Preaching Quotes

“The true preacher can be known by this, that he deals out to the people his life,--life passed through the fire of thought.”

“Among provocative, the next best thing to good preaching is bad preaching.”

“He charged nothing for his preaching and it was worth it too.”

“I can no more preach nonviolence to a cowardly man than I can tempt a blind man to enjoy healthy scenes.”

“There is something in the eloquence of the pulpit, when it is really eloquence, which is entitled to the highest praise and honour. The preacher who can touch and affect such an heterogeneous mass of hearers, on subjects limited, and long worn thread-bare in all common hands; who can say any thing new or striking, any thing that rouses the attention, without offending the taste, or wearing out the feelings of his hearers, is a man whom one could not (in his public capacity) honour enough.”

“A sermon wept over is more acceptable with God than one gloried over.”

“When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.”

“All originality and no plagiarism makes for dull preaching.”

“We cannot play at preaching. We preach for eternity.”

“Don't just throw the seed at the people! Grind it into flour, bake it into bread, and slice it for them. And it wouldn't hurt to put a little honey on it”

“If any man will preach as he should preach, his work will take more out of him than any other labor under heaven.”

“We have all heard the story of the man who preached so well and lived so badly, that when he was in the pulpit everybody said he ought never to come out again, and when he was out of it they all declared he never ought to enter it again.”

“Everywhere there is apathy. Nobody cares whether that which is preached is true or false. A sermon is a sermon whatever the subject; only, the shorter it is, the better.”

“If a crooked stick is before you, you need not explain how crooked it is. Lay a straight one down by the side of it, and the work is well done. Preach the truth, and error will stand abashed in its presence.”

“Far better for a man that he had never been born than that he should degrade a pulpit into a show box to exhibit himself in.”

“The kind of sermon which is likely to break the hearer's heart is that which first has broken the preacher's heart, and the sermon which is likely to reach the heart of the hearer is the one which has come straight from the heart of the preacher.”

“Some ministers would make good martyrs: they are so dry they would burn well.”

“A sermon often does a man most good when it makes him most angry. Those people who walk down the aisles and say, "I will never hear that man again," very often have an arrow rankling in their breast.”

“If I ever wrote a book on preaching, it would contain three words: Preach the Word. Get rid of all the other stuff that gets you sidetracked; preach the Word.”