75 Quotes On Redemption And Renewal

In the journey of life, moments of redemption and renewal often serve as pivotal turning points that redefine our paths and reshape our destinies. These profound experiences resonate deeply, offering a chance to rise from the shadows and embrace new beginnings. In this collection, we've gathered some of the most insightful and inspiring quotes on redemption and renewal to provide guidance and reflection. Whether you're seeking motivation to start afresh or simply pondering life's transformative moments, these quotes are sure to inspire and uplift. Each one serves as a reminder that no matter how difficult the past, the future holds endless possibilities for growth and reinvention.

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. “Redemption, n. Deliverance of sinners from the penalty of their sin through their murder of the deity against whom they sinned. The doctrine of Redemption is the fundamental mystery of our holy religions, and whoso believeth in it shall not perish, but have everlasting life in which to try to understand it.” - Ambrose Bierce

3. “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

4. “[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

5. “There's no need to talk about it, because the truth of what one says lies in what one does.” - Bernhard Schlink

6. “Now there is a final reason I think that Jesus says, "Love your enemies." It is this: that love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. Just keep being friendly to that person. Just keep loving them, and they can’t stand it too long. Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning. They react with guilt feelings, and sometimes they’ll hate you a little more at that transition period, but just keep loving them. And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That’s love, you see. It is redemptive, and this is why Jesus says love. There’s something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. So love your enemies. (from "Loving Your Enemies")” - Martin Luther King Jr.

7. “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

8. “Having been tenant long to a rich Lord, Not thriving, I resolved to be bold, And make a suit unto him, to affordA new small-rented lease, and cancell th’ old.In heaven at his manour I him sought: They told me there, that he was lately gone About some land, which he had dearly boughtLong since on earth, to take possession.I straight return’d, and knowing his great birth, Sought him accordingly in great resorts; In cities, theatres, gardens, parks, and courts:At length I heard a ragged noise and mirth Of theeves and murderers: there I him espied, Who straight, Your suit is granted, said, and died. ” - George Herbert

9. “Grace abounds in contemporary movies, books, novels, films and music. If God is not in the whirlwind, He may be in a Woody Allen film, or a Bruce Springsteen concert. Most people understand imagery and symbol better than doctrine and dogma. Images touch hearts and awaken imaginations. One theologian suggested that Springsteen's 'Tunnel of Love' album, in which he symbolically sings of sin, death, despair and redemption, is more important for Catholics than the Pope's last visit when he spoke of morality only in doctrinal propositions.” - Brennan Manning

10. “We must not offer people a system of redemption, a set of insights and principles. We offer people a Redeemer.” - Paul David Tripp

11. “[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

12. “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

13. “There's a certain amount of ambiguity in my background, what with intermarriages and conversions, but under various readings of three codes which I don’t much respect (Mosaic Law, the Nuremberg Laws, and the Israeli Law of Return) I do qualify as a member of the tribe, and any denial of that in my family has ceased with me. But I would not remove myself to Israel if it meant the continuing expropriation of another people, and if anti-Jewish fascism comes again to the Christian world—or more probably comes at us via the Muslim world—I already consider it an obligation to resist it wherever I live. I would detest myself if I fled from it in any direction. Leo Strauss was right. The Jews will not be 'saved' or 'redeemed.' (Cheer up: neither will anyone else.) They/we will always be in exile whether they are in the greater Jerusalem area or not, and this in some ways is as it should be. They are, or we are, as a friend of Victor Klemperer's once put it to him in a very dark time, condemned and privileged to be 'a seismic people.' A critical register of the general health of civilization is the status of 'the Jewish question.' No insurance policy has ever been devised that can or will cover this risk.” - Christopher Hitchens

14. “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

15. “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

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

17. “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

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

19. “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

20. “If every time we choose a turd, society, at a great expense, simply allows us to redeem it for a pepperoni, then not only will we never learn to make smart choices, we will also surrender the freedom to choose, because a choice without consequences is no choice at all.” - Tom Robbins

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

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

23. “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

24. “Even there, in the mines, underground, I may find a human heart in another convict and murderer by my side, and I may make friends with him, for even there one may live and love and suffer. One may thaw and revive a frozen heart in that convict, one may wait upon him for years, and at last bring up from the dark depths a lofty soul, a feeling, suffering creature; one may bring forth an angel, create a hero! There are so many of them, hundreds of them, and we are all to blame for them. [...] If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

25. “Sorry.Sorry means you feel the pulse of other people's pain as well as your own, and saying it means you take a share of it. And so it binds us together, makes us trodden and sodden as one another. Sorry is a lot of things. It's a hole refilled. A debt repaid. Sorry is the wake of misdeed. It's the crippling ripple of consequence. Sorry is sadness, just as knowing is sadness. Sorry is sometimes self-pity. But Sorry, really, is not about you. It's theirs to take or leave.Sorry means you leave yourself open, to embrace or to ridicule or to revenge. Sorry is a question that begs forgiveness, because the metronome of a good heart won't settle until things are set right and true. Sorry doesn't take things back, but it pushes things forward. It bridges the gap. Sorry is a sacrament. It's an offering. A gift.” - Craig Silvey

26. “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

27. “There will be no redemption because the men who run this place do not want redemption. They want to be as near to hell as they can.” - COLSON WHITEHEAD

28. “God has such gladness every time he sees from heaven that a sinner is praying to Him with all his heart, as a mother has when she sees the first smile on her baby's face.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

29. “Now the wren has gone to roost and the sky is turnin' goldAnd like the sky my soul is also turnin'Turnin' from the past, at last and all I've left behind” - Ray Lamontagne

30. “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

31. “It is not true that everyone is special. It is true that everyone was once special and still possesses the ability to recover it.” - Criss Jami

32. “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

33. “In the end, it is our defiance that redeems us. If wolves had a religion – if there was a religion of the wolf – that it is what it would tell us.” - Mark Rowlands

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

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

36. “In life, redemption was walking up the down escalator: stop to congratulate yourself, and back you slid.” - Amy Waldman

37. “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

38. “You cannot mend the chromosome, quell the earthquake, or stanch the flood. You cannot atone for the dead tyrants’ murders and you alone cannot stop living tyrants. As Martin Buber saw it, the world of ordinary days “affords” us that precise association with god that redeems both us and our speck of world. God entrusts and allots to everyone an area to redeem: this creased and feeble life, “the world in which you live, just as it is, and not otherwise.” “Insofar as he cultivates and enjoys them in holiness, he frees their souls…he who prays and sings in holiness, eats and speaks in holiness…through him the sparks which have fallen will be uplifted, and the worlds which have fallen will be delivered and renewed.” - Annie Dillard

39. “You must be excessively hungry, Mr. Merritt,” she saidgraciously. Mademoiselle would have been so proud of her.“Perhaps you are not a morning person?”He smiled, finally bringing his devastating sky bluemorning gaze fully upon her face.“I thought perhaps if I filled my mouth with biscuits, Imight keep my foot out of it for a while.” - Mona Karel

40. “Jesus is God's way of refusing to give up his dream for the world.” - Rob Bell

41. “Not every story has a happy ending, ... but the discoveries of science, the teachings of the heart, and the revelations of the soul all assure us that no human being is ever beyond redemption. The possibility of renewal exists so long as life exists. How to support that possibility in others and in ourselves is the ultimate question.” - Gabor Mate

42. “The sheep vs. goats analogy is presumptuous. I define the world in general to be the people who populate it without assignment of an either/or category in presumption of their final and ultimate choice as to Who and Whose Jesus is".~R. Alan Woods [2012]” - R. Alan Woods

43. “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

44. “Saving you is the only thing that will bring me peace for all the wrong I have done. That is my truth” - Jillian Peery

45. “Did you skip your medication or something?” - H.D. Gordon

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

47. “I stepped out of the circle of his arms with reluctance and patted him on his butt. “That’ll do, donkey,” I said, in my best Scottish accent.” - H.D. Gordon

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

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

50. “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

51. “The more He loved those for whom He was the ransom, the more His anguish would increase, as it is the faults of friends rather than enemies which most disturb hearts!” - Fulton J. Sheen

52. “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

53. “we are continuing God’s work of forming, filling, and subduing. Whenever we bring order out of chaos, whenever we draw out creative potential, whenever we elaborate and “unfold” creation beyond where it was when we found it, we are following God’s pattern of creative cultural development.” - Timothy Keller

54. “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

55. “You listen to me, and listen good!" she shouted, shocking me. "I am not evil because I have a thousand years of demon smut on my soul!" she exclaimed, the tips of her hair trembling and her face flushed. "Every time you disturb reality, nature has to balance it out. The black on your soul isn't evil, it's a promise to make up for what you have done. It's a mark, not a death sentence. And you can get rid of it given time.""Ceri, I'm sorry," I fumbled, but she wasn't listening. "You're an ignorant, foolish, stupid witch," she berated, and I cringed, my grip tightening on the copper spell pot and feeling the anger from her like a whip. "Are you saying because I carry the stink of demon magic, that I'm a bad person?""No..." I wedged in."That God will show no pity?" she said, green eyes flashing. "That because I made one mistake in fear that led to a thousand more that I will burn in hell?""No. Ceri -" I took a step forward."My soul is black," she said, her fear showing in her suddenly pale cheeks. "I'll never be rid of it all before I die, but it won't be because I'm a bad person but because I was a frightened one.” - Kim Harrison

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

57. “I'm sixteen with what I hope will be a long life ahead, but I'm willing to give it up, to give anything to let her live, to let her make it through the night.” - Travis Thrasher

58. “Oh, you've outdone me twice now, you queen of forgiveness. The ring's a promise of peace and I'm greedy with hope. It's a song that we sing in a tongue that we share. And though you say it's a gift from a king to a king, I say it's a sign from a queen to a queen.” - Melina Marchetta

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

60. “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

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

62. “Adoption is a beautiful picture of redemption. It is the Gospel in my living room.” - Katie J. Davis

63. “Devin rubbed his hands over his face. "Jesus, Jason. I didn't want—" "No, I know," Jason said, looking up again. "I know you didn't. I wasn't supposed to hear that. I get it. But let me just ask you to do one thing for me. Okay? One thing." "What?" Devin asked softly. "Be honest with me," Jason said. "I'm a nice enough guy and I'm a pretty good fuck. But I can't do this if you lie to me. I can't. So if you can't be honest with me, take what you need from me and just…don't make promises you can't keep, we might as well call Redemption tomorrow. Because I won't be able to give you what you want, what you've paid for. In the end, it wouldn't be fair to either of us.” - Olivia Duncan Craig

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

65. “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

66. “Jesus' miracles provide us with a sample of the meaning of redemption: a freeing of creation from the shackles of sin and evil and a reinstatement of creaturely living as intended by God.” - Randy Alcorn

67. “Oh goodness infinite, goodness immense!That all this good of evil shall produce,And evil turn to good; more wonderfulThan that which by creation first brought forthLight out of darkness! Full of doubt I stand,Whether I should repent me now of sinBy me done, and occasioned; or rejoiceMuch more, that much more good thereof shall spring;To God more glory, more good-will to menFrom God, and over wrath grace shall abound.” - John Milton

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

69. “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

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

71. “We are all trophies of God’s grace, some more dramatically than others; Jesus came for the sick and not the well, for the sinner and not the righteous. He came to redeem and transform, to make all things new. May you go forth more committed than ever to nourish the souls who you touch, those tender lives who have sustained the enormous assaults of the universe. (pp.88)” - Philip Yancey

72. “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

73. “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

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

75. “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