Flannery O'Connor Quotes

Like humility, generosity comes from seeing that everything we have and everything we accomplish comes from God's grace and God's love for us . . . Certainly it is from experiencing this generosity of God and the generosity of those in our life that we learn gratitude and to be generous to others.

Christianity seems at first to be all about morality, all about duties and rules and guilt and virtue, yet it leads you on, out of all that, into something beyond. One has a glimpse of a country where they do not talk of those things, except perhaps as a joke. Every one there is filled full with what we should call goodness as a mirror is filled with light. But they do not call it goodness. They do not call it anything. They are not thinking of it. They are too busy looking at the source from which it comes.

My brothers and sisters, true love is a reflection of the Savior's love. In December of each year we call it the Christmas spirit. You can hear it. You can see it. You can feel it.

Kindness is an essential part of Gods work and ours here on earth.

We should give as we would receive, cheerfully, quickly, and without hesitation; for there is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers.

No one perfectly loves God who does not perfectly love some of his creatures.

I have come to know a God of compassion and mercy and love.

To give without any reward, or any notice, has a special quality of its own.

Loving God is never separate from loving our brothers and sisters. It's always the same.

I, for one, am profoundly grateful to feel the hand of God at work in my life. But at the beginning and end of the day, when my default setting is to show kindness and love to others, I never regret it. And to me, that is what faith is all about.

To give and then not feel that one has given is the very best of all ways of giving.

My service to humanity is my real opportunity to prove my genuine love for God and God alone.

Love consists in giving without getting in return; in giving what is not owed, what is not due the other. That's why true love is never based, as associations for utility or pleasure are, on a fair exchange.

If a man say, 'I love God,' and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.

Charity never humiliated him who profited from it, nor ever bound him by the chains of gratitude, since it was not to him but to God that the gift was made.

God is simply love.

God is love, and love is love.

First of all, I am a man of God, and God is love. My expressions are always going to be about love.

I want people to know my truth. Unconditional love of God and each other.

Charity never faileth.

We need to return to the simplicity that God is love.

If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness.

God alone is real, nothing matters but love for God.

You have forgotten the One who doesn't care about ownership, who doesn't try to turn a profit from every human exchange.

Nothing you do makes much of a difference if you do not have charity. You can speak with tongues, have the gift of prophecy, understand all mysteries, and possess all knowledge; even if you have the faith to move mountains, without charity it won't profit you at all.... Without charity-or the pure love of Christ-whatever else we accomplish matters little. With it, all else becomes vibrant and alive.