Saved By Grace Quotes

Every day of our Christian experience should be a day of relating to God on the basis of His grace alone. We are not only saved by grace, but we also live by grace every day. ~ Jerry Bridges

Repent, return and be restored by Jesus Christ. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

God's great love is the grace of redemption. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The light of God illuminated my path. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Knowing we're saved by grace but still living under the law makes for a spiritually neurotic person. ~ Beth Moore

So where's the rationale for Christian pride and presumption, seeing as that's all the hand you ever played in your salvation? Where does all this woof-woofing come from, like you're scaring off the bad guys, swaggering out into the octagon cage? Get over yourself. You were saved by grace alone through faith alone. Therefore, God gets all the glory alone. And when you understand this one basic issue, you'll stop going into you and start going into the Lord - just ~ Matt Chandler

God's grace is amazing! We're saved by grace - God's undeserved favor - and we live by grace, which is also God's power in our lives to do what we could never do in our own strength. And it's all because God is love, and He loves us unconditionally, constantly and completely. ~ Joyce Meyer

The divine thoughts comes from God, we are only vessel for its transmission. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Never water down the Word of God, but preach it in its undiluted sternness. There must be unflinching faithfulness to the Word of God, but when you come to personal dealings with others, remember who you are - you are not some special being created in heaven, but a sinner saved by grace. ~ Oswald Chambers

The sacred souls are saved by grace. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I've asked people why they think God would probably not use them to share the gospel with someone on a "bad" day. A typical reply is, "I wouldn't be worthy," or "I wouldn't be good enough." Such a reply reveals an all-too-common misconception of the Christian life: the thinking that, although we are saved by grace, we earn or forfeit God's blessings in our daily lives by our performance. ~ Jerry Bridges

Alternative False Life-Styles

Once saved always saved; Just a sinner saved by grace; Once an addict, always an addict; No sin can separate us from the love of God; God understands sin

All alternatives leading away from our responsibility of tuning away from sin! ~ John M Sheehan

A person who is really saved by Grace does not need to be told that he is under solemn obligations to serve Christ. The new life within him tells him that. Instead of regarding it as a burden, he gladly surrenders himself, body, soul, and spirit, to the Lord. ~ Charles Spurgeon

All our good deeds cannot save us.
We are saved by grace and faith in Jesus Christ. ~ Lailah GiftyAkita

If you are not changed by grace, you're probably not saved by grace. ~ Jonathan Hayashi

For a group of people supposedly saved by grace, loved unconditionally, and secure in our relationship with Christ, we certainly carry a lot of guilt and baggage in our relationship with God. ~ Will Davis Jr.

Whoever shall call on God, shall be saved. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

We can draw no deadlines for God. He hastens or He delays as he sees fit. And his timing is all-loving toward his children. On, that we might learn to be patient in the hour of darkness. I don't mean that we make peace with darkness. We fight for joy. But we fight as those who are saved by grace and held by Christ. We say ... that our night will soon- in God's good timing- turn to day. ~ John Piper

I came to know Christ when I was 13 years old at a youth camp I attended. I may not have known much about Him, but I knew I was saved by grace and that, because of the cross, I had a hope like no other. I cannot imagine life without Him. ~ Bart Millard

A preposition is a word that shows a relationship between its object and another word in the sentence. Examples: By grace are ye saved through faith. (Ephesians 2:8a) These two prepositions introduce phrases that tell us how individuals are saved: By grace and through faith. Both prepositional phrases are used as adverbs because they modify the verb are saved. ~ Shirley M. Forsen

The greatest of all capabilities of a human being is to become born again. ~ J.R. Rim

Peace is the ultimate weapon of mankind to save the future generations from extinction! ~ Avijeet Das

We are
debtors who cannot pay, yet we have been released from the threat of debtors' prison. It is an insult to God for us to withhold forgiveness and grace from those who ask us, while claiming to be forgiven and saved by grace ourselves. ~ R.C. Sproul

We are justified by faith and saved by grace. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

No soul has the power to save. You can only tell others about the Saviour. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Get over yourself. You were saved by grace alone through faith alone. Therefore, God gets all the glory alone. And when you understand this one basic issue, you'll stop going into you and start going into the Lord - just laying out all the smelly, rotten groceries, shaking all the stuff out of your pockets, bringing it all out into the open, and saying, Here, would You please get rid of this for me? ~ Matt Chandler

I have to serve with all my might. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Only God can save every soul. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

God is the Saviour of all men. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

It is a mistake to reduce every decision about Christian living to a "Heaven-or-Hell issue."
For example, some ask if the Bible specifically says a certain action is a "sin" or will send them to "Hell." If not, they feel free to indulge in that action unreservedly and ignore any scriptural principles involved. But this approach is legalistic, which means living by rules or basing salvation on works. It treats the Bible as a law book, focusing on the letter and looking for loopholes.
By contrast, the Bible tells us that we are saved by grace through faith, not by our works (Ephesians 2:8-9). Grace teaches us how to live righteously, and faith leads us into obedience. (See Titus 2:11-12; Romans1:5; Hebrews 11:7-8.) ~ David K. Bernard

You are a new creation by the blood of Jesus. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

But what I have come to see is that God is big enough to receive us with all our mixture. We do not have to be bright, or pure, or filled with faith, or anything. That is what grace means, and not only are we saved by grace, we live by it as well. And we pray by it. ~ Richard J. Foster

If you confront insult or antagonism, your first impulse would be to respond in kind. But if you think, as it were, This is an emissary sent from the Lord, and some benefit is inteded for me, first of all the occasion to demonstrate my faithfulness, the chance to show that I do in some small degree participate in the grace that saved me, you are free to act otherwise than as circumstances would seem to dictate. You are free to act by your own lights. You are freed at the same time of the impulse to hate or resent that person. ~ Marilynne Robinson

Paul presents the Good News: Salvation is available to all, regardless of a person's identity, sin, or heritage. We are saved by grace (unearned, undeserved favor from God) through faith (complete trust) in Christ and his finished work. Through him we can stand before God justified, not guilty ~ Anonymous

We need God's great-grace in all spheres of life. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Christians do not practically remember that while we are saved by grace, altogether by grace, so that in the matter of salvation works are altogether excluded; yet that so far as the rewards of grace are concerned, in the world to come, there is an intimate connection between the life of the Christian here and the enjoyment and the glory in the day of Christ's appearing. ~ George Muller

Susan admitted the churches she had grown up in were heavy on hell and damnation and light on grace. They claimed to be "saved by grace" but then carefully outlined a very specific set of beliefs one had to accept in order to be a Christian. They had emphasized law over love. Nearly every sermon she heard growing up had warned of God's wrath. She'd been taught to fear God rather than be awed by his grace. ~ Philip Gulley

Regina, masturbation in itself is not a sin against God. Satan only uses it to oppress the mind and make it feel ineffective and inefficient in the sight of God. It's got nothing to do with God. It's about you and your own body.

The problem of many Christians today is that they now cling to what the society defines as sin. Sin is not what the society defines it to be but what God says it is, and God says sin's a transgression of the Law. And as a born-again Christian, for you the law has been abolished. So where then is sin?

We, the children of God are no longer under the law but grace; for we are saved by grace through faith. ~ S.A. David

We are saved by grace, through faith in Christ alone! And since there is no room for human merit there can be no grounds for human boasting! ~ Steve Camp

We are saved by grace. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

If we are saved by grace alone, this salvation is a constant source of amazed delight. Nothing is mundane or matter-of-fact about our lives. It is a miracle we are Christians, and the gospel, which creates bold humility, should give us a far deeper sense of humour and joy. We don't take ourselves seriously, and we are full of hope for the world. ~ Timothy Keller

His great act of condescension in becoming man and His willingness to be completely humiliated in the death on the cross is set before us here as the supreme example of what our attitude should be. If Jesus Christ the Lord of glory was willing to be obedient unto death, how much more should sinners saved by grace who owe everything to God give back to the God who saved them the life which He has redeemed. ~ John F. Walvoord

Life is ever changing.
We are ever transforming. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

There can be but one will the master in our salvation, but that shall never be the will of man, but of God; therefore man must be saved by grace. ~ John Bunyan

Why does Paul spell it out, calling us to consider the width and breadth and depth and height of Christ's love? He is proposing a way to meditate and inviting us to do it. Let's take up his invitation. How wide is the love of God? Think of Isaiah 1:18: "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." Scarlet is the color of blood. This was God's way of saying through Isaiah, "Even if you have killed somebody, even if you have blood-guilt, blood on your hands, my love is wide enough to enfold and embrace you. It doesn't matter who you are or what you have done. It doesn't matter if you have killed people. If Jesus Christ died on the cross so that you are saved by grace alone, then my love is infinitely wide. It is wide enough for you. ~ Timothy Keller

We experience a new life with divine encounter. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Our requests are necessary expressly to strengthen our faith, through which alone we can be saved. 'By grace are we saved through faith' (Eph. 2:8). 'O woman, great is your faith' (Mt. 15:28). For this reason the Lord made the woman pray earnestly, in order to awaken her faith and to strengthen it. ~ John Of Kronstadt

We are all sinners who have been saved by Grace. We have not been saved from sinning, but we have been redeemed despite it".

~ R. Alan Woods [2012] ~ R. Alan Woods

But the gospel doesn't need a coalition devoted to keeping the wrong people out. It needs a family of sinners, saved by grace, committed to tearing down the walls, throwing open the doors, and shouting, "Welcome! There's bread and wine. Come eat with us and talk." This isn't a kingdom for the worthy; it's a kingdom for the hungry. ~ Rachel Held Evans

Hypothetically speaking," Robert said, "if the attack happens, and Roland retaliates, what will you do about it?"
"She is a princess of Shinar." My aunt burst into existence in the middle of the kitchen. "It is by the grace of her mercy you are still breathing."
Robert stumbled back. Raphael's hands went to his knives. Andrea bared her teeth, cradling Baby B. You could hear a pin drop.
"I have family in town for the wedding," I said into the silence. "My aunt, Eahrratim, the Rose of Tigris."
Curran covered his face with his hand. ~ Ilona Andrews

4 But when the goodness of God and His love for mankind appeared, 5 He saved us - not by works of righteousness that we had done, but according to His mercy, through the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit. ~ Anonymous

The owner of the Agut d'Avignon had the air of a 1920s dandy who had ruined himself with one mad night of gambling at baccarat and had only been saved by this restaurant, which he seemed to cherish as if it were his wife or a good fountain pen. ~ Manuel Vazquez Montalban

Salvation is in Christ, not the Holy Ghost; our Blessed Lord redeemed us and the Holy Ghost is his messenger to carry the message of redeeming grace into the hearts of men. Thus, the joyous words spoken by the Holy Ghost are in reality the words of Christ. The Spirit is simply the one who delivers the word. ~ Bruce R. McConkie

My mother saved our home with a minimum wage job. But in the 1960s, a minimum wage job would support a family of three above the poverty line. Not today. Not even close. I understood right then that people can work hard, they can play by the rules, and they can still take a hard smack. ~ Elizabeth Warren

We accept without reservation the scriptural teachings that Christ is the Son of God and that he came into the world to ransom men from the spiritual and temporal death brought into the world by the fall of Adam. No one can state too plainly or emphasize too strongly this eternal truth that salvation is in Christ and that it comes because of his atoning sacrifice. Nor can we set forth too clearly the gospel truth that we also must do certain things to be saved. ~ Joseph Fielding Smith

Where in this wide world can a person find nobility without pride, friendship without envy or beauty without vanity? Here, where grace is laced with muscle and strength by gentleness confined. He serves without servility, he has fought without enmity. There is nothing so powerful, nothing less violent; there is nothing so quick, nothing more patient. ~ Ronald Duncan

Everybody living at the orphanage . . . are fully convinced of the selection of men to salvation ex absoluto decreto. . . . They claim to find much comfort and refreshment in this theory that serves the Roman heresy (secus sentientes roman.); yes, they would even say that they cannot look upon a person as converted who does not believe it. I showed my pity for them and told them of our dogma, sufficiently well founded in Holy Scriptures, of the everlasting, impartial love of God in Jesus Christ to all mankind and held up to them some evident verses . . . which they answered in a shallow manner. Since they pray that God may convert all the children entrusted to them and lead them to salvation, I asked them whether they believe that God would like to have those children saved.

Their answer was that they did not know, but it was their duty to make such intercession. However, I showed them: 1. that they, with their theory, do not have any joy in praying for the salvation of all men. 2. If they would do it and wished for all men to be helped, then their love would have to be greater than the love of God, who nevertheless effects this impartial and general love in them. 3. Their prayer was against the will and command of God: God has, according to their opinion, decided from eternity, by virtue of His sovereignty and great power, to let only a few be saved and these alone and no others to be redeemed by Christ. How could they now pray (without acting against the will of ~ Johann Martin Boltzius

Many a man is saved from being a thief by finding everything locked up. ~ E.W. Howe

I don't want to be an editor! I don't want to direct; I'd be a horrible director. I don't want to write - I have a 'story by' credit on one film I did. And I don't want to edit at all. ~ Topher Grace

I have said that I learned a lot by teaching others. I discovered that every soul has almost the same difficulties and that there is yet a vast difference between individual souls - a difference which means that each one must be dealt with differently. There are some with whom I must make myself small and show myself willing to be humiliated by confessing my own struggles and defeats, for then they themselves easily confess their own faults and are pleased that I understand them through my own experience. To be successful with others, firmness is necessary. I must never go back on what I have said, and to humiliate myself would be regarded as weakness.

God has given me the grace of having no fear of a fight. I will do my duty at any cost. More than once I have been told: "If you want to succeed with me, severity is no use. You will get nowhere unless you are gentle." But I know that no one is a good judge in his own case. ~ John Beevers

Don't let us rejoice in punishment, even when the hand of God alone inflicts it. The best of us are but poor wretches, just saved from shipwreck. Can we feel anything but awe and pity when we see a fellow-passenger swallowed by the waves? ~ George Eliot

We saved the lives of a whole family that night. Children, parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents, all sailed to safety in Sweden inside a little fisherman's boat."

Johannes aka 'BB'
The Informer by Steen Langstrup ~ Steen Langstrup

This is what I want everyone to experience at the end of my concert ...
everyone has this sense of rejoicing.
I don't want them to be blown away by what I do,
I want them to have this sense of real, real joy
from the depths of their being.
Because I think when you take them to that place,
then you open up a place where grace can come in. ~ Bobby McFerrin

Train yourselves by seeking and acknowledging beauty moment by moment every day of your lives," he told them. "Exercise your eyes. Take pleasure in the grace of shape and the excitement of color. ~ Susan Vreeland

Everything is a matter of interpretation. And that is how you will rule," he said, before handing the sword's hilt to me. "Think on what you've seen today. But do not let me influence you. Your will is yours alone."
I stared at the sword in my hand, still gleaming despite the dark. "I can promise you I won't forget."
Amar paused, his voice soft. "Memory is a riddled thing. I would caution you from making promises you cannot keep."
I moved toward the door, but Amar stopped me with a shake of his head. "Gupta will arrive in a moment to escort you." He straightened the cuffs of his sherwani jacket. "I myself have a number of duties to attend to, so I must leave."
Before I could stop myself, I blurted out, "Why?"
He paused and took a step to me. Darkness, soft-edged and heavy, clung to the room. In the shadows, his smile held all the lazy grace of a cat.
"Would you miss me?"
"Curiosity inspired my question. Nothing more," I said, but even my voice was unconvinced.
"Even so, there's no greater temptation than to stay by your side."
The door swung open and a chorus of voices trickled into the room--silvery and indistinct, like whispers released through clenched teeth. Amar lingered for a moment, his lips tight as though he wanted to say something.
Then, he cupped his palms together and blew into them. When he opened his hands, a bloom of light shaped like an unopened flower bud lifted off his palm and floated into the room. Brightne ~ Roshani Chokshi

...[A] poor priest, Chandi Das, was shocking Bengal by composing Dantean songs to a peasant Beatrice, ideal­izing her with romantic passion, exalting her as a symbol of divinity, and making his love an allegory of his desire for absorption in God; at the same time he inaugurated the use of Bengali as a literary language. "I have taken refuge at your feet, my beloved. When I do not see you my mind has no rest .... I cannot forget your grace and your charm, - and yet there is no desire in my heart." Excommunicated by his fellow Brahmans on the ground that he was scandalizing the public, he agreed to renounce his love, Rami, in a public ceremony of recantation; but when, in the course of this ritual, he saw Rami in the crowd, he withdrew his recanta­tion, and going up to her, bowed before her with hands joined in adora-
tion. ~ Will Durant

The presence of any humility in my life is purely and completely an evidence of God's grace. From my perspective, I am not a humble man. I am a proud man pursuing humility by the grace of God. ~ C.J. Mahaney

Once more, Never think that you can live to God by your own power or strength; but always look to and rely on him for assistance, yea, for all strength and grace. ~ David Brainerd

I need to be broken apart and put back into a different shape by that merging of things human and divine, which is really screwing up and receiving grace and love and forgiveness rather than receiving what I really deserve. I ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

Rosenfeld went to work for the Herald Tribune after his graduation from Syracuse University and has always been an editor, never a reporter. He was inclined to worry that too many reporters on the metropolitan staff were incompetent, and thought even the best reporters could be saved from self-destruction only by the skills of an editor. His natural distrust of reporters was particularly acute on the Watergate story, where the risks were very great, and he was in the uncomfortable position of having to trust Bernstein and Woodward more than he had ever trusted any reporters.

-- Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward ~ Carl Bernstein

But the Elves were not so lightly to be caught. As soon as Sauron set the One Ring upon his finger they were aware of him; and they knew him, and perceived that he would be master of them, and of an that they wrought. Then in anger and fear they took off their rings. But he, finding that he was betrayed and that the Elves were not deceived, was filled with wrath; and he came against them with open war, demanding that all the rings should be delivered to him, since the Elven-smiths could not have attained to their making without his lore and counsel. But the Elves fled from him; and three of their rings they saved, and bore them away, and hid them.

Now these were the Three that had last been made, and they possessed the greatest powers. Narya, Nenya, and Vilya, they were named, the Rings of Fire, and of Water, and of Air, set with ruby and adamant and sapphire; and of all the Elven-rings Sauron most desired to possess them, for those who had them in their keeping could ward off the decays of time and postpone the weariness of the world. But Sauron could not discover them, for they were given into the hands of the Wise, who concealed them and never again used them openly while Sauron kept the Ruling Ring.

Therefore the Three remained unsullied, for they were forged by Celebrimbor alone, and the hand of Sauron had never touched them; yet they also were subject to the One. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

The fires of refinement come with a cost, but also with a promise. His grace has been extended forth to you for restoration, confirmation, strengthening, and being established in Him. ~ Robin Bertram

And the heart of it is this. Real conversions are marked by the fruit of the Spirit, not the gifts of the Spirit. Regeneration has a tell, and that tell is love. As John Owen noted, the gifts of the Spirit are not the saving grace of the Spirit.11 And the love we are talking about is not a momentary thing. Love is not a walk around the block, but rather a long-haul trucking trip. ~ Douglas Wilson

Grace, on the other hand, means that God is pursuing you. That God forgives you. That God sanctifies you. When you are apathetic toward God, He is never apathetic toward you. When you don't desire to pray and talk to God, He never grows tired of talking to you. When you forget to read your Bible and listen to God, He is always listening to you. Grace means that your spirituality is upheld by God's stubborn enjoyment of you.
Charis: God's Scandalous Grace for Us (p. 76). ~ Preston Sprinkle

The wave is the signature of every experience of life. By understanding the nature of waves and their characteristics, and applying that understanding to our lives, we can navigate life with a little more grace. ~ Jeffrey R. Anderson

Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds? … It is certainly not lions and wolves that we eat out of self-defense; on the contrary, we ignore these and slaughter harmless, tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us, creatures that, I swear, Nature appears to have produced for the sake of their beauty and grace. But nothing abashed us, not the flower-like tinting of the flesh, not the persuasiveness of the harmonious voice, not the cleanliness of their habits or the unusual intelligence that may be found in the poor wretches. No, for the sake of a little flesh we deprive them of sun, of light, of the duration of life to which they are entitled by birth and being. ~ Plutarch

Grace doesn't grease the wheels of the law. Grace isn't God's way of jury rigging a broken law. It's the other way around. The law is just one small cog in a world animated entirely--from top to bottom, from beginning to end--by grace. ~ Adam S. Miller

For similar folly, our own country, in the transition from the colonial period, also paid a fearful price; and from a like catastrophe the United States has been twice saved in our time by the arguments formulated by Turgot. ~ Andrew Dickson White

I see myself as someone who's been saved by writing. God knows what I would have been, become or how I would have ended up without it. ~ Michael Ondaatje

Athena came to stand by her side. She reached out and ran a light touch over the read wrap. 'Nice dress.
Grace frowned in disbelief. 'They're fighting to the death and you're admiring my clothes?'
Athena laughed. 'Trust me, I pick my generals well. Priapus doesn't stand a chance. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Certainly, if the world ever is saved, it'll be by somebody young enough not to know that it can't be done. ~ Donald Hamilton

Water, thou hast no taste, no color, no odor; canst not be defined, art relished while ever mysterious. Not necessary to life, but rather life itself, thou fillest us with a gratification that exceeds the delight of the senses. By thy might, there return into us treasures that we had abandoned. By thy grace, there are released in us all the dried-up runnels of our heart. Of the riches that exist in the world, thou art the rarest and also the most delicate - thou so pure within the bowels of the earth! A man may die of thirst lying beside a magnesian spring. He may die within reach of a salt lake. He may die though he hold in his hand a jug of dew, if it be inhabited by evil salts. For thou, water, art a proud divinity, allowing no alteration, no foreignness in thy being. And the joy that thou spreadest is an infinitely simple joy. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

Most churches make the mistake of selecting as leaders the confident, the competent, and the successful. But what you most need in a leader is someone who has been broken by the knowledge of his or her sin, and even greater knowledge of Jesus' costly grace ~ Timothy Keller

I begin to see what marriage is for. It's to keep people away from each other. Sometimes I think that two people who love each other can be saved from madness only by the things that come between them - children, duties, visits, bores, relations - the things that protect married people from each other. ~ Edith Wharton

I'm a Kansan by residence, a Missourian by employment, a Louisianan by birth, Southern by the grace of God, and a Tybee Islander at heart. ~ Dick Peterson

Our youth is by God's grace, in God's hands, and for God's fame. ~ Jaquelle Crowe Ferris

Inspired by the punched railway tickets of the time, an inventor by the name of Herman Hollerith devised a system of punched manila cards to store information, and a machine, which he called the Hollerith Machine, to count and sort them. Hollerith was awarded a patent in 1889, and the government adopted the Hollerith Machine for the 1890 census. No one had ever seen anything like it. Wrote one awestruck observer, "The apparatus works as unerringly as the mills of the Gods, but beats them hollow as to speed." Another, however, reasoned that the invention was of limited use: "As no one will ever use it but governments, the inventor will not likely get very rich." This prediction, which Hollerith clipped and saved, would not prove entirely correct. Hollerith's firm merged with several others in 1911 to become the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company. A few years later it was renamed - to International Business Machines, or IBM. ~ Brian Christian

Recall that epic heroes were judged by their actions, not by the results. No matter how sophisticated our choices, how good we are at dominating the odds, randomness will have the last word. We are left only with dignity as a solution - dignity defined as the execution of a protocol of behavior that does not depend on the immediate circumstance. It may not be the optimal one, but it certainly is the one that makes us feel best. Grace under pressure, for example. Or in deciding not to toady up to someone, whatever ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Several fireboat men were trying to board the burning ferry. They had no apparent reason to do so, for all the passengers were either dead or saved and the firemen could not hope to extinguish the flames simply by being closer to them. Why then were they working their way hand over hand on an alternately slack and taut rope that had started to burn, and dipped them now and then into the freezing river as the crowd took in its breath all at once? Peter Lake knew. They took power from the fire. The closer they fought it, the stronger they became. The firemen knew that though it sometimes killed them, the fire gave them priceless gifts. ~ Mark Helprin

Virtually all letter writers confessed how their encounter with Nietzsche's philosophy either emboldened or chastened them, liberated them from old falsehoods, or saddled them with new moral responsibilities. Helen Bachmuller of Dayton, Ohio, wrote to let Förster-Nietzsche know that her brother had inspired the belief that human greatness was still possible in the modern world. Though unworthy of his greatness, he nevertheless awakened in her a longing for something deeper in herself. Nietzsche, Bachmuller confessed, had saved her from her 'own inner emptiness.' The 'Ohio country' she called home had become 'tame and commonplace,' filled with lives 'trivial and ... essentially ugly, for they are engrossed with matters of money and motors, not with work or faith or art.' She regarded the Methodist church near her house as 'vulgar, pretentious.' Though disgusted by the offensive mediocrity around her, she was also chagrined by her own limitations: 'It would be, probably, impossible for you to imagine anything more superficial than I am.' But reading presumably the recently released translation of Förster-Nietzsche's The_Nietzsche-Wagner_Correspondence had exposed Bachmuller to 'depths beyond depths, of one great soul striking fire against another great soul, and I became thrilled. I could feel the harmonies and dissonances, the swell and surge of those two glorious beings, and I felt much more that I cannot express.' Reading Nietzsche enlivened her to the possibility 'for a com ~ Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

We must approach our meditation realizing that 'grace,' 'mercy,' and 'faith' are not permanent inalienable possessions which we gain by our efforts and retain as though by right, provided that we behave ourselves. They are CONSTANTLY RENEWED GIFTS. The life of grace in our hearts is renewed from moment to moment, directly and personally by God in his love for us. ~ Thomas Merton

The stormy black sky had faded to dark gray, and in the distance white, billowing clouds blew across the prairie. They began racing one another, tossed by the wind, and the sun shining on them made them appear a brilliant white against the evening sky.
Memories crowded about her:a French trader with laughing eyes; a long ride into Fort Kearney; and somewhere, far back,a little mound of stones receding into the wide plain as a wagon rumbled away.Then he came, a Lakota brave, one with his snow white pony. They bounded together across the sky,and with each leap Jesse's heart fluttered.She stood on the prairie,her long red braides decorated with feathers, the part dusted with ochre. She raised a trembling hand in greeting, but he was gone.
Her hand fell back against the quilt, and Jesse saw the clouds again and realized it had only been a memory. She was an old woman,too tired to help with the supper,perhaps even too tired to be of use to Lisbeth.
The clouds outside came closer,and the old heart fluttered at the memory of a man who rode on the wind long ago.Now it seemed that the rode again across the sky,into the room.He raised one hand in greeting.
"I will ask the Father," he had said, "and I will come for you."
Jesse sat up in bed,her face alive with a new light.Rides the Wind smiled and reached out to sweep her up behind him.
And the Father said, "Come home.

The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places;
yes,I have a goodly her ~ Stephanie Grace Whitson

Let us resolve by God's grace that, however feeble and poor our prayers may seem to us, we will pray on. ~ J.C. Ryle