Quotes about Reflection

Gold is not less gold if it is mingled with alloy, nor is light less light if it is faint and dim, nor is grace less grace because it is young and weak. But after every allowance, I cannot see how anyone deserves to be called holy who willfully allows himself to sin and is not humbled and ashamed because of sin. I dare not call anyone holy who makes a habit of willfully neglecting known duties or willfully doing what he knows God has commanded him not to do.

Most men hope to go to heaven when they die; but few, it may be feared, take the trouble to consider whether they would enjoy heaven if they got there. Heaven is essentially a holy place; it's inhabitants are all holy; it's occupations are all holy.

We cannot work miracles as He did; in this He stands alone. But we can walk in His steps, in the matter of private devotion. If we have the Spirit of adoption, we can pray. Let us resolve to pray more than we have done hitherto. Let us strive to make time, and place, and opportunity for being alone with God. Above all, let us not only pray BEFORE we attempt to work for God, but pray also AFTER our work is done.

I want the times we live in to be praying times. I want the Christians of our day to be praying Christians. I want the Church of our age to be a praying Church.

The very least, speak with God in the morning, before you speak with the world: and speak with God at night, after you have done with the world. But settle it in your minds, that prayer is one of the great things of every day. Do not drive it into a corner. Do not give it the scraps and parings of your duty. Whatever else you make a business of, make a business of prayer.

He continues to teach because it provides him with a livelihood; also because it teaches him humility, brings it home to him who he is in the world. The irony does not escape him: that the one who comes to teach learns the keenest of lessons, while those who come to learn learn nothing.

And this, our life exempt from public haunts, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.

Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

A powerful exercise for building your appreciation muscle is to take 7 minutes every morning to write down all the things you appreciate in your life. I recommend this as a daily ritual for the rest of your life; however, if you think that is excessive, at least do it for 30 to 40 days. It will create a huge change in how you see the world.

Everything you experience in life—both internally and externally—is the result of how you have responded to a previous event.

Man lowers his head and lunges into civilization, forgetting the days of his infancy when he sought truth in a snowflake or a stick. Man forgets the wisdom of the child.

The spiritual experience of the philosopher is the nourishing soil of philosophy; that without it there is no philosophy; and that, even so, spiritual experience does not, or must not, enter into the intelligible texture of philosophy. The pulp of the fruit must consist of nothing but the truth.