[I will be adding to this regularly.]
"While I am sowing in one place, they ravage the field I have just left. I cannot be everywhere. If Christians had the Scriptures in their own tongue, they could themselves withstand these sophists: without the Bible it is impossible to establish the laity in the truth. If God give me life, ere many years the plough-boys shall know more of the Scriptures than you do." - William Tyndale
"I want people to fill their minds with passages of Scripture while they are well and strong, that they may have sure help in the day of need. I want them to be diligent in studying their Bibles, and becoming familiar with its contents, in order that the grand old Book may stand by them and talk with them when all earthly friends fail." ~ J.C. Ryle
Total Inability -
- "No man ever made himself to live. No preacher, however earnest, can make one hearer to live. No parent, however prayerful, no teacher, however tearful, can make a child live unto God. “You hath HE quickened,” is true of all who are quickened."- C. H. Spurgeon
“If you give your soul up to anything earthly, whether it be the wealth, or the honours, or the pleasures of this world, you might as well hunt after the mirage of the desert or try to collect the mists of the morning, or to store up for yourself the clouds of the sky, for all these things are passing away.”
- Charles Spurgeon
"Your trials, crosses, and conflicts are all temporary." ~ J.C. Ryle
"The trees of the garden should bear more fruit than the trees of the forest." - (Puritan) Christopher Love
"If you are strangers to prayer you are strangers to power." - Billy Sunday
“So great is my veneration for the Bible that the earlier my children begin to read it the more confident will be my hope that they will prove useful citizens of their country and respectable members of society. I have for many years made it a practice to read through the Bible once every year.” - John Quincy Adams
Puritan Jonathan Edwards once urged people to "total deadness to the world." I wonder what that would look like today?
"Not my will, But Thine" - Really means: Something I don't want to do. Something I know I have to do, but drag my feet, procrastinate, put off, and try to ignore. . . Yet the moment I yield to it, and start the task, I am blessed and overjoyed with peace.
"One who walks with God reflects the light of His countenance upon a benighted world; and the closer he walks the more of this light does he reflect." - Horatius Bonar, 1800's
“Is there nothing to sing about to-day? Then borrow a song from tomorrow; sing of what is yet to be. Is this world dreary? Then think of the next.” - Charles Spurgeon
"Home . . . — that blessed word, which opens to the human heart the most perfect glimpse of Heaven, and helps to carry it thither, as on an angel’s wings. . . ." - Lydia Maria Child (1800's)
"Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be." - Thomas A. Kempis
"You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you." - John Bunyan
"Let us take our lot in life just as it comes, courageously, patiently, and faithfully, never wondering at anything the Master does." - Elizabeth Prentiss
"Believe God's word and power more than you believe your own feelings and experiences." - Samuel Rutherford
"He who runs from God in the morning will scarcely find Him the rest of the day." - John Bunyan
"I know well that all souls are in fearful peril. . . Old or young, it matters not; All have a race to run, a battle to fight, a heart to mortify, a world to overcome, a body to keep under, a devil to resist." - J. C. Ryle
"Real holy living, in the Bible sense, consists in daily being set apart for God by confessing and forsaking sin, by feeding on the Word of God and by being led by the Spirit of God so that we can have daily strength and guidance and protection." - John R. Rice
"Cling to the whole Bible, not a part of it. A man is not going to do much with a broken sword."—D. L. Moody
"Christian, your whole life is to be one continuous following of the Lord." - Horatius Bonar
"Our Lord has many weak children in his family; many dull pupils in his school; many raw soldiers in his army; many lame sheep in his flock. Yet he bears with them all, and casts none away. Happy is that Christian who has learned to do likewise with his brethren."
- J. C. Ryle
"Fathers and mothers, do not forget that children learn more by the eye than they do by the ear... Imitation is a far stronger principle with children than memory. What they see has a much stronger effect on their minds than what they are told." - J. C. Ryle
“The Christian shoemaker does his duty, not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.” ― Martin Luther
"An angelic life; spent between ascending in prayer to fetch blessings from above, and descending to scatter them among men." - Robert Leighton
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Spoken About Billy Graham:
"I first heard Billy Graham as a teenager, and I thought to myself, “That man can preach the gospel!” During a time when the preaching had grown somewhat lifeless and stale, he was different. He spoke with enthusiasm and authority, was filled with the Holy Spirit, and was true to the Word of God. As a young man wanting to serve God, that inspired me profoundly." - Charles Stanley
"God’s work within me began in earnest with Billy [Graham]’s outreach. His care and his teachings were the real beginning of my faith walk—and the start of the end of my drinking. I couldn’t have given up alcohol on my own. But in 1986, at 40, I finally found the strength to quit." - George W. Bush
"There was a time when our relationship wasn’t so good, a time when I caused my mother and father quite a bit of anguish and heartache. During my teens and early 20s, I proved to be anything but what most people expected Billy Graham’s son to be. I’m so thankful he never gave up on me or quit loving me." - (his son) Franklin Graham
"On most Sundays for the past 20 years, I have driven an hour-and-a-half to have lunch and spend the afternoon with my father. I’ll forever cherish these special times we spent together." - (his son) Franklin Graham
"I don’t know what trials you may be facing right now, but God does, and He loves you and is with you by His Holy Spirit. Cultivate a spirit of thankfulness even in the midst of trials and heartaches." —Billy Graham
"Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are stiffened." - Billy Graham
"My home is in Heaven," (Billy) Graham habitually said. "I'm just traveling through this world."
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"Our fair morning is at hand; the daystar is near the rising, and we are not many miles from home. What matter, then, of ill-entertainment in the smoky inns of this worthless world?
We are not to stay here, and we shall be dearly welcome to Him to whom we are going."
- Samuel Rutherford
"The joy of the Lord will arm us against the assaults of our spiritual enemies and put our mouths out of taste for those pleasures with which the tempter baits his hooks." - Matthew Henry
"Live near to God, and so all things will appear to you little in comparison with eternal realities."
- Robert Murray M’Cheyne
“Conversion is a turning onto the right road. The next thing to do is to walk on it.” - Charles Spurgeon
"It is because of the hasty and superficial conversation with God that the sense of sin is so weak and that no motives have power to help you to hate and flee from sin as you should." - A. W. Tozer
“Get into the habit of saying, “Speak, Lord,” and life will become a romance.” -Oswald Chambers
"I have found that there are three stages in every great work of God; first, it is impossible, then it is difficult, then it is done." - Hudson Taylor
"Your Mother gave us no peace until we came for you." - Said the voice of an angel from Heaven to an elderly man, in an old movie.
Oh, that we mothers would storm the gates of heaven with our prayers for the souls of our children!
"This life was not intended to be the place of our perfection, but the preparation for it." - Richard Baxter
"If I walk with the world, I can't walk with God."
- Dwight L. Moody
"I've never been hurt by anything I didn't say." - Calvin Coolidge
"Blessed indeed is the man who hears many gentle voices call him
father!" - Lydia M. Child, 1836
"A thrifty housewife is better than a great income. A good wife and health are a man's best wealth."
- Charles Spurgeon
"I looked on child rearing not only as a work of love and duty but as a profession, that was fully interesting and challenging as any honourable profession in the world, and one that demanded the best that I could bring to it." - Rose Kennedy
"A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials, heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine, desert us when troubles thicken around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts."
- Washington Irving
“The woman who makes a sweet, beautiful home, filling it with love and prayer and purity, is doing something better than anything else her hands could find to do beneath the skies.”
― J.R. Miller, Home-Making
"I learned more about Christianity from my mother than from all the theologians in England." - John Wesley
"Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength."
- Charles Spurgeon
"The ultimate test of our spirituality is the measure of our amazement at the grace of God.”
- D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
"If humility and purity be not in the heart, they are not in the home; and if they are not in the home, they are not in the City."
- T.S. Eliot
“…the deepest spiritual lessons are not learned by his letting us have our way in the end, but by his making us wait, bearing with us in love and patience until we are able to honestly pray what he taught his disciples to pray: Thy will be done.” - Elisabeth Elliot
“God...made childhood joyous, full of life, bubbling over with laughter, playful, bright and sunny. We should put into their childhood days just as much sunshine and gladness, just as much cheerful pleasure as possible.
Pour in the sunshine about them in youth. Let them be happy, encourage all innocent joy, provide pleasant games for them, romp and play with them; be a child again among them. Then God's blessing will come upon your home, and your children will grow up sunny-hearted, gentle, affectionate, joyous themselves and joy-bearers to the world.”
― J.R. Miller
"A man's greatest care should be for that place where he lives longest; therefore eternity should be his scope." - Thomas Manton
"In all states of dilemma or of difficulty... ...prayer is an available source. The ship of prayer may sail through all temptations, doubts and fears, straight up to the throne of God; and though she may be outward bound with only griefs, and groans and sighs, she shall return freighted with a wealth of blessings!"
~ Charles Spurgeon
"To trust God in the light is nothing. But trust Him in the dark - that is faith." C.H. Spurgeon
"The nearer we live to God while we live, the more ready we will be to dwell forever in His presence when we die." ~ J.C. Ryle
"When Christians find themselves exposed to temptation they should pray to God to uphold them, and when they are tempted they should not be discouraged. It is not a sin to be tempted; the sin is to fall into temptation."
- Dwight L. Moody
“Oh that God would give every mother a vision of the glory and splendor of the work that is given to her when a babe is place in her bosom to be nursed and trained! Could she have but one glimpse in to the future of that life as it reaches on into eternity; could she look into it’s soul to see its possibilities; could she be made to understand her own personal responsibility for the training of this child, for the development of its life, and for its destiny,–she would see that in all God’s world there is no other work so noble and so worthy of her best powers, and she would commit to no others hands the sacred and holy trust given to her.” -JR Miller
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Quote from Sergeant Alvin C. York, 1922 -
"...Father built the log house at the spring and that's where most all of us were borned and growed up. The children kept coming right smart until there were eleven of us. Mother had to work from sunup often until ten o'clock at night to keep us clothed and fed...She milked the cows, made the butter; she looked after the hogs and chickens. She made the soap and the tallow candles and fixed the grease for the lamps. She carded the wool and spun and wove the cloth and made all our clothes. She was a good mother to us, and with Father she brought us all up and we are living today. We're all strong and healthy and well and she enjoyed every moment of it. She enjoyed life much more in those days, so she says, slaving and working for us, than she does today, Jes quietly living with us with not much to do or bother about.
"...Father built the log house at the spring and that's where most all of us were borned and growed up. The children kept coming right smart until there were eleven of us. Mother had to work from sunup often until ten o'clock at night to keep us clothed and fed...She milked the cows, made the butter; she looked after the hogs and chickens. She made the soap and the tallow candles and fixed the grease for the lamps. She carded the wool and spun and wove the cloth and made all our clothes. She was a good mother to us, and with Father she brought us all up and we are living today. We're all strong and healthy and well and she enjoyed every moment of it. She enjoyed life much more in those days, so she says, slaving and working for us, than she does today, Jes quietly living with us with not much to do or bother about.
She jes didn't have time to worry or be unhappy. Life tried to crowd in on her and bust her up right smart and she jes wouldn't let it nohow. She knowed what she wanted - she wanted her home, her husband, and her own children, and she knowed she would have to pay for those things with work and sacrifice, so she was willing. That's a mother for you! "
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"There is no panic in Heaven. God has no problems, only plans." - Corrie ten Boom
"Many do not recognize the fact as they ought, that Satan has got men fast asleep in sin and that it is his great device to keep them so. He does not care what we do if he can do that. We may sing songs about the sweet by and by, preach sermons and say prayers until doomsday, and he will never concern himself about us, if we don't wake anybody up. But if we awake the sleeping sinner he will gnash on us with his teeth. This is our work - to wake people up." - Catherine Booth
"David Livingstone went into the heart of Africa as a lone missionary. After some time his missions committee wrote to him saying, "Some people would like to join you. What’s the easiest road to get where you are?" He replied, "If they’re looking for the easiest road, tell them to stay in England. I want people who will come, even if there’s no road at all!"
"Because of the neglect of history in our educational system, most people have no idea how many of the great American fortunes were created by people who were born and raised in worse poverty than the average welfare-recipient today."
~Thomas Sowell
~Thomas Sowell
“When in doubt, don't.”
- Benjamin Franklin
"All places where women are excluded tend downward to barbarism; but the moment she is introduced, there come in with her courtesy, cleanliness, sobriety, and order."
- Harriet Beecher Stowe
"For a wife take the daughter of a good mother." - Thomas Fuller
"I have held many things and have lost them all. But that which I have placed in God's hands I still retain." - Martin Luther
"No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for anyone else." - Charles Dickens
"We never know who they are that God will draw, and have nothing to do with it. Our duty is to invite all, and leave it to God to choose the vessels of mercy." - J.C. Ryle
"The riches of His free grace cause me daily to triumph over all the temptations of the wicked one, who is very vigilant, and seeks all occasions to disturb me." - George Whitefield
"We must meet the uncertainties of this world with the certainty of the world to come." - A. W. Tozer
"There is a common, worldly kind of Christianity in this day, which many have and think they have enough—a cheap Christianity which offends nobody and requires no sacrifice, which costs nothing and is worth nothing."—J. C. Ryle
"You say, "Crime is excusable because somebody is poor." I was poor, too. My family was poor. I wore "hand-me-down" clothes. Eight of us lived in a four-room country house without plumbing, without electric lights, without running water; and we were decent and honest, and went to church, and paid our bills, and did right. Being poor doesn't give any excuse to break the laws of the land." - John R. Rice
"Most mothers would give up their life for their child. Why would a baby have to give up its life for its mother. I am against abortion." - unknown
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Describing D. L. Moody:
"His preaching had all the effect of Luther's; he exulted in the free grace of God. His joy was contagious. Men leaped out of darkness into light and lived a Christian life afterward."
- Dr. W. R. Dale from the biography of D. L. Moody, 1900
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"I will not ask "what if" about the future. I have never been promised tomorrow. The Lord has work for me to do today. I trust and depend upon Him for His will to be done, not for what "I" want."
- unknown
"It is the "in thing" to be a bad girl. Everyone else is doing it these days. But to be a good girl is such a rare and precious thing - a good girl, a sweet girl, a girl of honor and character and morals . . this type of girl is highly valued and worth much more." - unknown
"You can easily notice a Lady; not just by what she does, but by what she doesn't do." - unknown
"Go out more, keep cheerful as well as busy, for you are the sunshine-maker of the family, and if you get dismal there is no fair weather."
- Louisa May Alcott
"Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy." - Robert Heinlein
"May God give you the grace, persistence, and faith to raise up your children to glorify HIM, not themselves, which is the way of the world." - Valerie Shepard (Daughter of Elisabeth Elliot)
"You can't just buy an apartment and furnish it and walk away. It's the flowers you choose, the music you play, the smile you have waiting. I want it to be cheerful, a haven in this troubled world. I don't want my husband and children to come home and find a rattled woman. Our era is already rattled enough, isn't it?”
― Audrey Hepburn
"I recommend a general and public return of praise and thanksgiving to Him from whose goodness these blessings descend. The most effectual means of securing the continuance of our civil and religious liberties is always to remember with reverence and gratitude the source from which they flow." - John Jay
"Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse.
Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room."
- Jonathan Swift
"You have work to do. And you’re going to have to do it amidst the noise of the spectators. This is life. You cant escape them. You will be watched. There are far more viewers than doers."
- Seth Nichols
"All God's giants have been weak men who did great things for God because they reckoned on God being with them." J. Hudson Taylor
"The highest and most profitable lesson is the true knowledge and lowly esteem of ourselves." - Thomas A` Kempis
"Keep us little and unknown, prized and loved by God alone."
- Charles Wesley
"You cannot put yourself in the place of God. . . Only our dear Lord can make what you do to prosper. Try, dear, not to have any will of your own. Try dear. I am an old woman, and have had many sorrows, and have done fighting against my Lord." - taken from "The Little Preacher" by Elizabeth Prentiss.
From Stepping Heavenward by Elizabeth Prentiss:
Katie - "I have a great many little trials, but they don't do me a bit of good. Or, at least, I don't see that they do."
Mrs. Campbell - "No, we never see plants growing."
This is one of the common marks of all the elect of God, "They cry unto him day and night" (Luke 18:1) - J.C. Ryle
"The Bible, when not read in schools, is seldom read in any subsequent period of life… The Bible… should be read in our schools in preference to all other books because it contains the greatest portion of that kind of knowledge which is calculated to produce private and public happiness." - Benjamin Rush
"Do not have your concert first, and then tune your instrument afterwards. Begin the day with the Word of God and prayer, and get first of all into harmony with Him." Hudson Taylor
"A pharisee is hard on others and easy on himself, but a spiritual man is easy on others and hard on himself." - A. W. Tozer
"The greater are our affections the deeper are our afflictions, and the more we love the more we have to weep." - J. C. Ryle
"God is looking for people through whom He can do the impossible--what a pity that we plan only the things that we can do by ourselves." - A. W. Tozer
"Praying and sinning will never live together in the same heart.
Prayer will consume sin,
or sin will choke prayer." - J. C. Ryle, from "A Call to Prayer"
"Ours may be the first generation in civilized times that has not raised its young on proverbs. From the beginning of recorded history. . .concise sayings which describe the benefit of good conduct or the harm of bad have been used to teach children how to behave." - David Hubbard
"For what is our conversion but a turning of our back upon the world
and bidding farewell to all that the heart had hitherto been entwined around?
It is then that like Abraham we forsake all and go out not knowing whither."
- Horatius Bonar
"Benjamin Franklin was a newspaper columnist at age 16; He founded the first library in America at age 25; He started the first fire department at age 31;Designed a heating stove at age 36; Invented the lightning rod at age 43; Invented bifocals at age 79; He was a framer of the U.S. Constitution at age 81; He could speak and write in five different languages. In his lifetime he had only 2 years of formal education." ( This information was found in a book of interesting facts and quotes by Charles Swindoll)
What’s Your Excuse?
Before that evangelical awakening of two hundred years ago the churches were as empty as they are today, perhaps even more so, and they could not get the people to come to listen to the preaching of the gospel. Why? Because they were interested in other things. “But”, says someone, “they had not got televisions!” I know. But they greatly enjoyed cock fighting and card playing; they greatly enjoyed gambling and they greatly enjoyed drinking. The world has never been at a loss to find an excuse not to go to Church to listen to the preaching of the gospel.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Revival)
"I am as sure as I am of the fact of Christ's reign that a comprehensive and centralized system of national education, separated from religion, as is now commonly proposed, will prove the most appalling enginery for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief and of antisocial nihilistic ethics, social and political, which this sin- rent- world has ever seen."- A.A. Hodge
"To have no regard for the fact that their children are receiving a godless education is a mark of apostasy."- R.J. Rushdoony
"I can see little consistency in a type of Christian activity which preaches the gospel on the street corners and at the ends of earth, but neglects the children of the covenant by abandoning them to a cold and unbelieving secularism." - J. Gresham Machen
"I am afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of hell, unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures and engraving them in the heart of the youth." - Martin Luther
"A good example is like a bell that calls many to church." - unknown
"I have noticed that in old age and senility the personality seems to crystallize. The basically self-centered become more so, and the selfless become gentler and humbler in their weakness." - Patricia St. John
"He was too feeble to do much. . . He spent hours in his chair, with his Bible in his lap. He read the Bible over and over again." - Mary Lloys Himes, speaking about her late husband, shortly before his death.
"The soul that in this world had only a little spark of divine love in it, in heaven shall be, as it were, turned into a bright and ardent flame, like the sun in its fullest brightness, when it has no spot upon it." - Jonathan Edwards, 1700's, from "Heaven, A World of Love."
"Work as if everything depended on you and pray as if everything depended on God." D. L. Moody
"I find nothing in the Bible but holiness, and nothing in the world but worldliness. Therefore, if I live in the world, I will become worldly; on the other hand, if I live in the Bible, I will become holy...."
- S. Wigglesworth
"Some people think God does not like to be troubled with our constant coming and asking. The way to trouble God is not to come at all."
--D. L. Moody
From Yale College (1745) "All Scholars Shall Live Religious, Godly and Blameless Lives according to the Rules of God[']s Word, diligently Reading the holy Scriptures the Fountain of Light and Truth; and constan[t]ly attend upon all the Duties of Religion both in Publick and Secret. "
"A child will love what his parents love when he feels no competition for their affection." - Evangelist, Will Rice IV
"I have no faith in that woman who talks of grace and glory abroad, and uses no soap and water at home. Let the buttons be on the shirts, let the children's socks be mended, let the roast mutton be done to a turn, let the house be as neat as a new pin, and the home be as happy as home can be." - Charles Spurgeon
"We don't just bake cookies, Howard. . . It's not like they come in a little package and we cut them up and put them in the oven!"
- Mrs. Cunningham - "Happy Days" 1950's.
"Ladies could be spotted a block away, by the presence of gloves." - from "Keeping Hearth and Home in Old Massachusetts."
"Papa has never turned anyone away from our table. . He just figures Mama has made enough to go around. And this was a burden I kept to myself. . I just never wanted my family to think we didn't have enough food for what we needed. . . . I mean, with all the other hardships a family goes through, they deserve, at the end of the day, to have a warm meal and a cheerful and happy mother to put it on the table."
- Connie Hultquist, from her book, "Dear Kitchen Saints."
"A revival is nothing else than a new beginning of obedience to God." - Charles Finney
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"If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.
Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.
For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God."
- Colossians 3:1-3
