Graces Quotes & Sayings

What does the Spirit do? His works are ineffable in majesty, and innumerable in quantity. How can we even ponder what extends beyond the ages? What did He do before creation began? How great are the graces He showered on creation? What power will He wield in the age to come? He existed; He pre-existed; He co-existed with the Father and the Son before the ages. Even if you can imagine anything beyond the ages, you will discover that the Spirit is even further before. — Basil The Great

I can understand people simply fleeing the mountainous effort Christmas has become ... but there are always a few saving graces and finally they make up for all the bother and distress. — May Sarton

By daily contrition, and habitual mortification of the flesh, man is day by day RENEWED, bearing heavenly fruits and celestial graces, of an inexplicable sweetness. Contrariwise, the pleasure of the world bringeth heaviness of heart, vexation of spirit, and a wounded conscience: yea, so great hence is the calamity of the soul, and so heavy the loss of the heavenly gift (a loss which necessarily flows from the pleasures of the flesh, and from worldly delights) that he who duly calls the same to mind, cannot be exceedingly fear and dread any of the fleshly and worldly joys, which serve but to divert him from those that are spiritual and heavenly, and to quench in him the most sweet grace of devotion that brings the soul into the kingdom of God. — Johann Arndt

The king-becoming graces,
As justice, verity, temp'rance, stableness,
Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness,
Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude,
I have no relish of them, but abound
In the division of each several crime,
Acting in many ways. — William Shakespeare

The West Sister Dating Rules were clear on the matter of apologies. On the evolutionary scale of dating, a guy who apologized solely for the sake of ending the argument and getting back into your good graces was on the level of primeval slime - especially if he was clearly doing so merely because he was hoping for sex. The proper response was to unveil the offender's deceit by demanding he explain what exactly he was apologizing for, and then scorn him when he betrayed his ignorance. — Alex Gabriel

But common sense comes too late, because Logan is now moving away from the counter and marching in my direction.

"Hey, gorgeous." He slides in the seat across from me and places a chocolate-chip muffin on the table. "I got you a muffin."

Damn it, I guess he'd noticed me right when he'd walked in.

"Why?" I ask in suspicion, and without saying hi.

"'Cause I wanted to get you something, and you already have coffee. Ergo, muffin."

I raise one eyebrow. "Are you trying to buy your way into my good graces?"

"Yup. And excellent pun, by the way."

"I wasn't punning. My name just happens to be a homonym."

His blue eyes gleam as he downright smolders at me. "I love it when you talk homonyms to me."

"Uh-huh. — Elle Kennedy

Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears. — Charles Dickens

In taste and imagination, in the graces of style, in the arts of persuasion, in the magnificence of public works, the ancients were at least our equals. — Thomas B. Macaulay

Plato used to say to Xenocrates the philosopher, who was rough and morose, Good Xenocrates, sacrifice to the Graces. — Plutarch

For as a city which has been once besieged and not sacked will ever after be more strong to hold out if it be assaulted by the like danger ... so those who are besieged and assaulted by their spiritual enemies will ever after more carefully arm themselves against them with the graces of God's Spirit, that they may not be overcome nor foiled by them. — George Downame

From a biblical perspective, the deep question we must ask is what our motives are. There are different kinds of personalities, each with its own strengths. But the question is this: Are we concerned to utilize the gifts and graces God has given us, to utilize them for his glory and for his people's good? Or are we simply interested in doing our own thing? — D. A. Carson

The life of the individual believer, his personal salvation, and personal Christian graces have their being, bloom and fruitage in prayer. — Edward McKendree Bounds

The more I reflect on the graces I have received, the more they astonish me and make me tremble. — Rose Philippine Duchesne

St. Thomas Aquinas deeply loved this beautiful chant thus understood. It is told of him that he could not keep back his tears when, during Compline of Lent, he chanted the antiphon: "In the midst of life we are in death: whom do we seek as our helper, but Thou, O Lord, who because of our sins art rightly incensed? Holy God, strong God, holy and merciful Savior, deliver us not up to a bitter death; abandon us not in the time of our old age, when our strength will abandon us." This beautiful antiphon begs for the grace of final perseverance, the grace of graces, that of the predestined. How it should speak to the heart of the contemplative theologian, who has made a deep study of the tracts on Providence, predestination, and grace! — Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange

Each season brings a world of enjoyment and interest in the watching of its unfolding, its gradual harmonious development, its culminating graces-and just as one begins to tire of it, it passes away and a radical change comes, with new witcheries and new glories in its train. — Mark Twain

A love story is not about those who lost their heart but about those who find that sullen inhabitant who, when it is stumbled upon, means the body can fool no one, can fool nothing - not the wisdom of sleep or the habit of social graces. It is a consuming of oneself and the past. — Michael Ondaatje

A Mother's Advice

Manners matter, regardless of your position in society. There is no excuse in this world to practice bad manners, especially at the table. I found that out in high school. I was invited to my boyfriend's house for dinner. His parents were somewhat formal, and I knew the dinner would be "fancy," at least in my mind. My family wasn't upper class (or even middle class), and my mother never had what would be called "social graces."
Before I left, my mother gave me a piece of advice: hold your head high, be quiet, and take the lead from his mother. Even though I was scared to death, I did what my mother advised and got through the experience with flying colors.
To this day, my mother's advice has gotten me through many difficult situations, especially ones that are totally new to me! With my mother's simple advice, I know I could dine with the Queen of England, just by following her lead. Thanks, Mother!

-Deborah Ford — Deborah Ford

Go to the Madonna. Love her! Always say the Rosary. Say it well. Say it as often as you can! Be souls of prayer. Never tire of praying, it is what is essential. Prayer shakes the Heart of God, it obtains necessary graces! — Pio Of Pietrelcina

Each given of life comes to us trailing many graces. — David Richo

My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Self-righteousness ... is the largest idol of the human heart - the idol which man loves most and God hates most. Dearly beloved, you will always be going back to this idol. You are always trying to be something in yourself, to gain God's favour by thinking little of your sin, or by looking to your repentance, tears, prayers ; or by looking to your religious exercises, your frames, etc; or by looking to your graces, the Spirit's work in your heart. Beware of false Christs. Study sanctification to the utmost, but make not a Christ of it. — Robert Murray M'Cheyne

A lady must be born of unsullied blood for at least three generations, on each side of her house. Think for a minute about where you are going to fulfil that condition. Then she must be gentle by nature, and rearing. She must know all there is to learn from books, have wide experience to cover all emergencies, she must be steeped in social graces, and diplomatic by nature. She must rise unruffled to any emergency, never wound, never offend, always help and heal, she must be perfect in deportment, virtue, wifehood and motherhood. She must be graceful, pleasing and beautiful. She must have much leisure to perfect herself in learning, graces and arts - — Gene Stratton-Porter

Faith is the leading grace in all our spiritual warfare and conflict; but all along, while we live, it hath faithful company that adheres to it and helps it. Love works, and hope works, and all other graces - self-denial, readiness to the cross - they all work and help faith. Yet when we come to die, faith is left alone. Now, try what faith will do. Not to be surprised with any thing is the substance of human wisdom; not to be surprised with death is a great part of the substance of our spiritual wisdom. — John Owen

A man may as certainly miscarry by his seeming righteousness and supposed graces, as by gross sins; and that is, when a man doth trust in these as his righteousness before God, for the satisfying His justice, appeasing His wrath, procuring His favor, and obtaining his own pardon. — Joseph Alleine

Frequently renew settled and holy resolutions. A soldier unresolved to fight may be easily defeated ... The weakness of our graces, the strength of our temptations, and the diligence of our spiritual enemies, require strong resolutions. — Stephen Charnock

Our Father who art in nature, who has given the gift of survival to the coyote, the common brown rat, the English sparrow, the house fly and the moth, must have a great and overwhelming love for no-goods and blots-on-the-town and bums, and Mack and the boys. Virtues and graces and laziness and zest. Our Father who art in nature. — John Steinbeck

Complaisance, though in itself it be scarce reckoned in the number of moral virtues, is that which gives a lustre to every talent a man can be possessed of. It was Plato's advice to an unpolished writer that he should sacrifice to the graces. In the same manner I would advise every man of learning, who would not appear in the world a mere scholar or philosopher, to make himself master of the social virtue which I have here mentioned. — Joseph Addison

An new idea is rarely born like Venus attended by graces. More commonly it's modeled of baling wire and acne. More commonly it wheezes and tips over. — Marge Piercy

Humbly let go. Let go of trying to do, let go of trying to control, let go of my own way, let go of my own fears. Let God blow His wind, His trials, oxygen for joy's fire. Leave the hand open and be. Be at peace. Bend the knee and be small and let God give what God chooses to give because He only gives love and whisper a surprised thanks. This is the fuel for joy's flame. Fullness of joy is discovered only in the emptying of will. And I can empty. I can empty because counting His graces has awakened me to how He cherishes me, holds me, passionately values me. I can empty because I am full of His love. I can trust. — Ann Voskamp

It wasn't long before God made me realise that the true glory is that which is eternal and that, to achieve it, there is no need to perform outstanding deeds. Instead, one must remain hidden and perform one's good deeds so that the right hand knows not what the left hand does. When I read stories about the deeds of the great French heroines - especially of the Venerable Joan of Arc, I longed to imitate them and felt stirred by the same inspiration which moved them. It was then that I received one of the greatest graces of my life, for, at that age, I didn't receive the spiritual enlightenment which now floods my soul. I was made to understand that the glory I was to win would never be seen during my lifetime . . . — John Beevers

There are no better cosmetics than a severe temperance and purity, modesty and humility, a gracious temper and calmness of spirit; and there is no true beauty without the signatures of these graces in the very countenance. — Arthur Helps

If you are to stay in the good graces of the powerful, you had best, however unobtrusively, please the servants of the powerful. — Samuel R. Delany

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

It always annoys me when stars grumble about fans coming up to them in the street. I love it. These young stars today with all their airs and graces, they need to remember it is an honour and a privilege to make money from acting. How hard is it? — Larry Hagman

How cheering a thought that Jesus can find comfort in our poor feeble graces. Can — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Every Holy Mass, heard with devotion, produces in our souls marvelous effects, abundant spiritual and material graces which we, ourselves, do not know ... It is easier for the earth to exist without the sun than without the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass! — Pio Of Pietrelcina

Meekness is one of the brightest graces which can adorn the Christian character. — J.C. Ryle

Extraordinary afflictions are not always the punishment of extraordinary sins, but sometimes the trial of extraordinary graces. — Matthew Henry

It is the Sacrament of Love that excites the soul to ardent prayer. It stirs up the virtue of impetration and, as it were, forces God to grant our petition. It deepens the abyss of humility, above all it enkindles the flame of love in the heart; hence the Sacrament is the Gift of gifts, and the Grace of graces — Angela Of Foligno

The secret was to just be cool, stay in God's graces, and work it out. — Solomon Burke

I am often surprised when I think to count my graces, for the more I count, the more there seem to be. And if pride in my accomplishments is the emotion that I naturally feel when I focus on my gifts, gratitude is the emotion I feel as I become aware of the many graces that have shaped me and my gifts. — Susan Wittig Albert

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

God inclines to shower His graces upon us, but our perverted will is a barrier to His generosity. — Ignatius Of Loyola

What may I do to get back into your good graces?"
"You've done nothing to offend me."
"Then why did you acknowledge Robart before me?"
What?
"You addressed him before you addressed me."
I cleared my throat. "Just to be clear, you're upset because I spoke to Robart before I spoke to you? In the ballroom just before we went to check on the car?"
"I understand that the circumstances of the summit prevent frank exchanges," Arland said. "An appearance of propriety must be maintained and any hint of favoritism is to be avoided at all costs. But when one travels so far, one looks for the small things. A chance glance. A brief kindness, freely offered and gone unnoticed by all except its intended recipient. Some hint, some indication that he has not been forgotten. One might take an acknowledgment of a bitter rival before him, in public, as an indication of certain things."
It dawned on me. His feelings were actually hurt. — Ilona Andrews

In order to attract us, the Lord grants us many graces that we believe can easily obtain Heaven for us. We do not know, however, that in order to grow, we need hard bread: the cross, humiliation, trials and denials. — Pio Of Pietrelcina

The anointing to heal and bring deliverance will be of no value in Heaven. These graces must be used here and now as part of the package of tools used to bring the nations to Jesus. After all, He is called "the desire of the nations."Everyone desires Jesus. They just don't know it. We must become like Him more fully so that the harvest becomes all that God desires and has provided for. — Bill Johnson

Virgin Immaculate, perfect lover of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, we ask you to obtain for us the graces we need to become true adorers of our Eucharistic God. Grant us, we beg of you, to know Him better, to love Him more, and to center our lives around the Eucharist, that is, to make our whole life a constant prayer of adoration, thanksgiving, reparation, and petition to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. Amen. — Peter Julian Eymard

Take heed that thou gloriest not in thy graces, but let all thy glorying and confidence be in Christ and his strength, for only so canst thou be kept from falling. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

For Newman a university does not exist simply to convey information or expertise. The university is a society in which the student absorbs the graces and accomplishments of a higher form of life. In the university, according to Newman, the pursuit of truth and the active discussion of its meaning are integrated into a wider culture, in which the ideal of the gentleman is acknowledged as the standard. The gentleman does not merely know things; he is receptive to the tone, the meaning, the lived reality of what he knows. — Roger Scruton

Giving someone the benefit of the doubt is not so simple as it sounds. What it means, in fact, is being charitable--which, as the vicar is fond of pointing out, is the most difficult of the graces to master. Faith and hope are a piece of cake but charity is a Pandora's box: the monster in the cistern which, when the lid is opened, comes swarming out to seize you by the throat. — Alan Bradley

Everyone said they were witches.
I desperately wanted to believe it. — Laure Eve

Like most geniuses, the Countess was a very limited person. Sigmund Freud was so ignorant of the art that Surrealist painters had to explain then- use of Freudian symbols over and over again, and he still didn't get it. Einstein never could remember to take the biscuits out of oven. Those same forces that drive a genius to create things or ideas that entertain or enlighten us often gobble so much of his personality that he has none left for the social graces (Should you invite Van Gogh to your home he might stand on your sofa in his muddy boots and pee where he pleased), and the very act of creation requires such focused concentration that vast areas of knowledge may be completely overlooked. Well, so what? There is no evidence that generalized skills are in any way superior to specialized brilliance, and certainly that sputter less little candle. Same of the mediocre mind known as "common sense" has never produced anything worth celebrating. — Tom Robbins

I'm certainly not opposed to digital technology, whose graces I daily enjoy and rely on in so many ways. But I worry about our virtual blinders. — Diane Ackerman

To some kind of men their graces serve them but as enemies. — William Shakespeare

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

'Bloody' has now become an important indicator of Australianness and of cultural values such as friendliness, informality, laid-backness, mateship - and perhaps even the Australian dislike and distrust of verbal and intellectual graces — Kate Burridge

Faith is the silver thread upon which the pearls of the graces are to be hung. Break that, and you have broken the string - the pearls lie scattered on the ground. — Charles Spurgeon

With a perversity of judgement, which must be attributed to his not having by Nature a very strong head, the Graces, the Spirit, the Sagacity, and the Perseverance, of the Villain of the Story outweighed all his absurdities and all his Atrocities with Sir Edward. With him, such Conduct was Genius, Fire and Feeling. It interested and inflamed him; and he was always more anxious for its Success and mourned over its Discomfitures with more Tenderness than could ever have been contemplated by the Authors. — Jane Austen

Someone has beautifully analyzed the fruit of the Spirit in Gal. 5: 22, and shown that all the graces there mentioned are but various forms of love itself. The apostle is not speaking of different fruits, but of one fruit, the fruit of the Spirit, and the various words that follow are but phrases and descriptions of the one fruit, which is love itself. Joy, which is first mentioned, is love on wings; peace, which follows, is love folding its wings, and nestling under the wings of God; longsuffering is love enduring; gentleness is love in society; goodness is love in activity, faith is love confiding; meekness is love stooping; temperance is true self-love, and the proper regard for our own real interests, which is as much the duty of love, as regard for the interests of others. — A.B. Simpson

A father may have a child who is ugly and lacking in all the graces, and the love he feels for him puts a blindfold over his eyes so that he does not see his defects but considers them signs of charm and intelligence and recounts them to his friends as if they were clever and witty. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Christian holiness is not a matter of painstaking conformity to the individual precepts of an external law code; it is rather a question of the Holy Spirit's producing His fruit in the life, reproducing those graces which were seen in perfection in the life of Christ. — F.F. Bruce

If we are going to do away with polygamy, it would only be one feather in the bird, one ordinance in the Church and Kingdom. Do away with that, then we must do away with the prophets and apostles, with revelation and the gifts and graces of the Gospel, and finally give up our religion altogether. — Wilford Woodruff

The women looked from one to the other, knowing what the men didn't know. We knew the heartbeat and interior graces, compensation for our own clumsiness; the beatitude as we renounced our bodies, our noble little parasites the higher calling. We knew, without saying, the watery rollover, tremor, seismic shudders, the steadiness of the baby's hiccups, the reliable stab from a kick to the kidney — Naomi Levy

God won't permit temptation beyond your strength. It is true that temptations come to all, but God will give you the graces you need to withstand them, if you ask him to and if you are willing to cooperate with his grace ... In God's presence, consider: Do I put up a fight when temptations beset me, or do I give up quickly and surrender myself to them without a struggle? Do I rely on God's grace to conquer temptations, or am I conquered by them? — Patrick Madrid

I would have unleashed my secret weapon." She leaned in and whispered, "Operation Feel the Beard."

"That's your secret weapon?" He felt his beard every day, and he could say with 100 percent certainty that it was fairly low on his list of ways into his good graces. "I think you're overestimating the beard, Hollywood. Now if you were to feel another part of - "

She felt his beard. Sweet effen Christmas. — Kate Meader

When I look back upon my own religious experience," says Andrew Murray, "or round upon the Church of Christ in the world, I stand amazed at the thought of how little humility is sought after as the distinguishing feature of the discipleship of Jesus. In preaching and living, in the daily intercourse of the home and social life, in the more special fellowship with Christians, in the direction and performance of work for Christ - alas! how much proof there is that humility is not esteemed the cardinal virtue, the only root from which the graces can grow, the one indispensable condition of true fellowship with Jesus. — D.L. Moody

The Helicon of too many poets is not a hill crowned with sunshine and visited by the Muses and the Graces, but an old, mouldering house, full of gloom and haunted by ghosts. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Beauty of scene; stateliness of movement; sweetness of sound - these are the graces that seem to reward the mind that seeks enjoyment purely for its own sake. — Virginia Woolf

Classical Sanskrit prose writers made very long sentences like this: "Lost in the forest and in thought, bent upon death and at the root of a tree, fallen upon calamity and her nurse's bosom, parted from her husband and happiness, burnt with the fierce sunshine and the woes of widowhood, her mouth closed with silence as well as by her hand, held fast by her companions as well as by grief, I saw her with her kindred and her graces all gone, her ears and her soul left bare, her ornaments and her aims abandoned, her bracelets and her hopes broken, her companions and the needle-like grass-spears clinging round her feet, her eyes and her beloved fixed within her bosom, her sighs and her hair long, her limbs and her merits exhausted, her aged attendants and her streams of tears falling down at her feet...." and it goes on. — Abraham Eraly

Their sighing, canting, grace-proud faces, their three-mile prayers, and half-mile graces. — Robert Burns

The Holy Spirit does not act except through the Immaculata, his spouse. Hence, she is the Mediatrix of all the graces of the Holy Spirit. — Michael Gaitley

St. Chrysostom, suffering under the Empress Eudoxia, tells his friend Cyriacus how he armed himself beforehand...."I thought, will she banish me? 'The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof.' Take away my goods? 'Naked came I into the world, and naked must I return.' Will she stone me? I remembered Stephen. Behead me? John Baptist came into my mind," etc. Thus it should be with every one that intends to live and die comfortably: they must, as we say, lay up something for a rainy day; they must stock themselves with graces, store up promises, and furnish themselves with experiences of God's lovingkindness to others and themselves too, that so, when the evil day comes, they may have much good coming thereby. — John Spencer

The presence of cats exercises such a magic influence upon highly organized men of intellect. This is why these long-tailed Graces of the animal kingdom ... have been the favorite animal of a Mahommed, Cardinal Richelieu, Crebillon, Rousseau, Wieland. — Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch

On the other hand, if these four-Mr. Graces, the brutish Frank, the mysterious Mr. Liu, and rude little Henry-were the only company John had had for a hundred and sixty-odd years, it explained a lot about his brooding. — Meg Cabot

Those who are truly humble will never presume to judge and condemn others, even when they see them committing very serious wrongs. They will say to themselves, "Who knows how much more grievously I would sin if I were exposed to the same temptations as these persons?" or, "Who can tell how much better these persons would be than I am if they had received from God the graces that have been granted to me? — F.J. Remler

Holy joy lies in the habit of murmuring thanks to God for the smallest of graces. — Ann Voskamp

Syme strolled with her to a seat in the corner of the garden, and continued to pour out his opinions. For he was a sincere man, and in spite of his superficial airs and graces, at root a humble one. And it is always the humble man who talks too much; the proud man watches himself too closely. He — G.K. Chesterton

Read Demosthenes or Cicero, read Plato, Aristotle, or any other of that class: you will, I admit, feel wonderfully allured, pleased, moved, enchanted; but turn from them to the reading of the Sacred Volume, and whether you will or not, it will so affect you, so pierce your heart, so work its way into your very marrow, that, in comparison of the impression so produced, that of orators and philosophers will almost disappear; making it manifest that in the Sacred Volume there is a truth divine, a something which makes it immeasurably superior to all the gifts and graces attainable by man. Section — John Calvin

All these things He must be in me, abiding, living, speaking in me; that I may be the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. v. 21); not in love, nor in gifts and graces which follow; but in Him. — Martin Luther

O rose! the sweetest blossom,
Of spring the fairest flower,
O rose! the joy of heaven.
The god of love, with roses
His yellow locks adorning,
Dances with the hours and graces. — James Gates Percival

I wished, first of all, to buy my way into people's good graces with my book so that, in subsequent personal contact, I would find the ground already prepared, and, I reasoned, if I succeeded in implanting in their soules a favorable image of me, this image would in turn shape me; and so, willy-nilly, I would become mature. — Witold Gombrowicz

I keep saying that i wish our black women would not stop raising their sons to be like the niggas who left them. I see mothers covering for their deadbeat sons, putting some other child's mother through the same shit, her babyfather put her through.
We have spent the last few decades blaming absentee fathers for the lack of "graces" among our young men forgetting that they are raised by women. Women have always been other women's worst enemies. Maybe we need to start asking our mothers, what have they been doing wrong. Trying to smother the only man who won't leave them cause he can't, hes biologically linked to her. Trying to make up for the men who dumped her.
Raising monstrous, spoiled brats and then unleashing them on the female population. What we have today is a culture of men raised like daughters who do not know how to be a partner, a man and a father. — Crystal Evans

Oblong stones sink
slow and sideways. Shaped
by the weight of waves,
dutifully vibrating nature's
lunar-bound graces,
they wash ashore only for
closed palms to forsake them.
The cheerful will
cherish them, place them
on windowsills, or on graves. — Kristen Henderson

Humility is, of all graces , the chiefest when it does not know itself to be a grace at all. — Bernard Of Clairvaux

Beauty loses its relish; the graces never. — Henry Home, Lord Kames

There is a compound of grace in contentment: there is faith, and there is humility, and love, and there is patience, and there is wisdom, and there is hope; almost all graces are compounded. [ ... ] In one action that you do you may exercise one grace especially, but in contentment you exercise a great many graces at once. — Jeremiah Burroughs

The vulgar look upon a man, who is reckoned a fine speaker, as a phenomenon, a supernatural being, and endowed with some peculiargift of Heaven; they stare at him, if he walks in the park, and cry, that is he. You will, I am sure, view him in a juster light, and nulla formidine. You will consider him only as a man of good sense, who adorns common thoughts with the graces of elocution, and the elegancy of style. The miracle will then cease. — Lord Chesterfield

The Rosary is the most beautiful and the most rich in graces of all prayers; it is the prayer that touches most the Heart of the Mother of God ... and if you wish peace to reign in your homes, recite the family Rosary. — Pope Pius X

How could you give me life, and take from me all the inappreciable things that raise it from the state of conscious death? Where are the graces of my soul? Where are the sentiments of my heart? What have you done, oh, Father, What have you done with the garden that should have bloomed once, in this great wilderness here? Said louisa as she touched her heart. — Charles Dickens

True belief and true repentance are twins: it would be idle to attempt to say which is born first. All the spokes of a wheel move at once when the wheel moves, and so all the graces commence action when regeneration is wrought by the Holy Ghost. Repentance, however, there must be. — Charles Spurgeon

The sun of a prince's good graces resembles that in the skies in that it shines most kindly upon the blackest people. — Franz Grillparzer

She was a Canadian and had all their easy social graces. — Ernest Hemingway,

Sleep is the most blessed and blessing of all natural graces. — Aldous Huxley

Anyone could buy a green Jaguar, find beauty in a Japanese screen two thousand years old. I would rather be a connoisseur of neglected rivers and flowering mustard and the flush of iridescent pink on an intersection pigeon's charcoal neck. I thought of the vet, warming dinner over a can, and the old woman feeding her pigeons in the intersection behind the Kentucky Fried Chicken. And what about the ladybug man, the blue of his eyes over gray threaded black? There were me and Yvonne, Niki and Paul Trout, maybe even Sergei or Susan D. Valeris, why not? What were any of us but a handful of weeds. Who was to say what our value was? What was the value of four Vietnam vets playing poker every afternoon in front of the Spanish market on Glendale Boulevard, making their moves with a greasy deck missing a queen and a five? Maybe the world depended on them, maybe they were the Fates, or the Graces. Cezanne would have drawn them in charcoal. Van Gogh would have painted himself among them. — Janet Fitch

Whenever we think of Christ, we should recall the love that led Him to bestow on us so many graces and favors, and also the great love God showed in giving us in Christ a pledge of His love; for love calls for love in return. Let us strive to keep this always before our eyes and to rouse ourselves to love Him. — Saint Teresa Of Avila

And yet with every wound You robbed me of a crime,
And as each blow was paid with Blood,
You paid me also each great sin with greater graces.
For even as I killed You,
You made Yourself a greater thief than any in Your company,
Stealing my sins into Your dying life,
Robbing me even of my death. — Thomas Merton

The feminine graces of Madame de Sevigne's genius are exquisitely charming; but the philosophy and eloquence of Madame de Stael are above the distinction of sex. — James Mackintosh

Your love in a cottage is hungry,
Your vine is a nest for flies-
Your milkmaid shocks the Graces,
And simplicity talks of pies!
You lie down to your shady slumber
And wake with a bug in your ear,
And your damsel that walks in the morning
Is shod like a mountaineer. — Nathaniel Parker Willis

I'd never been in love, never felt that surge of feeling or that fall from its graces. I'd only watched as others weathered it: my mother in her garden, Sumner on the front lawn all those years ago, Ashley sobbing from the other side of a wall. I sat kerbside with my best friend and held her, trying to shoulder some of the hurt. There's only so much you can do, in these situations. — Sarah Dessen

To Lucy it was an admirable study, the contrast between the man who threw his whole soul into a certain aim, which he pursued with a savage intensity, knowing that the end was a dreadful, lonely death; and the man who was making up his mind deliberately to gather what was beautiful in life, and to cultivate its graces as though it were a flower garden.
"And the worst of it is that it will all be the same in a hundred years," said Dick. "We shall both be forgotten long before then, you with your strenuousness, and I with my folly."
"And what conclusion do you draw from that?" asked Mrs. Crowley.
"Only that the psychological moment has arrived for a whisky and soda. — W. Somerset Maugham