Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
God left the world unfinished for man to work his skill upon. He left the electricity still in the cloud, the oil still in the earth.
No man can make haste to be rich without going against the will of God, in which case it is the one frightful thing to be successful.
What I would say is this, that the light is not blinding because God would hide, but because the truth is too glorious for our vision.
As to the pure all things are pure, so the common mind sees far more vulgarity in others than the mind developed in genuine refinement.
I learned that he that will be a hero will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work is sure of his manhood.
If there be a God and one has never sought him, it will be small consolation to remember that one could not get proof of his existence.
God will not take shelter behind a jugglery of logic or metaphysics. He is neither a schoolman nor theologian, but our Father in Heaven.
It is to the man who is trying to live, to the man who is obedient to the word of the Master, that the word of the Master unfolds itself.
I saw thee ne'er before; I see thee never more; But love, and help, and pain, beautiful one, Have made thee mine, till all my years are done.
For this, deep waters whelm the fruitful lea, Wars ravage, famine wastes, plague withers, nor Shall cease till men have chosen the better part.
Her heart - like every heart, if only its fallen sides were cleared away - was an inexhaustible fountain of love: she loved everything she saw.
All love will, one day, meet with its return. All true love will, one day, behold its own image in the eyes of the beloved, and be humbly glad.
But it is not the rich man only who is under the dominion of things; they too are slaves who, having no money, are unhappy from the lack of it.
Alas, how easily things go wrong! A sigh too much, a kiss too long And there follows a mist and a weeping rain And life is never the same again
But words are vain; reject them all— They utter but a feeble part: Hear thou the depths from which they call, The voiceless longing of my heart.
there is no harm in being afraid. The only harm is in doing what Fear tells you. Fear is not your master! Laugh in his face and he will run away.
I am so tried by the things said about God. I understand God's patience with the wicked, but I do wonder how he can be so patient with the pious!
We have to do with God, to whom no one can look without the need of being good waking up in his heart; to think about God is to begin to be good.
She would wonder what had hurt her when she found her face wet with tears, and then would wonder how she could have been hurt without knowing it.
For the greatest fool and rascal in creation there is yet a worse condition; and that is, not to know it, but to think himself a respectable man.
They will pressure you into doing things that may be unsafe, use your good judgment, and remember, 'I would rather be laughed at, than cried for.'
For that great Love speaks in the most wretched and dirty hearts; only the tone of its voice depends on the echoes of the place in which it sounds.
The purposes of God point to one simple end-that we should be as he is, think the same thoughts, mean the same things, possess the same blessedness.
Now and then, when I look round on my books, they seem to waver as if a wind rippled their solid mass, and another world were about to break through.
But there are not a few who would be indignant at having their belief in God questioned, who yet seem greatly to fear imagining Him better than He is.
No man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when tomorrow's burden is added to the burden of today that the weight is more than a man can bear.
All those evil doctrines about God that work misery and madness have their origin in the brains of the wise and prudent, not in the hearts of children.
If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give.
To try too hard to make people good is one way to make them worse. The only way to make them good is to be good, remembering well the beam and the mote.
The ideal is the only absolute real; and it must become the real in the individual life as well, however impossible they may count it who never tried it.
The Root of All Rebellion: It is because we are not near enough to Thee to partake of thy liberty that we want a liberty of our own different from thine.
We are often unable to tell people what they need to know, because they want to know something else, and would therefore only misunderstand what we said.
The Bible is to me the most precious thing in the world, because it tells me his story; and what good men thought about him who knew him and accepted him.
A voice is in the wind I do not know A meaning on the face of the high hills Whose utterance I cannot comprehend. A something is behind them: that is God.
It is a happy thing for us that this is really all we have to concern ourselves about--what to do next. No man can do the second thing. He can do the first.
Primarily, God is not bound to punish sin; he is bound to destroy sin. The only vengeance worth having on sin is to make the sinner himself its executioner.
They are not the best students who are most dependent on books. What can be got out of them is at best only material; a man must build his house for himself.
To love righteousness is to make it grow, not to avenge it. Throughout his life on earth, Jesus resisted every impulse to work more rapidly for a lower good.
There is but one thing that can free a man from superstition, and that is belief. All history proves it. The most sceptical have ever been the most credulous.
Man finds it hard to get what he wants, because he does not want the best; God finds it hard to give, because He would give the best, and man will not take it.
God is the God of the animals in a far lovelier way, I suspect, than many of us dare to think, but he will not be the God of a man by making a good beast of him.
A man may sink by such slow degrees that, long after he is a devil, he may go on being a good churchman or a good dissenter and thinking himself a good Christian.
But we believe – nay, Lord we only hope, That one day we shall thank thee perfectly For pain and hope and all that led or drove Us back into the bosom of thy love.
It may be an infinitely less evil to murder a man than to refuse to forgive him. The former may be the act of a moment of passion: the latter is the heart’s choice.
Alas! this time is never the time for self-denial, it is always the next time. Abstinence is so much more pleasant to contemplate upon the other side of indulgence.
I begin indeed to fear that I have undertaken an impossibility, undertaken to tell what I cannot tell because no speech at my command will fit the forms in my mind.
There is no cheating in nature and the simple unsought feelings of the soul. There must be a truth involved in it, though we may but in part lay hold of the meaning.
Oh the folly of any mind that would explain God before obeying Him! That would map out the character of God instead of crying, Lord, what wouldst thou have me to do?
There is no strength in unbelief. Even the unbelief of what is false is no source of might. It is the truth shining from behind that gives the strength to disbelieve.
There is this difference between the growth of some human beings and that of others: in the one case it is a continuous dying, in the other a continuous resurrection.