Elizabeth Elliot > Quotes

“So I go on, not knowing - I would not if I might. I'd rather walk in the dark with God than go alone in the light”
― Elizabeth Elliot

“It is nothing short of a transformed vision of reality that is able to see Christ as more real than the storm, love more real than hatred, meakness more real than pride, long-suffering more real than annoyance, holiness more real than sin. - Discipline”
― Elizabeth Elliot

“The special gift and ability of each creature defines its special limitations. And as the bird easily comes to terms with the necessity of bearing wings when it finds that it is, in fact, the wings that bear the bird - up, away from the world, into the sky, into freedom - so the woman who accepts the limitations of womanhood finds in those very limitations her gifts, her SPECIAL CALLING - wings, in fact, which bear her up into PERFECT FREEDOM, into the WILL OF GOD.”
― Elizabeth Elliot

“We are called to be women. The fact that I am a woman does not make me a different kind of Christian, but the fact that I am a Christian does make me a different kind of woman. For I have accepted God's idea of me, and my whole life is an offering back to Him of all that I am and all that He wants me to be.”
― Elizabeth Elliot, Loneliness by Elizabeth Elliot

“Womanhood is a call. It is a vocation to which we respond under God, glad if it means the literal bearing of children, thankful as well for all that it means in a much wider sense, that in which every woman, married or single, fruitful or barren, may participate -- the unconditional response exemplified for all time in Mary the virgin, and the willingness to enter into suffering, to receive, to carry, to give life, to nurture and to care for others. The strength is to answer this call that is given us as we look up toward the Love that first, most literally, imagined sexuality, that made us at the very beginning real men and real women. As we conform to that Love's demands we shall become more humble, more dependent -- on Him and on one another -- and even (dare I say it?) more splendid.”
― Elizabeth Elliot

“Masculine and Feminine...
It was God who made us different, and He did it on purpose.... God created male and female, the male to call forth, to lead, initiate and rule, and the female to respond, follow, adapt, and submit. Even if we held to a different theory of origin the physical structure of the female would tell us that woman was made to receive, to bear, to be acted upon, to complement, and to nourish.”
― Elizabeth Elliot

“According as a pillar is cut and shaped to fit into a particular place and carry a specified weight, it is by that cutting and shaping differentiated and limited. It is the very differentiation and limitation that that pillar has to offer. So with us. We've been cut to a certain size and shape to fulfill a certain function. It is this, not that. It is a woman's offering, not a man's that we have to give.”
― Elizabeth Elliot

“Freedom through discipline...
"As I sit here in the window of this cottage I can see a sailboat skimming silently along the horizon. It is a beautiful image of freedom. But the freedom of the sailboat to move so swiftly and beautifully is the result of obedience to laws. The builder of the boat had to know the proper ratio of beam to keel and mast. The one who sails the boat obeys the rules of sailing. A ship tacking against the wind moves deviously, but when she runs with a strong tide or a following wind she takes to herself the power of tide and wind and they become her own. She is doing the thing she was made for. She is free not by disobeying the rules but by obeying them.”
― Elizabeth Elliot