John B. > John's Quotes

“Our anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strengths.”
― C. H. Spurgeon

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Hope itself is like a star- not to be seen in the sunshine of prosperity, and only to be discovered in the night of adversity.”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Fear not because your prayer is stammering, your words feeble, and your language poor. Jesus can understand you.”
― J.C. Ryle

“If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to Hell over our dead bodies. And if they perish, let them perish with our arms wrapped about their knees, imploring them to stay. If Hell must be filled, let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go unwarned and unprayed for.”
― Charles Spurgeon

“Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men’s brains, proves that he has no brains of his own. You need to read.

. . .

We are quite persuaded that the very best way for you to be spending your leisure time, is to be either reading or praying. You may get much instruction from books which afterwards you may use as a true weapon in your Lord and Master’s service. Paul cries, “Bring the books” — join in the cry.”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“God can't give us peace and happiness apart from Himself because there is no such thing.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Let us never measure our religion by that of others, and think we are doing enough if we have gone beyond our neighbors.”
― J.C. Ryle, Holiness

“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”
― Deitrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

“A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you and were helped by you will remember you when forget-me-nots have withered. Carve your name on hearts, not on marble.”
― Charles H. Spurgeon

“Thou art coming to a King, large petitions with thee bring, for His grace and power are such none can ever ask too much.”
― John Newton

“We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”
― C. S. Lewis

“We must allow the Word of God to confront us, to disturb our security, to undermine our complacency and to overthrow our patterns of thought and behavior.”
― John Stott

“Hearken, my believing reader. What is the cause of your weakness? Is it not because the fountain of life is little used? Is it not because you are resting on old experiences, and not daily gathering new manna—daily drawing new strength from Christ?”
― J.C. Ryle

“There is meaning in every journey that is unknown to the traveler.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“How unspeakably wonderful to know that all our concerns are held in hands that bled for us.”
― John Newton

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“Our love grows soft if it is not strengthened by truth, and our truth grows hard if it is not softened by love.”
― John Stott

“Before we can begin to see the cross as something done for us, we have to see it as something done by us.”
― John Stott

“Happiness does not depend on outward circumstances, but on the state of the heart.”
― J.C. Ryle, A Call to Prayer

“Faith is the gaze of a soul upon a saving God.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

“When you kill time, remember that it has no resurrection.”
― A.W. Tozer

“Read and listen to one thinker and you become a clone; Read two and you become confused; Read ten and you get your own voice; Read a hundred and you start to become wise.”
― Tim Keller

“You don't realize God is all you need until God is all you have.”
― Tim Keller

“Suffering is unbearable if you aren’t certain that God is for you and with you”
― Tim Keller

“What a man is on his knees before God, that he is, and nothing more.”
― Robert Murray M'Cheyne