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
TACT
“The original meaning of the word tact referred to the sense of touch, and came to mean skill in dealing with persons or sensitive situations. Tact is defined as ‘intuitive perception, especially a quick and fine perception of what is fit and proper and right.’ It alludes to one’s ability to conduct delicate negotiations and personal matters in a way that recognizes mutual rights, and yet leads to a harmonious solution.”
– Oswald Sanders, from Dynamic Spiritual Leadership
“Tact is like a girdle. It enables you to organize the awkward truth more attractively.”
– Unknown
“Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.”
– Abraham Lincoln
TALENT
“The real tragedy of life is not being limited to one talent, but in the failure to use the one talent.”
– Edgar Work
TALK
“They think too little who talk too much.”
– John Dryden
“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half have nothing to say and keep on saying it.”
– Robert Frost
TASKS
“All things are difficult before they are easy.”
– Thomas Fuller
TASTE
“My tastes are simple; I am easily satisfied with the best.”
– Winston Churchill
TEACHABLE
“Some people will never learn anything because they understand everything too soon.”
– Alexander Pope
TEACHABLENESS
“I make progress by having people around me who are smarter than I am – and listening to them. And I assume that everyone is smarter about something than I am.”
– Henry Kaiser
TEACHING
“God gave the Bible for life change. Teachers are responsible to apply the Scriptures for life change. At least 50 percent of our presentations should be application-oriented.”
– Bruce Wilkinson
“We get so tied up in our content that we forget the purpose of content is life change.”
– Bruce Wilkinson
“Teachers almost universally overestimate the power of their words and underestimate the power of emotion that flows behind their words.”
– Bruce Wilkinson
“Content centers around ‘knowing’ and application around ‘being’ and ‘doing.’”
– Bruce Wilkinson
Referring to Charles Swindoll, Wilkinson writes: “He is a master at expressing his content with the listeners needs and interest in mind. He has one hand on your pulse and the other on the Bible. He disciplines himself never to change the truth but always clothes the truth with contemporary culture. It hits home because he always aims at your home. Unfortunately, too many have both hands on the Bible and no hands on the pulse.”
– Bruce Wilkinson
“The primary source of Jesus’ illustrations was his imagination—the parables were all fictional stories.”
– Bruce Wilkinson
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
– Albert Einstein
“Teachers of the world have tried to explain everything but changed little. Jesus explained little and changed everything.”
– E. Stanley Jones
“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”
– William Arthur Ward
“The role of God-anointed teaching is not simply to share information, but to facilitate transformation. The goal is to share the word of God under the anointing of the Holy Spirit so that HE can work within the hearers to bring change in the lives of people.”
– Tony Cooke
“Rest assured that the most fervid revivalism will wear itself out in mere smoke, if it be not maintained by the fuel of teaching…. Sound teaching is the best protection for the heresies which ravage right and left among us.”
– Charles Spurgeon
“There is nothing more inspiring than having a mind unfold before you. Let people teach who have a calling. It is never just a job.”
– Abraham Kaplan
“A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.”
– Horace Mann
TEAMWORK
“In the Early Church, everybody was part of the ministry team. Everybody was expected to go out into the world and preach the glorious redeeming message of Jesus Christ. Certainly, there were categories—such as elders and bishops and apostles. The Church ran quite efficiently by all Christians working together, each of them knowing where they belonged, and doing their part.”
– A. W. Tozer
“I learned from [Billy] Graham to build your ministry on a team. He knew this, and he built a core team that was with him fifty years. Everybody on the team brought strengths to the table. When you build an effective team, you hire people who compensate for your weaknesses and who mobilize or reinforce your strengths, because nobody can be good at everything.”
– Rick Warren
“I realize more than ever that this ministry has been a team effort. Without the help of our prayer partners, our financial supporters, our staff, and our board of directors—this ministry and all of our dreams to spread the Good News of God’s love throughout the world would not have been possible.”
– Billy Graham
“Paul clearly teaches that each Christian believer ought to demonstrate a proper gift or gifts, bestowed by God the Holy Spirit, and that together the believers should accomplish the work of God as a team.”
– A. W. Tozer
“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”
– Helen Keller
“Michael, if you can’t pass, you can’t play.”
– Coach Dean Smith to Michael Jordan in his freshman year.
“’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
“The only heroes who operate alone are figures of fiction. The true stories of accomplishment and significance always unfold as stories of teamwork. In Christ, one’s life fame and self-importance for God-granted greatness and blessing is by walking in partnership with others.”
– Steve Hawthorne
“A great team doesn’t have to see eye to eye on everything, they just simply need to be focused on a common purpose.”
– Dean Brown
Regarding church leadership… “It’s not whether you can play the game; it’s whether you can play on the team.”
– Gerald Brooks
“We’re going to play together as a team. We’re going to believe in each other. We’re not going to criticize each other. We’re not going to talk about each other. We’re going to encourage each other.”
– Bo Schembechler
“The five best players don’t necessarily make the best team. Of course, I’d prefer to have my five most talented student athletes starting a game, but to become a starter, the player needed to combine talent with teamwork. Talent alone would not get you on the starting team.”
– John Wooden
“The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.”
– Babe Ruth
“To me teamwork is a lot like being part of a family. It comes with obligations, entanglements, headaches, and quarrels. But the rewards are worth the cost.”
– Pat Summitt
“Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishment toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.”
– Andrew Carnegie
“A snowflake is one of God’s most fragile creations, but look what they can do when they stick together!”
– Unknown
No member of a crew is praised for the rugged individuality of his rowing.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“We realized that no one of us could be as good as all of us playing unselfishly.”
– Bill Bradley
“Remember upon the conduct of each depends the fate of all.”
– Alexander the Great
“It is hard to rock the boat when you are helping to row the boat.”
– Unknown
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
– African Proverb
“No one can whistle a symphony.”
– Halford E. Luccock
“The most important measure of how good a game I played was how much better I’d made my teammates play.”
– Bill Russell
“A group becomes a team when each member is sure enough of himself and his contribution to praise the skills of the others.”
– Norman G. Shidle
“I early found that when I worked for myself alone, myself alone worked for me; but when I worked for others also, others worked also for me.”
– Benjamin Franklin
“Its the name on the front of the jersey that matters most, not the one on the back.”
– Joe Paterno
“When a team outgrows individual performance and learns team confidence, excellence becomes a reality.”
– Joe Paterno
In speaking of his first national championship team (1964), Coach Wooden said, “they… probably operated as much as a team as much as any team I have ever seen.” He also said, “Ironically, my players that year weren’t all that close off the floor. They certainly varied in how much they liked one another. After a game or practice they all went their separate ways, but they were completely loyal to each other on the court. No one tried to be a star. They were non-assuming and accomplished far more than anyone expected.”
– John Wooden
“Staff officers of inharmonious disposition, irrespective of their ability, must be removed. A staff cannot function unless it is a united family.”
– General George Patton
“Though I don’t like the crew, I won’t sink the ship. In fact, in time of storm I’ll do my best to save it. You see, we are all in this craft and must sink or swim together.”
– Daniel Defoe (author of Robinson Crusoe)
“You can do what I cannot do. I can do what you cannot do. Together we can do great things.”
– Mother Teresa
“Nothing of significance was ever achieved by an individual acting alone. Look below the surface and you will find that all seemingly solo acts are really team efforts.”
– John Maxwell
“Working together, ordinary people can perform extraordinary feats. They can lift things that come into their hands a little higher, a little further on toward the heights of excellence.”
– Unknown
“Teamwork is what the Green Bay Packers were all about. They didn’t do it for individual glory. They did it because they loved one another.”
– Coach Vince Lombardi
“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.”
– Michael Jordan
“Individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.”
– Vince Lombardi
“No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it.”
– Andrew Carnegie
“No member of a crew is praised for the rugged individuality of his rowing.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“In order to have a winner, the team must have a feeling of unity; every player must put the team first – ahead of personal glory.’
– Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant
“Some people believe you win with your five best players, but I found out that you win with the five who fit together best.”
– Red Auerbach
“Generally speaking, individual performances don’t win basketball games.”
– John Wooden
“The greatest players fit with the team. They play within the team’s style, rather than asking the team to change its style.”
– Patrick Ewing
“There are people with a lot more talent than I have who have been weeded out of the league because they couldn’t put their egos aside to fill a role.”
– Kurt Rambis
“I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.”
– Woodrow Wilson
“The most important measure of how good a game I played was how much better I’d made my teammates play.”
– Bill Russell
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
– Margaret Mead
TEARS
“Crying is alright in its way while it last. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do.”
– C. S. Lewis
“The capacity for tears is the last demonstration of greatness.”
– G. Campbell Morgan
TELEVISION
“I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a good book.”
– Groucho Marx
“Television: The device that brings into your living room characters you would never allow in your living room.”
– Red Skelton
TEMPTATION
“A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later.”
– C. S. Lewis
“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
“God never tempts anyone but He does test us. God’s tests are always a solicitation to obedience. Satan’s tests are always a solicitation to disobedience.”
– Tony Cooke
“When Satan tempts a person, it is a solicitation to disobedience. When acted upon, it brings harm. When God tests a person, it is a solicitation to obedience. When acted upon, it brings blessings.”
– Tony Cooke
“Temptation usually comes in through a door that has deliberately been left open.”
– Arnold Glasow
“To be tempted is not to sin. The strongest attacks are made on the strongest forts.”
– D.L. Moody
“No one is so good that he is immune from temptation. We will never be entirely free from it. . . . There is no order so holy, no place so secret where there will be no temptation.”
– Thomas Kempis
“The noblest souls are the most tempted. The Devil is a sportsman and likes big game. He makes the deadliest assaults on the richest natures, the finest minds, the noblest spirits.”
– John L. Lawrence
“We are not tempted to do bad things as much as we are tempted to try things God has not called us to do,” says Richard Exley
“It is true I may be an apparent loser by declining evil company, but I had better leave my cloak than lose my character; it is not needful that I should be rich, but it is imperative upon me to be pure. No ties of friendship, no chains of beauty, no flashings of talent, no shafts of ridicule must turn me from the wise resolve to flee from sin. The devil I am to resist and he will flee from me, but the lusts of the flesh, I must flee, or they will surely overcome me. May the horrible trinity of the world, the flesh, and the devil, never overcome us!”
– Charles Spurgeon
“There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.”
– Mark Twain
TESTIMONIES
“The youngest in grace magnified Christ. The ‘sanctified’ magnified themselves.” A good reminder, and a good warning.
– H.A. Ironside (speaking of people giving testimonies)
THANKSGIVING
“No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks.”
– Ambrose
“Thanksgiving is the language of heaven, and we had better start to learn it if we are not to be mere dumb aliens there.”
– A.J. Gossip
“We would worry less if we praised more. Thanksgiving is the enemy of discontent and dissatisfaction.”
– Harry Ironside
“Thanksgiving, to be truly Thanksgiving, is first thanks, then giving.”
– Jacob Braude
THEOLOGY
“Wherefore all theology, when separated from Christ, is not only vain and confused, but is also mad, deceitful, and spurious; for, though the philosophers sometimes utter excellent sayings, yet they have nothing but what is short-lived, and even mixed up with wicked and erroneous sentiments.”
John Calvin
THINGS
“The best things in life aren’t things.”
– Art Buchwald
THINKING
“Our Lord Jesus strove not to be an original thinker, for He said, ‘My doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent Me.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.”
– Henry Ford
“Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.”
– Thomas S. Szasz
“The ‘how’ thinker gets problems solved effectively because he wastes no time with futile ‘ifs’.”
– Norman Vincent Peale
THOUGHT
“The Church is perishing today through the lack of thinking, not through an excess of it.”
– J. Gresham Machen
“Every thought is a seed. If you plant crab apples, don’t count on harvesting Golden Delicious. “
– Bill Meyer
“There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.
“A person is what he thinks about all day.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.”
– Blaise Pascal
“Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission.”
– Arnold Bennett
“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”
– Galileo Galilei
“What comes to mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”
– A.W. Tozer
“We should not only use all the brains we have, but all that we can borrow.”
– Woodrow Wilson
“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.”
– General George S. Patton, Jr.
“Thinking like we (always) have is what got us where we are. It is not going to get us where we are going.”
– Albert Einstein
“He who has no opinion of his own, but depends upon the opinion and taste of others, is a slave.”
– Friedrich Klopstock
“Your mind will give back to you exactly what you put into it.”
– James Joyce
THRIFT
“How large an income is thrift!”
– Cicero
TIME
The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.
– Michael Altshuler
“Ask what Time is, it is nothing else but something of eternal duration become finite, measurable and transitory.”
– William Law
“Time is given us to use in view of eternity.”
– Harry Ironside
“The greatest time wasted is the time getting started.”
– Dawson Trotman
“I wasted time; now time doth waste me.”
– William Shakespeare
“There are only two important days: today and that day.”
– Martin Luther
“Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves.”
– Blaise Pascal
“In primitive societies, no one has a watch, but everyone has time. In advanced societies, everyone has a watch, but no one has any time.”
– Gerhard Geschwandtner
“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.”
– Benjamin Franklin
TIMING
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”
– Chinese Proverb
“In my experience of large enterprises, I have found it is often a mistake to try to settle everything at once.”
– Winston Churchill
TODAY
“Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games.”
– Babe Ruth
“From Peanuts Linus said, ‘Maybe we should think only about today.’ Charlie Brown disagreed. ‘No, that’s giving up. I’m still hoping yesterday will get better.”
“Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. Was it worth it?”
– Unknown
TOLERANCE
“The longer I live, the larger allowances I make for human infirmities”
– John Wesley
“Tolerance is not a spiritual gift; it is the distinguishing mark of postmodernism; and sadly, it has permeated the very fiber of Christianity. Why is it that those who have no biblical convictions or theology to govern and direct their actions are tolerated and the standard or truth of God’s Word rightly divided and applied is dismissed as extreme opinion or legalism?”
– John Stott
“Tolerance is a virtue of people who don’t believe in anything anymore.”
– G.K. Chesterton
“If thou art a master, sometimes be blind; if a servant, sometimes be deaf.”
– Thomas Fuller
TOOLS
“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. ”
– Abraham Maslow
TRADITION
“Tradition is the living faith of those now dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of those now living.”
– Jaroslav Pelikan
TRAGEDY
Jesus was born in the midst of tragedy and terrorism. He escaped it as an infant when Herod had all of the children under two years of age killed (Matthew 2:16-18). Jesus was the target of what could be termed a “terrorist attack.” In modern terms, Jesus could have become a victim of what psychologists call “survivor guilt.” Jesus lived while others died. Later, though, he would die so that others could live. Jesus also felt the agony of tragedy and terrorism when he received word of the senseless, barbaric murder of his own cousin, John the Baptist by another Herod. When Jesus addressed tragedy—both intentional and accidental—he pointed to a larger picture… the future of all humanity (see Luke 13:15).
– Tony Cooke
TRAINING
“The only thing worse than training employees and losing them, is not training them and keeping them.”
– Zig Ziglar
TRANSFORMATION
“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
“If conversion to Christianity makes no improvement in a man’s outward actions – if he continues to be just a snobbish or spiteful or envious as he was before – then I think we must suspect that his ‘conversion’ was largely imaginary.”
– C. S. Lewis
“Not only does God in his mercy take people as they are: He takes them to transform them into what he wants them to be.”
– Andrew Walls
“Do we just want God to make us feel better, or are we willing to let God make us better?”
– Kenneth W. Hagin
“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
“It took one night to get Israel out of Egypt but forty years to get Egypt out of Israel.”
– George Morrison
“Religion today is not transforming people; rather it is being transformed by the people. It is not raising the moral level of society; it is descending to society’s own level, and congratulating itself that it has scored a victory because society is smilingly accepting its surrender.”
– A. W. Tozer
TRANSITION
“Every exit is an entrance to somewhere else.”
– Zig Ziglar
TREATMENT OF WOMEN
“Man cannot degrade woman without himself falling into degradation; he can not elevate her without at the same time elevating himself.”
– Alexander Walker
TRIALS
“It’s important to understand that trials—in and of themselves—don’t make you strong spiritually anymore than weights (in and of themselves) make you strong physically. It’s what you do against the weights—lifting them, using them to walk or exercise—that builds your physical muscles. And it’s what you do in the midst of trials—trusting God, persevering, and so forth—that develops your spiritual strength.”
– Tony Cooke, “Through the Storms”
TRINITY
“What good is it for you to be able to discuss the Trinity with great profundity, if you lack humility, and thereby offend the Trinity?”
– Thomas a Kempis
“God the Father is God the author—the originator of all that exists. It was in His mind, first, that all took shape. God the Son, our Savior, is God the artisan—the artist, the Creator of all that exists. He brought into being all that had been originally formulated in His Father’s mind. God the Holy Spirit is God the agent who presents these facts to both my mind and my spiritual understanding so that they become both real and relative to me as an individual.”
– W. Phillip Keller
“The Persons of the Trinity cooperated for our redemption in perfect harmony and reciprocity. The Father planned. The Son made the plan possible of realization by yielding up His life to death on the cross. The Spirit bent His fiery energies to the implementation of the plan.”
— J. Oswald Sanders
“The Trinity is proof that God is love; for love requires the presence of a lover, a beloved, and the spirit of Love between them.”
– Augustine
“The Trinity is not a one-man show.”
– Tony Cooke
“The doctrine of the Trinity is to the Christian the key of the Bible.”
– Octavius Winslow
“As we were made by the joint concurrence and consultation of the blessed trinity; and as we were baptized in their name, so must all of them concur in our salvation: As the Father made and the Son redeemed so must the Holy Ghost sanctify and seal us, or we have believed in vain.”
– George Whitefield
“It has been remarked that the Father plans, the Son executes, and the Holy Spirit applies. But I also believe they plan and work together.”
– Dwight L. Moody
“As the Father made, and the Son redeemed, so must the Holy Ghost sanctify and seal us, or otherwise we have believed in vain.”
– George Whitfield
“When I say God, I mean Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
– Gregory Nazianzus
“The Persons of the Trinity cooperated for our redemption in perfect harmony and reciprocity. The Father planned. The Son made the plan possible of realization by yielding up His life to death on the cross. The Spirit bent His fiery energies to the implementation of the plan. It was His appreciation of this harmony that inspired our Lord to pray for His followers: ‘That they may be one, as we are.’”
– Oswald Sanders
“God created us so that the joy He has in Himself might be ours. God doesn’t simply think about Himself or talk to Himself. He enjoys Himself! He celebrates with infinite and eternal intensity the beauty of who He is as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And we’ve been created to join the party!”
– Sam Storms
Within the Holy Trinity we see that in principle the notion of subordination does not carry with it the notion of inferiority… Christ willingly submitted to the Father, without a word of protest. It is precisely that willingness that we are called to imitate in submitting ourselves to authority.
– R.C. Sproul
“The beginning of our salvation is from God the Father, the dispensation is from the Son, and the application from the Holy Ghost.”
– Thomas Manton
“Every divine action begins from the Father, proceeds through the Son, and is completed in the Holy Spirit.”
– Basil the Great
“Bring me a worm that can comprehend a man, and then I will show you a man who can comprehend the triune God.”
– John Wesley
TRIUMPHAL ENTRY
“Jesus entered Jerusalem to shouts of ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.’ Shortly, those accolades turned into the cries of ‘Crucify Him! Crucify Him!’ His joy was turned into sorrow, so that our sorrow could be turned into joy.”
– Tony Cooke
TRUST
“Make not Christ a liar in distrusting His promise.”
– Samuel Rutherford
“God uses men who are weak and feeble enough to lean on him.”
– Hudson Taylor
“Truth without love destroys. Love without truth deceives.”
– Dave Earley
“If God said it, he will do it. Don’t put a due date on something that has a due season. Our God is always faithful.
– Jonathan Del Turco
“We must put more faith in what we do know about God than in what we don’t know about the future.”
– Christine Caine
“If we would let God do his job, then we would never overwork at ours.”
– Stephen Fraser
“Many Christians estimate difficulties in the light of their own resources, and thus attempt little and often fail in the little they attempt. All God’s giants have been weak men who did great things for God because they reckoned on His power and presence with them.”
– Hudson Taylor
“There is no conceivable situation in which it is not safe to trust God.”
– J. Oswald Sanders
“Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God.”
– Martin Luther
“Trust is built one block at a time, but when it is violated the entire wall comes crashing down.”
– David Branker
“A great hymn of the church states: ‘When darkness seems to hide His face, I rest on His unchanging grace.’ We might not feel or perceive God at a certain time, but we can still trust in His eternal, unchanging nature regardless of what we sense or don’t sense at any given moment.”
– Tony Cooke
“That little word “able” — may it sink down deep into your hearts….He is able to do all for you that you need to have done; and if you but make up your minds to rely on Him you will have strength as you need it.”
– D.L. Moody
“Abraham did not know where he was going immediately, but he knew where he was going ultimately. He did not know the Whither but he knew the Whom. He believed God, and, being sure of his destiny, he did not worry about his destination.”
– Vance Havner
“All God’s giants have been weak men who did great things for God, because they reckoned on God’s being with them.”
– J. Hudson Taylor
“When we cannot trace God’s hand we can trust His heart.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“There is no conceivable situation in which it is not safe to trust God.”
– J. Oswald Sanders
“Unless we love the truth we cannot know it.”
– Blaise Pascal
“Our minds possess by nature an insatiable desire to know the truth.”
– Cicero
“When the train goes through a tunnel and the world gets dark, do you jump out? Of course not. You sit still and trust the engineer to get you through.”
– Corrie ten Boom
“All God’s giants have been weak men who did great things for God because they reckoned on His being with them.”
– J. Hudson Taylor
“Trust is built one block at a time, but when it is violated the entire wall comes crashing down.”
– David Branker
“Out of every difficulty Omnipotence can bring us, only let us in childlike confidence cast our burden upon the Lord.”
– C.H. Spurgeon
“Confidentiality is the essence of being trusted.”
– Billy Graham
“To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.”
– George Macdonald
“Trust in yourself, and you are doomed to disappointment. Trust in your friends and they will die and leave you. Trust in money and you may have it taken away from you. Trust in reputation and some slanderous tongues will blast it. But trust in God and you are never to be confounded in time or in eternity.”
– Dwight L. Moody
Corrie Ten Boom: “Don’t Wrestle; Nestle.”
TRUTH
“Biblical orthodoxy without compassion is surely the ugliest thing in the world.”
– Francis Schaeffer
“Just because someone is sincere in his conviction does not mean that it is true. It is possible to be sincerely wrong.”
– Alistair Begg
“Whenever A Truth becomes the lens thru which we look at All Truth, then Each Truth becomes distorted; perhaps perverted; sometimes obscured. When, on the other hand, Each Truth is looked at thru the Lens of All Truth, then Each Truth finds its proper place in the compendium of Truth. In this way, a complete and accurate understanding of God, His Word, and His will is developed.”
– Guy Duininck
“I return to my oft repeated fundamental and absolutely important principle. Every truth MUST be tempered with ALL truth. No truth can stand healthy if it is standing alone. And NO believer will come to full age, live powerfully, and bear much fruit if they engage themselves exclusively in one truth. They will become sick, weird, and ineffective. They will also become schismatic and cultish. No matter who the minister or what the truth, these things will always follow.”
– Guy Duininck
“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth.”
– C. S. Lewis
“Ultimate truth matters ultimately.”
– R. C. Sproul
“He who does not hate the false does not love the true.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“Truth” without grace is not really truth, and “grace” without truth is not really grace.”
– Tim Keller
“When lying is the rule those telling the truth get ridiculed.”
– Shane Philpott
“It doesn’t matter if everyone in the world joins hands and votes unanimously that God’s truth is false, it still remains true. It remains true whether I believe in it or I don’t believe it.”
– D. James Kennedy
“We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.”
– Winston Churchill
“You can’t say anything is crooked unless there’s a straight edge somewhere.”
– Tim Keller
“The truth is like a lion; you don’t have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself.”
– Augustine of Hippo
“Nothing makes a man so virtuous as belief of the truth. A lying doctrine will soon beget a lying practice. A man cannot have an erroneous belief without by-and-by having an erroneous life. I believe the one thing naturally begets the other.”
– Charles Spurgeon
“If you want the truth to go round the world you must hire an express train to pull it; but if you want a lie to go round the world it will fly; it is as light as a feather, and a breath will carry it.”
– Charles Spurgeon
“Never let us be guilty of sacrificing any portion of truth on the altar of peace.”
– J.C. Ryle
“All extremes are error. The reverse of error is not truth, but error still. Truth lies between extremes.”
– Richard Cecil
“Truth is mighty and will prevail.”
– Thomas Brooks
“Where truth goes, I will go, and where truth is I will be, and nothing but death shall divide me and the truth.”
– Thomas Brooks
“An honest heart loves the Truth.”
– A.W. Pink
“The truth of God may well be likened to a narrow path skirted on either side by a dangerous and destructive precipice: in other words, it lies between two gulfs of error.”
– A.W. Pink
“God’s truth always agrees with itself.”
– Richard Sibbes
“One never errs more safely than when one errs by too much loving the truth.”
– Augustine
“Being human, we can only receive infinite truth in finite doses.”
– Norman Grubb
“Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.”
– Aristotle
“Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy.”
– Warren Wiersbe
“Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.”
– Blaise Pascal
“Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains taken to bring it to light.”
– George Washington
“Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.”
– Aldous Huxley
“The willingness to hear hard truth is vital not only for CEOs of big corporations but also for anyone who loves the truth. Sometimes the truth sounds like bad news, but it is just what we need.”
– Bill Gates
“Peace if possible, but truth at any rate.”
– Martin Luther
“I would rather stand alone in the light of truth than in the crowd filled with error.”
– Adrian Rogers
“The truth is mightier than eloquence, the Spirit greater than genius, faith more than education.”
– Martin Luther
“When truth presents itself, the wise person see the light, takes it in, and makes adjustments. The fool tries to adjust the truth so he does not have to adjust to it.”
– Henry Cloud
“When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.”
– Corrie Ten Boom
“It isn’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so.”
– Will Rogers
“The question to be asked of all teaching is not, ‘Is it new?’ but ‘Is it true?'”
– F.F. Bruce (Commentary on 1 John)
“Truth needs no crutches; if it limps it’s a lie.”
– Unknown
“Peace, if possible, but the truth at any rate.”
– Martin Luther
“A lie has speed, but truth has endurance.”
– Edgar J. Mohn
“There is no wisdom save in truth. Truth is everlasting, but our ideas about truth are changeable. Only a little of the first fruits of wisdom, only a few fragments of the boundless heights, breadths, and depths of truth, have I been able to gather.”
– Martin Luther
TRUTHFULNESS
“Truthfulness is much more than the absence of lies. It is genuine communication of minds and hearts. Real truthfulness reflects the character of God, who is always exactly what He says He is, and who speaks painful but joyful truth… Think of Jesus: ever kind, but relentlessly truthful.”
– Tim Stafford
UNFORGIVENESS
“To carry a grudge is like being stung to death by one bee.”
– William H. Walton
UNHAPPINESS
“Unhappiness is not knowing what we want and killing ourselves to get it.”
– Don Herald
UNIQUENESS
“I would prefer to battle the ‘I’m special’ feeling not by the thought, ‘I’m no more special than anyone else,’ by by the feeling, ‘Everyone is as special as me.'”
– C.S. Lewis
UNITY
“To a true child of God, the invisible bond that unites all believers to Christ is far more tender, and lasting, and precious; and, as we come to recognize and realize that we are all dwelling in one sphere of life in Him, we learn to look on every believer as our brother, in a sense that is infinitely higher than all human relationships. This is the one and only way to bring disciples permanently together. All other plans for promoting the unity of the Church have failed.”
– A. T. Pierson
“The Church is everywhere represented as one. It is one body, one family, one fold, one kingdom. It is one because pervaded by one Spirit. We are all baptized into one Spirit so as to become, says the apostle, one body.”
– Charles Hodge
“Talk about what you believe and you have disunity. Talk about who you believe in and you have unity.”
– E. Stanley Jones
“Sticks in a bundle are unbreakable.”
– Kenyan Proverb
“Unity without the gospel is a worthless unity; it is the very unity of hell.”
– J.C. Ryle
“If God be one, let all that profess him be of one mind, and one heart, and thus fulfil Christ’s prayer, ‘that they all may be one.’”
– Thomas Watson
“Be united with other Christians. A wall with loose bricks is not good. The bricks must be cemented together.”
– Corrie Ten Boom
“I have never yet known the Spirit of God to work where the Lord’s people were divided.”
– D.L. Moody
“”Schism” – People who were agreed about the centralities of the faith dividing and separating from one another over matters that were not essential to salvation, not absolutely vital. This is always one of the dangers afflicting us as evangelicals. We can be so rigid, so over-strict, and so narrow that we become guilty of schism.”
– Martyn Lloyd-Jones
“The World will go limping until Christ’s prayer that all may be one is answered.”
– Charles H. Brent
Unity is a great thing! Lucy threatens Linus with a fist, and says, “These five fingers…individually, they’re nothing. But when I curl them together like this into a single unit, they form a weapon that is terrible to behold! Linus gives in quickly, then says to his fingers, “Why can’t you guys get organized like that?”
“The strength of the pack is in the wolf; the strength of the wolf is in the pack.”
– Rudyard Kipling
“What! At peace with the Father, and at war with His Children? It cannot be.”
– John Flavel
“We are plunged in a long and grievous struggle. But all will come right if we all work together to the end.”
– Winston Churchill
“We decline to determine as binding what the Scriptures have left undetermined, or to argue about mysteries impenetrable to human reason. In this regard, we hold to the principle, ‘In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; and in all things, charity.’”
– Moravian Covenant for Christian Living
“There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them.”
– Winston Churchill
“The best moments any of us have as human beings are those moments when for a little while it is possible to escape the squirrel-cage of being me into the landscape of being us.”
– Frederick Buechner
“Snowflakes are one of nature’s most fragile things, but just look at what they can do when they stick together.”
– Vesta Kelly.
URGENCY
“The stakes are too high and time is too short for us to sleepwalk through these days.”
– Pastor Kevin Berry
USEFULNESS
“Make yourself necessary to somebody.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is a four-word formula for success that applies equally well to organizations or individuals: Make Yourself More Useful.
– Leadership Magazine
“Never allow the thought, ‘I am of no use where I am.’ You are certainly of no use where you’re not.”
– Oswald Chambers
“We are like clay containers filled with a beautiful treasure. So often it has been the love of Jesus expressed through the life of someone I know that has made a difference in my life.”
– Roy Lessin
VALOR
“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena: whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again… who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
– Theodore Roosevelt
VALUE
“Until you value yourself, you won’t value your time. Until you value your time, you won’t do anything with it.”
– M. Scott Peck
“I value all things only by the price they shall gain in eternity.”
– John Wesley
“If you want to be remembered after you’re dead, write something worth reading, or do something worth writing about.”
– Benjamin Franklin
“If it is true in anything, it is especially true of divine things, what costs little is worth little.”
– J. Hudson Taylor
“The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.”
– Theodore Roosevelt
“What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.”
– Thomas Paine
“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”
– C.S. Lewis
VALUES
“Whatever I cannot do for God’s glory must be avoided.”
– A.W. Pink
VARIETY
“A shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.”
– Carl Jung
VICTORY
“You cannot overcome the world if you act like the world.”
– Casey Treat
“You can stand tall without standing on someone. You can be a victor without having victims.”
– Harriet Woods
“There are no victories at bargain prices.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower
“Victory at all cost, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.”
– Winston Churchill
“There is only one answer to defeat and that is victory.”
– Winston Churchill
“Cheer up now thou faint-hearted warrior. Not only has Christ travelled the road, but He has slain thine enemies. Dost thou dread sin? He has nailed it to His cross. Dost thou fear death? He has been the death of Death. Art thou afraid of hell? He has barred it against the advent of any of His children; they shall never see the gulf of perdition. Whatever foes may be before the Christian, they are all overcome. God has taken away in the person of Christ all the power that anything can have to hurt us. Your victory shall be easy, and your treasure shall be beyond all count.”
– Charles Spurgeon
Martin Luther was asked one time how he overcame the devil. He replied: “Well, when he comes knocking upon the door of my heart, and asks, ‘Who lives here?’ The dear Lord Jesus goes to the door and says, ‘Martin Luther used to live here but he has moved out. Now I live here.’ The devil, seeing the nail-pierced hands, and the nail-pierced side, takes flight immediately.”
“We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat.”
– Queen Victoria
VIOLENCE
“Violence is the recourse of those whose ideas are so small and hearts so hardened that they leave no room for dissent or even difference. Violence is a demand for compliance and conformity with fear as it’s only apologetic. Violence is the outcome of the lowest level of thinking.”
– Erwin McManus
VIRGIN BIRTH
“He was truly born of a virgin… He is God existing in flesh, true Life in death. He is both of Mary and of God.”
— Ignatius of Antioch
“We even affirm that He was born of a virgin.”
— Justin Martyr
“Christ Jesus, the Son of God, because of His surpassing love towards His creation, humbled Himself to be born of the virgin. Thereby, He united man through Himself to God.”
— Irenaeus
“The Son of God—He who made the universe—assumed flesh and was conceived in the virgin’s womb.”
— Clement of Alexandria
“This ray of God, then, as it was always foretold in ancient times, descended into a certain virgin. And He was made flesh in her womb. So, in His birth, God and man were united.”
— Tertullian
“He in the last times divested Himself and became a man, and was incarnate although still God. While He was made a man, He remained the God that He was. He assumed a body like our own, differing in only one respect: that the body was born of a virgin and of the Holy Spirit. This Jesus Christ was truly born, truly suffered, . . . and truly died.”
— Origen
“He enters into a virgin. Through the Holy Spirit, He is clothed with flesh. God is mingled with man.”
— Cyprian
“I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord.”
— Martin Luther
“Some things strange and tragic have been happening in recent years within Christianity. For one, some ministers have advised their congregations not to be greatly concerned if theologians dispute the virgin birth of Jesus. The issue, they say, is not important. For another thing, some professing Christians are saying they do not want to be pinned down as to what they really believe about the uniqueness and reality of the deity of Jesus, the Christ.”
— A. W. Tozer
“If we accept that Jesus was the incarnate Son of God, does not belief in the virgin birth become logically inevitable? Who could be the Father of the Son of God but God Himself?”
— Oswald Sanders
“The virgin birth of Christ is a key doctrine; for if Jesus Christ is not God come in sinless human flesh, then we have no Savior. Jesus had to be born of a virgin, apart from human generation, because He existed before His mother. He was not just born in this world; He came down from heaven into the world. Jesus was sent by the Father and therefore came into the world having a human mother but not a human father.
— Warren Wiersbe
“Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:35), and not by Joseph, in order that His human nature might be sinless. This is why He would be called ‘the Son of God’ at His birth.”
— Tony Evans
“The Virgin Birth alone insured both the full deity and full humanity of Jesus. If God had created Jesus a complete human being in heaven and sent Him to earth apart from any human parent, it is difficult to see how He could be truly a man. If God had sent His Son into the world through both a human father and mother, it is difficult to see how He could be truly God.”
— Sam Storms
“A virgin birth seems a most appropriate and creative way for God to enter the world.”
– Paul Smith
VIRTUE
“When was public virtue to be found when private was not?”
– William Cowper
“Do right and you will be conspicuous.”
– Mark Twain
“There was never yet a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.”
– Abraham Lincoln
“No people can be great who have ceased to be virtuous.”
– Samuel Johnson
A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.”
– Daniel Webster
VISION
“Vision is a spiritual picture, a clear mental image, a compelling perception of what could be, what should be, and with God’s help, what will be.”
– Tony Cooke
“It is one thing to see a vision. It’s another thing to be seized by a vision.”
– Josh Pennington
“We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details….”
– Jeff Bezos
“A vision without a task makes a visionary.
A task without a vision is drudgery.
A vision with a task makes a missionary.”
– Samuel Chadwick
“You can often measure a person by the size of his dream.”
– Robert H. Schuller
“A vision is a compelling image of an achievable future.”
– Laura B. Fortgang
“It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.”
– Winston Churchill
“The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.”
– Winston Churchill
“Nothing happens unless first a dream.”
– Carl Sandburg
“Vision is the world’s most desperate need. There are no hopeless situations, only people who think hopelessly.”
– Winifred Newman
“Make no little plans: They have no magic to stir men’s blood.”
– Daniel H Burnham
“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.”
– Antoine De Saint-Exupery
VOLUNTEERS
“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
“Only when the rank and file are enlisted in active service for Christ, will His Kingdom advance as it ought.”
– D.L. Moody
WEALTH
“It is a matter of whether one wants to get rich or be rich. We can be rich in Christ Jesus or perhaps get rich in Egypt, but we cannot do both.”
– Vance Havner
“Just as riches are an impediment to virtue in the wicked, so in the good they are an aid of virtue.”
– Ambrose
WILLINGNESS
“If you are not willing to be used by God, ask God to make you willing to be willing.”
– F.B. Meyer
“The world is a better place as a result of Michelangelo’s not having said, ‘I don’t do ceilings.’”
– Edward McCabe
WILLPOWER
“Technique and ability alone do not get you to the top—it is the willpower to that is the most important. This will power rises from your heart.”
– Junko Tabei (First woman on Mt. Everest)
WINNING
“There is something that can happen to every athlete and every human being; the instinct to slack off, to give in to pain, to give less than your best; the instinct to hope you can win through luck or through your opponent not doing his best, instead of going to the limit and past your limit where victory is always found. Defeating those negative instincts that are out to defeat us, is the difference between winning and losing – and we all face that battle every day.”
– Jessie Owens, winner of four gold medals at 1936 Berlin Olympics
WISDOM
“Think like a prophet, serve like a priest, and plan like a king.”
– Tim Keller
“Dumb is the first step toward wisdom.”
– Gerald Brooks
“Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.”
– Charles Spurgeon
“Giftedness is your accelerator; wisdom is your brake.”
– Gerald Brooks
“Don’t take the fence down until you know the reason it was put up.”
– G.K. Chesterton
“We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.”
– Benjamin Franklin
“If you young fellows were wise, the devil couldn’t do anything to you, but since you aren’t wise, you need us who are old.”
– Martin Luther
“Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.”
– Norman Cousins
“A flow of words does not mean a flow of wisdom.”
– Rosalind Ferguson
“Ladies and gentlemen, I was warned to be out here in plenty of time to permit those who are going to the Green Bay Packers game to leave,” JFK confessed to the carnivorous crowd at a 1960 campaign appearance in Green Bay. “I don’t mind running against Mr. Nixon, but I have the good sense not to run against the Green Bay Packers.”
– John F. Kennedy
“Wisdom requires the long view.”
John F. Kennedy
“The difference between a smart man and a wise man is that a smart man knows what to say; a wise man knows whether or not to say it.”
– Frank M. Garafola
“The chief aim of wisdom is to enable one to bear with the stupidity of the ignorant.”
– Winston Churchill
“From the example of the past, the man of the present acts prudently so as not to imperil the future.”
– Titian
“Wisdom is knowing when to speak your mind and when to mind your speech.”
– Evangel
WITNESS
“Nothing should be more contagious today than a person living out a genuine, authentic Christian life.”
– Charles Swindoll
“It is the duty of every Christian to be Christ to his neighbor.”
– Martin Luther
WOMEN IN MINISTRY
The Bible tells us of the important place of women in the early church. Women were the first to reach the empty tomb and to proclaim the Resurrection (Matt. 28:1–10; Mark 16:1–8; Luke 23:55–24:10; John 20:1–2, 11–18). They contended for the gospel alongside Paul (Phil. 4:2–3), taught new converts (Acts 18:24–28), prophesied (Acts 21:9), had churches in their homes (Acts 16:14–15, 40; 1 Cor. 16:19), served the church (Rom. 16:1), delivered Paul’s epistles (v. 2), and were considered “outstanding among the apostles” (v. 7).
– Christianity Today
“One reason why women are forbidden to preach the gospel, is, that they would persuade without argument and reprove without giving offense.”
– John Newton
WONDER
“He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.”
– Albert Einstein
WORD OF GOD
“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
“I did nothing; the Word did everything.”
– Martin Luther
“Every word of the God-breathed character of Scripture is meaningless if the Holy Scripture is not understood as the witness concerning Christ.”
– G.C. Berkouwer
“Out flashed the sword of the Spirit: our Lord will fight with no other weapon. He could have spoken new revelations, but he chose to say, ‘It is written.’ There is a power in the Word of God which even the devil cannot deny.”
– Charles Spurgeon
WORDS
“It is ironic that some people with the most narrow and closed minds also have the widest and open mouths.”
– Dale Bronner
“Cold words freeze people, and hot words scorch them, and bitter words make them bitter, and wrathful words make them wrathful. Kind words also produce their own image on men’s souls; and a beautiful image it is. They soothe, and quiet, and comfort the hearer.”
– Blaise Pascal
“Words are the most powerful drug used by mankind.”
– Rudyard Kipling
WORK
“Luther says that vocations are a ‘mask from God.’ That is, God hides Himself in the workplace, the family, the Church, and the seemingly secular society.”
– Gene Edward Veith Jr.
“Cause every task of your day to be a sacred ministry to the Lord. however mundane your duties, for you they are a sacrament.”
– Richard J. Foster
“All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.
“Let us practice the fine art of making every work a priestly ministration. Let us believe that God is in all our simple deeds and learn to find Him there.”
– A. W. Tozer
“Why should God have provided that so many hours of every day should be occupied with work? It is because work makes men.”
– Henry Drummond
“When it comes to getting things done, we need fewer architects and more bricklayers.”
– Colleen C Barrett
“Let every man abide in the calling wherein he is called and his work will be as sacred as the work of the ministry. It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it.”
– A.W. Tozer
“On your knees, pray as though it all depends on God; leave your knees and work as though it all depends on you.”
– Augustine
“You may hate your work, but do it like you love God.”
– Gerald Brooks
“Being made in God’s image, we have been designed to work, to be fellow workers with God. To be an image-bearer is to be a worker. In our work we are to show off God’s excellence, creativity, and glory to the world. We work because we bear the image of One who works.”
– Tom Nelson
“A lot of people quit looking for work as soon as they find a job.”
– Zig Ziglar
“The men doing the vital things of life are those who read the Bible and are Christians and not ashamed to let the world know it… No man can read the Bible and be lazy.”
– Booker T. Washington
“Jesus spent six times as long working at the carpenter’s bench as He did in His world-shaking ministry.”
– Oswald Sanders
“All growth depends upon activity. There is no development physically or intellectually without effort, and effort means work. Work is not a curse; it is the prerogative of intelligence, the only means to manhood, and the measure of civilization.”
– Calvin Coolidge
“Twentieth-century man needs to be reminded at times that work is not the result of the Fall. Man was made to work, because the God who made him was a ‘working God.’ Man was made to be creative, with his mind and his hands. Work is part of the dignity of his existence.”
– Sinclair B. Ferguson (A Heart for God, 1987)
“We meet God the Creator as a worker in Genesis 1:1-2:2… The image of God in man means man is to be a worker. The way we work will reveal how much we have allowed the image of God to develop in us.”
– R. Kent Hughes (Disciplines of a Godly Man, p. 148-149)
“Do not confound work and fruit. There may be a good deal of work for Christ that is not the fruit of the heavenly Vine.”
– Andrew Murray
“Working constantly may be visible proof that deep inside we do not trust God.”
– Bill Bright
“He who thinks that he is being released from the work, and not set free in order that he may accomplish that work, mistakes the Christ from whom the freedom comes, mistakes the condition into which his soul is invited.”
– Phillips Brooks
“Ideas are funny little things. They won’t work unless you do.”
– Unknown
“I never did a day’s work in my life. It was all fun.”
Thomas Edison
“Fear God and work hard.”
– David Livingstone
“No man needs sympathy because he has to work….Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”
– Theodore Roosevelt
“How do I work? I grope.”
– Albert Einstein
“Nobody can think straight who does not work. Idleness warps the mind. Thinking without constructive action becomes a disease.”
– Henry Ford
“When you have a number of disagreeable duties to perform, always do the most disagreeable first.”
– Josiah Quincy
“The body of every organization is structured from four kinds of bones. There are the wishbones, who spend all their time wishing someone would do the work. Then there are the jawbones, who do all the talking, but little else. The knucklebones knock everything anybody else tries to do. Fortunately, in every organization there are also the backbones, who get under the load and do most of the work.”
– Leo Aikman
“The world is full of willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.”
– Robert Frost
“Working too long without a break is a form of pride.”
– Dave Williams (from his book, “Emerging Leaders”)
“It is not work that kills men; it is worry. Work is healthy; you can hardly put more upon a man than he can bear. Worry is rust upon the blade. It is not the revolution that destroys the machinery, but the friction. Fear secretes acids; but love and trust are sweet juices.”
– Henry Ward Beecher
“Whatever your work, dignify it with your best thought and effort.”
– Esther Baldwin York
“The average person puts only 25% of his energy and ability into his work. The world takes off its hat to those who put in more than 50% of their capacity, and stands on its head for those few and far between souls who devote 100%.
– Andrew Carnegie
“I found that the men and women who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand, with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm and hard work.”
– Harry Truman
“The highest reward for man’s toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it.”
– John Ruskin
“I don’t know anything about luck. I’ve never banked on it, and I’m afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: hard work—and realizing what is opportunity and what isn’t.”
– Lucille Ball
“I’m no miracle worker. I’m just a guy who rolls up his sleeve and goes to work.”
– Don Shula
“In the way of Christ the reward of work well done is more work to do.”
– William Barclay
“Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.”
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
WORKAHOLISM
“They intoxicate themselves with work so they won’t see how they really are.”
– Aldous Huxley
WORKS
“Not that our salvation should be the effect of our work, but our work should be the evidence of our salvation.”
– Charles Spurgeon
“God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does.”
– Martin Luther
“Our confidence in Christ does not make us lazy, negligent, or careless, but on the contrary it awakens us, urges us on, and makes us active in living righteous lives and doing good.”
– Ulrich Zwingli (Swiss Reformer)
“If you want to hear Him say, ‘Well done,’ you need to do something well.”
– Scott Wilson
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 in order to earn your salvation.” He looked around at nearly slumbering collections of utterly casual Christians and wondered, “Who’s trying?”
– Martin Marty
“There is no inconsistency in saying that God rewards good works, provided we understand that nevertheless men obtain eternal life gratuitously.”
– John Calvin
“Do all the good you can, in all the ways you can, to all the souls you can, in every place you can, with all the zeal you can, as long as you ever can.”
– John Wesley
WORLD
“The world really isn’t much worse than it ever was. It’s just that the news coverage is so much better.”
WORLDLINESS
“Many evangelical churches are closer to the world than to New Testament standards in almost every regard.”
– A. W. Tozer
“A Christian in the world is one thing, and the world in a Christian is quite another thing. A ship in the water is all right, but when the water gets in the ship, it is quite a different thing.”
– D.L. Moody
WORRY
“What worries you, masters you.”
– Haddon W. Robinson
“Most Christians are being crucified on a cross between two thieves: Yesterday’s regret and tomorrow’s worries.”
– Warren Wiersbe
“Worry often gives a small thing a great shadow.”
– Swedish Proverb
“Worrying is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you anywhere.”
– Van Wilder
“Worry is a waste of the imagination.”
– Unknown
Someone said, “Don’t tell me worry doesn’t help; I know better. Things I worry about don’t happen.”
“Worry is simply imagination gone awry.”
– Peter Alwinson
“All our fret and worry is caused by calculating without God.”
– Oswald Chambers
“Ain’t no sense worrying about things you got control over, because if you got control over them, ain’t no sense worrying. And there ain’t no sense worrying about things you got no control over either, because if you got no control over them, ain’t no sense worrying.”
– Mickey Rivers
“Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If it continues, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.”
– Unknown
“Ain’t no sense worrying about things you got control over, because if you got control over them, ain’t no sense worrying. And there ain’t no sense worrying about things you got no control over either, because if you got no control them, ain’t no sense worrying.”
– Mickey Rivers
“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”
– Mark Twain
“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength.”
– Corrie Ten Boom
“Worry is like a rocking chair – it gives you something to do but won’t get you anywhere.”
– Unknown
WORSHIP
“To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.”
– William Temple
“Fruitful and acceptable worship begins before it begins.”
– Alexander McLaren
“Jesus was born of a virgin, suffered under Pontius Pilate, died on the cross and rose from the grave to make worshipers out of rebels!”
– A. W. Tozer
“I cannot sing a lick, but that is nobody’s business. God thinks I am an opera star!”
– A. W. Tozer
“The ancient English word for “worship” is weorthscipe, which incorporated the idea of “ascribe worth.” It meant fundamentally that a true worship of God is more than an exercise of religious ritual; it is a human expression of a proper value being placed in the Person being worshiped and the personal cost of the practice of worshiping Him.”
– Jack Hayford
“As worship begins in holy expectancy, it ends in holy obedience. Holy obedience saves worship from becoming an opiate, an escape from the pressing needs of modern life.”
– Richard Foster
“Worship isn’t crawling though a small hole to some theological wonderland. It is falling back upon God and finding that He is everywhere and anywhere you can fall.”
– Kenneth C. Wilson
“Our Lord approved neither idol worship or idle worship but ideal worship in Spirit and truth.”
– Vance Havner
WORSHIP / SIN
“For worship is, essentially, the reverse of sin. Sin began (and begins) when we succumb to the temptation, ‘You shall be as gods.’ We make ourselves the center of the universe and dethrone God. By contrast, worship is giving God his true worth; it is acknowledging Him to be the Lord of all things, and the Lord of everything in our lives. He is, indeed, the Most High God!”
– Sinclair B. Ferguson
WORTH
“A true measure of a man’s worth includes all the benefits others have gained from your success.”
– Cullen Hightower
WOUNDEDNESS
“Nobody escapes being wounded. We are all wounded people, whether physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. The main question is not, ‘How can we hide our wounds?’ so we don’t have to be embarrassed, but ‘How can we put our woundedness in the service of others?’ When our wounds cease to be a source of shame, and become a source of healing, we have become wounded healers.”
– Henry Nouwen
WRITING
“Don’t write so that you can be understood, write so that you can’t be misunderstood.”
– William Howard Taft
“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“You write because there’s fire in your bones. You’ve got to do this whether anybody ever reads it or not.”
– Eugene Peterson
“The only way to write a great book is to write it with the eyes of a child who sees things for the first time.”
– Arnold Bennett
“I hate to write, but I love to have written.”
– Robert Louis Stevenson
“Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it, and above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light.”
– Joseph Pulitzer
“Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it become a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him out to the public.”
– Winston Churchill
YIELDEDNESS
“There is no worse screen to block out the Spirit than confidence in our own intelligence.” – John Calvin
YOUTH
“The most aggravating thing about the younger generation is that I no longer belong to it.”
– Albert Einstein
ZEAL
“Can we be casual in the work of God—casual when the house is on fire, and people in danger of being burned?”
– Duncan Campbell
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