Quotable Quotes 

 

"Be not afraid of greatness; some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them." - William Shakespeare

"Father, make of me a crisis man. Bring those I contact to decision. Let me not be a milepost on a single road; make me a fork, that men must turn one way or another on facing Christ in me." - Jim Elliot

"Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Love is an exotic; it is not a plant which will flourish naturally in human soil, it must be watered from above." - C. H. Spurgeon

"The continuous and unembarrassed interchange of love and thought between God and the soul of the redeemed man is the throbbing heart of New Testament religion." - A. W. Tozer

"If you are walking backward, away from something you think is a mistake, you may be right in supposing it is a mistake, but for you to be walking backward is never right.  You know what happens to people who walk backward....  We are meant to walk forward, not backward, and reaction is always a matter of walking backward." - J. I. Packer

"There are perhaps occasions when we too can be tempted to take some 'short cut' - maybe some 'breakthrough' or 'insight' which will instantly lift our Christian living and experience to some higher plane, rather than the demanding and time-consuming labour of day-by-day self-control and sanctification." - Malcolm Horlock

"We need gracious minds trained to a high form of spiritual life by much converse with God in solitude.  These are the standard-bearers of the army: each one is a king's son.  There is an air about them, humble as they are, as of men who breathe a purer atmosphere....  The Lord send us a revival of consecrated strength, and heavenly energy!  May the weakest among us be as David, and David as the angel of the Lord!" C. H. Spurgeon

"The condition of the church may be very accurately gauged by its prayer meetings.  So is the prayer meeting a grace-ometer, and from it we may judge of the amount of divine working among a people.  If God be near a church, it must pray.  And if He be not there, one of the first tokens of His absence will be a slothfulness in prayer." - C. H. Spurgeon

"The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious." - Oswald Spengler

"It’s the marriage of the soul with nature that makes the intellect fruitful and gives birth to imagination." - Henry David Thoreau

"Faith is secured by adversity, but endangered by security."  - Margaret T. Jensen

"What are some practical steps believers can take to ensure that love and harmony will continue in the assembly? The flesh, the old nature, must be recognized whenever it appears and then be killed, without mercy."  - Donald L. Norbie

"There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go, if he doesn't mind who gets the credit." - Ronald Reagan

"Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds." - William Shakespeare

"We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything." - Blaise Pascal

"It is appropriation that tests us. How often we stop at admiration."  - C.A. Coates

"God intends that we should reach the place where we can speak, with or without manifest gifts, because we are the thing we say.  For in Christian experience the spiritual things of God are less and less outward, that is, of gift, and more and more inward, of life....  Then, though we teach the same doctrine, speak the same words, the impact on others is very different, manifesting itself in an increasing depth of the Spirit's work within them also." - Watchman Nee

"The fist should not be clenched until impact.  Relaxation will give you both speed and power....  Every blow just shoots from wherever the hand happens to be at the moment....  All punches should end with a snap several inches behind the target.  Thus you punch through the opponent, yet end the punch with a snap." - Bruce Lee  (See 2 Corinthians 10:3-5  -stk)

"The stillness in stillness is not the real stillness; only when there is stillness in movement does the universal rhythm manifest." - Bruce Lee  (See Revelation 4:2-6  -stk)

"Water is an example of wholeness without form; it can fill any container, and yet it is substance without shape.  Because it is formless, it permeates all....  Water can flow, and it can crash!" - Bruce Lee  (See 1 Corinthians 9:19-23  -stk)

"Agape love is...profound concern for the well-being of another, without any desire to control that other, to be thanked by that other, or to enjoy the process." - Madeleine L'Engle

“Since when was it more glorious to die for one’s country than for the Captain of our Salvation?” - William MacDonald

"Doctrine without exhortation makes man all brains, no heart; exhortation without doctrine makes the heart full, but leaves the brain empty.  Both together make a man." - W. H. G. Thomas

"We must love our fellows, without expecting friendship from them; they leave us and return, they go and come; let them do as they will; it is but a feather, the sport of the wind.  See God only in them; it is He that afflicts or consoles us, by means of them, according as we have need." - Fenelon

"God...doesn't intend to help us live the Christian life.  Immaturity considers the Lord Jesus a Helper.  Maturity knows Him to be life itself." - Miles J. Stanford

"According to my theory of initially self-reinforcing, but eventually self-defeating trends, the trend is your friend most of the way; trend followers only get hurt at inflection points....  I watch out for telltale signs that a trend may be exhausted. Then I disengage from the herd....." - George Soros  (See Matthew 16:2-3  -stk)

"Silence is so important.  Even when you cannot find total silence, you might try letting others take the lead in conversations.  There is no better way to quench the natural strength of the old nature than by silencing it." - Fenelon

"After the Lord resurrects you, He makes you fruitful.  He brings others into your life.  He brings someone to whom He wishes to commute divine love....  The love you will now express is simply the movement of the resurrected life within you." - Madame Jeanne Guyon

"The whole substance of religion is faith, hope, and love....  All things are possible to him who believes, they are less difficult to him who hopes, they are more easy to him who loves, and still more easy to him who perseveres in the practice of these three virtues. " - Brother Lawrence

"How very soon it becomes obvious that money can buy anything but people's real love, true joy, or the Lord's power for abundant living and eternal life.  Money talks, but it develops a stammer in life's big crises, a lisp in deep communication, and becomes tongue-tied when what it wants to buy is not for sale!" - Lloyd Ogilvie

"Our mind is a flowing something.  It oscillates.  Concentration is merely the continuous return to the same problem from a million angles....  So my problem is this: Can I bring the Lord back in my mind-flow every few seconds so that God shall always be in my mind?" - Frank Laubach

"It is possible for us to live in the very sense of the Lord's presence, under even the most difficult circumstances.  If you and I are going to enjoy the peace of paradise during this life we must become accustomed to a familiar, humble, and very affectionate conversation with the Lord Jesus." - Brother Lawrence

"There are times - and this will be borne out by many servants of God - when you cannot preach, you cannot do anything but hold on where you are, being there, standing there, keeping in close touch with heaven there." - T. Austin-Sparks

"God is not seeking a display of my Christ-likeness, but a manifestation of His Christ." - Watchman Nee

"There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." - William Shakespeare

"Community is not built on convenience...but on the conviction that I need it for spiritual health.  If you want to cultivate real fellowship, it will mean meeting together even when you don't feel like it, because you believe it is important." - Rick Warren

"Perseverance is more than endurance.  It is endurance combined with absolute assurance and certainty that what we are looking for is going to happen....  If our hopes seem to be experiencing disappointment right now, it simply means that they are being purified." - Oswald Chambers

"We must ourselves follow the Lord as conscientiously as we know how; but we must never imagine that God is confined to working through us.  The Savior will not have us to forbid others from working in His name 'because they follow not us' (Luke 9:49-50)...." - Dr. David Gooding

"It is not only the proclamation of the whole truth that is needed today; it is the release of the spiritual reality which the truth expresses, and that can only be realized as we allow ourselves to be caught into the mighty on-flowing tide of the Spirit." - Watchman Nee

"The deepest longing of the human heart and the deepest meaning of heaven and earth are summed up in this: the glory of God.  The universe was made to show it, and we were made to see it and savor it.  Nothing less will do." - John Piper

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." - Robert Frost

"We are not going to move this world by criticism of it, nor conformity to it, but by the combustion within it of lives ignited by the Spirit of God." - Vance Havner

"Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart - naught be all else to me, save that Thou art; Thou my best thought by day or by night - waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light." - 8th Century Irish hymn

"The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his time when it comes." - Benjamin Disraeli

"You have achieved excellence as a leader when people will follow you everywhere, if only out of curiosity." - Colin Powell

"For sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death." - 2 Corinthians 7:10

"To make known my wants, directly or indirectly, to a human being, is departure from the life of faith and a positive dishonor to God....  It is tantamount to saying that God has failed me, and I must look to my fellow for help....  It is placing the creature between my soul and God, thus robbing my soul of rich blessing, and God of the glory due to Him." - C. H. Makintosh

"[The] Savior was consumed by a passion for God and for His interests....  The Lord Jesus lived in a state of spiritual tension.  This is indicated by His words, 'I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how distressed I am till it is accomplished!' (Luke 12:50)." - William MacDonald

"God's thoughts center upon His beloved Son.  Christ is everywhere in the Word; His face looks out of every page...." - J. B. Watson

"The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones." - William Shakespeare

"Remove the centrality-of-Jesus-Christ message from ministry and meetings, and you can forget church life or organic meetings.  He must be the center of everything...not in lip service, but in the dynamic experiential whole." - Gene Edwards

"It is natural to admit the existence of a God as soon as one opens one's eyes....  The creation betokens the Creator." - Voltaire

"The terrible price we pay for keeping all those other people out so that we can savor the sweetness of being insiders is a reduction of reality, a shrinkage of life." - Eugene H. Peterson

"Conscience is, in most men, an anticipation of the opinion of others."  - Sir Henry Taylor;  But: "If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ." - Galatians 1:10

"Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend."  - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Love is giving your best self, for another's good."  - Canon Bryan Green

"There are no bona fide mass movements; it only looks that way.  At the center of the column there is always one man or woman who knows where his God is and where He is going."  - Richard Ellsworth Day

"The life function of [the local church] is to love the God who created it - to care for others out of obedience to Christ, to heal those who hurt, to take away fear, to restore community, to belong to one another, to proclaim the Good News while living it out.  The church is the invisible made visible."  - Charles Colson

"Monkeys are superior to men in this: When a monkey looks into a mirror, he sees a monkey."  - Malcolm de Chazal

"I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him."  - Booker T. Washington

"Learn to say no.  It will be of more use to you than to be able to read Latin." - C. H. Spurgeon

"Reading makes a full man, meditation a profound man, discourse a clear man." - Benjamin Franklin

"There is a kinship, a kind of freemasonry, between all persons of intelligence, however antagonistic their moral outlook." - Norman Douglas

"If it should be that any church feels that the Lord has shown them valuable truths and doctrines and principles, it is natural that that church should wish all the other churches everywhere to benefit from those insights." - Dr. David Gooding

"So hard a matter is it even for a good man to be high and humble." - John Wesley

"They made me the keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard have I not kept." - Song of Solomon 1:6

"In a full heart there is room for everything; in an empty heart there is room for nothing." - Antonio Porchia

"We know too much, and are convinced of too little.  Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion." - T. S. Eliot

"Do not be hasty in word or impulsive in thought to bring up a matter in the presence of God.  For God is in heaven and you are on earth; therefore let your words be few." - Ecclesiastes 5:2

"Words, words, words.  Everything you believe depends on what you think they mean." - Harold J. Berry

"If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.  Do good anyway....  People really need help, but may attack you if you do help them.  Help people anyway." - Dr. Kent M. Keith

"God has foreordained the works to which He has called you [see Ephesians 2:10].  He has been ahead of you preparing the place to which you are coming and manipulating all the resources of the universe in order that the work you do may be a part of His whole great and gracious work." - G. Campbell Morgan

"The Lord's goodness surrounds us at every moment.  I walk through it almost with difficulty, as through thick grass and flowers." - R. W. Barber

"Your playing small doesn't serve the world.  There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you....  And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same." - Nelson Mandela

"I found by daily experience, the more I did, the more I might do for God." - George Whitefield

"Big ideas are so hard to recognize, so fragile, so easy to kill.  Don't forget that, all of you who don't have them!" - John Elliot Jr.

"You may give without loving, but you cannot love without giving." - Richard Braunstein

"Doctrine is the framework of life - the skeleton of truth, to be clothed and rounded out by the living grace of a holy life." - A. J. Gordon

"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion." - Dean Inge

"Whom God would use greatly He will hurt deeply." - A. W. Tozer

"I bow to the sovereignty of God my heavenly Father; I have no will but His.  We know that God is love, and if, with love of which there is no measure, there be conjoined wisdom which makes no mistakes, what becomes us, His children, but to be full of thankfulness?" - R. C. Chapman

"The man who graduates today and stops learning tomorrow is uneducated the day after." - Newton D. Baker

"Either sin will keep you from the Word, or the Word will keep you from sin." – John Bunyan

"I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which one has overcome while trying to succeed." – Booker T. Washington

"We are mistaken if we think that we can get along with slovenly and incomplete knowledge of the Bible.  No amount of spiritual experience, or even the Spirit's help and instruction will take the place of the study God requires us to put upon His Word." – Katherine Bushnell

"There are many who preach Christ, but not so many who live Christ.  My great aim will be to live Christ." – R. C. Chapman

"The past has not exhausted the possibilities nor the demands for doing great things for God.  The church that is dependent on its past history for its miracles of power and grace is a fallen church...." – E. M. Bounds

"And if you address as Father the One who impartially judges according to each one's work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay on earth...." – 1 Peter 1:17

"When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more.  It is a temporary necessity.  But worship abides forever." – John Piper

"A professional is someone who can do his best work when he doesn't feel like it." - Alfred Alistair Cooke

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main....  Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." - John Donne

"Life happens at the level of events, not of words." - Alfred Adler

"What's past is prologue." - William Shakespeare 

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot

"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts...." - William Shakespeare

"What others think of us would be of little moment did it not, when known, so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"Truly You are a God who hides Himself...." - Isaiah 45:15  "You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart." - Jeremiah 29:13  "...If you seek Him, He will let you find Him; but if you forsake Him, He will reject you forever." - 1 Chronicles 28:9

"The character of God is today, and always will be, exactly what it was in Bible times....  God is forever what at that moment, three thousand years ago, He told Moses that He was (cf. Exodus 34:6,7)." - J. I. Packer

"We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability.  It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be co-workers with God...." - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"God cannot change for the better, for He is already perfect; and being perfect, He cannot change for the worse." - A. W. Pink

"You win them to what you win them with." - A. W. Tozer

"In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things love." - Augustine

"The Church is God's idea.  We can't help but notice the forceful and determined words of the Lord Himself in Matthew 16:18, 'I will build My Church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.'" - Brian Gunning

"Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies.  If anyone supposes that he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know; but if anyone loves God, he is known by Him." - 1 Corinthians 8:1-3

"Not how much of my money I give to God, but how much of His money I keep for myself." - R. G. LeTourneau

"Only those who see the invisible can do the impossible." - Unknown

"What does it say about our churches today that God birthed the church in a prayer meeting, but in our churches today prayer meetings are almost extinct?" - Jim Cymbala

"Don't let evangelism be a peripheral thing in your ministry.  Make it central - because Jesus made it central.  He came to seek and to save the lost." - Bill Bright

"By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy, and before all the people I will be honored." - Leviticus 10:3  "...but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin." - 1 John 1:7

"No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless.  There's too much work to do." - Dorothy Day

"I claim credit for nothing.  Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper." - Albert Einstein

"I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is - try to please everybody." - Herbert Bayard Swope      

"Men use thought only to justify their wrongdoings, and speech only to conceal their thoughts." - Voltaire

"The advisers of the ruler must be cold as ice; but the ruler himself should have fire, the spark of divine madness." - Confucius

"Oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; of having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but simply to pour them out." - Dinah Mulock

"Something there is that doesn't love a wall, that sends the frozen-ground-swell under it and spills the upper boulders in the sun, and makes gaps even two can pass abreast....  Something there is that doesn't love a wall, that wants it down...." - Robert Frost 

"If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up?  And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it." - Genesis 4:7 

"We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven.  The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection." - C. S. Lewis

"Faith is the sum total of our expectations based on what we know of God, and the guarantee that they will be met." - Dr. T. Cyprian Kia 

"Nothing ranks higher for mental discipline than a planned and systematic study of God's Word, from whence life's parameters and values are planted in the mind." - Ravi Zacharias

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." - Abraham Lincoln 

"Organization doesn't really accomplish anything.  Plans don't accomplish anything either....  Endeavors succeed or fail because of the people involved....  Surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but not themselves...." - Colin Powell 

"Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don't recognize them." - Ann Landers (Esther P. Lederer)

"Brethren, do not be children in your thinking; yet in evil be infants, but in your thinking be mature." - 1 Corinthians 14:20  "But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil." - Hebrews 5:14

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting.  It has been found difficult; and left untried." - G. K. Chesterton

"Come near to the holy men and women of the past and you will soon feel the heat of their desire after God....  They prayed and wrestled and sought...in season and out, and when they had found Him the finding was all the sweeter for the long seeking." - A. W. Tozer

"I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it." - Harry Emerson Fosdick

"Life is a succession of moments.  To live each one is to succeed." - Corita Kent

"The grace of God is unearned and unearnable, but if we ever expect to grow in grace, we must pay the price of a consciously chosen course of action." - Richard J. Foster

"Jesus didn't die for you because it was fun; He hung there for love, because it had to be done.  In spite of the anguish, His Word was fulfilled.  Love is not a feeling, it's an act of the will." - Don Francisco

"What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do." - Aristotle

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.  We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly." - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"This thing we call failure is not the falling down; it's the staying down." - Mary Pickford

"Missions, after all, is simply this: Every heart with Christ is a missionary, every heart without Christ is a mission field." - Count Zinzendorf

"Preach the gospel always.  When necessary use words." - Francis of Assisi

"Human compliments are like perfume.  Smell them, enjoy them while they last.  Please don't drink them; they will poison you." - Unknown

"I am tall on my knees, no way to fall on my knees.  Right where I belong, there I am strong through humility." - Billy Davis

"Live every day as if it were your last." - Marcus Aurelius 

"The tragedy of all tragedies is that we should live and die having never found that purpose, that special, God-ordained reason for serving our generation.  You have, like no other person on this planet,  particular contributions that you are to make to this generation.  They may not be as great as your dreams or they might be far beyond your expectations; but whatever they are, you are to find them and carry them out." - Dr. T. Cyprian Kia 

"Carpe diem, quam minimum credula a postero. - Seize the day, putting the least possible trust in tomorrow." - Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)

"Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor.  For if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion.  But woe to the one who falls when there is not another to lift him up." - Ecclesiastes 4:9,10

"Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity." - Oprah Winfrey

"A person completely wrapped up in himself makes a small package." - Harry Emerson Fosdick

"Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God.  It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness, the nourishment of mind by His truth, the purifying of imagination by His beauty, the opening of the heart to His love, and the submission of will to His purpose. And all of this gathered up in adoration is the greatest expression of which we are capable." - William Temple

"Yesterday is ashes, tomorrow wood.  Only today does the fire brightly burn." - Inuit Proverb

"Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer." - George Santayana

"To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary.  To one without faith, no explanation is possible." - Thomas Aquinas

"For God, who said, 'Light shall shine out of darkness,' is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.  But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves." - 2 Corinthians 4:6,7

"To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent.  To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius." - Henri Frederic Amiel

"Educated men are as much superior to uneducated men as the living are to the dead." - Aristotle

"Let love be without hypocrisy.  Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good." - Romans 12:9

"Although he's regularly asked to do so, God does not take sides in American politics." - George J. Mitchell

"There is nothing in history like the union of contrasts that confronts us in the Gospels.  The mystery of Jesus is the mystery of Divine personality." - James Stewart

"Grace creates liberated laughter.  The grace of God...is beautiful, and it radiates joy and awakens humor." - Karl Barth

"Our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.  And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner - no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment." - C. S. Lewis

"Without this faith there would be little meaning in my life.  I should be 'a mere pillar of darkness in the dark.'" - Helen Keller

"Make waves.  Make ripples.  Make something." - Microsoft mantra

 

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