It is easier to declaim like an orator against a thousand sins in others than to mortify one sin in ourselves; to be more industrious in our pulpits than in our closets; to preach twenty Sermons to our people than one to our own hearts.
Let us have wine and woman, mirth and laughter, Sermons and soda-water the day after.
lord byronSermons in stones and good in every thing.
william shakespearePreachers are not sermon makers, but men makers and saint makers, and he only is well-trained for this business who has made himself a man and a saint. It is not great talents nor great learning nor great preachers that God needs, but men great in holiness, great in faith, great in love, great in fidelity, great for God - men always preaching by holy Sermons in the pulpit, by holy lives out of it. These can mold a generation for God.
edward mckendree boundsAlas, how can the poor souls live in concord when you preachers sow amongst them in your Sermons debate and discord? They look to you for light and you bring them darkness. Amend these crimes, I exhort you, and set forth God's word truly, both by true preaching and giving a good example, or else, I, whom God has appointed his vicar and high minister here, will see these divisions extinct, and these enormities corrected...
King Henry VIIIIt is an unsufferable blasphemy to reject the public ministry or to say that people can become holy without Sermons and Church. This involves a destruction of the Church and rebellion against ecclesiastical order; such upheavals must be warded off and punished like all other revolts.
Martin LutherWordsworth went to the lakes, but he was never a lake poet. He found in stones the Sermons he had already hidden there.
william wordsworthStep right up young lady Your two hundred birthdays make you old if not senile And we see the symptoms there in your rigor mortis smile With your old folks eating dog food and your children eating paint While the pirates own the flag and sell us Sermons on restraint.
harry chapinThe greatest Sermons are the ones given with a closed mouth and an open heart.
steve maraboliHollywood no longer offers entertainment. Instead, activism has replaced acting, and Sermons have supplanted stories. Instead of a good yarn, you get a yawn.
ilana mercerFew are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their Sermons on the mountains go to our hearts; and if people in general could be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in the way of forest preservation would vanish.
john muirAt dinner we talked of Newman, whose Dream of Gerontius Gladstone puts very high, so high that he speaks of it in the same breath with the Divina Commedia. At length he asked, "Which of his writings will be read in a hundred years?" "Well," said Henry Smith, "certainly his hymn, 'Lead kindly Light,' and 'The Parting of Friends,' the sermon he preached before leaving Littlemore." "I go further," said Gladstone. "I think all his parochial Sermons will be read."
M. E. Grant DuffI will tell you what this people need, with regard to preaching; you need, figuratively, to have it rain pitchforks, tines downwards, from this pulpit, Sunday after Sunday. Instead of the smooth, beautiful, sweet, still, silk-velvet-lipped preaching, you should have Sermons like peals of thunder, and perhaps we then can get the scales from our eyes. This style is necessary in order to save many of this people.
Brigham YoungFew things surpass old wine, and they may preach who please, the more because they preach in vain. Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter, Sermons and soda-water the day after.
lord byronResort to Sermons, but to prayers most: Praying's the end of preaching.
George HerbertTo preach practical Sermons as they are called, that is, Sermons upon virtues and vices, without inculcating those great Scripture truths of redemption, grace, etc., which alone can incite and enable us to forsake sin and follow after righteousness, what is it but to put. together the wheels, and set the hands of a watch, forgetting the spring, which is to make them all go?
If the truth were known, many Sermons are prepared and preached with more regard for the sermon than the souls of the hearers.
The most intelligent hearers are those who enjoy most heartily the simplest preaching. It is not they who clamor for superlatively intellectual or aesthetic Sermons. Daniel Webster used to complain of some of the preaching to which he listened. "In the house of God" he wanted to meditate" upon the simple varieties, and the undoubted facts of religion;" not upon mysteries and abstractions.
The great bell of Moscow is too large to be hung, the question arises, what was the use of making it? Some preachers are so learned that they cannot make themselves understood, or else cannot bring their minds to preach plain, gospel Sermons; here, too, the same question might be asked.
The pious farmer, who ne'er misses pray'rs, With patience suffers unexpected rain; He blesses Heav'n for what its bounty spares, And sees, resign'd, a crop of blighted grain. But, spite of Sermons, farmers would blaspheme, If a star fell to set their thatch on flame.
lady mary wortley montaguHollywood no longer offers entertainment. Instead, activism has replaced acting, and Sermons have supplanted stories. Instead of a good yarn, you get a yawn.
He bought a Bible of the new translation, And in his life he show'd great reformation; He walkèd mannerly and talked meekly; He heard three lectures and two Sermons weekly; He vow'd to shun all companions unruly, And in his speech he used no oath but "truly;" And zealously to keep the Sabbath's rest.
It’s the music in our conscience, the dance in our spirit, which wants to make all Puritan litanies, all moral Sermons, and petty bourgeois respectability sound out of tune.
Let us never forget that, to be profited, that is, to be spiritually improved in knowledge, faith, holiness, joy, and love, is the end of hearing Sermons, and not merely to have our taste gratified by genius, eloquence, and oratory.