The truest truth. For my whole sixteen years I've rarely thought I was worth much more than a distracted grumble from God. But now in my shelter of all things impossible, I drift in a warm bath of forgiveness, and it seems pointless to resist. I have no energy for improving myself. If Anatole can wrap all my rattlebone sins in a blanket and call me goodness itself, why then I'll just believe him.

Sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words

To me He is all fault who hath no fault at all: For who loves me must have a touch of earth.

I'm sick to death—Oh when shall I get loose From this vain world, the abode of guilt and sorrow! —And yet methinks a beam of light breaks in On my departing soul. Alas! I fear 95 I've been too hasty. O ye powers that search The heart of man, and weigh his inmost thoughts, If I have done amiss, impute it not!— The best may err, but you are good, and—oh!  [Dies.]

O miserable man, what a deformed monster has sin made you! God made you "little lower than the angels"; sin has made you little better than the devils"

God finds nothing in man to turn His heart, but enough to turn his stomach.

Every congregation is a congregation of sinners. As if that weren't bad enough, they all have sinners for pastors.

The church is the primary arena in which we learn that glory does not consist in what we do for God but in what God does for us.

We have been told the lie ever since we can remember: human beings are basically nice and good. Everyone is born equal and innocent and self-sufficient. The world is a pleasant, harmless place. We are born free. If we are in chains now, it is someone's fault, and we can correct it with just a little more intelligence or effort or time.

The fact that we are a family of faith does not mean we are one big happy family. The people we encounter as brothers and sisters in faith are not always nice people. They do not stop being sinners the moment they begin believing in Christ.

All the persons of faith I know are sinners, doubters, uneven performers. We are secure not because we are sure of ourselves but because we trust that God is sure of us.

The Church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones.