E. Stanley Jones > Quotes

“The opponent strikes you on your cheek, and you strike him on the heart by your amazing spiritual audacity in turning the other cheek. You wrest the offensive from him by refusing to take his weapons, by keeping your own, and by striking him in his conscience from a higher level. He hits you physically, and you hit him spiritually.”
― E. Stanley Jones, Gandhi: Portrayal of a Friend

“The inner life is bruised by a running against the laws of the Kingdom. The bruises are guilt complexes, a sense of inferiority, of missing the mark, of being out of harmony with God and with oneself, a sense of wrongness. Divine forgiveness wipes out all that sense of inner hurt and condemnation. Brings a sense of at-homeness- at home with God and oneself and with life. The universe opens its arms and takes one in. You are accepted- by God, by yourself, and by life. All self-loathing, self-rejection, all inferiorities drop away. You are a child of God; born from above, you walk the earth, a conqueror, afraid of nothing. Healed at the heart, you can say to life: "Come on, I'm ready for anything.”
― E. Stanley Jones, The Unshakable Kingdom and the Unchanging Person

“To live by worry is to live against reality”
― E. Stanley Jones

“To implant fear in the minds of children is a crime. If parents try to rule the child by fear, then fear rules the child.”
― E. Stanley Jones, Abundant Living

“A Rattlesnake, if Cornered will become so angry it will bite itself. That is exactly what the harboring of hate and resentment against others is - a biting of oneself. We think we are harming others in holding these spites and hates, but the deeper harm is to ourselves.”
― E. Stanley Jones

“Our actions are the results of our intentions and our intelligence.”
― E. Stanley Jones

“Nothing is ever really yours until you share it.”
― E. Stanley Jones, Abundant Living

“Obviously God must guide us in a way that will develop spontaneity in us. The development of character, rather than direction in this, that, and the other matter, must be the primary purpose of the Father. He will guide us, but he won’t override us. That fact should make us use with caution the method of sitting down with a pencil and blank sheet of paper to write down the instructions dictated by God for the day. Suppose a parent would dictate to the child minutely everything he is to do during the day. The child would be stunted under that regime. The parent must guide in such a manner, and to the degree, that autonomous character, capable of making right decisions for itself, is produced. God does the same.”
― E. Stanley Jones

“Who has not seen a frail, clinging-vine type of woman, who upon the death of her husband strainghtens up and becomes an oak, around which the growing children twine their lives, and are forever greatful for such a mother? But this strength would never have come out and developed had it not been for the tears that watered the vine and made it into an oak.”
― E.Stanley Jones

“The Sermon on the Mount seems dangerous. It challenges the whole underlying conception on which modern society is built. It would replace it by a new conception, animate it with a new motive, and turn it toward a new goal.”
― E. Stanley Jones, The Christ of the Mount: A Living Exposition of Jesus' Words as the Only Practical Way of Life

“If I throw out a boathook from the boat and catch hold of the shore and pull, do I pull the shore to me, or do I pull myself to the shore? Prayer is not pulling God to my will, but the aligning of my will to the will of God.”
― E. Stanley Jones

“Your capacity to say ‘No’ determines your capacity to say ‘Yes’ to greater things.”
― E. Stanley Jones

“Happiness doesn’t come to you; you join happiness on the way to doing something for others.”
― E. Stanley Jones, The Way: 364 Daily Devotions

“If there were no God, we would have to invent one to keep people sane.”*”
― E. Stanley Jones, Abundant Living: 364 Daily Devotions

“the”
― E. Stanley Jones, The Christ of the Indian Road

“How has God faded out of the mind of this age? Well, the age, like thoughtless children, believed that the toyland of material wealth was a sufficient world; then God faded out, smothered by preoccupation.”
― E. Stanley Jones, Abundant Living: 364 Daily Devotions

“We are not quite sure that the Sermon on the Mount is the Sermon for the mart. We are not
sure, and an unsure place is an unsafe place*
We must go on or go back. We must be more
Christian or less.”
― E. Stanley Jones, The Christ of the Mount: A Living Exposition of Jesus' Words as the Only Practical Way of Life

“Around the world the problem of Christian work is the problem of the Christian worker.”
― E. Stanley Jones, The Christ of the Indian Road

“Seeley was right when he said that “moral deterioration is bound to set in in any subject race.”
― E. Stanley Jones, The Christ of the Indian Road