That prayer which does not succeed in moderating our wishes--in changing the passionate desire into still submission, the anxious, tumultuous expectation into silent surrender--is no true prayer, and proves that we have not the spirit of true prayer.

Frederick William Robertson

Categorized in : Expectations Prayer Passionate Desire

Instruction ends in the schoolroom, but education ends only with life. A child is given to the universe to be educated.

Frederick William Robertson

education science children

There are three things in the world that deserve no mercy, hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny.

Frederick William Robertson

three hypocrisy world

Marriage is not a union merely between two creatures - it is a union between two spirits; and the intention of that bond is to perfect the nature of both.

Frederick William Robertson

perfect love two

We win by tenderness. We conquer by forgiveness.

Frederick William Robertson

conquer forgiveness winning

There is a past which is gone forever, but there is a future which is still our own.

Frederick William Robertson

thinking-about-you thinking-of-you past

We hear in these days a great deal respecting rights--the rights of private judgment, the rights of labor, the rights of property, and the rights of man. Rights are grand things, divine things in this world of God's; but the way in which we expound these rights, alas! seems to me to be the very incarnation of selfishness. I can see nothing very noble in a man who is forever going about calling for his own rights. Alas! alas! for the man who feels nothing more grand in this wondrous, divine world than his own rights.

Frederick William Robertson

rights forever men

In God's world, for those who are in earnest, there is no failure. No work truly done, no word earnestly spoken, no sacrifice freely made, was ever made in vain (as long as it was done out of love, not personal glory)

Frederick William Robertson

sacrifice failure long

The Divine wisdom has given us prayer, not as a means whereby to obtain the good things of earth, but as a means whereby we learn to do without them; not as a means whereby we escape evil, but as a means whereby we become strong to meet it.

Frederick William Robertson

strong prayer mean

If you think that you can sin, and then by cries avert the consequences of sin, you insult God's character.

Frederick William Robertson

hypocrisy character thinking

False notions of liberty are strangely common. People talk of it as if it meant the liberty of doing whatever one likes - whereas the only liberty that a man, worthy of the name of man, ought to ask for, is, to have all restrictions, inward and outward, removed that prevent his doing what he ought.

Frederick William Robertson

names men people

I will tell you what to hate. Hate hypocrisy, hate cant, hate indolence, oppression, injustice; hate Pharisaism; hate them as Christ hated them with a deep, living, godlike hatred.

Frederick William Robertson

hate hypocrisy hatred

It is not the situation which makes the man, but the man who makes the situation.

Frederick William Robertson

uplifting success inspirational

It is not the number of books you read; nor the variety of sermons which you hear; nor the amount of religious conversation in which you mix: but it is the frequency and the earnestness with which you meditate on these things, till the truth which may be in them becomes your own, and part of your own being, that ensures your spiritual growth.

Frederick William Robertson

learning truth book

You reap what you sow — not something else, but that. An act of love makes the soul more loving. A deed of humbleness deepens humbleness. The thing reaped is the very thing sown, multiplied a hundred fold. You have sown a seed of life, you reap life everlasting.

Frederick William Robertson

humbleness deeds soul

... religious controversy does only harm. It destroys humble inquiry after truth, and throws all the energies into an attempt to prove ourselves right-a spirit in which no man gets at truth.

Frederick William Robertson

religious humble men

The only revenge which is essentially Christian is that of retaliating by forgiveness.

Frederick William Robertson

revenge christian

What the world calls virtue is a name and a dream without Christ. The foundation of all human excellence must be laid deep in the blood of the Redeemer's cross, and in the power of His resurrection.

Frederick William Robertson

names dream blood

Pray till prayer makes you forget your own wish, and leave it or merge it in God's will.

Frederick William Robertson

praying prayer wish

Read a work on the "Evidences of Christianity," and it may become highly probable that Christianity, etc., are true. This is an opinion. Feel God. Do His will, till the Absolute Imperative within you speaks as with a living voice, "Thou shalt, and thou shalt not;" and then you do not think, you know that there is a God.

Frederick William Robertson

voice may thinking

A silent man is easily reputed wise. A man who suffers none to see him in the common jostle and undress of life, easily gathers round him a mysterious veil of unknown sanctity, and men honor him for a saint. The unknown is always wonderful.

Frederick William Robertson

honor wise men