21 quotes
The call to religion is not a call to be better than your fellows, but to be better than yourself.
Life Thoughts (1858)
When laws, customs, or institutions cease to be beneficial to man, they cease to be obligatory.
Life Thoughts (1858)
Flowers are the sweetest things that God ever made, and forgot to put a soul into.
Life Thoughts (1858)
There is no such thing as preaching patience into people, unless the sermon is so long that they have to practise it while they hear.
Life Thoughts (1858)
It is not well for a man to pray, cream; and live, skim milk.
Life Thoughts (1858)
Never forget what a man has said to you when he was angry.
Life Thoughts (1858)
Doctrine is nothing but the skin of Truth set up and stuffed.
Life Thoughts (1858)
Some men are like pyramids, which are very broad when they touch the ground, but grow narrower as they reach the sky.
Life Thoughts (1858)
A man in the right, with God on his side, is in the majority, though he be alone, for God is multitudinous above all populations of the earth.
Life Thoughts (1858)
The first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day.
Life Thoughts (1858)
We expect old men to be conservative, but when a nation's young men are so, its funeral bell is already rung.
Life Thoughts (1858)
You are to accept as a Christian every one whose life and disposition are Christ-like, no matter how heretical the denomination may be to which he belongs.
Life Thoughts (1858)
There are apartments in the soul which have a glorious out-look; from whose windows you can see across the river of death, and into the shining city beyond; but how often are these neglected for the lower ones, which have earthward-looking windows!
Life Thoughts (1858)
[C]ompassion will cure more sins than condemnation.
Life Thoughts (1858)
If any of you should die today, could you say to God, "Lord, here is my life work. Thou didst send me into life with a handful of seeds, and here is my heart, like a garden, full of flowers"?
Life Thoughts (1858)
Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right using of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it only serves to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.
Life Thoughts (1858)
Let it be understood that the end of our existence here is that we may be more God-like [...] and that we are placed here to grow strong and noble, and not merely to enjoy.
Life Thoughts (1858)
Sink the Bible to the bottom of the ocean, and man's obligations to God would be unchanged. He would have the same path to tread, only his lamp and his guide would be gone; he would have the same voyage to make, only his compass and chart would be overboard.
Life Thoughts (1858)
[L]ove is more just than justice.
Life Thoughts (1858)
Astronomers have built telescopes which can show myriads of stars unseen before; but when a man looks through a tear in his own eye, that is a lens which opens reaches in the unknown, and reveals orbs which no telescope, however skilfully constructed, could do; nay, which brings to view even the throne of God, and pierces that nebulous distance where are those eternal verities in which true life consists.
Life Thoughts (1858)