69 Redemption Quotes

Once I returned to the Church and began to see the universe as a place that really did incorporate redemption and really tried to understand the implications of there being a God, my identification with the vampires as outcasts, as outsiders and lost souls began to totally wane. It no longer worked for me. I had done it. It had led me to this point.

If it wasn't for baseball, I'd be in either the penitentiary or the cemetery. I have the same violent temper my father and older brother had. Both died of injuries from street fights in Baltimore, fights begun by flare-ups of their tempers.

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.

It doesn't matter whether I'm judged criminal. I have a great feeling of guilt - I have a feeling that I ran after Hitler like a wildfire without reason. If I can sacrifice my life to make something good, I'd gladly do it.

No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that redeems them, at least a little, from their sins.

After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption.

A soul so pitiably forlorn, If such do on this earth abide, May season apathy with scorn, May turn indifference to pride; And still be not unblest- compared With him who grovels, self-debarred From all that lies within the scope Of holy faith and christian hope; Or, shipwrecked, kindles on the coast False fires, that others may be lost.

Sweet Mercy! to the gates of Heaven This minstrel lead, his sins forgiven; The rueful conflict, the heart riven With vain endeavour, And memory of earth's bitter leaven Effaced forever.

What one man does is something done, in some measure, by all men. For that reason a disobedience committed in a garden contaminates the human race; for that reason it is not unjust that the crucifixion of a single Jew suffices to save it.

Once, we all have to be redeemed. The world is pulling with a thousand strings. We sin because of indifference and negligence and heap new guilt on the old original one. Our life is a chain of sin and expiation controlled by a destiny that can not be understood.

There is not one among us in whom a devil does not dwell; at sometime, on some point, that devil masters each of us; he who has never failed has never been tempted; but the man who does in the end conquer, who does painfully retrace the steps of his slipping, why he shows that he has been tried in the fire and not found wanting. It is not having been in the Dark House, but having left it, that counts.

'The only philosophy which can be responsibly practised in face of despair is the attempt to contemplate all things as they would present themselves from the standpoint of redemption.'

This is the month, and this the happy morn, Wherein the Son of Heav'n's eternal King, Of wedded maid and virgin mother born, Our great redemption from above did bring; For so the holy sages once did sing, That He our deadly forfeit should release, And with His Father work us a perpetual peace.

There are no just people - merely hearts more or less lacking in justice. Living at least allows us to discover this and to add to the sum of our actions a little of the good that will make up in part for the evil we have added to the world. Such a right to live, which allows a chance to make amends, is the natural right of every man, even the worst man... Without that right, moral life is utterly impossible.

All these He will swiftly lead to the Paradise road: they are safe. That done, there must take place that struggle no human presumes to picture: living, dying, descending to rescue the just from shadow, were lesser travails than this: to break through earth and stone of the faithless world back to the cold sepulcher, tearstained stifling shroud; to break from them back into breath and heartbeat, and walk the world again, closed into days and weeks again, wounds of His anguish open, and Spirit streaming through every cell of flesh so that if mortal sight could bear to perceive it, it would be seen His mortal flesh was lit from within, now, and aching for home. He must return, first, in Divine patience, and know hunger again, and give to humble friends the joy of giving Him food - fish and a honeycomb.

Forgiving sins, I should have known, is not blotting them out. The blood of Christ only turns them red instead of black. It leaves them in the record. It leaves them in the memory.

What I need is a good defense 'Cause I'm feeling like a criminal And I need to be redeemed To the one I've sinned against Because he's all I ever knew of love.

Lo, the dead shall rise to heaven! Brethren hail the blest decree; Every sin shall be forgiven, Hell forever cease to be!

Roy Cohn and Joe McCarthy will be redeemed when the people have taken back their government from the criminal alliance of Communists, Socialists, New Dealers and the Eisenhower-Dewey Republicans.

Our chiefs said 'Done,' and I did not deem it; Our seers said 'Peace,' and it was not peace; Earth will grow worse till men redeem it, And wars more evil, ere all wars cease.

Last night I had looked into the heart of darkness, and the sight had terrified me. What part should I play in the great purification? Most likely that of the Biblical scapegoat.

I've been bouncing off the walls since childhood. Expelled from school. In trouble. Kid with no future. Comedy was the only answer.

He comes, and his face is sad and mild, With thorns his head is crowned; There are great bleeding wounds in his feet, And in each hand a wound. How can I tell, who am a fool, If this be Christ or no? Those bleeding hands outstretched to me! Those eyes that love me so!

I was dead. I was a woman who had divorced her soul. I was living apart from this self which you now see. I belonged to all men, and to none. They called me harlot, and a woman possessed of seven devils. I was cursed, and I was envied. But when His dawn-eyes looked into my eyes all the stars of my night faded away, and I became Miriam, only Miriam, a woman lost to the earth she had known, and finding herself in new places.

'The forgiveness of Christ is complete, and without condition. It is not dependent on an apology, or tied to a punishment.'

I cannot recall those years without horror, loathing, and heart-rending pain. I killed people in war, challenged men to duels with the purpose of killing them, and lost at cards; I squandered the fruits of the peasants' toil and then had them executed; I was a fornicator and a cheat. Lying, stealing, promiscuity of every kind, drunkenness, violence, murder - there was not a crime I did not commit... Thus I lived for ten years.

Vanquished in life, his death By beauty made amends: The passing of his breath Won his defeated ends.

Man's nature is not essentially evil. Brute nature has been known to yield to the influence of love. You must never despair of human nature.

He was not condemned to death, freedom awaited him. What was the temptation, the one that worked? Perhaps he wanted to live with a woman whose life he had saved, who had seen down into the earth but had nevertheless followed him back up to life. It was his only chance to be a hero, to one person at least, for if he became the hangman the others would despise him. He was in prison for wounding another man, on one finger of the right hand, with a sword. This too is history.

Keep me alive. Keep me alive long enough for me to conquer the animal within myself. Long enough for me to learn to partner myself with a woman who is better and stronger than me. Long enough for me to reconcile myself with my brothers. Long enough to be as good a man as my father, and as good as my mother, too.

Through love to light! Oh wonderful the way That leads from darkness to the perfect day!

Within the shadow of the ship I watched their rich attire: Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, They coiled and swam; and every track Was a flash of golden fire.

Il s'en est fallu de tres peu que les larmes de Judas ne fussent confondues, dans le souvenir des hommes, avec celles de Pierre. Il aurait pu devenir un saint, le patron de nous tous qui ne cessons de trahir.

Filipinos don't realize that victory is the child of struggle, that joy blossoms from suffering, and redemption is a product of sacrifice.

To destroy an offender cannot benefit society so much as to redeem him.

We're poor little lambs who've lost our way, Baa! Baa! Baa! We're little black sheep who've gone astray, Baa - aa - aa! Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree, Damned from here to Eternity, God ha' mercy on such as we, Baa! Yah! Bah!

'You sound like Henry, man.' Eddie had begun to cry himself. He didn't want to. He hated to cry. 'He had a tower, too, only it wasn't dark. Remember me telling you about Henry's tower? We were brothers, and I guess we were gunslingers. We had this White Tower, and he asked me to go after it with him the only way he could ask, so I saddled up, because he was my brother, you dig it? We got there, too. Found the White Tower. But it was poison. It killed him. It would have killed me. You saw me. You saved more than my life. You saved my fuckin soul.'

'You want to know the only thing my brother ever had to teach me?' His voice was hitching and thick with tears. 'Yes,' the gunslinger said. He leaned forward, his eyes intent upon Eddie's eyes. 'He taught me if you kill what you love, you're damned.' 'I am damned already,' Roland said calmly. 'But perhaps even the damned may be saved.'

Roland gently grasped Eddie's arm. 'Even the damned love,' he said.