Christian quotes
A few words from wise believers can lodge in the memory and steady a whole day. These are some we keep coming back to, gathered by the person who said them, with a short profile of who they were and a reflection on why the words ring true.
The people behind the words
From a fourth-century bishop to a Victorian preacher to a twentieth-century Oxford don. Different centuries, one faith.
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C.S. Lewis
1898 to 1963
Clive Staples Lewis was a Belfast-born writer and a scholar at Oxford and Cambridge, and one of the most widely read Christian authors of the twentieth century. An atheist in his youth, he came to faith in his thirties, helped along by the friendship of J.R.R. Tolkien. He went on to write Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain, The Screwtape Letters and the Chronicles of Narnia. His great gift was making deep things plain.
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Charles H. Spurgeon
1834 to 1892
Charles Haddon Spurgeon was an English Baptist preacher whom many called the Prince of Preachers. From the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London he preached to thousands every week, and yet he knew the dark valleys too, suffering for years with illness and depression. His sermons and his devotional Morning and Evening are still read all over the world. He wrote with warmth, plain speech and an unshakeable confidence in God's goodness.
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Augustine of Hippo
354 to 430
Augustine was a bishop in Roman North Africa and one of the most influential thinkers in the history of the church. As a young man he was a brilliant teacher of rhetoric who chased success and pleasure and ran from God for years, while his mother Monica prayed for him without ceasing. Under the preaching of Ambrose in Milan he finally came home to Christ. His Confessions, written as one long prayer, still reads as though he were sitting beside you.
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A.W. Tozer
1897 to 1963
Aiden Wilson Tozer was an American pastor and writer who had no formal theological training and pastored his first church at twenty-three. He had a rare gift for calling the church back to a real, awed knowledge of God, away from comfortable religion. He wrote his best-known book, The Pursuit of God, on a single overnight train journey, and gave away most of what his books earned. His writing is short, sharp and hard to forget.
2 quotes →
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D.L. Moody
1837 to 1899
Dwight Lyman Moody was an American evangelist and publisher who began his ministry among the poor of Chicago. He preached on both sides of the Atlantic and founded the Moody Church and what is now the Moody Bible Institute. He had little formal schooling, a deep love for the Bible, and a knack for saying true things simply.
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George Müller
1805 to 1898
George Müller was a German-born preacher who settled in Bristol and gave his life to caring for orphans. He took in more than ten thousand children over the years, and as a matter of principle never once asked anyone for money. He simply prayed, and the food and the funds arrived, again and again, for sixty years. His whole life was a deliberate, public argument that God hears prayer and can be trusted.
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John Newton
1725 to 1807
John Newton was an English Anglican clergyman and, in his early life, the captain of a slave ship. After a dramatic conversion he came to hate the trade he had once profited from, became a pastor, and worked with William Wilberforce for the abolition of slavery. He wrote the hymn we know as Amazing Grace out of his own astonishment that mercy had reached a man like him.
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Morton T. Kelsey
1917 to 2001
Morton T. Kelsey was an American Episcopal priest, counsellor and author who wrote widely on Christian spirituality and the healing of the whole person. He taught for many years and is remembered for a warm, pastoral voice.
1 quote →
Quotes with a reflection
Each of these opens a short, plain-spoken reflection on what the quote means and the truth behind it. Filter by theme to find one for where you are.
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“Faith goes up the stairs that love has built and looks out the windows which hope has opened.”
Charles H. Spurgeon -
“I pray because the need flows out of me all the time. It doesn't change God. It changes me.”
C.S. Lewis -
“Amazing grace! How sweet the sound / That saved a wretch like me!”
John Newton -
“Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.”
C.S. Lewis -
“God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.”
C.S. Lewis -
“The Church is not a museum for saints, but a hospital for sinners.”
Morton T. Kelsey -
“He loved us not because we are lovable, but because He is love.”
C.S. Lewis -
“Reach for the sky and you will get the earth too. But if you reach for the earth, you won't get either of them.”
C.S. Lewis -
“We are what we believe we are.”
C.S. Lewis -
“Where, except in uncreated light, can the darkness be drowned?”
C.S. Lewis -
“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”
C.S. Lewis -
“Don't let your happiness depend on something you may lose.”
C.S. Lewis -
“Trials, obstacles, difficulties, and sometimes defeats, are the very food of faith.”
George Müller -
“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”
A.W. Tozer -
“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
Augustine of Hippo -
“God is too good to be unkind, and too wise to be mistaken; and when we cannot trace his hand, we can trust his heart.”
Charles H. Spurgeon
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