Richard Cecil Quotes

The first step towards knowledge is to know that we are ignorant.

Every year of my life I grow more convinced that it is wisest and best to fix our attention on the beautiful and the good, and dwell as little as possible on the evil and the false.

God's way of answering the Christian's prayer for more patience, experience, hope and love often is to put him into the furnace of affliction.

Example is more forcible than precept. People look at my six days in the week to see what I mean on the seventh.

All extremes are error. The reverse of error is not truth, but error still. Truth lies between extremes.

Faith makes all evil good to us, and all good better; unbelief makes all good evil, and all evil worse.

In the midst of sorrow, faith draws the sting out of every trouble, and takes out the bitterness from every affliction.

Wisdom prepares for the worst, but folly leaves the worst for the day when it comes.

The history of all the great characters of the Bible is summed up in this one sentence: They acquainted themselves with God, and acquiesced His will in all things.

I could write down twenty cases wherein I wished that God had done otherwise than he did, but which I now see, if I had had my own way, would have led to extensive mischief.

Eloquence is vehement simplicity.

Think of the ills from which you are exempt, and it will aid you to bear patiently those which now you may suffer.

He who sows, even with tears, the precious seed of faith, hope, and love, shall doubtless come again with joy, bringing his sheaves with him, because it is the very nature of that seed to yield a joyful harvest.

Unbelief starves the soul; faith finds food in famine.

The Christian will find his parentheses for prayer even in the busiest hours of life.

Faith laughs at the shaking of the spear; unbelief trembles at the shaking of a leaf.

Abraham teaches us the right way of conversing with God : "And Abraham fell on his face, and God talked with him." When we plead with Him, our faces should be in the dust.

It is much easier to settle a point than to act on it.

Let family worship be short, savory, simple, plain, tender, heavenly.

Every man is an original and solitary character. None can either understand or feel the book of his own life like himself.

Duties are ours; events are God's. This removes an infinite burden from the shoulders of a miserable, tempted, dying creature. On this consideration only, can he securely lay down his head, and close his eyes.

The world looks at ministers out of the pulpit to know that they mean in it.

If there is any person to whom you feel a dislike, that is the person of whom you ought never to speak.

Philosophy is a proud, sullen detector of the poverty and misery of man. It may turn him from the world with a proud, sturdy contempt; but it cannot come forward and say, here are rest, grace, pardon, peace, strength, and consolation.

An accession of wealth is a dangerous predicament for a man. At first he is stunned if the accession be sudden, and is very humble and very grateful. Then he begins to speak a little louder, people think him more sensible, and soon he thinks himself so.