Wisdom 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

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

— Horace Mann

Wisdom

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

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

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

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

— Mark Hopkins

Wisdom

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

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

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

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

— Hannah More

Wisdom

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

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

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

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

— C. H. Spurgeon

Wisdom

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

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

— Alexander Maclaren

Wisdom

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

— C. H. Spurgeon

Wisdom

Christ leads me through no darker rooms Than He went through before.

— Richard Baxter

Wisdom

Ambition is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.

— H. W. Beecher

Wisdom

Virtue is choked with foul ambition.

— Shakspeare

Wisdom

Ambition is but avarice on stilts.

— W. S. Landor

Wisdom

Amusements are to religion like breezes of air to the flame; gentle ones will fan it, but strong ones will put it out.

— David Thomas

Wisdom

He submits himself to be seen through a microscope, who suffers himself to be caught in a fit of passion.

— Lavater

Wisdom

Our passions are like convulsion fits, which make us stronger for the time, but leave us weaker forever after.

— Dean Swift

Wisdom

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.

— Jeremy Taylor

Wisdom

The proud man hath no God; the envious man hath no neighbor; the angry man hath not himself.

— Bishop Hall

Wisdom

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.

— D. L. Moody

Wisdom

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.

— Plutarch

Wisdom

The sun should not set upon our anger, neither should he rise upon our confidence.

— C. C. Colton

Wisdom

The kiss of the apostate was the most bitter earthly ingredient in the agonies which Christ endured.

— E. L. Magoon

Wisdom

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?

— George Huntingdon

Wisdom

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.

— Psalms

Wisdom

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.

— J. G. Holland

Wisdom

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."

— T. DeWitt Talmage

Wisdom

The more the soul is conformed to Christ, the more confident it will be of its interest in Christ.

— Thomas Brooks

Wisdom

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?"

— John B. Gough

Wisdom

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.

— C. H. Spurgeon

Wisdom

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.

— Jacques Bonneval

Wisdom

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.

— Jeremy Taylor

Wisdom

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.

— Dean Swift

Wisdom

Ingersoll's atheism can never become an institution; it can never be more than a destitution.

— Robert Collyer

Wisdom

Nothing enlarges the gulf of atheism more than the wide passage that lies between the faith and lives of men pretending to teach Christianity.

— Stillingfleet

Wisdom

Avarice is to the intellect what sensuality is to the morals.

— Anna Jameson

Wisdom

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.

— E. H. Chapin

Wisdom

Poverty is want of much, but avarice of every thing.

— Publius Syrius

Wisdom

Jesus, save me from the infatuation of avarice! I, too, will lay up a treasure, but Thou shalt have the keeping of it.

— Christian Scriver

Wisdom

I never yet have heard of a good man having fallen when he was trying to do Christ's will and trusting on Christ's help. Every fall without one exception came from venturing upon sinful ground or from venturing upon self-support.

— T. L. Cuyler

Wisdom

The master will not keep His hand under our arms when we go on forbidden ground. Presumptuous Peter needed a sharp lesson, and he got it. That bitter cry at the foot of the stairs bespoke an awful fall. How many such are rising daily into God's listening ears.

— T. L. Cuyler

Wisdom

Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the infinite.

— George Bancroft

Wisdom

The gospel allies itself with all that is beautiful in the universe, as truly as with all that is noble and pure.

— Samuel Wolcott

Wisdom

Eyes raised toward heaven are always beautiful, whatever they be.

— Joseph Joubert

Wisdom

I pray the prayer of Plato old,— "God make thee beautiful within."

— J. G. Whittier

Wisdom

Begin by regarding every thing from a moral point of view, and you will end by believing in God.

— Dr. Arnold

Wisdom

If you wish to be assured of the truth of Christianity, try it. Believe, and if thy belief be right, that insight which gradually transmutes faith into knowledge will be the reward of thy belief.

— S. T. Coleridge

Truth

He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend, must have a very long head, or a very short creed.

— C. C. Colton

Wisdom

Now God be praised, that to believing souls, Gives light in darkness, comfort in despair!

— Shakspeare

Wisdom

Great minds, like heaven, are pleased in doing good.

— Rowe

Wisdom

Never try to save out of God's cause; such money will canker the rest. Giving to God is no loss; it is putting your substance in the best bank. Giving is true having, as the old gravestone said of the dead man: "What I spent I had, what I saved I lost, what I gave I have."

— C. H. Spurgeon

Wisdom

Learn the luxury of doing good.

— Goldsmith

Education

By doing good with his money, a man, as it were, stamps the image of God upon it, and makes it pass current for the merchandise of heaven.

— Rutledge

Wisdom

Liberality consists not so much in giving a great deal as in giving seasonably.

— Bruyere

Wisdom

Poverty is the load of some, and wealth is the load of others, perhaps the greater load of the two. It may weigh them to perdition. Bear the load of thy neighbor's poverty, and let him bear with thee the load of thy wealth. Thou lightenest thy load by lightening his.

— St. Augustine

Wisdom

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once, will never do any thing.

— Samuel Johnson

Wisdom

Be charitable before wealth makes thee covetous.

— Sir Thomas Browne

Wisdom

"Not for ourselves, but for others," is the grand law inscribed on every part of creation.

— Edward Payson

Wisdom

My brethren, surely the time has come for us to return to the Lord's plan. Among us there are children to be clothed, widows to be aided, and afflicted ones to be cared for. As you draw near to the poor, the Saviour will come nearer to you.

— George C. Lorimer

Wisdom

I have heard of a monk who in his cell, had a glorious vision of Jesus revealed to him. Just then, a bell rang, which called him away to distribute loaves of bread among the poor beggars at the gate. He was sorely tried as to whether he should lose a scene so inspiring. He went to his act of mercy; and when he came back, the vision remained more glorious than ever.

— T. L. Cuyler

Wisdom

What do you think God gave you more wealth than is requisite to satisfy your rational wants for, when you look around and see how many are in absolute need of that which you do not need? Can you not take the hint?

— J. G. Holland

Wisdom

Is it well with the child? And she answered, It is well.

— Bible

Wisdom

Believe me, it is no time for words when the wounds are fresh and bleeding; no time for homilies when the lightning's shaft has smitten, and the man lies stunned and stricken. Then let the comforter be silent; let him sustain by his presence, not by his preaching; by his sympathetic silence, not by his speech.

— George C. Lorimer

Wisdom

The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has pressed In their bloom; And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year On the tomb.

— O. W. Holmes

Wisdom

Over the river they beckon to me, Loved ones who've crossed to the farther side, The gleam of their snowy robes I see, But their voices are lost in the dashing tide.

— N. A. W. Priest

Wisdom

Yes, we all live to God! Father, Thy chastening rod, So help us, Thine afflicted ones, to bear, That in the spirit land, Meeting at Thy right hand, 'Twill be our heaven to find that He is there!

— John Pierpont

Wisdom

The Bible is God's chart for you to steer by, to keep you from the bottom of the sea, and to show you where the harbor is, and how to reach it without running on rocks or bars.

— H. W. Beecher

Wisdom

It is not simply a theological treatise, a code of laws, a religious homily, but the Bible— the book—while the only book for the soul, the best book for the mind.

— Herrick Johnson

Wisdom

You will want a book which contains not man's thoughts, but God's—not a book that may amuse you, but a book that can save you—not even a book that can instruct you, but a book on which you can venture an eternity—not only a book which can give relief to your spirit, but redemption to your soul—a book which contains salvation, and conveys it to you, one which shall at once be the Saviour's book and the sinner's.

— John Selden

Wisdom

The Bible is a warm letter of affection from a parent to a child; and yet there are many who see chiefly the severer passages. As there may be fifty or sixty nights of gentle dews in one summer, that will not cause as much remark as one hailstorm of half an hour, so there are those who are more struck by those passages of the Bible that announce the indignation of God than by those that announce His affection.

— T. DeWitt Talmage

Wisdom

The Bible is not only the revealer of the unknown God to man, but His grand interpreter as the God of nature. In revealing God, it has given us the key that unlocks the profoundest mysteries of creation, the clew by which to thread the labyrinth of the universe, the glass through which to look from Nature up to Nature's God.

— L. J. Halsey

Wisdom

Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law.

— Psalms

Wisdom

One gem from that ocean is worth all the pebbles from earthly streams.

— Robert McCheyne

Wisdom

I have carefully and regularly perused the Holy Scriptures, and am of opinion that the volume contains more sublimity, purer morality, more important history, and finer strains of eloquence, than can be collected from all other books, in whatever language they may have been written.

— Sir William Jones

Wisdom

This Bible, then, has a mission, grander than any mere creation of God; for in this volume are infinite wisdom, and infinite love. Between its covers are the mind and heart of God; and they are for man's good, for his salvation, his guidance, his spiritual nourishment. If now I neglect my Bible, I do my soul a wrong; for the fact of this Divine message is evidence that I need it.

— A. E. Kittredge

Love

The Old and New Testaments contain but one scheme of religion. Neither part of this scheme can be understood without the other.

— Richard Cecil

Wisdom

The Saviour who flitted before the patriarchs through the fog of the old dispensation, and who spake in time past to the fathers by the prophets, articulate but unseen, is the same Saviour who, on the open heights of the gospel, and in the abundant daylight of this New Testament, speaks to us. Still all along it is the same Jesus, and that Bible is from beginning to end, all of it, the word of Christ.

— James Hamilton

Wisdom

Throw away the Old Testament! What part of it will you throw away? That which I do not understand? Take down then yonder blood-stained cross; for there is a love there "which passeth knowledge," and a Divine hatred of sin which shook the solid earth.

— A. E. Kittredge

Love

Intense study of the Bible will keep any man from being vulgar in point of style.

— S. T. Coleridge

Wisdom

The English Bible—a book which, if every thing else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power.

— T. B. Macaulay

Wisdom

Wherever public worship has been established and regularly maintained, idolatry has vanished from the face of the earth. There is not now a temple to a heathen god where the word of God is read.

— Bishop Simpson

Wisdom

The increasing influence of the Bible is marvelously great, penetrating everywhere. It carries with it a tremendous power of freedom and justice guided by a combined force of wisdom and goodness.

— Mori

Freedom

What other book besides the Bible could be heard in public assemblies from year to year, with an attention that never tires, and an interest that never cloys?

— Robert Hall

Wisdom

The grand old Book of God still stands; and this old earth, the more its leaves are turned over and pondered, the more it will sustain and illustrate the Sacred word.

— James D. Dana

Wisdom

The books of men have their day and grow obsolete. God's word is like Himself, "the same yesterday, to-day, and forever."

— R. Payne Smith

Wisdom

The best evidence of the Bible's being the word of God is to be found between its covers. It proves itself.

— Charles Hodge

Wisdom

We glory most in the fact, that Scripture so commends itself to the conscience, and experience so bears out the Bible, that the gospel can go the round of the world, and carry with it, in all its travel, its own mighty credentials.

— Henry Melvill

Education

The piecemeal criticism which, like the fly, scans only the edge of a plinth in the great edifice upon which it crawls, disappears under a criticism that is all-comprehending and all-surveying.

— Prof. Shedd

Wisdom

The word of God is solid; it will stand a thousand readings; and the man who has gone over it the most frequently and the most carefully is the surest of finding new wonders there.

— James Hamilton

Wisdom

The Scripture is to be its own interpreter, or rather the Spirit speaking in it; nothing can cut the diamond but the diamond; nothing can interpret Scripture but Scripture.

— Richard Watson

Wisdom

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.

— Bible

Wisdom

The main condition is that the spiritual ear should be open to overhear and patiently take in, and the will ready to obey that testimony which, I believe, God bears in every human heart, however dull, to those great truths which the Bible reveals. This, and not logic, is the way to grow in religious knowledge, to know that the truths of religion are not shadows, but deep realities.

— J. C. Shairp

Love

Many books in my library are now behind and beneath me. They were good in their way once, and so were the clothes I wore when I was ten years old; but I have outgrown them. Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the book widens and deepens with our years.

— C. H. Spurgeon

Wisdom

If thou desire to profit, read with humility, simplicity, and faithfulness; nor even desire the repute of learning.

— Thomas à Kempis

Education

If the Bible is God's word, and we believe it, let us handle it with reverence.

— John B. Gough

Wisdom

I believe that the want of our age is not more "free" handling of the Bible, but more "reverent" handling, more humility, more patient study, and more prayer.

— J. C. Ryle

Wisdom