John Calvin Quotes
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Where is our acknowledgement of God if our thoughts are fixed on the glamour of our garments?
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The one condition for spiritual progress is that we remain sincere and humble.
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The Angels are the dispensers and administrators of the Divine beneficence toward us. They regard our safety, undertake our defense, direct our ways, and exercise a constant solicitude that no evil befall us.
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First of all, Scripture draws our attention to this, that if we want ease and tranquility in our lives, we should resign ourselves and all that we have to the will of God, and at the same time we should surrender our affections to him as our Conqueror and Overlord.
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Faith and hope...are the wings by which our souls, rising above the world, are lifted up to God.
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The human heart has so many crannies where vanity hides, so many holes where falsehood works, is so decked out with deceiving hypocrisy, that it often dupes itself.
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The denial of ourselves which Christ has so diligently commanded his disciples from the beginning will at last dominate all the desires of our heart.
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There is also an old proverb, that they who pay much attention to the body generally neglect the soul.
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There is within every soul a thirst for happiness and meaning.
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True peace consists in not separating ourselves from the will of God.
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The vices of which we are full we carefully hide from others, and we flatter ourselves with the notion that they are small and trivial; we sometimes even embrace them as virtues.
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Many people have accused me of such ferocious cruelty that (they allege) I would like to kill again the man I have destroyed. Not only am I indifferent to their comments, but I rejoice in the fact that they spit in my face.
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Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious.
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If the gospel be not preached, Jesus Christ is, as it were, buried.
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Faith consists not in ignorance, but in knowledge - knowledge not of God merely...but when we recognize God as a propitious Father through the reconciliation made by Christ, and Christ as given to us for righteousness, sanctification, and life.
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Prayers belong strictly to the worship of God. Fasting is a subordinate aid, which is pleasing to God no farther than as it aids the earnestness and fervency of prayer.
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We say, then, that Scripture clearly proves this much, that God by his eternal and immutable counsel determined once for all those whom it was his pleasure one day to admit to salvation, and those whom, on the other hand, it was his pleasure to doom to destruction. We maintain that this counsel, as regards the elect, is founded on his free mercy, without any respect to human worth, while those whom he dooms to destruction are excluded from access to life by a just and blameless, but at the same time incomprehensible judgment.
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No one can travel so far that he does not make some progess each day. So let us never give up. Then we shall move forward daily in the Lord's way. And let us never despair because of our limited success. Even though it is so much less than we would like, our labour is not wasted when today is better than yesterday!
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Unless men establish their complete happiness in God, they will never give themselves truly and sincerely to him.
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Christians rejoice even while they truly sorrow - because their rejoicing is in the hope of heaven... While joy overcomes sorrow, it does not put an end to it.
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Christ is the most perfect image of God, into which we are so renewed as to bear the image of God, in knowledge, purity, righteousness, and true holiness.
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Whatever a person may be like, we must still love them because we love God.
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Concerning our Lord Jesus Christ, we must also be aware that he is our Advocate, and that without him we cannot approach God.
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Creatures are so governed by the secret counsel of God, that nothing happens but what he has knowingly and willingly decreed.