Find A Quote by Topic
To find a quote about a particular topic, please click on the appropriate letter below. For example, if you’re looking for a quote about “worry,” click on the “w.”
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
MAJORITY
“A man with God is always in the majority.”
– John Knox
MAN
Men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, yet pass over the mystery of themselves without a thought.
– Augustine
“God made everything else but man “after its kind”‘—that is, according to the purpose and destiny he envisaged for it. But he made man in His own image. Man is patterned on God! He was made to represent God – in created, human form.”
– Sinclair B. Ferguson
MANAGEMENT
“Management is bottom-line focus: How can I best accomplish certain things? Leadership deals with the top line: What are the things I want to accomplish? Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.”
– Stephen R. Covey
“People don’t do what they’re expected to do; they do what they’re inspected to do.”
– Unknown
“Good management consists in showing average people how to do the work of superior people.”
– John D. Rockefeller
MANHOOD
“If men will become men, the world will change.”
– Larry Crabb
Phyllis George was interviewing Roger Staubach and asked him how he felt about having the All-American Boy image—did it bother him? Staubach replied, “I enjoy sex just as much as Joe Namath, I’ve just chosen to do it with one woman.”
“According to statistics, if a man is the first in his family to accept Christ, 93 percent of his family members will follow his example.”
– Baptist Press
MANIFESTATIONS
“Physical manifestations and prostrations have been a further feature. I find it somewhat difficult to explain this aspect, indeed I cannot; but this I will say, that the person who would associate this with satanic influence is coming perilously near committing the unpardonable sin.”
– Duncan Campbell (speak of the Hebrides revival)
MARGIN
“Margin is a space between our load and our limits.”
– Richard A. Swenson
MARRIAGE
“Marriage starts the moment a man and woman become one. The trouble starts the moment they start trying to decide which one.”
– George Burns
Martin Luther dearly loved his wife, a former nun. He said, “In domestic affairs, I defer to Katie. Otherwise, I am led by the Holy Ghost.”
“Socrates once advised a young man, ‘By all means get married. If you get a good wife you will be happy. If you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher!”
“The Bible opens and closes with a wedding.”
– Selwyn Hughes
“You got married not to be happy but to make each other happy.”
– Roy L. Smith
“Let the wife make the husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave.”
– Martin Luther
“Never criticize your spouse’s faults; if it weren’t for them, your mate might have found someone better than you.”
“A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.”
– Mignon McLaughlin
“You do not marry an isolated individual. You marry all of the people who are significant to that individual. You marry all of the childhood memories; you marry the values and beliefs instilled in the person by the family, including values about marriage and parenting.”
– Tommy Nelson
“Marriage is when you agree to spend the rest of your life sleeping in a room that’s too warm, beside someone who’s sleeping in a room that’s too cold.”
– Unknown
“A good marriage is the union of two forgivers.”
– Ruth Bell Graham.
“My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.”
– Winston Churchill
“There is no lonelier person than the one who lives with a spouse with whom he or she cannot communicate.”
– Margaret Mead
“Marriage is our last, best chance to grow up.”
– Joseph Barth
“To have peace and love in marriage is a gift which is next to the knowledge of the Gospel.”
– Martin Luther
“Nothing is more sweet than harmony in marriage, and nothing more distressing than dissension.”
– Martin Luther
MARTYR
“The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.”
– Soren Kierkegaard
“My birth is imminent. Forgive me, brethren. Do not prevent me from coming to life.”
– Ignatius of Loyola (as he faced the prospect of being martyred for his faith)
MARTYRDOM
“Although prepared for martyrdom, I prefer that it be postponed.”
– Winston Churchill
MATERIALISM
“Wealth is not the standard of worth. Some people put cash before character.”
– Billy Sunday
“If you have something you can’t do without, you don’t own it; it owns you.”
– Albert Schweitzer
MATERIAL POSSESSIONS
“I place no value on anything I have or may possess, except in relation to the kingdom of God. If anything will advance the interests of the kingdom, it shall be given away or kept, only as by giving or keeping it I shall most promote the glory of Him to whom I owe all my hopes in time or eternity.”
– David Livingstone
MATURITY
“I am not young enough to know everything.”
– Oscar Wilde
“Mature people tend to be more compassionate and less judgmental because they’ve been through more challenges in life.”
– Tony Cooke
“If you young fellows were wise, the devil couldn’t do anything to you, but since you aren’t wise, you need us who are old.”
– Martin Luther
“You grow up the day you have your first real laugh – at yourself.”
– Ethel Barrymore
“At age twenty, we worry about what others think of us. At forty, we don’t care what they think of us. At sixty, we discover that they haven’t been thinking about us at all.”
– Jack Falson
“An important aspect of maturity is being able to respectfully and thoughtfully listen to another express perspectives different than your own.”
– Tony Cooke
“Maturity is the ability to do a job whether you’re supervised or not; finish a job once it’s started; carry money without spending it. And last, but not least, the ability to bear an injustice without wanting to get even.”
– Fred Cook
“Maturity begins when we’re content to feel we’re right about something without feeling the necessity to prove someone else wrong.”
– Sydney Harris
“The popular notion is that maturity comes with age. Not true. You get old with age. Maturity comes with the acceptance of responsibility in every area of your life.”
– Ed Cole
MEDICINE
“The Holy Spirit, too, works within, that the medicine externally applied may have some good result.”
— Augustine (354-430)
MEDIOCRITY
“Only the mediocre are always at their best.”
– Jean Girandoux
MEDITATION
“I would rather lay my soul asoak in half a dozen verses [of the Bible] all day than rinse my hand in several chapters.”
– Charles Spurgeon
MEETINGS
“Don’t go away and talk so much about these meetings as about Christ; the world needs him.”
– D.L. Moody
MEN
“Men are God’s method. The church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men.”
– E.M. Bounds
MENTAL ASSENT
“It is perilously easy to have amazing sympathy with God’s truth and remain in sin.”
– Oswald Chambers
“Men often take their imagination for their heart; and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.”
– Blaise Pascal
MERCY
“When a Christian shows mercy, he experiences liberation.”
– Warren Wiersbe
“God in his infinite mercy has devised a way by which justice can be satisfied, and yet mercy can be triumphant. Jesus Christ, the only begotten of the Father, took upon himself the form of man, and offered unto Divine Justice that which was accepted as an equivalent for the punishment due to all his people.”
– Charles Spurgeon
“Embrace in one act the two truths–thine own sin, and God’s infinite mercy in Jesus Christ.”
– Alexander MacLaren
“The fact that holy God does not instantly obliterate rebellious sinners is mercy. The fact He adopts them as His own is grace (Rom 8:15).”
– Richard Blackaby
“Even if we stand at the very summit of virtue, it is by mercy that we shall be saved.”
– John Chrysostom
“The most miserable prison in the world is the prison we make for ourselves when we refuse to show mercy.”
– Warren Wiersbe
“God is more willing to pardon than to punish. Mercy does more multiply in Him than sin in us. Mercy is His nature.”
– Thomas Watson
“I see Jesus in every human being. I say to myself, this is hungry Jesus, I must feed him. This is sick Jesus. This one has leprosy or gangrene; I must wash him and tend to him. I serve because I love Jesus.”
– Mother Teresa
“I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.”
– Abraham Lincoln
METHODS
“Methods are many, principles are few. Methods always change, principles never do.”
– J. Robert Clinton
MINISTERS
“History abounds with evidence that when the church deteriorated and lost its vision and power, its clergymen had first become worldly and materially minded.”
– Gordon Lindsay
“The preacher’s task is to cry, as did John the Baptist, ‘Behold the Lamb of God;’ not to attract attention to himself or to gather a clique around himself.”
– Erling C. Olsen
“The man who will present Christ to others must be occupied with Christ for Himself.”
– C.H. Mackintosh
“How frightful a thing it is for the preacher when he becomes accustomed to his work, when his sense of wonder departs, when he gets used to the unusual, when he loses his solemn fear in the presence of the High and Holy One; when, to put it bluntly, he gets a little bored with God and heavenly things.”
– A.W Tozer
“Give me one hundred men who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not whether they be clergyman or laymen, they alone will shake the gates of Hell and set up the kingdom of Heaven upon the earth.”
– John Wesley
“Immature ministers often have what A.W. Tozer called ‘the fan-club mentality’ and will try to be like whatever famous preacher captures their imagination. On all occasions, be yourself—your best self—and trust God to use you. Don’t waste time and energy being an imitation. Let God make you into an original.”
– Warren Wiersbe
MINISTRY
“Yet the ministry is one of the most perilous of professions. The devil hates the Spirit-filled minister with an intensity second only to that which he feels for Christ Himself.”
– A. W. Tozer
“During the years that I have been privileged to labor for God… I have strongly and increasingly felt that the task of arousing Christians to a deeper sense of their responsibility is even a more important task that that of the simple evangelist.”
– D.L. Moody
“The purpose of a Spirit-filled life is to demonstrate the supernatural power of our living God so that the unsaved multitudes will abandon their dead gods to call upon the name of the Lord and be delivered.”
– T. L. Osborn
“It’s not just our job to minister to other peoples’ needs. We are also to minister to their potential.”
– Matthew Barnett
“You can minister from your gift without ministering from God’s heart.”
– Tony Cooke
“A minister may fill his pews and communion roll, but what he is on his knees in secret before God Almighty, that he is and no more.”
– John Owen
“If your ministry is to be good for anything, it must be your ministry, and not a feeble echo of another man’s.”
– Phillips Brooks
“You don’t have to be someone’s permanent destination to be a success. You are a success if you were a meaningful part of their journey.”
– Tony Cooke
“I always say to young fellows who consult me about the ministry, ‘Don’t be a minister if you can help it,’ because if the man can help it, God never called him. But if he cannot help it, and he must preach or die, then he is the man.”
– Charles Spurgeon
“People who are easily offended will never complete the course set before them. A jockey is going to get muddy. A doctor is going to get bloody. A landscaper is going to get dirty. A painter is going to get painted. And church leaders are going to deal with contentions. Grow up and get some thick skin if you want to be a church leader. Be like a smiling armadillo. Tough outside with a soft heart.”
– Andy White
“We are but the instruments or assistants, by whom God works.”
– Martin Luther
“Ministers don’t explode. You never hear of a pastor grabbing an Uzi and shooting up a congregation. Ministers implode. That is, the pressure on the outside becomes greater than the pressure on the inside and we’re crushed like an empty soda can. Ministry, however you express it, is giving yourself away. Unless we are intentional to refill our souls, we’ll soon get to the place where we have nothing to give.”
– Mike Glenn
“God’s ministers aren’t manufacturers; they’re distributors.”
– Warren Wiersbe
“The frontiers of the kingdom of God were never advanced by men and women of caution.”
– J. Oswald Sanders
I freed a thousand slaves I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.
– Harriet Tubman
“If we will do God’s work in God’s way at God’s time with God’s power, we shall have God’s blessing.”
– Leonard Ravenhill
“I may be an ordinary man, but I shall do extraordinary things through God.”
– E. Stanley Jones
“Jesus’ word to the world is, ‘Come’ and His word to the church is, ‘Go.'”
– Unknown
“Ministry requires that you are good at two worlds: the natural and the spiritual.”
– Gerald Brooks
“If you want to be a bridge of hope to the world, you’ve got to allow yourself to be walked on”
– Tommy Barnett
“It’s not just our job to minister to other peoples’ needs. We also have to minister to their potential.”
– Tommy Barnett
“A time will come when instead of shepherds feeding the sheep, the church will have clowns entertaining the goats.”
– C.H. Spurgeon
“Ministry is pretty simple. Love people and help them.”
– T.L. Osborne
“When ministry becomes performance, then the sanctuary becomes a theater, the congregation becomes an audience, worship becomes entertainment, and man’s applause and approval become the measure of success. But when ministry is for the glory of God, his presence moves into the sanctuary. Even the unsaved visitor will fall down on his face, worship God, and confess that God is among us (1 Corinthians 14:25).”
– Warren and David Wiersbe
“The leaders of the early church did not see their role as that of entertaining the saints, but as that of equipping the saints. Ephesians 4:11-12 (AMP) says, “And His gifts were [varied; He Himself appointed and gave men to us] some to be apostles (special messengers), some prophets (inspired preachers and expounders), some evangelists (preachers of the Gospel, traveling missionaries), some pastors (shepherds of His flock) and teachers. His intention was the perfecting and the full equipping of the saints (His consecrated people), [that they should do] the work of ministering toward building up Christ’s body (the church)…”
– Tony Cooke
“When Jeremiah was told that God had put His words in the young prophet’s mouth, God told him that part of his assignment was ‘…to root out and to pull down, to destroy and to throw down, to build and to plant’ (1:10). It seems there are times where the negative junk has to be eradicated in addition to the positive being established.”
– Tony Cooke
“Those who are called to the ministry and yet fail to get established in the ministry, are not those who failed to establish a large ministry, but who failed to establish a small ministry. If you’ll start with something small, God can bless it and multiply it.”
– Tony Cooke
“If your place is not great enough to suit you, make it so. The minister who is unable to make a place great is too weak to hold a great one.”
– L.R. Scarborough
Paul made three great statements in Romans 1:14-16.
1. I am a debtor to all men.
2. I am ready to preach the gospel.
3. I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ.
Jonah is an example of a God-follower who carried out “transactional ministry” toward others while resisting “transformational ministry” from the Holy Spirit in his personal life.
– Tony Cooke
“The first thing a man must do if he desires to be used in the Lord’s work, is to make an unconditional surrender of himself to God. He must consecrate and then concentrate.”
– D.L. Moody
“A man’s readiness and commitment are not enough if he does not enjoy help from above as well; equally help from above is no benefit to us unless there is also commitment and readiness on our part.”
– John Chrysostom
“God buries his workmen, but carries on his work”
– John Wesley
“I realize that my ministry would someday come to an end. I am only one in a glorious chain of men and women God has raised up through the centuries to build Christ’s church and take the Gospel everywhere.”
– Billy Graham
“Ministry need not be an office; it’s a lifestyle devoted to attracting the lost to Christ and encouraging other believers in the faith.”
– D.L. Moody
“There are three stages in the work of God: impossible, difficult, done.”
– James Hudson Taylor
“If God calls you to be a minister, don’t stoop to becoming a king.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“Life is very sweet to me, and there is no position of power or wealth that could tempt me from the throne God has given me.”
– Dwight L. Moody
“Our office…subjects us to great burdens and labors, dangers and temptations, with little reward or gratitude from the world. But Christ himself will be our reward if we labor faithfully.”
– Martin Luther
“The essence of the minister lies in what God has created him to be rather than in what the church authorized him to do.”
– John Stacey
“The ministry is a weight from which even an angel might shrink”
– Augustine
MIRACLES
“I cannot record all the miracles I know.”
— Augustine (354-430)
“I, your unworthy servant, know how many soldiers who have become monks in my own days have done miracles, have wrought signs and mighty deeds.”
— Gregory the Great (540-604)
“The New Testament without the miracles would be so far easier to believe. But the trouble is, would it be worth believing?
– J. Gresham Machen
“It is impossible on reasonable grounds to disbelieve miracles.”
– Blaise Pascal
“The miracles of earth are the laws of heaven.”
– Jean Paul
“Expectancy is the atmosphere for miracles.”
– Edwin Louis Cole
“It is a miracle, a perfect miracle, that God should so love man as to die for him, and to choose him before the foundation of the world.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature.”
– Augustine
“Anyone who doesn’t believe in miracles isn’t a realist!”
– David Ben Gurion
MIRACULOUS
“The thing is, if you make no place in your theology for God to still work miraculously, you’ll never fulfill your calling. It’s beyond you.”
– Beth Moore
MISSIONS
“Missions, after all, is simply this: Every heart with Christ is a missionary, every heart without Christ is a mission field.”
- Nikolaus Zinzendorf
“The Savior, our dear Evangelist and Teacher preached to the whole world. There is no man, no nation, no religion, and no worldly evil that can resist His fire. We are to carry the sparks into all the earth, and many will catch them.”
– Nikolaus Zinzendorf
“Oh, that I had a thousand lives, and a thousand bodies! All of them should be devoted to no other employment but to preach Christ to these degraded, despised, yet beloved mortals.”
– Robert Moffat
“We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God.”
– John Stott
“The Indian is making an amazing discovery, namely that Christianity and Jesus are not the same—that they may have Jesus without the system that has been built up around Him in the West.”
– E. Stanley Jones
“When he landed in 1848 there were no Christians here; when he left in 1872 there were no heathen.”
– Spoken of John Geddie
“The evangelization of the world in this generation.”
– John Mott
“The gospel is only good news if it gets there in time”
– Carl F. H. Henry
“Never pity missionaries; envy them. They are where the real action is—where life and death, sin and grace, Heaven and Hell converge.”
– Robert C. Shannon
“People who don’t believe in missions have not read the New Testament. Right from the beginning Jesus said the field is the world. The early church took Him at His word and went East, West, North and South.”
– J. Howard Edington
“God had only one Son and he made that Son a missionary.”
– David Livingstone
“Evangelism is a church growing where it is: Missions is a church growing where it isn’t.”
– Ralph Winter
“Is it possible to get close to the Master’s heart without getting close to the Master’s mission?”
– Larry Moyer
“God is a God of missions. He wills missions. He commands missions. He demands missions. He made missions possible through His Son. He made missions actual in sending the Holy Spirit. Biblical Christianity and missions are organically interrelated.”
– George W. Peters
“I wasn’t God’s first choice for what I’ve done for China…I don’t know who it was… It must have been a man…a well-educated man. I don’t know what happened. Perhaps he died. Perhaps he wasn’t willing…and God looked down…and saw Gladys Aylward… And God said, ‘Well, she’s willing.’”
– Gladys Aylward
“The Great Commission is not an option to be considered; it is a command to be obeyed.”
– James Hudson Taylor
“All the resources of the Godhead are at our disposal!”
– Jonathan Goforth (Missionary to China)
“And although I see few results, future missionaries will see conversions following every sermon. May they not forget the pioneers who worked in the thick gloom with few rays to cheer, except such as flow from faith in the precious promises of God’s Word.”
– David Livingstone
“If we lose the spirit of ‘go,’ we have lost the very Christian spirit itself. A disobedient church will become a dead church. It will die of heart failure.”
– S.D. Gordon
“If the church is to be missionary, she must be spiritual; and if the church is to be spiritual, she must be missionary.”
– G. Campbell Morgan
“I feel now, that Arabia could easily be evangelized within the next thirty years if it were not for the wicked selfishness of Christians.”
– Samuel Zwemer (1867-1952)
“We talk of the second coming, half the world has never heard of the first.”
– Oswald J. Smith
“Answering a student’s question, ‘Will the heathen who have not heard the Gospel be saved?’ thus, ‘It is more a question with me whether we, who have the Gospel and fail to give it to those who have not, can be saved.’”
– C.H. Spurgeon
“Let my heart be broken with the things that break the heart of God.”
– Bob Pierce
“The history of missions is the history of answered prayer… It is the key to the whole mission problem. All human means are secondary.”
– Samuel Zwemer
I would never have thought of going out to China had I not believed that the Chinese were lost and needed Christ.”
– James Hudson Taylor
“No local church can afford to go without the encouragement and nourishment that will come to it by sending away its best people.”
– David Penman
“I am immortal until God’s work for me to do is done. The Lord reigns.”
– Henry Martyn
“Mission is ultimately not a human response to human need. The Church’s involvement in mission is its privileged participation in the actions of the triune God.”
– Tim Dearborn
“And Jonah stalked to his shaded seat and waited for God to come around to his way of thinking. And God is still waiting for a host of Jonah’s in their comfortable houses to come around to His way of loving.”
– Thomas Carlisle
“Send us people with initiative, who can carry themselves and others too; such as need to be carried hamper the work and weaken those who should be spending their strength for the heathen. Weaklings should be nursed at home! If any have jealousy, pride, or talebearing traits lurking about them, do not send them, nor any who are prone to criticize. Send only Paul’s and Timothy’s; men who are full of zeal, holiness and power. All others are hindrances. If you send us ten such men the work will be done. Quantity is nothing; quality is what matters. ‘FORWARD EVER; BACKWARD, NEVER!’”
– C.T. Studd
“Every Christian is either a missionary or an imposter.”
– Charles Haddon Spurgeon
“The motto of every missionary, whether preacher, printer, or school master ought to be ‘devoted for life’.”
– Adoniram Judson
“Untold millions are still untold.”
– John Wesley
“I often wish I were in China, India, or Africa, so that I might preach, preach, preach all day long. It would be sweet to die preaching. But I want more of the Holy Spirit; I do not feel enough —no, not half enough, —of His Divine energy. ‘Come Holy Spirit, come!’ Then men must be converted; then the wicked would repent, and the just grow in grace.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“Some think little about it, others are unacquainted with the state of the world, and others love their wealth better than the souls of their fellow creatures.”
– William Carey
“I have but one passion: It is He, it is He alone. The world is the field and the field is the world; and henceforth that country shall be my home where I can be most used in winning souls for Christ.”
– Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf
Go to distant heathen lands, valleys, jungles, burning sands, freely you have gifts received, tell in whom you have believed; Quickly go, let others know, blessings from the Gospel flow. Not alone! A mighty friend Shall be with you to the end, blessing you as you shall bless those who writhe in sin’s distress; Go and teach, a Savior preach, speak in love, compel, beseech.
– From the Hymn, “Always Near,” by William N. Meserve (1879)
“God had one Son and He made Him a missionary.”
– Leighton Ford
“If the Church is ‘in Christ,’ she is involved in mission. Her whole existence then has a missionary character.”
– David J. Bosch
“You would believe in pioneer missions if your family were part of an unevangelized people group.”
– Norm Lewis
The missionary spirit is the spirit of Jesus, the spirit of the incarnation and the cross.
– Hudson Taylor
“That the Lamb who was slain would receive the reward of His suffering.”
– The missionary motivation of the Moravians
“Some think little about it, others are unacquainted with the state of the world, and others love their wealth better than the souls of their fellow creatures.”
– William Carey
“I went to India as a missionary to save England from spiritual collapse.”
– William Carey
“This lost world will never be reached and brought back to loyalty to God, until the children of God wake up to the fact that they have a mission in the world. If we are true Christians we should all be missionaries.”
– D.L. Moody
“Missionary zeal does not grow out of intellectual beliefs, nor out of theological arguments, but out of love”
– Roland Allen
”The Spirit of Christ is the spirit of missions, and the nearer we get to Him the more intensely missionary we must become.”
– Henry Martyn
MISTAKES
“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”
– George Bernard Shaw
“No man ever became great or good except through many and great mistakes.”
– William Gladstone
“The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.”
– Edward John Phelps
MODERATION
“There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no independence quite so important, as living within your means.”
– Calvin Coolidge
MOMENTUM
“Don’t confuse the exertion of energy with traction. Apply yourself to establishing and maintaining momentum, not just spinning your wheels.”
– Tony Cooke
MONEY
“Probably more leaders have lost spiritual power due to wrong attitudes and actions when dealing with money than through any other single cause.”
– Oswald Sanders
“The riches we impart are the only wealth we shall always retain.”
– Matthew Henry
“Riches should be admitted into our houses, but not into our hearts; we may take them into our possession, but not into our affections.”
– Pierre Charron
“More people should learn to tell their dollars where to go instead of asking them where they went.”
– Roger W. Babson
“Money is a terrible master but an excellent servant.”
– P.T. Barnum
“Many persons think that by hoarding money they are gaining safety for themselves. If money is your only hope for independence, you will never have it. The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability. Without these qualities, money is practically useless. The security even of money depends on knowledge, experience, and ability. If productive ideas are displaced by destructive ideas, economic life suffers.”
– Henry Ford
“Money doesn’t change men, it merely unmasks them. If a man is naturally selfish, or arrogant, or greedy, the money brings that out, that is all.”
– Henry Ford
“The darkest hour in any man’s life is when he sits down to plan how to get money without earning it.”
– Horace Greeley
“Men make counterfeit money; in many more cases, money makes counterfeit men.”
– Sydney J. Harris
“The safest way to double your money is to fold it over and put it in your pocket.”
– Kin Hubbard
“A man’s treatment of money is the most decisive test of his character – how he makes it and how he spends it.”
– James Moffatt
“When money speaks, the truth keeps silent.”
– Russian Proverb
“Get all you can, without hurting your soul, your body, or your neighbor. Save all you can, cutting off every needless expense. Give all you can.”
– John Wesley
“If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.”
– Edmund Burke
“Many speak truth when they say that they despise riches, but they mean the riches possessed by other men.”
– Charles Caleb Colton
“Wealth is a means to an end, not the end itself. As a synonym for health and happiness, it has had a fair trial and failed dismally.”
– John Galsworthy
“…he that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool.”
– Jeremiah 17:11 (KJV)
“By doing good with money, a man, as it were, stamps the image of God upon it…”
– J. Rutledge
“If a person gets his attitude toward money straitened out, then almost all other areas of his life will be straightened out.”
– Billy Graham
“Money may be the husk of many things, but not the kernel. It brings you food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; acquaintances, but not friends; servants, but not faithfulness; days of joy, but not peace and happiness.”
– Henrik Ibsen
“To meet Jesus is to look yourself in the pocketbook, which is the most unmistakable way of looking yourself in the heart.”
– J. Robert Ross
“It’s good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it’s good, too, to make sure you haven’t lost the things that money can’t buy.”
– George Horace Lorimer
“If all the gold in the world were melted down into a solid cube, it would be about the size of an eight-room house. If a man got possession of all that gold—billions of dollars worth, he could not buy a friend, character, peace of mind, clear conscience, or a sense of eternity.”
– Charles F. Banning
“I’d say it’s been my biggest problem all my life… it’s money. It takes a lot of money to make these dreams come true.”
– Walt Disney
“A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.”
– Jonathan Swift
“Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.”
– Will Rogers
“We have become ninety-nine percent money mad. The method of living at home modestly and within our income, laying a little by systematically for the proverbial rainy day which is due to come, can almost be listed among the lost arts.”
– George Washington Carver
MORALE
“Morale is the greatest single factor in successful wars.”
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
MORALITY
As a school principal, the survivor of a concentration camp once wrote to his teachers at the start of a new school year, “My eyes saw what no person should witness: gas chambers built by learned engineers, children poisoned by educated physicians, infants killed by trained nurses, women and babies shot and burned by high school and college graduates. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters and skilled psychopaths. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more humane.”
“What God says is best, is best, though all men in the world are against it.”
– John Bunyan
Geoffrey Chaucer (1342-1400), the greatest English poet before Shakespeare, wrote regarding the need for high moral standards among spiritual leaders: “…if gold rust, what shall poor iron do? For if the priest be foul, in whom we trust, what wonder if a layman yield to lust?”
“History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster.”
– General Douglas MacArthur
“Modern man has not only thrown away Christian theology, he has thrown away the possibility of what our forefathers had as a basis for morality and law.”
– Francis A. Schaeffer
MOTHER
“My mother always seemed to me like a fairy princess: a radiant being possessed of limitless riches and power. She shone for me like the evening star. I loved her dearly.”
– Winston Churchill
Read more Mother’s Day Quotes
MOTIVATION
“History has been written not by the most talented but by the most motivated.”
– Peter Drucker
“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing that’s why we recommend it daily.”
– Zig Ziglar
“It’s not up to anyone else to make me give my best.”
– Hakeem Olajuwon
“Coaches who can outline plays on a blackboard are a dime a dozen. The ones who win get inside their players and motivate.”
– Vince Lombardi
MOTIVES
“Over-desire is only another term for lust, and there can be an unhealthy lusting after signs and wonders that desires them for their own sake rather than for the glory of God and the work of the Gospel.”
— Donald Gee
“It is not the being seen of men that is wrong, but doing these things for the purpose of being seen of men. The problem with the hypocrite is his motivation. He does not want to be holy; he only wants to seem to be holy. He is more concerned with his reputation for righteousness than about actually becoming righteous. The approbation of men matters more to him than the approval of God.”
– Augustine
“We should often blush at our noblest deeds if the world were to see all their underlying motives.”
– La Rouchefoucauld
MUSIC
“The devil does not stay where music is.”
– Martin Luther
“Our children will grow up confused, not respecting the Bible or anything else that is sacred.”
– Critics referring to the “new” hymns written by Charles Wesley
“Next to the Word of God music deserves the highest praise. The gift of language combined with the gift of song was given to man that he should proclaim the Word of God through music.”
– Martin Luther
“The devil should not be allowed to keep all the best tunes for himself.”
– Martin Luther
“Secular music, do you say, belongs to the devil? Does it? Well, if it did I would plunder him for it, for he has no right to a single note of the whole seven.… Every note, and every strain, and every harmony is divine and belongs to us.… So consecrate your voice and your instruments.… Offer them to God, and use them to make all the hearts about you merry before the Lord.”
– William Booth
“I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.”
– George Washington Carver
“Nature is God’s first missionary. Where there is no Bible there are sparkling stars. Where there are not preachers there are spring times… If a person has nothing but nature, then nature is enough to reveal something about God.”
– Max Lucado
“All of nature is God’s art.”
– Dante
NEEDS
“If you were to offer a thirsty man all wisdom, you would not please him more than if you gave him a drink.”
– Sophocles
NERVOUSNESS
“The only difference between the pros and the novices is that the pros have trained the butterflies to fly in formation.”
– Edwin Newman.
NEW BEGINNINGS
“I am amazed by how many individuals mess up every new day with yesterday. They insist on bringing into today the failures of yesterday and in doing so pollute a potentially wonderful day.”
– Gary Chapman
NEW BIRTH
“No outward practices will stand in the place of the new birth. Nothing under heaven will stand in its place.”
– John Wesley
NEWS
“The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.”
– Thomas Jefferson
NO
“When, against one’s will, one is high pressured into making a hurried decision, the best answer is always ‘no,’ because ‘no’ is more easily changed to ‘yes’ than ‘yes’ is to ‘no’.”
– Charles E. Nielson
NON-CONFORMITY
“When the whole world is running towards a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind.”
– C. S. Lewis
NORMAL
“Being normal is grossly over-rated.”
– Andrew Wommack
NORMALITY
“The only normal people are the ones you don’t know very well.”
– Joe Ancis
NOVELTY
“By nature, men love newfangledness.”
– Geoffrey Chaucer
OBEDIENCE
“No matter how dark the day, God can still work through people who will trust His Word, yield to His Spirit, and do His bidding.”
– Warren W. Wiersbe
“Christ’s sheep will not be offended by Christ’s voice.”
– Charles Spurgeon
“There are two kinds of obedience. One that is very defective is like that of the disciples previous to Pentecost. They desired from the heart to do what the Lord said, but they did not have the power. On the other hand, there is a more abundant life which comes with the fullness of the Spirit where new power is given for full obedience.”
– Andrew Murray
“Much of our difficulty as Christians stems from our unwillingness to take God as He is and adjust our lives accordingly.”
– A. W. Tozer
“To escape the error of salvation by works we have fallen into the opposite error of salvation without obedience.”
– A.W. Tozer
A ton of prayer will not produce what an ounce of obedience will.
– Ed Cole
“Obedience to the call of Christ nearly always costs everything to two people – the one who is called, and the one who loves that one.”
– Oswald Chambers
One act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons.
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Have you noticed? Half-hearted obedience easily leads to whole-hearted disobedience. Let’s go all-out for God.”
– Chuck Swindoll
Saul took himself too seriously; he thought his position exempted him from following Scripture.
– R. T. Kendall
“Oh, when shall we learn how unspeakably pleasing obedience is in God’s sigh, and how unspeakable is the reward He bestows upon it.”
– Andrew Murray
“Our Lord told His disciples that love and obedience were organically united. The final test of love is obedience.”
– A.W. Tozer
“We do not understand and then obey: that is instruction. We obey by faith, and then we understand: that is illumination.”
– Warren Wiersbe
“Cultivate prompt, exact, unquestioning, joyous obedience to every command that it is evident from its context applies to you. Be on the lookout for new orders from your King. Blessing lies in the direction of obedience to them. God’s commands are but signboards that mark the road to present success and blessedness and to eternal glory.”
– R.A. Torrey
“Just as worship begins in holy expectancy, it ends in holy obedience. If worship does not propel us into greater obedience, it has not been worship.”
– Richard J. Foster
“Obedience is the only reality. It is faith visible, faith acting, and faith manifest. It is the test of real discipleship among the Lord’s people.”
– J.C. Ryle
“Obedience is the highest practical courage.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“The golden rule for understanding in spiritual matters is not intellect, but obedience.”
– Oswald Chambers
“The strength and the happiness of a man consists in finding out the way in which God is going, and going in that way too.”
– Henry Ward Beecher
“The man that believes will obey; failure to obey is convincing proof that there is no true faith present.”
– A.W. Tozer
“One act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons.”
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“He who cannot obey, cannot command.”
– Benjamin Frankin
“Woe to that man who runs when God has not sent him; and woe to him who refuses to run, or who ceases to run, when God has sent him.”
– Adam Clarke
OBSERVATION
“As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.”
– Andrew Carnegie
OBSTACLES
“As I look back on my life, I see it as one long obstacle course with myself as the main obstacle.”
– Jack Paar
“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.”
– Hannah More
OFFENSE
“People who are easily offended will never complete the course set before them. A jockey is going to get muddy. A doctor is going to get bloody. A landscaper is going to get dirty. A painter is going to get painted. And church leaders are going to deal with contentions. Grow up and get some thick skin if you want to be a church leader. Be like a smiling armadillo. Tough outside with a soft heart.”
– Andy White
“It will be treason to Christ if you turn away because of the evil yet unsubdued in the heart of your brother.”
– George Bowen
“It matters enormously if I alienate anyone from the truth.”
– C.S. Lewis
“It’s a fact that it is much more comfortable to be in the position of the person who has been offended than to be the unfortunate cause of it.”
– Barbara Walters
OPINIONS
“It’s ironic that some people with the most narrow and closed minds also have the widest and open mouths.”
– Dale Bronner
“Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.”
– Albert Einstein
“I am something of a contrarian, I suppose. I feel less comfortable when everybody agrees with me. I say, ‘I better reexamine my position!’ I probably believe that the worst opinions in my court have been unanimous. Because there’s nobody on the other side pointing out all the flaws.”
– Antonin Scalia
“There are two kinds of fools: those who can’t change their opinions and those who won’t.”
– Josh Billings
“Any lazy or biased fool can have opinions; making judgments is the hard work of responsible and compassionate people.”
– Lewis B. Smedes
“Most people when they come to you for advice, come to have their own opinions strengthened, not corrected.”
– Josh Billings
“The researches of many commentators have already thrown much darkness on this subject, and it is probable that, if they continue, we shall soon know nothing at all about it.”
– Mark Twain
“Nothing is more dangerous… than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll – always feeling one’s pulse and taking one’s temperature.”
– Winston Churchill
OPPORTUNITY
“Every place where God leads, there is your field.”
– D.L. Moody
“The opportunity of a lifetime must be seized during the lifetime of the opportunity.”
– Leonard Ravenhill
“I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it has ceased to be one.”
– Mark Twain
“Never surrender opportunity for security.”
– Branch Rickey
“All the great opportunities of life are opportunities of today and not of tomorrow.”
– Clarence Edward Macartney
“Great moments are born from great opportunities.”
– Herb Brooks
“Opportunities energize the faithful and paralyze the fearful.”
– Warren Wiersbe
“We are faced with great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.”
– Chuck Swindoll
“Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity.”
– John Flavel
“Remember the story of the Spanish prisoner. For many years he was confined in a dungeon… One day it occurred to him to push the door of his cell. It was open; and it had never been locked.”
– Winston Churchill
There is no security on this earth. Only opportunity.
– Douglas Macarthur
“Wherever we look upon this earth, the opportunities take shape within the problems.”
– Nelson A. Rockefeller
“A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.”
– Francis Bacon
“We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.”
– Walt Kelley
“When one door closes another door opens, but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the ones which open for us.”
– Alexander Graham Bell
“The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.”
– John Burrows
“No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“To young men who are looking for an opportunity and who complain there is no opening for them, permit me to say this: ‘Go where the poor and the under-privileged are. They will be glad to hear you. When you have learned to bless them, others will be calling for your services. Don’t wait for opportunity to come walking up to you. Go to meet it.’”
– Gordon Lindsay
“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overall and looks like work.”
– Thomas Edison
OPPOSITION
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win.”
– Mohatma Ghandi
“What a man needs to get ahead is a powerful enemy.”
– Wendell Wilkie
“As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.”
– Albert Einstein
OPTIMISM
“Researchers have determined that it is impossible to develop eyestrain from looking on the bright side of things.”
“The optimist sees opportunity in every danger; the pessimist sees danger in every opportunity.”
– Winston Churchill
“The world of achievement has always belonged to the optimist.”
– J. Harold Wilkins
“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.”
– Helen Keller
“I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.”
– Winston Churchill
ORATORY
“It was my ambition all of my life to be master of the spoken word.”
– Winston Churchill
ORDINARY
“The discovery of God lies in the daily and the ordinary, not in the spectacular and the heroic. If we cannot find God in the routines of home and shop, then we will not find Him at all.”
– Richard J. Foster
ORGANIZATION
“The supernatural and organization are friends, not enemies. The spiritual and the practical are complimentary, not contradictory. When Jesus fed the multitude, the demonstration of God’s supernatural power was very evident: Jesus multiplied five loaves and two fishes and fed 5,000 men. But Jesus demonstrated a keen organizational mind as well. He had the multitudes sit in groups of 50, delegated the distribution process to the disciples, and promoted efficiency in the gathering of the leftover fragments. This reflects 1 Corinthians 1:24 (MSG), ‘Christ is God’s ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one.’”
– Tony Cooke
“A first-rate organizer is never in a hurry. He is never late. He always keeps up his sleeve a margin for the unexpected.”
– Arnold Bennett
“Somehow ungodly men have developed systems of organization which permit them to work together in states of relative harmony and unity, whereas godly men, refusing to admit that these organizational structures are needed, live in states of chaos and disunity. The tragedy of this fact becomes evident when we realize that many of the successful systems of organization under which the godly men work and which the godly men refuse to accept are biblically based.”
– Ted Engstrom and Alec Mackenzie
ORIGINALITY
“Originality is the act of forgetting where you read it.”
– Unknown
OTHERS
“Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier.”
– Albert Schweitzer
“I must step out of the prison of me, and into the potential of we.”
– Tony Cooke
OUTLOOK
“Outlook determines outcome.”
– Warren Wiersbe
OUTREACH
“Sometimes we get so comfortable with our security with Christ we forget about people’s eternity without Christ.”
– Chuck Ford
“So long as there is a human being who does not know Jesus Christ, I am his debtor to serve him until he does.”
– Oswald Chambers
PACE
“God’s pace always leads to God’s peace.”
– Gerald Brooks
“God will never adjust His agenda to fit ours. He will not speed up His pace to catch up with ours; we need to slow our pace in order to recover our walk with Him. God will not scream and shout over the noisy clamor; He expects us to seek quietness, where His still small voice can be heard again.”
– Charles Swindoll
“I value all things only by the price they shall gain in eternity.”
– John Wesley
“In the name of Jesus Christ, who was never in a hurry, we pray, O God, that You will slow us down, for we know that we live too fast. With all of eternity before us, make us take time to live — time to get acquainted with You, time to enjoy Your blessings, and time to know each other.”
– Peter Marshall
“Death is nature’s way of telling us to slow down.”
– Unknown
PAIN
“Nobody escapes being wounded. We are all wounded people, whether physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. The main question is not, ‘How can we hide our wounds?’ so we don’t have to be embarrassed, but ‘How can we put our woundedness in the service of others?’ When our wounds cease to be a source of shame, and become a source of healing, we have become wounded healers.”
– Henry Nouwen
“If you do not transform your pain, you will surely transmit it to those around you and even to the next generation.”
– Richard Rohr
PARENTING
“The Lord once brought me up short with the challenge: ‘Why do you persist in seeing your children in the hands of the devil, rather than in the hands of their faithful Shepherd?’ I then realized that in my mind I had been imagining all the evils of our present age as being ultimately more powerful than the timeless love of God.”
– Robert Frost
“Another piece of advice I have for parents of teenagers is: ‘Get ’em through it.’ That may not sound like such a stunning idea, but I believe it has merit for most families—especially those with one or more tough-minded kids.”
– Dr. James Dobson
“If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much.”
– Jacquelyn Kennedy
“The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.”
– Dennis Waitley
“It is not what you do for your children but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings.”
– Ann Landers
“Before I was married I had three theories about raising children. Now I have three children and no theories.”
– John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
PARTNERSHIP
“There is a Zulu saying in Africa ‘Isandla Sihlamba Esinye’ – It means that a single hand cannot wash itself – It means that people need each other and cannot succeed separately.”
– Christopher Alam
“No man will work for your interests unless they are his.”
– David Seabury
“Without God, man cannot, and without man, God will not.”
– Augustine
“The spirit of interdependence will not cost us more than it’s worth. On the steep slope ahead, holding hands is necessary. And it just might be that we can learn to enjoy it.”
– Paul Harvey
“I have long been profoundly convinced that in the very nature of things, employers and employees are partners, not enemies; that their interests are common not opposed; that in the long run the success of each is dependent upon the success of the other.”
– John D. Rockefeller
“Few people are successful unless a lot of other people want them to be.”
– Charles Brower
“It marks a big step in your development when you come to realize that other people can help you do a better job than you could do alone.”
– Andrew Carnegie
“I will venture to go down, but remember that you must hold the ropes.”
– William Carey
PASSION
“May God so fill us today with the heart of Christ that we may glow with the divine fire of holy desire.”
– A. B. Simpson
“Most churches don’t have a theology problem; they have a passion problem.”
– Gerald Brooks
“Human nature, if it is healthy, demands excitement; and if it does not obtain its thrilling excitement in the right way, it will seek it in the wrong. God never makes bloodless stoics; He makes no passionless saints.”
– Oswald Chambers
“The Holy Spirit cannot conquer the world with unbelief, nor can He save the world with a worldly Church. He calls for a crusade, a campaign, and an adventure of saving passion. For this enterprise He wants a separated, sanctified and sacrificial people.”
– Samuel Chadwick
“The secret of the Christian’s passion is simple: Everything we do in life we do it as to the Lord and not to men.”
– David Jeremiah
“Let the current of your being set towards God, then your life will be filled and calmed by one master-passion which unites and stills the soul.”
– Alexander MacLaren
“A passion for God isn’t necessarily the same as abiding in God; it must be coupled with obedience to be true love for God.”
– Ed Cole
“I know when apostolic passion has died in my heart. It happens when I don’t spend my quiet time dreaming of the time when Jesus will be worshiped in languages that aren’t yet heard in heaven. I know it’s missing from my life when I sing about heaven, but live as if earth is my home. Apostolic passion is dead in my heart when I dream more about sports, toys, places to go and people to see, than I do about the nations worshiping Jesus.”
– Floyd Mclung
“You have to find something that you love enough to be able to take risks, jump over the hurdles and break through the brick walls that are always going to be placed in front of you. If you don’t have that kind of feeling for what it is you’re doing, you’ll stop at the first giant hurdle.”
– George Lucas
“Come near to the holy men and women of the past and you will soon feel the heat of their desire after God. They mourned for Him, they prayed and wrestled and sought for Him day and night, in season and out, and when they found Him, the finding was all the sweeter for the long seeking.”
– A.W. Tozer
PASSIVITY
“Only dead fish drift with the stream.”
– Malcolm Muggeridge
PAST
“But though the past is irrevocable, it is not irreparable… God Himself cannot undo the past, but He can and will forgive. He will not mention the past, but give us a fair fresh start.”
– F.B. Meyer
“I’ve got my faults, but living in the past is not one of them. There’s no future in it.”
– Sparky Anderson
“Frequently we do not leave the past behind. We clasp on to it. We dissect it, and let fears for the future, tempered by the past, unconsciously prevent us from taking up the task eternal.”
– Ray Simpson
“We ought not to look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from the past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience.”
– George Washington
“The only significance of analyzing the past is that it does give us some key to the future.”
– John F. Kennedy
“A nation that forget its past has no future.”
– Winston Churchill
“I am amazed by how many individuals mess up every new day with yesterday. They insist on bringing into today the failures of yesterday and in doing so pollute a potentially wonderful day.”
– Gary Chapman
“Your past is always going to be the way it was. Stop trying to change it.”
– Unknown
“You do not move ahead by constantly looking in a rear view mirror. The past is a rudder to guide you, not an anchor to drag you. We must learn from the past but not live in the past.”
– Dr. Warren W. Wiersbe
PASTORAL CARE
“Our job, and I say this carefully, is to show we care even when God seems not to.”
– Philip Yancey
PASTORAL QUALIFICATIONS
“Qualifications of a pastor: the mind of a scholar, the heart of a child, and the hide of a rhinoceros.”
– Stuart Briscoe
PASTORING
“Too many Christians treat their pastors like a religious commodity. Hot when they need them, disposable when a better prospect comes along.”
– Jonathan K. Dodson
“The vocation of pastor(s) has been replaced by the strategies of religious entrepreneurs with business plans.”
– Eugene Peterson
“A preacher must be both soldier and shepherd. He must nourish, defend, and teach; he must have teeth in his mouth and be able to bite and fight.”
– Martin Luther
“I like the saying that being a pastor is the worst of all jobs and the best of all callings.”
– Jackson Carroll
PATIENCE
“During his lifetime, artist Vincent Van Gogh only sold one of his paintings.”
“Patience (endurance) is what gives staying power to our faith. We’d all love it if every desired result was instantaneous, but we know that there is often a process involved. That’s why Hebrews 6:12 tells us that it’s through ‘faith and patience’ that we inherit the promises. Faith is our trusting God, and patience is our unwavering tenacity in doing so.”
– Tony Cooke, “Through the Storms”
“Never go out to meet trouble. If you will just sit still, nine cases out of ten, someone will intercept it before it reaches you.”
– Calvin Coolidge
The great New England preacher Phillips Brooks was noted for his poise and quiet manner. At times, however, even he suffered moments of frustration and irritability. One day a friend saw him feverishly pacing the floor like a caged lion. “What’s the trouble, Mr. Brooks?” he asked. “The trouble is that I’m in a hurry, but God isn’t!”
“Patience is something you admire in the driver behind you, but not in the one ahead.”
– Bill McGlashen
“Wisely and slowly; they stumble that run fast.”
– William Shakespeare
“Sometimes the ship that is longest on its voyage brings home the richest freight. If the promise tarries, wait for it. A promise long waited for is very precious in its fulfilment.”
– T. Coley
“The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg—not smashing it.”
– Arnold Glasow
PEACE
“Do not let your peace depend on the words of men. Their thinking well or badly of you does not make you different from what you are.”
– Thomas à Kempis
“If you think little about yourself, you will have rest wherever you reside.”
– Abba Poemen (4th or 5th-century monk)
Do not fret, for God did not create us to abandon us.
– Michelangelo Buonarotti
“And in His will is our peace.”
– Dante
“Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit. Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset.”
– Saint Francis de Sales
“For peace of mind, resign as general manager of the universe.”
– Larry Eisenberg
“A light heart lives long.”
– William Shakespeare
“As the sword was the last resort for the preservation of our liberties, so it ought to be the first to be laid aside when those liberties are firmly established.”
– George Washington
“Peace is the fruit of believing prayer.”
– M.R. Vincent
“If God be our God, He will give us peace in trouble. When there is a storm without, He will make peace within. The world can create trouble in peace, but God can create peace in trouble.”
-Thomas Watson
“There is no peace in the border lands. The halfway Christian is a torment to himself and of no benefit to others.”
– Earnest Worker
“When I am anxious it is because I am living in the future. When I am depressed it is because I am living in the past.”
– Unknown
PEACEMAKERS
“If you would rather pick a fight than solve a problem, do not consider leading the church. The Christian leader must be genial and gentle, not a lover of controversy.”
– Oswald Sanders
“Blessed are the peacemakers, and one sure way of peacemaking is to let the fire of contention alone. Neither fan it, nor stir it, nor add fuel to it, but let it go out by itself. Begin your ministry with one blind eye and one deaf ear.”
– Charles Spurgeon
PEACEMAKING
“Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can…. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.”
– Abraham Lincoln (speaking to lawyers)
PEER PRESSURE
“What difference does it make to you what someone else becomes, or says, or does? You do not need to answer for others, only for yourself.”
– Thomas a Kempis
PENTECOST
“I see no reason why we should not have a Pentecost greater than Peter saw and a Reformation deeper in its foundations, and truer in its building up than all the reforms which Luther or Calvin achieved! We have the same Christ, remember that! The times are changed, but Jesus is the Eternal and time touches him not.”
— Charles H. Spurgeon
“The Pentecostal power, when you sum it all up, is just more of God’s love. If it does not bring more love, it is simply a counterfeit.”
– William J. Seymour
“In Pentecostalism, poor and broken people discover that what they read in the Gospels is happening now in their midst.”
– Richard Shaull
“Pentecost isn’t over yet!”
– D.L. Moody
PEOPLE
“If you treat people right, they will treat you right… ninety percent of the time.”
– Franklin Delano Roosevelt
“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”
– C. S. Lewis
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
– Maya Angelou
“As you interact with others, remember this: anytime a person’s response is larger than the issue at hand, the response is almost always about something else.”
– John Maxwell
“The moment you place a label on someone, you begin to treat him or her accordingly.”
– John Maxwell
“I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.”
– Abraham Lincoln
“Wherever there’s light, there’s bugs.”
– Harry Ironside
“There are two kinds of people in the world—those who walk into a room and say, ‘There you are’—and those who say, ‘Here I am!’”
– Abigail Van Buren
“The crowd makes the ballgame.”
– Ty Cobb
PEOPLE PLEASING
“He who will not go to bed till he pleases everybody will have to sit up a great many nights.”
– Spurgeon
PEOPLE SKILLS
“Everything in the world we want to do or get done, we must do with and through people.”
– Earl Nightingale
“Many a preacher misses the mark because, though he knows books, he does not know men.”
– James Stalker
“Never get mad at someone for being who they’ve always been. Be upset with yourself for not coming to terms with it sooner.”
– Unknown
“Crocodiles are easy. They try to kill and eat you. People are harder. Sometimes they pretend to be your friend first.”
– Steve Irwin (The Crocodile Hunter)
“Handling people need not be so difficult — all you need is inexhaustible patience, unfailing insight, unshakable nervous stability, an unbreakable will, decisive judgment, infrangible physique, irrepressible spirits, plus unfeigned affection for all people — and an awful lot of experience.”
– Eric Webster
“The ability to make someone like you is one of the most valuable talents you can possibly possess. Without it, your other talents – no matter how great – may be largely wasted. You may never get a chance to use them in a way that would do the greatest good, for yourself or for others.”
– John Luther
“Never speak of yourself to others; make them talk about themselves instead: therein lies the whole art of pleasing. Everyone knows it and everyone forgets it.”
– Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
“A gossip is one who talks to you about others; a bore is one who talks to you about himself; and a brilliant conversationalist is one who talks to you about yourself.”
– Lisa Kirk
“Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.”
– Benjamin Disraeli
“People will sit up and take notice of you if you will sit up and take notice of what makes them sit up and take notice.”
– Frank Romer
Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them become what they are capable of becoming.
– Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
“You can foul up on almost anything, and you’ll get another chance. But if you screw up, even a little bit, on people management, you’re gone. That’s it, top performer or not.”
– IBM Executive
“Use a sweet tongue, courtesy, and gentleness, and thou mayst manage to guide an elephant with a hair.”
– Napoleon Bonaparte
“I will pay more for the ability to deal with people than for any other ability under the sun.”
– John D. Rockefeller
“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years of trying to get other people interested in you.”
– Dale Carnegie
“You can’t make the other fellow feel important in your presence if you secretly feel that he is a nobody.”
– Les Giblin
“Few things will pay you bigger dividends than the time and trouble you take to understand people. Almost nothing will add more to your stature as an executive and a person. Nothing will give you greater satisfaction or bring you more happiness.”
– George Kienzle and Edward Dare
“It’s more important to get along with people than to get ahead of them.”
– John Maxwell
PERCEPTION
“When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite.”
– William Blake
PERFECTIONISM
“The maxim, ‘Nothing avails but perfection,’ spells paralysis.”
– Winston Churchill
“Aim for success, not perfection. Never give up your right to be wrong, because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life. Remember that fear always lurks behind perfectionism. Confronting your fears and allowing yourself the right to be human can, paradoxically, make yourself a happier and more productive person.”
– Dr. David M. Burns
PERSECUTION
“Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Whenever the true message of the cross is abolished, the anger of hypocrites and heretics ceases.. and all things are in peace. This is a sure token that the devil is guarding the entry to the house, and that the pure doctrine of God’s Word has been taken away. The Church then, is in the best state, when Satan assails it on every side… both with subtle sleights, and outright violence. And likewise it is in the worst state when it is most at peace.”
– Martin Luther
“Is the distinction between living for Christ and dying for Him so great? Is not the second the logical conclusion of the first?”
– Elisabeth Elliot (wife of martyr Jim Elliot)
PERSEVERANCE
“Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.”
– Marilyn vos Savant
“The difference between a strong man and a weak one is that the former does not give up after a defeat.”
– Woodrow Wilson
“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”
– Thomas Edison
“I can plod. I can persevere in any definite pursuit. To this I owe everything.”
– William Carey (1761-1834), Missionary to India
“Wanting to quit is a sign of success because it means you have something to quit; but don’t quit.”
– Matthew Barnett
“Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.”
– Newt Gingrich
“We conquer, not in any brilliant fashion—we conquer by continuing.”
– George H. Morrison
“I determined never to stop until I had come to the end and achieved my purpose.”
– David Livingstone
“By perseverance the snail reached the ark.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“Rule #1: Take one more step
Rule #2: When you don’t think you can take one more step, refer to Rule #1.”
– H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
“Press on: nothing in the world can take the place of perseverance. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”
-Calvin Coolidge
“When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.”
– Franklin Delano Roosevelt
“In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins. Not through strength, but through persistence.”
– Unknown
“The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won’t.”
– Henry Ward Beecher
“Your ability to face setbacks and disappointments without giving up will be the measure of your ability to succeed.”
– Calvin Coolidge
“We conquer by continuing.”
– George Matheson
“Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal: my strength lies solely in my tenacity.”
– Louis Pasteur
“Don’t let go of the vine.”
– Johnny Weissmuller (Actor who played Tarzan, giving advice to acting students)
“The most common trait I have found in all successful people is that they have conquered the temptation to give up.”
– Peter Lowe
“If the biographer gives me credit for being a plodder, he will describe me justly. Anything beyond this will be too much. I can plod. I can persevere in any definite pursuit. To this I owe everything.”
– William Carey
“It is a hard rule of life, and I believe a healthy one, that no great plan is ever carried out without meeting and overcoming endless obstacles that come up to try the skill of man’s hand, the quality of his courage, and the endurance of his faith.”
– Donald Douglas
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
– Winston Churchill
“Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.”
– Winston Churchill
“How long should you try? Until.”
– Jim Rohn
PERSEVERING
“The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won’t.”
– Henry Ward Beecher
PERSISTENCE
“It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.”
– Babe Ruth
“I believe with every trial in life comes the opportunity to have a FINEST MOMENT – When you didn’t quit, you didn’t give up, you didn’t turn on God, you didn’t go crazy – you stood, fought, and won!”
– Pattie Ah Kui
“Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.”
– Babe Ruth
“It’s always too soon to quit.”
– Raymond Edman
“We Shall come through! We cannot tell when, we cannot tell how, but we shall come through.”
– Winston Churchill
“Consider the postage stamp: Its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there.”
– Josh Billings
“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”
– Albert Einstein
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
“I think that much of the advice given to young men about saving money is wrong. I never saved a cent until I was forty years old. I invested in myself – in study, in mastering my tools, in preparation. Many a man who is putting a few dollars a week into the bank would do much better to put it into himself.”
– Henry Ford
PERSPECTIVE
“Positive anything is better than negative nothing.”
– Elbert Hubbard
“This is something I have found to be true without exception: that when we, any of us, focus on things in our lives that are passing away, we get scared, we get anxious, we get depressed, we lose hope; and when we focus on things that are being birthed and are coming newly into creation, we get excited, we get imaginative, we get optimistic, we feel drawn closer to one another, we feel as if we have meaning and purpose in this life, and we have joy. . . . we are given change as an ingredient in life. We can be frightened and anxious and resistant to it or we can embrace it as a tool to transform us.”
– Jim Kelsey
“I can’t say I was ever lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.”
– Daniel Boone
“Two men looked out from prison bars. One saw mud, one saw stars.”
– Unknown
“We must learn to live on the heavenly side and look at things from above. To contemplate all things as God sees them, as Christ beholds them, overcomes sin, defies Satan, dissolves perplexities, lifts us above trials, separates us from the world and conquers fear of death.”
– A.B. Simpson
“I remember when the Titanic sank in 1912, it was the ship that was supposed to be unsinkable. The only thing it ever did was sink. When it took off from England, all kinds of passengers were aboard – millionaires, celebrities, people of moderate means, and poor folks down in the steerage. But a few hours later when they put the list in the Cunard office in New York, it carried only two categories – lost and saved. Grim tragedy had leveled all distinctions.”
-Vance Havner
“If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from his angle as well as your own.”
– Henry Ford
“If the fire of hell is not literal, it is worse than actual fire, and if the gates of the Celestial City are not actual gold, they are far finer.”
– Vance Havner
“To believe all men honest would be folly. To believe none so is something worse.”
– John Quincy Adams
“To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“If you make every game a life and death proposition, you’re going to have problems. For one thing, you’ll be dead a lot.”
– Dean Smith
“We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.”
– Anais Nin
PERSUASION
“If you feel the need to augment your message with shouting, perhaps your words are not powerful enough on their own.”
– Richard Blackaby
“People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others.”
– Blaise Pascal
PESSIMISM
“A pessimist is one who feels bad when he feels good for fear he’ll feel worse when he feels better.”
– Anonymous
PESSIMIST
“The pessimist’s epitaph: ‘Just what I expected’.”
“There’s many a pessimist who got that way by financing an optimist.”
PETER
“[Peter] …was sometimes on the wrong side of the fence, sometimes on the right side. But he never straddled it.”
– Clovis Chappell
PLAGIARISM
“Perhaps no poet is a conscious plagiarist; but there seems to be warrant for suspecting that there is no poet who is not at one time or another an unconscious one.”
– Mark Twain
PLAN
“If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.”
– Jim Rohn
PLANNING
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”
– Mark Twain
PLEASURE
“America’s greatest sin is the refusal to delay gratification.”
– Scott Peck
POPULARITY
“Popularity has slain more prophets of God than persecution ever did.”
– Vance Havner
POPULAR OPINION
“Whereas our grandparents lived as if they had swallowed gyroscopes, we think and act as if we have swallowed Gallup polls.”
– Os Guiness
POSITIVE
“Positive anything is better than negative nothing.”
– Elbert Hubbard
POSSIBILITIES
“Be a possibilitarian. No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see the possibilities – always see them, for they are always there.”
– Norman Vincent Peale
“Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.”
– Hannah More
POTENTIAL
“I may be an ordinary man, but I shall do extraordinary things through God.”
– E. Stanley Jones
“If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.”
– Muhammad Ali
“God uses ordinary people who are obedient to Him to do extraordinary things.”
– John Maxwell
“Does any man know what the Spirit of God can make of him? I believe the greatest, ablest, most faithful, most holy man of God might have been greater, and abler, and more faithful, and more holy, if he had put himself more completely at the Spirit’s disposal.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“Ah! dear friend, you little know the possibilities which are in you.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“Anyone can count the seeds in an apple. No one can count the apples in a seed.”
– Unknown
“The jump is so frightening between where I am and where I could be… Because of all that I may become, I will close my eyes and leap.”
– Mary Ann Radmacher
“When you discover you’ve been leading only half a life, the other half is going to haunt you until you develop it.”
– Phillips Brooks
“The real tragedy is the tragedy of the man who never in his life braces himself for his one supreme effort, who never stretches to his full capacity, never stands up to his full stature.”
– Arnold Bennett
“Anybody can do just about anything with himself that he really wants to and makes up his mind to do. We are capable of greater things than we realize.”
– Norman Vincent Peale
“Learn something new. Try something different. Convince yourself that you have no limits.”
– Brian Tracy
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
– William Morrow
“Whatever else may be said of man, this one thing is clear: He is not what he is capable of being.”
– G.K. Chesterton
POTENTIAL (UNREALIZED)
“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”
– Henry David Thoreau
POWER
“Force always attracts men of low morality.”
– Albert Einstein
“He who has great power should use it lightly.”
– Seneca
“The descent to hell is easy, and those who begin by worshipping power soon worship evil.”
– C.S. Lewis
“Power shows the man.”
– Sophocles
“The only way to meet the modern demon-stration of the powers of darkness is by a demonstration of the power of God.”
– Vance Havner
“Nothing will divide the church so much as the love of power.”
– Chrysostom
“The essence of government is power; and power, lodged in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.”
– James Madison
“There is nothing more corrupting, nothing more destructive of the noblest and finest feelings of our nature, than the exercise of unlimited power.”
– William Henry Harrison
“Three things ruin a man. Power, money, and women. I never wanted power. I never had any money, and the only woman in my life is up at the house right now.”
– Harry S. Truman
“The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it.”
– Thomas B. Macauley
“Power may be justly compared to a great river; while kept within its bounds it is both beautiful and useful, but when it overflows its banks, it brings destruction and desolation to all in its way.”
– Andrew Hamilton
“Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.”
– Edward Abbey
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
– Abraham Lincoln
“Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”
– Margaret Thatcher
POWER/MONEY
“Two passions have powerful influence on the affairs of men: the love of power and the love of money.”
– Benjamin Franklin
PRACTICALITY
“Nourish your hopes, but do not overlook realities.”
– Winston Churchill
“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
– Henry David Thoreau
PRAISE
“A Christian should be a Hallelujah from head to foot.”
– Augustine
“Praise now is one of the great duties of the redeemed. It will be their employment for ever.”
– Albert Barnes
PRAY
“On your knees, pray as though it all depends on God; leave your knees and work as though it all depends on you.”
– Augustine
PRAYER
“Lord, give me Scotland or I die!”
– John Knox
“Nothing lies beyond the reach of prayer except that which lies outside the will of God.”
– Duncan Campbell
“May I not ask Christian people to begin now to pray for a special outpouring of the Spirit upon every meeting of the Conference?”
– D.L. Moody
“My life is almost a continual conversation with heaven.”
– Cotton Mather
“In prayer it is better to have heart without words than words without a heart.”
– John Bunyan
“He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.”
– Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“If the only prayer we say is ‘thank you’ that would be enough.
– Meister Eckhart
“When a person is in his closet, alone before the all-seeing God, that he is and no more.”
– Don Fortner
“It is in the field of prayer that life’s critical battles are lost or won. In prayer we bring our spiritual enemies into the presence of God and we fight them there.”
– J.H. Jowett
“Hurry is the death of prayer.”
– Samuel Chadwick
“The fewer the words, the better the prayer.”
– Martin Luther
“Trouble and perplexity drive me to prayer, and prayer drives away perplexity and trouble.”
– Philip Melanchthon
“Groanings which cannot be uttered are often prayers which cannot be refused.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“The life of prayer is just love to God, and the custom of ever being with him.”
– Teresa of Avila
“Pray hardest when it is hardest to pray.”
– Martin Luther
“Be much in secret prayer. Converse less with man, and more with God.”
– George Whitefield
“Once we spent a whole night in prayer and praise: and many a time, at midnight and at one in the morning, after I have been wearied almost to death in preaching, writing and conversation, and going from place to place, God imparted new life to my soul, and enabled me to intercede with him for an hour and a half and two hours together.”
– George Whitefield
“On the ground of our own goodness we cannot expect to have our prayers answered. But Jesus is worthy, and for his sake we may have our prayers answered. But if we trust in Christ, if we hide in him, if we put him forward and ourselves in the background, depend on him and plead his name, we may expect to have our prayers answered.
– George Muller
“The secret of praying is praying in secret.”
– Leonard Ravenhill
“Prayer is not a collection of balanced phrases; it is the pouring out of the soul. What is love if it be not fiery? What are prayers if the heart be not ablaze? They are the battles of the soul. In them men wrestle with principalities and powers.”
– Samuel Chadwick
“The western church has lost the prayer stamina of the mission churches in Asia, Africa, South America, Indonesia, and those of the underground church in many parts of the world. Yes, we are great organizers, but poor pray-ers.”
– Paul E. Billheimer
“Next to the wonder of seeing my Savior will be, I think, the wonder that I made so little use of the power of prayer.”
– D. L. Moody
“I ought to pray before I see anyone.”
– Robert Murray McCheyne
“I fear John Knox’s prayers more than an army of ten thousand men.”
– Mary Queen of Scots
“Every great movement of God can be traced to a kneeling figure.”
– D. L. Moody
“A minister who prays not, who is not in love with prayer, is not a minister of the Church of God. He is a dry tree, which occupies in vain a place in Christ’s garden. He is an enemy, and not a father, of the people. He is a stranger, who has taken the place of the shepherd, and to whom the salvation of the flock is an indifferent thing.”
– Thomas Coke
“Brother, if you would enter that Province, you must go forward on your knees.”
– J. Hudson Taylor
“Saint Patrick’s Breastplate,”
Old Irish, eighth-century prayer.
I rise today
with the power of God to pilot me,
God’s strength to sustain me,
God’s wisdom to guide me,
God’s eye to look ahead for me,
God’s ear to hear me,
God’s word to speak for me,
God’s hand to protect me,
God’s way before me,
God’s shield to defend me,
God’s host to deliver me,
from snares of devils,
from evil temptations,
from nature’s failings,
from all who wish to harm me,
far or near,
alone and in a crowd.
“The trouble with our praying is, we just do it as a means of last resort.”
– Will Rogers
“I don’t mean that there is too little New Testament language in our prayers; but there is too little both Old and New Testament language meditated on, understood, believed, realized and felt. There is too little Scripture substance, Scripture strength, Scripture depth, and Scripture height, in our prayers.”
– Alexander Whyte
“In our prayers, we talk to God, in our Bible study, God talks to us, and we had better let God do most of the talking.”
– D.L. Moody
“We cannot all be leaders, but we can all be pleaders; we cannot all be mighty in rhetoric, but we can all be prevalent in prayer.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“On your knees, pray as though it all depends on God; leave your knees and work as though it all depends on you.”
– Augustine
“Prayer will make you leave off sinning, or sinning will make you leave off praying.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“Pray and read. Read and pray; for a little from God is better than a great deal from men.”
– John Bunyan
“Nights of prayer to God are followed by days of power with men.”
– R. A. Torrey
“If you only pray when you’re in trouble then you’re in trouble.”
– Unknown
“Waiting in prayer is a disciplined refusal to act before God acts.”
– Eugene Peterson
“Prayer will make a man cease from sin, or sin will entice a man to cease from prayer.”
– John Bunyan
“Pray and so preach that if there are no conversions you will be astonished, amazed, and brokenhearted.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“I will not let you go: I have wrestled with God for my hearers in private, and I must wrestle with you here in public.”
– George Whitfield
“Prayer is never the first word; it is always the second word. God has the first word.”
– Eugene Peterson
“The greatest tragedy of life is not unanswered prayer, but unoffered prayer.”
– F.B. Meyer
“Prayer involves transformed passions. In prayer, real prayer, we begin to think God’s thoughts after Him: to desire the things He desires, to love the things He loves, to will the things He wills.”
– Richard J. Foster
“It is in recognizing the actual presence of God that we find prayer no longer a chore, but a supreme delight.”
– Gordon Lindsay
“We need never shout across the spaces to an absent God. He is nearer than our own soul, closer than our most secret thoughts”
– A.W. Tozer
If we worshiped a small, petty deity, it would make sense to pray small, petty prayers. But we worship the Almighty Creator and Redeemer. What kind of prayers should we pray?
– Michael L. Brown
“Cry mightily to God, and, with the cords of holy violence, pull down blessings on your neighbors heads.”
– George Whitfield
“If you only pray when you’re in trouble then you’re in trouble.” (Sign outside of a rural church building in Michigan)
“When we depend upon organizations, we get what organizations can do; when we depend upon education, we get what education can do; when we depend upon man, we get what man can do; but when we depend upon prayer, we get what God can do.”
– A.C. Dixon
“Prayer is not so much an act as it is an attitude – an attitude of dependency, dependency upon God.”
– A.W. Pink
“There has never been a spiritual awakening in any country or locality that did not begin in united prayer.”
– A.T. Pierson
“Faith in a prayer-hearing God will make a prayer-loving Christian.”
– Andrew Murray
“The great thing in prayer is to feel that we are putting our supplications into the bosom of omnipotent love.”
– Andrew Murray
“A man may study because his brain is hungry for knowledge, even Bible knowledge. But he prays because his soul is hungry for God.”
– Leonard Ravenhill
“Prayer is not monologue, but dialogue. God’s voice in response to mine is its most essential part.”
– Andrew Murray
“To be much for God, we must be much with God. Jesus, that lone figure in the wilderness, knew strong crying, along with tears. Can one be moved with compassion and not know tears? Jeremiah was a sobbing saint. Jesus wept! So did Paul. So did John. Though there are some tearful intercessors behind the scenes, I grant you that to our modern Christianity, praying is foreign.”
– Leonard Ravenhill
“The secret of praying is praying in secret.”
– Leonard Ravenhill
“It matters enormously if I alienate anyone from the truth.”
– C.S. Lewis
“Whatever God can do faith can do, and whatever faith can do prayer can do when it is offered in faith. An invitation to prayer is, therefore, an invitation to omnipotence, for prayer engages the Omnipotent God and brings Him into our human affairs. Nothing is impossible to the man who prays in faith, just as nothing is impossible with God. This generation has yet to prove all that prayer can do for believing men and women.”
“If there are two persons praying, there are three. If three meet to pray, there are four praying. There is always one more than you can see.”
– S.D. Gordon
“Prayer is weakness leaning on omnipotence.”
– W.S. Bowd
“Get into the habit of dealing with God about everything. Unless in the first waking moment of the day you learn to fling the door wide back and let God in, you will work on a wrong level all day; but swing the door wide open and pray to your Father in secret, and every public thing will be stamped with the presence of God.”
– Oswald Chambers
“If we grow wiser and more learned in our intercourse with wise and learned persons, how much more will we gain in our inner life by communing with God in prayer.”
– Ulrich Zwingli
“Doubtful prayer is no prayer at all.”
– John Calvin
“The answer of our prayers is secured by the fact that in rejecting them God would in a certain sense deny His own nature.”
– John Calvin
“It was not surprising ….that [my father] should seldom have long seasons of agonizing prayer such as some have experienced, for His closeness to God was not limited to special seasons, but was a continuous and uninterrupted service.”
– William Moody (about D.L. Moody)
“My friends, if we are going to do a great work for God, we must spend much time in prayer; we have got to be closeted with God.”
– D.L. Moody
“It is not the man that can preach the best that is the most successful, but the man who knows how to get his people together to pray.”
– D.L. Moody
“There is no true prayer without confession. As long as we have unconfessed sin in our soul, we are not going to have power with God in prayer. He says if we regard iniquity in our hearts, He will not hear us, much less answer. As long as we are living in any known sin, we have no power in prayer. God is not going to hear it.”
– D.L. Moody
“Pray as though everything depended upon God but work as though everything depended upon you.”
– D.L. Moody
“It is not well for a man to pray cream and live skim milk.”
– Henry Ward Beecher
“You are coming to a King, Large petitions with you bring, For his grace and power are such, None can ever ask too much.”
– John Newton
“Thou art coming to a King;
Large petitions with thee bring;
For His grace and power are such
None can ever ask too much.”
– John Newton
“I would say to today’s young minister, ‘Be not afraid to give much time to solitary walks and meditation’.”
-Vance Havner
“We are not told that Jesus ever taught His disciples how to preach; but He taught them how to pray.
– D.L. Moody
“Prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance but cooperating with His willingness.”
– Richard C. Trench
“Forgive us for thinking that prayer is a waste of time and help us to see that without prayer our work is a waste of time.”
– Peter Marshall
Give me Souls, O God, or I die!”
– John Hyde (Missionary to India)
“We ought to see the face of God every morning before we see the face of man.”
– Dwight L. Moody
“If you have so much business to attend to that you have no time to pray, depend upon it that you have more business on hand than God ever intended you should have.”
– Dwight L. Moody
“A man who prays much in private will make short prayers in public.”
– Dwight L. Moody
“Some men’s prayers need to be cut short at both ends and set on fire in the middle.”
– Dwight L. Moody
“We may be certain that whatever God has made prominent in His Word, He intended to be conspicuous in our lives. If He has said much about prayer, it is because He knows we have much need of it.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“When we work, we work; but when we pray, God works.”
– Max Lucado
“What is not accomplished through prayer either should not be done, or else will not matter in eternity.”
– Jerry Miller
“God will do nothing on earth except in answer to believing prayer.”
– John Wesley
“Never have so many left so much to so few.”
– Leonard Ravenhill
“If you are a praying person, you are one of God’s gifts to mankind.”
– Unknown
“Prayer is not just getting ready for Christian service. Prayer is Christian service.”
– Adrian Rodgers
“The real victory in all service is won in secret beforehand by prayer.”
– S.D. Gordon
“Prayer is not designed to inform God, but… to humble man’s heart, to excite his desire, to inflame his faith, to animate his hope, and to raise his soul from earth to heaven.”
– Adam Clarke
“Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too small to be made into a burden.”
– Corrie Ten Boom
“The petitions of Moses discomfited the enemy more than the fighting of Joshua. Yet both were needed. No, in the soul’s conflict, force and fervor, decision and devotion, valour and vehemence, must join their forces, and all will be well.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“We are too busy to pray, and so we are too busy to have power. We have a great deal of activity, but we accomplish little; many services, but few conversions; much machinery, but few results.”
– R.A. Torrey
Prayer is not a means by which I seek to control God; it is a means of putting myself in a position where God can control me.”
– Charles L. Allen
“Prayer is speaking truth to Truth.”
– Phillip James Bailey
“Prayer is beyond any question the highest activity of the human soul. Man is at his greatest and highest when upon his knees he comes face to face with God.”
– Martyn Lloyd-Jones
“Prayer is an investment. The time you dedicate to prayer isn’t lost; it will return dividends far greater than what a few moments spent on a task ever could. If we fail to cultivate this discipline, prayer winds up being our last resort rather than our first response.”
– Charles Swindoll
“Prayer will become effective when we stop using it as a substitute for obedience.”
– A.W. Tozer
“The one concern of the devil is to keep Christians from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work and prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but he trembles when we pray.”
– Samuel Chadwick
“The man who mobilizes the Christian church to pray will make the greatest contribution to world evangelization in history.”
– Andrew Murray
“I would rather teach one man to pray than ten men to preach.”
– Charles Spurgeon
“What the church needs today is not machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Spirit can use – men mighty in prayer. The Holy Spirit does not flow through methods, but through men of prayer.” And we might add, through women of prayer.”
– E.M. Bounds
“Out of a very intimate acquaintance with D.L. Moody, I wish to testify that he was a far greater pray-er than he was preacher.”
– R.A. Torrey
“It is obvious that Paul did not regard prayer as supplemental, but as fundamental—not something to be added to his work but the very matrix out of which his work was born. He was a man of action because he was a man of prayer. It was probably his prayer even more than his preaching that produced the kind of leaders we meet in his letters.”
– Oswald Sanders, from Dynamic Spiritual Leadership
“A sinning man will stop praying. A praying man will stop sinning.”
– Leonard Ravenhill
“Prayer as a relationship is probably your best indicator about the health of your love relationship with God. If your prayer life has been slack, your love relationship has grown cold.”
– John Piper
“Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?”
– Corrie Ten Boom
“The less I pray, the harder it gets; the more I pray, the better it goes.”
– Martin Luther
“Real prayer comes not from gritting our teeth, but from falling in love.”
– Richard Foster
“Do not attempt to assess the quality of your prayer. God alone can judge its value.”
– Macarious of Optino
“Prayer is not conquering God’s reluctance, but taking hold of God’s willingness.”
– Phillips Brooks
“I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.”
– Abraham Lincoln
“Heaven is full of answers to prayer for which no one ever bothered to ask.”
– Billy Graham
“Unless I had the spirit of prayer, I could do nothing.”
– Charles G. Finney
“Prayer is not a fruitless exercise that God asked us to perform to determine whether or not we’re faithful. Prayer is the vehicle that releases God to move in the earth!”
– Joseph Cameneti Sr.
“Prayer is simple, as simple as a child making known its wants to it parents.”
– Oswald Chambers
“God does nothing but in answer to prayer.”
– John Wesley
“Prayer is striking the winning blow. . . . Service is gathering up the results.”
– S.D. Gordon
“God shapes the world by prayer. The prayers of God’s saints are the capital stock of heaven by which God carries on His great work upon earth.”
– E.M. Bounds
“Beloved, it is not our long prayers but our believing God that gets the answer.”
– John G. Lake
“I used to ask God to help me. Then I asked if I might help Him. I ended up by asking Him to do his work through me.”
– James Hudson Taylor
“God does nothing but by prayer, and everything with it.”
– John Wesley
“To pray is to cast off your burdens, it is to tear away your rags, it is to shake off your diseases, it is to be filled with spiritual vigor, it is to reach the highest point of Christian health.”
– C.H. Spurgeon
“I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me. His face, that hitherto may have been strange and intolerable to me, is transformed into the countenance of a brother for whom Christ died, the face of a forgiven sinner.”
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“You could remove the powerful preaching from our church and it would still continue. You could remove the administration of pastoral care through the cell group system and the church would still continue. But if you remove the prayer life of our church it would collapse.”
– David Yonggi Cho
“The character of our praying will determine the character of our preaching. Light praying makes light preaching.”
– E.M. Bounds
PREACHING
“Depth in preaching means that we make the profound things simple, the simple things profound, and all things practical.”
– Warren Wiersbe
“I design plain truth for plain people.”
– John Wesley
“The supreme work of the Christian minister is the work of preaching. This is a day in which one of our greatest perils is that of doing a thousand little things to the neglect of the one thing, which is preaching.”
G. Campbell Morgan
“Whenever we preach, we stand between those two things, between human need and Divine grace. We are the messengers of that grace to that need.”
G. Campbell Morgan
“Applying his communication skills to preaching the new faith, Augustine, the Christian rhetorician, defined the preacher’s task as docere, deletare, flectere—to teach, to delight, to influence. To touch the mind, the heart, the will.”
– Mark Galli
“No man can bear witness to Christ and himself at the same time. No man can at once give the impression that he is clever and that Christ is mighty to save.”
– James Denney
“Sound preaching arises out of two loves—love of the Word of God and love of people—and from them both a desire to show people God’s glorious grace. And so, while only God can open hearts, the communicator must give great time and thought both to presenting the truth accurately and to bringing it home to the hearts and lives of the hearers.”
– Timothy Keller
“Preach Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God, that takes away the sin of the world, and as the propitiation for the sins of the whole world, with demonstration of the Spirit and with power; and when poor lost men come to Christ, and find grace and the forgiveness of their sins in his blood—their hearts are then filled with the Holy Spirit and the love of Christ, and they obtain a desire and power to follow him, and to live according to his will.”
– Nikolaus Zinzendorf
“I see a man cannot be a faithful minister, until he preaches Christ for Christ’s sake—until he gives up striving to attract people to himself and seeks only to attract them to Christ. Lord, give me this!”
– Robert Murray M’Cheyne
“Unless you are simple in your sermons you will never be understood, and unless you are understood you cannot do good to those who hear you.”
– Bishop JC Ryle (1816-1900)
“Let every sermon preached contain so much of the plan of salvation that should a heathen come in who never heard the gospel before, and should depart never to hear it again, he should learn enough to know what he must do to be saved.”
-Thomas Goulding
“I enter a pulpit in weakness, and I end with power. I enter with self-confidence and I am made to feel a fool.”
-Martyn Lloyd-Jones
“A popular evangelist reaches your emotions. A true prophet reaches your conscience.”
– Leonard Ravenhill
“If the truth were known, many sermons are prepared and preached with more regard for the sermon than the souls of the hearers.”
– George F. Pentecost
“One filled with joy preaches without preaching.”
– Mother Teresa
“One reason why women are forbidden to preach the gospel, is, that they would persuade without argument and reprove without giving offence.”
– John Newton
“I have never once feared the devil, but I tremble every time I enter the pulpit.”
– John Knox
“Pray and so preach that if there are no conversions you will be astonished, amazed, and brokenhearted.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“I will not let you go: I have wrestled with God for my hearers in private, and I must wrestle with you here in public.”
– George Whitfield
“He is the greatest master of oratory who is able to address any class of people in a manner suitable to their condition, and likely to touch their hearts.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“If you feel the need to augment your message with shouting, perhaps your words are not powerful enough on their own.”
– Richard Blackaby
“I go out to preach with two propositions in mind. First, every person ought to give his life to Christ. Second, whether any one else gives him his life, I will give him mine.”
– Jonathan Edwards
“Do not try to make the gospel tasteful to carnal minds. Do not hide the offense of the cross, lest you make it of no effect.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“There’s a time for story and a time for statement. Moses didn’t come down the mountain with ten stories or ten metaphors.”
– Leonard Sweet
“It is conceivable that God might have ordained to preach the Gospel directly to man through dreams, visions and revelations. But as a matter of fact, He has not done this; but rather has committed the preaching to man, telling them to go and disciple all nations. The responsibility lies squarely on our shoulders.”
– J. Oswald Sanders
“Preaching is personal counseling on a group basis.”
– Harry Emerson Fosdick
“For God’s watchmen to become the world’s showmen is a miserable business.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“To love to preach is one thing to love those to whom we preach, quite another.”
– Richard Cecil
“There are three things missing from modern preaching — immensity, intensity, and eternity.”
– Leonard Ravenhill
“Never let your hearers have to ask the question, “What has this sermon to do with the text?”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“Whatever subject I preach, I do not stop until I reach the Savior, the Lord Jesus, for in Him are all things.”
– Charles Spurgeon
“The three essentials for great preaching are: truth, clarity, and passion.”
– G. Campbell Morgan
Wesley writes in his journal, “Saturday, 31 [March, 1731]. In the evening I reached Bristol, and met Mr. Whitefield there. I could scarce reconcile myself at first to this strange way of preaching in the fields, of which he set me an example on Sunday; having been all my life (till very lately) so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order, that I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin, if had it not been done in a church.”
“That eminent American preacher, the seraphic Summerfield, when he lay a-dying, turned round to a friend in the room and said, ‘I have taken a look into eternity. Oh, if I could come back and preach again, how differently would I preach from what I have done before!’”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“Preach to broken hearts, for in every pew you are sure to find some.”
– Charles Spurgeon
“If God speak not peace to you here, you’ll be damned for ever. I must not flatter you my dear friends; I will deal sincerely with your souls.”
– George Whitfield
“To tell about Jesus without the cross is to betray him with a kiss.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“To preach plain and simply is a great art.”
– Martin Luther
“Let eloquence be flung to the dogs rather than souls be lost. What we want is to win souls. They are not won by flowery speeches.”
– Charles Spurgeon
“A sermon without Christ as its beginning, middle and end is a mistake in conception and a crime in execution.”
– Charles Spurgeon
“A true sermon is an act of God, and not a mere performance by man.”
– J.I. Packer
“When you speak of Heaven,” he said, “let your face light up, let it be irradiated with a heavenly gleam, let your eyes shine with reflected glory. But when you speak of Hell; well, then your ordinary face will do.”
– Charles Spurgeon (speaking to students training for ministry)
“In 36 years of pastoral ministry, I’ve preached my share of sermons that flog rather than forgive, hurt instead of heal. I wish I could go back and ‘unpreach’ them.”
– Bill Giovannetti
“They said of one: “He is a fine preacher;” but of another they said: “We never notice how he preaches, but we always feel that God is great.”
– Charles Spurgeon
“To preach plain and simply is a great art.”
– Martin Luther
“An old sermon may be preached with new affections; what we say often we may say again, if we say it affectionately and are ourselves under the power of it.”
– Matthew Henry
“The disease of modern preaching is its search after popularity.”
– James S. Stewart
Christ always preached doctrine that was hopeful. While he denounced self-righteousness, he would turn around and say, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:32). If he ever had a frown on his brow, it was for the hypocrite and the proud man. But he had tears for sinners and loving invitations for penitent ones.”
– Charles Spurgeon
“Make Christ magnificent in the eyes of man.”
– Henrietta Mears
“The sermon which does not lead to Christ, or of which Jesus Christ is not the top and the bottom, is a sort of sermon that will make the devils in hell laugh, but make the angels of God weep.”
– Charles Spurgeon
“The God who speaks with utmost integrity must have messengers who represent him well.”
– Haddon W. Robinson
“I am certain that to preach the wrath of God with a hard heart, a cold lip, a tearless eye, and an unfeeling spirit is to harden men, not benefit them.”
– Charles Spurgeon
“I suggest that preaching Christ means proclaiming the Word of God in such a way that Jesus Christ is clearly presented in all the fullness of his person and the greatness of his work. He is glorified as the eternal Son of God, Creator, Savior of the world, Lord of history, and Head of the church. He is magnified as the heart of every Christian doctrine and the motivation for every Christian duty.”
– Warren Wiersbe
“John Wesley was so desirous of using the language of his people that he frequently read his sermons to the serving maid to see of she understood what he was saying.”
“Money doesn’t change men, it merely unmasks them. If a man is naturally selfish, or arrogant, or greedy, the money brings that out, that is all.”
– Henry Ford
“What is preaching? Logic on fire! Preaching is theology coming through a man who is on fire. A true understanding and experience of the Truth must lead to this. I say again that a man who can speak about these things dispassionately has no right whatsoever to be in a pulpit; and should never be allowed to enter one.”
– Martyn Lloyd-Jones
“The Christian church was designed to make sinners sweat. I have always believed that, and I still believe it. The messages preached in our churches should make backslidden Christians sweat. And if I achieve that objective when I preach, I thank God with all of my heart, no matter what people think of me.”
– A.W. Tozer
“God gave me this great book to preach from, and if He has put anything in it you think is not fit, go and complain to Him, not to me. I am simply his servant, and if His errand that I am to tell is objectionable, I cannot help it.”
– Charles Spurgeon
“The devil will let a preacher prepare a sermon if it will keep him from preparing himself.”
– Vance Havner
“The crowds themselves are meaningless. The thing that counts is what happens to the hearts of the people.”
– Billy Graham
“A good many preachers say I am lowering the pulpit. I am glad I am. I am trying to get it down to the level of men’s hearts. If I wanted to hit Chicago I would not put the cannon on the top of this building and fire into the air. Too many preachers fire into the air.”
– D.L. Moody
“If God has given you a message, go and give it to the people as God has given it to you. It is a stupid thing to try to be eloquent.”
– D.L. Moody
“One of the greatest compliments to his preaching was that the sermon that would hold the rapt attention of the most intelligent of his congregation would also be listened to with great eagerness by the children present. Any one – every one – Understood what he said.”
– Ira Sankey (about D.L. Moody)
“I once heard a preacher who sorely tempted me to go to church no more.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There is great need today for the New Testament prophet who speaks to edification, exhortation, and comfort, a strengthening, stirring and soothing ministry.”
-Vance Havner
“God is on the lookout today for a man who will be quiet enough to get a message from Him, brave enough to preach it, and honest enough to live it.”
-Vance Havner
“You can’t preach it like it is if you don’t believe it like it was.”
– Vance Havner
The Gospel…”It is not our responsibility to make it acceptable; it is our duty to make it available.”
– Vance Havner
“The gospel is for lifeboats, not showboats, and a man must make up his mind which boat he is going to operate.”
– Vance Havner
“No amount of facts in his head can compensate for the lack of fire on his lips.”
– Vance Havner
“A picture of Christ was hung in the back of a pulpit. When the minister rose to speak one Sunday morning, a little boy asked his mother, ‘Mother, who is that man who stands so we can’t see Jesus?”
– Vance Havner
“An old minister explained the smudges on his sermon outlines by saying they were caused by sweat and tears. And without those two marks, a sermon is not a sermon.”
– Vance Havner
“Does your message end with one point like a sword or does it end like a broom with a thousand straws?”
– Vance Havner
“Some preachers ought to put more fire into their sermons or more sermons into the fire.”
– Vance Havner
“The preacher who can’t broaden or deepen his sermons usually lengthens them.”
“When a man preaches to men, I want him to make it a personal matter, a personal matter, a personal matter.”
– Daniel Webster
“To preach the fires of hell without the glories of Heaven is condemnation. To preach the glories of Heaven without warning people of the fires of hell is to lull them into a false security.”
– Keith Intrater
“A sermon is no sermon in which I cannot hear the heartbeat.”
– Henry Longfellow
“No man preaches his sermon well to others if he does not first preach it to his own heart.”
– John Owen
“To love to preach is one thing; to love to whom you preach is quite another.”
– D. Martin Lloyd-Jones
“How good we are as preachers depends – not altogether, but (make no mistake!) primarily – on how good we are as men.”
– John Knox
“A preacher’s throne is the pulpit; he stands in Christ’s stead; his message is the Word of God; around him are immortal souls; the Savior, unseen, is beside him; the Holy Spirit broods over the congregation; angels gaze upon the scene, and heaven and hell await the issue. What associations, and what vast responsibility!
– Matthew Simpson
“The fact is, I don’t like to hear cut and dried sermons. No—when I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees!”
– Abraham Lincoln
“Every honest minister preaches from a reservoir of guilt and grace.”
– Gary Gulbranson
“Every preacher who trims himself to suit everybody will soon whittle himself away.”
– J. Harold Smith
“Preaching is not the art of making a sermon and delivering it. Preaching is the art of making a preacher and delivering him.”
– Bishop Quayle
“Everywhere there is apathy. Nobody cares whether that which is preached is true or false. A sermon is a sermon whatever the subject; only, the shorter it is the better.”
– Charles Haddon Spurgeon
“I like to hear a man dwell much on the same essentials of Christianity. For we have but one God, and one Christ, and one faith to preach; and I will not preach another Gospel to please men with variety, as if our Savior and our Gospel were grown stale.”
– Richard Baxter
“If a preacher is not first preaching to himself, better that he falls on the steps of the pulpit and breaks his neck than preaches that sermon.”
– John Calvin
“It’s been said that too many speakers are like Christopher Columbus. When he started out he didn’t know where he was going. When he got there he didn’t know where he was at. When he got back he did not know where he had been.”
– Dr. Larry Moyer
“The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending; and to have the two as close together as possible.”
– George Burns
“His throne is the pulpit. He stands in Christ’s stead. His message is the Word of God. Around him are immortal souls. The Savior, unseen, is beside him. The Holy Spirit broods over the congregation. Angels gaze upon the scene, and heaven and hell await the issue. What associations and what vast responsibility!”
– Matthew Simpson
“Some preachers think only of their sermon; others think only of themselves: the man who wins the soul is the man who aims at it.”
– Dean Hook
“Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.”
– St. Francis of Assisi
“All work and no plagiarism makes for dull sermons!”
– Henry Ward Beecher
“Preach as if you had seen heaven and its celestial inhabitants, and had hovered over the bottomless pit, and beheld the tortures, and heard the groans of the damned.”
– Frances Asbury
“I preach as though Christ was crucified yesterday; rose again from the dead today; and is coming back tomorrow.”
– Martin Luther
“I preach as never sure to preach again, And as a dying man to dying men.”
– Richard Baxter
John Wesley said, “Catch on fire with enthusiasm, and people will come for miles to watch you burn.” Wesley also said, “If I had three hundred men who feared nothing but God, hated nothing but sin, and were determined to know nothing among men but Jesus Christ and him crucified, I would set the world on fire.”
“Some people accuse us of too much emotionalism. I say we have too little. That is why we are losing church people to other interests. We need not only to capture their minds; we’ve got to touch their hearts. We’ve got to make people feel their faith.”
– Billy Graham
“A good sermon is an engineering operation by which a chasm is bridged so that the spiritual goods on one side – the ‘unsearchable riches of Christ’ – are actually transported into personal lives upon the other.”
– Harry Emerson Fosdick
“Your temper is uneven; you lack love for your neighbors. You grow angry too easily; your tongue is too sharp—thus the people will not hear you.”
– John Wesley (written to a preacher)
“It is not necessary for a preacher to express all his thoughts in one sermon. A preacher should have three principles: first, to make a good beginning, and not spend time with many words before coming to the point; secondly, to say that which belongs to the subject in chief, and avoid strange and foreign thoughts; thirdly, to stop at the proper time.”
– Martin Luther
“A sermon wept over is more acceptable with God than one gloried over.”
– Charles Spurgeon
PREDICTIONS
“The telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.” (A corporate memo from telegraph operator Western Union, 1876)
“Everything that can be invented, has been invented.” (U.S. Patent Office Commissioner Charles Duell, 1899)
“The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty – a fad.” (The president of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford’s lawyer Horace Rackham not to invest in the Ford Motor Company. 1903)
“The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?” (Response from associates of RCA founder David Sarnoff, circa 1920’s, when he proposed investing in the young radio industry)
“[Television] won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.” (Twentieth Century-Fox studio boss Darryl F. Zanuck, 1946)
“There will never be a bigger plane built.” (A Boeing engineer after the first flight of the 247, a twin-engine plane that carried ten people)
“With over 50 foreign cars already on sale here, the Japanese auto industry isn’t likely to carve out a big slice of the U.S. market.” (Business Week, August 2, 1968)
“The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C’ the idea must be feasible.” (Yale University management professor’s comment on a paper written by Fred Smith proposing an overnight delivery service, circa early 1970’s. Smith went on to start Federal Express)
“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” (Ken Olsen, President of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977)
“That kid can’t play baseball.” (Milwaukee Braves minor league manager Tommy Holmes, 1952, appraising Henry Aaron, who went on to break Babe Ruth’s all-time record for home runs)
“He’ll never be any good.” (Baltimore Colts owner Robert Irsay, 1983, evaluating future Pro Bowl and Super Bowl champion quarterback John Elway)
“You will never amount to very much.” (A Munich teacher to a ten-year-old Albert Einstein, 1889)
“Can’t act. Can sing. Balding. Can dance a little.” (MGM executive, 1929, about Fred Astaire’s screen test)
“You ain’t going nowhere, son. You ought to go back to driving a truck.” (Grand Ole Opry manager Jim Denny, 1954, firing Elvis Presley after one performance)
“We don’t like their sound. Groups of guitars are on their way out.” (Decca Recording Company, 1962, upon turning down the Beatles)
“Get rid of the pointed ears guy.” (NBC television executive to Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, 1966, recommending the new show eliminate the Vulcan character Mr. Spock)
PREPARATION
“It is a challenging thought, and one that should be closely observed by those who are preparing for a life of service to God, that our divine Lord spent six times as long working at the carpenter’s bench as He did in His world-shaking ministry. He did not shrink the hidden years of preparation. Preparatory years are important years. Jesus must be about His Father’s business and doing His Father’s will. If that will involve eighteen hidden, laborious, tedious years, He would not succumb to fleshly impatience, but would obey with delight.”
– J. Oswald Sanders
“Thinking on the front-end prepares you. Thinking on the back-end repairs you.”
– Gerald Brooks
“Rising to the occasion is a myth. We operate at the level of our preparation.”
– Willie George
“Have thy tools ready. God will find thee work.”
– Charles Kingsley
“God is preparing His heroes. And when the opportunity comes, He can fit them into their places in a moment. And the world will wonder where they came from.”
– A.B. Simpson
“To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.”
– Winston Churchill
“It’s better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one than to have an opportunity and not be prepared.”
– Whitney Young
“The will to win is important, but the will to prepare is vital.”
– Joe Paterno
“I don’t believe in team motivation. I believe in getting a team prepared so it knows it will have the necessary confidence when it steps on a field and be prepared to play a good game.”
– Tom Landry
“If you are prepared, you will be confident, and will do the job.”
– Tom Landry
“Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.”
– Johnny Wooden
“The secret of success is to be ready when your opportunity comes.”
– Benjamin Disraeli
“Chance favors the prepared mind.”
– Louis Pasteur
“Work as if you were to live a 100 years; pray as if you were to die tomorrow.”
– Benjamin Franklin
PRESENT
“It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.”
– Winston Churchill
PRESSURE
“A diamond is just a piece of coal that made good under pressure.”
“With all the fearful strain that is upon me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.”
– Abraham Lincoln
“No pressure, no diamonds.”
– Mary Case
PRIESTHOOD
“Every Christian is a priest, not offering a sacrifice for sins – since that has been done once and for all – but offering his person, praise, and possessions.”
– Vance Havner
PRIDE
“Beware of any man who claims to be wiser than the apostles or holier than the martyrs of the Early Church. The best way to deal with him is to rise and leave his presence. You cannot help him, and he surely cannot help you.”
– A. W. Tozer
“Nothing that comes from God will minister to my pride or self-congratulation. If I am tempted to be complacent and to feel superior because I have had a remarkable vision or an advanced spiritual experience, I should go at once to my knees and repent of the whole thing. I have fallen a victim to the enemy.”
– A. W. Tozer
“A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”
– C. S. Lewis
“Temper gets you into trouble. Pride keeps you there.”
– Unknown
“Pride does not listen. It knows.”
– Kevin J. Vanhoozer
“To believe one does not need counsel is great pride.”
– Basil the Great
Billy Graham reminded us, “The first, and worst, of the seven deadly sins is pride. It may be spiritual, intellectual, material, or social. The most repugnant of these four is spiritual pride. This pride of the spirit was the sin that caused Lucifer, the devil to fall (Isaiah 14:13-15). This is where sin actually began.”
“I believe firmly that the moment our hearts are emptied of pride and selfishness and ambition and everything that is contrary to God’s law, the Holy Spirit will fill every corner of our hearts. But if we are full of pride and conceit and ambition and the world, there is no room for the Spirit of God. We must be emptied before we can be filled.”
– D.L. Moody
“Pride causes us to use our gifts as though they came from ourselves, not benefits received from God, and to usurp our benefactor’s glory.”
– Bernard of Clairvaux
“When we make ourselves more than nothing, we make God less than everything.”
– Robert Foster
“It is very possible to be proud of the spiritual gifts God has entrusted to us and to strut about ostentatiously, forgetting that we have nothing which we have not received, that grace is a gift, an undeserved favor. We can actually be filled with pride at the eloquence and brilliance of our sermon on humility.”
– Oswald Sanders
“God sends no one away empty except those who are full of themselves.”
– D.L. Moody
“Be not proud of race, face, place, or grace.”
– Charles Spurgeon
“There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians ever imagine that they are guilty themselves….The essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil; Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind… As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”
– C. S. Lewis
“Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.”
– Abraham Lincoln
“A proud man is one who waits for a vacancy in the Trinity.”
– Mark Twain
“Mohamed Ali, when he was Cassius Clay, was on a plane. A flight attendant said, ‘Please fasten your seatbelt.’ He responded in pride, ‘Superman don’t need no seatbelt.’ She responded, ‘Superman don’t need no airplane either’.”
“Every man who takes office in Washington either grows or swells, and when I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is swelling or growing. The mischief of it is that when they swell, they do not swell enough to burst.”
– Woodrow Wilson
“When a man thinks he has got a good deal of strength, and is self-confident, you may look for his downfall. It may be years before it comes to light, but it is already commenced.”
– Dwight L. Moody
“Swallow your pride occasionally. It’s non-fattening.”
– Frank Tyger
“We grow small trying to be great.”
– E. Stanley Jones
PRINCIPLE
“Always stand on principle… even if you stand alone.”
– John Adams
“Methods are many, principles are few. Methods always change, principles never do.”
– J. Robert Clinton
“Policies are many, Principles are few, Policies will change, Principles never do.”
– John C. Maxwell
“Men and times change—but principles—never.”
– Grover Cleveland
“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.”
– Dwight David Eisenhower
“It is always more easy to discover and proclaim general principles than it is to apply them.”
– Winston Churchill
“Where principle was clearly at stake Paul was inflexible and would not yield for a moment, even if the person involved was the prestigious apostle Peter. Because the vastly important issue of Christian liberty was at issue, Paul told the Galatians, ‘We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might remain with you’ (Galatians 2:5). But when only a preference and not a principle was involved, he was prepared to make large concessions.”
– Oswald Sanders, from Dynamic Spiritual Leadership
“Principle – particularly moral principle – can never be a weathervane, spinning around this way and that with the shifting winds of expediency. Moral principle is a compass forever fixed and forever true.”
– Edward R Lyman
“Expedients are for the hour, but principles are for the ages. Just because the rains descend, and the winds blow, we cannot afford to build on shifting sands.”
– Henry Ward Beecher
“In matters of style, swim with the current. In matters of principle, stand like a rock.”
– Thomas Jefferson
PRIORITIES
“Priority number one for too many of us is not the glory of God but the blessing of ourselves.”
– David Shibley
“You can’t put God last in your budget yet claim He is first in your life.”
– Shane Philpott
“When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.”
– C.S. Lewis
“Don’t let the urgent take the place of the important in your life… When you and I were putting out the fires of the urgent, the important was again left in a holding pattern.”
– Charles E. Hummel
“God wants us to prosper. Our need, however, is to evaluate things as they should be evaluated – to esteem earthly things lightly – to put first things first.”
– Kenneth E. Hagin
“If you take care of the things that are dear to God, He will take care of the things that are dear to you.”
– Howard Taylor
“Anything less than a conscious commitment to the important is an unconscious commitment to the unimportant.”
– Stephen R. Covey
“What we love to do we find time to do.”
– John Spaulding
“If you don’t live by priorities, you’ll live by pressures. Either you determine what’s important in life or other people will determine it for you.”
– Rick Warren
PROBLEMS
“The question which we must ask ourselves is not whether we like or do not like what is going on, but what we are going to do about it.”
– Winston Churchill
“It’s no compliment to be a called a problem spotter, but the world loves problem solvers.”
– Mark Sanborn
“Beware the danger signals that flag problems: silence, secretiveness, or sudden outburst.”
– Sylvia Porter
“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”
– Albert Einstein
PROCESS
“It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.”
– Blaise Pascal
PROCRASTINATION
“Felix trembled, but he did not repent. Felix was a victim of tomorrow. If today has slain its thousands, tomorrow has slain its tens of thousands.”
– Clarence Edward Macartney
“Do not put off till tomorrow what can be put off till day-after-tomorrow just as well.”
– Mark Twain
PRODIGAL
“True prodigals don’t come home with a list of demands.”
– Lisa Philpott
“The pattern of the prodigal is: rebellion, ruin, repentance, reconciliation, restoration.”
– Edwin Louis Cole
PRODUCTIVITY
“Don’t tell me how hard you work. Tell me how much you get done.”
– James Ling
PROFANITY
“Profanity is the effort of a feeble mind to express itself forcefully.”
– Unknown
PROGRESS
“Any movement toward Christ is ascent, and any direction away from Him is down.”
– A. W. Tozer
“Man can make great strides scientifically and technologically without advancing an inch spiritually, morally or ethically.”
– Tony Cooke
“The further the soul advances, the greater are the adversaries against which it must contend.”
– Evagrius of Pontus
I am willing to go anywhere, anywhere, anywhere—provided it be forward.
– David Livingstone
“We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.”
– C.S. Lewis
“There is no improving the future without disturbing the present.”
– Catherine Booth
“The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.”
– Alfred North Whitehead
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”
– Frederick Douglass
“If in the last few years you haven’t discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead.”
– Gelet Burgess
“The quickest way to become an old dog is to stop learning new tricks.”
– John Rooney
“Progress is a tide. If we stand still we will surely be drowned. To stay on the crest, we have to keep moving.”
– Harold Mayfield
“Once an organization loses its spirit of pioneering and rests on its early work, its progress stops.”
– Thomas J. Watson
“Change is not always progress. . . . A fever of newness has been everywhere confused with the spirit of progress.”
– Henry Ford
“The price of progress is trouble.”
– Charles F. Kettering
“Progress consists largely of learning to apply laws and truths that have always existed.”
– John Allan May
The Australian coat of arms pictures two creatures – the emu, a flightless bird, and the kangaroo. The animals were chosen because they share a characteristic that appealed to the Australian citizens. Both the emu and the kangaroo can only move forward, not back. The emu’s three-toed foot causes it to fall if it tries to go backwards, and the kangaroo is prevented from moving in reverse by its large tail. Those who truly choose to follow Jesus become like the emu and the kangaroo, moving only forward, never back.
“Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.”
– James B. Conant
“I walk slowly, but I never walk backwards.”
– Abraham Lincoln
“Don’t let life discourage you; everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was.”
– Richard L. Evans
“I am prepared to go anywhere, so long as it is forward.”
– David Livingstone
“I am a slow walker, but I never walk backwards.”
– Abraham Lincoln
“Progress might have been all right once, but it’s been going on entirely too long.”
– Ogden Nash
“If what you did yesterday still looks big to you, you haven’t done much today.”
– Elbert Hubbard
PROMISES
“The prospects are bright as the promises of God.”
– Adoniram Judson
“God never made a promise that was too good to be true.”
– Dwight L. Moody
PROPHETS
“The task of the prophet is not to smooth things over but to make things right.”
– Eugene Peterson
PROSPERITY
“Religion begat prosperity, and the daughter devoured the mother.”
– Cotton Mather (upon witnessing increasing prosperity in the colonies)
“Not every man can carry a full cup. Sudden elevation frequently leads to pride and a fall. The most exacting test of all is to survive prosperity.”
– Oswald Sanders
PROVISION
“He still sets a table in the presence of so many enemies. They mad, but we eating.”
– Esau McCaulley
“God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supplies.”
– J. Hudson Taylor
“All the resources of the Godhead are at our disposal!”
– Jonathan Goforth
“I feel like a man who has no money, but is allowed to draw from one infinitely rich. I am at once both a beggar and rich man.”
– John Newton
“The Lord is a good banker, and I trust Him. He has never failed me. Why should I be anxious?”
– Charles Spurgeon
“Where God guides He provides. He is not responsible for expenses not on His schedule. He does not foot the bill when we leave His itinerary.”
– Vance Havner
PSALMS
“Everything that a person can possibly feel, experience, and say is brought into expression before God in the Psalms.”
– Eugene Peterson
PUBLIC SPEAKING
[on public speaking] “Be sincere; be brief; be seated.”
– Franklin Delano Roosevelt
“I am going to give a long speech today. I haven’t had time to prepare a short one.”
– Winston Churchill
“When Cicero finished an oration, the people would say, ‘How well he spoke.’ But when Demosthenes finished speaking, the people would say, ‘Let us march!’”
– Adlai Stevenson on John F. Kennedy
“Don’t deliver an essay with so many points. No one can absorb it. Just say one thing… Of course, you can say the point in many different ways over and over again with different illustrations.”
– Winston Churchill
“It is sheer laziness not compressing thought into a reasonable space.”
– Winston Churchill
“There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.”
– Blaise Pascal
PURITY
“The pastor should always be pure in thought … no impurity ought to pollute him who has undertaken the office of wiping away the stains in the hearts of others … for the hand that would cleanse from dirt must be clean, lest, being itself sordid with clinging mire, it soil whatever it touches all the more.”
– Gregory the Great
“Purity of soul cannot be lost without consent.”
– St. Augustine
PURPOSE
“These wounds were meant to purchase me. These drops of blood were shed to obtain me. I am not my own today. I belong to another. I have been bought with a price. And I will live every moment of this day so that the Great Purchaser of my soul will receive the full reward of His suffering.”
– Nikolaus Zinzendorf
“I pray that when I die, all of hell will rejoice that I am no longer in the fight.”
– C. T. Studd, Missionary to China, India, and Africa
“Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.”
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
“One of the best ways to move beyond past pain is to have future purpose.”
– Tony Cooke
“Don’t get so obsessed with your immediate need that you miss discovering your eternal purpose. It’s not just about our needs being met; it’s about His purpose being fulfilled.”
– Tony Cooke
“I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be “happy.” I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be honorable, to be compassionate. It is, above all, to matter, to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all.”
– Leo Rosten
“If you would do the best with your life, find out what God is doing in your generation and throw yourself wholly into it.”
– Arthur Wallis
The great purpose of life — the shaping of character by truth.”
– Phillips Brooks
“There’s some task which the God of all the universe, the great Creator, your redeemer in Jesus Christ has for you to do, and which will remain undone and incomplete until by faith and obedience you step into the will of God.”
– Alan Redpath
“If you would do the best with your life, find out what God is doing in your generation and throw yourself wholly into it.”
– Arthur Wallis
“Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do which must be done, whether you like it or not. Being forced to work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you temperance, self-control, diligence, strength of will, content, and a hundred other virtues which the idle never know.”
– Charles Kingsley
“Managing only for profit is like playing tennis with your eye on the scoreboard and not on the ball.”
– Ichak Adizes
“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of another.”
– Charles Dickens
“Our business in life is not to get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves – to break our own records, to outstrip our yesterday by our today.”
– Stewart B. Johnson
“Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you’re alive, it isn’t.”
– Richard Bach
“Through the ages one increasing purpose runs.”
– Alfred Lord Tennyson
“It is because Humanity has never known where it was going that it has never been able to find its way.”
– Oscar Wilde
“You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.”
– Woodrow Wilson
“There is no purpose in living where there is nothing to do.”
– Winston Churchill
“I would rather fail in a cause that will ultimately triumph than to triumph in a cause that will ultimately fail.”
– Woodrow Wilson
“We need to learn to set our course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship.”
– Omar Nelson Bradley
“The times are very bad. Very well, you are there to make them better.”
– Thomas Carlyle
“The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow-creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate, but almost disqualified for life.”
– Albert Einstein
“Even if they try to kill you, you develop the inner conviction that there are some things so precious, some things so eternally true that they are worth dying for. And if a person has not found something to die for, that person isn’t fit to live!”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“The way to tell if your job is done: if you’re alive, you’ve got a job.”
– Richard Bach
“Great minds have purposes, others have wishes. Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them.”
– Washington Irving
“There are two great days in a person’s life — the day we are born and the day we discover why.”
– William Barclay
“The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.”
– Albert Schweitzer
“It’s not about you. The purpose of your life is far greater than you own personal fulfillment, your peace of mind, or even your happiness. It’s far greater than your family, your career, or even your wildest dreams and ambitions. If you want to know why you were placed on this planet, you must begin with God. You were made by God and for God, and until you understand that, life will not make sense.”
– Rick Warren
“A life without cause is a life without effect.”
– Unknown
“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”
– Henry David Thoreau
PURSUIT
“With the catching ends the pleasure of the chase.”
– Abraham Lincoln
QUALITY
“In the race for quality, there is no finish line.”
– David T. Kearns
QUESTIONS
“Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Asking questions is the ABC of diagnosis. Only the inquiring mind solves problems.”
– Edward Hodnett
A friend once asked Isidor I. Rabi, a Nobel Prize winner in physics, how he became a scientist. Rabi replied that every day after school his mother would talk to him about his school day. She wasn’t so much interested in what he had learned that day, but she always inquired, “Did you ask a good question today?”
“Asking good questions,” Rabi said, “made me become a scientist.”
– Isidor I. Rabi
“The word ‘question’ originates from the Latin root, quaestio, which means ‘to seek.’ Inside the word ‘question’ is the word ‘quest,’ suggesting that within every question is an adventure, a pursuit which can lead us to hidden treasure.”
– Tom Wujec
“Sometimes it is better to ask some of the questions than to know all the answers.”
“I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where And Who.”
– Rudyard Kipling
“No man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions.”
– Charles P. Steinmetz
QUOTATIONS
“It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotation… The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts.”
– Winston Churchill
“The man who never reads will never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men’s brains, proves that he has no brains of his own.”
– Charles Spurgeon
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