C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Mercy
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
The greatest attribute of Heaven is mercy.
Sweet mercy is nobility’s true badge.
Let us be merciful as well as just.
Mercy turns her back to the unmerciful.
A God all mercy is a God unjust.
Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.
’Tis godlike to have power, but not to kill.
Mercy to him that shows it, is the rule.
Mercy often inflicts death.
Who will not mercy unto others show, how can he mercy ever hope to have?
If mercy were not mingled with His power, this wretched world could not subsist one hour.
Great minds erect their never-failing trophies on the firm base of mercy.
If thou hast fear of those who command thee, spare those who obey thee.
If the end of one mercy were not the beginning of another, we were undone.
Hate shuts her soul when dove-eyed Mercy pleads.
We hand folks over to God’s mercy, and show none ourselves.
Mercy more becomes a magistrate than the vindictive wrath which men call justice.
We do pray for mercy; and that same prayer doth teach us all to render the deeds of mercy.
Among the attributes of God, although they are all equal, mercy shines with even more brilliancy than justice.
Lenity will operate with greater force, in some instances, than rigor. It is therefore my first wish to have my whole conduct distinguished by it.
Good Heaven, whose darling attribute we find is boundless grace, and mercy to mankind, abhors the cruel.
God’s mercy is a holy mercy, which knows how to pardon sin, not to protect it; it is a sanctuary for the penitent, not for the presumptuous.
Nothing humbles and breaks the heart of a sinner like mercy and love. Souls that converse much with sin and wrath, may be much terrified; but souls that converse much with grace and mercy, will be much humbled.
There is no better rule to try a doctrine by than the question, Is it merciful, or is it unmerciful? If its character is that of mercy, it has the image of Jesus, who is the way, the truth, and the life.
How would you be if He, which is the top of judgment, should but judge you as you are? O, think on that, and mercy then will breathe within your lips like man new made.
No ceremony that to great ones belongs,—not the king’s crown nor the deputed sword, the marshal’s truncheon nor the judge’s robe, become them with one half so good a grace as mercy does.
We may imitate the Deity in all His attributes; but mercy is the only one in which we can pretend to equal Him. We cannot, indeed, give like God; but surely we may forgive like Him.
As the sun’s rays will irradiate even the murky pool, and make its stagnant waters to shine like silver, so doth God’s goodness and tender mercy, towards the greatest sinner, and the blackest heart, make his own image visible there!
The sun is the eye of the world; and he is indifferent to the negro or the cold Russian; to them that dwell under the line, and them that stand near the tropics,—the scalded Indian, or the poor boy that shakes at the foot of the Riphean hills; so is the mercy of God.
As freely as the firmament embraces the world, so mercy must encircle friend and foe. The sun pours forth impartially his beams through all the regions of infinity; heaven bestows the dew equally on every thirsty plant. Whatever is good and comes from on high is universal and without reserve; but in the heart’s recesses darkness dwells.