c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Jesus never concealed the fact that his religion included a demand as well as an offer. Indeed, the demand was as total as the offer was free. If he offered men his salvation, he also demanded their submission. He gave no encouragement whatever to thoughtless applicants for discipleship. He brought no pressure to bear on any inquirer. He sent irresponsible enthusiasts away empty. Luke tells of three men who either volunteered, or were invited, to follow Jesus; but no one passed the Lord’s test. The rich young ruler, too, moral, earnest and attractive, who wanted eternal life on his own terms, went away sorrowful, with his riches intact but with neither life nor Christ as his possession…The Christian landscape is strewn with the wreckage of derelict, half built towers—the ruins of those who began to build and were unable to finish. For thousands of people still ignore Christ’s warning and undertake to follow him without first pausing to reflect on the cost of doing so. The result is the great scandal of Christendom today, so called “nominal Christianity.” In countries to which Christian civilization has spread, large numbers of people have covered themselves with a decent, but thin, veneer of Christianity. They have allowed themselves to become somewhat involved, enough to be respectable but not enough to be uncomfortable. Their religion is a great, soft cushion. It protects them from the hard unpleasantness of life, while changing its place and shape to suit their convenience. No wonder the cynics speak of hypocrites in the church and dismiss religion as escapism…The message of Jesus was very different. He never lowered his standards or modified his conditions to make his call more readily acceptable. He asked his first disciples, and he has asked every disciple since, to give him their thoughtful and total commitment. Nothing less than this will do
— John R.W. Stott, Basic Christianity
The bridge of grace will bear your weight, brother. Thousands of big sinners have gone across that bridge, yea, tens of thousands have gone over it. Some have been the chief of sinners and some have come at the very last of their days but the arch has never yielded beneath their weight. I will go with them trusting to the same support. It will bear me over as it has for them.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon
I know nothing, except what everyone knows--if there when grace dances, I should dance.
— Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
Loyal companions are an unequaled grace, stanching fear before it bleeds you numb, a reliable antidote for creeping despair.
— Dean Koontz, Odd Interlude: A Special Odd Thomas Adventure
Pull himself together? This was a man who looked permanently cemented together.
— Maya Banks, Echoes at Dawn
We in the revivalist tradition have viewed grace only in terms of privatized, individualized spirituality. Give people enough Jesus to save their souls, move them to an emotional decision, help them get their hearts right and acquire a more responsible morality, and that will be enough. But that is not enough. It is not even the beginning of enough. God was concerned about those living in dire suffering long before Bono, Angelina Jolie, or George Clooney turned into social activists.
— Ronnie McBrayer, Leaving Religion, Following Jesus
When “doctrinal integrity” (a term usually defined by those using it) trumps kindness and grace, faith has wandered out of bounds. Anything claiming to be truth that does not lead to compassion for our neighbors cannot rightfully be called the truth.
— Ronnie McBrayer, Leaving Religion, Following Jesus
Law does, "because God said so!"; Grace does because it understands the reason God said so.
— D.R. Silva
The “Gospel” is not a sermon title or the name of a book in the Bible. The Gospel is the person of Jesus Christ and it is the power of God to bring people to salvation. Romans 1:16
— John Paul Warren
The Grace of God and the human will are co-operant, but not on equal terms. Grace has the pre-eminence.
— William Burton Pope
What was it you told me, Jesus?” she asked him softly. “Do you remember? Love is love is love. Pain is pain is pain. Knowledge is knowledge. It doesn’t matter what shape or form it takes, what matters is how you use it, what you do with it, and if you can accept it with some measure of grace. If you can, it’s the most beautiful thing in the world. If you can’t...
— Shannon Noelle Long, Second Coming
His grace lifts us in spite of us...it moves our lives forward on the conveyor belt of promise, even as we cling to our nagging doubts and unbelief.
— Carl Prude  Jr., Anchored in Light: Understanding and Overcoming the Five Deadliest Threats to Your Faith
I am relentlessly determine to be occupied with Jesus Christ and His Glorious Gospel and nothing else.
— John Paul Warren
Grace (the Gospel) is under attack today simply because it reveals the GOODNESS of God. Nothing reveals the GOODNESS of God more than grace.
— John Paul Warren
We preach grace, but we don’t always practice it. We talk about God’s mercy, but we don’t always want the people who need it most to know it or get in on it. We say we are in the redemption business, but the door to that redemption is often locked by us from the inside. We say, “Come in! All are welcome!” but “all” is often marked with an asterisk. How, I ask, can the world change – how can heaven come to earth – if we stingily protest against God for his grace to others, grace we have freely received ourselves? How can we pray “thy kingdom come,” and be resentful toward God and those he allows to enter the kingdom in his way and his timing?
— Ronnie McBrayer, How Far Is Heaven?: Rediscovering the Kingdom of God in the Here and Now
I often feel the pressure, from my peers and others, to come out and “take a stand” on a moral or social issue. Typically, I refuse to do so, or at least I refuse to do so in a way that will please my critics. On so many of the hard and divisive issues of our times, I don’t close my eyes. I do stand for something: I stand for love. For if Jesus came, not to condemn the world, but to redeem it, how can we who bear the Name respond any differently? Yes, what I believe about all these moral and social issues matters, without a doubt. But these beliefs mean nothing, if my first and consuming conviction is not love for those who are different and believe differently than me. We have a choice: We can choose to show how “right” we are, or we can choose to love. Sometimes, it is impossible to do both at the same time.
— Ronnie McBrayer, The Jesus Tribe: Following Christ in the Land of the Empire
We have taught this generation how to "market" the Gospel but we have neglected to encourage them to "preach" the Gospel.
— John Paul Warren
He's God....and his grace is a part of him working relentlessly on our behalf...never leaving, never abandoning, never stopping.
— Carl Prude  Jr., Anchored in Light: Understanding and Overcoming the Five Deadliest Threats to Your Faith
When we look at Abraham, Sarah, Hagar and Ishmael, we see that God's grace can survive our three-ring-circuses of compromise, rationalization and weak faith.
— Carl Prude  Jr., Anchored in Light: Understanding and Overcoming the Five Deadliest Threats to Your Faith
We have created a culture of leadership "development" in the Church at the expense of ignore the ministry of the Church to making disciples.
— John Paul Warren
The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn't actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn't get smallpox.
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
A Sunrise is God's way of saying, "Let's start again.
— Todd Stocker, Refined: Turning Pain Into Purpose
Those who believe they have pleased God by the quality of their devotion and moral goodness naturally feel that they and their group deserve deference and power over others. The God of Jesus and the prophets, however, saves completely by grace. He cannot be manipulated by religious and moral performance--he can only be reached through repentance, through the giving up of power. If we are saved by sheer grace we can only become grateful, willing servants of God and of everyone around us.
— Timothy J. Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism
the grace is being able to like rock music,symphony music, jazz …anything that contains the original energy ofjoy.
— Charles Bukowski
If you, free as you are of every weighthad stayed below, then that would be as strangeas living flame on earth remaining still."And then she turned her gaze up toward the heavens.
— Dante Alighieri, Paradiso
The most frightful of all spectacles is the strength of the civilization without its mercy.
— Winston S. Churchill
God gives us these raw, little people, and we have to form them and mold them and teach them how to operate in society. And if we get a glimpse of all the ugliness that lies right beneath our own polished surface? Well, then, there's a humbling lesson too. It's those moments when I realize I have to extend grace to Caroline as she figures these things out by trial and error in the same way God lavishes me with mercy, even as I make the same mistakes over and over again.
— Melanie Shankle, Sparkly Green Earrings: Catching the Light at Every Turn
When we lay the soil of our hard lives opened the rain of grace and let Joy permeate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows. How can this not be the best thing for the world? for us? The clouds open when we mouth thanks. p. 58
— Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
Her every movement transfixed him
—  she was graceful and refined. She’d become a woman. An elegant woman.
Grace is never wanting. God always gives sufficient grace to whoever is willing to receive it.
— Francis de Sales
0 true and heavenly grace, without which our own merits are nothing, and our natural gifts of no account! Neither arts nor riches, beauty nor strength, genius nor eloquence have any value in Your eyes, Lord, unless allied to grace. For the gifts of nature are common to good men and bad alike, but grace or love are Your especial gift to those whom You choose, and those who are sealed with this are counted worthy of life everlasting.
— Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
Knowledge.Grace. True union with the divine. I find that sort of prayer so much more difficult than the other, because it requires an extreme emotional and spiritual vulnerability. It's frighting,because we're trained not to expose the weakest parts of ourselves, the things that cause us pain and shame and suffering. It's those same things that often block our access to God-- basically, we stand in our own way.
— Anna Jarzab, The Opposite of Hallelujah
I will hold my self to a standard of grace which is Christ's gift, not perfection which is Satan's trap.
— Maralee McKee, Manners That Matter for Moms
God's Grace is greater than all our sins. Repentance is one of the Christian's highest privileges. A repentant Christian focuses on God's mercy and God's grace. Any moment in our lives when we bask in God's mercy and grace is our highest moment. Higher than when we feel smug in our decent performance and cannot think of anything we need to confess... That is potentially a glorious moment. For we could at that moment accept God's abundant Mercy and Grace and go forth with nothing to boast of except Christ Himself, or else we struggle with our shame, focusing on that as well as our track record. We fail because we have shifted our attention from Grace and Mercy. One who draws on God's Mercy and Grace is quick to repent, but also slow to sin.
— Jerry Bridges
Grace not only embraces you at your most shameful, it's the most effective antidote to sin.
— Anna Broadway, Sexless in the City: A Memoir of Reluctant Chastity
I did not have all the answers. I did not know if I’d deserved God’s grace or wrath, or what would become of me if I ever fled this town.But I did know how to shoot a gun. - Skylla Warden
— Rachael Wade, Repossession
Life,disassembled andreassembled into a thing of beauty,reflect GOD love in a manifestation of unlimited grace.
— Peter Adejimi
Only unconditional grace can transform a hardened heart into a grateful heart. Only a free gift can demolish any notion of quid pro quo. Only an utterly merciful act of love can fashion a new creation capable of love. As theologian Karl Barth puts it, 'As the beloved of God, we have no alternative but to love him in return.
— Mark Galli, Chaos and Grace: Discovering the Liberating Work of the Holy Spirit
Obedience makes our heart receptive to what God has already done. It doesn’t move Him; His heart is always aflame toward us. Generally, this revelation is not taught correctly by well-meaning ministers. The incorrect way that obedience is taught causes people to be overly-introspective, obsessing over their inadequacies and failures. It breeds SELF-ESTEEM issues instead of promoting CHRIST-ESTEEM wholeness. It breeds a destructive DEMAND-CONSCIOUSNESS (law) instead of a liberating SUPPLY-CONSCIOUSNESS (grace).
— Brian    Williams
God is the comic shepherd who gets more of a kick out of that one lost sheep once he finds it again than out of the ninety and nine who had the good sense not to get lost in the first place. God is the eccentric host who, when the country-club crowd all turned out to have other things more important to do than come live it up with him, goes out into the skid rows and soup kitchens and charity wards and brings home a freak show. The man with no legs who sells shoelaces at the corner. The old woman in the moth-eaten fur coat who makes her daily rounds of the garbage cans. The old wino with his pint in a brown paper bag. The pusher, the whore, the village idiot who stands at the blinker light waving his hand as the cars go by. They are seated at the damask-laid table in the great hall. The candles are all lit and the champagne glasses filled. At a sign from the host, the musicians in their gallery strike up "Amazing Grace.
— Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale
Cheer up! You're a worse sinner than you ever dared imagine, and you're more loved than you ever dared hope.
— Jack Miller
Sin and grace, absence and presence, tragedy and comedy, they divide the world between them and where they meet head on, the Gospel happens.
— Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale
The moments you are given are your true wealth. You don't need power, influence, or fame. The sunlight brings the power; the wind carries the influence. And as for fame, well, when you allow yourself to notice all those hands that have made your growth possible, you will also recognize what you have made possible for countless others — and how famous you already are. In this very moment, one of those others may be telling a story about how you helped them grow forward.
— Dawna Markova, Spot of Grace: Remarkable Stories of How You DO Make a Difference
The saints shall persevere in holiness, because God perseveres in grace.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, All of Grace
The inmost significance of the exaggerated value which is set upon hard work appears to be this: man seems to mistrust everything that is effortless; he can only enjoy, with a good conscience, what he has acquired with toil and trouble; he refused to have anything as a gift.
— Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis Of Culture
...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
We are all trophies of God’s grace, some more dramatically than others; Jesus came for the sick and not the well, for the sinner and not the righteous. He came to redeem and transform, to make all things new. May you go forth more committed than ever to nourish the souls who you touch, those tender lives who have sustained the enormous assaults of the universe. (pp.88)
— Philip Yancey, What Good Is God?: In Search of a Faith That Matters
The question is not whether or not change and challenge are going to happen. They are. The question is, when they do happen, how are we going to choose to look at them, contextualize them, and navigate them?
— Jeffrey R. Anderson, The Nature of Things - Navigating Everyday Life with Grace
Elegance is timeless
— Habeeb Akande
There is no question of doing is purely on our own. But we must act. Grace is opposed to earning, not to effort. And it is well-directed, decisive, and sustained effort that is the key to the keys of the kingdom and to the life of restful power in ministry and life that those keys open to us.
— Dallas Willard, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus's Essential Teachings on Discipleship
If it wasn’t for all those silver wings spread out to help you on your journey, you would’a been dead or someplace screamin’ in a nut house a long time ago.
— Aberjhani, The River of Winged Dreams
Quietly...softly, God taps on our tense shoulders with His love.
— Shawntel Jefferson, Refreshing Winds 31 Day Devotional
When she remembers to look at herself in a spiritual light, she sees the deep capacity for love this pain has brought her. The realization fills her with wonder. Now she can rise in the morning and greet the new day with eagerness and grace.
— Harold Kemp
He would know a number of grown women in his life who did not possess even a small portion of the grace his middle sister owned at the age of fourteen.
— James Carlos Blake, Wildwood Boys
Genius is a sovereign power; it forms schools; it lays hold on the spirits of men, with irresistible might; and it exercises an immeasurable influence on the whole condition of human life. This sovereignty of genius is a gift of God, possessed only by his grace. It is subject to no one and is responsible to him alone who has granted it this ascendancy.
— Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism
Besides," she says, eyes twinkling mischievously, "it'd never work out between us. I'm still holding a candle for Professor Haven.""How could I compete with a middle-aged English professor?""Well," she says, "you could do, but it'd be useless. Something about his receding hairline just drives me mad.
— seventhswan, The Side Effects of Forgetting
We are no longer under the 'Law', but rather the Grace of God in Christ."~R. Alan Woods [2013]
— R. Alan Woods, The Journey Is the Destination: A Book of Quotes With Commentaries
So," she says, "What's got you so busy?""What?" he says, "Oh, um, I was trying to perfect my telepathy." Grace gasps and bulges her eyes out very wide. "Are…you okay?" he asks, finally, after she shows no signs of stopping."I'm pushing a thought towards you, obviously.""Oh," Kellan says, "Well I guess I'm not a telepath after all.
— seventhswan, The Side Effects of Forgetting
Hey, if you're going to say what I think you're going to say…wait, are you going to say it?” he asked, smiling down at me.“Yes, yes I think so.” I grinned shyly back.“Well, then I think we should say it at the same time, yes?” he suggested.“Count of three?” I asked. He nodded.“One…” I started.“Two…” he said, eyes twinkling.“Three,” we said together. We both paused, smiling hugely, and then I took a deep breath.“Jack, I love you.”“I know,” he said at the same time.Ass…“Ass!” I said, smacking him on the arm.“That was great!” he laughed.
— Alice Clayton, The Unidentified Redhead
Let today be the day you learn the grace of letting go and the power of moving on.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Gratitude goes beyond the 'mine' and 'thine' and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline. The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
The Lord bestows his blessings there, where he finds the vessels empty.
— Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
Do you know whether or not you are in God's grace?Joan: If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.
— Jeanne d'Arc
Someone who is determinedly trying to show God how good he or she is is likely to become an insufferable prig.
— N.T. Wright, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters
We are all the walking wounded in a world that is a war zone. Everything we love will be taken from us, everything, last of all life itself. Yet everywhere I look, I find great beauty in this battlefield, and grace and the promise of joy.
— Dean Koontz, Odd Apocalypse
One of these days you who are now a 'babe' in Christ shall be a 'father' in the church. Hope for this great thing; but hope for it as a gift of grace, and not as the wages of work, or as the product of your own energy.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, All of Grace
Secrets aren’t the same as lying,' Vaughn commented, because they both had the muddiest of ethics, which was an odd thing to have in common.
— Sarra Manning, Unsticky
God can't clean the house of you when you're still in it.
— Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith
When life tries to define you with its hardship, you gotta push back, look it straight in the eye and say, ‘No matter what life throws at me, I’m going to keep telling myself that I will overcome.’ And every time you own that truth, you write your own life script.
— Nikki Rosen, Dancing Softly
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, The Nature of Things - Navigating Everyday Life with Grace
Paul saith, 'Not of works, lest any man should boast.' Now, faith excludes all boasting. The hand which receives charity does not say, 'I am to be thanked for accepting the gift'; that would be absurd. When the hand conveys bread to the mouth it does not say to the body, 'Thank me; for I feed you.' It is a very simple thing that the hand does though a very necessary thing; and it never arrogates glory to itself for what it does. So God has selected faith to receive the unspeakable gift of His grace, because it cannot take to itself any credit, but must adore the gracious God who is the giver of all good.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, All of Grace
For the Word of God is not received by faith if it flits about in the top of the brain, but when it takes root in the depth of the heart . . . the heart's distrust is greater than the mind's blindness. It is harder for the heart to be furnished with assurance [of God's love] than for the mind to be endowed with thought.
— John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 Vols
Our weaknesses may never go away but when we give them to God, His grace will turn them into something beautiful...
— Heather Bixler, Breaking Pride
Grace does not work like a penny in a slot machine. Grace will move you only when you want it to move you, and only when you let it move you. The supernatural order supposes the freedom of the natural order, but it does not destroy it.
— Fulton J. Sheen, A Preface to Religion
Certainly there is life and there is death, but even in death, if we look closely enough, we will find grace.
— Jeffrey R. Anderson, The Nature of Things - Navigating Everyday Life with Grace
I remember the revelation it was to me when I realized I'd rather be smart in the way Elvis Presley was than in the way, say, Ludwig Wittgenstein was. The thing was, you could imagine you could be smart like Wittgenstein by just thinking hard enough, but Elvis just had it. It was almost spiritual. A kind of grace.
— Richard Hell
God has made us to be conduits of his grace. The danger is in thinking the conduit should be lined with gold. It shouldn't. Copper will do.
— John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist
We have another chance to navigate, perhaps in a slightly different way than we did yesterday. We cannot go back. But we can learn.
— Jeffrey R. Anderson, The Nature of Things - Navigating Everyday Life with Grace
Christians are God's delivery people, through whom he does his giving to a needy world. We are conduits of God's grace to others. Our eternal investment portfolio should be full of the most strategic kingdom-building projects to which we can disburse God's funds.
— Randy Alcorn, Money, Possessions and Eternity
Properly understood, the doctrine of sin means that believers are never as good as our true worldview should make us. Similarly, the doctrine of grace means as messed up their false worldview should make them.
— Timothy J. Keller, Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God's Plan for the World
All things acceptable to God the Father must come from God the Son, whether us or our works.
— paul viggiono
Surely there is a knowing behind it all. There is a teacher, an expresser, a creator, an artist perhaps, a poet certainly that has designed and presented all of the clues that we need to navigate life with some degree of grace, and perhaps with a greater degree of happiness than we now have.
— Jeffrey R. Anderson, The Nature of Things - Navigating Everyday Life with Grace
Imagine if we applied as much grace to others as we give ourselves & as much law to ourselves as we apply to others.
— Orrin Woodward
The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.
— Abigail Van Buren
I want to wake up ev­ery day I have left to the warmth of your lips on mine, the sound of your voice singing next to me, the feel of your fin­gers on my skin and your heart beat­ing mu­sic with mine.
— Christine Zolendz, Saving Grace
We are suspicious of grace. We are afraid of the very lavishness of the gift.
— Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art
He was everything I’d ever wanted, and everything I hadn’t even known I needed.
— Alice Clayton, The Redhead Revealed
Unconditional love is not affirming another in every decision they make especially when those choices are unhealthy. Unconditional love will risk offending in the name of genuine concern. It will risk relationship for the ultimate well-being of the other. To indiscriminately affirm the unhealthy choices of others is not love at all but perhaps the worst kind of fraud.
— Michael M. Rose
He let his guitar swing behind him and cupped my face with his hand. "I love you, Grace Taylor." It barely came out above a whisper from his lips but it echoed throught the microphone. And then he kissed me. In front of everyone, he kissed me. A slow, deep kiss that sent heat from my lips to every other surface of my skin, and completely an utterly set me on fire.
— Christine Zolendz, Saving Grace
What really holds their marriage together are mutual respect of an awesome depth, a shared sense of humor, faith that they were brought together by a force greater than themselves, and a love so unwavering and pure that it is sacred.
— Dean Koontz, Forever Odd
I assigned him to help me trim the Brussels sprouts, but instead he kept trying to throw them away when he thought I wasn’t looking. “Brussels sprouts, Grace, really? These are our friends. Why are you doing this to them?
— Alice Clayton, The Redhead Revealed
With my guitar, I could write my own stories, my own poems, and my own destiny. No one could take away the feelings, the emotions or the truth of my notes. They could hide secrets and provoke images of words that never should be whispered. I could compose the melody of my aching heart and write into it my own happily ever after since no one seemed to think after all my suffering I deserved one. That's okay, I would make my own.
— Christine Zolendz, Saving Grace
Sacraments are like hoses. They are the channels of the living water of God's grace. Our faith is like opening the faucet. We can open it a lot, a little, or not at all.
— Peter Kreeft, Jesus-Shock
I'm never one, distinct color but a dichotomy of dark and bright. The hues follow me, reflecting my mood, displaying every tone and shade I feel. I can breathe in red and exhale blue, or swim in green and dry as a rainbow. It all depends on how I choose to react to every shadow and light beam headed my way.
— Linda Kage, The Color of Grace
God save her from annoying Alphas.
— Jill Shalvis, Forever and a Day
I wish I could just fling myself into bed with you, but I can’t. I don’t want to be used that way and I don’t want to use you! Can’t you understand that?
— Sherrilyn Kenyon, Fantasy Lover
Please Julian,” she whispered to him as he slept beside her. “Don’t leave me.
— Sherrilyn Kenyon, Fantasy Lover
For most of my life I have thought of grace as a hope of a bright tomorrow in spite of the darkness of today--and this is true. In this way we are all like Pamela, walking a road to grace--hoping for mercy. What we fail to realize is that grace is more than our destination, it is the journey itself, manifested in each breath and with each step we take. Grace surrounds us, whirls about us like the wind, falls on us like rain. Grace sustains us on our journeys, no matter how perilous they may be and, make no mistake, they are all perilous. We need not hope for grace, we merely need to open our eyes to its abundance. Grace is all around us, not just in the hopeful future but in the miracle of now.
— Richard Paul Evans, The Road to Grace
Many times in life, those who do the most correcting, need the most correcting.
— Orrin Woodward
Oh goodness infinite, goodness immense!That all this good of evil shall produce,And evil turn to good; more wonderfulThan that which by creation first brought forthLight out of darkness! Full of doubt I stand,Whether I should repent me now of sinBy me done, and occasioned; or rejoiceMuch more, that much more good thereof shall spring;To God more glory, more good-will to menFrom God, and over wrath grace shall abound.
— John Milton, Paradise Lost
Don't let anyone charge you for what God has freely given.
— Paul  Ellis
The fallacy in Peter's mind was this: he believed his relationship was dependent on his consistency in producing the qualities he thought had earned him the Lord's approval.
— Lloyd John Ogilvie
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
It is a terrible smudge on grace and unconditional love to think that God simply winks and smiles at our poor choices
—  that God must rubber stamp everything we do or else He is unloving. God loves us unconditionally regardless of our performance - good or bad. When God challenges us or corrects us He does not stop loving us. In the safety of His love we can receive correction and challenge without shame or feelings of rejection.
Got plans for the rest of the day?"I looked back at him and my heart just stopped. Then it just started again thudding erratically. What the hell does that mean? I feel like I'm having a heart attack."No plans," I whispered. Test drive your mattress? Let me pretend to be a Skittle and you can taste my rainbow? Fifty Shades me? Please! Oh, holy horror, I'm freaking losing it.
— Christine Zolendz
Grace is not a doctrine or a religion. It is a person, Jesus Christ.
— John Paul Warren
Suddenly, as one, all the Greys stop talking and gape at Christian. What? Christian is singing softly to himself at the piano. Silence descends on us all as we strain to hear his soft, lyrical voice. I've heard him sing before, haven't they? He stops, suddenly conscious of the deathly hush that's fallen over the room. Kate glances questioningly at me and I shrug. Christian turns on the stool and frowns, embarrassed to realize he's become the center of attention.'Go on,' Grace urges softly. 'I've never heard you sing, Christian. Ever.
— E.L. James
... the pursuit of holiness must bre anchored in grace
—  otherwise it is doomed to failure.
He remembered the gracefulness with which she moved in battle—like liquid flesh. There was no one quite like his wife, and he never felt more triumphant and free than when he was in her company.
— Nadia Scrieva
Find the Grace in the things you can’t change, and help somebody if you can.
— Peter Van Zant
It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.
— William Ernest Henley, Echoes of Life and Death;
It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.
— Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
A breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive, which lay silent and tidy under the inky sky, the very last place you would expect astonishing things to happen. Harry Potter rolled over inside his blankets without waking up. One small hand closed on the letter beside him and he slept on, not knowing he was special, not knowing he was famous, not knowing he would be woken in a few hours' time by Mrs. Dursley's scream as she opened the front door to put out the milk bottles, nor that he would spend the next few weeks being prodded and pinched by his cousin Dudley...He couldn't know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: "To Harry Potter - the boy who lived!
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
When it comes to life, we spin our own yarn, and where we end up is really, in fact, where we always intended to be.
— Julia Glass, Three Junes
Captain?""Yeah?""Do you think it was destiny that brought us together?"He squinted and, after a thoughtful moment, shook his head. "No. I'm pretty sure it was Cinder.
— Marissa Meyer, Cress
Sometimes life has a cruel sense of humor, giving you the thing you always wanted at the worst time possible.
— Lisa Kleypas, Sugar Daddy
Fate is never fair. You are caught in a current much stronger than you are
—  struggle against it and you'll drown not just yourself but those who try to save you. Swim with it. and you'll survive
Albert grunted. "Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions?"Mort thought for a moment."No," he said eventually, "what?"There was silence.Then Albert straightened up and said, "Damned if I know. Probably they get answers, and serve 'em right.
— Terry Pratchett, Mort
Do you think the universe fights for souls to be together? Some things are too strange and strong to be coincidences.
— Emery Allen
Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear.
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Oh, I am fortune's fool!
— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Take it from me, Fate doesn't care most of the time.
— Diana Wynne Jones, Castle in the Air
To the dumb question "Why me?" the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: why not?
— Christopher Hitchens, Mortality
Reader, you must know that an interesting fate (sometimes involving rats, sometimes not) awaits almost everyone, mouse or man, who does not conform.
— Kate DiCamillo, Despereaux = Tale of Despereaux
Stop longing.You poison today’s ease, reaching always for tomorrow.
— Robin Hobb, Fool's Errand
History is filled with brilliant people who wanted to fix things and just made them worse.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby
Many young men started down a false path to their true destiny. Time and fortune usually set them aright.
— Mario Puzo, The Godfather
[T]his readiness to assume the guilt for the threats to our environment is deceptively reassuring: We like to be guilty since, if we are guilty, it all depends on us. We pull the strings of the catastrophe, so we can also save ourselves simply by changing our lives. What is really hard for us (at least in the West) to accept is that we are reduced to the role of a passive observer who sits and watches what our fate will be. To avoid this impotence, we engage in frantic, obsessive activities. We recycle old paper, we buy organic food, we install long-lasting light bulbs—whatever—just so we can be sure that we are doing something. We make our individual contribution like the soccer fan who supports his team in front of a TV screen at home, shouting and jumping from his seat, in the belief that this will somehow influence the game's outcome.
— Slavoj Žižek
You deserve a longer letter than this
—  but it is my unhappy fate seldom to treat people so well as they deserve.
And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others. And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.
— Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
When an inner situation is not made conscious it appears outside as fate.
— C.G. Jung
Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill.
— Arthur Conan Doyle
I felt a little guilty about jangling the poor bugger's brains with that evil fantasy. But what the hell? Anybody who wanders around the world saying, "Hell yes, I'm from Texas," deserves whatever happens to him.
— Hunter S. Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time
There is no such thing as coincidence, only hitsuzen.
— CLAMP, xxxHolic, Vol. 1
Fate. As a child, that word was often my only companion. It whispered to me from dark corners during lonely nights. It was the song of the birds in spring and the call of the wind through bare branches on a cold winter afternoon. Fate. Both my anguish and my solace. My escort and my cage.
— Leslye Walton, The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender
Irony is Fate's most common figure of speech.
— Trevanian, Shibumi
Above all, mine is a love story. Unlike most love stories, this one involves chance, gravity, a dash of head trauma. It began with a coin toss. The coin came up tails. I was heads. Had it gone my way, there might not be a story at all. Just a chapter, or a sentence in a book whose greater theme had yet to be determined. Maybe this chapter would've had the faintest whisper of love about it. But maybe not. Sometimes, a girl needs to lose.
— Gabrielle Zevin, Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac
Sometimes our fate is different from the one we imagined for ourselves.
— Jean Kwok, Girl in Translation
Strange things conspire when one tries to cheat fate
— Rick Riordan, The Son of Neptune
He stares at me so darkly, so hungily that I can only nod. Agree. Of course, I feel it. "I do", I admit.
— Sophie Jordan, Firelight
But some things, no matter how unlikely, are just supposed to happen. You know what I mean. Some things just smack of the future and feel part of an overarching rightness. 
— Marisa de los Santos, Belong to Me
My fate is like those envelopes – sealed and tossed aside.
— Jenny B. Jones, There You'll Find Me
Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.
— Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club
Not even need and love can defeat fate...
— Ursula K. Le Guin, Lavinia
We create our fate every day . . . most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior.
— Henry Miller
Yeah. A feeling. Like the whole point of my life from the alleys in Bangkok to the yachts and private island to coming here like a crazy person trying to fly a helicopter like all of it from birth to here point A to point Z was all some big cosmic trick to get me to meet you. - Sanjit to Lana
— Michael  Grant, Plague
The future was with Fate. The present was our own.~ The Poison Belt
— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Anyway, it seems to me that the way most people go on living (I suppose there are a few exceptions), they think that the world of life (or whatever) is this place where everything is (or is supposed to be) basically logical and consistent.... It's like when you put instant rice pudding mix in a bowl in the microwave and push the button, and you take the cover off when it rings, and there you've got rice pudding. I mean, what happens in between the time when you push the switch and when the microwave rings? You can't tell what's going on under the cover. Maybe the instant rice pudding first turns into macaroni gratin in the darkness when nobody's looking and only then turns back into rice pudding. We think it's natural to get rice pudding after we put rice pudding mix in the microwave and the bell rings, but to me that's just a presumption. I would be kind of relieved if, every once in a while, after you put rice pudding mix in the microwave and it rang and you opened the top, you got macaroni gratin.
— Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
It is always thus, impelled by a state of mind which is destined not to last, we make our irrevocable decisions
— Marcel Proust
I will always buy extra yarn. I will not try to tempt fate.
— Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, At Knit's End: Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much
Fate already warned us to pack it in. We just didn’t hear it in time.
— Jonathan Tropper, This is Where I Leave You
We gallop through our lives like circus performers balancing on two speeding side-by-side horses--one foot is on the horse called "fate," the other on the horse called "free will." And the question you have to ask every day is--which horse is which? Which horse do I need to stop worrying about because it's not under my control, and which do I need to steer with concentrated effort?
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
It seems to me further, that it is very odd that fate should leave so careful a trail, and spend so little time preparing the one that must follow it.
— Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword
Suddenly Ka realized he was in love with İpek. And realizing that this love would determine the rest of his life, he was filled with dread.
— Orhan Pamuk, Snow
TO CHANGE THE FATE OF ONE INDIVIDUAL IS TO CHANGE THE WORLD.
— Terry Pratchett, Soul Music
I don’t believe in coincidence or fateBut I know one thing for sureYour face was meant to beBurned into the deepest reachesOf my blackest memories.
— Cassia Leo, Black Box
Habent sua fata libelli et balli [Books and bullets have their own destinies]
— Ernst Jünger, Storm of Steel
Maybe it was fate that I sat next to her that day, or serendipity, divine intervention, who knows? However you look at, I got seated next to the first girl to ever really steal my heart. I was in love from that moment on.
— Renee Carlino, Sweet Thing
It's not my fate to give up--I know it can't be.
— Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady
She upset Billy simply by being his mother. She made him feel embarrased and ungrateful and weak because she had gone to so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn't really like life at all.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five
For an hour, blended with all she could offer, something noble had been created which had nothing to do with the physical world. And from the turn of his throat, the warmth of his hair, the strong, slender sinews of his hands, something further; which had. Though she combed the earth and searched through the smoke of the galaxies there was no being she wanted but this, who was not and should not be for Philippa Somerville.
— Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate
Nico was wrong. The Book of Fate isn't already written. It's written every day.Some scars never heal.Then again, some do.
— Brad Meltzer
Every man carries the seed of his own death, and you will not be more than a man. You will have everything; you cannot have more…
— Mary  Stewart, The Hollow Hills
If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all.
— William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Fate has a twisted sense of humor.
— Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, Midnight Predator
It is not true that fate slips silently into our lives. It steps in through the door that we have opened, and we invite it to enter. No one is strong enough or cunning enough to avert by word or deed the misfortune that is rooted in the iron laws of his character and his life.
— Sándor Márai, Embers
Affliction is enamoured of thy parts, And thou art wedded to calamity.
— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
You know what I think? Fate! That's what it is fate! There's a thing that comes after a fellow:got a name,but I forgot what it is. Creeps up behind him, and puts him in the basket when he ain't expecting it.
— Georgette Heyer, Friday's Child
if the world go wrong, it was, in some off-hand manner, never meant to go right.
— Charles Dickens, Bleak House
How incredibly far our lives drift from where we knew with all certainty they would go. How little today resembles what yesterday thought it would look like.
— Jim Beaver, Life's That Way
But in high school the business of irrevocable choices began. Doors slipped shut with a faint locking click that was only heared clearly in the dreams of later years.
— Stephen King, Cujo
And how can you say I love you to someone you love? I rolled onto my side and fell asleep next to her. Here is the point of everything I have been trying to tell you, Oskar. It's always necessary.
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Then I glanced at the ring on my finger.The Snake That Eats Its Own Tail, Forever and Ever. I know where I came from—but where did all you zombies come from?I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once—and you all went away.So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light.You aren’t really there at all. There isn’t anybody but me—Jane—here alone in the dark.I miss you dreadfully!
— Robert A. Heinlein
Chance. It weaves through our lives like a golden thread, sometimes knotting, tangling, and breaking along the way. Loose threads are left hanging, but the in and out, the back and forth continues, the weaving goes on. It doesn't stop.
— Mary E. Pearson, The Miles Between
Lee was too cool by nature to rage at fate
—  his manner was to raise an eyebrow and greet it laconically.
I do believe in fate, Anne-not the blind fate that gives one no freedom of choice, but a fate that sets down a pattern for each of our lives and gives us choices, numerous choices, by which to find that pattern and be happy.
— Mary Balogh, Simply Love
Anything can happen. But almost always, just normal things happen and people have happy lives.
— David Wroblewski, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
Fate. You could never anticipate it.
— Nora Roberts
Hide from fate all you like,” Baba Yellowlegs said as they turned away. “But it shall soon find you!
— Sarah J. Maas, Crown of Midnight
Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that has nothing to do with you, This storm is you. Something inside you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up the sky like pulverized bones.
— Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore