C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Will
Our wills are ours to make them Thine.
The star of the unconquered will.
There is nothing good or evil save in the will.
Our wills are ours, we know not how.
Will is not unfrequently weakness.
He would make his will lord of his reason.
People do not lack strength; they lack will.
He wants wit that wants resolved will.
Will is deaf, and hears no heedful friends.
No one is a slave whose will is free.
A boy’s will is the wind’s will.
All life needs for life is possible to will.
The will of man is by his reason sway’d.
How does our will become sanctified? By conforming itself unreservedly to that of God.
He who is firm in will moulds the world to himself.
Everything in this world depends upon will.
A tender heart, a will inflexible.
Want of will causes paralysis of every faculty. In spiritual things man is utterly unable because resolvedly unwilling.
To deny the freedom of the will is to make morality impossible.
The only way of setting the will free is to deliver it from wilfulness.
It is the will that makes the action good or ill.
In idle wishes fools supinely stay; be there a will, and wisdom finds a way.
A willing heart adds feather to the heel, and makes the clown a winged Mercury.
That ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
No action will be considered as blameless unless the will was so; for by the will the act was dictated.
The saddest failures in life are those that come from the not putting forth of power and will to succeed.
Lawless are they that make their wills their law.
Leaning on Him, make with reverent meekness His own thy will.
The general of a large army may be defeated, but you cannot defeat the determined will of a peasant.
The despotism of will in ideas is styled plan, project, character, obstinacy; its despotism in desires is called passion.
We sought therefore to amend our will, and not to suffer it through despite to languish long time in error.
There may be some tenderness in the conscience and yet the will be a very stone; and as long as the will stands out, there is no broken heart.
“My will, not Thine, be done,” turned paradise into a desert. “Thy will, not mine be done,” turned the desert into paradise, and made Gethsemane the gate of heaven.
We are too fond of our own will; we want to be doing what we fancy mighty things: but the great point is to do small things, when called to them, in a right spirit.
Whatever the will commands, the whole man must do; the empire of the will over all the faculties being absolutely overruling and despotic.
In the moral world there is nothing impossible if we can bring a thorough will to it. Man can do everything with himself, but he must not attempt to do too much with others.
God takes men’s hearty desires and will, instead of the deed, where they have not power to fulfill it; but he never took the bare deed instead of the will.
There is nothing more precious to a man than his will; there is nothing which he relinquishes with so much reluctance.
Study to follow His will in all, to have no will but His. This is thy duty and thy wisdom. Nothing is gained by spurning and struggling, but to hurt and vex thyself; but by complying all is gained,—sweet peace.
To those who are His all things are not only easy to be borne, but even to be gladly chosen. Their will is united to that will which moves heaven and earth, which gives laws to angels, and rules the courses of the world.
A good inclination is but the first rude draught of virtue; but the finishing strokes are from the will, which, if well disposed, will by degrees perfect; if ill-disposed, will by the superinduction of ill habits quickly deface it.
Calmness of will is a sign of grandeur. The vulgar, far from hiding their will, blab their wishes. A single spark of occasion discharges the child of passions into a thousand crackers of desire.
If the will, which is the law of our nature, were withdrawn from our memory, fancy, understanding, and reason, no other hell could equal, for a spiritual being, what we should then feel from the anarchy of our powers. It would be conscious madness,—a horrid thought!
Do not let the loud utterances of your own wills anticipate, nor drown, the still, small voice in which God speaks. Bridle impatience till He does. If you cannot hear His whisper, wait till you do. Take care of running before you are sent. Keep your wills in equipoise till God’s hand gives the impulse and direction.
There dwelt in him a mighty will, which merely said to the serving company of impulses: Let it be! Such a will is not stoicism, which rules merely over internal malefactors, or knaves, or prisoners of war, or children; but it is that genially energetic spirit which conditions and binds the healthy savages of our bosoms, and which says more royally than the Spanish regent to others: I, the king.