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

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Everyone should carefully observe which way his heart draws him, and then choose that way with all his strength. (Hasidic Saying)

I truly feel that there are as many ways of loving as there are people in the world and as there are days in the life of those people. (Mary S. Calderone)

Advice is what you ask for when you already know the answer but wish you didn't. (Erica Jong)

The first virtue is to restrain the tongue; he approaches nearest to the gods who knows how to be silent, even though he is in the right. (Cato the Younger — B.C. 95-46)

Glorious gospel! which provides everything for the helpless, which draws nigh to us when we cannot reach after it — brings us grace before we seek for grace! (Spurgeon)

If you are debating as to whether or not God can deliver from sin, then either let Him do it or tell Him that He cannot. Do not quote this or that person to Him. Simply obey Matthew 11:28, "Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden...."

There is no education like adversity. (Our Daily Bread)

The charity that hastens to proclaim its good deeds, ceases to be charity, and is only pride and ostentation. (William Hutton)

There was a definite process by which one made people into friends, and it involved talking to them and listening to them for hours at a time. (Rebecca West)

It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion, it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who, in the midst of the world, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. (Ralph Waldo Emerson — 1803-1882)

To listen to some devout people, one would imagine that God never laughs. (Aurobindo Ghose)

I went about in pity for myself; and all the while a great wind was blowing me across the heavens. (Ojibway saying)

Whatever a man does he must do first in his mind. (Albert Szent-Gyöorgi — Hungarian-American Biochemist)

Magnificent promises are always to be suspected. (Theodore Parker)

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

The illusion that we are separate from one another is an optical delusion of our consciousness. (Albert Einstein)

God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh. (Voltaire)

Jesus says, in effect, "Don't worry about whether or not you are being treated justly." Looking for justice is actually a sign that we have been diverted from our devotion to Him. Never look for justice in this world, but never cease to give it. If we look for justice, we will only begin to complain and to indulge ourselves in the discontent of self-pity, as if to say, "Why should I be treated like this?" If we are devoted to Jesus Christ, we have nothing to do with what we encounter, whether it is just or unjust. In essence, Jesus says, "Continue steadily on with what I have told you to do, and I will guard your life. If you try to guard it yourself, you remove yourself from My deliverance." Even the most devout among us become atheistic in this regard — we do not believe Him. We put our common sense on the throne and then attach God's name to it. (Oswald Chambers)

If we give our enemy a foothold he will build a stronghold then use it as a stranglehold. (Lew Gervais)

Servants of Christ must be masters of themselves. (ODB)

Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved. (ODB)

Saying yes to God means saying no to things that offend His holiness. (A. Morgan Derham)

Love can wait to give; it is lust that can't wait to get. (Josh McDowell)

There is nothing so disagreeable, that a patient mind cannot find some solace for it. (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)

It is more shameful to distrust one's friends than to be deceived by them. (De la Rochefoucauld)

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of. (Blaise Pascal)

Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well. (Mohandas K. Gandhi)

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. (Albert Einstein)

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. (Galileo Galilei)

I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart. (e e cummings)

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. (Thomas Jefferson)

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. (Albert Einstein)

Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains. (Sir Winston Churchill)

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. (Niels Bohr)

We sit down at the door of God's purpose and enter a slow death through self-pity. And all the so-called Christian sympathy of others helps us to our deathbed. But God will not. He comes with the grip of the pierced hand of His Son, as if to say, "Enter into fellowship with Me; arise and shine." If God can accomplish His purposes in this world through a broken heart, then why not thank Him for breaking yours? (Oswald Chambers)

When you close your doors, and make darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; nay, God is within, and your genius is within. (Epictetus)

The man who backbites an absent friend, nay, who does not stand up for him when another blames him, the man who angles for bursts of laughter and for the repute of a wit, who can invent what he never saw, who cannot keep a secret — that man is black at heart: mark and avoid him. (Cicero)

Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets. (Paul Tournier)

Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. (Albert Einstein)

The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people. (Lucille S. Harper)

They don't ask much of you. They only want you to hate the things you love and to love the things you despise. (Boris Pasternak — Russian writer, on Soviet leaders. On this day in 1958, under pressure from Soviet leaders, Pasternak refuses Nobel Prize.)

In diving to the bottom of pleasure we bring up more gravel than pearls. (Honoré de Balzac)

The only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next. (Mignon Mclaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966)

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets real thing, it is irresistible. (CS Lewis)

He who stops being better stops being good. (Oliver Cromwell)

The Lord does not give me rules, but He makes His standard very clear. If my relationship to Him is that of love, I will do what He says without hesitation. If I hesitate, it is because I love someone I have placed in competition with Him, namely, myself. Jesus Christ will not force me to obey Him, but I must. And as soon as I obey Him, I fulfill my spiritual destiny. (Oswald Chambers)

Reason should direct and appetite obey. (Cicero)

Self-respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself. (Abraham J. Heschel)

You will find that silence or very gentle words are the most exquisite revenge for insult. (Judge Hall)

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

God will have no strength used in His battles but the strength which He Himself imparts. (Spurgeon)

Once I press myself into action, I immediately begin to live. Anything less is merely existing. The moments I truly live are the moments when I act with my entire will. (Oswald Chambers)

We come up to the truth of God, confess we are wrong, but go back again. Then we approach it again and turn back, until we finally learn we have no business going back. (Oswald Chambers)

Treat people as if they are what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being. (Johann von Goethe)

It is not so much our friends' help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us. (Epicurus)

Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century. (Perelman)

Most of us ask for advice when we know the answer but we want a different one. — Ivern Ball)

I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to. (Elvis Presley)

Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you. (C. G. Jung)

The gods too are fond of a joke. (Aristotle)

Saints are not, by nature, wells, or streams, they are but cisterns into which the living water flows; they are empty vessels into which God pours His salvation. (Spurgeon)

We have to remember that our conscious life, even though only a small part of our total person, is to be regarded by us as a "temple of the Holy Spirit." He will be responsible for the unconscious part which we don't know, but we must pay careful attention to and guard the conscious part for which we are responsible. (Oswald Chambers)

A word rashly spoken cannot be brought back by a chariot and four horses. (Chinese Proverb)

Attention to health is life's greatest hindrance. (Plato)

Plato was a bore. (Friedrich Nietzsche)

Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal. (Leo Tolstoy)

Be more prompt to go to a friend in adversity than in prosperity. (Chilo)

Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure. (Ross MacDonald — 1915-1983)

When I stop telling God what I want, He can freely work His will in me without any hindrance. He can crush me, exalt me, or do anything else He chooses. He simply asks me to have absolute faith in Him and His goodness. Self-pity is of the devil, and if I wallow in it I cannot be used by God for His purpose in the world. (Oswald Chambers)

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.(Mark Twain)

In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted. (Bertrand Russell)

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. (Woody Allen)

In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take. (Adlai Stevenson)

Heav'n hath no rage like love to hatred turn'd,
Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn'd. (William Congreve)

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. (Sir Winston Churchill)

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers. (Thomas Watson — 1874-1956, Chairman of IBM, 1943)

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. (Edmund Burke)

I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat! (Will Rogers)

If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out? (Will Rogers)

You could not have believed your own weakness had you not been compelled to pass through the rivers; and you would never have known God's strength had you not been supported amid the water-floods. (Spurgeon)

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence. (Mohandas K. Gandhi)

Most of us live only within the level of consciousness — consciously serving and consciously devoted to God. This shows immaturity and the fact that we're not yet living the real Christian life. Maturity is produced in the life of a child of God on the unconscious level, until we become so totally surrendered to God that we are not even aware of being used by Him. When we are consciously aware of being used as broken bread and poured-out wine, we have yet another level to reach — a level where all awareness of ourselves and of what God is doing through us is completely eliminated. A saint is never consciously a saint — a saint is consciously dependent on God. (Oswald Chambers)

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions — it only guarantees equality of opportunity. (Irving Kristol)

There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home. (Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977)

640K ought to be enough for anybody. (Bill Gates, 1981)

We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out. (Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962)

Victory has a thousand fathers but defeat is an orphan. (John F. Kennedy)

Everything that can be invented has been invented. (Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899)

Man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions. (Oliver Wendell Holmes)

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt. (Mark Twain)

The promises of God are of no value to us until, through obedience, we come to understand the nature of God. We may read some things in the Bible every day for a year and they may mean nothing to us. Then, because we have been obedient to God in some small detail, we suddenly see what God means and His nature is instantly opened up to us. (Oswald Chambers)

He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know. (Abraham Lincoln)

Nothing conceits like success. (Al Bernstein)

The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense. (Tom Clancy)

Nothing fails like success because you do not learn anything from it. The only thing we ever learn from is failure. (Wayne Dyer)

Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame. (Benjamin Franklin)

Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing. (Wernher Von Braun)

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. (Friedrich Nietzsche)

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. (Albert Einstein)

We can know what God is not, but we cannot know what He is. (Saint Augustine)

A God who let us prove his existence would be an idol. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

The Bible is the rope God throws us in order to ensure that we stay connected while the rescue is in progress. (J. I. Packer)

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his. (Helen Adams Keller)

God is subtle but he is not malicious. (Albert Einstein)

The Holy One...requires the heart (The Talmud)

When we discern that other people are not growing spiritually and allow that discernment to turn to criticism, we block our fellowship with God. God never gives us discernment so that we may criticize, but that we may intercede. (Oswald Chambers)

There are three kinds of giving: grudge giving says "I have to"; duty giving says "I ought to"; thanksgiving says "I want to." (Robert Rodenmayer)

Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small. (Friedrich von Logau)

Had I but served my God with half the zeal I served my king, he would not in mine age Have left me naked to mine enemies. (Shakespeare)

A bad habit is like a soft chair — easy to get into but hard to get out of. (ODB)

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)

If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated. (Voltaire)

Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside. (Mark Twain)

How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it. (Marcus Aurelius)

I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief (Gerry Spence)

The deeper our troubles, the louder our thanks to God, who has led us through all, and preserved us until now. Our griefs cannot mar the melody of our praise, we reckon them to be the bass part of our life's song, "He hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad." (Spurgeon)

You are God's king: reign over your lusts. You are God's chosen: do not associate with Belial. Heaven is your portion: live like a heavenly spirit, so shall you prove that you have true faith in Jesus, for there cannot be faith in the heart unless there be holiness in the life. (Spurgeon)

A man who is ruler of his passions is master of the world. (Dominic — Founder of order of preachers, 13th Century)

That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest. (Henry David Thoreau)

Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves. (George Gordon Noel Byron — 1788-1824)

I don't divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and the failures, those who make it or those who don't. I divide the world into learners and non-learners. (Benjamin Barber)

This new life will reveal itself in conscious repentance followed by unconscious holiness, never the other way around.(Oswald Chambers)

Is what you're living for worth dying for? (ODB)

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. (Henry David Thoreau)

It is impossible to live pleasurably without living prudently, honorably, and justly; or to live prudently, honorably, and justly, without living pleasurably. (Epicurus — 341-270 B.C.)

If a man points at the moon, an idiot will look at the finger. (Sufi wisdom)

Don't think there are no crocodiles because the water is calm. (Malayan Proverb)

Personally I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like to be taught. (Winston Churchill)

In prosperity our friends know us; in adversity we know our friends. (John Churton Collins)

Salvation is easy for us, because it cost God so much. But the exhibiting of salvation in my life is difficult. God saves a person, fills him with the Holy Spirit, and then says, in effect, "Now you work it out in your life, and be faithful to Me, even though the nature of everything around you is to cause you to be unfaithful." And Jesus says to us, "... I have called you friends...." Remain faithful to your Friend, and remember that His honor is at stake in your bodily life. (Oswald Chambers)

Without God we can't; without us He won't. (Anonymous)

Take God's promises to heart, but never take them for granted. (ODB)

God does not tell us what He is going to do, He reveals who He is. (Oswald Chambers)

I am defeated and know it if I meet any human being from whom I find myself unable to learn anything. (George Herbert Palmer)

In the initial stages it will be a continual effort to abide, but as you continue, it will become so much a part of your life that you will abide in Him without any conscious effort. Make the determination to abide in Jesus wherever you are now or wherever you may be placed in the future. (Oswald Chambers)

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something. (Plato)

Noise proves nothing — often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid. (Mark Twain — 1835-1910)

To be alone is to be different, to be different is to be alone. (Suzanne Gordon, Lonely in America, 1976)

Call on God, but row away from the rocks. (Indian Proverb)

Believer, go to the throne for a large supply of heavenly salt. It will season thine afflictions, which are unsavoury without salt; it will preserve thy heart which corrupts if salt be absent, and it will kill thy sins even as salt kills reptiles. Thou needest much; seek much, and have much. (Spurgeon)

The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is "look under foot." You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think. (John Burroughs)

He who sees the truth, let him proclaim it, without asking who is for it or who is against it. (Henry George)

Any problem that comes while I obey God (and there will be many), increases my overjoyed delight, because I know that my Father knows and cares, and I can watch and anticipate how He will unravel my problems. (Oswald Chambers, 12/14)

Prayer can do anything that God can do. (E.M.Bounds)

A sorrow shared is a sorrow halved. (Shakespeare)

This art of resting the mind and the power of dismissing from it all care and worry is probably one of the secrets of energy in our great men. (Captain J. A. Hadfield)

I believe you should live each day as if it is your last, which is why I don't have any clean laundry because, come on, who wants to wash clothes on the last day of their life? (Anonymous)

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal. (Henry Ford, 1863-1947)

We must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose. (Indira Ghandi)

Let not thy will roar, when thy power can but whisper. (Thomas Fuller)

Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years. If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry. Worry never fixes anything. (Mary Hemingway)

If you can't sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there and worrying. It's the worry that gets you, not the loss of sleep. (Dale Carnegie)

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any. (Alice Walker, 1944-)

He who labors diligently need never despair; for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor. (Menander of Athens)

That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment. (Dorothy Parker)

You train people how to treat you by how you treat yourself. (Martin Rutte)

Christianity is a statement which, if false, is of no importance, and, if true, is of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important. (CS Lewis)

There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great. (G.K. Chesterton)

Seek not happiness too greedily, and be not fearful of happiness. (Lao-tsze)

If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine...(John 7:17).

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence. (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

It is only a faithful person who truly believes that God sovereignly controls his circumstances. We take our circumstances for granted, saying God is in control, but not really believing it. We act as if the things that happen were completely controlled by people. (Oswald Chambers)

With focused attention and great care, you have to "work out" what God "works in" you — not work to accomplish or earn "your own salvation," but work it out so you will exhibit the evidence of a life based with determined, unshakable faith on the complete and perfect redemption of the Lord. As you do this, you do not bring an opposing will up against God's will — God's will is your will. Your natural choices will be in accordance with God's will, and living this life will be as natural as breathing. (Oswald Chambers)

Let us be of good cheer, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never happen. (James Russell Lowell — 1819-1891)

Knowing all truth is less than doing a little bit of good. (Albert Schweitzer)

Charity sees the need not the cause. (German Proverb)

We have passed through one more year. One more long stage in the journey of life, with its ascents and descents and dust and mud and rocks and thorns and burdens that wear the shoulders, is done. The old year is dead. Roll it away. Let it go. God, in His providence, has brought us out of it. It is gone...; its evil is gone; its good remains. The evil has perished, and the good survives. (Henry Ward Beecher)

A man who has not suffered, what does he know? (Henry Suso)

Joy is the serious business of heaven. (CS Lewis)

The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. (William James)

If you look at life one way, there is always cause for alarm. (Elizabeth Bowen)

Natural devotion may be enough to attract us to Jesus, to make us feel His irresistible charm, but it will never make us disciples. Natural devotion will deny Jesus, always falling short of what it means to truly follow Him. (Oswald Chambers)

If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with. (Stephen Stills)

You can't ever be really free if you admire somebody too much. (Tove Jansson)

You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover will be yourself. (Alan Alda)

Blessed is the person who is too busy to worry in the daytime and too sleepy to worry at night. (Anonymous)

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. (Aristotle)

People fail forward to success. (Mary Kay Ash)

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet. (Franz Kafka)

You cannot go around and keep score. If you keep score on the good things and the bad things, you'll find out that you're a very miserable person. God gave man the ability to forget, which is one of the greatest attributes you have. Because if you remember everything that's happened to you, you generally remember that which is the most unfortunate. (Hubert H. Humphrey)

The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one's 'own,' or 'real' life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one's real life — the life God is sending one day by day: what one calls one's 'real life' is a phantom of one's own imagination. This at least is what I see at moments of insight: but it's hard to remember it all the time. (CS Lewis)