Ability involves responsibility. Power to its last particle is duty.
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Wisdom Quotes
Explore timeless wisdom quotes about judgment, experience, truth, character and the lessons of life.
Man is not altogether an imbecile. True, "circumstances do make the man." But they make him only in the sense and degree that he permits them to make him.
What we do upon a great occasion will probably depend upon what we already are; what we are will be the result of previous years of self-discipline, under the grace of Christ or the absence of it.
Moral conduct includes every thing in which men are active and for which they are accountable. They are active in their desires, their affections, their designs, their intentions, and in every thing they say and do of choice; and for all these things they are accountable to God.
The end of man is an action, and not a thought, though it were the noblest.
Existence was given us for action, rather than indolent and aimless contemplation; our worth is determined by the good deeds we do, rather than by the fine emotions we feel. They greatly mistake, who suppose that God cares for no other pursuit than devotion.
It is well to think well; it is divine to act well.
I have never heard any thing about the resolutions of the disciples, but a great deal about the Acts of the Apostles.
Act well at the moment, and you have performed a good action to all eternity.
Look around you, and you will behold the universe full of active powers. Action is, so to speak, the genius of nature. By motion and exertion, the system of being is preserved in vigor. By its different parts always acting in subordination one to another, the perfection of the whole is carried on. The heavenly bodies perpetually revolve. Day and night incessantly repeat their appointed course. Continual operations are going on in the earth and in the waters. Nothing stands still. All is alive and stirring throughout the universe. In the midst of this animated and busy scene, is man alone to remain idle in his place? Belongs it to him to be the sole inactive and slothful being in the creation, when in so many various ways he might improve his own nature; might advance the glory of the God who made him; and contribute his part in the general good?
The history of the Church of Christ from the days of the Apostles has been a history of spiritual movements .
It is much easier to settle a point than to act on it.
Unselfish and noble acts are the most radiant epochs in the biography of souls.
Haste thee on from grace to glory, Armed by faith and winged by prayer, Heaven's eternal day's before thee; God's own hand shall guide thee there.
All mental discipline and symmetrical growth are from activity of the mind under the yoke of the will or personal power.
Our actions must clothe us with an immortality loathsome or glorious.
Adoption is an act of God's free grace, whereby we are received into the number, and have a right to all the privileges, of the sons of God.
God kills thy comforts from no other design but to kill thy corruptions; wants are ordained to kill wantonness, poverty is appointed to kill pride, reproaches are permitted to destroy ambition.
Adversity borrows its sharpest sting from impatience.
In the day of prosperity we have many refuges to resort to; in the day of adversity, only one.
For one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity.
Afflictions are but the shadow of God's wings.
Affliction is the school in which great virtues are acquired, in which great characters are formed.
God sometimes washes the eyes of His children with tears in order that they may read aright His providence and His commandments.
Extraordinary afflictions are not always the punishment of extraordinary sins, but sometimes the trial of extraordinary graces.
Affliction of itself does not sanctify any body, but the reverse. I believe in sanctified afflictions, but not in sanctifying afflictions.
What seem to us but dim funereal tapers may be heaven's distant lamps.
The Lord gets His best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction.
If you would not have affliction visit you twice, listen at once, and attentively, to what it teaches.
Grace will ever speak for itself and be fruitful in well-doing; the sanctified cross is a fruitful tree.
Seek holiness rather than consolation.
The cup which my Saviour giveth me, can it be any thing but a cup of salvation?
As sure as God ever puts His children into the furnace, He will be in the furnace with them.
Christ leads me through no darker rooms Than He went through before.
Ambition is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.
Virtue is choked with foul ambition.
Ambition is but avarice on stilts.
Amusements are to religion like breezes of air to the flame; gentle ones will fan it, but strong ones will put it out.
He submits himself to be seen through a microscope, who suffers himself to be caught in a fit of passion.
Our passions are like convulsion fits, which make us stronger for the time, but leave us weaker forever after.
If anger proceeds from a great cause, it turns to fury; if from a small cause, it is peevishness; and so is always either terrible or ridiculous.
The proud man hath no God; the envious man hath no neighbor; the angry man hath not himself.
There was a man here last night—you needn't be afraid that I shall mention his name—who said that his will was given up to God, and who got mad because the omnibus was full, and he had to walk a mile to his lodgings.
When I had twice or thrice made a resolute resistance to anger, the like befell me that did the Thebans; who, having once foiled the Lacedemonians, never after lost so much as one battle which they fought against them.
The sun should not set upon our anger, neither should he rise upon our confidence.
The kiss of the apostate was the most bitter earthly ingredient in the agonies which Christ endured.
Still in the garden shadows art Thou pleading, Staining the night dews with Thine agony; But one is there Thy woe and prayer unheeding, And to their guileless prey Thy murderers leading, Lord, is it I?
O God, Thou art my God; early will I seek Thee; my soul thirsteth for Thee; my flesh longeth for Thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is.
Aspiration, worthy ambition, desires for higher good for good ends—all these indicate a soul that recognizes the beckoning hand of the good Father who would call us homeward towards Himself—all these are the ground and justification for a Christian discontent; but a murmuring, questioning, fault-finding spirit has direct and sympathetic alliance with nothing but the infernal.
You have a valuable house or farm. It is suggested that the title is not good. You employ counsel. You have the deeds examined. You search the records for mortgages, judgments and liens. You are not satisfied until you have a certificate, signed by the great seal of the State, assuring you that the title is good. Yet how many leave their title to heaven an undecided matter! Why do you not go to the records and find it? Give yourself no rest day or night until you can read your "title clear to mansions in the skies."
The more the soul is conformed to Christ, the more confident it will be of its interest in Christ.
One of those poor fellows that had become a Christian was badgered by his companions; and one of them said, "How do you know that Jesus Christ has forgiven your sins?" The man turned at once and said, "How do you know when you have got sugar in your tea?"
There are believers who by God's grace, have climbed the mountains of full assurance and near communion, their place is with the eagle in his eyrie, high aloft; they are like the strong mountaineer, who has trodden the virgin snow, who has breathed the fresh, free air of the Alpine regions, and therefore his sinews are braced, and his limbs are vigorous; these are they who do great exploits, being mighty men, men of renown.
If you have not the faith of assurance, practice at least the faith of adherence. That, at least, is in your power. Cleave to God exactly as if you were certain of being accepted of Him at last; and thus fulfilling His own conditions, you will be accepted of Him, whether you are assured of it beforehand or not.
The thing formed says that nothing formed it; and that which is made is, while that which made it is not! The folly is infinite.
That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.
Ingersoll's atheism can never become an institution; it can never be more than a destitution.
Nothing enlarges the gulf of atheism more than the wide passage that lies between the faith and lives of men pretending to teach Christianity.
Avarice is to the intellect what sensuality is to the morals.
Objects close to the eye shut out much larger objects on the horizon; and splendors born only of the earth eclipse the stars. So a man sometimes covers up the entire disk of eternity with a dollar, and quenches transcendent glories with a little shining dust.