John > John's Quotes

“Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he does not want to sign.”
― Théophile Gautier

“The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.”
― C.S. Lewis

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
― C.S. Lewis

“We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.”
― C.S. Lewis

“I sought to hear the voice of God and climbed the topmost steeple, but God declared: "Go down again - I dwell among the people.”
― John Henry Newman

“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
― C.S. Lewis

“God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas but for scars.”
― Elbert Hubbard

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“Sometimes God allows what he hates to accomplish what he loves.”
― Joni Eareckson Tada, The God I Love

“It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us; it is the very sign of His presence.”
― C.S. Lewis

“God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.”
― Voltaire

“All sacrifice and suffering is redemptive. It is used to either teach the individual or to help others. Nothing is by chance.”
― A.J. RUSSELL

“He's not safe, but he's good (referring to Aslan, the Lion, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)”
― C. S. Lewis

“God will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of heaven as a shortcut to the nearest chemist's shop.”
― C.S. Lewis

“God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than He is of any other slacker.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“You cannot conceive, nor can I, of the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.”
― Graham Greene, Brighton Rock

“I have too much respect for the idea of God to make it responsible for such an absurd world.”
― Georges Duhamel

“The best things are never arrived at in haste. God is in no hurry; His plans are never rushed.”
― Michael Phillips

“In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that-and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison-you do not know God at all. ”
― C.S. Lewis

“If our testimonies are strong onthis point and if we feel the absolute assurance that God loves us, we will change our questons. We won't ask, 'Why did this happen?' or 'Why doesn't God care about me?' Instead, our questions will become, 'What can I learn from this experience?' or 'How does the Lord want me to handle this?”
― John Bytheway, When Times Are Tough: 5 Scriptures That Will Help You Get Through Almost Anything

“I made this [letter] very long, because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter.”
― Blaise Pascal, The Provincial Letters

“Deep in each man is the knowledge that something knows of his existence. Something knows, and cannot be fled nor hid from.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing

“Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”
― Anonymous, The Holy Bible: King James Version

“Stop asking God to bless what you're doing. Find out what God's doing. It's already blessed.”
― Bono

“To believe in God or in a guiding force because someone tells you to is the height of stupidity. We are given senses to receive our information within. With our own eyes we see, and with our own skin we feel. With our intelligence, it is intended that we understand. But each person must puzzle it out for himself or herself.”
― Sophy Burnham

“ The Paradoxical Commandments

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.”
― Kent M. Keith, The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council

“God has no religion.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, 'I used everything you gave me.”
― Erma Bombeck

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”
― Soren Kierkegaard