Quotes on Building Character
"I cannot truly imagine a truly great person who hasn't suffered." Fyoder Dostoevsky
"Much mental suffering is tied to our false expectations. We may so link our hopes and joys and future to a new job, to a promotion, or to certain kinds of success, to propsperity, that when they fail to materialize, we are utterly crushed. But quiet confidence in God alone breeds stability and delight amid "all the changing scenes of life. The degree of our peace of mind is tied tour prayer life because we address a prayer answering God, a personal God, a responding God and a sovereign God whom we can trust with the outcomes of life's confusions." DA Carson, How Long O Lord.
"Comfort and prosperity have never enriched the world as much as adversity has." Billy Graham
"If we are given gold, would we not test it to determine it's value? If we doubted its genuineness - we would test it by fire...and so God with us...." John Calvin
"Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men." Seneca
"The fire of affliction reveals the quality of our faith " John Calvin
"Worry is like a rocking chair - - it gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you anywhere." Spurgeon
"Experience is the hardest because it gives the test before the lesson." John MacArthur
"I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable." Joseph Addison
"Christ was willing to suffer and be despised, and darest thou complain of anything?" Thomas a Kempis
"Comfort and prosperity have never enriched the world as much as adversity has." Billy Graham
"Those who never make mistakes, never make anything." Kimber Kauffmann, pastor College Park church
"Once they have taken everything from me, and I respond like Christ, they have lost their control over me" - Unknown (The greatest honor for a Christian is to be like Christ and suffer for the name of God)
"Endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it to glory." William Barclay
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optomist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." Wiinston Churchill
"The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory." Cicero
"A man of character finds a special attractiveness in difficulty, since it is only by coming to grips with difficulty that he can realize his potentialities." Charles DeGaulle
"It is not the critic who counts......not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy course; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of great achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat." Theodore Roosevelt
"There's no future in questioning...." Russ Blowers - pastor emeritus - E91 Christian church-Indianapolis,IN
"pride - is the root of all other sins. It's even in the most godly people we know" John Piper
"In times of defeat, we never know how close we are to victory. In every event of failure, God has planted a seed of success." Charles Stanley
"Learn to cry much, especially with others" John Piper
"Pain narrows vision. The most private of sensations, it forces us to think of ourselves and little else." Phillip Yancey
"Endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory." William Barclay
In the arena of human life, the honors and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities in action…I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is victory over self.” Aristotle
"The beautiful colors of the leaf are only revealed in the fall season,....... when the leaf is dying." Tim Doyle
"God whispers in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain. It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world" C.S. Lewis
"What is the greatest deficiency among human Chrsitians? They have an inadequate view of human suffering." Helmut Thielicke, German pastor and theologian
"What doesn't destroy me makes me stronger." Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Every man dies; not every man really lives." The movie Braveheart
"To suffer passes, to have suffered never passes." Unknown.
"Experience is valuable only when it has brought suffering and when the suffering has left its mark upon both body and mind." Andre Maurois
"Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood." Nietzsche.
"It is easier to diminish God than it is to enlarge one's heart." Mike Mason, The Gospel According to Job
"It is easy for us to tarnish God's character because He never argues back; He never tries to defend or vindicate himself." Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest
"God gave me nothing I wanted and everything I needed." Brett Butler, professional baseball player with the Los Angeles Dodgers and former cancer victim.
"Our response to suffering is an accurate barometer of our soul, Steven J. Lawson, "When All Hell Breaks Loose - You May be Doing Something Right".
"Christ brings the heart to heaven first - and then He brings the person." Unknown
"A tree is best measured when it is down - - and so it is with people." Carl Sandburg, Lincoln in the War Years.
"If you allow physical selfishness, mental carelessness, moral insensitivity, or spiritual weakness, everyone in contact with you will sufer. Our sufficiency is from God and God alone," Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest
"As a saint of God my attitude toward sorrow and difficulty should not be to ask that it be prevented, but to ask that God protect me so that I may remain what He created me to be, in spite of all my fires of sorrow. Sorrow removes a great deal of a person's shallowness, but it does not always make the person better. Suffering either gives me to myself or destroys me. You cannot find or receive yourself through success, because you lose your head over pride. And you cannot receive yourself through the monotony of your daily life, because you give into complaining. The only way you find yourself is in the fires of sorrow. Why it should be this way is immaterial. The fact that it is true is in Scripture and in human experience." Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest
"When we are consciously aware of being used as broken bread and poured out wine, we have yet another level to reach - a level where all awareness of ourselves and what God is doing through us is completely eliminated. A saint is never consciously a saint - a saint is consciously dependent on God." Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest
"If a bird is flying for pleasure it flies with the wind, but if it meets danger, it turns and faces the wind, in order that it may rise higher." Corrie ten Boom
"Whatever brings you to your knees in weakness carries the greatest potential for your personal success and spiritual victory." Charles Stanley
"No one enjoys feeling weak, whether it is emotionally, spiritually or physically. There is something within the human spirit that wants to resist the thought of weakness. Many times this is nothing more than our human pride at work. Just as weakness carries a great potential for strength, pride carries an equally great potential for defeat." Charles Stanley
"There are 3 things that make a man of God:
Supplication
Meditation
Tribulation
Martin Luther
"You will not find one Godly man who came out of an affliction worse than when he went into it. Though for a little while he was shaken, yet, at last, he was better for an affliction. But, a great many Godly men have been worse for their prosperity." Jeremiah Burroughs
"I believe the hard heartest, most cross grained and most unloving Christians in all the world are those who have not had much trouble in their life. And those that are the most sympathizing, loving and Christlike are generally those who have the most affliction. The worse thing that can happen to any of us is to have a path made too smooth. One of the greatest blessings the Lord ever gave us was a cross." Charles Spurgeon
"He jests at scars who never felt a wound" Shakespeare
"Christian character does not get strong by a life of success." Kimber Kauffman, pastor College Park Baptist Church, Indpls, IN
"If you only knew what God had to take me through to get me to the place where he could use me to be a blessing to other people, I doubt whether you would be willing to pay the price." Chuck Swindoll
"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved." Helen Keller
"The stronger the winds, the deeper the roots. The deeper the roots and the longer the winds, the more beautiful the tree." Charles Swindoll on Psalm 1
"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do." Eleanor Roosevelt
"I had to be healed of my desire to be healed." Joni Eareckson Tada
"Our strength often increases in proportion to the obstacles imposed upon it." Paul De Rapin
"The greatness of a man's power is the measure of his surrender." William Booth
"We must take our troubles to the Lord, but we must do more than that, we must leave them there." Hannah Whitall Smith
"You can't change circumstances and you can't change other people, but God can change you." Evelyn A. Theissen
"What was hard to suffer is sweet to remember." Seneca
"Calamity is the perfect glass wherein we truly see and know ourselves." William Davenant
"Many a text [of Scripture] is written in a secret ink which must be held to the fire of adversity to make it visible." Charles Spurgeon
"My temptations have been my Masters of Divinity." Martin Luther
"I have known more of God since I came to this bed than through all my life." Ralph Erskine (lying in bed "racked with pain")
"The darkness is a holy of holies of which no one can rob me. In the darkness I meet God face to face." Kagawa of Japan (describing what it felt like when he thought he was going blind)
"A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver 5 minutes longer." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"If you had never known physical pain in your life, how could you appreciate the nail scarred hands with which Jesus Christ will meet you?" Joni Eareckson Tada
"In a way I wish I could take to heaven my old, tattered Everest & Jennings wheelchair. I would point to the empty seat and say, "Lord, for decades I was paralyzed in this chair. But it showed me how paralyzed You must have felt to be nailed to Your Cross. My limitations taught me something about the limitations You endured when You laid aside your robes of state and put on the indignity of human flesh." At that point, with my strong and glorified body, I might sit in it, rub the armrests with my hands, look up at Jesus, and add, "the weaker I felt in this chair, the harder I leaned on You. And the harder I leaned, the more I discovered how strong You are. Thank you, Jesus for learning obedience in your suffering...You gave me grace to learn obedience in mine." Joni Eareckson Tada
"How easily we equate our purpose/meaning/usefulness with things we physically do, and how little emphasis we place on things of the spirit and acts of encouragement which require little or nothing of us physically." Tina (in Joni's book, When God Weeps)
"God is more concerned with conforming me to the likeness of His Son than leaving me in my comfort zones. God is more interested in inward qualities than outward circumstances - things like refining my faith, humbling my heart, cleaning up my thought life and strengthening my character." Joni Eareckson Tada
"The greatest good suffering can do for me is to increase my capacity for God." Joni Eareckson Tada
"The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it." Moliere
" Looking back it seems to me, All the grief that had to be, Left me when the pain was o'er, Stronger than I was before." Unknown
"Most anyone can stand adversity, but to test a person's character give him power." Abraham Lincoln
"It's not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog." Archie Griffin
"You may have just victoriously gone through a great crisis, but now be alert about the things that may appear to be the least likely to tempt you. Beware of thinking that the areas of your life where you have experienced victory in the past are now the least likely to cause you to stumble and fall. Stay alert, keep your memory sharp before God. Unguarded strength is actually a double weakness, because that is where the least likely temptation s will be effective in sapping strength. The bible characters stumbled over their strong points, never their weak ones." Oswald Chambers
"No sin is worse than the sin of self pity, because it removes God from the throne of our lives, replacing Him with our own self interests. It causes us to open our mouths only to complain, and we simply become spiritual sponges - - always absorbing, never giving and never being satisfied. And there is nothing lovely or generous about our lives." Oswald Chambers
"Better to be taught by suffering than to be taught by sin ! Better to lie in God's dungeon then to revel in the devil's palaces." Charles Spurgeon
"When the pangs shoot through our body, and ghastly death appears in view, people see the patience of the dying Christian. Our infirmities become the black velvet on which the diamond of God's love glitters all the more brightly. Thank God I can suffer ! Thank God I can be made the object of shame and contempt, for in this way God shall be glorified." Charles Spurgeon
"Paul reckoned his great trial to be a gift. It is well put. He does not say, "there was inflictedon me a thorn in the flesh", but "there was given to me". This is holy reckoning. Child of God, among all the goods of your house, you have not one single article that is a better token of divine love to you than your daily cross." Charles Spurgeon (2 Cor 12:7)
