c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
The pale pink light of dawn sparkled on branch and leaf and stone. Every blade of grass was carved from emerald, every drip of water turned to diamond. Flowers and mushrooms alike wore coats of glass. Even the mud puddles had a bright brown sheen. Through the shimmering greenery, the black tents of his brothers were encased in a fine glaze of ice. So there is magic beyond the Wall after all.
— George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings
Magic. It can get a guy killed.
— Jim Butcher, Storm Front
Every libromancer had a first book. Etched more sharply into my memory than my first kiss, this book had been my magical awakening.
— Jim C. Hines, Libriomancer
You can almost always find chains of coincidence to disprove magic. That's because it doesn't happen the way it does in books. It makes those chains of coincidence. That's what it is.
— Jo Walton, Among Others
You will remember that Albertus Magnus, after describing minutely the process by which spirits may be invoked and commanded, adds emphatically that the process will instruct and avail only to the few - that a man must be born a magician! - that is, born with a peculiar physical temperament, as a man is born a poet. Rarely are men in whose constitution lurks this occult power of the highest order of intellect - usually in the intellect there is some twist, perversity, or disease.' ("The House And The Brain")
— Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Reign of Terror Volume 2: Great Victorian Horror Stories
We, and I think I'm speaking for many writers, don't know what it is that sometimes comes to make our books alive. All we can do is write dutifully and day after day, every day, giving our work the very best of what we are capable. I don't that we can consciously put the magic in; it doesn't work that way. When the magic comes, it's a gift.
— Madeleine L'Engle
When he reached his own room again, he found Khloe curled up on his bed, asleep. He stood over her, watching her sleep peacefully for a few moments before taking a deep breath and moving to the other side of the bed. He sat down on top of the covers next to her and watched the rise and fall of her chest as she slept. He withdrew a leather bond journal from the nightstand drawer and tried to push Hecate’s words from his mind.Khloe is yours to deal with.
— Lia Davis, Death's Storm
They took form in a bedroom, Khloe realized with a scowl. He noticed and gave her a sideways grin. Arrogant ass. Laugh it up, demon.
— Lia Davis, Death's Storm
One misspoken word and the world will no longer know you. Mark Andrew Ramsay
— Brendan Carroll, The Knight of Death: The Assassin Chronicles
I did feel a 'something', like a catch in the silence at the moment of creation.
— Ben Aaronovitch, Midnight Riot
Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it, we go nowhere - Carl Sagan
— T.S. Garp, Serenity's Dream: A Collection of Tales and Poems about Mystical Journeys.
Just because you don’t know how on Earth something might be achieved doesn’t mean you shouldn’t allow yourself to really, really want it. That’s the essence of a dream, the realms of magic and of miracles.
— Silvia Hartmann
Then, idly scratching his nose, he walks to the bookcase in the living room and stoops before a set of drab brown Victorian volumes gathering dust on the second shelf from the bottom.How amusing, he thinks, as he withdraws one of them-amusing that a key to dark and ancient rites should survive in such innocuous-looking form.A young fool like Freirs would probably refuse to believe it. Like the rest of his doomed kind, he'd probably expect such lore to be found only in ancient leather-bound tomes with gothic lettering and portentously sinister titles. He'd search for it in mysterious old trunks and private vaults, in the "restricted" sections of libraries, in intricately carved wood chests with secret compartments.But there are no real secrets, the Old One knows. Secrets are ultimately too hard to conceal. The keys to the rites that will transform the world are neither hidden nor rare nor expensive. They are available to anyone. You can find them on the paperback racks or in any second-hand bookshop.
— T.E.D. Klein, The Ceremonies
His harmonic words could weave the fabric of time or spin matter from nothingness if the mood suited him.
— Lita Burke
I am come,' the Demon said simply, in a droning monotone. 'I am with the dead of the lake. Come to me.' Then the appearance of the skull-face vanished and the blood burst into a shroud of flame, spreading through the throne room in a storm of brilliant red and yellow. The screams could be heard half a league away.
— Ian Livingstone, Firestorm
That guy with the silver hair, he’s your dad, right?” Amber questioned, surveying the scene. “Yes,” I said, reluctant to say anything but, considering what was happening, figured was the least of my worries. “Ooo la la. He’s, like, totally diesel. Look at those arms.” She went on, admiring my dad to a sickening degree. “All right, jailbait, back off. It’s practically incest.”She sucked air through her teeth. “I know,” she said regretfully. “But a girl can dream. And I have a feeling he’s going to be starring in a lot of them.
— Brandi Salazar, Addicted to Magic
I pull my power more tightly around me like a magic binky.
— Sam Cheever, 'Tween Heaven and Hell
Any ceremony performed in the absence of reasonable knowledge as to cause and effect is magic.
— Bernard Wolfe, Limbo
Hey, aren’t you that girl from the web?” the new one asked, bending to suck my earing between his teeth. I pulled my head away. “You got the wrong girl.”Mr. Hawaii pulled back to take a better look at me. “No, I think you might be.” To my total bewilderment, he spun me around. “Hey! What are you—?”“Hey, it is you!” he yelled excitedly, drawing the attention of the crowd. “Hey, everyone, it’s Cheeky Galore!
— Brandi Salazar, Addicted to Magic
Observing the wizard’s high magic was his biggest privilege as Kadmeion’s assistant.
— Lita Burke, Forever Boy
Those old hypocrites. They talk about killing witches but the Good Book’s full of magic. Turning the Nile to blood and parting the Red Sea. What’s that if it’s not good old-fashioned magic? Want a little water into wine? No trouble! How about raising the dead man Lazarus? Just say the word!
— Clive Barker, Days of Magic, Nights of War
Squeeze your eyes closed, as tight as you can, and think of all your favorite autumns, crisp and perfect, all bound up together like a stack of cards. That is what it is like, the awful, wonderful brightness of Fairy colors. Try to smell the hard, pale wood sending up sharp, green smoke into the afternoon. To feel the mellow, golden sun on your skin, more gentle and cozier and more golden than even the light of your favorite reading nook at the close of the day.
— Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
The logic behind magic is that we create what we are imagining.
— Mary Faulkner, Complete Idiot's Guide to Women's Spirituality
Nick stands up and offers his hand to me. I have no idea what he wants, but what the hell, I take his hand anyway, and he pulls me up on my feet then presses against me for a slow dance and it's like we're in a dream where he's Christopher Plummer and I'm Julie Andrews and we're dancing on the marble floor of an Austrian terrace garden. Somehow my head presses Nick's t-shirt and in this moment I am forgetting about time and Tal because maybe my life isn't over. Maybe it's only beginning.
— Rachel Cohn, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist
We're going nowhere, " Joan said grimly. Traffic on the narrow street was at a complete standstill.A chill settled in Sophie's stomach: it was the appalling fear that her brother was going to die."Sidewalk," Nicholas said decisively. "Take it.""But the pedestrians—""Can get out of the way. Use your horn.
— Michael Scott, The Magician
Success is hard, rewards are scant and the glory not always there.
— Billie-Jo Williams
Sometimes, reality is the illusion, and the truth only visible where our eyes can’t see.”- Lady Lalaigne
— Jeanine Henning
By the standards of magical society they’d fallen at the first hurdle: they hadn’t had the basic good sense to keep their shit to themselves.
— Lev Grossman, The Magicians
What do you think of allthis, darlin’? Will you be my soul mate?
— Ann Macela
There are many forms of magic in this world, High Lord. Some come in large packages, some in small. Some work with fire and strength of body and heard ... and some work with revelation.
— Terry Brooks, The Black Unicorn
It's just like any relationship," Raelin told him with a grin, while Aldri practiced over and over again. "You need to coax her, persuade her, impress her, not knock her over the head with a mallet. Sometimes, for complicated things, you even need to grovel a little—but I'll teach you that later, some of the syllables in Faerilíca can take weeks to learn correctly. For now, keep trying to catch her eye in silence.""But magic is only converted energy and emotion," Aldri reminded him. "I already possess it, I only need to use it.""And just how do you want to take ten minutes' running energy or your liking for the color blue, and throw it out in front of you as an arrow-stopping shield, hm?
— Alexis Steinhauer
Love is magic in its rawest form.
— Anne Rainey, Touching Lace
Throughout his life, Bradbury liked to recount the story of meeting a carnival magician, Mr. Electrico, in 1932. At the end of his performance Electrico reached out to the twelve-year-old Bradbury, touched the boy with his sword, and commanded, Live forever! Bradbury later said, I decided that was the greatest idea I had ever heard. I started writing every day. I never stopped.
— Ray Bradbury
She once told him about the mysterious trampled-down places found in fields, which the peasants superstitiously called werewolves' nests. Coming across one of these sites, she fell to her knees and buried her face in the flattened yellow grasses, hoping to inhale the odor of a werewolf, a csordásfarkas. As if his scent was a charm. She smelled nothing but hay burned by the afternoon sun.
— Jody Shields, The Fig Eater
We can offer women what they want most of all, cures for the most common ailments of this world... When children are ailing or babies refuse to be born, when men are unfaithful, when the sky is empty of rain, when the amulets buried beneath holy wall upon instructions of the minim offer not solace and all entreaties to the priests for guidance fail, when the rituals they offer bring no comfort and no consolation, they come to us.
— Alice Hoffman, The Dovekeepers
It is not Love that is the crime and it is not Love that is the sin. It is the absence of it!”ARcher Tariq - "A Rising Darkness
— Nikki Dorakis, The Dread Wolf
Traveling together into what the poet Adrienne Rich has called ‘the cratered night of female memory,’ they undertook a shared process of self-discovery, working together to probe the possibility of woman’s creative power. Through their exploration of hermetic and magical paths, they developed a common pictorial language, derived from the realms of domestic life, the fairy tale and the dream.
— Janet Kaplan
But what would happen if I put on the ring?” the boy asked.“There is only one way to find out.
— Jef Murray
Enchantment frightens us for good reason. Whether it's enchantment of the ordinary kind or the magical kind, it may very well change us, and we may not be able to return to our old selves, to our old certainties and our easy understandings. Magical people seem to fear that less than the rest of us. They want to be enchanted and are quite willing to be changed forever as they go deeper and deeper into realms beyond everyday understanding. Most of us wouldn't mind a little more magic ourselves, if we could slip in and out of it. We too want to leave the brab realities of work-a-day life, experience the transcendent, to revel in endless possibility. But most of us have lost any belief in good magic. All that's left is a vague sence that evil is afoot and ready to draw nearer. The only magic most of us believe in is the scary stuff.
— Christine Wicker, Not In Kansas Anymore
Do we not each dream of dreams? Do we not dance on the notes of lostmemories? Then are we not each dreamers of tomorrow and yesterday, since dreamsplay when time is askew? Are we not all adrift in the constant sea of trial and when all is done, do we not all yearn for ships to carry us home?
— Nathan Reese Maher
Call me crazy, but there is something terribly wrong with this city.
— Nathan Reese Maher
There is a stillness between us, a period of restlessness that ties my stomachin a hangman’s noose. It is this same lack in noise that lives, there! in thedarkness of the grave, how it frightens me beyond all things.
— Nathan Reese Maher
I can’t help but ask, “Do you know where you are?”She turns to me with a foreboding glare. “Do you?
— Nathan Reese Maher
At first I wasn’t all that tempted by him, but then he killed the spider. Which was a huge point in his favor.” “Absolutely. I love men who kill bugs.” “And then when I was freaking out and couldn’t breathe, he was so…gentle.” Zoe sighed and colored, remembering. “He was holding me, and talking to me in that voice…you know, sort of low and rough around the edges…” “All the Nolans sound like that,” Justine said reflectively. “Like they’ve got a mild case of bronchitis. Totally hot.
— Lisa Kleypas, Dream Lake
From this, one can make a deduction which is quite certainly the ultimate truth of jigsaw puzzles: despite appearances, puzzling is not a solitary game: every move the puzzler makes, the puzzlemaker has made before; every piece the puzzler picks up, and picks up again, and studies and strokes, every combination he tries, and tries a second time, every blunder and every insight, each hope and each discouragement have all been designed, calculated, and decided by the other.
— Georges Perec, Life A User's Manual
Beauty, happiness, they're things so big they can't capture them with their scientific words. It's like what they used to call magic.
— Heather Anastasiu, Glitch
Did Bach ever eatpancakes at midnight?
— Nathan Reese Maher
After that, he tried to go upstairs through the broom cupboard, and then the yard. This seemed to puzzle him a little. But finally he discovered the stairs, all except the bottom on, and fell up them on his face. The whole castle shook.
— Diana Wynne Jones
History doesn’t start with a tall buildingand a card with your name written on it, but jokes do. I think someone is takingus for suckers and is playing a mean game.
— Nathan Reese Maher
Love—such a keen mystery prone to pierce and shatter the delicate heart.  Yet it possesses more strength, power, and influence than any other magic known to man. 
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway
Children and babies should be held in the most sacred regard. We feel that they're the most natural and true magicians.
— Zeena Schreck
I steal one glance over my shoulder as soon as we are far from the foreboding luminance of the neon glow, and it is there that my stomach leaps into my throat. Squatting just shy of the light and partially concealed by the shade of an alley is a sinister silhouette beneath a crimson cowl, beaming a demonic smile which spans from cheek to swollen cheek.
— Nathan Reese Maher
There was a feeling on the air like the eve of the end of the world...
— Billie-Jo Williams
Woman magic. A quality that could bring great joy or havoc or both in equal measure.
— Margaret Way, Her Outback Man
She leaves my side and heads deeper intothe apartment singing, “—if the spirit tries to hide, its temple far away… acopper for those they ask, a diamond for those who stay.
— Nathan Reese Maher
I write because writing is power. Writing is creation. When you write, you are as a god, a deity wielding his pen like some Harry Potter staff, making whatever you want to happen, happen. By sheer force of will and some clever word placement, I can arrange all of these little symbols together to invoke emotions and ideas at a whim out of whosoever allows me to cast my spell. It does not take a man and a woman to create. It just takes a writer.
— Jonathan Culver
I rouse Emily to our guests, as she finishes off our fifteenth snowman by setting the head atop its torso. She stands limp at my direction, pointing out the coming shadows and I cannot help but hear a muffled sigh as she decapitates her latest creation with a single push of her hand.
— Nathan Reese Maher
I really need to remember to block my thoughts.""Oh, come on," he pulled me closer towards him. "Why are you so scared?""Because the second that I let this conversation happen, I'll be letting my walls down. No matter what answer you give me, you'll have some sort of power over me, and I don't want that." I pushed past him, plopping down on the bed, not bothering to remove my boots.I could feel the mattress sink beside me. Ian ran his fingers through my hair. "Come here," he spoke softly. "Please." I pushed myself into a sitting position, and moved closer to him, leaning my head on Ian's shoulder. "I like this, a lot. It feels nice." Ian lifted my chin so that I was forced to look directly at him, and then he leaned in to kiss me.
— Nicole Sobon, Capture
That’s a stupid name! Whirly-gig is much better, I think. Who in their rightmind would point at this thing and say, ‘I’m going to fly in my Model-A1’.People would much rather say, ‘Get in my whirly-gig’. And that’s what youshould name it.
— Nathan Reese Maher
Left hand path magick is generally socially unacceptable.
— Nikolas Schreck
Border crossing' is a recurrent theme in all aspects of my work -- editing, writing, and painting. I'm interested in the various ways artists not only cross borders but also subvert them. In mythology, the old Trickster figure Coyote is a champion border crosser, mischievously dashing from the land of the living to the land of the dead, from the wilderness world of magic to the human world. He tears things down so they can be made anew. He's a rascal, but also a culture hero, dancing on borders, ignoring the rules, as many of our most innovative artists do. I'm particularly drawn to art that crosses the borders critics have erected between 'high art' and 'popular culture,' between 'mainstream' and 'genre,' or between one genre and another -- I love that moment of passage between the two; that place on the border where two worlds meet and energize each other, where Coyote enters and shakes things up. But I still have a great love for traditional fantasy, for Imaginary World, center-of-the-genre stories. I'm still excited by series books and trilogies if they're well written and use mythic tropes in interesting ways.
— Terri Windling
To dream of a magical world is one thing. To be told it exists is quite another.
— Barbara Kloss, Gaia's Secret
It seemed hardly feasible that anyone could tune an oil barrel, and even less credible that the barrel could make music like nothing else in the world. She thought those sounds were magic.
— Stieg Larsson
Hey. My life’s not all about weird little creatures pretending to be teddy bears.” From Tribe of the Teddy Bear.
— J. Joseph Wright
I think that thinking of our material universe, the one we perceive with our sense, as the only thing is not only foolish, it is arrogant. As well as, if I may add, in contradiction to theoretical physics. I believe — I have always believed — that there is meaning and purpose to life, although we may not understand that meaning and purpose. I think we catch glimpses of it here and there, and I honestly think that the universe communicates it to us, if we can listen for it — if our perceptions are finely enough tuned. All my life, I’ve had a strong sense of purpose, of being here for a reason that I might not at that moment understand, but that something, somewhere, understood. The times I’ve been unhappy in my life are when I’ve gone off the path, when I’ve realized that I made a choice taking me away from the way I was supposed to go. I remember what it was like to go to law school and to feel, so deeply that it went to my core, as though I was in the wrong place, as though I had stepped off the path. The path itself feels narrow and rocky, sometimes. Sometimes it feels as though I’m walking along a gulley, or a high cliff with winds. But it feels like a path, as though I’m going somewhere.I don’t know how to talk about this except by saying that we have instincts, and our instincts tell us these things, and we have to trust them.
— Theodora Goss
The Tanakee are thought to possess strange, almost supernatural powers.Their eyes are described as large and hypnotic." From Tribe of the Teddy Bear
— J. Joseph Wright
Something with inner beauty will live forever, like the scent of a rose.
— Alex Flinn, Beastly
The magic is over, but its effects will live forever.
— Alex Flinn, Beastly
Yesterday's fairy tale is today's fact. The magician is only one step ahead of his audience.
— Anne Morrow Lindbergh, North to the Orient
My understanding of magic is fairly straightforward. Hit enemies with a sword until they’re dead. If they rise again, hit them again. Repeat as necessary. It worked against Set.
— Rick Riordan
Ultimately, the purpose of magic is to free our potential, not bind us to ideas.
— Philip Carr-Gomm, The Book of English Magic
But are they heroes or mere dreamers?
— Gaius Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica
I just knew. There was no movie ending. There was only an ending.
— Alex Flinn, Beastly
Mikolay and Julia live in the same neighborhood and go tothe same school every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
— Magda M. Olchawska, Mikolay and Julia Meet the Fairies
You belong with us, the lost of the lost, the tribe without a home, a tribe of orphans living our abandoned lives amid toys and trinkets, stuffed monkeys and bears. You’re one of us now—the Tribe of the Teddy Bear.” From Tribe of the Teddy Bear
— J. Joseph Wright
If you use magic outside the school, we are going to get into more trouble than ever. I’m still not allowed to eat sweets after the last trouble we got into. They will lock us up and there will be no sweets and no adventuring ever again.
— Magda M. Olchawska, Mikolay and Julia Meet the Fairies
I want an avowed atheist in the White House. When time comes to push that button, I want whoever's making the decision to understand that once it's pushed, it's over. Finito. They're not gonna have lunch with Jesus. Won't be deflowering 72 virgins on the great shag carpet of eternity, or reincarnated as a cow. I want someone making that decision who believes life on this Earth isn't just a dress rehearsal for something better -- but the only shot we get.
— Quentin R. Bufogle
Hungry for love, He looks at you. Thirsty for kindness, He begs of you. Naked for loyalty, He hopes in you. Homeless for shelter in your heart, He asks of you. Will you be that one to Him?
— Mother Teresa, In the Heart of the World: Thoughts, Stories and Prayers
And now tell me, why is it that you use me words "good people" all the time? Do you call everyone that, or what?- Everyone, - the prisoner replied. - There are no evil people in the world.(- А теперь скажи мне, что это ты все время употребляешь слова добрыелюди"? Ты всех, что ли, так называешь?- Всех, - ответил арестант, - злых людей нет на свете.)
— Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
Christianity is not about building an absolutely secure little niche in the world where you can live with your perfect little wife and your perfect little children in your beautiful little house where you have no gays or minority groups anywhere near you. Christianity is about learning to love like Jesus loved and Jesus loved the poor and Jesus loved the broken.
— Rich Mullins
When we learn to read the story of Jesus and see it as the story of the love of God, doing for us what we could not do for ourselves--that insight produces, again and again, a sense of astonished gratitude which is very near the heart of authentic Christian experience.
— N.T. Wright
What kind of Christmas present would Jesus ask Santa for?
— Salman Rushdie, Fury
I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems. On the cross, he forgave the people who crucified him. Jesus wanted us to be loving and forgiving. I don't know what makes people so cruel. Try being a gay woman in the Middle East -- you're as good as dead.
— Elton John
What does your anxiety do? It does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, but it empties today of its strength. It does not make you escape the evil; it makes you unfit to cope with it if it comes.
— Raymond L. Cramer, Psychology of Jesus & Mental Health
Jesus is the starving, the parched, the prisoner, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the dying. Jesus is the oppressed, the poor. To live with Jesus is to live with the poor. To live with the poor is to live with Jesus.
— Jean Vanier, Community And Growth
Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's Prayer is about.
— N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
The gospel declares that no matter how dutiful or prayerful we are, we can't save ourselves. What Jesus did was sufficient.
— Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Our task as image-bearing, God-loving, Christ-shaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to a world that has discovered its fallenness, to announce healing to a world that has discovered its brokenness, to proclaim love and trust to a world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion...The gospel of Jesus points us and indeed urges us to be at the leading edge of the whole culture, articulating in story and music and art and philosophy and education and poetry and politics and theology and even--heaven help us--Biblical studies, a worldview that will mount the historically-rooted Christian challenge to both modernity and postmodernity, leading the way...with joy and humor and gentleness and good judgment and true wisdom. I believe if we face the question, "if not now, then when?" if we are grasped by this vision we may also hear the question, "if not us, then who?" And if the gospel of Jesus is not the key to this task, then what is?
— N.T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is
If sympathy is all that human beings need, then the Cross of Christ is an absurdity and there is absolutely no need for it. What the world needs is not "a little bit of love," but major surgery. If you think you are helping lost people with your sympathy and understanding, you are a traitor to Jesus Christ. You must have a right-standing relationship with Him yourself, and pour your life out in helping others in His way— not in a human way that ignores God. 
— Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest
A Christian community should do as Jesus did: propose and not impose. Its attraction must lie in the radiance cast by the love of brothers.
— Jean Vanier, Community And Growth
If your salvation was dependent on your ability to read and understand scripture, Jesus would have been an author.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Elder Neal A. Maxwell suggests that the prime reason the Savior personally acts as the gatekeeper of the celestial kingdom is not to exclude people, but to personally welcome and embrace those who have made it back home.
— Tad R. Callister, The Infinite Atonement
The Bible is the story of two gardens: Eden and Gethsemane. In the first, Adam took a fall. In the second, Jesus took a stand. In the first, God sought Adam. In the second, Jesus sought God. In Eden, Adam hid from God. In Gethsemane, Jesus emerged from the tomb. In Eden, Satan led Adam to a tree that led to his death. From Gethsemane, Jesus went to a tree that led to our life.
— Max Lucado
The difference between Socrates and Jesus is that no one had ever been put to death in Socrates' name. And that is because Socrates' ideas were never made law. Law, in whatever name, protects privilege.
— E.L. Doctorow
The sinners to whom Jesus directed His messianic ministry were not those who skipped morning devotions or Sunday church. His ministry was to those whom society considered real sinners. They had done nothing to merit salvation. Yet they opened themselves to the gift that was offered them. On the other hand, the self-righteous placed their trust in the works of the Law and closed their hearts to the message of grace.
— Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
The unwounded life bears no resemblance to the Rabbi.
— Brennan Manning, Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging
Jesus soon is coming,and Christmas too,Good reason for being happy, Helping people to do.
— Válgame, Zori 1ª Parte
The human life cycle no less than evolves around the box; from the open-topped box called a bassinet, to the pine box we call a coffin, the box is our past and, just as assuredly, our future. It should not surprise us then that the lowly box plays such a significant role in the first Christmas story. For Christmas began in a humble, hay-filled box of splintered wood. The Magi, wise men who had traveled far to see the infant king, laid treasure-filled boxes at the feet of that holy child. And in the end, when He had ransomed our sins with His blood, the Lord of Christmas was laid down in a box of stone. How fitting that each Christmas season brightly wrapped boxes skirt the pine boughs of Christmas trees around the world. 
— Richard Paul Evans, The Christmas Box
As for those who state that it is thanks to a woman, the lady Eve, that man was expelled from paradise, my answer to them would be that man has gained far more through Mary than he ever lost through Eve.
— Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies
Why couldn't Jesus command us to obsess over everything, to try to control and manipulate people, to try not to breathe at all, or to pay attention, stomp away to brood when people annoy us, and then eat a big bag of Hershey's Kisses in bed?
— Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
At Sunday worship, as in every dimension of our existence, many of us pretend to believe we are sinners. Consequently, all we can do is pretend we have been forgiven. As a result, our whole spiritual life is pseudo-repentance and pseudo-bliss.
— Brennan Manning
The beauty of the ragamuffin gospel lies in the insight it offers into Jesus: the essential tenderness of His heart, His way of looking at the world, His mode of relating to you and me. 'If you really want to understand a man, don't just listen to what he says, but watch what he does.
— Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
Suffering, failure, loneliness, sorrow, discouragement, and death will be part of your journey, but the Kingdom of God will conquer all these horrors. No evil can resist grace forever.If you reject the ragamuffin gospel and turn your back on Christianity, do so because you find the answers of Jesus incredible, blasphemous, or hopelessly hopeful.
— Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
I believe Jesus wasn't thinking about miracle when He performed it. He's just doing normal activities as he did in His heavenly kingdom.
— Toba Beta
I believe that Jesus would have given His life for just one person. Jesus emptied Himself, He humbled Himself and He so yielded Himself to His Father's love that He had no ambition of His own. He was not looking to build an empire, He did not want praise or adulation or to impress people with who or how many followed Him. He stopped over and over again for just one person, for just one life.
— Heidi Baker, Learning to Love: Passion, Compassion and the Essence of the Gospel
Stoning prophets and erecting churches to their memory afterwards has been the way of the world through the ages. Today we worship Christ, but the Christ in the flesh we crucified.
— Mahatma Gandhi
I will not glory, even in my orthodoxy, for even that can be a snare if I make a god of it... Let us rejoice in Him in all His fulness and in Him alone.
— D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Gentle Jesus, meek and mild' is a snivelling modern invention, with no warrant in the gospels.
— George Bernard Shaw
If it’s not one god it’s another. Allah or oil. Jesus or Jewels. Lenin or lust.
— Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies
For me to live is Christ and to die is gainPhillippians 1:21
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
For the Lord touched all parts of creation, and freed and undeceived them all from every deceit.
— Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation
Jesus lived and died in vain if He did not teach us to regulate the whole of life by the eternal law of love. Gandhi, quoted in Merton, p. 38
— Thomas Merton, Gandhi On Non-Violence
Again Jesus said, "Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
Child," she said placing her head to mine and her callused fingers on my cheek, "you can whip it and beat it senseless, you can drag it through the streets and spin on it, you can even dangle it from a tree, drive spikes trough it, and drain the last breath from it, but in the end, no matter what you do, and no matter how hard you try to kill it, love wins.
— Charles Martin, Wrapped in Rain
We spend more time asking what would Jesus do instead of what did Jesus do.
— Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything
The gospel of submission, commitment, decision, and victorious living is not good news about what God has achieved but a demand to save ourselves with God’s help. Besides the fact that Scripture never refers to the gospel as having a personal relationship with Jesus nor defines faith as a decision to ask Jesus to come into our heart, this concept of salvation fails to realize that everyone has a personal relationship with God already: either as a condemned criminal standing before a righteous judge or as a justified coheir with Christ and adopted child of the Father.
— Michael S. Horton
Your soul may belong to Jesus, but your ass belongs to the marines.
— Eugene B. Sledge, With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
The life of Jesus suggests that to be like Abba is to show compassion. Donald Gray expresses this: "Jesus reveals in an exceptionally human life what it is to live a divine life, a compassionate life.
— Brennan Manning, Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging
When we were arguing on my twenty-fourth birthday, she left the kitchen, came back with a pistol, and fired it at me five times from right across the table. But she missed. It wasn't my life she was after. It was more. She wanted to eat my heart and be lost in the desert with what she'd done, she wanted to fall on her knees and give birth from it, she wanted to hurt me as only a child can be hurt by its mother.
— Denis Johnson, Jesus' Son
Christ literally walked in our shoes and entered into our affliction. Those who will not help others until they are destitute reveal that Christ's love has not yet turned them into the sympathetic persons the gospel should make them.
— Timothy J. Keller, Generous Justice: How God's Grace Makes Us Just
Assured of your salvation by the unique grace of our Lord Jesus Christ" is the heartbeat of the gospel, joyful liberation from fear of the Final Outcome, a summons to self-acceptance, and freedom for a life of compassion toward others.
— Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
I never thought much about flowers until I made the close acquaintance of a man who knew all about them. You would have thought that the butterflies and flowers were friends of his. 'See how richly they are clad,' he said. 'Even King Solomon did not have such raiment.
— Lloyd C. Douglas, The Robe
Strange star-like object over Oslo right before Obama arrives. A gift of a golden medal given by a group of wise men... Nah.
— Craig Ferguson
I will make you a fisher of men
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
Remember Jesus of Nazareth, staggering on broken feet out of the tomb toward the Resurrection, bearing on his body the proud insignia of the defeat which is victory, the magnificent defeat of the human soul at the hands of God.
— Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat
Jesus was a good guy, he didn't need this shit.
— John Prine
Q: What do Jesus and Nicole Brown Simpson have in common? A: They were both killed by the Joooooooose.
— Helen Thomas
By the hairy balls of Jesus
— Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
There is nothing greater than love; it is stronger than any evil, any darkness. Show me the way, Jesus!Love is the answer. If we love one another, then we need not fear anything else. Love is everything.
— Cecilia Galante, The Patron Saint of Butterflies
I tried talking to Jesus, but he just put me on hold...
— Colin Hay
This Christian claim [of universal validity] is naturally offensive to the adherents of every other religious system. It is almost as offensive to modern man, brought up in the atmosphere of relativism, in which tolerance is regarded almost as the highest of the virtues. But we must not suppose that this claim to universal validity is something that can quietly be removed from the Gospel without changing it into something entirely different from what it is... Jesus' life, his method, and his message do not make sense, unless they are interpreted in the light of his own conviction that he was in fact the final and decisive word of God to men... For the human sickness there is one specific remedy, and this is it. There is no other.
— Stephen Neill, Christian Faith And Other Faiths; The Christian Dialogue With Other Religions
Who was the greatest business man ever. . . The greatest salesman? Advertiser? Who? . . . It was Jesus. . . Jesus was the founder of modern business. . . he picked up twelve men from the bottom ranks of business and forged them into an organization that conquered the world!
— Paul Harding, Tinkers
If the devil ain't messin with you, he's already got you. If you is waitin to clean up your own life before you get out and help somebody else, you may as well take off your shoes and crawl back in the bed 'cause it ain't never gon' happen. Jesus don't need no help from no perfect saints. If He did, He wouldn't a' gone up yonder and left us down here in charge.
— Ron Hall
When the focus becomes ‘What would Jesus do?’ instead of ‘What has Jesus done?’ the [conservative/liberal] labels no longer matter.
— Michael S. Horton
Judas sold his soul for thirty pieces of silver
—  Faust sold his for some extra years of youth
Jesus was a strange hobo who walked on water—
— Jack Kerouac, Lonesome Traveler
The Lord did not come to make a display. He came to heal and to teach suffering men. For one who wanted to make a display the thing would have been just to appear and dazzle the beholders. But for Him Who came to heal and to teach the way was not merely to dwell here, but to put Himself at the disposal of those who needed Him, and to be manifested according as they could bear it, not vitiating the value of the Divine appearing by exceeding their capacity to receive it.
— Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation
If you want to help people we have to dive into people wade into the sea of humanity.
— Hugh Halter & Matt Smay
I explained we lost the porch to the flood. 'Father hasn't gotten around to rebuilding it, although he's quite a good carpenter. He says if Jesus was a carpenter, it's good enough for a clergyman. But I don't remember that Jesus let his house fall down.
— Franny Billingsley, Chime
They always loved my sense of humor. There used to be a light switch inside one of the nurseries that was a cutout of Jesus putting his arm around two children on each side of him as he towered above them. The switch was ironically located in the spot of where his penis would have been and I was the first to point this out. Everyone thought it was funny until I started singing the childhood church song “Jesus Loves the Little Children.” In fear of being struck by lightning or being involved in a massive pile-up car accident after leaving, their laughing ceased. I still thought it was funny.
— Chase Brooks
Focus on relationships in your communities and God will come up spiritual conversations will emerge and real needs will come to light.
— Matt Smay
I know the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. How? Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then they proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denying it. Every one was beaten, tortured, stoned and put in prison. They would not have endured that if it weren't true. Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world-and they couldn't keep a lie for three weeks. You're telling me 12 apostles could keep a lie for 40 years? Absolutely impossible.
— Charles W. Colson
I see Jesus in every human being. I say to myself, this is hungry Jesus, I must feed him. This is sick Jesus. This one has leprosy or gangrene; I must wash him and tend to him. I serve becuase I love Jesus.
— Mother Teresa
Grace is a person. And his name is Jesus.
— Judah Smith, Jesus Is: Find a New Way to Be Human
When we neglect our Bible study we often feel guilty. When you skip a meal do you feel guilty? No, you feel hungry. The Bible is food for our soul. When we fail to read it we should not feel guilty, we should feel hungry. Guilt is fueled by obligation hunger is fueled by desire.
— Tyler Edwards
I have brought you the rose of love, and you have crowned me, in these dark hours, with their thorns.
— Kristian Goldmund Aumann, The Seven Deadly Sins
As a young child I had Santa and Jesus all mixed up. I could identify Coke or Pepsi with just one sip, but I could not tell you for sure why they strapped Santa to a cross. Had he missed a house? Had a good little girl somewhere in the world not received the doll he’d promised her, making the father angry?” (p.3)
— Augusten Burroughs, You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas
God stipulates in the Bible that Jesus Followers are to love and serve everyone regardless of their faith or lack of it. But, this does not require us to honour and respect their Biblically-heinous cultural practises like multiculturalism does!
— Gary Patton
Perhaps [the critics are right and] the drama is played out now and Jesus is safely dead and buried. Perhaps. It is ironical and entertaining to consider that at least once in the world’s history those words might have been said with complete conviction, and that was on the eve of the Resurrection.
— Dorothy L. Sayers, The Whimsical Christian: 18 Essays
Could he have been the fork in the road American never took, the singular point she jumped the wrong way from? Suppose the Slothropite heresy had had the time to consolidate and prosper? Might there have been fewer crimes in the name of Jesus, and more mercy in the name of Judas Iscariot? It seems to Tyrone Slothrop that there might be a route back--maybe that anarchist he met in Zurich was right, maybe for a little while all the fences are down, one road as good as another, the whole space of the Zone cleared...
— Thomas Pynchon
In medieval times, contrary to popular belief, most knights were bandits, mercenaries, lawless brigands, skinners, highwaymen, and thieves. The supposed chivalry of Charlemagne and Roland had as much to do with the majority of medieval knights as the historical Jesus with the temporal riches and hypocrisy of the Catholic Church, or any church for that matter. Generally accompanied by their immoral entourage or servants, priests, and whores, they went from tourney to tourney like a touring rock and roll band, sports team, or gang of South Sea pirates. Court to court, skirmish to skirmish, rape to rape. Fighting as the noble's substitution for work.
— Tod Wodicka, All Shall Be Well; And All Shall Be Well; And All Manner of Things Shall Be Well
Jesus taught in parables for a reason.
— Stuart Connelly
It is such a letdown to rise from the dead and have your friends not recognize you.
— Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith
We live in a Jesus haunted culture that is Biblically illiterate, and so unfortunately at this point in time, almost anything can pass for knowledge of the historical Jesus from notions that he was a a Cynic sage to ideas that he was a Gnostic guru to fantasies that he didn't exist, to Dan Browne's Jesus of hysterical (rather than historical) fiction.
— Ben Witherington III
He [Jesus] had a terrible temper, you know, undoubtedly inherited from His Father.
— Robertson Davies, Fifth Business
Nobody wanted to hear about all the Preterite, the many God passes over when he chooses a few for salvation. William argued holiness for these "second Sheep," without whom there'd be no elect. You can bet the Elect in Boston were pissed off about that. And it got worse. William felt that what Jesus was for the elect, Judas Iscariot was for the Preterite. Everything in the Creation has its equal and opposite counterpart. How can Jesus be an exception? could we feel for him anything but horror in the face of the unnatural, the extracreational? Well, if he is the son of man, and if what we feel is not horror but love, then we have to love Judas too. Right? How William avoided being burned for heresy, nobody knows.
— Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
The law provides expert diagnosis of our sin problem, but the law does not provide the cure to our sin problem. Only Jesus can!
— John Paul Warren
We are children, perhaps, at the very moment when we know that it is as children that God loves us - not because we have deserved his love and not in spite of our undeserving; not because we try and not because we recognize the futility of our trying; but simply because he has chosen to love us. We are children because he is our father; and all of our efforts, fruitful and fruitless, to do good, to speak truth, to understand, are the efforts of children who, for all their precocity, are children still in that before we loved him, he loved us, as children, through Jesus Christ our lord.
— Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat
Promising paradise or threatening hell-fire is, we assumed, generally admitted to be unproductive. It is based upon a fundamental fraud which, when discovered, turns the individual against society and nourishes the very thing it tries to stamp out. What Jesus offered in return of loving one's enemies was heaven on earth, better known as peace of mind.
— B.F. Skinner, Walden Two
If Jesus was a bartender, He would still only be half as cool as Carlos.
— Richard Kadrey, Kill the Dead
As they were walking, a beggar came up, holding his hand out and crying, "Baksheesh! Baksheesh!"Mike kept on going but Mitchell stopped. Digging into his pocket, he pulled out twenty paise and placed it in the beggar's dirty hand.Mike said, "I used to give to beggars when I first came here. But then I realized, it's hopeless. It never stops.""Jesus said you should give to whoever asks you," Mitchell said."Yeah, well," Mike said, "obviously Jesus was never in Calcutta.
— Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot
In 30 years Christians will have baptized their picture of Christ. He won't be a nice, banal, meek, and bearded man with softly permed hair. Instead, he will fill our imaginations more solidly, more invasively , more unexpectedly. Christ will become That Man who changes people, someone who jumps off a bumper sticker and mediocre praise songs and into lives.
— Jonalyn Fincher
The severest trial of oppression is the constant outrage which one suffers at the thought of the oppressor. What Jesus discovered was how to avoid the inner devastations. His technique was to practice the opposite emotion... [a man] may not get his freedom or possessions back, but he's less miserable. It's a difficult lesson.
— B.F. Skinner, Walden Two
As I speak for many in the budding new missional church world I have to share that I no longer judge the faithful fervent work of so many pastors who have pastored well but who struggle to find their place in this new world. They deserve to be honored instead of belittled. Without their legacy we would have nothing to build upon.
— Hugh Halter & Matt Smay
Lord, forgive us for the times we have read about Gethsemane with dry eyes.
— Frederick S. Leahy, The Cross He Bore: Meditations on the Sufferings of the Redeemer