Quotes by Ministers - Page 3

If your preaching of the gospel of God's free grace in Jesus Christ does not provoke the charge from some of antinomianism, you're not preaching the gospel of the free grace of God in Jesus Christ.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
To make it quite practical I have a very simple test. After I have explained the way of Christ to somebody I say “Now, are you ready to say that you are a Christian?” And they hesitate. And then I say, “What’s the matter? Why are you hesitating?” And so often people say, “I don’t feel like I’m good enough yet. I don’t think I’m ready to say I’m a Christian now.” And at once I know that I have been wasting my breath. They are still thinking in terms of themselves. They have to do it. It sounds very modest to say, “Well, I don’t think I’ good enough,” but it’s a very denial of the faith. The very essence of the Christian faith is to say that He is good enough and I am in Him. As long as you go on thinking about yourself like that and saying, “I’m not good enough; Oh, I’m not good enough,” you are denying God – you are denying the gospel – you are denying the very essence of the faith and you will never be happy. You think you’re better at times and then again you will find you are not as good at other times than you thought you were. You will be up and down forever. How can I put it plainly? It doesn’t matter if you have almost entered into the depths of hell. It does not matter if you are guilty of murder as well as every other vile sin. It does not matter from the standpoint of being justified before God at all. You are no more hopeless than the most moral and respectable person in the world.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Start each day by affirming peaceful, contented, and happy attitudes and your days will tend to be pleasant and successful. Such attitudes are active and definite factors in creating satisfactory conditions. Watch your manner of speech then if you wish to develop a peaceful state of mind.
Norman Vincent Peale
He was dimly angry with himself, he did not know why. It was that he had struck his wife. He had forgotten it, but was miserable about it, notwithstanding. And this misery was the voice of the great Love that had made him and his wife and the baby and Diamond, speaking in his heart, and telling him to be good. For that great Love speaks in the most wretched and dirty hearts; only the tone of its voice depends on the echoes of the place in which it sounds. On Mount Sinai, it was thunder; in the cabman's heart it was misery; in the soul of St John it was perfect blessedness.
George MacDonald
She would be one of those who kneel to their own shadows till feet grow on their knees; then go down on their hands till their hands grow into feet; then lay their faces on the ground till they grow into snouts; when at last they are a hideous sort of lizards, each of which believes himself the best, wisest, and loveliest being in the world, yea, the very centre of the universe. And so they run about for ever looking for their own shadows that they may worship them, and miserable because they cannot find them, being themselves too near the ground to have any shadows; and what becomes of them at last, there is but one who knows.
George MacDonald
I'm sorry to say that the subject I most disliked was mathematics. I have thought about it. I think the reason was that mathematics leaves no room for argument. If you made a mistake, that was all there was to it.
Malcolm X
It's just like when you've got some coffee that's too black, which means it's too strong. What do you do? You integrate it with cream, you make it weak. But if you pour too much cream in it, you won't even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it puts you to sleep.
Malcolm X
A library cannot be made all at once, any more than a house or a nation or a tree; they must all take time to grow, and so must a library. I wouldn't even know what books to go and ask for. I dare say, if I were to try, I couldn't at a moment's notice tell you the names of more than two score of books at the outside. Folk must make acquaintance among books as they would among living folk.
George MacDonald
The time is always right to do the right thing.
Dr. Martin Luther King
Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate. Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American.
Malcolm X
Part of the happiness of life consists not in fighting battles, but in avoiding them. A masterly retreat is in itself a victory.
Norman Vincent Peale
The love of our neighbor is the only door out of the dungeon of self, where we mope and mow, striking sparks, and rubbing phosphorescences out of the walls, and blowing our own breath in our own nostrils, instead of issuing to the fair sunlight of God, the sweet winds of the universe.
George MacDonald
I am a beast until I love as God doth love.
George MacDonald
God will not judge by man’s standard of what is right, but by His own, and they are vastly different!
William Branks
I say, sir, that you can never make an intelligent judgment without evidence.
Malcolm X
The old men had a set rabbit-hunting strategy that they had always used. Usually when a dog jumps a rabbit, and the rabbit gets away, that rabbit will always somehow instinctively run in a circle and return sooner or later past the very spot where he originally was jumped. Well, the old men would just sit and wait in hiding somewhere for the rabbit to come back, then get their shots at him. I got to thinking about it, and finally I thought of a plan. I would separate from them and Big Boy and I would go to a point where I figured that the rabbit, returning, would have to pass me first.It worked like magic. I began to get three and four rabbits before they got one. The astonishing thing was that none of the old men ever figured out why. They outdid themselves exclaiming what a sure shot I was. I was about twelve, then. All I had done was to improve on their strategy, and it was the beginning of a very important lesson in life—that anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you’re both engaged in the same business—you know they’re doing something that you aren’t.
Malcolm X
That's a poet.''I thought you said it was a bo-at.''Stupid pet! Don't you know what a poet it?''Why, a thing to sail on the water in.''Well, perhaps you're not so far wrong. Some poets do carry people over the sea....'...'A poet is a man who is glad of something, and tries to make other people glad of it too.
George MacDonald
It is the heart that is unsure of its God that is afraid to laugh.
George MacDonald
There is no water in oxygen, no water in hydrogen: it comes bubbling fresh from the imagination of the living God, rushing from under the great white throne of the glacier. The very thought of it makes one gasp with an elemental joy no metaphysician can analyse. The water itself, that dances, and sings, and slakes the wonderful thirst--symbol and picture of that draught for which the woman of Samaria made her prayer to Jesus--this lovely thing itself, whose very wetness is a delight to every inch of the human body in its embrace--this live thing which, if I might, I would have running through my room, yea, babbling along my table--this water is its own self its own truth, and is therein a truth of God.
George MacDonald
It is not the hysterical alone for whom the great dash of cold water is good.All who dream life, instead of living it,require some similar shock.
George MacDonald
I don't know how many marriage breakups are caused by these movie-and television-addicted women expecting some bouquets and kissing and hugging and being swept out like Cinderella for dinner and dancing -- then getting mad when a poor, scraggly husband comes in tired and sweaty from working like a dog all day, looking for some food.
Malcolm X
conscience is the window of our spirit, evil is the curtain
Doug Horton
He stretched out on the bed and was suddenly struck by how utterly lonely he was.
Tim LaHaye
A devil - "A power that lives against its life
George MacDonald
That there is a Devil, is a thing doubted by none but such as are under the influences of the Devil.
Cotton Mather
What is a friend? I will tell you...it is someone with whom you dare to be yourself.” ― Frank Crane
Frank Crane
She who is even once unjust can not complain if the like is expected of her again.
George MacDonald
From the neglect of a real duty, she became the slave of a false one.
George MacDonald
Why are all reflections lovelier than what we call reality? -- not so grand or so strong, it may be, but always lovelier? Fair as is the gliding sloop on the shining sea, the wavering, trembling, unresting sail below is fairer still...All mirrors are magic mirrors. The commonest room is a room in a poem when I turn to the glass...There must be a truth involved in it, though we may but in part lay hold of the meaning.
George MacDonald
[A]nd you may know how little God thinks of money by observing on what bad and contemptible characters he often bestow
Thomas Guthrie
If it supports the liberation struggle of Black people then it is good. If it is in opposition to the liberation struggle of Black people then it is bad. If it supports the liberation struggle of Black people then it is moral. If it opposes the liberation struggle, then it is immoral. If it supports the liberation struggle of Black people, then it is the will of GOD. If it opposes the liberation struggle of Black people, then it is satanic. With this simple key to the mysteries of life both events and institutions can be judged.
Albert B. Cleage Jr.
I am always hearing. . . the sound of a far off song. I do not exactly know where it is, or what it means; and I don't hear much of it, only the odour of its music, as it were, flitting across the great billows of the ocean outside this air in which I make such a storm; but what I do hear, is quite enough to make me able to bear the cry from the drowning ship. So it would you if you could hear it.''No it wouldn't,' returned Diamond stoutly. 'For they wouldn't hear the music of the far-away song; and if they did, it wouldn't do them any good. You see you and I are not going to be drowned, and so we might enjoy it.''But you have never heard the psalm, and you don't know what it is like. Somehow, I can't say how, it tells me that all is right; that it is coming to swallow up all the cries. . . . It wouldn't be the song it seems if it did not swallow up all their fear and pain too, and set them singing it themselves with all the rest.
George MacDonald
For we are not saved by believing in our own salvation, nor by believing anything whatsoever about ourselves. We are saved by what we believe about the Son of God and His righteousness. The gospel believed saves; not the believing in our own faith.
Horatius Bonar
To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal. You see, I could conceive death, but I could not conceive betrayal.
Malcolm X
No matter how much respect, no matter how much recognition whites show towards me…as long as that same respect and recognition isn’t shown towards everyone of our people in this country–it doesn’t exist for me.
Malcolm X
I truly believe that if we keep telling the Christmas story, singing the Christmas songs, and living the Christmas spirit, we can bring joy and happiness and peace to this world.
Norman Vincent Peale
Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful.
Norman Vincent Peale
He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree.
Roy L. Smith
Storytelling is a form of self-disclosure.
John S. Savage
This chapter is an attempt to share with you some insights about story listening and how to do it.
John S. Savage
Simply read a child’s story that he or she is writing for school, and you will discover some of the inner struggles with which the young person is trying to cope.
John S. Savage
A child’s stories are simpler to understand because the language has not been developed to the point of high abstraction. An adult tells stories far more obtuse in nature.
John S. Savage
You had better not open that door.
George MacDonald
In the bitter waves of woe, Beaten and tossed about By the sullen winds that blow From the desolate shores of doubt,­­ When the anchors that faith had cast Are dragging in the gale, I am quietly holding fast To the things that cannot fail: In the darkest night of the year,  When the stars have all gone out,  That courage is better than fear,  That faith is truer than doubt; And fierce though the fiends may fight,  And long though the angels hide, I know that Truth and Right Have the universe on their side; And somewhere, beyond the stars, Is a Love that is better than fate; When the night unlocks her bars I shall see Him, and I will wait
Washington Gladden
We are all in such a hurry, we want everything at once. We believe that all truth can be stated in a few minutes. The answer to that is that it cannot.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Never, my little one, hide anything from those that love you. Never let anything that makes itself a nest in your heart, grow into a secret, for then at once it will begin to eat a hole in it.
George MacDonald
Eventually my mother suffered a complete breakdown, and the court orders were finally signed. They took her to the State Mental Hospital at Kalamazoo. My mother remained in the same hospital at Kalamazoo for about 26 years.My last visit, when I knew I would never come to see her again-there-was in 1952. I was twenty-seven. My brother Philbert had told me that on his last visit, she had recognized him somewhat. "In spots" he said.But she didn't recognize me at all.She stared at me. She didn't know who I was.Her mind, when I tried to talk, to reach her, was somewhere else. I asked, "Mama, do you know what day it is?"She said, staring, "All the people have gone."I can't describe how I felt. The woman who had brought me into the world, and nursed me, and advised me, and chastised me, and loved me, didn't know me.It was as if I was trying to walk up the side of a hill of feathers."-Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Malcolm X
It is not where one is, but in what direction he is going.
George MacDonald
At the very time when we have been boasting of our enlightenment and knowledge and understanding, there is this tragic breakdown in personal relationships. ... For instance, we now have to have Marriage Guidance classes. Up to this century men and women were married without this expert advice which now seems to be so essential.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
How much of what you accomplish today will bring you, or anyone else, closer to Christ?
William Branks
Sovereignty is not to be considered as an attribute of God-in the sense of being a quality which exists in God (such as omnipotence and omniscience)-rather it is the result of His attributes.
Iain H. Murray
I am beginning to understand that I cannot interpret the probable action of Jesus until I know better what His spirit is. The greatest question in all of human life is summed up when we ask, 'What would Jesus do?' if, as we ask it, we also try to answer it from a growth in knowledge of Jesus himself. We just know Jesus before we can imitate Him.
Charles M. Sheldon
The Algerians were revolutionsists, they wanted land. France offered to let them be integrated into France. They told France, to hell with Fance, they wanted some land, not some France.
Malcolm X
It’s Christmas, and no matter what historical usage you choose to assign to “mass” be it mission or Lord’s Supper, Christ’s Mass refers to WHY he came, not THAT he came. Christ’s mission was to be a sacrifice.
William Branks
Seek not that your sons and your daughters should not see visions, should not dream dreams; seek that they should see true visions, that they should dream noble dreams. Such out-going of the imagination is one with aspiration, and will do more to elevate above what is low and vile than all possible inculcations of morality.
George MacDonald
I always felt awkward and unfinished, unworthy of love, suspicious of affection offered. My mother's absence became a great presence in my life.
Marilyn Sewell
As in all sweetest music, a tinge of sadness was in every note. Nor do we know how much of the pleasures even of life we owe to the intermingled sorrows. Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths, although deepest truth must be deepest joy.
George MacDonald
The more difficulties one has to encounter, within and without, the more significant and the higher in inspiration his life will be.
Horace Bushnell
The church grew very lonely about him, and he began to feel like a child whose mother has forsaken it. Only he knew that to be left alone is not always to be forsaken.
George MacDonald
Hell was never God's intention. It is man's invention. It is a human-manufactured religious icon, no less idolatrous than deifying a statue.
Carlton D. Pearson