Wisdom Quotes
The way we finish our lives is what matters most.
I think that the Preacher in Ecclesiastes was teaching this same principle when he wrote: Ecc 7:1
"A good name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one's birth." Death is only better than birth if you end with a good name.
"Beautiful forms and compositions are not made by chance, nor can they ever, in any material, be made at small expense. A composition for cheapness and not excellence of workmanship is the most frequent and certain cause of the rapid decay and entire destruction of arts and manufacturers."
-Josiah Wedgwood
"A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy.... While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.... If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security.
-Samuel Adams
"No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich."
-Chinese Proverb
"What we do in life echoes in eternity."
-General Maximus Decimus Meridius
"Everyday you are becoming who you will be forever."
-John Luhmann
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."
-Leonardo da Vinci
If you are not content with what you have, you would not be satisifed if it were doubled.
-C.H. Spurgeon
Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance.
-Augustine
We who preach and write, do so in a manner different from which the Scriptures have been written. We write while we make progress. We learn something new every day. We speak as we still knock for understanding...If anyone criticizes me when I have said what is right, he does me an injustice. But I would be more angry with the one who praises me and takes what I have written for Gospel truth than I would be with the one who criticizes me unfairly.
-Augustine
"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the sea."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
"I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading."
- John Adams
"How could a society escape destruction if, when political ties are relaxed, moral ties are not tightened, and what can be done with a people master of itself if it not subject to God?"
- Tocqueville
"I will not be at the mercy of the telephone"
- C.S. Lewis
I think he would have added "email and face book!"
-Mark Hamby
If you're early you're on time,
If you're ontime you're late,
If you're late you're left behind!
"There is no force so powerful as error in a godly person's mouth."
-Andree Seu
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
-C.S.Lewis
Our happiness is not God’s greatest concern…His greatest concern is our holiness. It is sometimes in our darkest hour that the seeds of faith sown with tears, spring up into a harvest of hope.
God has plans, not problems for our lives. The life of a Christian is an education for a higher service.
God is training you for something
-Corrie Ten Boom
'Insinuate Truth, diguis'd by Fiction's Veil;
They'll leave their Play and listen to your Tale.'
“You can buy a man’s time; you can buy his physical presence at a given place; you can even buy a measured number of his skilled muscular motions per hour. But you cannot buy enthusiasm… you cannot buy loyalty… you cannot buy the devotion of hearts, mind or souls. You must earn these.”
-Clarence Francis
"With caution judge of probability.
Things deemed unlikely, e'en impossible,
Experience oft hath proved to be true."
-Shakespeare in "The Hidden Hand"
A cup of sweet water could never spill a drop of bitter water, no matter how heavily it was jolted."
-Amy Carmichael
"Suppression is not victory."
-Zac Poonen
Controlled conduct apart from the Spirit of God is merely a result of temperament. If suppression were victory then shopkeepers, salesmen, and airline attendants are among the most Christ-like.
God allows trials to bring the real self to the surface, to counter the humanistic messaging of our self-esteem. If you reverse the word self-esteem, you will see that to esteem-self is not the goal for the Christian.
-anonymous
The 1869 Librarian of Congress’ definition of a good book:
“The true question to ask respecting
a book is,
‘has it help’d any human soul.’”
"Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success
is the doing, not the getting; in the trying, not the triumph. Success
is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us,
becoming all that we can be. If we do our best, we are a success.
Success is the maximumutilization of the ability that you have."
-Zig Ziglar
"Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."
- George Washington
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroy ourselves."
- Abraham Lincoln
When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe
-Thomas Jefferson
The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
-Thomas Jefferson
It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.
-Thomas Jefferson
I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
-Thomas Jefferson
My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.
-Thomas Jefferson
No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.
-Thomas Jefferson
The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.
-Thomas Jefferson
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
-Thomas Jefferson
To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
-Thomas Jefferson
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
-Thomas Jefferson
Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.
-Theodore Roosevelt
Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman as courage.
-Theodore Roosevelt
I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do! That is character!
-Theodore Roosevelt
If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month.
-Theodore Roosevelt
It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.
-Theodore Roosevelt
Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.
-Theodore Roosevelt
People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives.
-Theodore Roosevelt
The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.
-Theodore Roosevelt
The boy who is going to make a great man must not make up his mind merely to overcome a thousand obstacles, but to win in spite of a thousand repulses and defeats.
-Theodore Roosevelt
The one thing I want to leave my children is an honorable name.
-Theodore Roosevelt
The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.
-Theodore Roosevelt
The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
-Theodore Roosevelt
To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.
-Theodore Roosevelt
We need the iron qualities that go with true manhood. We need the positive virtues of resolution, of courage, of indomitable will, of power to do without shrinking the rough work that must always be done.
-Theodore Roosevelt
When you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, 'Certainly I can!' Then get busy and find out how to do it.
-Theodore Roosevelt
With self-discipline most anything is possible.
-Theodore Roosevelt
Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.
-Theodore Roosevelt
Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.
-Theodore Roosevelt
"Many times the reading of a book has made the future of a man."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries."
-Descartes.
"The man who does not read good books, has no advantage over the man who cannot read them."
-Mark Twain
"There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island…and best of all you can enjoy these riches every day of your life."
-Walt Disney
"If we encounter a man of rare intellect we should ask him what books he reads."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Master those books you have. Read them thoroughly. Bathe in them until they saturate you. Read and re-read them…digest them…a student will find that his mental constitution is more affected by one book thoroughly mastered than by 20 books he has merely skimmed."
-Charles Spurgeon
"Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have laboured hard for."
- Socrates.
"Next to the Holy Scriptures, the greatest aide to the life of faith may be Christian biographies."
- A.W. Tozer
"The reading of good biography forms an important part of a Christian's education. It provides him with numberless illustrations for use in his own service. He learns to assess the true worth of character, to glimpse a work goal for his own life, to decide how best to attain it, what self denial is needed to curb unworthy aspirations, and all the time he learns how God breaks into the dedicated life to bring about His own purposes."
-Ransome W. Cooper
“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found difficult and left untried.”
-G.K. Chesterton
"Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee."
-Augustine
If a commission by an earthly king is considered a honor, how can a commission by a Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?"
-David Livingstone
"Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved…"
-Luther
"I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God's hands, that I still possess"
-Martin Luther
He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose"
-Jim Elliot
"The Great Commissionis not an option to be considered; it is a command to be obeyed"
- Hudson Taylor
“Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”
-Corrie Ten Boom
That religion which costs a man nothing is usually worth nothing.
-Charles Spurgeon
Here is a good searching question for a man to ask himself as he reviews his past
life:—Have I written in the snow? Will my life-work endure the lapse of years and the
fret of change? Has there been anything immortal in it, which will survive the
speedy wreck of all sublunary things? The boys inscribe their names in capitals in the
snow, and in the morning’s thaw the writing disappears; will it be so with my work,
or will the characters which I have carved outlast the brazen tablets of history?
Have I written in the snow?
-Charles Spurgeon
Let us be banded together as one man; let us contend earnestly for the faith once
delivered to the saints; let us pray with fervour, let us live in holiness, let us preach
constantly, and preach with fire, and let us so live, that we may impress our age, and
leave our footprints on the sands of time.
-Charles Spurgeon
Dear brethren, this is exactly what we have to do, we have to pawn the present for
the future. We must be satisfied to give up anything which Christ may require of us
for the sake of that which is to come. Our inheritance is not on this side of Jordan.
Our joy is yet to be revealed. I grant you that we have much thrown in, for the Lord
is a good paymaster; but on the road to heaven he gives us only our spending money.
-Charles Spurgeon
The distance between glorified spirits in heaven and militant saints on earth seems
great; but it is not so. We are not far from home—a moment will bring us there.
-Charles Spurgeon
I will not talk to you longer; for what, after all, brethren, can religion cost us
compared with what our salvation cost our Lord? What is it to go forward if we
compare it with the glory that is beyond? A pin’s prick, that is all; and then you will
be in heaven. Oh, to stand amongst the glorified!—to hear the Master say, “Well
done!” One might die a thousand deaths to get those two syllables, if there were
nothing else—“Well done!”
-Charles Spurgeon
"In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government ought to be instructed...No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people."
-Noah Webster
"There is a great difference between watching a thing and being a part of a thing...."
-Sir Malcolm and the Missing Prince
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