Quotes & Sayings About Beauty And Grace

It is the capacity to feel consuming grief and pain and despair that also allows me to embrace love and joy and beauty with my whole heart. I must let it all in. — Anna White

All health, beauty, intelligence, and social grace has been teased from a vast butcher's yard of unbounded carnage, requiring incalculable eons of massacre to draw forth even the subtlest of advantages. This is not only a matter of the bloody grinding mills of selection, either, but also of the innumerable mutational abominations thrown up by the madness of chance, as it pursues its directionless path to some negligible preservable trait, and then - still further - of the unavowable horrors that 'fitness' (or sheer survival) itself predominantly entails. We are a minuscule sample of agonized matter, comprising genetic survival monsters, fished from a cosmic ocean of vile mutants, by a pitiless killing machine of infinite appetite. (This is still, perhaps, to put an irresponsibly positive spin on the story, but it should suffice for our purposes here.) — Nick Land

In the end, long life is the reward, strength, and beauty. — Grace Paley

My cruel fate hath warr'd with me in vain
Life, glory, worth, and all unmeasur'd skill
Beauty and grace, themselves in me fulfill
That many I surpass, and to the best attain. — Benvenuto Cellini

If thou art beautiful, and youth and thought endue thee with all truth-be strong;
be worthy of the grace of God. — William Wordsworth

No matter your past or your future, the depth of your sin or the mistakes that you've made, the weariness of your soul or the obstacles in your path, you can experience God's love right here, right now, right where you are. And that's the beauty of grace. — Dawn Camp

They should be beautiful, but I know what they are. They are not beautiful, because beauty is about grace and love and hope. They are all about need. — Carrie Jones

The thistle is a prince. Let any man that has an eye for beauty take a view of the whole plant, and where will he see a more expressive grace and symmetry; and where is there a more kingly flower? — Henry Ward Beecher

I had never believed either in God, or in the Devil, or in a King, or in the Pope (as for the Revolution, so far I had no knowledge of it), but I had always been taught to recognize Grace and Beauty, and they alone, in my opinion, justified the curtseys, the fervor in our souls, the fullness of our hearts. - Max-Ulrich — Henri Guigonnat

When I became a bandit, I spent a lot of time being close to the lowliest of the low: criminals, the enslaved, deserters, men who had nothing to lose. Contrary to what I had expected, I found that they had a hardscrabble beauty and grace. They were not mean in their nature, but made mean by the meanness of their rulers. The poor were willing to endure much, but the emperor had taken everything from them.

These men have simple dreams: a plot of land, a few possessions, a warm house, conversations with friends, and a happy wife and healthy children. They remember the smallest acts of kindness and think me a good man because of a few exaggerated stories. They've raised me on their shoulders and called me duke, and I have a duty to help them get a little closer to their dreams. — Ken Liu

This earth is my sister; I love her daily grace, her silent daring, and how loved I am. How we admire this strength in each other, all that we have lost, all that we have suffered, all that we know: We are stunned by this beauty, and I do not forget: what she is to me, what I am to her. — Susan Griffin

All of a sudden, there is no hurry. There will be time for everything. For the breezes that blow and for the rainwater drying in the gutters, for Maury to find a place of safety in the world, for Malcolm to come back from the dead and ask her about birds and jets. For the big things too, things like beauty and vengeance and honor and righteousness and the grace of God and the slow spilling of the earth from day to night and back to day again.
It is spread out before her, compressed into one single moment. She will be able to see it all. — Alden Bell

One more royal trait properly belongs to the poet. I mean his cheerfulness, without which no man can be a poet,
for beauty is his aim. He loves virtue, not for its obligation, but for its grace; he delights in the world, in man, in woman, for the lovely light that sparkles from them. Beauty, the spirit of joy and hilarity, he sheds over the universe. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The source of beauty in a man,
It is humbleness and grace;
Equality is the pearl of a king,
Justice his scepter;
Salvation is his crown. — Stephan Attia

There is a certain standard of grace and beauty which consists in a certain relation between our nature ... and the thing which pleases us. — Blaise Pascal

Virtue is a step toward cultivating authentic beauty, for the love and grace that is within a woman is what truly shines through to make her radiant. Grace illuminates the exterior. — Jenessa Terraccino

I am not fair save to the King, Though fair my royal dress, His kingly grace is lavished on My need and worthlessness. My blemishes he will not see But loves the beauty that shall be. — Hannah Hurnard

If you pay attention to those aspects of God that demonstrate love, truth, beauty, intelligence, order, and spiritual evolution, those aspects will begin to expand in your life. Bit by bit, like a mosaic, disparate fragments of grace will merge to form a complete picture. Eventually this picture will replace the ore threatening one you have carried around inside you since infancy. — Deepak Chopra

The fullness of Your grace is here with me
The richness of Your beauty's all I see
The brightness of Your glory has arrived
In Your presence God, I'm completely satisfied

For You I sing I dance
Rejoice in this divine romance
Lift my heart and my hands
To show my love, to show my love — Phil Wickham

Those who have never seen a leopard under favourable conditions in his natural surroundings can have no conception of the grace of movement, and beauty of colouring, of this the most gracefuL and the most beautiful of all animales in our Indian jungles. — Jim Corbett

Something of the severe hath always been appertaining to order and to grace; and the beauty that is not too liberal is sought the most ardently, and loved the longest. — Walter Savage Landor

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

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

Like most qualities, cuteness is delineated by what it isn't. Most people aren't cute at all, or if so they quickly outgrow their cuteness ... Elegance, grace, delicacy, beauty, and a lack of self-consciousness: a creature who knows he is cute soon isn't. — William S. Burroughs

But it's not as simple as that," he told himself, because the dance of the Shadow Warrior showed him that silence had its own grace and beauty (just as speech could be graceless and ugly); and that Action could be as noble as Words; and that creatures of darkness could be as lovely as the children of the light. "If Guppees and Chupwalas didn't hate each other so," he thought, "they might actually find each other pretty interesting. Opposites attract, as they say. — Salman Rushdie

At this very moment, the thumb of Ricardo's hovering shadow jabbed her in her left eye, revealing for all the world the shallowness of her water table. Rice could have been planted at that instant on the terraces of her flesh and sprouted in strength and beauty in the floods that overwhelmed her from that moment on through all the afternoon. — Grace Paley

And therefore, I said, Glaucon, musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful; and also because he who has received this true education of the inner being will most shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in art and nature, and with a true taste, while he praises and rejoices over and receives into his soul the good, and becomes noble and good, he will justly blame and hate the bad, now in the days of his youth, even before he is able to know the reason why; and when reason comes he will recognize and salute the friend with whom his education has made him long familiar ...
... Thus much of music, which makes a fair ending; for what should be the end of music if not the love of beauty? — Plato

There's no winning or losing in this game, only playing, endless playing, you want your adversary to be strong not weak, smart not dumb, you're delighted to trick him and delighted to be tricked by him, boy learns from girl, white learns from black, old learns from young, the teaching is the doing is the beauty is the grace is the humor, endlessly you go on learning, smiling, moving, feinting, never missing a beat. Gingare, the dance of life: the controlled, prolonged, sustained, ineffable excitement of capoeira is like an endless climax. — Nancy Huston

As I looked and looked, the living face became visible in the dead, the young in the old. This is what must happen to old married couples, I thought: the young man is preserved in the old one for her, the beauty and grace of the young woman stay fresh in the old one for him. — Bernhard Schlink

There is no beauty like that which was spoiled by an accident; no accomplishments and graces are so to be envied as those that circumstances rudely hindered the development of. — Charles Dudley Warner

Oh little Poupchette, some may tell you that you are nobody's child, a child of defilement, a child begotten in fear and horror. Some may tell you that you are a child of abomination conceived in abomination, a tainted child, a child polluted long before you were born. Do not pay attention to them, my little sweetheart, please do not listen to them; listen to me. I say you are my child and I love you. I sometimes say that out of horror, beauty and purity and grace are born. I say I am your father for ever. I say the loveliest rose can bloom in contaminated soil. I say you are the dawn, the light of all my tomorrows, and the only thing that matters is the promise you represent. I say you are my luck and my forgiveness. My darling Poupchette, I say you are my whole life. — Philippe Claudel

There might not be a measure of happiness left in a life, but there could be beauty and grace and endless love. — Peter Heller

You can never reach to the truth if you don't even look for it, and the bigger dilemma with the truth is, that you don't have to go too far, but simply have to, turn your attention inward. — Roshan Sharma

I want to be part of a church that, as the full-orbed body of Christ, reflects the radiant beauty and attractiveness of God's love, grace, forgiveness, salvation, and hope, for this life and for an eternity of fellowship together with one another as well as with him! — Mark Mittelberg

The Word bestows adoption on us when he grants us that birth and deification which, transcending nature, come by grace from above through the Spirit. The guarding and preservation of this in God depends on the resolve of those thus born: on their sincere acceptance of the grace bestowed on them and, through the practice of the commandments, on their cultivation of the beauty given to them by grace. Moreover, by emptying themselves of the passions they lay hold of the divine to the same degree as that to which, deliberately emptying himself of his own sublime glory, the Word of God truly became man. — Andrew Louth

As a thinker I keep discovering that beauty itself is as much a fact, and a mystery ... I consider nature's facts
its beautiful and grotesque forms and events
in terms of the import to thought and their impetus to the spirit. In nature I find grace tangled in a rapture with violence; I find an intricate landscape whose forms are fringed in death; I find mystery, newness, and a kind of exuberant, spendthrift energy. — Annie Dillard

The little house is not too small
To shelter friends who come to call.
Though low the roof and small its space
It holds the Lord's abounding grace,
And every simple room may be
Endowed with happy memory.
The little house, severly plain,
A wealth of beauty may contain.
Within it those who dwell may find
High faith which makes for peace of mind,
And that sweet understanding which
Can make the poorest cottage rich.
The little house can hold all things
From which the soul's contentment springs.
'Tis not too small for love to grow,
For all the joys that mortals know,
For mirth and song and that delight
Which make the humblest dwelling bright. — Edgar A. Guest

Everything in the world reminded him of her. The beauty of the loved woman exists in the beauties of Nature. The swelling outlines of the hills, the curves of a coast, the free sinuosities of a river are less suave than the harmonious lines of her body, and when she moves, gliding lightly, the grace of her progress suggests the power of occult forces which rule the fascinating aspects of the visible world. — Joseph Conrad

The way I played music there was the way I wanted to farm, chop wood, cook, make love, raise children. Everything. A lo of it had to do with things I felt while I played. If only I could feel that sense of total absorption in what I was doing when I was doing other things. It was more than absorption, it was spontaneity, competence, a sense of grace and playfulness, of being in touch with an inexhaustible source of energy and beauty. — Mark Vonnegut

Courtesy, like grace and beauty, that which begets liking and inclination to love one another at the first sight, and in the very beginning of our acquaintance and familiarity; and, consequently, that which first opens the door for us to better ourselves by the example of others, if there be anything in the society worth notice — Michel De Montaigne

Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace. — Simone Weil

There are two kinds of beauty; there is a beauty which God gives at birth, and which withers as a flower. And there is a beauty which God grants when by His grace men are born again. That kind of beauty never vanishes but blooms eternally. — Abraham Kuyper

Peace is the number one beautiful ornament you can wear, I really believe that. They say you should always wear a smile, but I don't believe that you should "always" wear a smile, seriously, you're going to look stupid! But peace, you should always carry peace within you, its the most beautifying thing you could ever have or do. Peace makes your heart beautiful and it makes you look beautiful, too. You want to have perfect physical posture when you stand, sit, and walk, and peace is the perfect posture of the soul, really. Try perfect posture outside as well as inside. Peace creates grace and grace gives peace. — C. JoyBell C.

We plant, we nurture, we grow and we give, different flowers for different moments in time, but all for the same purpose: to say that which cannot be said, and to say it with beauty and with grace. — Mandy Kirkby

Lotus flowers blossom while rooted in mud, a reminder that beauty and grace can rise above something ugly. — Lisa Genova

Things that remind me of Mother are these:
the truth 'mid deception, a warm summer breeze,
the calm within chaos, a stitch in a rip,
a comforting blanket, the smile on her lip,
an ocean of love in a heart big as whales,
the morals in everyday stories she tells,
a wink amid laughter, the wisdom in books,
the peace in humility, beauty in looks,
the light and the life in a ray of the sun,
the hard work accomplished disguised as pure fun,
concern in a handclasp, encouragement too,
the hope in a clear morning sky azure blue,
the power in prayers uttered soft and sincere,
the faith in a promise, and joy in a tear.
These things all attest to the wonder and grace
of my precious mother, none else could replace. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Every mother should be a true artist, who knows how to weave into her child's life images of grace and beauty, the true poet capable of writing on the soul of childhood the harmony of love and truth, and teaching it how to produce the grandest of all poems - the poetry of a true and noble life. — Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty — John F. Kennedy

It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance - for a moment or a year or the span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again, and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or light ... Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don't have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it? ... Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave - that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm. — Marilynne Robinson

For certain he hath seen all perfectness
For certain he hath seen all perfectness.
Who among other ladies hath seen mine:
They that go with her humbly should combine
To thank their God for such peculiar grace.
So perfect is the beauty of her face
That it begets in no wise any sign
Of envy, but draws round her a clear line
Of love, and blessed faith, and gentleness.
Merely the sight of her inakes all things bow:
Not she herself alone is holier
Than all: but hers, through her, are raised above.
From all her acts such lovely graces flow
That truly one may never think of her
Without a passion of exceeding love. — Dante Alighieri

The beauty of grace is that God chooses to use imperfect people to demonstrate His perfect glory, love and Truth to this world. — Alisa Hope Wagner

We worship numberless gods or idols, but we all need to be the grandest possible versions of ourselves, we need to walk across the face of the earth with as much grace and beauty as we can muster before we're wrapped in our winding sheets, and returned. — Michael Cunningham

Grace is the outer reflection of a woman's inner soul. It's the single and unique beauty of her submission. It's her gift to give to the man she loves. — Riley Murphy

You have something much more enduring than beauty," she said severely. "And what is that?" "Grace," she said simply. "Grace, and talent." I — S. Jae-Jones

Thus there is a difference between having an opinion that God is holy and gracious, and having a sense of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace. There is a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet, and having a sense of its sweetness. A man may have the former, that knows not how honey tastes; but a man can't have the latter unless he has an idea of the taste of honey in his mind. So there is a difference between believing that a person is beautiful, and having a sense of his beauty. — Jonathan Edwards

Every storm has a brilliance, Dustin; has beauty when you look at it from a distance. It blurs all those incessant imperfections we seek to hollow out with each of our hopes. But when you step into its still center, when you see it's fury and its power, you also see its beauty; its grace. — Brandon Shire

God can take the ugly stains in our lives, those scars that run deep, and transform them into masterpieces of His grace and mercy that will bless others. It's time for a makeover. Even now God can turn the ugliness of sin into beauty marks. Just come to Him and ask. Surrender your scars to His gentle touch. — Anne Graham Lotz

If on creation's morn the king of heaven
To shrubs and flowers a sovereign lord had given,
O beauteous rose, he had anointed thee
Of shrubs and flowers the sovereign lord to be;
The spotless emblem of unsullied truth,
The smile of beauty and the glow of youth,
The garden's pride, the grace of vernal bowers,
The blush of meadows, and the eye of flowers. — Henry George Bohn

thought much of women; their grace and beauty, blooming like lotus flowers, floating like milkweed on the wind. — Diana Gabaldon

Nothing affects the heart like that which is purely from itself, and of its own nature; such as the beauty of sentiments, the grace of actions, the turn of characters, and the proportions and features of a human mind. — Anthony Ashley Cooper

In short, Beauty is everywhere. It is not that she is lacking to our eye, but our eyes which fail to perceive her. Beauty is character and expression. Well, there is nothing in nature which has more character than the human body. In its strength and its grace it evokes the most varied images. One moment it resembles a flower: the bending torso is the stalk; the breasts, the head, and the splendor of the hair answer to the blossoming of the corolla. The next moment it recalls the pliant creeper, or the proud and upright sapling. — Auguste Rodin

The beauty of the twentieth century is the charm of the hospital, the grace of the cemetery, of consumption and emaciation. I admit that I have submitted to it all; worse, I have loved with all my heart. — Jean Lorrain

So, in the tulip, we have a flower of beauty and grace of charm, refinement and distinction. It is a powerful flower and it knows it — Tadashi Shoji

Obviously, to be in the fear of the Lord is not to be scared of the Lord, even though the Hebrew word has overtones of respect and awe. "Fear" in the Bible means to be overwhelmed, to be controlled by something. To fear the Lord is to be overwhelmed with wonder before the greatness of God and his love. It means that, because of his bright holiness and magnificent love, you find him "fearfully beautiful." That is why the more we experience God's grace and forgiveness, the more we experience a trembling awe and wonder before the greatness of all that he is and has done for us. Fearing him means bowing before him out of amazement at his glory and beauty. — Timothy Keller

There is a twofold knowledge of good of which God has made the mind of man capable. The first, that which is merely notional . . . and the other is, that which consists in the sense of the heart, as when the heart is sensible of pleasure and delight in the presence of the idea of it. In the former is exercised merely . . . the understanding, in distinction from the . . . disposition of the soul. Thus there is a difference between having an opinion that God is holy and gracious, and having a sense of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace. There is a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet and having a sense of its sweetness. A man may have the former that knows not how honey tastes; but a man cannot have the latter unless he has an idea of the taste of honey in his mind. — Timothy Keller

The creatures of the sea hold special mystery, and they are among the most exciting, graceful, and beautiful on Earth. Just consider the living riot of a coral reef, the beauty of an albatross, the awesome power of a giant turtle, the grace of a dolphin. Now multiply that by the millions of creatures in the sea. Wow! — Carl Safina

While men define themselves by deeds, women simply "are" beauty, grace, faith and goodness. Men tend to be rational and objective, women subjective, intuitive and emotional. — Henry Makow

The fame of Maria Foote's beauty and charm of manner had reached London, and in May 1814, she made her first appearance at Covent Garden Theatre and personated Amanthis in 'The Child of Nature' with such grace and effect that the manager complimented her with an immediate engagement. — Sabine Baring-Gould

No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes. — Cormac McCarthy

What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas. They would mar its beauty, and eat away its grace. they would defile it, and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still live on. It would be always alive. (Dorian Gray regarding his portrait) — Oscar Wilde

What a beautiful woman. She moved with grace, she was entirely feminine, and yet, she possessed incredible inner strength. She's a survivor. — Jan Moran

Snow-melt in the stream: Mama Nature turning winter's storms into nourishment for the soil, fecundity, and beauty. This is what I must now learn to do with the stormy weather I've been passing through: turn it into beauty, turn it into art, so new life can germinate and bloom.
One example of a creative artist who does this is my friend Jane Yolen, who wrote her exquisite book of poems The Radiation Sonnets while her husband was undergoing treatment for the cancer that would eventually claim his life. This is what all artists must do: take whatever life gives us and "alchemize" it into our art (either directly and autobiographically, as in Jane's book, or indirectly; whatever approach works best), turning darkness into light, spinning straw into gold, transforming pain and hardship into what J.R.R. Tolkien called 'a miraculous grace. — Terri Windling

The B.C. spirit bear symbolizes the essence of the spirit of British Columbia. It is a powerful presence and a thing of wonder that lives in a magical land of beauty, grace and unbridled potential. — Gordon Campbell

Isn't that the way God works? She'd thought. He takes the things in our lives that are ugly, disgusting, and downright wicked, and transforms them into something magnificent. — J.E.B. Spredemann

In grace and beauty and sheer fascination, they were alike. But where Katherine had been a white kitten, Elena was a snow-white tigress. — L.J.Smith

The knowledge of courtesy and good manners is a very necessary study. It is like grace and beauty, that which begets liking and an inclination to love one another at the first sight. — Michel De Montaigne

Unless all ages and races of men have been deluded by the same mass hypnotist (who?), there seems to be such a thing as beauty, a grace wholly gratuitous. — Annie Dillard

Illium seems far too pretty to be dangerous." Dmitri's male beauty, by contrast, was a darker, edgier thing.
"No one ever expects him to take out a blade and slice off their balls," he said with lethal amusement in his tone as he drove them toward the George
Washington Bridge. "He does it with such grace, too. — Nalini Singh

Faith is the champion of Grace, and Love the nurse; but Humility is the beauty of Grace. — Thomas Brooks

If your inner being changes, your whole outer life will be totally different. It will have a different fragrance, a different beauty, a different grace. And when your inner being is changed and becomes a flame of light, you will become a light unto others too. You will become a beckoning light, a great herald of a new dawn. Your very presence will trigger revolutions in other people's lives. — Rajneesh

Female forms of exquisite grace and beauty began to mingle in his mental adventures; nor was he long without looking abroad to compare the creatures of his own imagination with the females of actual life. — Walter Scott

There is a beauty that arises from withholding judgment and evading comparison, a grace in not demanding consensus. — David Romtvedt

Hung over her enamour'd, and beheld Beauty, which, whether waking or asleep, Shot forth peculiar graces. — John Milton

The mystery and art of living are as grand as the sweep of a lifetime and the lifetime of a species. And they are as close as beginning, quietly, to mine whatever grace and beauty, whatever healing and attentiveness, are possible in this moment and the next and the next one after that. — Krista Tippett

I saw myself as reviving a certain mode of life, a mode that had been almost lost: the contemplative life of the country gentleman, in harmony with his status and history. In Renaissance times they had called it sprezzatura. The idea was to do whatever one did with grace, to imbue one's every action with beauty, while at the same time making it look quite effortless. Thus, if one were to work at, say, law, one should raise it to the level of an art; if one were to laze, then one must laze beautifully. This, they said, was the true meaning of being an aristocrat. — Paul Murray

Men who have died in battle are rarely good to look upon. No matter how splendid their appearance at the apex of heroism, when the soul has fled it takes all grace and beauty with it. Bowels empty, mouths gape, bellies swell, dead eyes gleam fish-belly white. Nothing visible remains of glory. In the tents of death all men belong to the same tribe. — Morgan Llywelyn

Have you ever experienced a beauty of soul, an esthetic grace, that was so intense it made you want to cry?
From Central Park Song ( A Screenplay ) — Zack Love

With grace and beauty, feel. — A.D. Posey

The strength of opening manhood is never so well employed as in practicing subserviency to God's revealed will; it lends a grace and a beauty to religion, and produces an abundant harvest. — Richard Mant

Lord Bacon makes beauty to consist of grace and motion. — Mary Wortley Montagu

The largely objective character of beauty is further indicated by the fact that to a considerable extent beauty is the expression of health. A well and harmoniously developed body, tense muscles, an elastic and finely toned skin, bright eyes, grace and animation of carriage- all these things which are essential to beauty are the conditions of health. — Havelock Ellis

In effective womanly beauty form is more than face, and manner more than either. — William Makepeace Thackeray

He was my equal in beauty, a paragon of grace and charm, sparkling with wit, and burning with love. I adored him to distraction, to the point of idolatry: I loved him as one can never love twice. — Voltaire

All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes. So, he whispered to the sleeping boy. I have you. — Cormac McCarthy

I would never speak about faith, but speak about the Lord himself - not theologically, as to the why and wherefore of his death - but as he showed himself in his life on earth, full of grace, love, beauty, tenderness and truth. Then the needy heart cannot help hoping and trusting in him, and having faith, without ever thinking about faith. How a human heart with human feelings and necessities is ever to put confidence in the theological phantom which is commonly called Christ in our pulpits, I do not know. It is commonly a miserable representation of him who spent thirty-three years on our Earth, living himself into the hearts and souls of men, and thus manifesting God to them. — George MacDonald

Hoever dewlls on beauty tends to become beautiful; there will be a grace and charm to expressing itself through that person which no one can fail to recognize and appreciate. — Ernest Holmes

All writing is by the grace of God. People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad. In these sentences that you show me, I can find no beauty, for I see death in every clause and every word. There is a fossil or a mummy character which pervades this book. The best sepulchers, the vastest catacombs, Thebes and Cairo, Pyramids, are sepulchers to me. I like gardens and nurseries. Give me initiative, spermatic, prophesying, man-making words. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

As we speak of poetical beauty, so ought we to speak of mathematical beauty and medical beauty. But we do not do so; and that reason is that we know well what is the object of mathematics, and that it consists in proofs, and what is the object of medicine, and that it consists in healing. But we do not know in what grace consists, which is the object of poetry. — Blaise Pascal

I feel vulnerable every day to the grace of God as expressed in every living thing. I feel vulnerable to the astonishing beauty of being alive and to Mother Nature. I feel positive when I feel vulnerable, because it's another reminder that it's not all about me and about my ego. And I actually think it's courageous to be vulnerable, and it's not something to be avoided. — Brad Willis

Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave - that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm. And therefore, this courage allows us, as the old men said, to make ourselves useful. It allows us to be generous, which is another way of saying exactly the same thing. — Marilynne Robinson