Ryan Pool > Ryan's Quotes

“LAW 4
Always Say Less Than Necessary

When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike. Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.”
― Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power

“The art of living is the art of bringing dreams and reality together.”
― Tom Hodgkinson, How to Be Idle

“Idleness is only the refuge of weak
minds, and the holiday of fools.”
― Philip Dormer Stanhope, Letters to His Son, 1746-47

“Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.”
― Franz Kafka, The Blue Octavo Notebooks

“It would be a sin to help you destroy yourself.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“Before you make a decision, ask yourself this question: will you regret the results or rejoice in them?”
― Rob Liano

“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“Issues arise not from expecting too much from people, but too little.”
― Robert J. Braathe

“Whenever the Christian idea of meditation is taken seriously, there are those who assume it is synonymous with the concept of meditation centered in Eastern religions. In reality, the two ideas stand worlds apart. Eastern meditation is an attempt to empty the mind; Christian meditation is an attempt to fill the mind. The two ideas are quite different.”
― Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth

“If our Founding Fathers wanted us to care about the rest of the world, they wouldn't have declared their independence from it.”
― Stephen Colbert

“The heart of man is his worst part before it be regenerate, and the best afterwards: it is the seat of principles, and fountain of actions. The eye of God is, and the eye of a Christian ought to be, principally fixed upon it. The greatest difficulty in conversion, is, to win the heart to God; and the greatest difficulty after conversion, is, to keep the heart with God.”
― John Flavel, Keeping The Heart

“The Providence of God is like Hebrew words - it can be read only backwards.”
― John Flavel

“O miserable man, what a deformed monster has sin made you! God made you "little lower than the angels"; sin has made you little better than the devils”

”
― Joseph Alleine

“Let me see you, O Light of my eyes. Come, O Joy of my spirit; let me behold you, O Gladness of my heart. Let me love you, O Life of my soul. Appear unto me, O my great delight, my sweet comfort, O my God, my life, and the whole glory of my soul. Let me find you, O Desire of my heart; let me hold you, O Love of my soul. Let me embrace you, O Heavenly Bridegroom. Let me possess you.”
― Joseph Alleine, A Sure Guide to Heaven

“Study hard, for the well is deep, and our brains are shallow.”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor

“Christ keeps not his subjects in by force, but is King of a willing people. They are, through his grace, freely devoted to his service; they serve out of choice, not as slaves, but as the son or spouse, from a spring of love and a loyal mind. In a word, the laws of Christ are the convert’s love, delight, and continual study.”
― Joseph Alleine, An Alarm to the Unconverted: A Serious Treatise on Conversion

“The unsound convert is willingly ignorant, loves not to come to the light. He is willing to keep such or such a sin, and therefore is loathed to know it to be a sin, and will not let in the light at that window. Now, the gracious heart is willing to know the whole latitude and compass of his Maker’s law. He receives with all acceptation the Word which convinceth him of any duty that he knew not, or minded not before, or which discovereth any sin that lay hid before.”
― Joseph Alleine, An Alarm to the Unconverted: A Serious Treatise on Conversion

“I preached as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men.”
― Richard Baxter

“O what a blessed day that will be when I shall . . . stand on the shore and look back on the raging seas I have safely passed; when I shall review my pains and sorrows, my fears and tears, and possess the glory which was the end of all!”
― Richard Baxter

“Make careful choice of the books which you read:
let the holy Scriptures ever have the preeminence.
Let Scripture be first and most in your hearts and
hands and other books be used as subservient to it.

While reading ask yourself:

1. Could I spend this time no better?

2. Are there better books that would edify me more?

3. Are the lovers of such a book as this the greatest
lovers of the Book of God and of a holy life?

4. Does this book increase my love to the Word of God,
kill my sin, and prepare me for the life to come?

"The words of the wise are like goads, their collected
sayings like firmly embedded nails—given by one Shepherd.
Be warned, my son, of anything in addition to them. Of
making many books there is no end, and much study
wearies the body." Ecclesiastes 12:11-12”
― Richard Baxter

“Lay siege to your sins, and starve them out by keeping away the food and fuel which is their maintenance and life.”
― Richard Baxter

“Let no man think to kill sin with few, easy, or gentle strokes. He who hath once smitten a serpent, if he follow not on his blow until it be slain, may repent that ever he began the quarrel. And so he who undertakes to deal with sin, and pursues it not constantly to the death.”
― Richard Baxter

“If God be not enough for you, you will never have enough. Turn to him more, and know him better, if you would have a satisfied mind.

-Directions Against Sinful Desires and Discontent.”
― Richard Baxter

“The vigor and power and comfort of our spiritual life depends on our mortification of deeds of the flesh.”
― Richard Baxter

“The most dangerous mistake that our souls are capable of, is, to take the creature for God, and earth for heaven (374).”
― Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest

“Of all preaching in the world, (that speaks not stark lies,) I hate that preaching which tendeth to make the hearers laugh, or to move their mind with tickling levity, and affect them as stage-players use to do, instead of affecting them with a holy reverence of the name of God.”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor

“I am profoundly grateful to God that He did not grant me certain things for which I asked, and that He shut certain doors in my face.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount

“The man who is meek is not even sensitive about himself. He is not always watching himself and his own interests. He is not always on the defensive… To be truly meek means we no longer protect ourselves, because we see there is nothing worth defending… The man who is truly meek never pities himself, he is never sorry for himself. He never talks to himself and says, “You are having a hard time, how unkind these people are not to understand you.”
― Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“To love to preach is one thing, to love those to whom we preach quite another.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

“when saints sin, they know they are not sinning against law but against love.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Experiencing the New Birth: Studies in John 3