Popular Quotes

Ability involves responsibility. Power to its last particle is duty.

— Alexander Maclaren

Wisdom

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.

— G. D. Boardman

Wisdom

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.

— H. P. Liddon

Wisdom

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.

— Emmons

Wisdom

The end of man is an action, and not a thought, though it were the noblest.

— Thomas Carlyle

Wisdom

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.

— E. L. Magoon

Wisdom

Christian life is action: not a speculating, not a debating, but a doing. One thing, and only one, in this world has eternity stamped upon it. Feelings pass; resolves and thoughts pass; opinions change. What you have done lasts—lasts in you. Through ages, through eternity, what you have done for Christ, that, and only that, you are.

— F. W. Robertson

Life

It is well to think well; it is divine to act well.

— Horace Mann

Wisdom

Man, being essentially active, must find in activity his joy, as well as his beauty and glory; and labor, like every thing else that is good, is its own reward.

— Bishop Whipple

Happiness

Be thy best thoughts to work divine addressed; Do something,—do it soon—with all thy might; An angel's wing would droop if long at rest, And God Himself inactive were no longer blessed.

— Carlos Wilcox

Success

When I read the life of such a man as Paul, how I blush to think how sickly and dwarfed Christianity is at the present time, and how many hundreds there are who never think of working for the Son of God and honoring Christ.

— D. L. Moody

Success

I have lived to know that the secret of happiness is never to allow your energies to stagnate.

— Adam Clarke

Happiness

I have never heard any thing about the resolutions of the disciples, but a great deal about the Acts of the Apostles.

— Horace Mann

Wisdom

The life of man is made up of action and endurance; and life is fruitful in the ratio in which it is laid out in noble action or in patient perseverance.

— H. P. Liddon

Life

Act well at the moment, and you have performed a good action to all eternity.

— Lavater

Wisdom

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?

— Blair

Wisdom

Activity in the kingdom of God augments the power of spiritual life, and deepens the consciousness of religious realities.

— William Adams

Life

The history of the Church of Christ from the days of the Apostles has been a history of spiritual movements .

— H. P. Liddon

Wisdom

It is much easier to settle a point than to act on it.

— Richard Cecil

Wisdom

Unselfish and noble acts are the most radiant epochs in the biography of souls.

— David Thomas

Wisdom

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.

— H. F. Lyte

Wisdom

I do not say the mind gets informed by action,—bodily action; but it does get earnestness and strength by it, and that nameless something that gives a man the mastership of his faculties.

— Wm. Mountford

Courage

The essential elements of giving are power and love—activity and affection—and the consciousness of the race testifies that in the high and appropriate exercise of these is a blessedness greater than any other.

— Mark Hopkins

Love

All mental discipline and symmetrical growth are from activity of the mind under the yoke of the will or personal power.

— Mark Hopkins

Wisdom

Let us remember that Elijah's God was with him only while he was occupied in noble and effectual services. When thus engaged, he exulted in the conscious majesty of a life which had upon it the stamp and signature of Divine power.

— Richard Fuller

Life

The fact is that in order to do any thing in this world worth doing, we must not stand shivering on the bank thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.

— Sydney Smith

Life

What is done is done; has already blended itself with the boundless, ever living, ever working universe, and will also work there for good or evil, openly or secretly, throughout all time.

— Thomas Carlyle

Success

Consider and act with reference to the true ends of existence. This world is but the vestibule of an immortal life. Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.

— E. H. Chapin

Life

Our actions must clothe us with an immortality loathsome or glorious.

— C. C. Colton

Wisdom

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.

— Westminster Catechism

Wisdom

We need a spirit of adoption to take us out of the foundling hospital of the world, and to put us into the celestial family.

— G. D. Boardman

Life

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.

— John Flavel

Wisdom

Adversity borrows its sharpest sting from impatience.

— Bishop Horne

Wisdom

In the day of prosperity we have many refuges to resort to; in the day of adversity, only one.

— Horatius Bonar

Wisdom

How full of briers is this working-day world!

— Shakspeare

Success

For one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity.

— Thomas Carlyle

Wisdom

Afflictions are but the shadow of God's wings.

— Geo. MacDonald

Wisdom

Human character is never found "to enter into its glory," except through the ordeal of affliction. Its force cannot come forth without the offer of resistance, nor can the grandeur of its free will declare itself, except in the battle of fierce temptation.

— James Martineau

Life

Affliction is the school in which great virtues are acquired, in which great characters are formed.

— Hannah More

Wisdom

The damps of autumn sink into the leaves and prepare them for the necessity of their fall; and thus insensibly are we, as years close around us, detached from our tenacity of life by the gentle pressure of recorded sorrow.

— W. S. Landor

Life

God sometimes washes the eyes of His children with tears in order that they may read aright His providence and His commandments.

— T. L. Cuyler

Wisdom

Be still, sad heart, and cease repining, Behind the clouds the sun is shining; Thy fate is the common fate of all; Into each life some rain must fall,— Some days must be dark and dreary.

— Longfellow

Love

Extraordinary afflictions are not always the punishment of extraordinary sins, but sometimes the trial of extraordinary graces.

— Matthew Henry

Wisdom

Affliction of itself does not sanctify any body, but the reverse. I believe in sanctified afflictions, but not in sanctifying afflictions.

— C. H. Spurgeon

Wisdom

Heaven gives us friends to bless the present scene; Resumes them, to prepare us for the next.

— Young

Friendship

Most of the grand truths of God have to be learned by trouble; they must be burned into us by the hot iron of affliction, otherwise we shall not truly receive them.

— C. H. Spurgeon

Truth

What seem to us but dim funereal tapers may be heaven's distant lamps.

— Longfellow

Wisdom

Every man will have his own criterion in forming his judgment of others. I depend very much on the effect of affliction. I consider how a man comes out of the furnace; gold will lie for a month in the furnace without losing a grain.

— Richard Cecil

Truth

The Lord gets His best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction.

— C. H. Spurgeon

Wisdom

Night brings out stars as sorrow shows us truths.

— P. J. Bailey

Truth

If you would not have affliction visit you twice, listen at once, and attentively, to what it teaches.

— Burgh

Wisdom

Grace will ever speak for itself and be fruitful in well-doing; the sanctified cross is a fruitful tree.

— Rutherford

Wisdom

Seek holiness rather than consolation.

— John Owen

Wisdom

It is the best thing for a stricken heart to be helping others.

— A. K. H

Love

The cup which my Saviour giveth me, can it be any thing but a cup of salvation?

— Alexander Maclaren

Wisdom

The truly great and good, in affliction, bear a countenance more princely than they are wont; for it is the temper of the highest hearts, like the palm tree, to strive most upward when they are most burdened.

— Sir Philip Sidney

Love

What He tells thee in the darkness, Weary watcher for the day, Grateful lip and heart should utter When the shadows flee away.

— F. R. Havergal

Love

As sure as God ever puts His children into the furnace, He will be in the furnace with them.

— C. H. Spurgeon

Wisdom

The truest help we can render an afflicted man is not to take his burden from him, but to call out his best strength, that he may be able to bear the burden.

— Phillips Brooks

Courage

Oh, when we are journeying through the murky night and the dark woods of affliction and sorrow, it is something to find here and there a spray broken, or a leafy stem bent down with the tread of His foot and the brush of His hand as He passed; and to remember that the path He trod He has hallowed, and thus to find lingering fragrance and hidden strength in the remembrance of Him as "in all points tempted like as we are," bearing grief for us, bearing grief with us, bearing grief like us.

— Alexander Maclaren

Courage