"It is possible to be diligent in our religion yet distant in our relationship." - Anonymous

"It is religion without love that has been responsible for most of the misery of the world." - Anonymous

"Nothing so tends to mask the face of God as religion; it can be a substitute for God himself." - Martin Buber

"If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be without it?" - Benjamin Franklin

"Religion is what keeps a nation from chaos - from falling asunder like uncemented sand." - A. A. Hodge

"Religion's in the heart, not in the knee." - Douglas Jerrold

"Formal religion always makes fertile soil for false religion." - Gilbert W. Kirby

"The heart of religion lies in its personal pronouns." - Martin Luther

"A cheap religion is always a cheat religion." - Thomas V. Moore

"There is nothing more irreligious than self-absorbed religion." - J. I. Packer

"Religion is union between God and the soul." - Paul Sabatier

"People can be inoculated against religion by small injections of it." - W. E. Sangster

"No man's religion ever survives his morals." - Robert South

"I would not give much for your religion unless it can be seen. Lamps do not talk, but they do shine." - C. H. Spurgeon

"Religion is nothing if it is not the foundation of our whole life." - Robert Thornton

"No religion has ever been greater than its idea of God." - A. W. Tozer

"Religion is the first and the last thing, and until a man has found God, and been found by God, he begins at no beginning and works to no end." - H. G. Wells

"A man may have as many religious changes in the year as there are changes in the moon, and be unchanged after all." - Rowland Hill

"There are no non-religious activities; only religious and irreligious." - C. S. Lewis

"The heart of true religion is to glorify God by patient endurance and to praise him for his gracious deliverances." - J. I. Packer

"When people say that all religions are basically the same, they are actually saying that they know little or nothing about world religion." - R. C. Sproul

"If your religion does not make you holy it will damn you. It is simply pageantry to go to hell in." - C. H. Spurgeon

"For the true Christian the one supreme test for the present soundness and ultimate worth of everything religious must be the place our Lord occupies in it." - A. W. Tozer

"That religion is suspicious which is full of faction and discord." - Thomas Watson

"Unpractical religion is unscriptural religion." - James Wolfendale

"A religion without mystery must be a religion without God." - Anonymous

"One's religion is what he is most interested in." - J. M. Barrie

"Justification by faith is the hinge on which all true religion turns." - John Calvin

"Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair." - G. K. Chesterton

"One mark of the low state of affairs among us is religious boredom." - A. W. Tozer

"We are paying a frightful price for our religious boredom. And that at the moment of the world's mortal peril." - A. W. Tozer

"The religious snob is devoid of truth. Snobbery and truth are irreconcilable." - A. W. Tozer

"Religion without the Son of God is worldly religion." - A. W. Tozer

"The whole religious machine has become a noisemaker." - A. W. Tozer

"Powerless religion may put a man through many surface changes and leave him exactly what he was before." - A. W. Tozer

"If true religion consisted in outward practices, then it could be destroyed by laws forbidding those practices." - A. W. Tozer

"Religion is disengaged from practical life and retired to the airy region of fancy where dwell the sweet insubstantial nothings which everyone knows do not exist but which they nevertheless lack the courage to repudiate publicly." - A. W. Tozer

"We settle for words in religion because deeds are too costly." - A. W. Tozer

"There is probably not another field of human activity where there is so much waste as in the field of religion." - A. W. Tozer

"Religion is interested primarily in the One who is the source of all things, the master of every phenomenon." - A. W. Tozer

"True religion is removed from diet and days, from garments and ceremonies, and placed where it belongs-in the union of the spirit of man with the Spirit of God." - A. W. Tozer

"In this dim world of pious sentiment all religions are equal and any man who insists that salvation is by Jesus Christ alone is a bigot and a boor." - A. W. Tozer

"When religion has said its last word, there is a little that we need other than God Himself." - A. W. Tozer

"To the absence of the spirit may be traced that vague sense of unreality which almost everywhere invests religion in our times." - A. W. Tozer

"It was religion that put Christ on the cross, religion without the indwelling Spirit." - A. W. Tozer

"The deadening effect of religious make-believe on the human mind is beyond all describing." - A. W. Tozer

"We fear extremes and shy away from too much ardor in religion as if it were possible to have too much love or too much faith or too much holiness." - A. W. Tozer

"The one thing that religious persons want most is to be changed, to be made over from what they are into something they desire to be." - A. W. Tozer

"We spend much time today trying to arouse indifferent church members to do religious work, time that could be spent more profitably in getting them right with God and each other. After that, they are ready to go to work. Simply recruiting more Ephesians to more works and more labor without their first love only worsens a situation that is bad enough now." - Vance Havner

"Sacrilegious sinners may be more violent and vulgar, but our greatest problem is religious sinners." - Vance Havner

"Christians can get into a religious rut and fall into a mere form of godliness without power. But the true disciple is a rebel against this age because the friend of the world is the enemy of God. The Christian life is a revolution and a revolution is the opposite of a rut, which is only a grave with both ends knocked out." - Vance Havner

Religion

"Covetousness is dry drunkenness." - Thomas Watson

"He is not a covetous man, who lays up something providentially; but he is a covetous man, who gives out nothing willingly." - William Secker

"A poor man doth want many things, a rich miser wants everything." - John Boys

"It is the love, not the lack of money, that makes men churls." - John Trapp

"It is a common saying that a hog is good for nothing whilst he is alive: not good to bear or carry, as the horse; nor to draw, as the ox; nor to give milk, as the cow; nor to keep the house, as the dog; but fed only to the slaughter."

"So a covetous, rich man, just like a hog, doth no good with his riches whilst he liveth, but when he is dead his riches come to be disposed of. "The riches of a sinner are laid up for the just." - Andrew Willet

"They are fools that fear to lose their wealth by giving, but fear not to lose themselves by keeping it." - John Trapp

"Covetousness is called idolatry, which is worse than infidelity, Colossians 3:5; for it is less rebellion not to honour the king, than to set up another king against him…" -- Henry Smith

"Antichrist is Mammon's son." - John Milton

"To dispense our wealth liberally, is the best way to preserve it." - Isaac Barrow

"We must be convinced that covetousness, I mean that our covetousness, is a vice; for it holds something of a virtue, of frugality, which is not to waste that which one hath; and this makes us entertain thoughts that it is no vice; and we often say that it is good to be a little worldly; a little covetousness we like well; which shows that we do not indeed and in heart, hold it to be a sin. For if sin be naught, a little of sin cannot be good. As good say, a little poison were good, so it be not too much." - Richard Capel

"Covetousness puts money above manhood." - Billy Graham

'Take heed and beware of covetousness.'
'Take heed and beware of covetousness.'
'Take heed and beware of covetousness.'
What if I should say nothing else these three or four hours?" - Hugh Latimer, preaching before King Edward VI

"We are most of us far too ready to "seek great things" in this world: let us "seek them not" (Jeremiah 45:5)." - J. C. Ryle

"Greatness and riches are a perilous possession for the soul." - J. C. Ryle

"Much trouble is caused by our yearnings getting ahead of our earnings." - Anonymous

"Covetousness is the blight that is withering our church life in all directions." - Samuel Chadwick

"He is much happier that is always content, though he has ever so little, than he that is always coveting, though he has ever so much." - Matthew Henry

"The soul of man is infinite in what it covets." - Ben Jonson

"The itch of covetousness makes a man scratch what he can from another." - Thomas Watson

"I have heard thousands of confessions, but never one of covetousness." - Francis Xavier

"Wealth is the devil's stirrup whereby he gets up and rides the covetous." - Thomas Adams

"Seeking empties a life; giving fills it." - Anonymous

"Faith is the sovereign antidote to covetousness." - John Calvin

"Covetousness is commonly a master-sin and has the command of other lusts." - Matthew Henry

"Poor people are as much in danger from an inordinate desire towards the wealth of the world as rich people from an inordinate delight in it." - Matthew Henry

"There are two sins which were Christ's sorest enemies, covetousness and envy. Covetousness sold Christ and envy delivered him." - Thomas Manton

"We may love money without having it, just as we may have money without loving it." - J. C. Ryle

Covetousness

"According to a survey conducted by Robert Half International, Inc., working parents are willing to cut their pay and hours by as much as 21 percent to spend more time with their families; 76 percent would also forfeit career advancement for more family or personal time. The simplicity trend has almost become its own religion." - Leadership Winter 1997

"With the appearance of the two-bathroom home, Americans forgot how to cooperate. With the appearance of the two-car family, we forgot how to associate, and with the coming of the two-television home, we forgot how to communicate." - Dr. John Baucom, quoted in New Man, Jul/Aug 1997, page 15

"Despite the pessimistic headlines announcing that the strong family in America is an endangered species, I refuse to give up hope. Who says 'endangered' means 'doomed'? If we're ingenious enough to preserve the bison, whooping crane, and humpbacked whale, I'm convinced we can preserve the family." - Charles Swindoll in The Strong Family, Zondervan, 1994

"The family is not one of several alternative lifestyles; it is not an arena in which rights are negotiated; it is not an old-fashioned barrier to a promiscuous sex life; it is not a set of cost-benefit calculations. It is a commitment for which there is no feasible substitute. No child ought to be brought into the world where that commitment from both parents is lacking." - James Q. Wilson, quoted in Readers Digest, March 1996, pg. 32

"When we envision the church as an idealized family, we are not capable of welcoming the stranger. When family is the only metaphor we use, people with whom we cannot achieve intimacy, or with whom we do not want to be intimate, are squeezed out. Since intimacy often depends on social and economic similarities, church then becomes a place of retreat rather than true hospitality. Such a church does everything in its power to eliminate the strange and cultivate the familiar. Such a church can neither welcome the stranger nor allow the stranger in each of us to emerge." - Molly Marshall, quoted in The Other Side, Nov/Dec 1996, page 57

"A survey reported in the Wall Street Journal found that out of 100 CEOs 85 say they would like more family time, but only seven said they actually expect to make it happen. - Vital Ministry, Sep/Oct 1997, page 49

"Fathering is not a pure science. All fathers fail, but the mark of a true father is what he does after he fails. - Ken Canfield, quoted in Ministries Today, May/Jun 1996, page 106

"Kevin's father used to say, 'If the son's not a better man than his father, they're both failures.' - Kevin A. Miller, editor of Leadership

Family

"I believe in the sun even when it is not shining. I believe in love even when feeling it not. I believe in God even when He is silent." - Inscription on a cellar wall in Germany where Jews hid from Nazis

"The only thing that can defeat the faith God has given you…is you. You must use your faith, exercise your faith, engage your faith. Until it is pressed into service, faith is only potential. To use the old exercise cliché, you must 'use it or lose it!'" - Andrew Merritt in My Faith Is Taking Me Someplace

"Remember it is the very time for faith to work when sight ceases. The greater the difficulties, the easier for faith; as long as there remain certain natural prospects, faith does not get on even as easily as where natural prospects fail." - George Mueller, quoted in Streams in the Desert

"At its best, our age is an age of searchers and discoverers. At its worst, it is an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it. The fiction that celebrates this last state will be the least likely to transcend its limitations, since, when the religious need is banished successfully, it usually atrophies, even in the novelist. The sense of mystery vanishes. A kind of reverse evolution takes place. The whole range of feeling is dulled." - Flannery O'Connor in "Mystery and Manners", Christianity Today: February 9, 1998

The Just Shall Live By Faith
Charles Wesley in The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, Vol. II

"O that I might the power receive
The simple life of faith to live.
A stranger by the world unknown,
To live, shut up with Christ alone!
Jesus, my real Life Thou art,
Inspire
Thyself into my heart,
And fill'd with purity drive
I live, thro' endless ages thine."

"I feel like God's leading me out, so I'm kind of sleeping with my shoes on. When God parts the sea, you don't want to say, 'Oh rats, where are my sandals?'"

"The amazing thing about the whole joy of Christianity is it's something you can't find, it's something that has to find you. Once we submit ourselves to God, the things of God chase us down like dogs, and you can't escape them. I think we can stifle the Spirit. We can thwart the work of God in our own lives. We can choose to nourish that which should be crucified and ignore that which should be nourished, but God ain't done with any of us."

"Faith is walking with God. The biggest problem with life is that it's just daily. You can never get so healthy that you don't have to continue to eat right…Spiritually, we're in much the same place…it's not what you did, and not what you say you're going to do, it's what you do today.'"

"Our faith becomes real when we focus on what never changes instead of our ever-changing opinions." - Rich Mullins, CCM November, 1997

"We have now moved from the burden of raising money to the adventure of trusting God." - Author unknown

"If our faith is something that really does not make a very big difference, if it is actually not crucial that we or others believe, no wonder it seems boring to our young. Anything we don't care much about can't be very interesting. The things we do care about, however, we inevitably talk about…If faith is real, it seeks expression. It will communicate and profess. It will have the energy of passion." - John F. Kavanaugh in The Word Encountered

"Faith in God will not get for you everything you may want, but it will get for you what God wants you to have. The unbeliever does not need what he wants: the Christian should want only what he needs." - Vance Havner in By the Still Waters

"At various times, Jesus publicly denounced sinners as snakes, dogs, foxes, hypocrites, fouled tombs, and dirty dishes. So that His hearers would not miss the point. He sometimes referred to the objects of His most intense ridicule both by name and by position, and often face to face. Christ did not affirm sinners; He affirmed the repentant. He well understood that sometimes it is wrong to be nice." - Theologian Michael Bauman, quoted in Tabletalk, June 1996, page 58

"Faith is the vitamin that makes all we take from the Bible digestible and makes us able to receive it and assimilate it. If we do not have faith, we cannot get anything." - A.W. Tozer in Rut, Rot or Revival

"It is your living faith in the adequacy of the One who is in you, which releases His divine action through you." - W. Ian Thomas in The Saving Life of Christ

"Faith does not operate in the realm of the possible. There is no glory for God in that which is humanly possible. Faith begins where man's power ends." - George Mueller

Faith

"Never deprive someone of hope-it may be all they have." - Author unknown

"A religious hope does not only bear up the mind under her sufferings, but makes her rejoice in them." - Joseph Addison

"When you say a situation or a person is hopeless, you are slamming the door in the face of God." - Charles Allen

"What can be hoped for which is not believed?" - Augustine of Hippo

"Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper." - Francis Bacon

"The glory of the star, the glory of the sun-we must not lose either in the other. We must not be so full of the hope of heaven that we cannot do our work on the earth; we must not be so lost in the work of the earth that we shall not be inspired by the hope of heaven." - Phillips Brooks

"The word "hope" I take for faith; and indeed hope is nothing else but the constancy of faith." - John Calvin

"If you do not hope you will never discover what is beyond your hopes." - Clement of Alexandria

"All human wisdom is summed up in two words - wait and hope." - Alexander Dumas

"Great hopes make great men." - Thomas Fuller

"If it were not for hopes, the heart would break." - Thomas Fuller

"Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out." - Vaclav Havel

"The word which God has written on the brow of every man is hope."- Victor Hugo

"It is more serious to lose hope than to sin." - John of Carpathos

"Where there is no hope, there can be no endeavor." - Samuel Johnson

"Whatever enlarges hope will also exalt courage." - Samuel Johnson

"The future is as bright as the promises of God." - Adoniram Judson

"There is no better or more blessed bondage than to be a prisoner of hope." - Roy Z. Kemp

"We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope." - Martin Luther King

"We stand in life at midnight; we are always at the threshold of a new dawn." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"My only hope is that I shall be clothed with the righteousness of Jesus Christ." - M. Lloyd-Jones

"Everything that is done in the world is done by hope. No husbandman would sow a grain of corn if he hoped not it would grow up and become seed…Or no tradesman would set himself to work if he did not hope to reap benefit thereby." - Martin Luther

"Courage is like love; it must have hope for nourishment." - Napoleon

"The Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity - hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory - because at the Father's will Jesus Christ became poor, and was born in a stable so that thirty years later He might hang on a cross." - J. I. Packer

"Hope is the pillar that holds up the world. Hope is the dream of a waking man." - Pliny the Elder

"It is not the end of joy that makes old age so sad, but the end of hope." - Jean Paul Richter

"Our ground of hope is that God does not weary of mankind." - Ralph W. Sockman

"Do not look to your hope, but to Christ, the source of your hope." - C. H. Spurgeon

"Without Christ there is no hope." - C. H. Spurgeon

"While I breathe, I hope." - Anonymous

"Despondency is ingratitude; hope is God's worship." - Henry Ward Beecher

"My hope is built on nothing less / Than Jesus' blood and righteousness." - William Bradbury

"Hope means expectancy when things are otherwise hopeless." - G. K. Chesterton

"There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something better tomorrow." - G. K. Chesterton

"Of all delusions perhaps none is so great as the thought that our past has ruined our present, that the evils we have done, the mistakes we have committed, have made all further Hope impossible." - Archbishop Goodier

"It is silly not to hope…Besides I believe it is a sin." - Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

"Hope is the mother of faith." - Walter Savage Landor

"I live in hope." - Proverb (French)

"Christ is our hope of glory and the glory of our hope." - Anonymous

"A man full of hope will be full of action." - Thomas Brooks

"We are refugees from the sinking ship of this present world order, so soon to disappear; our hope is fixed in the eternal order, where the promises of God are made good to his people in perpetuity." - F. F. Bruce

"When you stop hoping you are on the vestibule of hell, for there is no hope there." - A. J. Cronin

"Hope is the only tie which keeps the heart from breaking." - Thomas Fuller

"Faith and a good conscience are hope's two wings." - William Gurnall

"The ground of our hope is Christ in the world, but the evidence of our hope is Christ in the heart." - Matthew Henry

"The Christian hope is the hope of a time when even the possibility of our sinning will be over. It is not the hope then of a return to the condition of Adam before the Fall but the hope of an entrance into a far higher condition." - J. Gresham Machen

"From Christ's death flow all our hopes." - J. C. Ryle

"Hope fills the afflicted soul with such inward joy and consolation, that it can laugh while tears are in the eye, sigh and sing all in a breath; it is called "the rejoicing of hope" (Hebrews 3:6)." - William Gurnall

"If a Jew pawned his bed-clothes, God provided mercifully that it should be restored before night: "For," saith He, "That is his covering: wherein shall he sleep?" (Exodus 22:27). Truly, hope is the saint's covering, wherein he wraps himself, when he lays his body down to sleep in the grave: "My flesh," saith David, "shall rest in hope." - William Gurnall

"Nothing more unbecomes an heavenly hope than an earthly heart." - William Gurnall

"Hope is faith in the future tense." - Peter Anderson

"Bless God that there is in us resurrection life, and that there awaits us a resurrection morn!" - J. J. Bonar

"Hope can see heaven through the thickest clouds." - Thomas Brooks

"Hope is never ill when faith is well." - John Bunyan

"Where there is no hope there is no faith." - William Gouge

"He that was our help from our birth ought to be our hope from our youth." - Matthew Henry

"Our fear must save our hope from swelling into presumption, and our hope must save our fear from sinking into despair." - Matthew Henry

"Hoping is disciplined waiting." - E. Hoffmann

"Hope is the mother of patience." - William Jenkyn

"My future is as bright as the promises of God." - Adoniram Judson

"I am walking toward a bright light and the nearer I get the brighter it is." - D. L. Moody

"The future belongs to those who belong to God. This is hope." - W. T. Purkiser

"The nature of hope is to expect that which faith believes." - Richard Sibbes

"The Christian hope is not a matter for tickling our minds but for changing our lives and for influencing society." - Stephen Travis

Hope

"Money is like muck, no good except it be spread." - Francis Bacon

"Jesus talked a great deal about money and the problems it causes men - in fact, one-fifth of all Jesus had to say was about money." - Billy Graham

"Honor and profit lie not all in one stack." - George Herbert

"God pity the nation whose factory chimneys rise higher than her church spires." - John Kelman

"Money is emphasized in Scripture simply because our temptation to love it is inexplicably powerful." - Erwin W. Lutzer

"If a man's religion does not affect his use of money, that man's religion is vain." - Hugh Martin

"When I have any money, I get rid of it as quickly as possible, lest it find a way into my heart." - John Wesley

"If your outgo exceeds your income, then your upkeep will be your downfall." - Bill Earle

"We spend money we don't have, to buy things we don't need, to impress people we don't like." - Michael Catt

"Modern man is frantically trying to earn enough to buy things he's too busy to enjoy." - Frank A. Clark

"Most Americans are members of the debt set." - Frank Tyger

"One-sixth of Matthew, Mark, and Luke and 12 of Jesus' 38 parables, have to do with money." - David Allen

"Make money your god, and it will plague you like the devil." - Henry Fielding

"Make all you can, save all you can, give all you can." - John Wesley

"Money is an excellent servant and a terrible task master." - Michael Catt

"Easy credit is what makes people uneasy later." - anonymous

"Sign in a loan company: Loans - for those who have everything but haven't paid for all of it yet."

"Nothing makes time go faster than buying on it." - Balance Sheet

"I have not observed men's honesty to increase with their riches." - Thomas Jefferson

"My wife has just one extravagance. Our checking account." - anonymous

"Money will buy a pretty good dog, but it won't buy the wag of his tail." - Josh Billings

"In the battle of faith, money is usually the last stronghold to fall." - Ron Dunn

Money

"God has his hours and his delays. - J. A. Bengel

"I have lived, seen God's hand through a lifetime, and all was for best." - Robert Browning

"Providence is crowned by the end of it." - Stephen Charnock

"God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm."
- William Cowper

"The longer I live, the more faith I have in providence, and the less faith in my interpretation of providence." - Jeremiah Day

"Sometimes providences, like Hebrew letters, must be read backwards." - John Flavel

"God's providences often seem to contradict his purposes, even when they are serving them." - Matthew Henry

"Everything that happens to me can help me along in my Christian life." - E. Stanley Jones

"Nothing is or can be accidental with God." - Henry W. Longfellow

"Our Lord God doeth work like a printer who setteth the letters backwards; we see and feel well his setting, but we shall see the print yonder - in the life to come." - Martin Luther

"God not only orders our steps; he orders our stops." - George Muller

"God rules and overrules." - William S. Plumer

"We need never fear that God will be dethroned, or over-reached or defeated." - William S. Plumer

"God's providence is all exercised through Christ." - Augustus H. Strong

"I do not know why God does some things, but I am convinced that nothing is accidental in his universe." - A. W. Tozer

"It is a sin as much to quarrel with God's providence as to deny his providence." - Thomas Watson

"If a Christian has to change his plans, it is always because God has something better in store." - Phil Webb

"All the world's thrones are occupied by rulers under God's authority." - anonymous

"The same God who controls the sun cares for the sparrow." - anonymous

"There are no accidents in the life of a Christian." - Rowland Bingham

"What God intends, he decrees; what God permits, he has foreseen." - Arthur C. Custance

"If our circumstances find us in God, we shall find God in our circumstances." - George Muller

"Providence is the perpetuity and continuance of creation." - Richard Sibbes

"Not a drop of rain falls in vain." - John Trapp

"God is to be trusted when his providences seem to run contrary to his promises." - Thomas Watson

"God is not defeated by human failure." - William J. C. White

"God gives, but man must open his hand." - Proverb (German)

"God gives the milk but not the pail." - Proverb (German)

"I firmly believe in divine Providence. Without belief in Providence I think I should go crazy. Without God the earth would be a maze without a clue." - Woodrow Wilson

"God is to be trusted when His providences seem to run contrary to His promise. God promised David to give him the crown, to make him king; but providence turns contrary to His promise; David was pursued by Saul, was in danger of his life; but all this while it was David's duty to trust God. The Lord doth oftentimes, by cross providence, bring to pass His promise. God promised Paul the lives of all that were with him in the ship; but now the providence of God seems to run quite contrary to His promise; the winds blow, the ship splits and breaks in pieces; and thus God fulfilled His promise; upon the broken pieces of the ship, they all come safe to shore. Trust God when providences seem to run quite contrary to promises." - Thomas Watson

"Grace makes the promise and providence the payment." - John Flavel

"God from eternity, decrees or permits all things that come to pass, and perpetually upholds, directs and governs all creatures and all events; yet so as not in any wise to be the author or approver of sin nor to destroy the free agency and responsibility of intelligent creatures." - James Boyce

"Fate is not the ruler, but the servant of Providence." - Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

"God never does anything to you that isn't for you." - Elizabeth Elliott

"I have lived a long time and the longer I live the more convincing proofs I see that God governs in the affairs of men." - Benjamin Franklin

"That power which erring men call chance." - John Milton

"We serve a gracious Master who knows how to overrule even our mistakes to His glory and our own advantage." - John Newton

"God writes straight with crooked lines." - Spanish proverb

"Man proposes but God disposes." - Thomas á Kempis

"A firm faith in the universal providence of God is the solution of all earthly problems. It is almost equally true that a clear and full apprehension of the universal providence of God is the solution of most theological problems." - B. B. Warfield

"We are immoral until our work on earth is done." - George Whitefield

Providence

"When a thing has been said and said well; have no scruple. Take it and copy it." -Anatole France

"Taking something from one man and making it worse is plagiarism." - George Moore

"There is much difference between imitating a man and counterfeiting him." - Benjamin Franklin

"What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing, he knew nobody had said it before." - Mark Twain

"Originality is undetected plagiarism." - William R. Inge

"Genius borrows nobly." - Emerson

"Nothing is said which has not been said before." - Terence

"About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgement." - Josh Billings

"Stealing a ride on someone else's train of thought." - Russell E. Curran

"Borrowing, if it be not bettered by the borrower." - John Milton

"The highest form of compliment and the lowest form of larceny." - Anonymous

"Plagiarist: an educated pickpocket and a literary body-snatcher." - Anonymous

"When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other." - Eric Hoffer

"One Sunday morning after attending a church service, Mark Twain approached the pastor and said, 'I enjoyed your service this morning. I welcomed it like an old friend. In fact, I have a book at home containing every word of it.' The minister said, 'You have not!' Twain insisted, 'Yes, I have. I'll send it to you.' The next day, someone delivered a copy of an unabridged dictionary."

"To take the thought or style of another writer." - Ambrose Bierce

"Another man's ideas dressed up." - Solomon Bushkin

"The only 'ism' Hollywood believes in." - Dorothy Parker

"An act which aids the novice." - Anonymous

Plagiarism

"God is closest to those whose hearts are broken." - anonymous

"Humility is the beginning of true intelligence." - John Calvin

"Humility, after the first shock, is cheerful virtue." - C. S. Lewis

"Only those who see themselves as utterly destitute can fully appreciate the grace of God." - Erwin W. Lutzer

"I did nothing that I might not have done better." - Richard Baxter

"Humility is not thinking meanly of oneself, but rather it means not thinking of oneself at all." - Vance Havner

"If you want to become humble, the first thing you have to admit is that you are proud." - Michael Catt

"I've met some people who were very proud of their humility." - Michael Catt

"Should you ask me what is the first thing in religion, I should reply that the first, second, and third thing therein is humility." - Augustine

"The true way to be humble is not to stoop until you are smaller than yourself, but to stand at your real height against some higher nature that will show you what the real smallness of your greatness is." - Phillips Brooks

"The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility; humility is endless." - T. S. Eliot

"God created the world out of nothing, and so long as we are nothing, He can make something out of us." - Martin Luther

"I used to think that God's gifts were on shelves one above the other and that the taller we grew in Christian character, the more easily we should reach them. I find now that God's gifts are on shelves one beneath the other and that it is not a question of growing taller, but of stooping lower and that we have to go down, always down to get His best ones." - F. B. Meyer

"Humility is like underwear - essential, but indecent if it shows." - Helen Nielson

"For the Christian, humility is absolutely indispensable. Without it there can be no self-knowledge, no repentance, no faith and no salvation." - A. W. Tozer

"There are two classes of Christians: the proud who imagine they are humble and the humble who are afraid they are proud. There should be another class: the self-forgetful who leave the whole thing in the hands of Christ and refuse to waste any time trying to make themselves good. They will reach the goal far ahead of the rest." - A. W. Tozer

"Humility is a strange thing: the moment you think you have it, you have lost it." - anonymous

"Many would be scantily clad if clothed in their humility." - anonymous

"Life is a long lesson in humility." - Sir James Matthew Barrie, The Little Minister

"Nothing sets a person so much out of the devil's reach as humility." - Jonathan Edwards

"Humility is pride in God." - Austin O'Malley

Humility

"Any philosophy which deals only with the here and now is not adequate for man." - Billy Graham

"The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next." - Henry Ward Beecher

"If the East loves infinity, the West delights in boundaries." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know." - Bertrand Russell

"What philosophy is striving to find, theology asserts has been found." - A. H. Strong

"Philosophy is the search for truth. In Jesus, the search ends." - John Blanchard

"The exhortations of the philosophers are cold and lifeless, if compared with the convictions, affections and boundless energy of the real believers." - John Calvin

"Human philosophy, the wisdom of the world, has never converted a soul." - Henry C. Fish

"No philosophy that will not teach us how to master death is worth two pence to us." - J.I. Packer

"If a philosophy of life cannot help me to die, then in a sense it cannot help me to live." -D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

"Philosophy and science have not always been friendly toward the idea of God, the reason being that they are dedicated to the task of accounting for things and are impatient with anything that refuses to give an account of itself." - A. W. Tozer

"Good philosophy must exist - because bad philosophy needs to be answered." - C. S. Lewis

Philosophy

"The devil has no difficulty in making sin look innocent." - Anonymous

"Satan promises the best, but pays with the worst; he promises honor and pays with disgrace; he promises pleasure and pays with pain; he promises profit and pays with loss; he promises life and pays with death." - Thomas Brooks

"Satan is an acute theologian." - John Calvin

"Satanic anarchy is conscious and determined opposition to God. Wherever God's rule is made known, Satan will put himself alongside and oppose it. Satan's sin is at the summit of all sins, man's sin is at the foundation of all sins, and there is all the difference in the world between them." - Oswald Chambers

"Satan is not fighting churches; he is joining them. He does more harm by sowing tares than by pulling up wheat. He accomplishes more by imitation than by outright opposition." - Vance Havner

"When Satan fell he may have lost his innocence but he did not lose his intelligence." -Trevor Knight

"The Holy Ghost is the only One who can detect the temptations of Satan, neither our common sense nor our human wisdom can detect them as temptations." - Oswald Chambers

"Nothing promotes the activity of the devil more than the Christian's proximity to God." -John Blanchard

"To deny the fact of Satan is to deny the truth of Scripture." - John Blanchard

"The devil is old, but not infirm." - Anonymous

"If God were not my friend, Satan would not be so much my enemy." - Thomas Brooks

"Satan, as in his first temptation, is still on the losing side." - William Gurnall

"Satan does far more harm as an angel of light than as a roaring lion." - Vance Havner

"Satan has no constructive purpose of his own: his tactics are simply to thwart God and destroy men." -J. I. Packer

"The devil has more knowledge than any of us, and yet is no better for it." - J. C. Ryle

"The devil deserves his name." - Henry Smith

"The devil could care less about how many sermons you listen to, as long as you have no intention of applying them to your life." - Michael Catt

"Satan hates God for His own sake, and everything that is dear to God he hates for the very reason that God loves it". - A. W. Tozer

"The enemy will not see you vanish into God's company without an effort to reclaim you." - C. S. Lewis

"I believe Satan exists for two reasons: first, the Bible says so, and second, I've done business with him." - D. L. Moody

"Satan, when tempting someone, says that sin isn't very bad, isn't very big and isn't very important. But after the person has yielded to temptation and sinned, and has begun to think about asking God's forgiveness, then Satan reverses his field. And to his victim Satan declares that sin is so big, so bad and so awful that asking forgiveness will hardly suffice." - John R. W. Stott

"We must be careful not to advertise the devil by talking too much about him and his devices." - Corrie Ten Boom

In his book about Satan, J. Oswald Sanders, gives a great summary on the counterfeit activities of Satan.

• "He has his own trinity - the devil, the beast, and the false prophet" - Rev. 16: 13
• "He has his own church - 'a synagogue of Satan'" - Rev. 2:9
• "He has his own ministers - 'ministers of Satan'" - 2 Cor. 11:4,5
• "He has his own theology - 'doctrines of demons'" - 1 Tim. 4:l
• "He has his own sacrificial system - 'The Gentiles...sacrifice to demons'" - 1 Cor. 10:20
• "He has his own communion service - 'the cup of demons... and the table of demons'" - 1 Cor.10:21
• "He has his own gospel - 'a gospel contrary to that which we have preached to you'" - Gal. 1:7,8

Satan