do not know truly that our Lord is the ground from which our prayer springeth; nor do we know that it is given us by his grace and his love. If we knew this, it would make us trust to have of our Lord's gifts all that we desire. For I am sure that no man asketh mercy and grace with sincerity, without mercy and grace being given to him first.
Feast of Aelred of Hexham, Abbot of Rievaulx, 1167 Commemoration of Benedict Biscop, Abbot of Wearmouth, Scholar, 689 Continuing a short series on Romans 8: Romans 8:14,16. Ephesians 1:13,14. The Witnessing and Sealing Spirit Why should the children of a king Go mourning all their days? Great Comforter, descend and bring Some tokens of thy grace. Dost though not dwell in all thy saints, And seal the heirs of heaven? When wilt thou banish my complaints, And shew my sins forgiven? Assure my conscience of her part In the Redeemer's blood; And bear thy witness with my heart, That I am born of God. Thou are the earnest of his love, The pledge of joys to come; And thy soft wings, celestial Dove, Will safe convey me home.
Feast of the Conversion of Paul O for a thousand tongues to sing My great Redeemer's praise, The glories of my God and King, The triumphs of his grace! My gracious Master and my God, Assist me to proclaim, To spread through all the earth abroad The honours of thy name. Jesus! the name that charms our fears, That bids our sorrows cease; 'Tis music in the sinner's ears, 'Tis life, and health, and peace. He breaks the power of cancelled sin, He sets the prisoner free; His blood can make the foulest clean, His blood availed for me. He speaks, and, listening to his voice, New life the dead receive, The mournful, broken hearts rejoice, The humble poor believe. Hear him, ye deaf; his praise, ye dumb, Your loosened tongues employ; Ye blind, behold your Saviour come, And leap, ye lame, for joy. Look unto him, ye nations, own Your God, ye fallen race; Look, and be saved through faith alone, Be justified by grace. See all your sins on Jesus laid: The Lamb of God was slain, His soul was once an offering made For every soul of man. Awake from guilty nature's sleep, And Christ shall give you light, Cast all your sins into the deep, And wash you purest white. With me, your chief, ye then shall know, Shall feel your sins forgiven; Anticipate your heaven below, And own that love is heaven.
As a sinful man looking at death and beyond it, into the eternal world, I need salvation. Nothing else will meet my case. There is something genuinely at stake in every man's life, the climax whereof is death. Dying is inevitable, but arriving at the destination God offers to me is not inevitable. It is not impossible to go out of the way and fail to arrive. Christian doctrine has always urged that life eternal is something which may conceivably be missed. It is possible to neglect this great salvation and to lose it eternally, even though no man may say that anything is impossible with God or that his grace may ultimately be defeated. I know it is no longer fashionable to talk about Hell, one good reason for this being that to make religion into a prudential insurance policy is to degrade it. The Faith is not a fire-escape. (Continued tomorrow).
