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O. P. Gifford Quote

“One never knows a man till he has refused him something, and studied the effect of the refusal; one never knows himself till he has denied himself. The altar of sacrifice is the touchstone of character. The cross compels a choice for or against Christ.”

— O. P. Gifford

Source: Three Thousand Selected Quotations from Brilliant Writers — Wikisource

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Running like a Gulf-stream through the sea of time, comes the affirmation that God has manifested Himself to man, and the best men have affirmed it most persistently. Wherever this affirmation has made its way, the icebergs of skepticism have disappeared, the temperature of virtue has risen, and the sweet fruits of charity have ripened. If the belief be false, then a lie has blessed the world, and the soul is so organized that it reaches its highest state of development in an atmosphere of deception; for it is a fact that man is purest and woman most virtuous where belief in God's manifestations is most intense and real.

— O. P. Gifford

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Ability involves responsibility. Power to its last particle is duty.

— Alexander Maclaren

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Man is not altogether an imbecile. True, "circumstances do make the man." But they make him only in the sense and degree that he permits them to make him.

— G. D. Boardman

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What we do upon a great occasion will probably depend upon what we already are; what we are will be the result of previous years of self-discipline, under the grace of Christ or the absence of it.

— H. P. Liddon

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Moral conduct includes every thing in which men are active and for which they are accountable. They are active in their desires, their affections, their designs, their intentions, and in every thing they say and do of choice; and for all these things they are accountable to God.

— Emmons

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The end of man is an action, and not a thought, though it were the noblest.

— Thomas Carlyle

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