Martin Luther Quotes
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Where faith is not continually kept in motion and exercised, it weakens and decreases, so that it must indeed vanish; and yet we do not see nor feel this weakness ourselves, except in times of need and temptation, when unbelief rages too strongly; and yet for that very reason faith must have temptations in which it may battle and grow.
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Beer is made by men, wine by God.
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Sleep is a most useful and most salutary operation of nature. Scarcely any minor annoyance angers me more than the being suddenly awakened out of a pleasant slumber. I understand that in Italy they torture poor people by depriving them of sleep. `Tis a torture that cannot long be endured.
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To turn one's eyes away from Jesus means to turn them to the Law.
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Every week I preach justification by faith to my people, because every week they forget it.
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Our works do not generate righteousness, rather our righteousness in Christ generates works.
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We are but the instruments or assistants, by whom God works.
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The spiritual rest, which God particularly intends in this Commandment, is this: that we not only cease from our labor and trade, but much more, that we let God alone work in us and that we do nothing of our own with all our powers.
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That which the sober man keeps in his breast, the drunken man lets out at the lips. Astute people, when they want to ascertain a man's true character, make him drunk.
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Yes, I see the Church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.
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I would take to be quite a fool any man who would make a book full of laws and statutes for an apple tree telling it how to bear apples and not thorns, when the tree is able by its own nature to do this better than the man with all his books can describe and demand.
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Heretics are not to be disputed with, but to be condemned unheard, and whilst they perish by fire, the faithful ought to pursue the evil to its source, and bathe their heads in the blood of the Catholic bishops, and of the Pope, who is the devil in disguise.
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The will is not free to strive toward whatever is declared good.
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Our most merciful Father, seeing us to be oppressed and overwhelmed with the curse of the law . . . sent his only Son into the world and laid upon him all the sins of all men, saying, 'You be Peter that denier, Paul that persecutor, blasphemer and cruel oppressor, David that adulterer, that sinner who ate the apple in Paradise, that thief who hung upon the cross, and briefly, you be the person who has committed the sins of all men. See therefore that you pay and satisfy for them.'
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All laws and philosophy merely tell us what should be done, but they do not provide the strength to do it.
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Even if all the world were to combine forces, they could not bring about the conception of a single child in any woman's womb nor cause it to be born; that is wholly the work of God.
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Therefore we Christians, in turn, are obliged not to tolerate their wanton and conscious blasphemy.
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God's love gives in such a way that it flows from a Father's heart, the well-spring of all good. The heart of the giver makes the gift dear and precious; as among ourselves we say of even a trifling gift, "It comes from a hand we love," and look not so much at the gift as at the heart.
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God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does.
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In Matthew 12:23 Christ says: 'Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree bad and its fruit bad,' as if to say: 'Let the one who wishes to have good fruit begin by planting a good tree.' Therefore, let the person who wishes to do good works being not with the works but with the believing, for this alone makes a person good.
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Merit is a work for the sake of which Christ gives rewards. But no such work is to be found, for Christ gives by promise. Just as if a prince should say to me, "Come to me in my castle, and I will give you a hundred florins." I do a work, certainly, in going to the castle, but the gift is not given me as the reward of my work in going, but because the prince promised it to me.
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Our suffering is not worthy the name of suffering. When I consider my crosses, tribulations, and temptations, I shame myself almost to death, thinking what are they in comparison of the sufferings of my blessed Savior Christ Jesus.
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The devil should not be allowed to keep all the best tunes for himself.
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Prayer is a powerful thing; for God has bound and tied himself thereunto.