Unsorted Quotes, Devotional Bits, "Good 'uns," and Beloved Bible Passages

On the outside, it may appear to others that we are winning the battle against sin. But we must stay alert to the sins of the spirit, especially pride. They can cause us to stumble and fall, (ODB)

God has no more precious gift to a church or an age than a man who lives as an embodiment of his will, and inspires those around him with the faith of what grace can do. (Andrew Murray)

Much of the modern resistance to chastity comes from men's beliefs that they "own" their bodies — those vast and perilous estates, pulsating with the energy that made the worlds, in which they find themselves without their consent, and from which they are ejected at the pleasure of another! (CS Lewis)

Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die. (Amelia Burr)

Judge thyself with the judgment of sincerity, and thou will judge others with the judgment of charity. (John Mitchell Mason)

Words written on the flyleaf of a Bible: "Acknowledgment. Acceptance. Adjustment." (ODB)

God takes us into His darkroom to develop our character. (ODB)

There is a vast difference between devotion to a person and devotion to principles or to a cause. Our Lord never proclaimed a cause — He proclaimed personal devotion to Himself. (Oswald Chambers)

Trouble does not necessarily bring consolation with it to the believer, but the presence of the Son of God in the fiery furnace with him fills his heart with joy. (Spurgeon)

Death opens a door out of a little, dark room (that's all the life we have known before it) into a great, real place where the true sun shines. (CS Lewis)

He will allow His Spirit to use whatever process it may take to bring us to obedience. The fact that we insist on proving that we are right is almost always a clear indication that we have some point of disobedience. (Oswald Chambers)

Obtain from yourself all that makes complaining useless. No longer implore from others what you yourself can obtain. (Andre Gide, 1869-1951)

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others. (Cicero, "Pro Plancio," 54 B.C.)

If we neglect our duty, men will be not only contented but transported by the mixed novelty and familiarity of snowdrops this January, sunrises this morning, plum pudding this Christmas. ... Only by our incessant efforts is the demand for infinite, or unrhythmical, change kept up. (CS Lewis)

A failure is a man who has blundered but is not able to cash in on the experience. (Elbert Hubbard — 1856-1915)

When you sing your own praise you are always out of tune. (ODB)

To have a thing is little, if you're not allowed to show it, and to know a thing is nothing unless others know you know it. (Charles Neaves)

If ... you feel that if you could indulge in sin without punishment, yet it would be a punishment of itself..., then be of good courage, thou art a child of God. (Spurgeon)

Charlie Hainline is a layman at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He is a man who radiates the love of Christ, and is serious about sharing his faith with others. One year, his goal was to lead 1650 people to faith in Christ (5 a day)! Once, he was out witnessing with a couple of other folks, and though he didn't share the gospel, he sat there and smiled broadly as a teammate did. When the teammate was finished and asked if the person would like to trust Christ and receive the gift of eternal life, the person replied, "If being a Christian would make me like him (point to Charlie), I want it!" Charlie's life wasn't a bed of roses by any means. His daughter was kidnapped, killed, and her head was found floating in a canal. When the murderer of his daughter was caught and convicted, Charlie went to jail in order to witness to the man. (Anonymous)

The continual inner-searching we do in an effort to see if we are what we ought to be generates a self-centered, sickly type of Christianity, not the vigorous and simple life of a child of God.... Launch out in reckless, unrestrained belief that the redemption is complete. Then don't worry anymore about yourself, but begin to do as Jesus Christ has said, in essence, "Pray for the friend who comes to you at midnight, pray for the saints of God, and pray for all men." Pray with the realization that you are perfect only in Christ Jesus, not on the basis of this argument: "Oh, Lord, I have done my best; please hear me now." (Oswald Chambers)

You cannot run away from a weakness; you must sometimes fight it out or perish. And if that be so, why not now, and where you stand? (Robert Louis Stevenson)

To find fulfillment...don't exist with life — embrace it. (Jim Beggs)

Shut out all of your past except that which will help you weather your tomorrows. (Sir William Osler)

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

Today we have substituted doctrinal belief for personal belief, and that is why so many people are devoted to causes and so few are devoted to Jesus Christ. People do not really want to be devoted to Jesus, but only to the cause He started. (Oswald Chambers)

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most times he will pick himself up and carry on. (Winston Churchill)

Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all...As long as matters are really hopeful, hope is mere flattery or platitude; it is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength. (GK Chesterton)

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from that of their social environment. (Albert Einstein, 1879-1955)

Doubt comes in at the window when inquiry is denied at the door. (Benjamin Jowett, 1817-1893)

Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look there. (Marcus Aurelius)

A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life; he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days. (Emerson)

I think every one who has some vague belief in God, until he becomes a Christian, has the idea of an exam, or of a bargain in his mind. The first result of real Christianity is to blow that idea into bits. (CS Lewis)

The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said. (Peter Drucker)

Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed be doing at that moment. (Robert Benchley)

Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it. (Seneca)

God gives every bird his worm, but he does not throw it into the nest. (Swedish proverb)

We have the idea that we can dedicate our gifts to God. However, you cannot dedicate what is not yours. There is actually only one thing you can dedicate to God, and that is your right to yourself (see Romans 12:1). (Oswald Chambers)

If you have no good feelings, if you be but willing, you are invited; therefore come! You have no belief and no repentance, — come to Him, and He will give them to you. (Spurgeon)

One who makes it a rule to be content in every part and accident of life because it comes from God praises God in a much higher manner than one who has some set time for the singing of psalms. (William Law)

The best way to convince a fool that he is wrong is to let him have his own way. (Josh Billings)

The sacrifice of selfish privacy which is daily demanded of us is daily repaid a hundredfold in the true growth of personality which the life of the body encourages. ...Obedience is the road to freedom, humility the road to pleasure, unity the road to personality. (CS Lewis)

As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death. (Leonardo da Vinci)

A soldier was astonished when he heard General Robert E. Lee speak in complimentary terms about a fellow officer. "General," he said, "do you know that the man you spoke so highly of is one of your worst enemies, and that he misses no opportunity to slander you?"
"Yes," said the General, "but I was asked for my opinion of him, not his of me."

When you look for the bad in people, expecting to find it.... you surely will (Benjamin Franklin)

In looking back, it would be wrong to deny that we have been in the Slough of Despond, and have crept along the Valley of Humiliation, but it would be equally wicked to forget that we have been through them safely and profitably; we have not remained in them, thanks to our Almighty Helper and Leader, who has brought us 'out into a wealthy place.' (Spurgeon)

Trouble is part of your life, and if you don't share it, you don't give the person who loves you a chance to love you enough. (Dinah Shore)

I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? (CS Lewis)

If we were to hear 100 people repeating the sentence, 'Let not your heart be troubled,' we should find that 99 of them put the emphasis upon the word troubled.... I feel led to believe that the purposed emphasis is on the word heart.... The heart is to be clothed in serene regality even when hell is knocking and rioting at its very gates. (J.H. Jowett)

Man is harder than iron, stronger than stone and more fragile than a rose. (Turkish proverb)

The greatest sign of success for a teacher is to be able to say, "The children are now working as if I did not exist." (Maria Montessori, Italian educator — 1870-1952)

Laughter is like changing a baby's diaper. It doesn't solve any problems permanently, but it makes things more acceptable for a while. (Pickles comic strip)

It is not on what we spend the greatest amount of time that molds us the most, but whatever exerts the most power over us. (Oswald Smith)

I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace. (Helen Keller)

Nothing produces such odd results as trying to get even. (Franklin P. Jones)

It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped on link at a time. (Sir Winston Churchill)

Have you ever seen a sidewalk turned inside out because a little acorn fell between the cracks? An acorn can't move sidewalks. But when you set the acorn free to be what it was created to be, you've got an oak tree on your hands. The law of the oak transcends the law of the concrete. When you accepted Jesus Christ, you received the acorn of the Spirit who wants to become the oak of your life to move aside the concrete of your problems. (Tony Evans)

The abiding awareness of the Christian life is to be God Himself, not just thoughts about Him. The total being of our life inside and out is to be absolutely obsessed by the presence of God. A child's awareness is so absorbed in his mother that although he is not consciously thinking of her, when a problem arises, the abiding relationship is that with the mother. In that same way, we are to "live and move and have our being" in God (Acts 17:28), looking at everything in relation to Him, because our abiding awareness of Him continually pushes itself to the forefront of our lives.(Oswald Chambers)

The sense of obligation to continue is present in all of us.
A duty to strive is the duty of us all. — Abraham Lincoln)

A feast is made for laughter, and wine makes life merry, but money is the answer for everything (Eccl 10:19)

I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him. (Booker T. Washington)

It is a mistake to regard age as a downhill grade toward dissolution. The reverse is true. As one grows older, one climbs with surprising strides. (George Sand)

We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us. (CS Lewis)

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. (CS Lewis)

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. (William A. Ward)

I have met no people who fully disbelieved in Hell and also had a living and life-giving belief in Heaven. (CS Lewis)

There are certain things in life that we need not pray about — moods, for instance. We will never get rid of moodiness by praying, but we will by kicking it out of our lives. Moods nearly always are rooted in some physical circumstance, not in our true inner self. It is a continual struggle not to listen to the moods which arise as a result of our physical condition, but we must never submit to them for a second. We have to pick ourselves up by the back of the neck and shake ourselves; then we will find that we can do what we believed we were unable to do. The problem that most of us are cursed with is simply that we won't. (Oswald Chambers)

The man who thinks he can do without the world is indeed mistaken; but the man who thinks the world cannot do without him is mistaken even worse. (Francois, duc de La Rochefoucauld)

Obedience from the heart is wanting to do what God tells you to do. (ODB)

If error is corrected whenever it is recognized as such, the path of error is the path to truth. (Hans Reichenbach)

No sin is worse than the sin of self-pity, because it removes God from the throne of our lives, replacing Him with our own self-interests. It causes us to open our mouths only to complain, and we simply become spiritual sponges — always absorbing, never giving, and never being satisfied. And there is nothing lovely or generous about our lives. (Oswald Chambers)

There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking. (Theodore Rubin)

As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand. (Josh Billings)

We are judged by how we finish, not by how we start. (ODB)

God is the Master Designer, and He allows adversities into your life to see if you can jump over them properly — "By my God I can leap over a wall" (Psalm 18:29).

The thief upon the cross was justified the moment that he turned the eye of faith to Jesus; and Paul, the aged, after years of service, was not more justified than was the thief with no service at all. We are to-day accepted in the Beloved, to-day absolved from sin (Spurgeon)

Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself. (Chinese Proverb)

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes. (Mahatma Gandhi)

God loves every one of us as if there were but one of us to love. (Augustine)

An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. (G.K. Chesterton)

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about. (Charles Kingsley)

A readiness to believe every promise implicitly, to obey every command unhesitatingly.... is the only true spirit of Bible study. (Andrew Murray)

Love means that there are no visible habits — that your habits are so immersed in the Lord that you practice them without realizing it. If you are consciously aware of your own holiness, you place limitations on yourself from doing certain things — things God is not restricting you from at all. This means there is a missing quality that needs to be added to your life. The only supernatural life is the life the Lord Jesus lived, and He was at home with God anywhere. Is there someplace where you are not at home with God? Then allow God to work through whatever that particular circumstance may be until you increase in Him, adding His qualities. Your life will then become the simple life of a child. (Oswald Chambers)

If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor. (Albert Einstein)

Be kind — Remember every one you meet is fighting a battle — everybody's lonesome. (Marion Parker)

We have seen only one [perfect] man. And he was not at all like the psychologist's picture of the integrated, balanced, adjusted, happily married, employed popular citizen. You can't really be very well 'adjusted' to your world if it says you have a devil and ends by nailing you up naked to a stake of wood. (CS Lewis)

Neither natural love nor God's divine love will remain and grow in me unless it is nurtured. Love is spontaneous, but it has to be maintained through discipline. (Oswald Chambers)

Our Master does not think so lightly of our unbelief as we do. When we are desponding we are subject to a grievous malady, not to be trifled with, but to be carried at once to the beloved Physician. (Spurgeon)

If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end. If you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth — only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair. (CS Lewis)

I bear witness that never servant had such a master as I have; never brother such a kinsman as He has been to me; never spouse such a husband as Christ has been to my soul; never sinner a better Saviour; never mourner a better comforter than Christ hath been to my spirit. I want none beside Him. In life He is my life, and in death He shall be the death of death; in poverty Christ is my riches; in sickness He makes my bed; in darkness He is my star, and in brightness He is my sun.... (Spurgeon)

The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best. (Epictetus)

Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling into at night. I miss you like hell. (Edna St. Vincent Millay)

A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past. (Eric Hoffer)

Jesus prayed, "This is eternal life, that they may know You...." (John 17:3). The real meaning of eternal life is a life that can face anything it has to face without wavering. If we will take this view, life will become one great romance — a glorious opportunity of seeing wonderful things all the time. God is disciplining us to get us into this central place of power. (Oswald Chambers)

I cannot choose the best. The best chooses me. (Rabindranath Tagore)

Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. (Henry David Thoreau)

We must begin to love in order that we may not fall ill,
and we must fall ill if, in consequence of frustration, we cannot love. (Sigmund Freud)

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present. (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 200 A.D.)

To ask that God's love should be content with us is to ask that God should cease to be God: because He is what He is, His love must, in the nature of things, be impeded and repelled by certain stains in our present character, and because He already loves us He must labour to make us lovable. (CS Lewis)

Every big problem was at one time a wee disturbance. (anonomous)

Remember, happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely on what you think (Dale Carnegie)

Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. (Helen Keller)

Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It was not reasoned into him, and cannot be reasoned out.(Sydney Smith)

They were so strong in their beliefs that there came a time when it hardly mattered what exactly those beliefs were; they all fused into a single stubbornness. (Louise Erdrich)

Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self.... Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in. (CS Lewis)

They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. (Ronald Reagan)

If we have only what we have experienced, we have nothing. But if we have the inspiration of the vision of God, we have more than we can experience. Beware of the danger of spiritual relaxation. (Oswald Smith)

Christians often want to die when they have any trouble. Ask them why, and they tell you, "Because we would be with the Lord." We fear it is not so much because they are longing to be with the Lord, as because they desire to get rid of their troubles; else they would feel the same wish to die at other times when not under the pressure of trial. (Spurgeon)

The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt. (Thomas Merton)

To love love and not its meaning hardens the heart in monstrous ways. (Archibald MacLeish)

We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks incognito. And the incognito is not always hard to penetrate. The real labour is to remember, to attend. In fact, to come awake. Still more, to remain awake. (CS Lewis)

Fear is the tax that conscience pays to guilt. (George Sewell)

To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. (CS Lewis)

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done whether you like it or not. (Thomas Huxley)

If anyone would like to acquire humility...the first step is to realise that one is proud...nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed. (CS Lewis)

Love is moral even without legal marriage, but marriage is immoral without love. (Ellen Key)

Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feelings that a legitimate claim has been denied. (CS Lewis)

There are some people who are totally unemployable in the spiritual realm. They are spiritually feeble and weak, and they refuse to do anything unless they are supernaturally inspired. The proof that our relationship is right with God is that we do our best whether we feel inspired or not. (Oswald Chambers)

It is better to have a lion at the head of an army of sheep than a sheep at the head of an army of lions. (Daniel Defoe)

Our work is not to save souls, but to disciple them. Salvation and sanctification are the work of God's sovereign grace, and our work as His disciples is to disciple others' lives until they are totally yielded to God. One life totally devoted to God is of more value to Him than one hundred lives which have been simply awakened by His Spirit.... God brings us up to a standard of life through His grace, and we are responsible for reproducing that same standard in others.... Many of us are dictators, dictating our desires to individuals and to groups. But Jesus never dictates to us in that way. Whenever our Lord talked about discipleship, He always prefaced His words with an "if," never with the forceful or dogmatic statement — "You must." Discipleship carries with it an option. (Oswald Chambers)

A recovery of the old sense of sin is essential to Christianity. Christ takes it for granted that men are bad. Until we really feel this assumption of His to be true, though we are part of the world He came to save, we are not part of the audience to whom His words are addressed. (CS Lewis)

...once our concentration is on God..., the only responsibility you have is to stay in living constant touch with God, and to see that you allow nothing to hinder your cooperation with Him. The freedom that comes after sanctification is the freedom of a child, and the things that used to hold your life down are gone. (Oswald Chambers)

Wit consists in seeing the resemblance between things which differ, and the difference between things which are alike. (Germaine de Staël)

A book must be an axe for the frozen sea inside of us. (Franz Kafka)

God will not look you over for medals, degrees, or diplomas, but for scars. (Elbert G. Hubbard)

Man is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed; the only animal that is never satisfied. (Henry George)

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. (Einstein)

A complaining Christian is a contradiction in terms. (ODB)

If your father and mother, your sister and brother, yes even the very cat and dog in your house are not happier for your being a Christian, it is a question whether you really are one or not. (Hudson Taylor)

Mortal lovers must not try to remain at the first step; for lasting passion is the dream of a harlot and from it we wake in despair. (CS Lewis)

Socrates used to say, "Philosophers can be happy without music;" and Christians can be happier than philosophers when all outward causes of rejoicing are withdrawn. (Spurgeon)

To make pleasures pleasant, shorten them. (Charles Buxton)

I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal to Him. (CS Lewis)

If I could do it all again, I would do less, and allow God to do more through me. (Vance Havner)

Our Lord doesn't hide these things from us, but we are not prepared to receive them until we are in the right condition in our spiritual life.... And our own unyielding and headstrong opinions will effectively prevent God from revealing anything to us. But our insensible thinking will end immediately once His resurrection life has its way with us. (Oswald Chambers)

Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels he is 'finding his place in it,' while really it is finding its place in him. (CS Lewis)

We succeed only as we identify in life, or in war, or in anything else, a single overriding objective, and make all other considerations bend to that one objective. (Dwight D. Eisenhower)

What do people mean when they say "I am not afraid of God because he is good?" Have they never been to a dentist? (CS Lewis)

Faithfulness in little things is a great thing. (ODB)

The ambiguous and the false, the unworthy and mean, will ere long overthrow and confute themselves, and therefore the true can afford to be quiet, and finds silence to be its wisdom. (Spurgeon)

... pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world. (CS Lewis)

What will all that chatter and hearsay count (will you even be able to remember it?) when the anaesthetic fog which we call 'nature' or 'the real world' fades away and the presence in which you have always stood becomes palpable, immediate, and unavoidable? (CS Lewis)

The mark of a good action is that it appears inevitable in retrospect. (Robert Louis Stevenson)

Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave. (Henry Peter Brougham, 1778-1868)

Use soft words and hard arguments. (English Proverb)

All humanity is divided into three classes: those who are immovable, those who are movable, and those who move! (Benjamin Franklin)

I can imagine our entire school system shriveling up. It is a $500 billion-dollar enterprise. By everybody's measure, they are inefficient, ineffective and very expensive. When we built that system, it was humanizing and democratic and good. But its very structure — it simulated the factory.... Now they continue to simulate a factory future, but the factories aren't going to be there. So what is going to happen is that these schools are going to shrink in relevance.... (Alvin Toffler)

He not busy being born is busy dying. (Bob Dylan)

I think earth, if chosen instead of Heaven, will turn out to have been, all along, only a region in Hell: and earth, if put second to Heaven, to have been from the beginning a part of Heaven itself. (CS Lewis)

Don't simply retire from something; have something to retire to. (Harry Emerson Fosdick)

I wish they'd remember that the charge to Peter was feed my sheep; not try experiments on my rats, or even, teach my performing dogs new tricks. (CS Lewis)

If we want to maintain personal intimacy with the Lord Jesus Christ, it will mean refusing to do or even think certain things. And some things that are acceptable for others will become unacceptable for us. (Oswald Chambers)

Calmness is a language the deaf can hear and the blind can read. (Mark Twain)

Do not wait for the last judgment. It takes place every day. (Albert Camus)

He treated the whole mob of men as a mob of kings. (GK Chesterton about St Francis)

It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head. (Sally Kempton)

Listen intently with your entire being until you hear the Bridegroom's voice in the life of another person. And never give any thought to what devastation, difficulties, or sickness it will bring. Just rejoice with godly excitement that His voice has been heard. You may often have to watch Jesus Christ wreck a life before He saves it (see Matthew 10:34). (Oswald Chambers)

Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens. (Epictetus)

We want in fact not so much a father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven — a senile benevolence who as they say 'liked to see young people enjoying themselves.' (CS Lewis)

We have to face our sins before we can put them behind us. (ODB)

If the Spirit of God detects anything in you that is wrong, He doesn't ask you to make it right; He only asks you to accept the light of truth, and then He will make it right. A child of the light will confess sin instantly and stand completely open before God. But a child of the darkness will say, "Oh, I can explain that." (Oswald Chambers)

Behold the great Apostle and High Priest of our profession, and sweat even to blood rather than yield to the great tempter of your souls. (Spurgeon)

Thankfulness in prayer can lift a load of care. (ODB)

Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself. (Elie Wiesel)

... the only test we should use to determine whether or not to allow a particular emotion to run its course in our lives is to examine what the final outcome of that emotion will be. Think it through to its logical conclusion, and if the outcome is something that God would condemn, put a stop to it immediately. But if it is an emotion that has been kindled by the Spirit of God and you don't allow it to have its way in your life, it will cause a reaction on a lower level than God intended. That is the way unrealistic and overly emotional people are made. (Oswald Chambers)

... death smites the goodliest of our friends; the most generous, the most prayerful, the most holy, the most devoted must die. And why? It is through Jesus' prevailing prayer — "Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am." It is that which bears them on eagle's wings to heaven. Every time a believer mounts from this earth to paradise, it is an answer to Christ's prayer.... You would give up your prayer for your loved one's life, if you could realize the thoughts that Christ is praying in the opposite direction — "Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am." Lord, Thou shalt have them. By faith we let them go. (Spurgeon)

I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business. (Michael J. Fox)

Let him do anything but act. No amount of piety in his imagination and affections will harm us if we can keep it out of his will. As one of the humans has said, active habits are strengthened by repetition but passive ones are weakened. The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel. (CS Lewis)

Grant that we may not so much seek to be understood as to understand. (St Francis of Assisi)

Rest satisfied with doing well, and leave others to talk of you as they please. (Pythagoras)

Humans are amphibians — half spirit and half animal...As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. (CS Lewis)

You are free to make decisions in the light of a perfect and delightful friendship with God, knowing that if your decisions are wrong He will lovingly produce that sense of restraint. Once he does, you must stop immediately. (Oswald Chambers)

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

The mind has exactly the same power as the hands; not merely to grasp the world, but to change it. (Colin Wilson)

Let us make daily use of our riches, and ever repair to Him as to our own Lord in covenant, taking from Him the supply of all we need with as much boldness as men take money from their own purse. (Spurgeon)

When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute — and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity. (Albert Einstein)

It seems to me that people have vast potential. Most people can do extraordinary things if they have the confidence or take the risks. Yet most people don't. They sit in front of the telly and treat life as if it goes on forever. (Philip Adams)

It is better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one than to have an opportunity and not be prepared. (Whitney Young, Jr.)

We are saved by faith alone, but faith that saves is never alone. (ODB)

Begin to see yourself as a soul with a body rather than a body with a soul. (Dr. Wayne Dyer)

We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality. (Albert Einstein)

Praise God for the community of believers, for they are Christ to you. (Anonymous)

The church is not a society of the successful. It is a fellowship of the forgiven. (Robert B. Munger)

Forgiving and being forgiven are two names for the same thing. (CS Lewis)

If you love darkness, and are satisfied to dwell in gloom and misery, then be content with little faith; but if you love the sunshine, and would sing songs of rejoicing, covet earnestly this best gift, "great faith." (Spurgeon)

Turbulence is life force. It is opportunity. Let's love turbulence and use it for change. (Ramsay Clark)

If we haven't learned to be worshipers, it doesn't really matter how well we do anything else. (Erwin Lutzer)

When you have no vision from God, no enthusiasm left in your life, and no one watching and encouraging you, it requires the grace of Almighty God to take the next step in your devotion to Him, in the reading and studying of His Word, in your family life, or in your duty to Him. It takes much more of the grace of God, and a much greater awareness of drawing upon Him, to take that next step, than it does to preach the gospel. (Oswald Chambers)

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. (Aristotle)

Our defeats are but stepping-stones to victory, and his victories are but stepping-stones to ruin. (Winston Churchill)

I often find myself at such cross-purposes with the modern world: I have been a converted Pagan living among apostate Puritans. (CS Lewis)

If thou rememberest that thou art going to heaven, thou wilt not sleep on the road. If thou thinkest that hell is behind thee, and the devil pursuing thee, thou wilt not loiter. (Spurgeon)

Never consider whether or not you are of use — but always consider that "you are not your own" (1 Corinthians 6:19). You are His. (Oswald Chambers)

Vegetarianism is harmless enough, though it is apt to fill a man with wind and self-righteousness. (Sir Robert Hutchinson)

If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Christians never say goodbye for the last time. (ODB)

Both the children were looking up into the Lion's face as he spoke these words. And all at once (they never knew exactly how it happened) the face seemed to be a sea of tossing gold in which they were floating, and such a sweetness and power rolled about them and over them and entered them that they felt they had never really been happy or wise or good, or even alive and awake, before. (CS Lewis)

We need to rely on the resurrection life of Jesus on a much deeper level than we do now. We should get in the habit of continually seeking His counsel on everything, instead of making our own commonsense decisions and then asking Him to bless them. (Oswald Chambers)

I used to think freedom was loving who I wanted and smoking what I wanted, and living as I pleased. What I discovered was that true freedom is doing what deep down inside you know you ought to do. True freedom is found in the grace and love of Jesus. (Anonymous)

Those that think it permissible to tell white lies soon grow color blind. (Austin O'Malley)

When you say that you agree to a thing in principle, you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out. (Otto von Bismarck)

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. (Friedrich Nietzsche)

Press on: nothing in the world can take the place of perseverance. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. (Calvin Coolidge)

The alternative to tragedy, or at least the risk of tragedy is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell. (Spurgeon)

Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. (Aldous Huxley)

Prayer is thus connected with the blessing to show us the value of it. If we had the blessings without asking for them, we should think them common things; but prayer makes our mercies more precious than diamonds. The things we ask for are precious, but we do not realize their preciousness until we have sought for them earnestly. (Spurgeon)

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Rouseau's philosophy continues to survive in the pop-psychology and "human potential" movements of today, and in the do-nothing school of child-rearing, which has given us so many little savages. (Judith Martin, a.k.a. Miss Manners)

Charming villains have always had a decided social advantage over well-meaning people who chew with their mouths open. "I could better eat with one who did not respect the truth or the laws," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, "than with a sloven and unpresentable person." (Judith Martin, a.k.a. Miss Manners)

As you journey with God, the only thing He intends to be clear is the way He deals with your soul. The sorrows and difficulties in the lives of others will be absolutely confusing to you. (Oswald Chambers)

Even in this world, of course, it is the stupidist children who are most childish and the stupidist grown-ups who are most grown-up. (CS Lewis)

Let us make one point, that we meet each other with a smile, when it is difficult to smile. Smile at each other, make time for each other in your family. (Mother Teresa)

The minute one utters a certainty, the opposite comes to mind. (May Sarton)

Most marriage failures are caused by failures marrying. (Henny Youngman)

If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it's not so bad. (CS Lewis)

This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: "In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it...." Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him! O people of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. How gracious he will be when you cry for help! As soon as he hears, he will answer you. (Isaiah 30:15, 18-19)

There is one art of which man should be master, the art of reflection. (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834)

Most people are mirrors, reflecting the moods and emotions of the times; few are windows, bringing light to bear on the dark corners where troubles fester. The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows. (Sydney J. Harris)

It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not. (Andre Gide)

When we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves. (Confucius)

I love my past. I love my present. I'm not ashamed of what I've had, and I'm not sad because I have it no longer. (Colette, The Last of Cheri)

Refuse to be ill. Never tell people you are ill; never own it to yourself. Illness is one of those things which a man should resist on principle. (Edward George Bulwer-Lytton)

Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of 'crackpot' than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost. (Thomas J. Watson)

Fear God and you will have nothing else to fear. (Anonymous)

In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong nothing can surpass it. (Lao Tzu)

The angels of God serve Him with songs, not with groans; a murmur or a sigh would be a mutiny in their ranks. That obedience which is not voluntary is disobedience, for the Lord looketh at the heart, and if He seeth that we serve Him from force, and not because we love Him, He will reject our offering. Service coupled with cheerfulness is heart-service, and therefore true. Take away joyful willingness from the Christian, and you have removed the test of his sincerity. (Spurgeon)

The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go. (Galileo Galilei)

There are not three levels of spiritual life — worship, waiting, and work. God's idea is that the three should go together as oe. They were always together in the life of our lord and in perfect harmony. It is a discipline that must be developed, it will not happen overnight. (Chambers.)

Man: a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal. (Alexander Hamilton)

Christians can never sin cheaply; they pay a heavy price for iniquity. Transgression destroys peace of mind, obscures fellowship with Jesus, hinders prayer, brings darkness over the soul.... (Oswald Chambers)

These little sins burrow in the soul, and make it so full of that which is hateful to Christ, that He will hold no comfortable fellowship and communion with us. A great sin cannot destroy a Christian, but a little sin can make him miserable. Jesus will not walk with His people unless they drive out every known sin. (Oswald Chambers)

Believe nothing against another but on good authority; and never report what may hurt another, unless it be a greater hurt to some other to conceal it. (William Penn)

Repentance does not cause a sense of sin — it causes a sense of inexpressible unworthiness. When I repent, I realize that I am absolutely helpless, and I know that through and through I am not worthy even to carry His sandals. Have I repented like that, or do I have a lingering thought of possibly trying to defend my actions? The reason God cannot come into my life is that I am not at the point of complete repentance. (Oswald Chambers)

Whenever anything begins to disintegrate your life with Jesus Christ, turn to Him at once, asking Him to re-establish your rest. Never allow anything to remain in your life that is causing the unrest. (Oswald Chambers)

A godly parent is a child's best guide to God. (ODB)

In all sickness, the Lord saith to the waves of pain, "Hitherto shall ye go, but no further." His fixed purpose is not the destruction, but the instruction of His people. Wisdom hangs up the thermometer at the furnace mouth, and regulates the heat. (Spurgeon)

Smite, Lord, smite, for my sin is forgiven; if Thou hast but forgiven me, smite as hard as Thou wilt. (Luther)

Psalm 30:5 For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.

The rainbow is only to be seen painted upon a cloud. When the sinner's conscience is dark with clouds, when he remembers his past sin, and mourneth and lamenteth before God, Jesus Christ is revealed to him as the covenant Rainbow, displaying all the glorious hues of the divine character and betokening peace. To the believer, when his trials and temptations surround him, it is sweet to behold the person of our Lord Jesus Christ — to see Him bleeding, living, rising, and pleading for us. God's rainbow is hung over the cloud of our sins, our sorrows, and our woes, to prophesy deliverance. (Spurgeon)

I've learned I must decide to look at sin as an offense against a holy God, instead of as a personal defeat; to take personal responsibility for [my] sin, depend on the grace of God; and obey God in all areas of life, however insignificant. (Jerry Bridges)

Man is certainly stark mad: he cannot make a flea, yet me makes gods by the dozens. (Montaigne)

History is fables agreed upon. (Voltaire, 1694-1778)

God does not give us overcoming life — He gives us life as we overcome. The strain of life is what builds our strength. If there is no strain, there will be no strength. Are you asking God to give you life, liberty, and joy? He cannot, unless you are willing to accept the strain. And once you face the strain, you will immediately get the strength. Overcome your own timidity and take the first step. Then God will give you nourishment.... (Oswald Chambers)

What a revelation it is to know that sorrow, bereavement, and suffering are actually the clouds that come along with God! God cannot come near us without clouds — He does not come in clear-shining brightness.

Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. (William Somerset Maugham)

Losses in business are often sanctified to our soul's enriching. If the chosen soul will not come to the Lord full-handed, it shall come empty. If God, in His grace, findeth no other means of making us honour Him among men, He will cast us into the deep; if we fail to honour Him on the pinnacle of riches, He will bring us into the valley of poverty. Yet faint not, heir of sorrow, when thou art thus rebuked, rather recognize the loving hand which chastens, and say, "I will arise, and go unto my Father." (Spurgeon)

When thieves robbed Matthew Henry, the English author, he still found something to be thankful for. He wrote these words in his diary: "Let me be thankful first, because I was never robbed before; second, because, although they took my purse, they did not take my life; third, because it was I who was robbed, not I who robbed."

Christ's finished work is like wine stored in the wine-vat; through unbelief we can neither draw nor drink. The Holy Spirit dips our vessel into this precious wine, and then we drink.... (Spurgeon)

There hang the blessings on the nail — Christ Jesus; but being short of stature, we cannot reach them; the Spirit of God takes them down and hands them to us, and thus they become actually ours. (Spurgeon)

Hofstadter's Law: The time and effort required to complete a project are always more than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

A handful of patience is worth more than a bushel of brains. (Dutch Proverb)

In his book The Pursuit of God, A. W. Tozer wrote, "Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned not to each other but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshipers [meeting] together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be were they to become unity-conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship." (ODB)

If an angel should lay his hand upon us when we are doing evil, he need not use any other rebuke than the question, "What thou? What dost thou here?" (Spurgeon)

To bear the Spirit's fruit don't let sin take root. (ODB)

The underlying foundation of Jesus Christ's kingdom is poverty, not possessions; not making decisions for Jesus, but having such a sense of absolute futility that we finally admit, "Lord, I cannot even begin to do it." Then Jesus says, "Blessed are you...." (5:11). This is the doorway to the kingdom, and yet it takes us so long to believe that we are actually poor! The knowledge of our own poverty is what brings us to the proper place where Jesus Christ accomplishes His work. (Oswald Chambers)

If life knocks you flat on your back, just tell yourself "Things are looking up!" (Ziggy, Tom Wilson)

Having the reality of God's presence is not dependent on our being in a particular circumstance or place, but is only dependent on our determination to keep the Lord before us continually. Our problems arise when we refuse to place our trust in the reality of His presence. The experience the psalmist speaks of — "We will not fear, even though...." (Psalm 46:2) — will be ours once we are grounded on the truth of the reality of God's presence, not just a simple awareness of it, but an understanding of the reality of it. Then we will exclaim, "He has been here all the time!" (Oswald Chambers)

They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel. (Carl W. Buechner)

When our lives honor Christ, even silence is eloquent. (ODB)

If you don't learn to laugh at troubles, you won't have anything to laugh at when you grow old. (Ed Howe)

He who receives a benefit should never forget it; he who bestow should never remember it. (Pierre Charron)

Take hold lightly; let go lightly. This is one of the great secrets of felicity in love. (Spanish Proverb)

The true test of our spirituality occurs when we come up against injustice, degradation, ingratitude, and turmoil, all of which have the tendency to make us spiritually lazy. While being tested, we want to use prayer and Bible reading for the purpose of finding a quiet retreat. We use God only for the sake of getting peace and joy. We seek only our enjoyment of Jesus Christ, not a true realization of Him. This is the first step in the wrong direction. All these things we are seeking are simply effects, and yet we try to make them causes.(Oswald Chambers)

In every believer there is darkness and light, and yet he is not to be named a sinner because there is sin in him, but he is to be named a saint because he possesses some degree of holiness. This will be a most comforting thought to those who are mourning their infirmities, and who ask, "Can I be a child of God while there is so much darkness in me?" Yes...; for you are spoken of in the word of God as if you were even now perfectly holy as you will be soon. You are called the child of light, though there is darkness in you still. You are named after what is the predominating quality in the sight of God, which will one day be the only principle remaining.... (Oswald Chambers)

It is a blessed aphorism of John Bunyan, "That which is last, lasts for ever." ... though you are naturally darkness, when once you become light in the Lord, there is no evening to follow; "thy sun shall no more go down." The first day in this life is an evening and a morning; but the second day, when we shall be with God, for ever, shall be a day with no evening, but one, sacred, high, eternal noon. (Spurgeon)

Sorrow was like the wind. It came in gusts. (Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings)

You have to dig deep to bury your Daddy. (PROVERB, PK webpage)

It is when we are in the valley, where we prove whether we will be the choice ones, that most of us turn back. We are not quite prepared for the bumps and bruises that must come if we are going to be turned into the shape of the vision. We have seen what we are not, and what God wants us to be, but are we willing to be battered into the shape of the vision to be used by God? The beatings will always come in the most common, everyday ways and through common, everyday people. (Chambers)

"If any man sin, we have an advocate" (I Jn. 2:1) Yes, though we sin, we have Him still. John does not say, "If any man sin he has forfeited his advocate," but "we have an advocate," sinners though we are. All the sin that a believer ever did, or can be allowed to commit, cannot destroy his interest in the Lord Jesus Christ, as his advocate. (Spurgeon)

The Lord's people shall also enjoy light in the hour of death. Unbelief laments; the shadows fall, the night is coming, existence is ending. Ah no, crieth faith, the night is far spent, the true day is at hand. Light is come, the light of immortality, the light of a Father's countenance. Gather up thy feet in the bed, see the waiting bands of spirits! Angels waft thee away. Farewell, beloved one, thou art gone, thou wavest thine hand. Ah, now it is light. The pearly gates are open, the golden streets shine in the jasper light. We cover our eyes, but thou beholdest the unseen; adieu, brother, thou hast light at even-tide, such as we have not yet. (Spurgeon)

No really great man ever thought himself so. (William Hazlitt — 1778-1830 — British essayist noted for literary criticism)

We can remain powerless forever ... by trying to do God's work without concentrating on His power, and by following instead the ideas that we draw from our own nature. We actually slander and dishonor God by our very eagerness to serve Him without knowing Him.(Oswald Chambers)

Our place of safety is the bosom of the Saviour. Perhaps we are tempted just now, in order to drive us nearer to Him. Blessed be any wind that blows us into the port of our Saviour's love! Happy wounds, which make us seek the beloved Physician.(Spurgeon)

My mother drew a distinction between achievement and success. She said that 'achievement is the knowledge that you have studied and worked hard and done the best that is in you. Success is being praised by others, and that's nice, too, but not as important or satisfying. Always aim for achievement and forget about success.' (Helen Hayes)

In 1968 the Olympics were held in Mexico City; my favorite event was the marathon. The crowd had pretty well gone because the winners had been declared, but there was still one man out — a man from Africa. He finally showed up, hobbling around the track with blood pouring from a bandage on his leg. As he made the final lap, those remaining began to stand. They clapped and yelled beyond anything the winner had received. After the man finished, he went directly to the locker room. The press followed him, asking, "Why did you continue in the race when it was obvious you couldn't win?" He said, "My country didn't send me 7,000 miles to start the race; they sent me to finish. That's what I did." (Howard Hendricks)

Most of us can do things if we are always at some heroic level of intensity, simply because of the natural selfishness of our own hearts. But God wants us to be at the drab everyday level, where we live in the valley according to our personal relationship with Him. (Oswald Chambers)

To be a holy person means that the elements of our natural life experience the very presence of God as they are providentially broken in His service. We have to be placed into God and brought into agreement with Him before we can be broken bread in His hands. Stay right with God and let Him do as He likes, and you will find that He is producing the kind of bread and wine that will benefit His other children. (Spurgeon)

Be substantially great in thyself, and more than thou appearest unto others. (Sir Thomas Browne, "Christian Morals," 1716)

Switzerland is known for its scenic mountains and beautiful waterfalls. A visitor to that picturesque country observed: Some guidebooks name the time when rainbows may be seen on many of the waterfalls in Switzerland. One day, when I was at Lauterbrunnen, I went to the famous Staubbach Falls and watched and waited. Others did the same, and we all went away quite disappointed. The next day one of my friends said he would show us how to find the rainbow. So I went again and saw a lovely one, and stood almost in the center of it. Then I found that not only were sunshine and spray necessary to produce a rainbow, but also that it could be seen and enjoyed only at a certain point. (ODB)

Worries go down better with soup than without. (Jewish)

By perseverance the snail reached the ark. (Spurgeon)

Don't worry that other people don't know you; worry that you don't know other people. (Confucius)

An act of goodness is of itself an act of happiness. No reward coming after the event can compare with the sweet reward that went with it. (Maurice Maeterlinck)

Do not pursue what is illusory — property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade and can be confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life — don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. (Alexander Solzhenitsyn)

He who does not prepare for death is more than an ordinary fool, he is a madman. (Spurgeon)

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give. (Winston Churchill)

If God be just, I, a sinner, alone and without a substitute, must be punished; but Jesus stands in my stead and is punished for me; and now, if God be just, I, a sinner, standing in Christ, can never be punished. God must change His nature before one soul, for whom Jesus was a substitute, can ever by any possibility suffer the lash of the law. Therefore, Jesus having taken the place of the believer — having rendered a full equivalent to divine wrath for all that His people ought to have suffered as the result of sin, the believer can shout with glorious triumph, "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?" Not God, for He hath justified; not Christ, for He hath died, "yea rather hath risen again." My hope lives not because I am not a sinner, but because I am a sinner for whom Christ died; my trust is not that I am holy, but that being unholy, He is my righteousness. My faith rests not upon what I am, or shall be, or feel, or know, but in what Christ is, in what He has done, and in what He is now doing for me. On the lion of justice the fair maid of hope rides like a queen. (Spurgeon)

Never disregard a conviction that the Holy Spirit brings to you. If it is important enough for the Spirit of God to bring it to your mind, it is the very thing He is detecting in you. You were looking for some big thing to give up, while God is telling you of some tiny thing that must go. But behind that tiny thing lies the stronghold of obstinacy, and you say, "I will not give up my right to myself" — the very thing that God intends you to give up if you are to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. (Oswald Chambers)

Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do. (Voltaire)

In battling evil, excess is good; for he who is moderate in announcing the truth is presenting half-truth. He conceals the other half out of fear of the people's wrath. (Kahlil Gibran)

Throw your heart over the fence and the rest will follow. (Norman Vincent Peale)

The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time. (Colette, Paris From My Window)

Our Lord never takes measures to make me do what He wants. Sometimes I wish God would master and control me to make me do what He wants, but He will not. And at other times I wish He would leave me alone, and He does not. (Oswald Chambers)

If we are consciously aware that we are being mastered, that idea itself is proof that we have no master. If that is our attitude toward Jesus, we are far away from having the relationship He wants with us. He wants us in a relationship where He is so easily our Master and Teacher that we have no conscious awareness of it — a relationship where all we know is that we are His to obey. (Oswald Chambers)

Thought to Apply: Before God can deliver us we must undeceive ourselves. (Augustine)

Whatever you are, be a good one. (Abraham Lincoln)

It is a mistake to regard age as a downhill grade toward dissolution. The reverse is true. As one grows older, one climbs with surprising strides. (George Sand)

Love truth, and pardon error. (Voltaire)

Satan does not tempt us just to make us do wrong things — he tempts us to make us lose what God has put into us through regeneration, namely, the possibility of being of value to God. He does not come to us on the premise of tempting us to sin, but on the premise of shifting our point of view, and only the Spirit of God can detect this as a temptation of the devil. (Oswald Chambers)

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. (Francis Bacon)

Wisdom doesn't automatically come with old age. Nothing does — except wrinkles. It's true, some wines improve with age. But only if the grapes were good in the first place. (Abigail Van Buren, 1978)

For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them. (Aristotle)

...those who are made partakers of the divine nature will manifest their high and holy relationship in their intercourse with others, and make it evident by their daily walk and conversation that they have escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. O for more divine holiness of life! (Spurgeon)

A strong will often conceals a strong "won't." (ODB)

Many people have turned back because they are afraid to look at things from God's perspective. The greatest spiritual crisis comes when a person has to move a little farther on in his faith than the beliefs he has already accepted. (Oswald Chambers)

Have you "renounced the hidden things of shame" in your life — the things that your sense of honor or pride will not allow to come into the light? You can easily hide them. Is there a thought in your heart about anyone that you would not like to be brought into the light? Then renounce it as soon as it comes to mind — renounce everything in its entirety until there is no hidden dishonesty or craftiness about you at all. (Oswald Chambers)

Content thyself to be obscurely good. When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, the post of honor is a private station. (Joseph Addison)

You cannot think through spiritual confusion to make things clear; to make things clear, you must obey. In intellectual matters you can think things out, but in spiritual matters you will only think yourself into further wandering thoughts and more confusion. If there is something in your life upon which God has put His pressure, then obey Him in that matter. Bring all your "arguments and.... every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ" regarding the matter, and everything will become as clear as daylight to you (2 Corinthians 10:5). Your reasoning capacity will come later, but reasoning is not how we see. We see like children, and when we try to be wise we see nothing. (Oswald Chambers)

In absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily acts of trivia.

Life's challenges are designed not to break us but to bend us toward God. (ODB)

None are so precious in Jesus' sight as the sinners for whom He died. When Jesus receives sinners, He has not some out-of-doors reception place, no casual ward where He charitably entertains them as men do passing beggars, but He opens the golden gates of His royal heart, and receives the sinner right into Himself — yea, He admits the humble penitent into personal union and makes Him a member of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. There was never such a reception as this!

You may have pleasure; but when you are merry, sing psalms and make melody in your hearts to the Lord. (Spurgeon)

Never do anything when you are in a temper, for you will do everything wrong. (Baltasar Gracian)

Temptation says, "Do this pleasant thing; do not be hindered by the fact that it is wrong." Trial or proving says, "Do this right and noble thing; do not be hindered by the fact that it is painful." (Anonymous)

Our faith is really and truly tested only when we are brought into very severe conflicts, and when even hell itself seems opened to swallow us up. (John Calvin)

Never esteem anything as of advantage to thee that shall make thee break thy word or lose thy self-respect. (Marcus Aurelius)

Science may have found a cure for most evils; but is has found no remedy for the worst of them all — the apathy of human beings. (Helen Keller, My Religion)

If you would reach to something higher than ordinary groveling experience, look to the Rock that is higher than you, and gaze with the eye of faith through the window of importunate prayer. When you open the window on your side, it will not be bolted on the other. (Spurgeon)

Familiarity is a magician that is cruel to beauty but kind to ugliness. (Ouida)

Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece. (Ralph Charell)

He who confers a favor should at once forget it, if he is not to show a sordid ungenerous spirit. To remind a man of a kindness conferred and to talk of it, is little different from reproach. (Demosthenes)

Truth is something like the cluster of the vine: if we would have wine from it, we must bruise it; we must press and squeeze it many times. The bruiser's feet must come down joyfully upon the bunches, or else the juice will not flow; and they must well tread the grapes, or else much of the precious liquid will be wasted. So we must, by meditation, tread the clusters of truth, if we would get the wine of consolation therefrom. (Spurgeon)

The Holy Spirit consoles, but Christ is the consolation. If we may use the figure, the Holy Spirit is the Physician, but Jesus is the medicine. (Spurgeon)

I here present myself, praying to live only in Thee and to Thee. Let me be as the bullock which stands between the plough and the altar, to work or to be sacrificed; and let my motto be, "Ready for either." (Spurgeon)

Earth should be a preparation for heaven; and heaven is the place where saints feast most and work most. They sit down at the table of our Lord, and they serve Him day and night in His temple. They eat of heavenly food and render perfect service. (Spurgeon, 10/05 a.m.)

Lord, paint upon the eyeballs of my soul the image of Thy Son. (Spurgeon)

Lord, please keep your arm around my shoulder and your hand over my mouth.

God, give us the desires of our heart — and the desires of your heart.
May these be the same set of desires.

Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules, for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases, though not often. (Samuel Butler, 1612-1680)

To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am. (Bernard M. Baruch, 1940)

He deserves Paradise who makes his companions laugh. (The Koran)

If God gave us favours without constraining us to pray for them we should never know how poor we are, but a true prayer is an inventory of wants, a catalogue of necessities, a revelation of hidden poverty. While it is an application to divine wealth, it is a confession of human emptiness. The most healthy state of a Christian is to be always empty in self and constantly depending upon the Lord for supplies; to be always poor in self and rich in Jesus; weak as water personally, but mighty through God to do great exploits; (Spurgeon)

Our enemies come nearer the truth in the opinions they form of us than we do in our opinion of ourselves. (La Rochefoucauld — 1613-1680)

Integrity has no need of rules. (Albert Camus — 1913-1960)

Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy. (Anne Frank, Diary of a Young Girl, 1952)

The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but to reveal to him his own. (Benjamin Disraeli)

In some sense the path to heaven is very safe, but in other respects there is no road so dangerous. (Spurgeon)

A child who is allowed to be disrespectful to his parents will not have true respect for anyone. (Billy Graham)

God's love is to be enjoyed, not tested. (ODB)

Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.(Confucius)

To establish oneself in the world, one has to do all one can to appear established. (Francois La Rochefoucauld)

I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching,and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person. (Socrates, quoted by Plato, The Death of Socrates)

The nature of sin is not immorality and wrongdoing, but the nature of self-realization which leads us to say, "I am my own god." This nature may exhibit itself in proper morality or in improper immorality, but it always has a common basis — my claim to my right to myself. When our Lord faced either people with all the forces of evil in them, or people who were clean — living, moral, and upright, He paid no attention to the moral degradation of one, nor any attention to the moral attainment of the other. He looked at something we do not see, namely, the nature of man. (Chambers)

Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work. (Peter F. Drucker)

Often the best thing about not saying anything is that it can't be repeated. (Suzan Wiener)

Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear. (Thomas Jefferson)

Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you. (James 1:21)

Honest criticism is hard to take — especially when it comes from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger. (Franklin Jones)

It really is true to say, "I cannot live a holy life," but you can decide to let Jesus Christ make you holy. "You cannot serve the Lord ..." — but you can place yourself in the proper position where God's almighty power will flow through you. Is your relationship with God sufficient for you to expect Him to exhibit His wonderful life in you? (Oswald Chambers)

Have you ever really weighed and considered how great the sin of God's people is? Think how heinous is your own transgression, and you will find that not only does a sin here and there tower up like an alp, but that your iniquities are heaped upon each other..., mountain upon mountain. What an aggregate of sin there is in the life of one of the most sanctified of God's children! Attempt to multiply this, the sin of one only, by the multitude of the redeemed, "a number which no man can number," and you will have some conception of the great mass of the guilt of the people for whom Jesus shed His blood. (Spurgeon)

The Christian life is a life characterized by true and spontaneous creativity. Consequently, a disciple is subject to the same charge that was leveled against Jesus Christ, namely, the charge of inconsistency. But Jesus Christ was always consistent in His relationship to God, and a Christian must be consistent in his relationship to the life of the Son of God in him, not consistent to strict, unyielding doctrines. People pour themselves into their own doctrines, and God has to blast them out of their preconceived ideas before they can become devoted to Jesus Christ. (Oswald Chambers)

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar. (Helen Keller)

These sermons of Jesus Christ are meant for your will and your conscience, not for your head. If you dispute these verses from the Sermon on the Mount with your head, you will dull the appeal to your heart. (Oswald Chambers)

He stands at the door and knocks, and if His people will but open He rejoices to enter. But in what state is my heart, which is my Lord's garden? May I venture to hope that it is well trimmed and watered, and is bringing forth fruit fit for Him? If not, He will have much to reprove, but still I pray Him to come unto me, for nothing can so certainly bring my heart into a right condition as the presence of the Sun of Righteousness, who brings healing in His wings. (Spurgeon)

Live as if Christ died yesterday and is coming back today. (ODB)

Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live. (Margaret Fuller)

Sorrow shared is a sorrow halved.(Shakespeare)

With an enthusiastic love for Jesus difficulties are surmounted, sacrifices become pleasures, sufferings are honours. (Spurgeon)

No creature that deserved redemption would need to be redeemed. (CS Lewis)

Why should I despair of loving Jesus with a love as strong as death? He deserves it: I desire it. The martyrs felt such love, and they were but flesh and blood, then why not I? They mourned their weakness, and yet out of weakness were made strong. Grace gave them all their unflinching constancy — there is the same grace for me. Jesus, lover of my soul, shed abroad such love, even Thy love in my heart, this evening. (Spurgeon)

True repentance has a distinct reference to the Saviour. When we repent of sin, we must have one eye upon sin and another upon the cross, or it will be better still if we fix both our eyes upon Christ and see our transgressions only, in the light of His love. (Spurgeon)

No man may say he hates sin, if he lives in it. Repentance makes us see the evil of sin, not merely as a theory, but experimentally — as a burnt child dreads fire. We shall be as much afraid of it, as a man who has lately been stopped and robbed is afraid of the thief upon the highway; and we shall shun it — shun it in everything — not in great things only, but in little things, as men shun little vipers as well as great snakes. True mourning for sin will make us very jealous over our tongue, lest it should say a wrong word; we shall be very watchful over our daily actions, lest in anything we offend, and each night we shall close the day with painful confessions of shortcoming, and each morning awaken with anxious prayers, that this day God would hold us up that we may not sin against Him. (Spurgeon)

All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer. (Robert Louis Stevenson)

If salvation can be attained only by working hard, then surely horses and donkeys would be in heaven. (Martin Luther)

Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time. (Mark Twain)

Don't believe the world owes you a living; the world owes you nothing — it was here first. (Mark Twain)

I don't even butter my bread; I consider that cooking. (Katherine Cebrian)

Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth. (Franklin D. Roosevelt)

It is a blessed thing to be teachable as a little child, but it is a much more blessed thing when one has been taught the lesson, to carry it out to the letter. (Spurgeon)

Our Lord told us how our love for Him is to exhibit itself when He asked, "Do you love Me?" (John 21:17). And then He said, "Feed My sheep." In effect, He said, "Identify yourself with My interests in other people," not, "Identify Me with your interests in other people." (Oswald Chambers)

You can stand almost anything if you know it isn't permanent. (Steve Brown in