Three Thousand Selected Quotations from Brilliant Writers/W
WAITING.
They also serve who only stand and wait.
Let me rejoice in the light which Thou hast imparted; let me serve Thee with active zeal, humbled confidence, and wait with patient expectation for the time in which the soul which Thou receivest shall be satisfied with knowledge.
We are waiting, Master, waiting,
Wayworn, pressed with toils and strife;
Waiting, hoping, watching, praying,
Till we reach the gates of life.
Be patient, my friends; time rolls rapidly away; our longing has its end. The hour will strike, who knows how soon?—when the maternal lap of everlasting Love shall be opened to us, and the full peace of God breathe around us from the palmy summits of Eden.
Only waiting till the shadows
Are a little longer grown,
Only waiting till the glimmer
Of the day's last beam is flown.
Then from out the gathered darkness,
Holy, deathless stars shall rise,
By whose light my soul shall gladly
Tread its pathway to the skies.
Waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.
WAR.
The fruits of the gospel are love, forbearance, meekness, purity, joy; those of war are hatred, vengeance, lust, carnage, and misery.
War will never yield but to the principles of universal justice and love, and these have no sure root but in the religion of Jesus Christ.
No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
WEARINESS.
Jesus, give the weary
Calm and sweet repose.
With Thy tend'rest blessing
May our eyelids close.
After all there is a weariness that cannot be prevented. It will come on. The work brings it on. The cross brings it on. Sometimes the very walk with God brings it on, for the flesh is weak; and at such moments we hear softer and sweeter than it ever floated in the wondrous air of Mendelssohn, "O rest in the Lord," for it has the sound of an immortal requiem: "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, for they rest from their labors."
So tired! Lord, Thou wilt come
To take me to my home,
So long desired:
Only Thy grace and mercy send,
That I may serve Thee to the end,
Though I am tired.
There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest.
WILL.
We lay it down as a first principle—from which we can no more depart than from the consciousness of existence—that man is free; and therefore stand ready to embrace whatever is fairly included in the definition of freedom.
Renew my will from day to day,
Blend it with Thine, and take away
All that now makes it hard to say,
"Thy will be done."
What men want is not talent, it is purpose; in other words, not the power to achieve, but the will to labor. I believe that labor judiciously and continuously applied becomes genius.
You cannot will to possess the spirit of Christ, that must come as His gift; but you can choose to study His life, and to imitate it.
—Prentiss.
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.
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.
Want of will causes paralysis of every faculty. In spiritual things man is utterly unable because resolvedly unwilling.
The true servants of God are not solicitous that He should order them to do what they desire to do, but that they may desire to do what He orders them to do.
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.
WISDOM.
Be wise to-day; 'tis madness to defer.
—Young.
What is it to be wise?
'Tis but to know how little can be known,
To see all other's faults, and feel our own.
—Pope.
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.
—Tennyson.
The heart is wiser than the intellect.
For knowledge to become wisdom, and for the soul to grow, the soul must be rooted in God: and it is through prayer that there comes to us that which is the strength of our strength, and the virtue of our virtue, the Holy Spirit.
The question is, whether, like the Divine Child in the Temple, we are turning knowledge into wisdom, and whether, understanding more of the mysteries of life, we are feeling more of its sacred law; and whether, having left behind the priests and the scribes and the doctors and the fathers, we are about our Father's business, and becoming wise to God.
Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much;
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
—Cowper.
The wise man is but a clever infant, spelling letters from a hieroglyphical prophetic book, the lexicon of which lies in eternity.
What in me is dark,
Illumine, what is low, raise and support.
—Milton.
WOMAN.
Women of America! You can give and serve and pray. You can give self-denyingly. You can serve lovingly. You can pray conqueringly. The best example of self-denying liberality in the Bible is recorded of woman. The best example of loving service in the Bible is recorded of woman. The best example of conquering prayer in the Bible is recorded of woman. It was no great gift, no great service, no great prayer. The gift was a widow's mite. The service was the anointing of Jesus with a box of ointment. The prayer was a mother's prayer for a daughter possessed with a devil. But the gift and service and prayer were in self-denial and love and faith. And so in the sight of God they were of great price.
Without religion, man is an atheist, woman is a monster. As daughter, sister, wife, and mother, she holds in her hands, under God, the destinies of humanity. In the hours of gloom and sorrow we look to her for sympathy and comfort. Where shall she find strength for trial, comfort for sorrow, save in that gospel which has given a new meaning to the name of "mother," since it rested on the lips of the child Jesus?
Christ has lifted woman to a new place in the world. And just in proportion as Christianity has sway, will she rise to a higher dignity in human life. What she has now, and what she shall have, of privilege and true honor, she owes to that gospel which took those qualities peculiarly and which had been counted weak and unworthy, and gave them a Divine glory in Christ.
WORKS.
Although good works, which are the fruits of faith, and follow after justification, cannot put away our sins, and endure the severity of God's judgments, yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ, and spring out of a true and lively faith, insomuch that by them a lively faith may be as evidently known as a tree is discerned by its fruit.
—Articles of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
The movement of the soul along the path of duty, under the influence of holy love to God, constitutes what we call good works.
It is impossible that those who are implanted into Christ by a true faith, should not bring forth fruits of thankfulness.
—Heidelberg Catechism.
You never will be saved by works; but let us tell you most solemnly that you never will be saved without works.
Christian practice is that evidence which confirms every other indication of true godliness.
It is the hardest thing in the world not to think our good works better than they are, and to make the very best keep their distance in the office of justification. Though we must be judged by and according to our actions, yet we shall not be saved by them.
Many shall seek; do you strive. For wishing is one thing, and willing is another, and doing is yet another. And in regard to entrance into Christ's kingdom, our "doing" is trusting Him who has done all for us. "This is the work of God, that ye should believe on Him whom He hath sent." Does your wish lead to the acceptance of the condition? Then it will be fulfilled.
When a man dies they who survive him ask what property he has left behind. The angel who bends over the dying man asks what good deeds he has sent before him.
—Koran.
WORLD.
And what is this world in the immensity that teems with them? And what are they who occupy it? The universe at large would suffer as little in its splendor and variety by the destruction of our planet as the verdure and sublime magnitude of a forest would suffer by the fall of a single leaf.
Ownership in the world I have none, but I have an infinite interest in it; for if not my own it is my God's; and so it is mine in a higher than a legal sense. Yes, this is the beauty, this is the whole sublimity, this is the tender delight of life—that it is of God's governing.
The world's history is a Divine poem, of which the history of every nation is a canto, and every man a word. Its strains have been pealing along down the centuries, and though there have been mingled the discords of warring cannon and dying men, yet to the Christian philosopher and historian—the humble listener—there has been a Divine melody running through the song which speaks of hope and halcyon days to come.
WORLDLINESS.
Set not your heart upon the world, since God hath not made it your portion.
Lift thyself up, look around, and see something higher and brighter than earth, earthworms, and earthly darkness.
O my God! close my eyes, that I may see Thee; separate me from the world, that I may enjoy Thy company.
Worldliness consists in these three: attachment to the outward—attachment to the transitory—attachment to the unreal: in opposition to love for the inward, the eternal, the true: and the one of these affections is necessarily expelled by the other.
Unworldliness is this—to hold things from God in the perpetual conviction that they will not last; to have the world, and not let the world have us; to be the world's masters, and not the world's slaves.
There is such a thing as a worldly spirit, and there is such a thing as an unworldly spirit—and according as we partake of the one or the other, the savor of the sacrifice of our lives is ordinary, common-place, poor, and base; or elevating, invigorating, useful, noble, and holy.
Conformity to the world has in all ages proved the ruin of the church. It is utterly impossible to live in nearness to God, and in friendship with the world.
Show me the men who imbibe the spirit of the world, who choose the company of the world, who imitate the example of the world, conform to the maxims of the world, are swallowed up in the gayety, fashions, and amusements of the world;—behold, these are the ungodly, who are brought into desolation as in a moment.
There is no surer evidence of an unconverted state than to have the things of the world uppermost in our aim, love, and estimation.
Not by empty protestations against the pleasures of the world, and cynical denunciations of its enjoyments, but by our superiority to its perishing greatness, to its fading beauties, and its impotent antagonisms, are we to express our redemption from its power.
We wonder why a certain church-member is so lax in his devotions and loose in his practices. The reason is that, while his trunk and his branches are over on the church side of the wall, his roots run under the wall and dwell in the bad soil on the other side.
Christians should live in the world, but not be filled with it. A ship lives in the water; but if the water gets into the ship, she goes to the bottom. So Christians may live in the world; but if the world gets into them, they sink.
The only true method of action in this world is to be in it, but not of it.
A Christian making money fast is just a man in a cloud of dust, it will fill his eyes if he be not careful.
Christianity does not condemn traffic, commerce, material activities of any kind. Its highest development is possible with the busiest life. To be a first-rate business man does not involve being a fourth-rate Christian.
Buying, possessing, accumulating—this is not worldliness. But doing this in the love of it, with no love of God paramount—doing it so that thoughts of eternity and God are an intrusion—doing it so that one's spirit is secularized in the process; this is worldliness.
They best pass over the world who trip over it quickly; for it is but a bog. If we stop, we sink.
I had as lief preach humanity to a battle of eagles, as to urge honesty and integrity upon those who have determined to be rich, and to gain it by gambling stakes, and madmen's ventures.
WORTH.
In all our noble Anglo-Saxon language, there is scarcely a nobler word than worth; yet this term has now almost exclusively a pecuniary meaning. So that if you ask what a man is worth, nobody ever thinks of telling you what he is, but what he has. The answer will never refer to his merits, his virtues, but always to his possessions. He is worth—so much money.
Dignity and rank and riches are all corruptible and worthless; but moral character has an immortality that no sword-point can destroy.