Quotes from William Barclay

There is a time when to avoid trouble is to store up trouble, and when to seek for a lazy and a cowardly peace is to court a still greater danger.

Christian freedom does not mean being free to do as we like; it means being free to do as we ought.

It is one of the strange facts of church life that, in official church gatherings such as sessions and presbyteries and even General Assemblies, a great many hours might be given to the discussion of mundane problems of administration for every one hour given to the discussion of the eternal truths of God.

There are two great days in a person's life -- the day we are born and the day we discover why.

If all the other noble qualities of life were placed in the balance against it, loyalty would outweigh them all.

His very use of parables shows that it was his conviction that the things of this world can lead a man's thoughts direct to God, if he will only see.

But in one thing I would go beyond strict orthodoxy - I am a convinced universalist. I believe that in the end all men will be gathered into the love of God.

Not even God can teach a man who comes to the Bible with his mind made up.

The tragedy of life and of the world is not that men do not know God the tragedy is that, knowing Him, they still insist on going their own way.

Jesus is to God as we must be to Jesus.

We will often find compensation if we think more of what life has given us and less about what life has taken away.

Religion fails if it cannot speak to men as they are.