"It is not that we keep His commandments first, and that then He loves; but that He loves us, and then we keep His commandments. This is that grace, which is revealed to the humble, but hidden from the proud...."

Augustine of Hippo

"But whence comes this liberty to do right to the man who is in ####### and sold under sin, except he be redeemed by Him who has said, "If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed?" And before this redemption is wrought in a man, when he is not yet free to do what is right, how can he talk of the freedom of his will and his good works, except he be inflated by that foolish pride of boasting which the apostle restrains when he says, "By grace are ye saved, through faith."

Augustine of Hippo

"Grace is the essence of theology and gratitude is the essence of ethics."

G. C. Berkouwer

"Do not pray for easy lives; pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you yourself shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come to you by the grace of God."

Phillips Brooks (1835-1893)

"Whatever mixture men study to add from the power of free will to the grace of God, is only a corruption of it; just as if anyone should dilute good wine with dirty or bitter water."

John Calvin, Institutes II:v.15

"Grace means you're in a different universe from where you had been stuck, when you had absolutely no way to get there on your own."

Anne Lamott

"Our righteousness is in Him, and our hope depends, not upon the exercise of grace in us, but upon the fullness of grace and love in Him, and upon His obedience unto death."

"I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I want to be. I am not what I hope to be. But still, I am not what I used to be. And by the grace of God, I am what I am."

Rev. John Newton

"The house built on the sand may oftentimes be built higher, have more fair parapets and battlements, windows and ornaments, than that which is built upon the rock; yet all gifts and privileges equal not one grace."

John Owen

"Just as the sinner's despair of any hope from himself is the first prerequisite of a 
sound conversion, so the loss of all confidence in himself is the first essential in the 
believer's growth in grace." 
A.W. Pink

"Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace."

George Santayana

"No doctrine is so calculated to preserve a man from sin as the doctrine of the grace of 
God. Those who have called it 'a licentious doctrine' did not know anything at all about 
it. Poor ignorant things, they little knew that their own vile stuff was the most 
licentious doctrine under Heaven."

C.H. Spurgeon

"Salvation is all of grace; damnation all of sin. Salvation of God from first to last the 
Alpha and the Omega; but damnation of men not of God: and if you perish, at your own hands 
must your blood be required"

C.H. Spurgeon

"Ah! the bridge of grace will bear your weight, brother. Thousands of big sinners have 
gone across that bridge, yea, tens of thousands have gone over it. I can hear their 
trampings now as they traverse the great arches of the bridge of salvation. They come by 
their thousands, by their myriads; e'er since the day when Christ first entered into His 
glory, they come, and yet never a stone has sprung in that mighty bridge. Some have been 
the chief of sinners, and some have come at the very last of their days, but the arch has 
never yielded beneath their weight. I will go with them trusting to the same support; it 
will bear me over as it has borne them."

C.H. Spurgeon

"I must confess I never would have been saved if I could have helped it. As long as I 
could, I rebelled and revolted and struggled against God. When he would have me pray, I 
would not pray. When he would have me listen to the sound of the ministry, I would not. 
And when I heard, and the tear rolled down my cheek, I wiped it away and defied him to 
melt my heart. Then he gave me the effectual blow of grace, and there was no resisting 
that irresistible effort. It conquered my depraved will and made me bow myself before the 
scepter of his grace. And so it is in every case. Man revolts against his Savior, but 
where God determines to save, save he will. God never was thwarted yet in any one of his 
purposes. Man does resist with all his might, but all the might of man, tremendous though 
it be for sin, is not equal to the majestic might of the Most High." 

C.H. Spurgeon, New Park Street Pulpit, Vol. 4 [1858]

"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