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

RACE
“Christianity is not a white man’s religion and don’t let anybody ever tell you that it’s black or white. Christ belongs to all people. He belongs to this whole world.”
– Billy Graham

RAPPORT
“A worker must win the hearts and affections of the people before he can do any effective work.”
– D.L. Moody

RATIONALIZATION
“We humans, you see, have an infinite capacity for self-rationalization.”
– Charles Colson

“At the end of the day, every child has learned the Lesson of Spin: Almost every wrong action can be stripped of consequences, along with the need for feelings of guilt and remorse.”
– Bill O’Reilly

REACTING
“Your reactions to your enemy can hurt you more than your enemy can.”
– Hannah Hurnard

READING
“A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas – a place where history comes to life.”
– Norman Cousins

“Reading Christians are growing Christians. When Christians cease to read, they cease to grow.”
– John Wesley

“He who no longer reads should get out of the ministry.”
– John Wesley

“My best friend is the man who’ll get me a book I ain’t read.”
– Abraham Lincoln

“One of the best ways to expand his horizon is through a regular reading program.”
– John F. Kennedy

“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

“The person who won’t read has no advantage over the person who can’t.”
– Rev. Clifford Warren, Welsh clergyman

“Do not deny yourself the help of good books on the subject of your lessons. Buy, borrow or beg, if necessary, but obtain somehow the help of the best thinkers, enough at least to stimulate your own thought; but do not read without thinking. If possible, talk the lesson over with an intelligent friend; collision often brings light.”
– John Milton Gregory

“No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.”
– Atwood H. Townsend

“It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.”
– C.S. Lewis

REALISM
“The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The realist adjusts the sails.”
– William Arthur Ward

REALITY
“Just when the truth about life sinks in, his truth starts to surface. He takes us by the hand and dares us not to sweep the facts under the rug but to confront them with him at our side.”
– Max Lucado

“There’s nothing so tragic as the murder of a beautiful theory by a gang of brutal facts.”
– Unknown

REASON
“The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.”
– Blaise Pascal

REASONABLE
“There are two kinds of people one can call reasonable: those who serve God with all their heart because they know him, and those who seek him with all their heart because they do not know him.”
– Blaise Pascal

RECEIVING
“For God to give is one thing; for us to receive is quite another. ‘God so loved that he gave his only begotten son,’ is the word of our Lord to Nicodemus. But it is written also: ‘As many as received him to them gave he power to become the sons of God.’ In order to realize regeneration and sonship it is absolutely essential for us to receive as for God to have given.”
– A.J. Gordon

RECIPROCATION
We have received much by means of the efforts and sufferings of the saints in years gone by, and if we do not make some return to the church of Christ by giving her our best energies, we are unworthy to be enrolled in her ranks.
– Charles Spurgeon

REDEMPTION
“Jesus drank a cup of wrath without mercy, that we might drink a cup of mercy without wrath.”
– J. Oswald Sanders

“God just doesn’t throw a life preserver to a drowning person. He goes to the bottom of the sea, and pulls a corpse from the bottom of the sea, takes him up on the bank, breathes into him the breath of life and makes him alive.”
– R.C. Sproul

“Knowing God without knowing our wretchedness leads to pride. Knowing our wretchedness without knowing God leads to despair. Knowing Christ gives the balance.”
– Blaise Pascal

“Christ took our hell so that we might take His heaven.”
– Donald Grey Barnhouse

“Three themes captured the essence of the Reformation: No priest but Christ. No sacrifice but Calvary. No confessional but the throne of grace.”

“Moreover, Christ views the sinner, not as he is in himself, but as he is in the purpose of redemption. ‘His whole head is sick,’ saith Christ, ‘but I can cure him; his whole heart is faint, but I can restore him, and I will do it. His feet have gone astray, his mouth is an open sepulchre, his eyes are windows of lust, his hands are stained with blood; but I will amend all that, and make him a new creature, meet to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light.’ Jesus looks, you see, not so much to what the sinner is in himself, as to what he can make him. He sees, in every sinner, the possibility of making a glorified saint, who shall dwell with him for ever and ever.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon

REFLECTION
“No one ever said at the end of his days; ‘I have read my bible too much, I have thought of God too much, I have prayed too much, I have been too careful with my soul.'”
– J.C. Ryle

REFORMATION
“The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right.”
– G.K. Chesterton

REGENERATION
Speaking of regeneration, Tozer says, “It is, however, not an end but an inception, for now begins the glorious pursuit, the heart’s happy exploration of the infinite riches of the Godhead.”

“It is, however, not an end but an inception, for now begins the glorious pursuit, the heart’s happy exploration of the infinite riches of the Godhead.”
– A. W. Tozer

To wash and dress a corpse is a far different thing from making it alive: man can do the one, God alone can do the other.
– Spurgeon

REGRET
“Hell begins the day that God grants you the vision to see all that you could have done, should have done, and would have done, but did not do.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Live today so that you don’t have regrets tomorrow. Mickey Mantle was one of the greatest baseball players of all time, and yet he expressed great remorse late in life because of the damage he had done to his body through alcohol abuse. He also deeply regretted how his example negatively affected his sons. In planning his funeral, he requested Roy Clark to sing, ‘Yesterday When I Was Young.’ That song ends… ‘There are so many songs in me that won’t be sung, I feel the bitter taste of tears upon my tongue. The time has come for me to pay for yesterday when I was young…’ Before he died, Mickey Mantle said, ‘God gave me everything and I blew it. For the kids out there, don’t be like me!’ Thankfully, Mickey gave his life to Jesus before he died, but let me say again, live today so that you don’t have regrets tomorrow.”

“For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, ‘It might have been.'”
– John Greenleaf Whittier

“Let us not bankrupt our todays by paying interest on the regrets of yesterday and by borrowing in advance the troubles of tomorrow.”
– Ralph W. Sockman

“A man is not old until his regrets take the place of his dreams.”
– Unknown

“Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can’t build on it, it’s only good for wallowing in.”
– Katherine Mansfield

“For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: ‘It might have been.’”
– John Greenleaf Whittier

“Most Christians are being crucified on a cross between two thieves: Yesterday’s regret and tomorrow’s worries.”
– Warren Wiersbe

REGRETS
Billy Graham shared his three biggest regrets:
1. I would spend more time with my family.
2. I would spend more time in spiritual nurture.
3. I would spend more time in fellowship with other believers.

RELATIONSHIP
“Perhaps Samson’s real problem was that his personal relationship had become so distant he could not discern the difference between the presence and absence of the Spirit of God in his life.”
– Elmer Towns

“God does not have to come and tell me what I must do for Him, He brings me into a relationship with Himself where I hear His call and understand what He wants me to do, and I do it out of sheer love to Him… When people say they have had a call to foreign service, or to any particular sphere of work, they mean that their relationship to God has enabled them to realize what they can do for God.”
– Oswald Chambers

RELATIONSHIPS
“There is no such thing as solitary religion. If it is solitary, it is not religion, for Jesus expressed religion as love to God and love to people. There can be no love to people unless life is lived out in relationships.”
– E. Stanley Jones

“The greatest need in modern civilization is the development of communities—true communities where the heart of God is home, where the humble and wise learn to shepherd those on the path behind them, where trusting strugglers lock arms with others as together they journey on.”
– Larry Crabb

“A good relationship test is how a person responds to the word ‘No.’ Love respects ‘No.’ Control does not.”
– Dr. Henry Cloud

“We need people in our lives to save us from ourselves.”
– Brian Houston

“The hardest thing in life to learn is which bridges to cross and which ones to burn.”
– David Russell

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
– Maya Angelou

“Every disciple needs three types of relationships in his life. He needs a ‘Paul’ who can mentor him and challenge him. He needs a ‘Barnabas’ who can come along side and encourage him. And he needs a ‘Timothy,’ someone that he can pour his life into.”
– Dr. Howard Hendricks

“The right to criticize must be earned, even if the advice is constructive in nature.”
– James Dobson in What Wives Wish their Husbands Knew about Women

“Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none.”
– Benjamin Franklin

“Our navel is a constant reminder that we all started life connected to another human being. We spend all of our lives trying to get reconnected to someone. God created us as relational people.”
– Unknown

RELAXATION
“For fast-acting relief try slowing down.”
– Lily Tomlin

RELEVANCE
“Being relevant isn’t mirroring the world around you…. It’s modeling what they long to become.”
– Bill Johnson

It is said that the sermons of Augustine are in bad Latin, not because Augustine was not a good scholar, but because the dog-Latin of the day suited his turn best to get hold of men. That preaching is best which fisherwomen understand. “But the dignity of the pulpit!” says one. Well, the “dignity” of a war-chariot lies in the captives dragged at its wheels, and the “dignity of the pulpit” lies in the number of souls converted to God. You must condescend to men of low estate.

“Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.”
– William Butler Yates

RELIANCE
“We are nothing, but Christ is everything, and what we want is to keep in communion with Him and let Christ dwell in us richly and shine forth through us.” 
– D.L. Moody 

“God uses men who are weak and feeble enough to lean on Him.”
– James Hudson Taylor

“Confusion and impotence are the inevitable results when the wisdom and resources of the world are substituted for the presence and power of the Spirit.”
– Samuel Chadwick

RELIGION
“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”
– Blaise Pascal

REMORSE
“Remorse: beholding heaven and feeling hell.”
– George Moore

“Remorse goes to sleep during a prosperous period and wakes up in adversity.”
– Jean-Jacques Rosseau

RENEWAL 
“A renewal is not possible when a congregation perceives itself alive but it is actually dead.”
– Nikolaus Zinzendorf 

REPENTANCE
Where real repentance is, there is obedience; for repentance is not only sorrow for past failures and sins, it is a determination to begin now to do the will of God as He reveals it to us.” 
– A. W. Tozer

“Therefore, let us repent and pass from ignorance to knowledge, from foolishness to wisdom, from licentiousness to self-control, from injustice to righteousness, from godlessness to God.”
– Clement of Alexandria

“The tears of those repenting are the wine of angels.”
– Bernard of Clairvaux

“Biblical repentance, then, is not merely a sense of regret that leaves us where it found us. It is a radical reversal… creating in us a completely different mind-set. We come to our senses spiritually (Luke 15:17). Thus the prodigal son’s life was no longer characterized by the demand ‘give me’ (v. 12) but now by the request ‘make me…’ (vs. 19).”
– Sinclair Ferguson

“Jesus must become more beautiful to your imagination, more attractive to your heart, than your idol. That is what will replace your counterfeit gods. If you uproot the idol and fail to ‘plant’ the love of Christ in its place, the idol will grow back. Rejoicing and repentance must go together. Repentance without rejoicing will lead to despair. Rejoicing without repentance is shallow and will only provide passing inspiration instead of deep change.” He proceeds, “Fear-based repentance makes us hate ourselves. Joy-based repentance makes us hate the sin.”
– Timothy Keller

“Man’s thoughts are to be brought into conformity with God’s thoughts not by abandoning logic but by repentance.”
– D. A. Carson

“Repentance is like antiseptic. You pour antiseptic onto a wound and, at first, it stings. Then it heals.”
– Tim Keller

“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

“True repentance is no light matter. It is a thorough change of heart about sin, a change showing itself in godly sorrow and humiliation – in heartfelt confession before the throne of grace – in a complete breaking off from sinful habits, and an abiding hatred of all sin. Such repentance is the inseparable companion of saving faith in Christ.”
– J.C. Ryle

“True belief and true repentance are twins: it would be idle to attempt to say which is born first. All the spokes of a wheel move at once when the wheel moves, and so all the graces commence action when regeneration is wrought by the Holy Ghost. Repentance, however, there must be.”
– Charles Spurgeon

“Repentance is an old-fashioned word, not much used by modern revivalists. ‘Oh,’ said a minister to me one day, ‘it only means a change of mind.’ This was thought to be a profound observation. ‘Only a change of mind’; but what a change! A change of mind with regard to everything! Instead of saying, ‘It is only a change of mind,’ it seems more truthful to say it is a great and deep change—even a change of the mind itself. But whatever the literal Greek word may mean, repentance is no trifle. You will not find a better definition of it than the one given in the children’s hymn:
‘Repentance is to leave
The sins we loved before
And show that we in earnest grieve
By doing so no more.'”
– Charles H. Spurgeon

In 1903, Spurgeon wrote, “Repentance is an old-fashioned word, not used much by modern revivalists. ‘Oh!’ said a minister to me one day, ‘it only means a change of mind.’ This was thought to be a profound observation. ‘Only a change of mind’; but what a change! A change of mind with regard to everything! Instead of saying, ‘It is only a change of mind,’ it seems to me to be more truthful to say it is a great and deep change—even a change of the mind itself. But whatever the literal Greek word may mean, repentance is no trifle. You will not find a better definition of it than the one given in the children’s hymn:
‘Repentance is to leave
The sins we loved before
And show that we in earnest grieve,
By doing so no more.'”

“True belief and true repentance are twins: it would be idle to attempt to say which is born first. All the spokes of a wheel move at once when the wheel moves, and so all the graces commence action when regeneration is wrought by the Holy Ghost. Repentance, however, there must be.”
– Charles Spurgeon

“…the farther we get from God, the more the world spirals out of control. My heart aches for America and its deceived people. The wonderful news is that our Lord is a God of mercy, and He responds to repentance. In Jonah’s day, Nineveh was the lone world superpower—wealthy, unconcerned, and self-centered. When the Prophet Jonah finally traveled to Nineveh and proclaimed God’s warning, people heard and repented. I believe the same thing can happen once again, this time in our nation. It’s something I long for…”
– Billy Graham

“Repentance is the true turning of our life to God, a turning that arises from a pure and earnest fear of Him; and it consists in the mortification of the flesh and the renewing of the Spirit.”
– John Calvin

“Can true repentance exist without faith? By no means. But although they cannot be separated, they ought to be distinguished.”
– John Calvin

“Some people will see the light only when they feel the heat.”
– Unknown

“The pattern of the prodigal is: rebellion, ruin, repentance, reconciliation, restoration.”
– Edwin Louis Cole

“If you have sinned, do not lie down without repentance; for the want of repentance after one has sinned makes the heart yet harder and harder.”
– John Bunyan

“That great word repentance has five r’s: 1) recognition, 2) remorse, 3) resolution, 4) restitution, and 5) reformation.”
– Unknown

“Of all acts of man repentance is the most divine. The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.”
– Thomas Carlyle

“It is much easier to repent of sins that we have committed than to repent of those that we intend to commit.”
– Josh Billings

“It’s easier to prepare and prevent, than to repair and repent.”
– Unknown

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.

“Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.”
– Aldous Huxley

“God is none other than the Saviour of our wretchedness. So we can only know God well by knowing our iniquities… Those who have known God without knowing their wretchedness have not glorified him, but have glorified themselves.”
– Blaise Pascal

“Evangelical repentance is repentance of sin as sin: not of this sin nor of that, but of the whole mass. We repent of the sin of our nature as well as the sin of our practice. We bemoan sin within us and without us. We repent of sin itself as being an insult to God. Anything short of this is a mere surface repentance, and not a repentance which reaches to the bottom of the mischief. Repentance of the evil act, and not of the evil heart, is like men pumping water out of a leaky vessel, but forgetting to stop the leak. Some would dam up the stream, but leave the fountain still flowing; they would remove the eruption from the skin, but leave the disease in the flesh.”
– Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“Remorse is impotence, it will sin again. Only repentance is strong, it can end everything.”
– Henry Miller

“Repentance may be old-fashioned, but it is not outdated so long as there is sin.”
– J.C. Mcacauley

“When a man is not deeply convicted of sin, it is a pretty sure sign that he has not truly repented. Experience has taught me that men who have very slight conviction of sin sooner or later lapse back into their old life.”
– Dwight L Moody

“God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination.”
– Augustine

“O God of Second Chances and new Beginnings, here I am again.”
– Nancy Spiegelberg

“It is better to feel repentance, than to be able to define it.”
– Thomas a Kempis

“To do so no more is the truest repentance.”
– Martin Luther

True repentance hates the sin, and not merely the penalty; and it hates the sin most of all because it has discovered and felt God’s love.
– W.M. Taylor

True repentance is to cease from sin.
– Ambrose of Milan

“Remorse is sorrow over being caught and the pain of consequences that follow. Repentance is not being concerned for ourselves but having a contrite heart.”
– Charles Swindoll

REPUTATION
“You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.”
– Henry Ford

“A reputation once broken may possibly be repaired, but the world will always keep their eyes on the spot where the crack was.”
– Joseph Hall

“Associate with men of good quality, if you esteem your own reputation; it is better to be alone than in bad company.”
– Unknown

RESENTMENT
“Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”
– Malachy McCourt

RESILIENCE
“I’ll lay me down and bleed a while. Though I am wounded I am not slain. I shall rise and fight again.”
– Ronald Reagan (quoting an old English ballad during his concession speech in 1976 after losing the Republican nomination to Gerald Ford)

RESISTANCE
“Learn to say ‘no.’ It will be of more use to you than to be able to read Latin.”
– Charles Spurgeon

RESOLUTION
“Never give in! Never give in! Never, never, never, never–in nothing great and small—large and petty—Never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.”
– Winston Churchill

RESOLVE
“No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong.”
– Winston Churchill

“Once you agree upon the price you and your family must pay for success, it enables you to ignore the minor hurts the opponent’s pressure, and the temporary failures.”
– Vince Lombardi

“We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields, and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender!”
– Winston Churchill

RESOURCEFULNESS
“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
– Theodore Roosevelt

RESPECT
“Only those who respect the personality of others can be of real use to them.”
– Albert Schweitzer

“Nothing so clearly discovers a spiritual man as his treatment of an erring brother.”
– Augustine

RESPECTABILITY
“Though everyone has an equal right to speak, not all have earned an equal right to be taken seriously.”
Hubert Humphrey

RESPONSIBILITY
“If you don’t do your part, don’t blame God.”
– Bill Sunday

“A problem occurs when people want the benefits of a relationship with God without the responsibilities of a relationship with God.”
– Jim Herring

“Today’s church wants to be raptured from responsibility.”
– Leonard Ravenhill

“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.”
– Abraham Lincoln

“The first requisite of a good citizen in this republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight.”
– Theodore Roosevelt

During the talks between President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev at Vienna, the discussion became heated.  “Do you ever admit a mistake?” Kennedy exclaimed.  “Certainly,” said Khrushchev.  “In a speech before the Twentieth Party Congress, I admitted all of Stalin’s mistakes.”

“We cannot solve a problem by saying, ‘It’s not my problem.’ We cannot solve a problem by hoping that someone else will solve it for us. I can solve a problem only when I say, ‘This is my problem and it’s up to me to solve it.’”
– M. Scott Peck

“I am rather tired of hearing about our rights…The time is come…to hear about responsibilities…”
– Peter Marshall

“Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anyone else expects of you. Never excuse yourself.”
– Henry Ward Beecher

“The price of greatness is responsibility.”
– Winston Churchill

“This is a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was asked to do it. Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that! After all, it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody because Nobody had wound up doing what Anybody could have done!”
– Author Unknown

“The only thing needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”
– Edmund Burke, British Statesman

“I know God won’t give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish he didn’t trust me so much.”
– Mother Teresa

“We cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”
– Abraham Lincoln

REST
“You can’t truly rest until every area in your life rests in God.”
– A. W. Tozer

“We must every now and then cry halt, and serve the Lord by holy inaction and consecrated leisure.”
– Charles Spurgeon

“A rest-less work style produces a restless person. We do not rest because our work is done; we rest because God commanded it and created us to have a need for it.”
– Gordon MacDonald

“God did His most magnificent work while Adam was asleep. This episode contains and important insight: When man rests, God works.”
– Leonard Sweet

“We must have some room to breathe. We need freedom to think and permission to heal. Our relationships are being starved to death by velocity. No one has time to listen, let alone love. Is God pro-exhaustion? Doesn’t He lead people by still waters anymore?”
– Richard Swenson (“Margin”)

Rest in the Lord; wait patiently for Him. In Hebrew, “Be silent in God, and let Him mould thee.” Keep still, and He will mould thee to the right shape.
– Martin Luther

“It is our best work that God wants, not the dregs of our exhaustion. I think he must prefer quality to quantity.”
– George Macdonald

“I’m always calling preachers to more meditation, reflection, and solitude within this rat race we live in. If we do not ‘come apart’ to be with the Lord, we will surely ‘come apart’.”
– Dennis Hester

“He that can take rest is greater than he that can take cities.”
– Benjamin Franklin

“The Master knows better than to exhaust His servants and quench the light of Israel. Rest time is not waste time. It is economy to gather fresh strength.”
– Charles Spurgeon (from his book, “Lectures to My Students”)

“People mistakenly believe that if you do nothing but train you can only get better. You’ve got to work hard, but the harder you work the harder you must rest and relax.”
– Justin Gatlin (2004 Olympic Gold Medalist, 100 Meter Dash)

“There is more to life than increasing its speed.”
– Mohandas K. Gandhi

RESTORATION
“Nothing so clearly discovers a spiritual man as his treatment of an erring brother.”
– Augustine

RESTRAINT
“Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.”
– Norman Vincent Peale

RESURRECTION
“Some people probably think of the Resurrection as a desperate last moment expedient to save the Hero from a situation which had got out of the Author’s control.”
– C.S. Lewis

“Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection not in books alone, but in every leaf in the springtime.”
– Martin Luther

“We are adopted into God’s family through the resurrection of Christ from the dead in which he paid all our obligations to sin, the law, and the devil, in whose family we once lived. Our old status lies in his tomb. A new status is ours through his resurrection.”
– Sinclair B. Ferguson

“The resurrection was proof that the Father’s love found full satisfaction in the redeeming work of Christ.”
– John Murray

“Hell and the grave unite their force
To hold our God in vain;
The sleeping Conqueror arose,
And burst their feeble chain.”
– Isaac Watts (from ‘Blest Morning’)

“Resurrection means that the worst thing is never the last thing.”
– Frederick Buechner

“If Christians understood and applied the resurrection and ascension of Christ, it would radically change much of the work done for God by them. Christians need not be defeated. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead works not only to save us but to assist us in our Christian life and service.”
– Elmer Towns

“There are pressures and forces in life that want to drag us down, pull us down, beat us down, and keep us down. If there is spiritual power related to and emanating from the resurrection of Christ that will undergird our lives and lift us up—especially if Scripture teaches that there is—we need to know about it, and we need to partake of it.”
– Tony Cooke (From LIFT: Experiencing the Elevated Life)

“If Christ is risen, nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen—nothing else matters.”
– Jaroslav Pelikan

“The empty grave does not do anything to us. You need to meet the Risen One.”
– Alex Harten

“The resurrection blasts apart the finality of death, providing an alternative to the stifling, settling dust of death and opens the way to new life.”
– Billy Graham

“Let us consider this settled, that no one has made progress in the school of Christ who does not joyfully await the day of death and final resurrection.”
– John Calvin

Epitaph in a graveyard in England:
I have sinned;
I have repented;
I have trusted;
I have loved;
I rest;
I shall rise;
I shall reign.
– D.L. Moody

“As I go into a cemetery I like to think of the time when the dead shall rise from their graves. … Thank God, our friends are not buried; they are only sown!”
– Dwight L. Moody

RETALIATION
“People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes.”
– Abigail Van Buren

REVELATION
“Revelation does not mean man finding God, but God finding man, God sharing His secrets with us, God showing us Himself. In revelation, God is the agent as well as the object.”
– J.I. Packer

REVERENCE
“The fear of God keeps us from lawlessness. The love of God keeps us from legalism.”
– John Bevere

“I have never once feared the devil, but I tremble every time I enter the pulpit.”
– John Knox

“In the Westminster Abbey a monument to Lord Lawrence has inscribed on it his name, his date of death, and these words: ‘He feared man so little because he feared God so much.”

REVIVAL
“A Divine influence seemed to pervade the land and men’s hearts were strangely warmed by a power that was outpoured in unusual ways.”
– Edwin Orr (Describing the American Awakening of 1858) 

“Two things became clear to me: Christ’s willingness to save the ‘whosoever,’ and the awful state of the eternally lost in hell. That is what revival has meant to me… ‘Revival,’ said Professor James S. Stewart, is ‘a new discovery of Jesus.’ God becoming real in the midst of men.”
– Duncan Campbell 

 “Suddenly an awareness of God would take hold of a community, and, under pressure of this divine presence, men and women would fall prostrate on the ground, while their cry of distress was made the means of God’s hand, to awaken the indifferent who had sat unmoved for years under the preaching of the Gospel.”
– Duncan Campell 

“God is sovereign and must act according to his sovereign purpose – but ever keeping in mind that, while God is sovereign in the affairs of men, his sovereignty does not relieve men of responsibility. ‘God is the God of revival, but man is the human agent through whom revival is possible.’” |– Duncan Campbell 

“Revival is a going of God among his people, and an awareness of God laying hold of the community.”
– Duncan Campbell 

“There must be a desire for the Spirit’s power and an embracing of his sovereignty if we are to experience his work in revival. This includes the willingness to allow the unusual without allowing the unbiblical.”
– Robert Murray M’Cheyne 

 “The Devil got just nothing; but God got praises, Christ got subjects, the Holy Spirit got temples, the Church got additions, and the souls of men got everlasting benefits.”
– Cotton Mather (speaking of a revival that followed great spiritual opposition) 

 “I should like to see a wave surging from Maine to California sweeping thousands into the Kingdom of God.” 
– D.L. Moody 

“Every true revival is a rediscovery of the living Christ.”
– Donald Gee 

“Every revival worthy of the name begins in the restoration of the Word of God to the pulpit, and its fearless proclamation by those anointed of God to preach the Gospel. The revival under Josiah took place when ‘Hilkiah found the Book of the Law of the Lord’.”
– Wilbur M. Smith

“We want a revival to come just in our way. You never saw two revivals come just alike. We must let them come in God’s way. People are ashamed to admit they need a revival.”
– Mordecai Ham

“I see no hope for a revival among God’s people today. They are so enamored and so cluttered up with Hollywood and newspapers and magazines and parties and bowling alleys and camping trips and everything else. How in the world are they going to get still long enough to see anything from God?”
– Lester Roloff

“As long as we are content to live without revival, we will.”
– Leonard Ravenhill

“What is fire and passion in the heart of the first generation often becomes formula and ritual in the minds of subsequent followers.”
– Tony Cooke

“Revival is the visitation of God which brings to life Christians who have been sleeping and restores a deep sense of God’s near presence and holiness. Thence springs a vivid sense of sin and a profound exercise of heart in repentance, praise, and love, with an evangelistic outflow.”
– J.I. Packer

“Revival is a season of unusual divine visitation resulting in deep repentance, supernatural renewal, and sweeping reformation in the Church, along with radical conversion of sinners in the world, often producing moral, social, and even economic change in communities.”
– Michael L. Brown

“A true revival means nothing less than a revolution, casting out the spirit of worldliness and selfishness, and making God and His love triumph in the heart and life.”
– Andrew Murray

“Our error today is that we do not expect a converted man to be a transformed man, and as a result of this error our churches are full of substandard Christians. A revival is among other things a return to the belief that real faith invariably produces holiness of heart and righteousness of life.”
– A.W. Tozer

“The way to get revival is to begin at the Master’s feet: you must go there with Mary, and afterwards you may work with Martha.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon

“Nobody in pulpit or pew needs a revival more than a bitter-spirited fundamentalist with his dispensations right and his disposition wrong.”
– Vance Havner

“Have you noticed how much praying for revival has been going on of late – and how little revival has resulted? I believe the problem is that we have been trying to substitute praying for obeying, and it simply will not work.”
– A.W. Tozer

“Nothing that imagination can paint can make a stronger impression…Sinners dropping down on every hand, professors praying, others in raptures of joy!…There can be no question but it is of God, as the subjects…can give a clear and rational account of their conversion.”
– Rev Moses Hodge (Describing the happenings in Cane Ridge, Kentucky, in 1801)

Gypsy Smith was once asked how to start revival. He answered: “Go home, lock yourself in your room, and kneel down in the middle of the floor. Draw a chalk mark all around yourself and ask God to start a revival inside that chalk mark. When he has answered your prayer, the revival will be on.”

John Wesley was once asked how he got crowds: “I set myself on fire, and the people come to see me burn.”

REWARDS
“I feel that the greatest reward for doing is the opportunity to do more.”
– Jonas Salk

“Our rewards in heaven are a result of God’s crowning His own gifts.”
– Augustine

“The supreme test of service is this: For whom am I doing this? Much that we call service to Christ is not such at all….If we are doing this for Christ, we shall not care for human reward or even recognition.”
– A.T. Pierson

“The true Church has never sounded out public expectations before launching her mission. Her leaders heard from God, they knew their Lord’s will and did it. Their people followed them – sometimes to triumph, oftener to insults and public persecution – and their sufficient reward was the satisfaction of being right in a wrong world!”
– A.W. Tozer

“I am going down into the pit; you hold the ropes,”; said Carey the pioneer missionary. They that hold the ropes, and the daring miner that swings away down in the darkness, are one in work, may be one in the motive, and, if they are, shall be one in the reward.
– Alexander MacLaren

“But isn’t it wrong to be motivated by reward? No, it isn’t. If it were wrong, Christ wouldn’t offer it to us as a motivation. Reward is His idea, not ours.”
– Randy Alcorn

“There is no inconsistency in saying that God rewards good works, provided we understand that nevertheless men obtain eternal life gratuitously.”
– John Calvin

“Let us remember, there is One who daily records all we do for Him, and sees more beauty in His servants’ work than His servants do themselves… And then shall His faithful witnesses discover, to their wonder and surprise, that there never was a word spoken on their Master’s behalf, which does not receive a reward.”
– J.C. Ryle

RICHES
“Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.”
– Oscar Wilde

RIDICULE
“Ridicule is the first and last argument of fools.”
– C. Simmons

RIGHT
“You can’t improve a wrong path by trying to walk better or faster or smarter. Get on a right path.”
– Dr. Henry Cloud

“Right is right, even if everyone is against it; and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.”
– William Penn

“The question should never be who is right, but what is right.”
– Glen Gardiner

“Stand with anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.”
– Abraham Lincoln

“The time is always ripe to do what is right.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.

RIGHTS
“If we are willing to give up only wrong things for Jesus, let us never talk about being in love with Him. Anyone will give up wrong things if he knows how. But are we prepared to give up the best we have for Jesus Christ? The only right a Christian has is the right to give up his rights.”
– Oswald Chambers

“For love of Christ and in the interests of soul-winning effectiveness, Paul sacrificed his rights to be accompanied by a wife. ‘Not to make full use of my rights in the gospel’ (9: 18 NRSV), was his characteristic attitude. He did not squeeze the last drop out of his rights.”
– Oswald Sanders

RIGHTEOUSNESS
“We do not become righteous by doing righteous deeds, but having been made righteous, we do righteous deeds.”
– Martin Luther

RISK
“If no one ever took risks, Michelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor.”
– Neil Simon

“Victory will never be found by taking the line of least resistance.”
– Winston Churchill

“The person who gets the farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.”
– Dale Carnegie

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”
– Robert F. Kennedy

“It is only in risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all.  And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.”
– William James

“It is when we all play safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity.”
– Dag Hammarskjold

“There are a lot of ways to become a failure, but never taking a chance is the most successful.”
– Unknown

“Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.”
– James Bryant Conant

“The man who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from the shore.”
– Dale Carnegie

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the great twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”
– Theodore Roosevelt

“No man is worth his salt who is not ready at all times to risk his body, to risk his well-being, to risk his life, in a great cause.”
– Theodore Roosevelt

ROMANS 7/8
“Romans 7 is a tomb, Romans 8 is a triumph.
Romans chapter 7 is a funeral march, Romans chapter 8 is a wedding march.
Romans chapter 7 is a defeat, Romans chapter 8 is a deliverance.
Romans chapter 7 he’s a victim, Romans chapter 8 he’s a victor.”
– Leonard Ravenhill 

RUDENESS
Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.
– Eric Hoffer

SABBATH
“Do not let Sunday be taken from you. If your soul has no Sunday, it becomes an orphan.”
– Albert Schweitzer

“The Sabbath day I always kept as a day of rest.  Besides being a religious duty, it was essential to health.  On commencing my Presidential career, I found that the Sabbath had frequently been employed by visitors for private interviews with the President.  I determined to put an end to this custom, and ordered my doorkeeper to meet all Sunday visitors with an indiscriminate refusal.”
– Millard Fillmore

SACRIFICE
“I know of nothing that speaks louder for Christ and Christianity than to see a man or woman giving up what they call their rights for others, and ‘in honor preferring one another.”
– D.L. Moody 

“If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.”
– C.T. Studd

“Life is like a grain of wheat: to plant it is to recognize its value; to keep it is to destroy its value. The ‘planted’ Christian counts life dear not unto himself but unto God.”
-Vance Havner

So often the difference from where we are, and where God wants us to be, is the pain we aren’t wiling to endure to get there.”
– Craig Groeschel

“Out of the depths of sorrow and sacrifice will be born again the glory of mankind.”
– Winston Churchill

“It is wonderful how well men can keep secrets they have not been told.”
– Winston Churchill

Jim Elliot said, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

A religion that gives nothing, costs nothing, and suffers nothing, is worth nothing.
– Martin Luther

SALVATION
“In the depth of the human heart has to be an anchor. It is a… truth of the heart of utmost importance, and only the Holy Spirit can reveal this truth: The Creator had to die for the creature to open the way to heaven. This alone opens the way to commune with the resurrected Savior.” 
– Nikolaus Zinzendorf

“[Christ] didn’t come to treat symptoms. He came to get at the very heart of man’s disease.”
– Billy Graham

“Not that our salvation should be the effect of our work, but our work should be the evidence of our salvation.”
– Charles Spurgeon

“This great gift of God, the salvation of our souls, is no other than the image of God fresh stamped on our hearts.”
– John Wesley

“My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things: That I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Savior.”
– John Newton

“By a life I did not live, and by a death I do not die, I am saved.”
– Charles Spurgeon

“True salvation always produces an abiding change of nature in a true convert. Therefore, whenever holiness of life does not accompany a confession of conversion, it must be understood that that this individual is not a Christian.”
– Jonathan Edwards

“There is a clean path to hell as well as a dirty one. You will be lost if you trust your good works as surely if you trusted your sins.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon

“He that made us without ourselves, will not save us without ourselves.”
– Augustine

“For many years I thought I was a Christian when in fact I was not. It was only later that I came to see that I had never been a Christian and became one. What I needed was preaching that would convict me of sin and … bring me to repentance and tell me something about regeneration. But I never heard that. The preaching we had was always based on the assumption that we were all Christians…”
– Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, He would have done no less.”
– C.S. Lewis

“Rather than ask, ‘Can we lose our salvation?’ Ask, ‘Does the Word warn us against apostasy and should we take those warnings seriously?’”
– Michael L. Brown

“No outward practices will stand in the place of the new birth. Nothing under heaven will stand in its place.”
– John Wesley

“God wants us to know we are saved, for saved people are dangerous people, willing to face off with the world, unafraid of the consequences since they know that, whatever happens, they will have eternal life.”
– Max Lucado

“To offer a sinner the gift of salvation based upon the work of Christ, while at the same time allowing him to retain the idea that the gift carries with it no moral implications, is to do him untold injury where it hurts him worst.”
– A.W. Tozer

“Salvation is God’s way of making us real people.”
– Augustine

Salvation is the work of God for man; it is not the work of man for God.”
– Lewis Sperry Chafer

God just doesn’t throw a life-preserver to a drowning person. He goes to the bottom of the sea, and pulls a corpse from the bottom of the sea, takes him up on the bank, breathes into him the breath of life and makes him alive. That’s what the Bible says happens in your salvation.”
– R.C. Sproul

“Salvation is from our side a choice; from the divine side it is a seizing upon, an apprehending, a conquest by the Most High God. Our accepting and willing are reactions rather than actions.”
– A.W. Tozer

“To tell a man who has no realization that he is lost, that he may be saved by faith in Christ, means nothing to him, however true and blessed the fact is in itself.”
– Harry Ironside

Socrates said, “It may be, Plato, that the Deity can forgive sins, but I do not see how.” Jesus came 500 years later and answered his question.

“Your salvation depends on what [Christ] has done for you, not on what you do for Him. It isn’t your hold on God that saves you. It’s His hold on you.”
– Billy Graham

“The nature of Christ’s salvation is woefully misrepresented by the present-day evangelist. He announces a Saviour from Hell rather than a Saviour from sin. And that is why so many are fatally deceived, for there are multitudes who wish to escape the Lake of fire who have no desire to be delivered from their carnality and worldliness.”
– Arthur W. Pink

“Either sin is with you, lying on your shoulders, or it is lying on Christ, the Lamb of God. Now if it is lying on your back, you are lost; but if it is resting on Christ, you are free, and you will be saved. Now choose what you want.”
– Martin Luther

SALVATION BY WORKS
One critic said he had gone to many churches and heard the preacher say, “Don’t try to impress God with your works” or “Don’t attempt to please God with your merits” or “Don’t try to keep the rules and regulations and thus win your way.” He looked around at nearly slumbering collections of utterly casual Christians and wondered, “Who’s trying?”
– Martin Marty

SANCTIFICATION
“The conversion of a soul is the miracle of a moment, but the making of a saint is the task of a lifetime.”
– Charles Swindoll

SATAN
“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn’t exist.”
– Charles Baudelaire

“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils.  One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe and to feel an unhealthy interest in them. They themselves (the devils) are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.”
– C.S. Lewis

“The devil divides the world between atheism and superstition.”
– George Herbert

“The Devil’s best ruse is to persuade us that he does not exist.”
– Charles Baudelaire

“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence, the other is to believe and to feel an unhealthy interest in them!”
– C. S. Lewis

SAVIOR
“Although my memory’s fading, I remember two things very clearly: I am a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior.”
– John Newton 

SCHOOLS
“I am much afraid that the universities will prove to be the great gates to hell, unless they diligently labor to explain the Holy Scriptures and to engrave them on the hearts of youth. I advise no one to place his child where the Scriptures do not reign paramount. Every institution where men are not unceasingly occupied with the Word of God must become corrupt.”
– Martin Luther

SCRIPTURE
“The Scriptures of God are my only foundation and substance in all matters of weight and importance.”
– John Knox

“The truthfulness of Scripture can be validated by everyone who applies its maxims to his life. The Word and reader should come so close together, that the reader himself becomes a living Bible.”
– Nikolaus Zinzendorf 

“Nothing can satisfy the longings of the soul but the Word of the living God.”
– D.L. Moody 

“The scriptures are given not to increase our knowledge, but to change our lives.”
– Dwight L. Moody

“If the Holy Spirit guides us, He will do it according to the Scriptures and never contrary to them.”
– George Muller

“Most people are bothered by the passages in Scripture which they cannot understand; but as for me, I always noticed that the passages in Scripture that bothered me most are those which I do understand.”
– Mark Twain

“The best teacher is the one who does not bring his meaning into the Scripture but gets his meaning from the Scripture.”
– Martin Luther

“Whoever would be wise should read the Proverbs; whoever would be holy should read the Psalms.”
– Richard Steele

“I perceived how that it was impossible to establish the lay people in any truth except the Scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue.”
– William Tyndale

“The authority of Scripture is greater than the comprehension of the whole of man’s reason.”
– Martin Luther

SECOND CHANCES
“Some of the best writing advice I ever received? ‘Cross it out and start over.’ It’s also some of the best Christian life advice I ever got”
– Leonard Sweet

SECOND COMING
“The apostolic church thought more about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ than about death and heaven. The early Christians were looking, not for a cleft in the ground called a grave but for a cleavage in the sky called Glory.”
– Alexander MacLaren

SECRETS
“The only ‘secret life’ that we are called to have is one with God, not from Him.”
– Tony Cooke

“Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead.”
– Benjamin Franklin

“Most of us can keep a secret. It’s the people we tell it to who can’t.”

“Recovery programs have taught us that you are only as sick as your secrets. Secrets do indeed have great power over us. When sins are kept in the dark, they take on a life of their own, creating an untenable double-life.”
– Joe Jurkowski

SECULAR
“The present age is so flippant that if a man loves the Savior he is a fanatic and if he hates the powers of evil he’s a bigot.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon

SECURITY
Security is mostly superstition.  It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.  Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.  Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
– Helen Keller

“My best security is within the munitions of an immutable Jehovah, where His unalterable promises stand like giant walls of rock.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon

“If money is your 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.”
– Henry Ford

SELF
“Sin is believing the lie that you are self-created, self-dependent and self-sustained.”
– Augustine 

“I am more afraid of my own heart than of the pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great pope, Self.”
– Martin Luther

“The kingdom of self is heavily defended territory.”
– Eugene Peterson

SELF-ACCEPTANCE
“There is someone I accept even though I do not approve of all he does…and that someone is me”
– C.S. Lewis

SELF-AWARENESS
“Knowing God without knowing our wretchedness leads to pride. Knowing our wretchedness without knowing God leads to despair. Knowing Jesus Christ is the middle course, because in him we find both God and our wretchedness.”
– Blaise Pascal 

“All men should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.”
– James Thurber

“God is never my problem. The devil is rarely my problem. Sometimes others are my problem. Mostly I’m my problem.”
– Chuck Ford

“Perhaps our place is not at the center of the universe. God does not exist to make a big deal out of us. We exist to make a big deal out of him. It’s not about you. It’s not about me. It’s all about him.”
– Max Lucado

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
– Carl Jung

“Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon

“If you find yourself loving and pleasure above prayer, any book other than the Bible, any house more than the house of God, any table better than the Lord’s, or any person more than Christ, take alarm.”
– Thomas Guthrie

“When you get to heaven God won’t ask you why you weren’t more like Billy Graham.  He may ask you why you weren’t more like you.  Get in touch with who you are.   Lead with your own unique style.  Be yourself and let God use you.”
– Rick Warren

“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
– Carl Jung

“When Abraham Lincoln was a candidate for President of the United States, someone asked him about his aspiration to that high office. He answered that he did not fear his opponents. “But,” he said, “there is a man named Lincoln of whom I am very much afraid. If I am defeated, it will be by that man.””
– Dillard S. Miller

SELF-CARE
“Take heed to yourselves, lest you perish while you call upon others to take heed of perishing, and lest you famish yourselves while you prepare their food.”
– Richard Baxter

SELF-CENTEREDNESS
“We sing the (beautiful) praise chorus, ‘It’s all about you, Jesus.’ Who are we kidding? It’s all about Jesus—as long as it’s in a service I like, in a building I like, with people I like, with music I like, for a length of time I like. At some point in this generation, ‘Take up your cross and follow me’ changed into, ‘Come to Jesus and he’ll make your life better.'”
– E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien

SELF-CONFIDENCE
“So what if someone wrote your obituary… that doesn’t mean you are obligated to die.”
– Lou Holtz

“Believe in yourself. You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you stop to look fear in the face… You must do that which you think you cannot do.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt

SELF-CONTROL
“Those who have accomplished the greatest results are those…who never grow excited or lose self-control, but are always calm, self-possessed, patient and polite.”
– Booker T. Washington

“The size of a man is measured by what it takes to upset him.”

“You cannot put straight in others what is warped in yourself.”
– Athanasius of Alexandria, Patriarch of Alexandria and Church Father (c. 293-373)

“You never conquer the mountain. You only conquer yourself.”
– Jim Whittaker

“I have conquered an empire, but I have not been able to conquer myself.”
– Peter the Great

“All significant battles are waged within the self.”
– Sheldon Kopp

“I have more trouble with D.L. Moody than with any other man I have ever met.”
– D.L. Moody

“Make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up.”
– George S. Patton

“You can never have a greater or lesser dominion than over yourself.”
– Leonardo DaVinci

“I count him braver who conquers his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is the victory over the self.”
– Aristotle

SELF-DECEPTION
“It is difficult for men in high office to avoid the malady of self-delusion. They are always surrounded by worshippers.  They are constantly, and for the most part sincerely, assured of their greatness.
– Calvin Coolidge

“The President hears a hundred voices telling him that he is the greatest man in the world. He must listen carefully indeed to hear the one voice that tells him he is not.”
– Harry S. Truman

“The man is deceived who thinks he can somehow steward his gift without first and continually stewarding his life.  A man’s life—his thoughts, attitudes, actions, and relationships—must be affected, influenced, and permeated by the Word he preaches, or else he preaches for the benefit of others while he himself stagnates and atrophies in a pool of self-deception.”
– Tony Cooke

SELF-DISCIPLINE
“The preacher’s strongest and sharpest preaching should be to himself.”
– E. M. Bounds

“In reading about the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves . . . self-discipline with all of them came first.”
– Harry S. Truman

“That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.”
– Thomas Jefferson

SELF ESTEEM
“If each of us were to confess his most secret desire, the one that inspires all his plans, all his actions, he would say, ‘I want to be praised.’”
– E. M. Cioran

SELF-EXAMINATION
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
– Socrates

SELF-INDULGENCE
“Self-indulgence has slain its thousands; let us tremble lest we perish by the hands of that Delilah. Let us have every passion and habit under due restraint: if we are not masters of ourselves we are not fit to be leaders in the church.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon

SELFISHNESS
“The man who lives by himself and for himself is likely to be corrupted by the company he keeps.”
– Charles H. Parkhurst

SELF-MANAGEMENT
“Whether you prevail or fail, endure of die, depends more on what you do to yourself than on what the world does to you.”
– Jim Collins

SELF-PITY
“Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in the world.”
– Helen Keller

As a Christian you have to live in the midst of an ungodly world, and it is of little use for you to cry “Woe is me.” Jesus did not pray O that you should be taken out of the world, and what He did not pray for you need not desire. Better far in the Lord’s strength to meet the difficulty, and glorify Him in it.
– Charles Spurgeon

“Never feel self-pity, the most destructive emotion there is. How awful to be caught up in the terrible squirrel cage of self.”
– Millicent Fenwick

SELF-PROMOTION
“Promoting self under the guise of promoting Christ is currently so common as to excite little notice.”
– A.W. Tozer

SELF-RATIONALIZATION
“We humans, you see, have an infinite capacity for self-rationalization.”
– Charles Colson

SELF-RESTRAINT
“You don’t have to explain something you never said.”
– Sam Rayburn

“My father often told me, “Never pass up an opportunity to shut up.”
– Phil McGraw

“It is easier to stay out than get out.”
– Mark Twain

“I have noticed that nothing I never said ever did me any harm.”
– Calvin Coolidge

SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS
“The self-righteous never apologize.”
– Leonard Ravenhill

“Beware of self-righteousness in every possible shape and form. Some people get as much harm from their ‘virtues’ as others do from their sins.”
– J.C. Ryle

“Self-righteousness is the devil’s masterpiece to make us think well of ourselves.”
– Thomas Adams

“The greatest enemy to human souls is the self-righteous spirit which makes men look to themselves for salvation.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon

SELF SACRIFICE
Self-preservation is the first law of nature, but self-sacrifice is the highest rule of grace.
– Unknown

SELF DEVELOPMENT
He can do more for others who has done most with himself.
– S.D. Gordon

SELFISHNESS
“To be selfish is to be wicked. Suppose the ocean gave up none of its watery treasure, it would bring ruin upon our race. God forbid that any of us should follow the ungenerous and destructive policy of living unto ourselves. Jesus pleased not Himself. All fulness dwells in Him, but of His fulness have all we received. O for Jesus’ spirit, that henceforth we may live not unto ourselves!”
– Charles Spurgeon

“It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others.”
– John Andrew Holmes

“If you wish to be miserable, think about yourself; about what you want, what you like, what respect people ought to pay you, what people think of you; and then to you nothing will be pure. You will spoil everything you touch; you will make sin and misery for yourself out of everything God sends you; you will be as wretched as you choose.”
– Charles Kingsley

“Selfishness is the greatest curse of the human race.”
– William E. Gladstone

“The counterfeit trinity is me, myself, and I.”
– Edwin Louis Cole

SELF-CARE
“If a church is only focused on out-reach, and no care is given to the health and the development of those within, the core will eventually crumble and collapse. If you are only focused on what you “put out” to others and no care is given to your own soul, your own inner-culture, you will eventually crumble and collapse.”
-Tony Cooke

SELF TALK
“The most influential person who will talk to you all day is you, so you should be very careful about what you say to you!”
– Zig Ziglar

SERMONS
“Milk many cows but make your own butter.”
– Dr. Erwin Lutzer (speaking of reading after others and sermon preparation)

SENSITIVITY
“Perhaps Samson’s real problem was that his personal relationship had become so distant he could not discern the difference between the presence and absence of the Spirit of God in his life.”
– Elmer Towns

“Listen to the whispers and you won’t have to hear the screams.”
– Cherokee Saying

SERENITY
God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know it’s me.
– Unknown

SERVANTHOOD
“There is a loftier ambition than merely to stand high in the world. It is to stoop down and lift mankind a little higher.”
– Henry Van Dyke

“The man who keeps busy helping the man below him won’t have time to envy the man above him.”
– Henrietta Mears

“Not until we take the place of a servant can He take His place as Lord.”
– Watchman Nee

“God is not looking for extraordinary characters as His instruments, but He is looking for humble instruments through whom He can be honored throughout the ages.”
– A.B. Simpson

Embracing a Servant’s Heart Enables us to:
1. Relinquish the Supremacy of Self
2. Reflect the Example of Jesus
3. Release the Compassion and Power of God
– Tony Cooke

“Timothy’s great value was that he was always willing to go anywhere; and in his hands a message was as safe as if Paul had delivered it himself.  Others might be consumed with selfish ambition; but Timothy’s one desire was to serve Paul and Jesus Christ.  He is the patron saint of all those who are quite content with the second place, so long as they can serve.”
– William Barclay

“Everybody can be great because anybody can serve.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.

“You can tell whether you are becoming a servant by how you act when people treat you like one.”
– Gordon MacDonald

“The true measure of a man is not the number of servants he has, but the number of people he serves.”
– Arnold Glasgow

“I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found a way to serve.”
– Albert Schweitzer

“There is no more noble occupation in the world than to assist another human being—to help someone succeed.”
– Alan Loy McGinnis

SERVICE
“It is a rare church whose members all put their shoulder to the wheel. The typical church is composed of the few whose shoulders are bruised by their faithful labors and the many who are unwilling to raise a blister in the service of God and their fellowmen.” 
– A. W. Tozer

“It is deeply interesting to notice also where the citizens were put to work. Each was set to labor on the bit of all opposite his home… I do not say that men are not called to service in far distant places… But I do say that for the vast majority the task that God appoints is the task lying at the door. The nearest thing is God’s thing. The nearest duty is God’s duty. He who cannot find his service there is little likely to be useful anywhere.”
– George H. Morrison

“Maybe it’s not just about having anointed services where the saints are recipients. Maybe it’s even more about having anointed service where the saints are distributors.”
– Tony Cooke

“There is a loftier ambition than merely to stand high in the world. It is to stoop down and lift mankind a little higher.”
– Henry Van Dyke

“God is not greater if you reverence Him, but you are greater if you serve Him.”
– Augustine

“If the Savior could die for the world, can’t we work for it?”
– D.L. Moody

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
– Anne Frank

“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.

“You can get everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”
– Zig Ziglar

“There is no greater threat to our devotion to Christ than our service for Christ.”
– Oswald Chambers

“In the Kingdom of God, service is not a stepping-stone to nobility: it is nobility, the only kind of nobility that is recognized.”
– T.W. Manson

“You must act in your friend’s interest whether it pleases him or not; the object of love is to serve, not to win.”
– Woodrow Wilson

“No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.”
– Calvin Coolidge

“Being a politician is a poor profession. Being a public servant is a noble one.”
– Herbert Clark Hoover

“The reward of service is more service.”
– Dwight L. Moody

“The purpose of life is not to win.  The purpose of life is to grow and share.  When you come to look back on all that you have done in life, you will get more satisfaction from the pleasure you have brought to other people’s lives than you will from the times that you outdid and defeated them.”
– Rabbi Harold Kushner

“I feel that the greatest reward for doing is the opportunity to do more.”
– Jonas Salk

“I could never forgive myself if I elected to live without humane purpose, without trying to help the poor and unfortunate, without recognizing that …the purest joy in life comes with trying to help others.”
– Arthur Ashe

“Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.”
– Albert Einstein

“It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: ‘What are you doing for others?’”
– Martin Luther King Jr.

“Only a life lived for others is worth living.”
– Albert Einstein

“God does not choose a person for ease and comfort and selfish joy but for a task that will take all that head and heart and hand can bring to it. God chooses a man in order to use him.”
– William Barclay

“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else.”
– Charles Dickens

“True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever the cost.”
– Arthur Ashe

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
I woke and saw that life was service.
I acted and behold service was joy.”
– Tagore

“Every member must work or quit. No honorary members.”
– Charles Finney

“The hardest instrument in the orchestra to play is second fiddle.”
– Leonard Bernstein

Act in all things not according to your own will but as a son in the gospel. As such, it is your part to employ your time in a manner which we direct: partly in visiting the flock from house to house (the sick in particular); partly, in such a course of reading, meditation and prayer as we advise from time to time. Above all, if you labor with us in the Lord’s vineyard, it is needful you should do that part of the work which we direct, at those times and places which we judge most for his glory.
– John Wesley

SERVING
“I seldom made an errand to God for another, but I got something for myself.”
– Samuel Rutherford 

“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

“Volunteering is an action; serving is an attitude. Volunteers focus on what they gave; servants focus on what Jesus gave. Volunteering makes us look good; serving makes Jesus look good.”
– Gerald Brooks

“Now one sign of a true revival, and indeed an essential part of it, is the increased activity of God’s laborers.”
– Charles Spurgeon

“Where Christ’s Spirit is, it will bring men from their altitudes and excellencies, and make them to stoop to serve the church, and account it an honor to be an instrument to do good.”
– Richard Sibbes

“How utterly terrible is the current idea that Christians can serve God at their own convenience.”
– AW Tozer

“The man who keeps busy helping the man below him won’t have time to envy the man above him.”
– Henrietta Mears

“True greatness, true leadership, is found in giving yourself in service to others, not in coaxing or inducing others to serve you. True service is never without cost. Often it comes with a painful baptism of suffering. But the true spiritual leader is focused on the service he and she can render to God and other people, not on the residuals and perks of high office or holy title. We must aim to put more into life than we take out.”
– J. Oswald Sanders

“The spiritual leader will choose the hidden path of sacrificial service and approval of the Lord over the flamboyant self-advertising of the world.”
– J. Oswald Sanders

SEX
“Sex has become one of the most discussed topics of modern times. The Victorians pretended it did not exist; the moderns pretend that nothing else exists.”
– Bishop Fulton J. Sheen

SHAME
“People used to blush when they were ashamed. Now they are ashamed if they blush. Modesty has disappeared and a brazen generation with no fear of God before its eyes mocks at sin. We are so fond of being called tolerant and broadminded that we wink at sin when we ought to weep.”
– Vance Havner

“Shame is a spin-off from guilt. We may feel guilty for what we did, but we feel ashamed of who we are.”
– Dr. Les Parrott

SIGNIFICANCE
“One hundred years from now it will not matter what kind of car I drove, what kind of house I lived in, how much money I had in my bank account, or what my clothes looked like. But one hundred years from now the world may be a little better because I was important in the life of a child.”
– Anonymous

“If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we rear temples, they will crumble to dust. But if we work on men’s immortal minds, if we impress on them high principles, the just fear of God, and love for their fellowmen, we engrave on those tablets something which no time can efface and which will brighten and brighten to all eternity.”
– Daniel Webster

SILENCE
“Whenever anything disagreeable or displeasing happens to you remember Christ crucified and be silent.”
– John of the Cross

“The right word may be effective, but no word is ever as effective as a rightly-timed pause.”
– Mark Twain

“I’ve never been hurt by anything I didn’t say.”
– Calvin Coolidge

“A closed mouth gathers no feet.”

SIMPLICITY
“Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple.”
– C.W. Ceram

“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

“To simplify complications is the first essential of success.”
– George Earle Buckle

“You don’t really understand something unless you can communicate it in a simple way.”
– Albert Einstein

SIN
“Sin is believing the lie that you are self-created, self-dependent and self-sustained.”
– Augustine

“Embrace in one act the two truths–thine own sin, and God’s infinite mercy in Jesus Christ.”
– Alexander MacLaren

“Many a man goes through life hanging his head with shame and living without his self-respect because he has never discovered the distinction between temptation and sin.”
– Henry Drummond

“How serious is sin? Serious enough that to provide a way to deal with it, God the Father ordained the death of His own beloved Son, a death far more profound than physical death.”
– Henry Blackaby

“Too many think lightly of sin, and therefore think lightly of the Savior. He who has stood before his God, convicted and condemned, and with the rope about his neck, is the man to weep for joy when he is pardoned, to hate the evil which has been forgiven him, and to live to the honor of the Redeemer by who blood he has been cleansed.”
– Charles Spurgeon

“Satan’s biggest lie is that sin is not destructive.”
– Henry and Richard Blackaby

But my sin was this, that I looked for pleasure, beauty, and truth not in Him but in myself and His other creatures, and the search led me instead to pain, confusion, and error.
– Augustine

“Original sin is the only rational solution of the undeniable fact of the deep, universal and early manifested sinfulness of men in all ages, of every class, and in every part of the world.”
– Charles Hodge

“Sin has the devil for its father, shame for its companion, and death for its wages.
– Thomas Watson

“Sin came into the world full-grown; the first man born of woman was a murderer.”
– D.L. Moody

“To deny the reality of sin is to deny the necessity of the cross.”
– Tony Cooke

The Apostle Paul on Victory, from Romans 6:
1. Know that your “old man” was crucified with Christ so that you would no longer be slaves of sin (6:6).
2. Reckon yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ (6:11).
3. Do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey its lusts (6:12).
4. Do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin (6:13).
5. Present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God (6:13).
– Tony Cooke

“I preach on specific sins because people are not convicted by sermons on sin in general. It was when our Lord said to the Samaritan woman, ‘Go call thy husband…’ (John 4:16), that she really faced up to her sinfulness.”
– Vance Havner

“There are two sins of men that are bred in the bone and that continually come out in the flesh. One is self-dependance and the other is self-exultation.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon

“Our first problem is that our attitude towards sin is more self-centered than God-centered. We are more concerned about our own “Victory” over sin than we are about the fact that our sin grieves the heart of God. We cannot tolerate failure in our struggle with sin chiefly because we are success oriented, not because we know it is offensive to God.”
– Jerry Bridges

“Sin is what you do when your heart is not satisfied with God.”
– John Piper

“Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off the relish of spiritual things, whatever increases the authority of your body over your mind, that thing for you is sin.”
–  Susanna Wesley

“Sin will take you farther then you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay.”
– Unknown

“Oh, how horrible our sins look when they are committed by someone else.”
– Chuck Smith

SINCERITY
“The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is insincerity.”
– Anne Morrow Lindbergh

SKILL
“When love and skill work together expect a masterpiece.”
– John Ruskin

SLANDER
“The murderer only takes the life of the parent and leaves his character as a goodly heritage to his children, whilst the slanderer takes away his goodly reputation and leaves him a living monument to his children’s disgrace.”
– Andrew Jackson

“Speaking ill of others is a cheap, dishonest way to praise ourselves.”
– Unknown

SMALL THINGS
“There are many of us that are willing to do great things for the Lord, but few of us are willing to do little things.”
– D.L. Moody 

“It’s the little things that make the big things possible.”
– J. W. Marriott

“Everybody wants to change the world, but nobody wants to change the toilet paper.”
– Bill Wilson

“Everyone is trying to accomplish something big, not realizing that life is made up of little things.”
– Frank Clark

“The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.”
– Blaise Pascal

“We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.”
– Mother Teresa

“He does most in God’s great world who does his best in his own little world.”
– Thomas Jefferson

“He is invited to do great things who receives small things greatly.”
– Cassiodorus

“I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.”
– Helen Keller

SOCIETY
“Society cannot exist unless a controlling power on will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.”
Edmund Burke

SOLITUDE
“Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word ‘loneliness’ to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word ‘solitude’ to express the glory of being alone.”
– Paul Tillich

“Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.”
– Edward Gibbon

SOLUTIONS
“Don’t find fault. Find a remedy.”
– Henry Ford

SOULS
“Would that God would make hell so real to us that we cannot rest; heaven so real that we must have men there, Christ so real that our supreme motive and aim shall be to make the Man of Sorrows the Man of Joy by the conversion to him of many.”
– J. Hudson Taylor

“Lost people matter to God, and so they must matter to us.”
– Keith Wright

“Some wish to live within the sound of church or chapel bell; I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.”
– C.T. Studd

“If sinners be dammed, at least let them leap to Hell over our bodies. If they will perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees. Let no one go there unwarned and unprayed for.”
– Charles Spurgeon

“I would think it a greater happiness to gain one soul to Christ than mountains of silver and gold to myself.”
– Matthew Henry

“I care not where I go or how I live or what I endure so that I may save souls.  When I sleep I dream of them; when I awake they are first in my thoughts…no amount of scholastic attainment, or able and profound exposition, of brilliant and stirring eloquence can atone for the absence of a deep, impassioned, sympathetic love for human souls.”
– David Brainerd

“Not called,” did you say? “Not heard the call,” I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of Hell and hear the damned entreat you to go to their fathers’ houses and bid their brothers and sister and servants and master not to come there. Then look Christ in the face – whose mercy you have professed to obey – and tell Him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish His mercy to the world.
– William Booth

“Some men’s ambition is art, some men’s ambition is fame, some men’s ambition is gold.  My ambition is the souls of men.”
– William Booth

SOULWINNING
“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.”
– Nikolaus Zinzendorf

“My one design is to bring poor souls to Jesus Christ.”
– George Whitefield 

“To be useful to one soul is of more importance than the temporal prosperity of a whole nation.”
– John Newton 

“Our great object of glorifying God is to be mainly achieved by the winning of souls. We must see souls born unto God.”
– Charles Spurgeon 

“The glory of God, and, as our only means to glorifying Him, the salvation of human souls, is the real business of life.”
– C. S. Lewis 

“I would rather win souls than be the greatest king or emperor on earth; I would rather win souls than be the greatest general that ever commanded an army; I would rather win souls than be the greatest poet, or novelist, or literary man who ever walked the earth. My one ambition in life is to win as many as possible.”
– R. A. Torrey

“Pray and so preach that if there are no conversions you will be astonished, amazed, and brokenhearted.”
– Spurgeon

“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

“Pray and so preach that if there are no conversions you will be astonished, amazed, and brokenhearted.”
– Charles 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

“It matters not how spiritual a church may profess to be, if souls are not saved, something is radically wrong, and the professed spirituality is simply a false experience, a delusion of the devil. People who are satisfied to meet together simply to have a good time among themselves are far away from God. Real spirituality always has an outcome.”
– Oswald J. Smith

On the night of October 8, 1871, D.L. Moody finished a message with some words he regretted for the rest of his life. So great was his remorse that he committed himself to never making the same mistake again. The title of Moody’s sermon was “What Shall I Do with Jesus?” At the end, he announced, “Now I want you to take the question with you and think it over, and next Sunday I want you to come back and tell me what you’re going to do with Him.” But next Sunday never came. As Moody dismissed his audience, the nearby courthouse fire bell sounded. At the time, no one had any idea how serious the blaze would become. As it turned out, the hall in which Moody spoke, the church he established, and his home were all destroyed in the inferno that became the Great Chicago Fire, along with more than 18,000 other buildings. But Moody hardly gave a second thought to his gutted home and church. They could easily be replaced – but not the lost souls. It was the memory of the audience he never saw again that was seared in his mind for the rest of his life.

“When a man gets up so high (spiritual mountaintop) that he cannot reach down and save poor sinners, there is something wrong.”
– Dwight L. Moody

“I could not be satisfied unless some fruits did appear in my work.”
– John Bunyan

“I care not where or how I live, or what hardships I go through, so that I can but gain souls to Christ.”
– David Brainerd

“I long for the conversion of souls more sensibly than anything besides.”
– Doddridge

“I would think it a greater happiness to gain one soul to Christ than mountains of silver and gold to myself.”
– Matthew Henry

“If you should live to preach the gospel forty years, and be the instrument of saving only one soul, it will be worth all your labours.”
– Fletcher

“How can I help weeping when you will not weep for yourselves, though your immortal souls are on the verge of destruction!”
– George Whitfield

“The greatest of all things is not theology; it is not controversy; it is to save souls.”
– Dr. Lyman Beecher

SOVEREIGNTY
“In the total expanse of human life there is not a single square inch of which the Christ, who alone is sovereign, does not declare, ‘That is mine!’”
– Abraham Kuyper

SOWING
“Others also reap what we sow. Bound up in a bundle of human relationships, we pass on to them the good and evil results of our sowing.”
– E. Stanley Jones

SPEECH
“O Lord Eternal, move and govern my tongue to speak the truth.”
– John Knox 

SPIRIT
“The Spirit and the Word must be combined. If I look to the Spirit alone without the Word, I lay myself open to great delusions. If the Holy Ghost guides us at all, He will do it according to the Scriptures and never contrary to them.”
– George Mueller

SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES
“Too often preachers may feel the necessity of spiritual disciplines, not as a means of drawing closer to God, but as sermon insurance.”
– Ed Rowell

SPIRITUAL WARFARE
“Sooner or later every believer discovers that the Christian life is a battleground, not a playground.”
– Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones

“It’s a fact of earthly life that when God opens the windows of heaven to bless us, the devil opens the doors of hell to blast us. When God begins moving, the devil fires up all his artillery.”
– Adrian Rogers

SPIRITUALITY
“Spirituality is not easy to define, but you can tell when it is present. It is the fragrance of the garden of the Lord, the power to change the atmosphere around you, the influence that makes Christ real to others.”
– Oswald Sanders

“We’re not just human beings having a temporary spiritual experience. But we’re spiritual beings having a temporary human experience.”
– Teilhard de Chardin, French Priest

SPONTANEITY
“I will tell you the mistake you are always making,” Napoleon said, addressing an opponent he had defeated.  “You draw up your plans the day before battle, when you do not yet know your adversary’s movements.”

STAGNATION
“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always be what you’ve always been.”
– Unknown

STANDARDS
“Let us set up a standard around which the brave and the loyal can rally.”
– Winston Churchill

STARTING
“You don’t have to be great to start, but you do have to start to be great.”
– Joe Sabah

STRATEGY
“The company without a strategy is willing to try anything.”
– Michael Porter

“Sharpen your weapons and limit your frontiers.”
– Roman Military Saying

STATUS
“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

STEADFASTNESS
“If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battlefield besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.”
– Martin Luther

“I assure you by the Lord, your adversaries shall get no advantage against you, except you sin, and offend your Lord, in your sufferings.”
– Samuel Rutherford

STEPS
“Little strokes fell great oaks.”
Benjamin Franklin

STEWARDSHIP
“The surest method of arriving at a knowledge of God’s eternal purposes about us is to be found in the right use of the present moment.”
– F.W. Faber

“You can sing all you want about how you love Jesus… but the consecration that doesn’t reach your purse has not reached your heart.”
– Adrian Rogers

“The world asks, ‘What does a man own?’ Christ asks, ‘How does he use it?’”
– Andrew Murray

“If God was the owner, I was the manager. I needed to adopt a steward’s mentality toward the assets He had entrusted – not given – to me. A steward manages assets for the owner’s benefit. The steward carries no sense of entitlement to the assets he manages. It’s his job to find out what the owner wants done with his assets, then carry out his will.”
– Randy Alcorn

“There is no dignity quite so impressive and no independence quite so important as living within your means.”
– Calvin Coolidge

“Stewardship is the act of organizing your life so that God can spend you.”
– Lynn A. Miller

“Stewardship is what a man does after he says, ‘I believe.’”
– W. H. Greeveries

“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.

“We deem it a sacred responsibility and genuine opportunity to be faithful stewards of all God has entrusted to us: our time, our talents, and our financial resources. We view all of life as a sacred trust to be used wisely.”
– Moravian Covenant for Christian Living

STORIES
“Stories are verbal acts of hospitality.”
– Eugene Peterson

STRATEGY
“The company without a strategy is willing to try anything.”
– Michael Porter

STRENGTH
“Do not pray for easy lives; pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be a miracle.”
– Bishop Phillip Brooks

“The strongest oak of the forest is not the one that is protected from the storm and hidden from the sun. It’s the one that stands in the open where it is compelled to struggle for its existence against the winds and rains and the scorching sun.”
– Napoleon Hill

“One’s strongest asset is simultaneously his point of strongest vulnerability.”
– Harry Levinson

“There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: pushing down or pulling up.”
– Booker T. Washington

“The Christian often finds his ultimate strength only when he acknowledges his greatest weakness.”
– Tony Cooke

“Do not pray for easier lives.  Pray to be stronger men.”
– John F. Kennedy

STRESS
“The bow too tensely strung is easily broken.”
– Publius Syrus

“But did you know that some stress can be good? Think of a violin. Each string is tightened to a certain level of tension or stress, and when the stress is just right, it makes beautiful music. Overtighten, and it goes out of tune. Under-tighten, and it goes out of tune. There is a balance in which the right amount of stress tells us we’re living life at its proper speed. On one hand, we’re not being lazy, and on the other hand we’re not being overworked.”
– Dave Williams (from his book, “Emerging Leaders”)

“Most stress is caused by people who overestimate the importance of their problems.”
– Michael LeBoeuf

STUBBORNNESS
“Stubbornness should have been my middle name.”
– Martin Luther

STUDY
“So few grow, because so few study.”
– D. L. Moody 

“If I had only three years to serve the Lord, I would spend two of them studying and preparing.”
– Donald Grey Barnhouse

STUPIDITY
“Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity. And I’m not sure about the universe.”
– Albert Einstein

“Unwisdom prevailed.”
– Winston Churchill

SUBMISSION
“There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, ‘All right, then, have it your way.'”
– C. S. Lewis 

SUCCESS
“The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it’s the same problem you had last year.
– John Foster Dulles

“Success isn’t impossible to achieve. It’s holding on when others choose to let go.”
– Shane Philpott

“The worst thing that can happen to a man is to succeed before he is ready.”
– Martin Lloyd Jones

“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

The three great essentials to achieving anything worthwhile are; first, hard work, second, stick-to-it-iveness, and third, common sense.
– Thomas Edison

“To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions.”
– Benjamin Franklin

“Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles that one has overcome while trying to succeed.”
– Booker T. Washington

“A champion is one who gets up even when he can’t.”
– Jack Dempsey

“The trouble with success is that the formula is the same as the one for a nervous breakdown.”
– Executive’s Digest

“If you’re successful, don’t crow. If you’re defeated, don’t croak.”
– Samuel Chadwick

“There are two kinds of success: initial and ultimate.”
– Winston Churchill

“Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning.”
– Thomas Edison

“The toughest thing about being a success is that you’ve got to keep on being a success.”
– Irving Berlin

“My mother drew a distinction between achievement and success. She said that achievement is the knowledge that you have studied and worked hard and done the best that is in you. Success is being praised by others. That is nice but not as important or satisfying. Always aim for achievement and forget about success.”
– Helen Hayes

“The secret of my success?  It is simple.  It is found in the Bible, ‘In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths.’”
– George Washington Carver

“People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.”
– Dale Carnegie

“Success is where preparation and opportunity meet.”
– Bobby Unser

“Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
– Abraham Lincoln

“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”
– Albert Schweitzer

“It takes twenty years to be an overnight success.”
– Eddie Cantor

“Someday I hope to enjoy enough of what the world calls success so that somebody will ask me, “What’s the secret of it?” I shall say simply this: “I get up when I fall down.”
– Paul Harvey

“It seems to me shallow and arrogant for any man in these times to claim he is completely self-made, that he owes all his success to his own unaided efforts. Many hands and hearts and minds generally contribute to anyone’s notable achievements.”
– Walt Disney

“You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments or publicity.”
– O.A. Battista

“As far as I can remember, being a celebrity has never helped me make a good picture … or command the obedience of my daughter, or impress my wife. It doesn’t even seem to help keep fleas off our dog, and if being a celebrity won’t give one an advantage over a couple fleas, then I guess there can’t be that much in being a celebrity after all.”
– Walt Disney

“The desire for fame is the last weakness wise men put off.”
– Tacitus

“Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value.”
– Albert Einstein

The best place to succeed is where you are with what you have.
– Charles M Schwab

“Be awful nice to ‘em going up, because you’re going to meet them coming down.”
– Jimmy Durante

“If you achieve success, you will get applause, and if you get applause, you will hear it. My advice to you concerning applause is this: Enjoy it but never quite believe it.”
– Robert Montgomery

“The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.”
– Vidal Sassoon

“Success can make you go one of two ways. It can make you a prima donna – or it can smooth the edges, take away the insecurities, let the nice things come out.”
– Barbara Walters

“When you are making a success of something, it’s not work. It’s a way of life. You enjoy yourself because you are making your contribution to the world.”
– Andy Granatelli

“Success is the child of audacity.”
– Benjamin Disraeli

SUCCESS / FAILURE
“If you can meet success and failure and treat them both as impostors, then you are a balanced man, my son.”
– Rudyard Kipling

SUFFERING
“There is no class of people exempt from broken hearts. The rich and the poor suffer alike.”
– D.L. Moody 

“Some suffering is not the result of our sin but simply the result of being faithful to God in a world at war with him.”
– D. A. Carson

“While Jesus suffered as our substitute, there are other ways in which He suffered as our example. Jesus demonstrated what it meant to be a godly person in an ungodly world. He modeled grace under fire. He showed what it is to exhibit love to the unloving and to display kindness to the cruel. He personified unconditional trust, unwavering obedience, and an unflinching commitment to do the will of God whatever the cost.”
– Tony Cooke (Through the Storms)

“Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.”
– Helen Keller

SUPERNATURAL
“The religion of the Bible is wholly supernatural.”
— A. B. Simpson  

“God is a supernatural God, and you’ve got to have supernatural power to do His work.”
 — D. L. Moody  

“To be blunt, Christianity is either supernatural, or nothing at all. We had—and still have—a supernatural Jesus with a supernatural ministry, creating a supernatural church, with a supernatural gospel, and a supernatural Bible. Take the miraculous away, and you have taken Christianity’s life away. The church becomes an ethical society, or a social club, when it is intended to be the grid system for transmitting the power of God into this powerless world. You and I are conductors of God’s power to the world!”
— Reinhard Bonnke  

SUPPORTIVE ROLES
“The hardest instrument in the orchestra to play is second fiddle.
– Leonard Bernstein

SUPREMACY OF CHRIST
“Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded empires; but upon what foundation did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force! But Jesus Christ founded His upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him.”
– Napoleon Bonaparte

SURRENDER
“The greatness of a man’s power is the measure of his surrender.”
– William Booth

“In our competitive world we’re taught to never quit trying, never give up, and never give in – so we don’t hear much about surrendering. If winning is everything, surrendering is unthinkable. Even Christians would rather talk about winning, succeeding, overcoming, and conquering than yielding, submitting, obeying, and surrendering. But surrendering to God is the heart of worship.”
– Rick Warren

SURVIVAL
“The complacent, the self-indulgent, the soft societies are about to be swept away with the debris of history.  Only the strong, only the industrious, only the determined, only the courageous, only the visionary who determine the real nature of our struggle can possibly survive.”
– John F. Kennedy

SYSTEMS
“Your systems are perfectly designed to get the results that you are getting.”
– Stephen Covey

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