Quotes About Grace

And the beautiful are forgiven; no matter how egregious their shortcomings, they are forgiven.

He seemed genuinely astonished. You admire me? Yes, she said gravely. All of us do things we regret--that's part of being human. And sometimes, I think, moral quality reveals itself not so much in what we do, but in what we later say about what we have done....

Forgiveness was never easy, but Mma Ramotswe believed in it because she knew that without forgiveness we cluttered our lives with old business.

You have to tell her that you have forgiven what she did to you. You have that duty because we all of us have it. It comes in different forms, but it is always the same duty. We have to forgive.

She did not think that those who were late, or the ancestors themselves, would wish punishment upon us, no matter what our transgressions. It was far more likely that there would be love, falling like rain from above, changing the hearts of the wicked; transforming them

People don't talk about mercy very much these days—it has a rather old-fashioned ring to it. but it exists and its power is quite extraordinary

People were forever digging up events that had taken place a long time ago. And what was the point in doing this if the effect was merely to poison the present? There were many wrongs in the past, but did it help to keep bringing them up and giving them a fresh airing?

I'm saying that forgiveness is like the rain. That's all I'm saying. It makes things better. Rain does that too.

But if you do not forgive, and you think all the time about getting even, or punishing somebody who has done you a wrong, what are you achieving?

It is so easy to thank people, said Mma Ramotswe, passing the letter over to Mma Makutsi, and most people don't bother to do it. They don't thank the person who does something for them. They just take it for granted.

Gratitude was a lost art, she felt. People accepted things, took them as their right, and had forgotten how to give proper thanks.

The ordinary people of Africa tended not to have room in their hearts for hatred. They were sometimes foolish, like people anywhere, but they did not bear grudges, as Mr Mandela had shown the world.

And then there was the delicate issue of what to do with one's bottom while one was walking. Some people thought that one could just leave one's bottom to follow one when one was walking. Not so. A mere glance at any glamorous girl would show that the bottom had to be more involved.

La bella figura...it's at the heart of Italian life...it's about doing things beautifully.

And perhaps a deliberate act of forgetting went along with forgiveness. You forgave, and then you said to yourself: Now I shall forget. Because if you did not forget, then your forgiveness would be tested, perhaps many times and in ways that you could not resist, and you might go back to anger, and to hating.

No, on the whole it was better to say kind things of late people, even if they did not fully deserve them. Kindness, after all, did not distinguish between those who merited it and those who did not. It was like rain, she thought. It fell everywhere and made everything green and new and alive once more. That is what it did.

Why, she asked herself, why keep a wound open when forgiveness can close it?

I'm only writing this to show That I stopped sinning long ago.

I thought... their elegance... lies not so much in their clothes as in their bodies, and their bodies have received it, and continue to unceasingly receive it, from their souls, which are just like yours, lovely Simonetta.

You're not likely to err by practicing too much of the cross.

I'm sure you're very nice, but you'd be even nicer if you went away.

Everyone knows that God protects drunkards and lovers.

God is merciful to all, as he has been to you; he is first a father, then a judge.

God is full of mercy for everyone, as He has been towards you. He is a father before He is a judge.