C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Thomas Brooks
Afflictions are but as a dark entry into our Father’s house.
Ambition is a gilded misery, a secret poison, a hidden plague, the engineer of deceit, the mother of hypocrisy, the parent of envy, the original of vices, the moth of holiness, the blinder of hearts, turning medicines into maladies, and remedies into diseases.
Cold prayers shall never have any warm answers. God will suit His returns to our requests. Lifeless services shall have lifeless answers. When men are dull, God will be dumb.
Faith is a Christian’s right eye, without which he cannot look for Christ; right hand, without which he cannot do for Christ; it is his tongue, without which he cannot speak for Christ; it is his vital spirit, without which he cannot act for Christ.
Faith is the champion of grace, and love the nurse; but humility is the beauty of grace.
He who stands upon his own strength will never stand.
How many threadbare souls are to be found under silken cloaks and gowns!
It is not he who knows most, nor he who hears most, nor yet he who talks most, but he who exercises grace most, who has most communion with God.
It is the very nature of grace to make a man strive to be most eminent in that particular grace which is most opposed to his bosom sin.
Nothing humbles and breaks the heart of a sinner like mercy and love. Souls that converse much with sin and wrath, may be much terrified; but souls that converse much with grace and mercy, will be much humbled.
Our sins are debts that none can pay but Christ. It is not our tears, but His blood; it is not our sighs, but His sufferings, that can testify for our sins. Christ must pay all, or we are prisoners forever.
Secret sins commonly lie nearest the heart.
The best and sweetest flowers of paradise God gives to His people when they are upon their knees. Prayer is the gate of heaven.
There is no such way to attain to greater measures of grace, as for a man to live up to that little grace he has.
There is the seed of all sins—of the vilest and worst of sins—in the best of men.
Though there is nothing more dangerous, yet there is nothing more ordinary, than for weak saints to make their sense and feeling the judge of their condition. We must strive to walk by faith.
Weak Christians are afraid of the shadow of the cross.
When you have overcome one temptation, you must be ready to enter the lists with another. As distrust, in some sense, is the mother of safety, so security is the gate of danger. A man had need to fear this most of all, that he fears not at all.