The leading cause of failure is mismanaged success. And the leading cause of success is well-managed failure.

True knowledge should not produce pride; it should produce humility...Because the more you know, the more you know how much you don't know.

Lest anyone think that any action, however required or useful, could be a source of pride, Sibbes preached that "it is a sottish conceit to think that we can fit ourselves for grace, as if a child in the womb could forward its natural birth. If God hath made us men, let us not make ourselves gods."107

I know the vanity of your heart, and that you will feel mortified that your congregation is very small, in comparison with those of your brethren around you; but assure yourself on the word of an old man, that when you come to give an account of them to the Lord Christ, at his judgment-seat, you will think you have had enough.

There are no grades of vanity, there are only grades of ability in concealing it.

I am a person who recognizes the fallacy of humans.

God's grace and mercy have brought you through. Quit acting as if you made it on your own.

The labor of self-love is a heavy one indeed. Think whether much of your sorrow has not arisen from someone speaking slightingly of you. As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal, how can you hope to find inward peace.

Grace is given to heal the spiritually sick, not to decorate spiritual heroes

This grace of God is a very great, strong, mighty and active thing. It does not lie asleep in the soul. Grace hears, leads, drives, draws, changes, works all in man, and lets itself be distinctly felt and experienced. It is hidden, but its works are evident.

Hereby we may understand that God, of His special grace, maketh the teachers of the gospel subject to the Cross, and to all kinds of afflicitons, for the salvation of themselves and of the people; for otherwise they could by no means beat down this beast which is called vain-glory.

The white devil of spiritual sin is far more dangerous than the black devil of carnal sin because the wiser, the better men are without Christ, the more they are likely to ignore and oppose the Gospel.