William Booth > Quotes

“The chief danger that confronts the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, heaven without hell.”
― William Booth

“The greatness of the man's power is the measure of his surrender.”
― William Booth

“Not called!' did you say?

'Not heard the call,' I think you should say.

Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father's house and bid their brothers and sisters and servants and masters not to come there. Then look Christ in the face — whose mercy you have professed to obey — and tell Him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish His mercy to the world.”
― William Booth

“While women weep, as they do now,
I'll fight
While little children go hungry, as they do now,
I'll fight
While men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now,
I'll fight
While there is a drunkard left,
While there is a poor lost girl upon the streets,
While there remains one dark soul without the light of God,
I'll fight-I'll fight to the very end!”
― William Booth

“The chief danger of the 20th century will be religion without the Holy Spirit, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven without hell.”
― William Booth

“Work as if everything depended upon work and pray as if everything depended upon prayer.”
― William Booth

“God loves with a great love the man whose heart is bursting with a passion for the impossible.”
― William Booth

“Go straight for souls, and go for the worst.”
― William Booth

“Don't instill, or allow anybody else to instill into the hearts of your girls the idea that marriage is the chief end of life. If you do, don't be surprised if they get engaged to the first empty, useless fool they come across.”
― William Booth

“I consider that the chief dangers which confront the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven without hell.”
― General William Booth

“Will you go to His feet and place yourself entirely at His disposal?”
― William Booth

“The rescued are appallingly few—a ghastly minority compared with the multitudes who struggle and sink in the open-mouthed abyss.”
― William Booth, In Darkest England and the Way Out

“One reason for the victory I daily gained from the moment of my conversion was, no doubt, my complete and immediate separation from the godless world. I turned my back on it. I gave it up, having made up my mind beforehand that if I did go in for God I would do so with all my might. Rather than yearning for the world's pleasures, books, gains, or recreations, I found my new nature leading me to come away from it all. It had lost all charm for me. What were all the novels, even those of Sir Walter Scott or Fenimore Cooper, compared with the story of my Saviour? What were the choicest orators compared with Paul? What was the hope of money-earning, even with all my desire to help my poor mother and sisters, in comparison with the imperishable wealth of ingathered souls? I soon began to despise everything the world had to offer me.”
― William Booth, The Life and Works of General William Booth and Catherine Booth of the Salvation Army (Illustrated): 25 Works by the Founders of the Salvation Army With Over 40 Illustrations

“Since that night, for it was near upon eleven o'clock when the happy change was realised, the business of my life has been not only to make a holy character but to live a life of loving activity in the service of God and man. I have ever felt that true religion consists not only in being holy myself, but in assisting my Crucified Lord in His work of saving men and women, making them into His Soldiers, keeping them faithful to death, and so getting them into Heaven.”
― William Booth, The Life and Works of General William Booth and Catherine Booth of the Salvation Army (Illustrated): 25 Works by the Founders of the Salvation Army With Over 40 Illustrations

“To those whose eyes may fall on these lines, may I not be excused saying, 'See to it that you honour your father and your mother, not only that your days may be long in the land, but that you may not, in after years, be disturbed by useless longings to have back again the precious ones who so ceaselessly and unselfishly toiled with heart and brain for your profoundest well-being.”
― William Booth, The Life and Works of General William Booth and Catherine Booth of the Salvation Army (Illustrated): 25 Works by the Founders of the Salvation Army With Over 40 Illustrations

“Only those who are certain that they have found the Lord can be capable of inducing others to seek and find Him.”
― William Booth, The Life and Works of General William Booth and Catherine Booth of the Salvation Army (Illustrated): 25 Works by the Founders of the Salvation Army With Over 40 Illustrations

“What is the duty of Salvationists at such a crisis? … One thing is plain―every true soldier of The Salvation Army would cry day and night to God to avert so dreadful a calamity. Let him shut his ears to all the worldly, unscriptural, unchristian talk about war being a necessity. It cannot be a necessity before God that tens of thousands of men should be launched into eternity with all manner of revengeful passionate feelings in their souls … Whatever may be the right method of settling human disputes and preventing earthly calamities, this cannot be the divine plan. This cannot be the will of God.”
― William Booth

“In convincing him that goodness was the only safe passport to peace and prosperity of any lasting kind, William Booth's mother had happily laid in the heart of her boy the best foundation for a happy life, "Be good, William, and then all will be well," she had said to him over and over again.”
― William Booth, The Life and Works of General William Booth and Catherine Booth of the Salvation Army (Illustrated): 25 Works by the Founders of the Salvation Army With Over 40 Illustrations

“I was wrought upon quite independently of human effort by the Holy Ghost, who created within me a great thirst for a new life. "I felt that I wanted, in place of the life of self-indulgence, to which I was yielding myself, a happy, conscious sense that I was pleasing God, living right, and spending all my powers to get others into such a life. I saw that all this ought to be, and I decided that it should be. It is wonderful that I should have reached this decision in view of all the influences then around me. My professedly Christian master never uttered a word to indicate that he believed in anything he could not see, and many of my companions were worldly and sensual, some of them even vicious. "Yet I had that instinctive belief in God which, in common with my fellow-creatures, I had brought into the world with me. I had no disposition to deny my instincts, which told me that if there was a God His laws ought to have my obedience and His interests my service. "I felt that it was better to live right than to live wrong, and as to caring for the interests of others instead of my own, the condition of the suffering people around me, people with whom I had been so long familiar, and whose agony seemed to reach its climax about this time, undoubtedly affected me very deeply.”
― William Booth, The Life and Works of General William Booth and Catherine Booth of the Salvation Army (Illustrated): 25 Works by the Founders of the Salvation Army With Over 40 Illustrations