Preacher Quotes

“Whenever you get one inch above the ground in your own esteem, you are that inch too high!”

“Ready-to-Halt, Poor Fearing, and thou, Mrs. Despondency, and Much-afraid, go often there [the empty tomb]; let it be your favorite haunt. There build a tabernacle, there abide. And often say to your heart, when you are in distress and sorrow, Come, see the place where the Lord lay.”

“The greater our present trials, the louder will our future songs be, and the more intense our joyful gratitude.”

“When filled with holy truth the mind rests.”

“Periodical godliness is perpetual hypocrisy.”

“Nothing is improved by anger, unless it be the arch of a cat's back. A man with his back up is spoiling his figure. People look none the handsomer for being red in the face. It takes a great deal out of a man to get into a towering rage; it is almost as unhealthy as having a fit. . . . Whatever wrong I suffer, it can not do me half so much hurt as being angry about it.”

“Behold, at this hour our moral history is being preserved for eternity. Processes are at work which will perpetuate our every act and word and thought.”

“He who boasts of being perfect is perfect in folly. I never saw a perfect man. Every rose has its thorns, and every day its night. Even the sun shows spots, and the skies are darkened with clouds; and faults of some kind nestle in every bosom.”

“Let gratitude be awakened; let humility be deepened; let love be quickened.”

“Time, how short-eternity, how long! Death, how brief-immortali ty, how endless!”

“Master those books you have. Read them thoroughly. Bathe in them until they saturate you. Read and reread them…digest them. Let them go into your very self. Peruse a good book several times and make notes and analyses of it. A student will find that his mental constitution is more affected by one book thoroughly mastered than by twenty books he has merely skimmed. Little learning and much pride comes from hasty reading. Some men are disabled from thinking by their putting meditation away for the sake of much reading. In reading let your motto be ‘much not many.”

“The change is radical it gives us new natures, it makes us love what we hated and hate what we loved, it sets us in a new road; it makes our habits different, it makes our thoughts different, it makes us different in private, and different in public.”

“We know so little about the future that to worry about it would be the height of foolishness.”

“Six feet of dirt make all men equal.”

“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.”

“You say, 'If I had a little more, I should be very satisfied.' You make a mistake. If you are not content with what you have, you would not be satisfied if it were doubled.”

“Our griefs cannot mar the melody of our praise, we reckon them to be the bass part of our life's song, 'He hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad.'”

“May we do good everywhere as we have opportunity, and results will not be wanting!”

“To know is not to be wise. To know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.”

“Man's wonder grows with his knowledge.”

“At any rate, cost what it may, to separate ourselves from those who separate themselves from the truth of God is not alone our liberty, but our duty.”

“Don't rely too much on labels, for too often they are fables”

“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.”

“A child's cry touches a father's heart.”

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