50 Inspiring Redemption Quotes

In our journey through life, moments of struggle and redemption often shape who we are. Whether it's overcoming personal challenges, mending broken relationships, or finding a renewed sense of purpose, the concept of redemption offers a powerful narrative of hope and transformation. In this collection, we've gathered 50 inspiring quotes that capture the essence of redemption, each offering unique insights and motivation. These quotes remind us that no situation is beyond repair, and that every setback is an opportunity for a beautiful comeback. Dive in and let these words inspire your path to redemption and renewal.

1. “Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.” - Clive Barker

2. “God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.” - Soren Kierkegaard

3. “[No] matter what a waste one has made of one's life, it is ever possible to find some path to redemption, however partial.” - Charles Frazier

4. “Redemption is something you have to fight for in a very personal, down-dirty way. Some of our characters lose that, some stray from that, and some regain it.” - Joss Whedon

5. “The situation was extraordinary. How someone like Evangeline Jenner could have wrought such a change in St. Vincent, the most worldly of men, was difficult to understand. However, Westcliff had learned that the mysteries of attraction could not always be explained through logic. Sometimes the fractures in two separate souls became the very hinges that held them together.” - Lisa Kleypas

6. “[On Schopenhauer in Black and White] Schopenhauer's views of love are flawed. Love can't be merely an illusion of the mind to aid in procreation, but the path to redemption for an otherwise violently selfish species. Past human greatness has proven that when challenged, love can overpower impulsive instinct, and in essence, the vilest aspects of our nature.” - Tiffany Madison

7. “I take literally the statement in the Gospel of John that God loves the world. I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love. I believe that divine love, incarnate and indwelling in the world, summons the world always toward wholeness, which ultimately is reconciliation and atonement with God.” - Wendell Berry

8. “The Jewish people and their fate are the living witness for the absence of redemption. This, one could say, is the meaning of the chosen people; the Jews are chosen to prove the absence of redemption.” - Leo Strauss

9. “Between the radiant white of a clear conscience and the coal black of a conscience sullied by sin lie many shades of gray--where most of us live our lives. Not perfect but not beyond redemption.” - Sherry L. Hoppe

10. “To be saved is here, local and mortal” - A.R. Ammons

11. “It is to the Cross that the Christian is challenged to follow his Master: no path of redemption can make a detour around it.” - Hans Urs von Balthasar

12. “Was it you or I who stumbled first? It does not matter. The one of us who finds the strength to get up first, must help the other.” - Vera Nazarian

13. “Sometimes friends make mistakes. Grievous ones that cry out for us to stay and prove we are true friends.” - Beth Bernobich

14. “Where but in the very asshole of comedown is redemption: as where but brought low, where but in the grief of failure, loss, error do we discern the savage afflictions that turn us around: where but in the arrangements love crawls us through” - A.R. Ammons

15. “Yes, a dark time passed over this land, but now there is something like light.” - Dave Eggers

16. “Your job today is to pass gas. You do that and we can start feeding you liquids. No fart, no food.” - Khaled Hosseini

17. “When a relationship of love is disrupted, the relationship does not cease. The love continues; therefore, the relationship continues. The work of grief is to reconcile and redeem life to a different love relationship.” - W. Scott Lineberry

18. “I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless sins onto a scapegoat and expect them to pass from me; we rightly sneer at the barbaric societies that practice this unpleasantness in its literal form. There's no moral value in the vicarious gesture anyway. As Thomas Paine pointed out, you may if you wish take on a another man's debt, or even to take his place in prison. That would be self-sacrificing. But you may not assume his actual crimes as if they were your own; for one thing you did not commit them and might have died rather than do so; for another this impossible action would rob him of individual responsibility. So the whole apparatus of absolution and forgiveness strikes me as positively immoral, while the concept of revealed truth degrades the concept of free intelligence by purportedly relieving us of the hard task of working out the ethical principles for ourselves.” - Christopher Hitchens

19. “Like most people, my views about ghosts and haunted places were traditional while growing up. I believed ghosts were human spirits. Not that I talked to many people about the subject or my experiences. I assumed people would think I was weird.” - Kristine McGuire

20. “God's relationship with man does not work in a way in which man stumbles and then God has to drop what he is doing in order to lift him up; rather, man stumbles so that God can lift him up. Hence it is utterly impossible to truly diminish his glory.” - Criss Jami

21. “Contrary to what we may have been taught to think, unnecessary and unchosen suffering wounds us but need not scar us for life. It does mark us. What we allow the mark of our suffering to become is in our own hands.” - bell hooks

22. “The organist was almost at the end of the anthem’s long introduction, and as the crescendo increases the cathedral began to glitter before my eyes until I felt as if every stone in the building was vibrating in anticipation of the sweeping sword of sound from the Choir.The note exploded in our midst, and at that moment I knew our creator had touched not only me but all of us, just as Harriet had touched that sculpture with a loving hand long ago, and in that touch I sensed the indestructible fidelity, the indescribable devotion and the inexhaustible energy of the creator as he shaped his creation, bringing life out of dead matter, wresting form continually from chaos. Nothing was ever lost, Harriet had said, and nothing was ever wasted because always, when the work was finally completed, every article of the created process, seen or unseen, kept or discarded, broken or mended – EVERYTHING was justified, glorified and redeemed.” - Susan Howatch

23. “Mentre che la speranza ha fior del verde” - Dante Alighieri

24. “We can be redeemed only to the extent to which we see ourselves.” - Martin Buber

25. “Emma, if I had to march an eternity in slavery it would be worth it knowing that you are safe. They can bind my wrists and shackle my feet, but they can't take away my memories, my heart. If I had to see you grow old from a distance with someone else, it would have been worth it. I have had more than one lifetime to learn that our love can only come around once.” - Rebecca Gober

26. “A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good. Each should have its own reward.” - George R.R. Martin

27. “We all long for Eden, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most human, is still soaked with the sense of exile.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

28. “Maybe I should punch myself in the face and see if you scream.” - H.D. Gordon

29. “Where are my manners? We haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Surah.” - H.D. Gordon

30. “Your current circumstances are part of your redemption story He is writing.” - Evinda Lepins

31. “The deaf who deny they are deaf will never hear; the sinners who deny there is sin deny thereby the remedy of sin, and thus cut themselves off forever from Him Who came to redeem.” - Fulton J. Sheen

32. “The material creation was made by God to be developed, cultivated, and cared for in an endless number of ways through human labor. But even the simplest of these ways is important. Without them all, human life cannot flourish.” - Timothy Keller

33. “It's hard to know, isn't it, whether the things we face are just because the world is full of sin and sinful people, or if God is working out a plan,' Grandma continued. 'I happen to think it's both. There's sin, but through it all, He takes the mess we make and paints a masterpiece. In fact, I'm quite certain that before God can ever bless a woman—and use her to impact many—He uses the hammer, the file, and the furnace to do a holy work.” - Tricia Goyer

34. “If man had his way, the plan of redemption would be an endless and bloody conflict. In reality, salvation was bought not by Jesus' fist, but by His nail-pierced hands; not by muscle but by love; not by vengeance but by forgiveness; not by force but by sacrifice. Jesus Christ our Lord surrendered in order that He might win; He destroyed His enemies by dying for them and conquered death by allowing death to conquer Him.” - A.W. Tozer

35. “The day misspent,the love misplaced,has inside itthe seed of redemption.Nothing is exemptfrom resurrection.” - Kay Ryan

36. “The three step key to happiness when everything is down - Redemption, Reconstruction and Recover” - Maulik Doshi

37. “Stained-glass windows glowed faintly in the moonlight streaming through, illuminating the sculpture of Christ on the cross that hung above the altar. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Then the sculpture seemed to move, and Christ’s body twisted on the cross to look directly at him. ...Jesus, the son of God and his saviour, seemed be smiling at him.” - Phillip W. Simpson

38. “We are no longer under the 'Law', but rather the Grace of God in Christ."~R. Alan Woods [2013]” - R. Alan Woods

39. “...I've known damnable beauty - the turgid pull of swirling blackness - but in the end, it's futile - purity alone redeems...” - John Geddes

40. “And I wish to thank you as well, Royce."He was puzzled. "For what?" "For reminding me that anyone, no matter what they've done, can find redemption if they seek it.” - Michael J. Sullivan

41. “It was not enough that the Son of God should come down from the heavens and appear as the Son of Man, for then He would have been only a great teacher and a great example, but not a Redeemer. It was more important for Him to fulfill the purpose of the coming, to redeem man from sin while in the likeness of human flesh. Teachers change men by their lives; Our Blessed Lord would change men by His death. The poison of hate, sensuality, and envy which is in the hearts of men could not be healed simply by wise exhortations and social reforms. The wages of sin is death, and therefore it was to be by death that sin would be atoned for.” - Fulton J. Sheen

42. “Even now one rarely hears of people achieving great things unless they first stumble in some respect.” - Meister Eckhart

43. “It was suffering and incapacity that created all afterworlds - this, and that brief madness of bliss which is experienced only by those who suffer deeply. Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

44. “In my opinion, we will always be sinners in need of our Savior, Jesus Christ."~R. Alan Woods [2007]” - R. Alan Woods

45. “Murderers don't get forgiven just because we promise to be good from now on. We have to earn our way back. One hundred is the price. One hundred lives for each we took. That seems fair. That's how we get whole again and that's our work, from now until as long as it takes.” - Bill Willingham

46. “Brad Green, almost overnight, became the poster boy for the common Wall Street tale - proving once again that greed, most definitely, kills. Giving away about 99% of his fortune was also front page news, but Green barely blinked at having to scrape by with only $200 million. The government seized all five of his homes, his three boats, two jets, a helicopter, 14 cars, and all of his assets except the $200 million he stashed for a rainy day in an offshore bank account.” - Phil Wohl

47. “In a world of change and decay not even the man of faith can be completely happy. Instinctively he seeks the unchanging and is bereaved at the passing of dear familiar things. Yet much as we may deplore the lack of stability in all earthly things, in a fallen world such as this the very ability to change is a golden treasure, a gift from God of such fabulous worth as to call for constant thanksgiving. For human beings the whole possibility of redemption lies in their ability to change. To move across from one sort of person to another is the essence of repentance; the liar becomes truthful, the thief honest, the lewd pure, the proud humble. The whole moral texture of the life is altered. The thoughts, the desires, the affections are transformed, and the man is no longer what he had been before.” - A. W. Tozer

48. “A condition of complete simplicity(Costing not less than everything)” - T.S. Eliot

49. “Beauty is transformed over time, and not without destruction.” - Terry Tempest Williams

50. “Sometimes, most times, when I think back to the people that I loved, the person that I was... I feel like I'm reading the pages of a book written about someone else's life.I can't believe that was me. I can't believe that was you. I can't believe there was an us.It's not that I regret it. It just doesn't feel like it happened to me and yet, I can't forget it. I feel like it's still refracting and reflecting back on me, haunting me.Jesus intercepted my mind, my thoughts, my mistakes, my shame. He's changed me from the inside out. But I'm afraid you still see the stain.Lord, let them see my heart, look at You and Your still-in-progress work of art. Help us all to look beyond our burned bridges, charred reputations, scattered shards of memories, and gaze at the One who took on the weight of all the hate to find the freedom in redemption that we all crave.” - Katie Kiesler