"There can be no abiding power until that day comes when we keep our conduct abreast of our profession; there must be something back of profession; that something is a consistent life. It is a beautiful thing to hear one who is gifted in speech and in prayer in the prayer meeting, but I am persuaded that there is a something far more beautiful, and this is, for one to be able, from Monday morning to Saturday night, to live Christ. Here is a power infidelity cannot assail nor unbelief deny. If you are traveling through an orange country, you are sensible all the time of the fact that orange blossoms are about you; the fragrance is wafted to you the last thing at night; the first thing in the morning, and it even makes your sleep sweeter, and there is a sweetness like that about the life that is truly `hid with Christ in God.'" Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman.
"Infinite toil would not enable you to sweep away a mist, but by ascending a little you may afterwards look it over altogether. So it is with our moral improvements. We wrestle fiercely with a vicious habit which would have no hold upon us if ascended into a higher moral atmosphere. It is by adding to our purposes and nourishing the affections which are rightly placed, that we shall be able to combat the bad one."
“Beautiful souls often get put into plain bodies; but they cannot be hidden, and have a power all their own, the greater for the unconsciousness of the humility which gives it grace.” Louisa M. Alcott.
"...If mistakes were hay stacks, there would be no poor horses in this world, except such as would not eat hay, or the hay was a poor quality."
"Do not keep the alabaster boxes of your love sealed up until your friends are dead. Fill their lives with sweetness. Speak approving, cheerful words while their hearts can be thrilled by them. The things you mean to say when they are gone say before they go. The flowers you meant to send for their coffins send to sweeten and brighten their homes before they leave them. If my friends have alabaster boxes laid away full of perfumes of sympathy and affections, which they intend to break over my body, I would rather they would bring them out in my weary hours and open them that I may be refreshed and cheered while I need them. I would rather have a bare coffin without a flower and a funeral without a eulogy, than a life without the sweetness of love and sympathy." - Fla. Christian Advocate. (1890 issue.)
"He is a wise man that can avoid evil; he is a patient man that can endure it; but he is a valiant man that can conquer it." Quarles.
"Be quiet and do your little duties. Do them for God, be they ever such little things, and then they will become great results. For every godly worker God has a worker together with him." Wm. Mountford.
"None of us can tell for what God is educating us. We fret and murmur at the narrow round and daily task of ordinary life, not realizing that it is only thus that we can be prepared for the high and holy office which awaits us. We must descend before we can ascend. We must suffer if we would reign. We must take the via crucis (way of the cross) submissively and patiently if we would tread the via lucis (way of light). We must endure the polishing if we would be shafts in the quiver of Emmanuel. God's will comes to thee and me in daily circumstances; in little things equally as in great; meet them bravely; be at your best always, though the occasion be one of the very least; dignify the smallest summons by the greatness of your response." B.F. Meyer.
"It is the lives like the stars, which simply pour down on us the calm light of their bright and faithful being, up to which we look and out of which we gather the deepest calm and courage. No man or woman of the humblest sort can really be strong, gentle, pure and good without the world being better for it, without somebody being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness." Phillips Brooks.
"We need to watch against a `grudging service'. The enemy is always trying to get in the word `duty' instead of the word `delight,' he says a stern `you must' instead of the loving `you may.' There is no slavery like the slavery of love, but its chains are sweet. It knows nothing of sacrifice, no matter what may be given up. It delights to do the will of the beloved one." Smith.
"False religion is clamorous, impatient, nervous and selfish, but a true faith gives strength, repose of spirit, and calm confidence, and impels to unselfish concern for others."
"If we charged so much a head for sunsets, or if God sent round a drum before the hawthorns came into flower, what a work we should make about their beauty! But these things, like good companions, stupid people early cease to observe." R.L. Stevenson.
"There is a grace of kind listening, as well as a grace of kind speaking. Some men listen with an abstracted air, which shows that their thoughts are elsewhere. Or they seem to listen, but by wide answers and irrelevant questions show that they have been occupied with their own thoughts, as being more interesting at least in their own estimation, than what you have been saying. Some interrupt, and will not hear you to the end, and then forthwith begin to talk to you about a similar experience which has befallen themselves, taking your case only as an illustration of their own. Some, meaning to be kind, listen with such a determined, lively, violent attention, that you are at once made uncomfortable, and the charm of conversation is at an end. Many persons, whose manners will stand the test of speaking, break down under the trial of listening. But all these things should be brought under the sweet influence of religion." Frederick Wm. Faber.
"A neglected Bible means a starved and strengthless spirit; a comfortless heart; a barren life; and a grieved Holy Ghost. If the people, who are now perpetually running about to meetings for crumbs of help and comfort, would only stay at home and search their Bibles, there would be more happiness in the church, and more blessing in the world. It is prosaic counsel; but it is true." F.B. Meyer.
"Think of the result of existence in the man or woman who has lived chiefly to gratify the physical appetites; think of its real emptiness, its real repulsiveness, when old age comes, and the senses are dulled, and the roses have faded, and the lamps at the banquet are smoking and expiring, and desire fails, and all that remains is the fierce, insatiable, ugly craving for delights which have fled forever more; think of the bitter, burning vacancy of such an end, and you must see that pleasure is not a good haven to seek in the voyage of life." Henry Van Dyke.
“It's good to have money, and the things that money can buy, but it's good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure you haven't lost the things that money can't buy.” Lorimer.
"Every church is divided into two classes that may be called trees and posts. Plant a tree and it begins to grow. Stick out a post and it begins to rot. The difference between the tree and the post is simply a matter of life. The tree is alive, while the post is dead. The pastor enjoys the living trees of his church, watching them grow and bear fruit, while he is often perplexed to know what to do with posts that show no signs of life. It takes much time and strength to paint and prop up and finally have carried off the posts when they have fallen down." Dr. A.C. Dixon.
"The child is savior of the race. What we do for the child, for his protection, for his education, for his training for the duties of mankind, for securing the rights and prolonging the period of childhood, is a measure of what we shall accomplish for the race that is to be."
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