Spare me through your mercy, do not punish me through your justice.
Interpretation
The speaker seeks mercy over strict justice, highlighting the value of compassion.
This quote by Anselm of Canterbury expresses a profound plea for mercy rather than justice. It reflects the human desire for understanding and forgiveness, suggesting that while justice is necessary, mercy is preferred as it aligns more closely with the essence of love and compassion that humanity needs to thrive.
In practice
During a speech on forgiveness and redemption, one could quote this to emphasize the importance of mercy.
A Prayer of Anselm My God, I pray that I may so know you and love you that I may rejoice in you. And if I may not do so fully in this life let me go steadily on to the day when I come to that fullness . . . Let me receive That which you promised through your truth, that my joy may be full.
For I do not seek to understand in order to believe, but I believe in order to understand. For I believe this: unless I believe, I will not understand.
Remove grace, and you have nothing whereby to be saved. Remove free will and you have nothing that could be saved.
I believe in order that I may understand.
A single Mass offered for oneself during life may be worth more than a thousand celebrated for the same intention after death.
I have written the little work that follows . . . in the role of one who strives to raise his mind to the contemplation of God and one who seeks to understand what he believes.
The question of hegemony is always the question of a new cultural order.
Water is the softest of all things, yet it is the most powerful. The ocean patiently allows all things to flow into it. It is always flexible. The Tao is not about grasping, but allowing, like water.
A typical biography relying upon individuals' notorious memories and the anecdotes they've invented contains a high degree of fiction, yet is considered 'nonfiction.'
At a period when Literature was wont to attribute the grief of living exclusively to the mischances of disappointed love or the jealousy of adulterous deceptions, he had said not a word of these childish maladies, but had sounded those more incurable, more poignant and more profound: wounds that are inflicted by satiety, disillusion and contempt in ruined souls tortured by the present, disgusted with the past, terrified and desperate of the future.
he must deny his right to himself, and he must realize who Jesus Christ is before he will bring himself to do it. Beware of refusing to go to the funeral of your own independence
Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid...He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.