Top 280 Brennan Manning Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “In every encounter we either give life or we drain it; there is no neutral exchange.”

— Brennan Manning

2. “Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.”

— Brennan Manning

3. “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians, who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door, and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”

— Brennan Manning

4. “God loves you unconditionally, as you are and not as you should be, because nobody is as they should be.”

— Brennan Manning

5. “You will trust God to the degree you know you are loved by Him.”

— Brennan Manning

6. “Be who you is, ’cause if you ain’t who you is, you is who you ain’t.”

— Brennan Manning

7. “In a futile attempt to erase our past, we deprive the community of our healing gift. If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become a light for others.”

— Brennan Manning

8. “I could more easily contain Niagara Falls in a teacup than I can comprehend the wild, uncontainable love of God.”

— Brennan Manning

9. “My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.”

— Brennan Manning

10. “Letting ourselves be loved by God is more important than loving God.”

— Brennan Manning

11. “Real freedom is freedom from the opinions of others. Above all, freedom from your opinions about yourself.”

— Brennan Manning

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12. “Our identity rests in God’s relentless tenderness for us revealed in Jesus Christ.”

— Brennan Manning

13. “Lord, when I feel that what I’m doing is insignificant and unimportant, help me to remember that everything I do is significant and important in your eyes, because you love me and you put me here, and no one else can do what I am doing in exactly the way I do it.”

— Brennan Manning

14. “A ragamuffin knows he’s only a beggar at the door of God’s mercy.”

— Brennan Manning

15. “The Good News of the gospel of grace cries out: We are all, equally, privileged but unentitled beggars at the door of God’s mercy!”

— Brennan Manning

16. “The Christian with depth is the person who has failed and who has learned to live with it.”

— Brennan Manning

17. “A saint is not someone who is good but who experiences the goodness of God.”

— Brennan Manning

18. “I have been seized by the power of a great affection.”

— Brennan Manning

19. “In Love’s service, only wounded soldiers can serve.”

— Brennan Manning

20. “Craving clarity, we attempt to eliminate the risk of trusting God. Fear of the unknown path stretching ahead of us destroys childlike trust in the Father’s active goodness and unrestricted love.”

— Brennan Manning

21. “The deepest desire of our hearts is for union for God. God created us for union with himself. This is the original purpose of our lives.”

— Brennan Manning

22. “The temptation of the age is to look good without being good.”

— Brennan Manning

23. “To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side I learn who I am and what God’s grace means.”

— Brennan Manning

24. “We are made for God, and nothing less will ever satisfy us.”

— Brennan Manning

25. “Craving clarity, we attempt to eliminate the risk of trusting God.”

— Brennan Manning

26. “That which is denied cannot be healed.”

— Brennan Manning

27. “Genuine self-acceptance is not derived from the power of positive thinking, mind games or pop psychology. IT IS AN ACT OF FAITH in the God of grace.”

— Brennan Manning

28. “The litmus test of our love for God is our love of neighbor.”

— Brennan Manning

29. “We should be astonished at the goodness of God, stunned that He should bother to call us by name, our mouths wide open at His love, bewildered that at this very moment we are standing on holy ground.”

— Brennan Manning

30. “God is enough. That is the root of peace. When we start seeking something besides Him, we lose it.”

— Brennan Manning

31. “The ancient spiritual tradition is that God gives himself fully to us in silence and solitude.”

— Brennan Manning

32. “In human beings, love is a quality, a high-prized virtue; in God, love is His identity.”

— Brennan Manning

33. “Suffering, failure, loneliness, sorrow, discouragement, and death will be part of your journey, but the Kingdom of God will conquer all these horrors. No evil can resist grace forever.”

— Brennan Manning

34. “Hope knows that if great trials are avoided great deeds remain undone and the possibility of growth into greatness of soul is aborted.”

— Brennan Manning

35. “There is an essential connection between experiencing God, loving God, and trusting God. You will trust God only as much as you love him. And you will love him to the extent you have touched him, rather that he has touched you.”

— Brennan Manning

36. “There is a beautiful transparency to honest disciples who never wear a false face and do not pretend to be anything but who they are.”

— Brennan Manning

37. “Grace is sufficient even though we huff and puff with all our might to try and find something or someone that it cannot cover. Grace is enough.”

— Brennan Manning

38. “To lend each other a hand when we’re falling, perhaps that’s the only work that matters in the end.”

— Brennan Manning

39. “Hope your wildest hopes, dream your maddest dreams, imagine your most fantastic fantasies. Where your hopes and your dreams and your imagination leave off, the love of my Heavenly Father only begins.”

— Brennan Manning

40. “Our hearts of stone become hearts of flesh when we learn where the outcast weeps.”

— Brennan Manning

41. “Jesus comes not for the super-spiritual but for the wobbly and the weak-kneed who know they don’t have it all together, and who are not too proud to accept the handout of amazing grace.”

— Brennan Manning

42. “The ragamuffin who sees his life as a voyage of discovery and runs the risk of failure has a better feel for faithfulness than the timid man who hides behind the law and never finds out who he is at all.”

— Brennan Manning

43. “Accepting the reality of our sinfulness means accepting our authentic self. Judas could not face his shadow; Peter could. The latter befriended the impostor within; the former raged against him.”

— Brennan Manning

44. “How glorious the splendor of a human heart that trusts that it is loved!”

— Brennan Manning

45. “When a man or woman is truly honest, it is virtually impossible to insult them personally.”

— Brennan Manning

46. “The ragamuffin gospel says we can’t lose, because we have nothing to lose.”

— Brennan Manning

47. “Faithfulness requires the courage to risk everything on Jesus, the willingness to keep growing, and the readiness to risk failure throughout our lives.”

— Brennan Manning

48. “Being the beloved is our identity, the core of our existence. It is not merely a lofty thought, an inspiring idea, or one name among many. It is the name by which God knows us and the way He relates to us.”

— Brennan Manning

49. “Our culture says that ruthless competition is the key to success. Jesus says that ruthless compassion is the purpose of our journey.”

— Brennan Manning

50. “Faith will become vision, hope will become possession, but the love of Jesus Christ that is stronger than death endures forever. In the end, it is the only thing you can hang onto.”

— Brennan Manning