#grace

There is more beauty than our eyes can bear, precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm. ↗

— Marilynne Robinson

#brave #courage #deception #eyes #fortitude

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. ↗

— Paul Hawken

#social-justice #beauty

How I wish you could have known me in my strength. ↗

— Marilynne Robinson

#brave #courage #fortitude #grace #inspirational

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

#god #grace #mercy #transformation #ugliness

She seemed shy, yet all her attention was focused on Magnus, as if he were the most fascinating thing she had ever seen. There was no man who did not want to see himself reflected like that in a beautiful girl's eyes. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#magnus-bane #beauty

I folded myself against her body, breathing in the smell of my new life and matching my heartbeat to hers" Sam, Linger ↗

— Maggie Stiefvater

#sam-roth #life

When we fail, we cut the string. Then God ties it up again, making a knot and thereby bringing us a little closer to Him. Again and again our failures cut the string, and with each additional knot God keeps drawing us closer and closer. ↗

— Sharon A. Hersh

#courage

We preach grace, but we don’t always practice it. We talk about God’s mercy, but we don’t always want the people who need it most to know it or get in on it. We say we are in the redemption business, but the door to that redemption is often locked by us from the inside. We say, “Come in! All are welcome!” but “all” is often marked with an asterisk. How, I ask, can the world change – how can heaven come to earth – if we stingily protest against God for his grace to others, grace we have freely received ourselves? How can we pray “thy kingdom come,” and be resentful toward God and those he allows to enter the kingdom in his way and his timing? ↗

— Ronnie McBrayer

#business

Courage is grace under pressure. ↗

— Ernest Hemingway

#grace #pressure #under

I was tired of seeing the Graces always depicted as beautiful young things. I think wisdom comes with age and life and pain. And knowing what matters. ↗

— Louise Penny

#three-graces #wisdom #age