19th-century Clergy Quotes

George Müller
William Connor Magee
Basil King
Thomas De Witt Talmage
Samuel I. Prime
Samuel Longfellow
Leonid Feodorov

No great thought, no great object, satisfies the mind at first view, nor at the last.

Abel Stevens
Abel Stevens
Everywhere I find the signature, the autograph of God, and he will never deny his own handwriting. God has set his tabernacle in the dewdrop as surely as in the sun. No man can any more create the smallest flower than he could create the greatest world.

All Christ's public acts were consecrated by prayer, — His baptism, His transfiguration, His miracles, His agony, His death. He breathed away His spirit in prayer. " His last breath," says Philip Henry, "was praying breath."

The truth of what I have so often inculcated, that it is the "steady, painstaking, likely-to-do-good" man who in the long run wins the race against those who now and then give a brilliant flash and, as Shakespeare says, "straight are cold again".

Charles Dodgson (archdeacon)
Charles Dodgson (archdeacon)
I would not live alway: I ask not to stay
Where storm after storm rises dark o'er the way.

William Augustus Muhlenberg
William Augustus Muhlenberg
The dead leaves their rich mosaics
Of olive and gold and brown
Had laid on the rain-wet pavements,
Through all the embowered town.

Samuel Longfellow
Samuel Longfellow
Whom, then, did the Master mean by the poor in spirit to whom the kingdom belongs? Not those who are rightly called "poor spirited." There ought to be no need of saying that, but there is, for some may still be found who consider crawling the Christian's proper gait. There are men who fear to call their souls their own, and if they did, they would deceive—themselves. At times such men baptize their cowardice in holy water, name it humility, and tremble.... They are not blessed. Their life is a creeping paralysis. Afraid to stand for their convictions, they end by having no convictions to stand to.

My soul, bear thou thy part,
Triumph in God above,
And with a well-tuned heart
Sing thou the songs of love.

The time is coming when the pressure of population on the means of subsistence will be felt here as it is now felt in Europe and Asia. Then will the world enter upon a new stage of its history - the final competition of races, for which the Anglo-Saxon is being schooled.

It would be better that England should be free than that England should be compulsorily sober.

William Connor Magee
William Connor Magee
I rowed stroke and he rowed bow in the famous Long Vacation voyage to Godstow, when the three Miss Liddells were our passengers, and the story was actually composed and spoken over my shoulder.

Robinson Duckworth
Robinson Duckworth
Days and moments quickly flying, Blend the living with the dead; Soon will you and I be lying Each within our narrow bed.

The vessel is as gold even though we may not always like the chasing.

Andrew Bonar
Andrew Bonar
Go at it boldly, and you'll find unexpected forces closing round you and coming to your aid.

Basil King
Basil King
The indwelling presence and power of the Spirit are to be sought and received by faith in God's word of promise.

I do not believe in a mixture of good and evil in the world, or in myself. All is Good.

'Turbot, Sir,' said the waiter, placing before me two fishbones, two eyeballs, and a bit of black mackintosh.

Come down, O Love divine,
Seek thou this soul of mine,
And visit it with thine own ardour glowing;
O Comforter, draw near,
Within my heart appear,
And kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing.

The things we do at Christmas are touched with a certain extravagance, as beautiful, in some of its aspects, as the extravagance of nature in June.

[There are] a host of minds of profoundest thought, who find nothing in the disclosures of science to shake their faith in the eternal verities of reason and religion.

A mathematician is always a mathematician, even without his formulas and diagrams.

The man of science may be likened to an artist or sculptor who spends a lifetime in producing one or two masterpieces of his art, which few are able to see or appreciate, while his statuettes or sketches please or satisfy the multitude who are his daily customers.

Whenever you find a preacher who takes the Bible allegorically and figuratively...that preacher is preaching an allegorical gospel which is no gospel. I thank God for a literal Christ, for a literal salvation. There is literal sorrow, literal death, literal Hell, and, thank God, there is a literal Heaven.

J. Frank Norris
J. Frank Norris
Lying is sometimes acted, insinuated, or implied, in a manner as injurious and shameful as when the falsehood is spoken outright.

It is true that the faith, which I am enabled to exercise, is altogether God's own gift; it is true that He alone supports it, and that He alone can increase it; it is true that, moment by moment, I depend upon Him for it, and that, if I were only one moment left to myself, my faith would utterly fail...

George Müller
George Müller