Suffering Quotes

Adversity borrows its sharpest sting from impatience.

— Bishop Horne

In the day of prosperity we have many refuges to resort to; in the day of adversity, only one.

— Horatius Bonar

For one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity.

— Thomas Carlyle

The damps of autumn sink into the leaves and prepare them for the necessity of their fall; and thus insensibly are we, as years close around us, detached from our tenacity of life by the gentle pressure of recorded sorrow.

— W. S. Landor

Night brings out stars as sorrow shows us truths.

— P. J. Bailey

Oh, when we are journeying through the murky night and the dark woods of affliction and sorrow, it is something to find here and there a spray broken, or a leafy stem bent down with the tread of His foot and the brush of His hand as He passed; and to remember that the path He trod He has hallowed, and thus to find lingering fragrance and hidden strength in the remembrance of Him as "in all points tempted like as we are," bearing grief for us, bearing grief with us, bearing grief like us.

— Alexander Maclaren

Ambition is a gilded misery, a secret poison, a hidden plague, the engineer of deceit, the mother of hypocrisy, the parent of envy, the original of vices, the moth of holiness, the blinder of hearts, turning medicines into maladies, and remedies into diseases.

— Thomas Brooks

He submits himself to be seen through a microscope, who suffers himself to be caught in a fit of passion.

— Lavater

"Compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses," let us with firm and cheerful trust endure all trials, discharge all duties, accept all sacrifices, fulfill the law of universal and impartial love, and adopt as our own that cause of truth, righteousness, humanity, liberty, and holiness,—which being the cause of the All-Good, cannot but triumph over all powers of evil. Let us rise into blest assurance that everywhere and forever we are enfolded, penetrated, guarded, guided, kept by the power of the Father and Friend, who can never forsake us; and that all spirits who have begun to seek, know, love, and serve the All-Perfect One on earth shall be reunited in a celestial home, and be welcomed together into the freedom of the universe, and the perpetual light of His presence.

— W. E. Channing

A genuine faith lifts us above the bitterness of grief; a sense of Christ's living presence takes away all unbearable loneliness even when we are most alone. In our darkest hours, to know that our lost friend is still living, still loving us, still ours, in the highest and best sense, must be unspeakably consoling.

— A. H. K

Believe me, it is no time for words when the wounds are fresh and bleeding; no time for homilies when the lightning's shaft has smitten, and the man lies stunned and stricken. Then let the comforter be silent; let him sustain by his presence, not by his preaching; by his sympathetic silence, not by his speech.

— George C. Lorimer

The Bible is the treasure of the poor, the solace of the sick, and the support of the dying; and while other books may amuse and instruct in a leisure hour, it is the peculiar triumph of that book to create light in the midst of darkness, to alleviate the sorrow which admits of no other alleviation, to direct a beam of hope to the heart which no other topic of consolation can reach; while guilt, despair, and death vanish at the touch of its holy inspiration.

— Robert Hall

If you are ever tempted to speak lightly or think lightly of it, just sit down and imagine what this world would be without it. No Bible! A wound and no cure, a storm and no covert, a condemnation and no shrift, a lost eternity and no ransom! Alas for us if this were all; alas for us if the ladder of science were the only stair to lead us up to God!

— R. R. Meredith

God gives us power to bear all the sorrows of His making; but He does not give us power to bear the sorrows of our own making, which the anticipation of sorrow most assuredly is.

— Alexander Maclaren

Whatever capacities there may be for enjoyment or for suffering in this strange being of ours, and God only knows what they are, they will be drawn out wholly in accordance with character.

— Mark Hopkins

Character is the product of daily, hourly actions, and words, and thoughts; daily forgivenesses, unselfishness, kindnesses, sympathies, charities, sacrifices for the good of others, struggles against temptation, submissiveness under trial. Oh, it is these, like the blending colors in a picture, or the blending notes of music, which constitute the man .

— J. R. Macduff

Charity is that rational and constant affection, which makes us sacrifice ourselves to the human race, as if we were united with it, so as to form one individual, partaking equally in its adversity and prosperity.

— Confucius

Jesus! How does the very word overflow with sweetness, and light, and love, and life; filling the air with odors, like precious ointment poured forth; irradiating the mind with a glory of truths on which no fear can live, soothing the wounds of the heart with a balm that turns the sharpest anguish into delicious peace, shedding through the soul a cordial of immortal strength. Jesus! the answer to all our doubts, the spring of all our courage, the earnest of all our hopes, the charm omnipotent against all our foes, the remedy for all weakness, the supply of all our wants, the fullness of all our desires. Jesus! at the mention of whose name every knee shall bow and every tongue confess. Jesus! our power; Jesus! our righteousness, our sanctification, our redemption—Jesus! our elder brother, our blessed Lord and Redeemer. Thy name is the most transporting theme of the church, as they sing going up from the valley of tears, to their home on the mount of God; Thy name shall ever be the richest chord in the harmony of heaven, while the angels and the redeemed unite their exulting, adoring songs around the throne of God.

— George W. Bethune

The incarnation of God is a necessity of human nature. If we really and truly have a Father, we must be able to clasp His feet in our penitence, and to lean on His breast in our weary sorrowfulness.

— Charles F. Deems

Every unfulfilled aspiration of humanity in the past; all partial representation of perfect character; all sacrifices, nay, even those of idolatry, point to the fulfillment of what we want, the answer to every longing—the type of perfect humanity, the Lord Jesus Christ.

— F. W. Robertson

The tears of Christ are the pity of God. The gentleness of Jesus is the long-suffering of God. The tenderness of Jesus is the love of God. "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father."

— Alexander Maclaren

Jesus Christ was born in a stable; He was obliged to fly into Egypt; thirty years of His life were spent in a workshop; He suffered hunger, thirst, and weariness; He was poor, despised, and miserable; He taught the doctrines of heaven, and no one would listen. The great and the wise persecuted and took Him, subjected Him to frightful torments, treated Him as a slave, and put Him to death between two malefactors, having preferred to give liberty to a robber, rather than to suffer Him to escape. Such was the life which our Lord chose; while we are horrified at any kind of humiliation, and cannot bear the slightest appearance of contempt.

— Fenelon

In Christ we see the strength of achievement, and the strength of endurance. He moved with a calm majesty, like the sun. The bloody sweat, and the crown of thorns, and the cross, were full in His eyes; but He was obedient unto death. In His perfect self-sacrifice, we see the perfection of strength; in the love that prompted it, we see the perfection of beauty. This combination of self-sacrifice and love must be commenced in every Christian; and when it shall be in its spirit complete in him, then will he also be perfect in strength and beauty.

— Mark Hopkins

This it is that gives a majesty so pure and touching to the historic figure of Christ; self-abandonment to God, uttermost surrender, without reserve or stipulation, to the guidance of the Holy Spirit from the Soul of souls; pause in no darkness, hesitation in no perplexity, recoil in no extremity of anguish; but a gentle unfaltering hold of the invisible Hand, of the Only Holy and All Good;—these are the features that have made Jesus of Nazareth the dearest and most sacred image to the heart of so many ages.

— James Martineau

Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.

— Bible

A large portion of Christ's miracles of love were wrought at the urgent request of parents for their suffering children. Is that ear gone deaf to-day? Will He not do for our children's souls what He did for the bodies of the ruler's daughter, and the dead youth at Nain?

— T. L. Cuyler

Not only do we witness on the Holy Mount the installation of the royal lawgiver, but of the great high-priest. It is a grand valedictory service in which He is re-ordained to duty—as the banners are blessed before the army marches to the field. And the voice speaks from heaven as a sovereign gives audience to a chosen commander, and cheers him with the encouragement of royal favor. With what reverence, brethren, should we, sinners, look upon the scene! As we see Him standing alone upon the mountain—fresh from His ordination of glory—calm and kingly in His heaven-imparted strength; and then as we see Him, with firm step, treading the dark avenue which, through desertion, agony, insult, abandonment, terminates in His death upon the cross—surely our distrust should vanish, and in reliance on such a champion we should have "joy in believing." Surely our indignation against the vile sin which made all this suffering necessary should be roused within us. Surely our hearts should bound with a fervor of devotion and gratitude which the obedience of a lifetime can only inadequately express.

— Wm. M. Punshon

Christ wrought out His perfect obedience as a man, through temptation, and by suffering.

— Alexander Maclaren

And I think, dear friends, if we carried with us more distinctly than we do that one simple thought that in all human joys, in all the apparently self-forgetting tenderness, of that Lord, who had a heart for every sorrow, and an ear for every complaint, and a hand open as day and full of melting charity for every need—that in every moment of that life in the boyhood, in the dawning manhood, in the maturity of His growing power—there was always present one black shadow, toward which He ever went straight with the consent of His will and the clearest eye, we should understand something more of how the life as well as the death was a sacrifice for us sinful men.

— Alexander Maclaren

God's beloved Son, leaving the echoes of His cries upon the mountains and the traces of His weary feet upon the streets, shedding His tears over the tombs and His blood upon Golgotha, associating His life with our homes, and His corpse with our sepulchres, shows us how we, too, may be sons in the humblest vale of life, and sure of sympathy in heaven amid the deepest wrongs and sorrows of earth.

— Edward Thomson

The whole history of Israel, its ritual and its government, is explicable only as it is typical of the spiritual Israel, of the sacrifice on Calvary, of the precious blood which alone can wash away sin.

— A. E. Kittredge

It was in His parting sorrow—that Jesus asked His disciples to remember Him; and never was entreaty of affection answered so; for ever since has His name been breathed in morning and evening prayers that none can count, and has brought down some gift of sanctity and peace on the anguish of bereavement, and the remorse of sin.

— James Martineau

Christ's sacrifice stands in glorious proportions with the work to be done. Nothing else or less would suffice. It is a work supernatural, transacted in the plane of nature; and what but such a work could restore the broken order of the soul under evil?

— Horace Bushnell

As we look upon that agony and those tearful prayers, let us not only look with thankfulness; but let that kneeling Saviour teach us that in prayer alone can we be forearmed against our lesser sorrows; that strength to bear flows into the heart that is opened in supplication; and that a sorrow which we are made able to endure is more truly conquered than a sorrow which we avoid.

— Alexander Maclaren

I entreat you to devote one solemn hour of thought to a crucified Saviour—a Saviour expiring in the bitterest agony. Think of the cross, the nails, the open wounds, the anguish of His soul. Think how the Son of God became a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, that you might live forever. Think as you lie down upon your bed to rest, how your Saviour was lifted up from the earth to die. Think amid your plans and anticipations of future gaiety, what the redemption of your soul has cost, and how the dying Saviour would wish you to act. His wounds plead that you will live for better things.

— Albert Barnes

But now, the sounds of infancy, always nearest the heart, and sure to come to the lips in our deepest emotion, returned in His anguish; and in words which He had learned at His mother's knee, His heart uttered its last wail—"Eloi! Eloi! lama sabachthani?" "My God! My God! why hast Thou forsaken me?"

— J. Cunningham Geikie

The death of the Son of God is a single and most perfect sacrifice and satisfaction for sins; of infinite value and price, abundantly sufficient to expiate the sins of the whole world.

— Synod of Dort

The sufferings and death of Jesus Christ are a substitution for the endless punishment of all who truly believe on Him.

— Adams

By Thine hour of dire despair; By Thine agony of prayer; By the cross, the nail, the thorn, Piercing spear, and torturing scorn; By the gloom that veiled the skies O'er the dreadful sacrifice; Listen to our humble cry, Hear our solemn Litany.

— Sir Robert Grant

In His discourses, His miracles, His parables, His sufferings, His resurrection, He gradually raises the pedestal of His humanity before the world, but under a cover, until the shaft reaches from the grave to the heavens, when He lifts the curtain, and displays the figure of a man on a throne, for the worship of the universe; and clothing His church with His own power, He authorizes it to baptize and to preach remission of sins in His own name.

— Edward Thomson

Having made an expiation for sins, He is set down on God's right hand for ever. There is no more that even Immanuel can do. This is Love's extremest effort, God's last and greatest gift, God's own sacrifice. Can there be any escape for those who neglect so great salvation?

— James Hamilton

Yes, we have throned Him in our minds and hearts—the cynosure of our wandering thoughts—the monarch of our warmest affections, hopes, desires. This we have done. And the more we meditate upon His astonishing love, His amazing sacrifice, the more we feel that if we had a thousand minds, hearts, souls, we would crown Him Lord of all. Living we will live in Him, for Him, to Him. Dying, we will clasp Him in our arms, and, with Simeon, welcome death as the consummation of bliss.

— Richard Fuller

Our sins are debts that none can pay but Christ. It is not our tears, but His blood; it is not our sighs, but His sufferings, that can testify for our sins. Christ must pay all, or we are prisoners forever.

— Thomas Brooks

Because many who are called by the gospel do not repent nor believe in Christ, but perish in unbelief, this does not arise from defect or insufficiency of the sacrifice offered by Christ, but from their own fault.

— Synod of Dort

On Thee alone my hope relies, Beneath Thy cross I fall; My Lord! my Life! my Sacrifice! My Saviour! and my All!

— Anne Steele

O Thou Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world, what Thou bearest in Thy blessed hands and feet I cannot bear; take it all away. Hide me in the depths of Thy suffering love, mold me to the image of Thy divine passion.

— Horace Bushnell

Guide Thou my hand within that hand of Thine— Thy wounded hand!—until its tremblings take Strength from Thy touch.

— Dora Greenwell

Jesus does not drive His followers on before, as a herd of unwilling disciples, but goes before Himself, leading them into paths that He has trod, and dangers He has met, and sacrifices He has borne Himself, calling them after Him and to be only followers.

— Horace Bushnell

No friend sympathizes so tenderly with his friend in affliction as does Jesus. "In all our afflictions, He is afflicted." He feels all our sorrows, wants, and burdens as His own. Whence it is that the sufferings of believers are called the sufferings of Christ.

— John Flavel

To multitudes of sufferers on beds of pain and languishing, Jesus has been the great physician to-day; in many a weeping circle around precious dust, He has been the Divine comforter, and the tears have almost ceased to flow as this Jesus has touched the bier. Dying lips have whispered His name, and the valley of the shadow has been illumined as with the glory from the celestial shores.

— A. E. Kittredge

Thou our throbbing flesh hast worn; Thou our mortal griefs hast borne; Thou hast shed the human tear; Jesus, Son of Mary, hear!

— H. H. Millman

What will you do with Jesus? Do with Him did I say? O what, what will you do without Him? What, when affliction and anguish shall come upon you? what, when closing your eyelids in death? what, when appearing before the awful judgment-seat?

— Richard Fuller

Still Jesus joins Himself to us; still He walks with us; still He instructs us, speaking to us by His word, His providences, His Spirit; still He seeks to enter into our sorrows and trials, and to console and cheer us. But we know Him not. Our eyes are holden by unbelief. We do not press Him to abide with us. Hence He is grieved, and we are left alone in the night.

— Richard Fuller

It is when we unbosom ourselves to Him, and confide to Him all our cares and sorrows and temptations, that He walks with us, and abides with us, and opens to us the Scriptures concerning Himself—His dignity, His suitableness, His loveliness. His truth, His tenderness, His faithfulness, revealing Himself in us; causing our hearts to burn within us—to burn with love, gratitude, devotion, courage, joy—to burn with a celestial fire, which consumes all selfishness and sin, and glows, a pure, perennial flame, upon pure, living altars.

— Richard Fuller

Dear Lord! in all our loneliest pains Thou hast the largest share, And that which is unbearable 'Tis Thine, not ours to bear.

— F. W. Faber

Then Jesus spoke: "Bring here thy burden, And find in me a full release; Bring all thy sorrows, all thy longings, And take instead my perfect peace. Trying to bear thy cross alone!— Child, the mistake is all thine own."

— Anna Warner

A Christian is a believer in Jesus. He believes that if he only throws his own lost and sinful soul on the Redeemer, there is in His sacrifice sufficient merit to cancel all his guilt, and in His heart sufficient love to undertake the keeping of his soul for all eternity. He believes that Jesus is a Saviour. He believes that His heart is set on His people's holiness, and that it is only by making them new creatures, pure-minded, kind-hearted, unselfish, devout, that He can fit them for a home and a life like His own, that He can fit them for the occupations and enjoyments of heaven. And believing all this he prays and labors after holiness.

— James Hamilton

It was a deep true thought which the old painters had, when they drew John as likest to his Lord. Love makes us like.

— Alexander Maclaren

These—lowliness, meekness, long-suffering, loving forbearance—quiet, unpretending, unshowy virtues, are amongst the best means for promoting true unity in the church of God. Who is the most useful Christian? Not as a rule he who has the most transcendent genius, brilliant talents, and commanding eloquence, but he who has the most of this quiet, loving, forbearing spirit. The world may do without its Niagara, whose thundering roar and majestic rush excite the highest amazement of mankind, but it cannot spare the thousand rivulets that glide unseen and unheard every moment through the earth, imparting life, and verdure, and beauty wherever they go. And so the church may do without its men of splendid abilities, but it cannot do without its men of tender, loving, forbearing souls.

— David Thomas

Guided by His wisdom, strong in His strength, there may be for you struggle and suffering, the darkness and the storm. "The disciple is not above His Master." There may be weeping that shall endure for a night, but joy shall come in the morning. If the night cometh, so also the morning, "a morning without clouds," the morning of an eternal day.

— Mark Hopkins

The success of sainthood is the success attained by struggle and suffering and achieved by faith; a success of honor, of clean hands and pure heart, of service to man and glory to God.

— Bishop Doane

No true work since the world began was ever wasted; no true life since the world began has ever failed. Oh, understand those two perverted words "failure" and "success," and measure them by the eternal, not by the earthly standard. When after thirty obscure, toilsome, unrecorded years in the shop of the village carpenter, one came forth to be preëminently the man of sorrows, to wander from city to city in homeless labors, and to expire in lonely agony upon the shameful cross—was that a failure? Nay, my brethren, it was the death of Him who lived that we might follow His footsteps, it was the life, it was the death of the Son of God.

— F. W. Farrar

Great talents are not, before God, a substitute for love for Himself; the possession of a profound intellect does not free any man from the obligations resting on the heart for purity and holiness; a reputation for attainments in science does not settle the question whether he is righteous before his Maker; refined manners are not, in the sight of God, a substitute for the graces of the Spirit; God does not justify man on the ground of human learning; attainments in chemistry, anatomy, geology, botany, astronomy, or skill in sculpture and painting,—these do not prepare a man to die.

— Albert Barnes

Though to us—the toilers—it is night still, to Him—the Master who watcheth our labor, and to them—our fellows whose labor is done—"there is light with a clear sky." Though to us, down below, there is but the deafening roar, the shriek of discord, the wail of pain, blent in one jargon of strange sounds which have no chime; to them, above in the high, calm silence, there are heard only the striking of the hour which tells of the sure speed of time, and the voice of the joy-bells already ringing for the world's great bridal.

— Wm. M. Punshon

He who lives to God rests in his Redeemer's love, and is trying to get rid of his old nature—to him every sorrow, every bereavement, every pain, will come charged with blessings, and death itself will be no longer the "king of terrors," but the messenger of grace.

— F. W. Robertson

Give an earnest-hearted, devoted girl any true work that will make her active in the dawn, and weary at night, with the consciousness that her fellow-creatures have indeed been the better for her day, and the powerless sorrow of her enthusiasm will transform itself into a majesty of radiant and beneficent peace.

— John Ruskin

Let us imitate Him who sought the mountain-tops as His refreshment after toil, but never left duties undone or sufferers unrelieved in pain. Let us imitate Him who turned from the joys of contemplation to the joys of service without a murmur when His disciples broke in on His solitude with, "All men seek Thee;" but never suffered the outward work to blunt His desire for, nor to encroach on, the hour of still communion with His Father. Lord, teach us to work; Lord, teach us to pray.

— Alexander Maclaren

Christianity is, above all other religions ever known, a religion of sacrifice. It is a religion founded on the greatest of all sacrifices, the sacrifice of the Incarnation, culminating in the sacrifice on Calvary.

— Dean Stanley

A lazy, indolent church tends toward unbelief; an earnest, busy church, in hand-to-hand conflict with sin and misery, grows stronger in faith.

— John Hall

I believe that the root of almost every schism and heresy from which the Christian church has ever suffered, has been the effort of men to earn, rather than to receive, their salvation.

— John Ruskin

What we want, above all things, in this age is heartiness and holy simplicity; men who justify the holy impulse of grace in their hearts, and do not keep it back by artificial clogs of prudence and false fear, or the sham pretences of fastidiousness and artificial delicacy. These are they whom God will make His witnesses in all ages. They dare to be holy, dare just as readily to be singular. What God puts in them, that they accept; and when He puts a song, they sing it. They know Christ inwardly, and therefore stand for Him outwardly. They endure hardships. They fight a fight. And these are the souls, my brethren, who will stand before God accepted.

— Horace Bushnell

Seek to make life henceforth a consecrated thing; that so, when the sunset is nearing, with its murky vapors and lowering skies, the very clouds of sorrow may be fringed with golden light. Thus will the song in the house of your pilgrimage be always the truest harmony. It will be composed of no jarring, discordant notes; but with all its varied tones will form one sustained, life-long melody; dropped for a moment in death, only to be resumed with the angels, and blended with the everlasting cadences of your Father's house.

— J. R. Macduff

A cross borne in simplicity, without the interference of self-love to augment it, is only half a cross. Suffering in this simplicity of love, we are not only happy in spite of the cross, but because of it; for love is pleased in suffering for the Well Beloved, and the cross which forms us into His image is a consoling bond of love.

— Fenelon

To do Thy holy will; To bear Thy cross; To trust Thy mercy still, In pain or loss; Poor gifts are these to bring, Dear Lord, to Thee, Who hast done every thing For me!

— George Cooper

Thou, Everlasting Strength, hast set Thyself forth to bear our burdens. May we bear Thy cross, and bearing that, find there is nothing else to bear; and touching that cross, find that instead of taking away our strength, it adds thereto. Give us faith for darkness, for trouble, for sorrow, for bereavement, for disappointment; give us a faith that will abide though the earth itself should pass away—a faith for living, a faith for dying.

— H. W. Beecher

When to the cross I turn my eyes, And rest on Calvary, O Lamb of God, my sacrifice, I must remember Thee.

— James Montgomery

What a power has Death to awe and hush the voices of this earth! How mute we stand when that presence confronts us, and we look upon the silence he has wrought in a human life! We can only gaze, and bow our heads, and creep with our broken, stammering utterances under the shelter of some great word which God has spoken, and in which we see through the history of human sorrow the outstretching and overshadowing of the eternal arms.

— W. W. Battershall

Soon for me the light of day Shall forever pass away; Then from sin and sorrow free, Take me, Lord, to dwell with Thee.

— Doane

O that we may all be living in such a state of preparedness, that, when summoned to depart, we may ascend the summit whence faith looks forth on all that Jesus hath suffered and done, and exclaiming, "We have waited for Thy salvation, O Lord," lie down with Moses on Pisgah, to awake with Moses in paradise.

— Henry Melvill

Firmness, both in sufferance and exertion, is a character which I would wish to possess. I have always despised the whining yelp of complaint and the cowardly, feeble resolve.

— Robert Burns

The moment you can make a very simple discovery; viz., that obligation to God is your privilege, and is not imposed as a burden, your experience will teach you many things,—that duty is liberty, that repentance is a release from sorrow, that sacrifice is gain, that humility is dignity, that the truth from which you hide is a healing element that bathes your disordered life, and that even the penalties and terrors of God are the artillery only of protection to His realm.

— Horace Bushnell

He who can at all times sacrifice pleasure to duty approaches sublimity.

— Lavater

Do right! and thou hast naught to fear; Right hath a power that makes thee strong. The night is dark, but light is near; The grief is short, the joy is long.

— T. C. Upham

Let him who gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain light, and prays vehemently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay this precept well to heart: "Do the duty which lieth nearest to thee," which thou knowest to be a duty! Thy second duty will already have become clearer.

— Thomas Carlyle

O thou sculptor, painter, poet, Take this lesson to thy heart; That is best which lieth nearest; Shape from that thy work of art.

— Longfellow

Without earnestness no man is ever great, or does really great things. He may be the cleverest of men; he may be brilliant, entertaining, popular; but he will want weight. No soul-moving picture was ever painted that had not in it depth of shadow.

— Peter Bayne

Child of earth and earthly sorrows—child of God and immortal hopes—arise from thy sadness, gird up the loins of thy mind, and with unfaltering energy press toward thy rest and reward on high.

— E. L. Magoon

This poor world, the object of so much insane attachment, we are about to leave; it is but misery, vanity, and folly; a phantom,—the very fashion of which "passeth away."

— Fenelon

Do not wade far out into the dangerous sea of this world's comfort. Take the good that God provides you, but say of it, "It passeth away;" for, indeed, it is but a temporary supply for a temporary need. Never suffer your goods to become your God.

— C. H. Spurgeon

Eternity invests every state, whether of bliss or of suffering, with a mysterious and awful importance, entirely its own. It gives that weight and moment to whatever it attaches, compared to which all interests that know a period fade into absolute insignificance.

— Robert Hall