Top 18 Brennan Manning Quotes to Help You Pursue Happiness

Born Richard Francis Xavier Manning in 1934, Brennan Manning was a renowned American novelist, priest, and public speaker. One of his bestselling books is The Ragamuffin Gospel, which has inspired many authors and songwriters. Most of his books bear his true reflection on God’s grace, which has inspired many evangelicals.

His work is full of wisdom and guidance from which you can draw inspiration to find personal happiness and freedom. Manning also teaches you to accept your flaws and allow God’s grace to guide you in everything you do. Here, I have listed the top 16 Brennan Manning quotes to inspire you to pursue personal happiness.

​Top 18 Brennan Manning Quotes to Inspire You to Pursue Personal Happiness

​Brennan Manning Quotes to Motivate You to Accept Your Weaknesses

#1. “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.”

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

#3. “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.”

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

#5. “The story goes that a public sinner was excommunicated and forbidden entry to the church. He took his woes to God. ‘They won’t let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner.’ ‘What are you complaining about?’ said God. ‘They won’t let Me in either.’”

​Brennan Manning Quotes to Encourage You to Accept and Love Others Unconditionally

#6. “Because salvation is by grace through faith, I believe that among the countless number of people standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands (see Revelation 7:9), I shall see the prostitute from the Kit-Kat Ranch in Carson City, Nevada, who tearfully told me that she could find no other employment to support her two-year-old son. I shall see the woman who had an abortion and is haunted by guilt and remorse but did the best she could faced with grueling alternatives; the businessman besieged with debt who sold his integrity in a series of desperate transactions; the insecure clergyman addicted to being liked, who never challenged his people from the pulpit and longed for unconditional love; the sexually abused teen molested by his father and now selling his body on the street, who, as he falls asleep each night after his last ‘trick’, whispers the name of the unknown God he learned about in Sunday school.”

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

#8. “If we maintain the open-mindedness of children, we challenge fixed ideas and established structures, including our own. We listen to people in other denominations and religions. We don’t find demons in those with whom we disagree. We don’t cozy up to people who mouth our jargon. If we are open, we rarely resort to either-or: either creation or evolution, liberty or law, sacred or secular, Beethoven or Madonna. We focus on both-and, fully aware that God’s truth cannot be imprisoned in a small definition.”

#9. “None of us has ever seen a motive. Therefore, we don’t know we can’t do anything more than suspect what inspires the action of another. For this good and valid reason, we’re told not to judge. Tragedy is that our attention centers on what people are not, rather than on what they are and who they might become.”

#10. “To affirm a person is to see the good in them that they cannot see in themselves and to repeat it in spite of appearances to the contrary. Please, this is not some Pollyanna optimism that is blind to the reality of evil, but rather like a fine radar system that is tuned in to the true, the good, and the beautiful.”

​Brennan Manning Quotes to Motivate You to Be Honest with Yourself

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

#12. “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.”

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

#14. “Silent solitude makes true speech possible and personal. If I am not in touch with my own belovedness, then I cannot touch the sacredness of others. If I am estranged from myself, I am likewise a stranger to others.”

#15. “When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.”

​Brennan Manning Quotes That Will Make You Feel Special

#16. “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.”

#17. “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.”

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

​Final Thoughts

In his bestselling book “The Ragamuffin Gospel”, Brennan Manning talks about God’s grace and how God loves us regardless of our inequities. He also discusses his personal experiences and the lessons he has learned along the way through spiritual reflection. Hopefully these Brennan Manning inspirational quotes will help you understand the meaning of life and pursue personal happiness and freedom.

Image source: brokenbelievers.com