It takes a great man to give sound advice tactfully, but a greater to accept it graciously.

I want to be as gracious and thankful as I can because it has been a long road.

The last time I saw Ted Kennedy was a generation after my first meeting, at the Senate subway below the Capitol on Obama's Inauguration Day. He was his usual gregarious and gracious self - with beaming smile and booming voice wishing my husband and me good luck with our pregnancy and expressing his excitement about the new president.

It is boorish to live ungraciously: the giving is the hardest part; what does it cost to add a smile?

Being identified as a poet in France or Denmark or India one is greeted with gracious respect.

The man who practises unselfishness, who is genuinely interested in the welfare of others, who feels it a privilege to have the power to do a fellow-creature a kindness - even though polished manners and a gracious presence may be absent - will be an elevating influence wherever he goes.

I feel really privileged to have gracious and merciless people with a lot of perspective and patience in my life.

Music from my fourth year began to be the first of my youthful occupations. Thus early acquainted with the gracious muse who tuned my soul to pure harmonies, I became fond of her, and, as it often seemed to me, she of me.

Femininity is not just lipstick, stylish hairdos, and trendy clothes. It is the divine adornment of humanity. It finds expression in your qualities of your capacity to love, your spirituality, delicacy, radiance, sensitivity, creativity, charm, graciousness, gentleness, dignity, and quiet strength.

And I pray thee, loving Jesus, that as Thou hast graciously given me to drink in with delight the words of Thy knowledge, so Thou wouldst mercifully grant me to attain one day to Thee, the fountain of all wisdom and to appear forever before Thy face.

My greatest happiness is to serve my gracious King and Country and I am envious only of glory; for if it be a sin to covet glory I am the most offending soul alive.

For me, the healing process starts with graciousness and forgiveness.

And you know, when you've experienced grace and you feel like you've been forgiven, you're a lot more forgiving of other people. You're a lot more gracious to others.

Show me a good and gracious loser and I'll show you a failure.

Surprisingly, the Eisenhower Memorial design contains almost none of the known Gehry-box of tricks. His giant etched chain-link curtain, first applied in 1979 to hide an ungracious parking garage at Santa Monica Place, is resurrected for Eisenhower to screen the equally graceless facade of the Department of Education.

I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness.

As far as friendships go, things change even without the fame. People start moving on. I have a few friends that are married and are starting to have kids and I'm like, 'Oh my goodness gracious - that's so insane.' I also have friends who are just doing their own thing, which is cool.

My mother fought cancer for almost a decade and died at 56. She held out long enough to meet the first of her grandchildren and to hold them in her arms. But my other children will never have the chance to know her and experience how loving and gracious she was.

When from our better selves we have too long been parted by the hurrying world, and droop. Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired, how gracious, how benign is solitude.

I actually had the pleasure of meeting David Bowie at his 50th birthday party in New York City. I handed him the cassette of 'Eight Arms to Hold You,' which I had just got an advance of that day. He very graciously thanked me and tucked it into his jacket pocket.

There are no better cosmetics than a severe temperance and purity, modesty and humility, a gracious temper and calmness of spirit; and there is no true beauty without the signatures of these graces in the very countenance.

People who don't know the true character of God - who don't believe He is merciful, gracious and slow to anger - can never have a close, personal, intimate relationship with Him.

Living in this moment is a gracious mercy of God.

"David had every right to be angry and take vengeance upon such a character as Nabal, who insulted him and his men, yet God had something different in mind. In Romans 12 verse 19 we read that it is God who will avenge, He will repay. It is not our job. And God knows exactly how to get through to people. God had a very specific purpose in this whole event ? He was getting David ready to move into kingship and David had some character building left to do which he did by giving heed to Abigail's words of wisdom. Abigail, in wisdom, asked for forgiveness from David for her husband's foolish words but she also appealed to him to be gracious to her and her household while reminding him of what God had promised to David regarding his future as leader of Israel. God was busy softening David's hear. This was a lesson in grace. David learned how to show the grace of God to Abigail.