QUOTES: HOLINESS/CHARACTER
“Each year one vicious habit rooted out, in time might make the worst man good throughout…
He is ill clothed that is bare of Virtue…
Anger is never without a Reason, but seldom with a good one.”
Benjamin Franklin
THE THIRTEEN VIRTUES:
1. Temperance: Eat not to dullness. Drink not to elevation
2. Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself. Avoid trifling conversation,
3. Order: Let all your things have their places. Let each part of your business have its time.
4. Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve.
5. Frugality: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself, i.e., waste nothing.
6. Industry: Lose no time. Be always employed in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. Sincerity: Use no hurtful deceit. Think innocently and justly; if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. Justice: Wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. Moderation: Avoid extremes. Forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes or habitation.
11. Tranquility: Be not disturbed at trifles or at accidents common r unavoidable.
12. Chastity: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring – never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your
own or other’s peace or reputation.
13. Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
Let not Pleasure tempt thee, no Profit allure thee, no Ambition corrupt thee, no Example sway thee, no
Persuasion move thee, to do any thing which thou knowest to be evil; so shalt thou always live jollily, for a
good Conscience is a continual Christmas.
Benjamin Franklin
“I remember the thoughts I used then to have of holiness. I remember I then said sometimes to myself, I do
certainly know that I love holiness, such as the gospel prescribes. It appeared to me, there was nothing in it
but what was ravishingly lovely. It appeared to me, to be the highest beauty and amiableness, above all other
beauties, that it was a divine beauty, far purer than any thing here upon earth, and that every thing else was
like mire, filth, and defilement, in comparison of it.
“Holiness, as I then wrote down some of my contemplations on it, appeared to me to be of a sweet,
pleasant, charming, serene, calm nature. It seemed to me, it brought an inexpressible purity, brightness,
peacefulness, and ravishment to the soul; and that it made the soul like a field or garden of God, with all
manner of pleasant flowers; that is all pleasant, delightful, and undisturbed; enjoying a sweet calm, and the
gently vivifying beams of the sun. The soul of a true Christian, as I then wrote my meditations, appeared like
such a little white flower, as we see in the spring of the year, low, and humble on the ground, opening its
bosom to receive the pleasant beams of the sun’s glory; rejoicing as it were in a calm rapture; diffusing
around a sweet fragrancy; standing peacefully and lovingly, in the midst of other flowers round about; all in
like manner opening their bosoms, to drink in the light of the sun.”
The Protestant Mystics, by Jonathan Edwards, p. 153 to B
Character: from Greek charassein, “to scratch” or “engrave” 1a: A conventional graphic device placed on
an object as an indication of ownership, origin, or relationship. 2a: One of the attributes or features that
make up and distinguish an individual.
Webster’s Dictionary
“Man is made to adore and obey; but if you give him nothing to worship, he will fashion his own divinities
and find a chieftain in his own passions.”
Benjamin Distaeli
“Every man has three characters—that which he exhibits, that which he has, and that which he thinks he
has.”
Alphonse Karr
“When some English moralists write about the importance of having character, they appear to mean only the
importance of having a dull character.”
G.K. Chesterton
“A revolutionary age is an age of action; ours in an age of advertisement and publicity. Nothing ever
happens but there is immediate publicity everywhere.”
Søren Kierkegaard
“Mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“We must be doing what we want the world to be.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“I pray Heaven bestow the best of blessings on this House and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none
but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.”
--John Adams in a prayer on November 2, 1800, that FDR later had carved above the fireplace in the
State Dining Room in the White House.
“Madonna told me to break every rule I could think of, and then when I was done to make up some new ones
and break them.”
The choreographer for Madonna’s 1990 world tour
“That such large numbers of the cultivated and intelligent have identified themselves deliberately with those
who are supposed to have no love for instinctual renunciation, suggests to me the most elaborate act of
suicide that Western intellectual have ever staged.”
Philip Rieff
“In the long run, the public interest depends on private virtue.”
James Q. Wilson
“Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.”
Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor from A.D. 161-180
“Produce good persons, the rest follows.”
Walt Whitman
“Honor is a harder master than the Law.”
Mark Twain
“Sow a thought, and reap an act
Sow an act, and reap a habit
Sow a habit, and reap a character
Sow a character, and reap a destiny.”
“My whole heart has not one single grain, this moment, of thirst after approbation. I feel alone with God; He
fills the void: I have not one wish, one will, one desire, but in Him; He hath set my feet in a large room. I
have wondered and stood amazed that God should make a conquest of all within me by love.”
Lady Huntington
“Many years since I saw that “without holiness no man shall see the Lord.” I began by following after it and
inciting all with whom I had intercourse to do the same. Ten years after, God gave me a clearer view than I
ever had before of the way to obtain it; namely, by faith in the Son of God. And immediately I declared to
all, “We are saved from sin, we are made holy by faith.” This I testified in private, in public, and in print,
and God confirmed it by a thousand witnesses. I have continued to declare this for above thirty years, and
God has continued to confirm my work.”
John Wesley in 1771
“Holiness – as I then wrote down some of my contemplations on it – appeared to me to be of a sweet, calm,
pleasant, charming, serene nature, which brought an inexpressible purity, brightness, peacefulness,
ravishment to the soul; in other words, that it made the soul like a field or garden of God, with all manner of
pleasant fruits and flowers, all delightful and undisturbed enjoying a sweet calm and the gentle vivifying
beams of the sun.”
Jonathan Edwards.
“We must not merely have the aromatic and fragrant sweetness of honey, namely, the sweetness of polite
conversation with strangers, but also the sweetness of milk among our own family and neighbors. Those
who appear in public as angels but are devils in their own homes greatly fail in this regard.”
Introduction to the Devout Life, by Francis DeSales – p. 149
“Holiness does not signify an air that prevails in the solemn atmosphere of a sanctuary, a quantity reserved
for supreme acts, an adverb of the spiritual, the distinction of hermits and priests. . . The strength of holiness
lies underground, in the somatic. It is primarily in the way in which we gratify physical needs that the seed
of holiness is planted. Originally the holy (kadosh) meant that which is set apart, isolated, segregated. In
Jewish piety it assumed a new meaning, denoting a quality that is involved, immersed in common and earthly
endeavors; carried primarily by individual, private, simple deeds rather than public ceremonies. . .”
Abraham Joshua Herschel, I Asked for Wonder
“Is Daily sinning an inevitable necessity?
“Why is it that when we possess a Saviour whose love and power are infinite, we are so often filled with fear
and despondency? We are wearied and fain in our minds because we do not look steadfastly unto Jesus, the
author and finisher of faith, who is set down at the right hand of God-unto Him whose omnipotence
embraces both heaven and earth, who is strong and mighty in His feeble saints.
“While we remember our weakness, we forget his all sufficient power. While we acknowledge that apart
from Christ we can do nothing, we do not rise to the height or depth of Christian humility: ‘I can do all things
through Christ which strengthened me.’ While we trust in the power of the death of Jesus to cancel the guilt
of sin, we do not exercise a reliance and appropriating faith in the omnipotence of the living Savior to deliver
us from the bondage and power of sin in our daily life. We forget that Christ works in us mightily, and that,
one with Him, we possess strength sufficient to overcome every temptation.
We are apt to either to forget our nothingness and imagine that in our daily path we can live without sin,
that the duties and trials of our everyday live can be performed born in our own strength; or we do not avail
ourselves of the omnipotence of Jesus, who is able to subdue all things to Himself, and to help us from the
daily infirmities and falls which we are apt to imagine an inevitable necessity. If we really depended in all
things and in all times on Christ, we would in all things and at all times gain the victory through Him whose
power is infinite, and who is appointed by the Father to be the Captain of our salvation. Then all our deeds
would be wrought, not merely before, but in God. We would then do all things to the glory of the Father, in
the all powerful name of Jesus, who is our sanctification. Remember that unto him all power is given in
heaven and on earth, and live by the constant exercise of faith in His power. Let us most fully believe that
we have and are nothing, that with man it is impossible, that in ourselves we have no life which can bring
forth fruit; but that Christ is all-that abiding in Him, and His word dwelling in us, we can bring forth fruit to
the glory of the Father.
Christ and the Church, Sermons by Adolph Saphir
“We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. The world has achieved
brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
We know more about war then we know about peace, more about killing then we know about living.”
Omar Bradley quoted in Dance, Children, Dance by Jim Rayburn III, founder of Young Life.
“No amount of money, genius, or culture can move things for God. Holiness, energizing the soul, the whole
man aflame with love, with desire for more faith, more prayer, more zeal, more consecration-this is the secret
of power. These we need and must have and they must be the incarnation of this God-inflamed devotedness.
God’s advance has stayed, His cause crippled, His name dishonored for their lack. Genius (though loftiest
and most gifted), education (thought the most learned and refined), position, dignity, place and honored
names cannot move this chariot of our God. It is a fiery one, and only fiery forces can move it. The genius
of a Milton fails. The imperial strength of a Leo fails. But, Brainerd’s spirit could move it...”
EM Bounds, The Power of Prayer
“Souls are perishing now for lack of this power. God is blessing now some who are seeking this blessing
from Him in Faith. All things are ready if we are ready. Let us ask Him to search us and remove all that
hinders His working by us in larger measure. If any of us have been tempted to murmur, to think for speak
unkindly of fellow workers; if light conversation or jesting ‘which are not convenient’ have been indulged in,
if we have allowed less important things to take time and attention that God’s direct word should have had; if
our Bibles or secret prayer have been neglected, let us confess the evil before God and claim His promised
forgiveness, carefully avoiding such occasions of weakness for the future. And having sought the removal of
all hindrances and yielded ourselves up in fresh consecration, let us accept by faith the filling, and definitely
receive the Holy Ghost, and govern the cleansed temple.”
Hudson Taylor
“Study universal holiness of life. Your whole usefulness depends on this, for your sermons last only an hour
or two; your life preaches all week. If Satan can make you a covetous minister, a lover of praise, of pleasure,
of good eating, he has ruined your ministry.”
Robert Murray McCheyne
Character is the most effective means of persuasion.
Aristotle’s Rhetoric
God became like us so we could become like him.
O thou in whose boundless being are laid up all treasures of wisdom and truth and holiness, grant that
through constant fellowship with Thee the true graces of Christian character may more and more take shape
within my soul:
The grace of thankful and uncomplaining heart:
The grace to await Thy leisure patiently and to answer Thy call promptly:
The grace of courage, whether in suffering or in danger:
The grace to endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ:
The grace of boldness in standing for what is right:
The grace of preparedness, lest I enter into temptation:
The grace of bodily discipline:
The grace of strict truthfulness:
The grace to treat others as I would have others treat me:
The grace of charity, that I may refrain from hasty judgement:
The grace of silence, that I may refrain from hasty speech:
The grace of forgiveness towards all who have wronged me:
The grace of tenderness towards all who are weaker than myself:
The grace of steadfastness in continuing to desire that Thou wilt do
As now I pray.
John Baiallie, A DIARY OF PRIVATE PRAYER, p.55
The traditional concept of the superior man meant superiority in blood, for the term “chin-tzu” literally
meant sons of rulers. Confucius changed it to mean superiority in character. This radical change in concept
practically amounted to a social revolution.
The Chinese Mind, by Charles A. Moore, p. 19
“It’s a sad commentary on our world that ‘integrity’ has slowly been coming to mean self-centeredness.
Most people who worry about their integrity are thinking about it in terms of themselves. It’s a great excuse
for not doing something you really don’t want to do, or are afraid to do: “I can’t do that and keep my
integrity,’ Integrity, like humility, is a quality.”
Madeleine L’Engle from Engaging God’s World by Cornelius Plantings, p. 60
The relative perfection which we must attain to in this life if we are to live as sons of God is not the twentyfour-hour-a-day production of perfect acts of virtue, but a life from which practically all the obstacles to
God’s love have been removed or overcome.
Happiness consists of finding out precisely what the “one thing necessary” may be, in our lives, and in
gladly relinquishing all the rest. For then, by a divine paradox we find that everything else is given us
together with the one thing we needed.
No Man is an Island, by Thomas Merton, pp. 129m to 130
“Take some bread and eat it. When you have eaten it, its substance goes to nourish the body, and the
remainder, the superfluous part, is evacuated, because nature has no use for it, and indeed, if it were to
remain in the body would die. Now if the bread were to say to you: ‘Why do you take my being from me? It
is not in my nature to like being annihilated. If I could, I would defend myself from you in order to save
myself, an action natural to every creature.’ You would answer: ‘Bread, your being was meant for the
sustenance of my body, which is of more worth than you, and so you ought to be more content with the end
for which you were created than with simply being. It is only your end that makes your being of any value; it
gives you your dignity, which you cannot attain except by means of your annihilation. If you live for your
end, you will not care about your being, but you will say: ‘Quickly, quickly, take my being from me and set
me to accomplish my end for which I was created.’
This is what God does with man, who is created for eternal life as his end. When he was first created,
before he sinned, he was quite pure, and there was nothing ugly or superfluous in him. Had there been no
sin, he would have attained his end with this purity without effort. But sin corrupted man’s being and
inclined him to all evil. The inclination to evil is to strong that without God’s grace and operation we cannot
overcome it or even recognize our wicked instincts. We are blind and incurable as regards the natural part of
us.
Seeing the gravity and danger of the disease, the soul says: I have no other remedy unless God takes me in
hand. So I offer myself to Him, and make Him a gift of my body and all that I have and may have, so that He
may do with me what I do with the bread. When I eat it, nature retains only the substance that is good and
throws away the remainder and so I keep healthy. If God did not bring about this result in us, our natural part
would never let itself be annihilated, ever ready as it is to defend itself to the utmost. But when it finds itself
under God’s care and guidance, He gradually cuts away the roots so that the branches of our disordered
inclinations dry up without our being aware. We only notice that we can no longer take pleasure in exterior
things as we formerly did; our happiness is a contentment that God is doing with us what He pleases.
When God takes charge of us, He sees to it that our evil inclinations are consumed, and this is the way He
extinguishes them.”
The Life and Sayings of St. Catherine of Genoa, by Paul Gavin, pp. 119, 122-4
Early Church: “CONSIDER, THEN, whether those who have received such teaching can possibly practice
promiscuous and unlawful intercourse, or most godless of all, eat human flesh! We are forbidden so much as
to look at gladiator fights lest we become privy to and participants in murder! We also consider it immoral to
watch other shows because our eyes and ears shall not be defiled with sympathy for acts of murder as they
are celebrated there in song. As for speaking about cannibalism: there the children of Thyestes and Tereus
are devoured. As for speaking about adultery: with them it is the theme of their tragedies, not just as a
misdeed of men, but even more so of gods, celebrated as a heroic act in elegant language during their
contests.
May the very thought of doing such things be far from the Christians! They exercise wise self-control.
They practice continence, observe monogamy, guard chastity, and wipe out injustice destroying sin with its
root. With them justice is lived out, laws are kept, and faith is witnessed to by deeds. They confess God.
They consider truth supreme. Grace protects them. Peace shields them. The holy Word leads them.
Wisdom teaches them. Life is decisive. God is their king.”
Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus Book 111.15; The Early Christians, by Eberhard Arnold, P.
125-6 (40)
“We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. The world has achieved
brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.”
Omar Bradley (quote taped to Jim Rayburn’s Checkbook)