Whenever the world throws rose petals at you, which thrill and seduce the ego, beware. The cosmic banana peel is suddenly going to appear underfoot to make sure you don't take it all too seriously, that you don't fill up on junk food.

Grace is having a commitment to- or acceptance of- being ineffective and foolish.

I told myself that historically when people do too well too quickly, they are a Greek tragedy waiting to happen.

The movement of grace toward gratitude brings us from the package of self-obsessed madness to a spiritual awakening. Gratitude is peace.

The factory is a dead end and so is compliance. More obedience will not make us better. That's why graceful is in such demand.

The word grace emphasizes at one and the same time the helpless poverty of man. and the limitless kindness of God. WILLIAM BARCLAY

The most liberating act of free, unconditional grace demands that the recipient give up control of his or her life.

The spirit that caused Cain to murder Abel was pride. The spirit that caused Israel to follow other gods was pride. And the spirit that sent Jesus to the cross … that lurked in the heart of every Pharisee … was the spirit of self-righteous pride. That same demonic spirit is destroying America; it deceives us in believing that we know how to run our lives and lead our nation better than God can.

We're more popular than Jesus Christ now. I don't know which will go first; rock and roll or Christianity.

And God help Bruce Springsteen when they decide he's no longer God... They'll turn on him, and I hope he survives it.

Grace, too, is not an impersonal, metaphysical substance that trickles down to people through the sacraments, as in much popular Catholicism. Grace is an irreducibly personal category, first, in that it is a personal attitude of favor from God's heart, bringing us into relationship with him as our Savior, Friend, and Father.

Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.