William Law Quotes - Page 2

Receive every day as a resurrection from death, as a new enjoyment of life; meet every rising sun with such sentiments of God's goodness, as if you had seen it, and all things, new-created upon your account: and under the sense of so great a blessing, let your joyful heart praise and magnify so good and glorious a Creator.

If our life is not a course of humility, self-denial, renunciation of the world, poverty of spirit, and heavenly affection, we do not live the lives of Christians.

Wherever thou goest, whatever thou dost at home, or abroad, in the field, or at church, do all in a desire of union with Christ, in imitation of His tempers and inclinations, and look upon all as nothing, but that which exercises, and increases the spirit and life of Christ in thy soul.

As a good Christian should consider every place as holy, because God is there, so he should look upon every part of his life as a matter of holiness, because it is offered unto God. The profession of a clergyman is a holy profession, because it is a ministration in holy things, an attendance at the alter. But worldly business is to be made holy unto the Lord, by being done as a service unto Him, and in conformity to His Divine will.

Let every creature have your love. Love, with its fruits of meekness, patience, and humility, is all that we can wish for ourselves and our fellow creatures. For this is to live in God, united with him, both for time and eternity. To desire to communicate good to everyone, in the degree that we can and to which each person is capable of receiving from us, is a divine temper, for thus God stands unchangeably disposed towards the whole creation.

They, therefore, who are hasty in their devotions and think a little will do, are strangers both to the nature of devotion and the nature of man; they do not know that they are to learn to pray, and that prayer is to be learnt as they learn other things, by frequency, constancy, and perseverance.

As all types and figures in the Law were but empty shadows without the coming of Christ, so the New Testament is but a dead letter without the Holy Spirit in redeemed men as the living power of a full salvation.

We may justly condemn ourselves as the greatest sinners we know because we know more of the folly of our own heart than we do of other people's.

He who complains of the weather, complains of the God who ordained the weather!

Faith is not a notion, but a real strong essential hunger, an attracting or magnetic desire of Christ, which as it proceeds from a seed of the divine nature in us, so it attracts and unites with its like.

You have no questions to ask of any body, no new way that you need inquire after; no oracle that you need to consult; for whilst you shut yourself up in patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God, you are in the very arms of Christ, your heart is His dwelling-place, and He lives and works in you.

All people desire what they believe will make them happy. If a person is not full of desire for God, we can only conclude that he is engaged with another happiness.

The more we pay for any truth, the better is our bargain.

This new birth in Christ, thus firmly believed and continually desired, will do everything that thou wantest to have done in thee, it will dry up all the springs of vice, stop all the workings of evil in thy nature, it will bring all that is good into thee, it will open all the gospel within thee, and thou wilt know what it is to be taught of God.

Follow Christ in the denial of all the wills of self, and then all is put away that separates you from God; the heaven born new creature will come to life in you, which alone knows and enjoys the things of God, and has his daily food of gladness in that manifold blessed, and blessed, which Christ preached on the mount.

Love and pity and wish well to every soul in the world; dwell in love, and then you dwell in God.

What could begin to deny self, if there were not something in man different from self?

This is the state of all creatures, whether men or angels; as they make not themselves, so they enjoy nothing from themselves; if they are great, it must be only as great receivers of the gifts of God; their power can only be so much of the divine power acting in them; their wisdom can be only so much of the divine wisdom shining within them; and their light and glory, only so much of the light and glory of God shining upon them.

Death is not more certainly a separation of our souls from our bodies than the Christian life is a separation of our souls from worldly tempers, vain indulgences, and unnecessary cares.

The eyes of our souls only then begin to see when our bodily eyes are closing.

He that rightly understands the reasonableness and Excellency of charity will know that it can never be excusable to waste any of our money in pride and folly.

If someone is leaving you behind, and you are becoming jealous and embittered, keep praying that he may have success in the very matter where he is awakening your envy; and whether he is helped or not, one thing is sure, that your own soul will be cleansed and ennobled.

The sun meets not the springing bud that stretches towards him with half the certainty that God, the source of all good, communicates himself to the soul that longs to partake of him.

The will is that which has all power; it makes heaven and it makes hell: for there is no hell but where the will of the creature is turned from God, nor any heaven but where the will of the creature worketh with God.

No education can be of true advantage to young women but that which trains them up in humble industry, in great plainness of living, in exact modesty of dress.