Righteous Judgment

"Expect great things; attempt great things."
William Carey

It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's mind about to religion.
~ Francis Bacon

Of all the gifts of the gods to the human race, philosophy is the richest, the most beautiful, the most exalted.
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, in De Legibus

Philosophy is the best medicine for the mind.
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

I believe Plato and Socrates. I believe in Jesus Christ.
~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

If you would enjoy real freedom, you must be the slave of philosophy.
~ Epicurus

Leisure is the mother of philosophy.
~ Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan, pt. 1, ch. 1

Postremo nemo aegrotus quidquam somniat tam infandum, quod non aliquis dicat philosophus. [In short, no sick man has ever dreamed of anything so absurd that one or another philosopher has not said it.]
~ Marcus Terentius Varro

The most important thought I ever had was that of my individual responsibility to God.
~ Daniel Webster

Philosophy consists largely of one philosopher arguing that all the others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself.
~ H. L. Mencken

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.
~ Philip K. Dick

If by "real" you mean what you can touch, smell, taste and see, then reality is simply electrial impulses interpreted by your brain.
~ Morpheus, in The Matrix

To make no mistakes is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes, the wise and the good learn wisdom for the future.
-- Plutarch, Historian

"I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work."
-- Pearl Buck, Novelist

I sometimes think that the saving grace of America lies in the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans are possessed of two great qualities -- a sense of humor and a sense of proportion.
~ Franklin Roosevelt, 32nd U.S. president

Carpe diem, quam minimus credula postero. [Seize today, and put as little trust as you man in tomorrow.]
~ Horace

The fool, with all his other faults, has this also, he is always getting ready to live.
~ Epicurus

It is better to live one day as a lion than a hundred years as a sheep.
~ Old Persian proverb

There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.
~ Henry David Thoreau, in Life Without Principle

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
- Alan Kay

Happy is the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own;
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have liv'd today.
~ John Dryden, in Translation of Horace

You've got to get to the state in life where going for it is more important than winning or losing.
~ Arthur Ashe

A man's character is his fate.
~ Heraclitus

To succeed is nothing, it is an accident. But to feel no doubts about oneself is something very different, it is character.
~ Marie Leneru

Hard work spotlights the character of people. Some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses and some don't turn up at all.
~ Sam Ewing

The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches, but to reveal to him his own.
~ Benjamin Disraeli

"Knowledge is power, but enthusiasm pulls the switch"
-- Ivern Ball, Poet

By perseverance the snail reached the ark.
~ C. H. Spurgeon

Anyone can CARRY HIS BURDEN
however hard, until nightfall.
Anyone, can DO HIS WORK,
however hard, one day.
Anyone can live SWEETLY, PATIENTLY, LOVINGLY,
until the sun goes down.
And this is all that life really is.
~Robert Louis Stevenson

Heroism consists of hanging on one minute longer.
~ Norwegian Proverb

Trying times are not the times to stop trying.
~ Ray Owen, Writer

A champion is one who gets up even when he can't.
~ Jack Dempsey, Heavyweight Boxing Champion

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.
- Christopher Morley

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much. "
~ Bessie A. Stanley

Success is never final; failure is never fatal.
~ Winston Churchill

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
~ Albert Einstein

Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.
~ Albert Einstein

Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love.
~ David McCullough

If you want to double your success rate, double your failure rate.
~ Thomas Watson

To succeed is nothing, it is an accident. But to feel no doubts about oneself is something very different, it is character.
~ Marie Leneru

If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.

"Leaders must learn to discipline their disappointments. It's not what happens to us, it is what we choose to do about what happens that makes the difference in how our lives turn out. "
~ Jim Rohn

Are the things your living for worth Christ dying for?
~ Leonard Ravenhill

God always fills in all hearts all the room which is left Him there.
~ F. W. Faber

The soul which gives itself wholly and without reserve to God is filled with His own peace; and the closer we draw to our God, so much the stronger and more steadfast and tranquil shall we become.
~ Jean Nicolas Grou

Be persuaded, timid soul, that He has loved you too much to cease loving you.
~ Fenelon

The spirit of prayer is pressing forth of the soul out of this earthly life; it is a stretching with all its desire after the life of God, to be one life, one love, one spirit with Christ in God.
~ William Law

A low standard of prayer means a low standard of character and a low standard of service. Those alone labor effectively among men who impetuously fling themselves upward towards God.
~ Charles H. Brent

Pray hardest when it is hardest to pray.
~ Charles H. Brent

True peace is when the soul revolves around its center, Almighty God, craving for nothing but what God continually supplies. Since the soul is large enough to contain the infinite God, nothing less than Himself can satisfy or fill it.
~ Edward B. Pusey

Take your burdens, and troubles, and losses, and wrongs, if come they must and will, as your opportunities, knowing that God has girded you for greater things than these.
~ Horace Bushnell

You find no difficulty in trusting the Lord with the management of the universe and all the outward creation, and can your case be any more difficult than these, that you need to be anxious about His management of it?
~ Hannah Whitall Smith

As in our daily walk we come nearer towards heaven, He will open to us more of heaven.
~ Edward B. Pusey

I have no home, until I am in the realized presence of God. This holy presence is my inward home, and, until I experience it, I am a homeless wonderer, a straying sheep in waste howling wilderness.
~ Anonymous

If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.
~ C. T. Studd

Measure thy life by loss and not by gain.
Not by the wine drunk, but by the wine poured forth.
For love’s strength standeth in love’s sacrifice.
And He who suffers most has most to give.

~ Ugo Bassi

The more we pay for any truth, the better is our bargain.
~ William Law

Prayer is the highest activity of the human soul, and therefore it is at the same time the ultimate test of a man’s true spiritual condition (there is nothing so much as prayer life that tells the truth about us as Christina people.) Everything we do in the Crhistian life is easier than prayer.
~ Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones

I do not want people who come with me under certain reservations. In battle you need soldiers who fear nothing.
~ Pere Didon

Teach us, good Lord, to serve Thee more faithfully; to give and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to seek for rest; to labour and not to ask for any reward, save that of knowing that we do Thy will, O Lord our God.
~ Traditional Prayer

Lord Jesus, I ask Thee, give unto me movement in Thy love withouten measure; desire withouten limit; longing withouten order; burning withouten discretion. Truly the better the love of Thee is, the greedier it is; for neither by reason is it restrained, nor be dread thronged, nor by doom tempted.
~ Richard Rolle

First of the Christian graces - humility
Second of the Christian graces - humility
Third of the Christian graces - humility.
~ St. Augustine

It is the heart that experiences God and not the reason.
~ Pascal

Where there is fear of God to keep the house, the enemy can find no way to enter.
~ St. Francis of Assisi

I look not to win away my home without wounds and blood.
~ Samuel Rutherford

Yet more, Oh my God, more toil, more agony, more suffering for Thee.
~ Francis Xavier

The Christian is a man who can be certain about the ultimate even when he is most uncertain about the immediate.
~ Martyn Lloyd-Jones

There is no sin [unchastity] which will sooner bring about a nation’s fall. If histoy teaches anything, it teaches that sensual indulgence is the surest way to national ruin. Society, in not condemning this sin, condemns itself.
~ F. B. Meyer

The only right a Christian has is the right to give up his rights
~ Oswald Chambers

Pray hardest when it is hardest to pray.
~ Charles H. Brent

I have now concentrated all my prayers into one, and that one prayer is this, that I may die to self, and live wholly to him.
~ Charles H. Spurgeon

Cursed be that love and unity for whose sake the Word of God must be put at stake.
~ Martin Luther

The cure for dullness in the pulpit is not brilliance but reality.
~ Principal P. R. Forsyth

Actors speak of things imaginary as if they were real, while you preachers too often speak of things real as if they were imaginary.
~ Thomas Betterton

Beware of prayerless tears and beware of tearless prayers.
~ Anon

Gethsemane is where He died; the cross is only the evidence.
~ Leonard Ravenhill

Prayer must be of the right sort
very humble
very expectant
very persevering. Lord, teach me to pray.
~ Alexander Smellie

In prayer... "I must wrestle like Jacob, and pant like David, and hope like Elijah, and be persistent like Bartimeus, and cry with tears like my blessed Lord."
~ Alexander Smellie

No listening is healthy which is not mentally referred to obedience. We are to listen with a view to obedience, with our eyes upon the very road where the obedient feet will tread. "Doing" makes a new thing out of "hearing."
The statue obeyed becomes a song.
The commandment is found to be a beatitude.
The decree discloses reaches of grace.
The hidden things of God are not discovered until we are treading the path of obedience.
~ Henry Jowett

With God, the most of mosts is lighter than nothing, and without Him the least of leasts is heavier than any burden.
~ One of the ladies of the Scottish Covenant

Unity without verity is no better than conspiracy.
~ John Trapp

Pray absolutely for those things you may pray for absolutely.
Pray conditionally for those things you may pray for conditionally.
For those things you can’t pray for - don’t.
~ Paul Gerhardt

You’ve got to have fire to set fire with. You’ve got to have life to propagate life with.
~ Dwight L. Moody

Fall on your knees and grow there. There is no burden of the spirit but is lighter by kneeling under it. Prayer means not always talking to Him, but waiting before Him till the dust settles and the stream runs clear.
~ F. B. Meyer

The Kingdom of Heaven is not for the well-meaning: it is for the desperate.
~ James Denney

When the door opens we ought to press in, sacrificing our lives if needs be for God... of course it costs life. It is not an expedition of ease nor a picnic excursion to which we are called. It is going to cost many a life, and not lives only, but prayers and tears and blood.
~ Dr. Zwemer

You have chosen the roughest road, but it leads straight to the hill-tops.
~ John Bunyan

If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.
- Ludwig Wittgenstein

I could be content that we procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the World without this trivial and vulgar way of coition; it is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life; nor is there any thing that will more deject his cool'd imagination, when he shall consider what an odd and unworthy piece of folly he hath committed.
~ Sir Thomas Browne, in Religio Medici

Whenever a man's friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old.
~ Washington Irving

Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that happen to man.
~ Leon Trotsky, in Diary In Exile

What a man knows at 50 that he did not know at 20 is, for the most part incommunicable. The knowledge he has acquired with age is not the knowledge of formulas, or forms of words, but of people, places, actions—a knowledge gained not by words but by touch, sight, sound, victories, failures, sleeplessness, devotion, love—the human experiences and emotions of this earth and of oneself and other men; and perhaps, too, a little faith, a little reverence for things one cannot see.
~ Adlai Stevenson

I'm not afraid of death. It's just that I don't want to be there when it happens.
~ Woody Allen

But the long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.
~ Sir Thomas Browne, in Hyddriotaphia

We don't know yet about life, how can we know about death?
~ Confucius, in Aphorisms

Because I would not stop for Death--
He kindly stopped for me--
The carriage held but just ourselves--
And Immortality.
~ Emily Dickinson

No man is an Iland intire of itselfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is thelesse, as well as if a promontorie were, as well as if a mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
~ John Donne, in Devotions

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
~ John Donne

Keep before your eyes from day to day death and exile and all things that seem terrible, but death most of all, and then you will never set your thoughts on what is low and will never desire anything beyond measure.
~ Epictetus, in The Encheiridion

Thus that which is the most awful of evils, death, is nothing to us, since when we exist there is no death, and when there is death we do not exist.
~ Epicurus, in Principal Doctrines

Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment.
~ Dag Hammarskjold, in Markings

We are all under sentence of death, but with a sort of indefinite reprieve.
~ Victor Hugo

Love makes us poets and the approach of death should make us philosophers.
~ George Santayana

He that gives good advice builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example builds with both.
~ Francis Bacon

He who influences the thought of his times influences the times that follow.
~ Elbert Hubbard

Example is not the main thing in influencing others; it is the only thing.
~ Albert Schweitzer