109 J. C. Ryle Quotes

The chief weapon we ought to use in resisting Satan is the Bible. Three times the great enemy offered temptations to our Lord. Three times his offer was refused, with a text of Scripture as the reason, "it is written" (Mt. 3:4, 7, 10).

The ways, and fashions, and amusements, and recreations of the world have a continually decreasing place in the heart of a growing Christian. He does not condemn them as downright sinful, nor say that those who have anything to do with them are going to hell. He only feels they have a constantly diminishing hold on his own affections and gradually seem smaller and more trifling in his eyes.

Beware of self-righteousness in every possible shape and form. Some people get as much harm from their "virtues" as others do from their sins.

Faith is to the soul what life is to the body. Prayer is to faith what breath is to the body. How a person can live and not breathe is past my comprehension, and how a person can believe and not pray is past my comprehension too.

Amidst the flood of dangerous reading, I plead for my Master's book; I call upon you not to forget the book of the soul. Do not let newspapers, novels, and romances be read, while the prophets and Apostles be despised. Do not let the exciting and sensual swallow up your attention, while the edifying and the sanctifying can find no place in your mind.

It is not that doing nothing is of itself so wicked; it is the opportunity it affords to evil and empty thoughts; it is the wide door it opens for Satan to throw in the seeds of bad things; it is this which is mainly to be feared.

The Bible in the pulpit must never supersede the Bible at home.

Humility and love are precisely the graces which the men of the world can understand, if they do not comprehend doctrines. They are the graces about which there is no mystery, and they are within reach of all classes. The poorest Christian can every day find occasion for practicing love and humility.

Pride comes from not knowing yourself and the world. The older you grow, and the more you see, the less reason you will find for being proud. Ignorance and inexperience are the pedestal of pride; once the pedestal is removed - pride will soon come down.

I should as soon expect a farmer to prosper in business who contented himself with sowing his fields and never looking at them till harvest, as expect a believer to attain much holiness who was not diligent about his Bible reading, his prayers, and the use of his Sundays.

The beginning of the way to heaven, is to feel that we are on the way to hell.

Saving faith and real converting grace will always produce some conformity to the image of Jesus.

But depend on it, bad company in this life, is the sure way to procure worse company in the life to come.

To maintain pure truth in the church, we should be ready to make any sacrifice, to hazard peace, to risk dissention and run the chance of division.

Never let us be guilty of sacrificing any portion of truth on the altar of peace.

The whole extent of hell, the present suffering, the bitter recollection of the past, the hopeless prospect of the future, will never be thoroughly known except by those who go there.

True repentance is no light matter. It is a thorough change of heart about sin, a change showing itself in godly sorrow and humiliation - in heartfelt confession before the throne of grace - in a complete breaking off from sinful habits, and an abiding hatred of all sin. Such repentance is the inseparable companion of saving faith in Christ.

No time is so well spent in every day as that which we spend upon our knees.

To be prayerless is to be without God, without Christ, without grace, without hope, and without heaven.

Sin must indeed be exceeding sinful, when the Father must needs give His only Son to be the sinner's Friend!

There are very few errors and false doctrines of which the beginning may not be traced up to unsound views about the corruption of human nature. Wrong views of the disease will always bring with them wrong views of the remedy. Wrong views of the corruption of human nature will always carry with them wrong views of the grand antidote and cure of that corruption.

If there is any point on which God's holiest saints agree it is this: that they see more, and know more, and feel more, and do more, and repent more, and believe more, as they get on in spiritual life, and in proportion to the closeness of their walk with God.

When an eagle is happy in an iron cage, when a sheep is happy in water, when an owl is happy in the blaze of the noonday sun, when a fish is happy on dry land - then, and not till then, will I admit that the unsanctified man could be happy in heaven.

Give me the plenary, verbal theory of biblical inspiration with all its difficulties, rather than the doubt. I accept the difficulties and humbly wait for their solution. But while I wait, I am standing on the rock.

Disbelieve hell, and you unscrew, unsettle, and unpin everything in Scripture.

The one true Church is composed of all believers in the Lord Jesus. It is made up of all God's elect - of all converted men and women - of all true Christians. In whomever we can discern the election of God the Father, the sprinkling of the blood of God the Son, the sanctifying work of God the Spirit, in that person we see a member of Christ's true church.

I am convinced that the first step towards attaining a higher standard of holiness is to realize more fully the amazing sinfulness of sin.

The servant of Christ must never be surprised if he has to drink of the same cup with His Lord.

If Christ had not gone to the cross and suffered in our stead, the just for the unjust, there would not have been a spark of hope for us. There would have been a mighty gulf between ourselves and God, which no man ever could have passed.

All portions of Scripture ought to be approached with deep humility and earnest prayer for the teaching of the Spirit. On no point have good people so entirely disagreed as on the interpretation of prophecy; on no point have the prejudices of one group, the dogmatism of a second and the extravagance of a third done so much to rob the church of truths which God intended to be a blessing.

I declare I know of no state of soul more dangerous than to imagine we are born again and sanctified by the Holy Ghost, because we have picked up a few religious feelings.

We corrupt the Word of God most dangerously, when we throw any doubt on the plenary inspiration of any part of Holy Scripture.

Many, I fear, would like glory, who have no wish for grace. They would [want to] have the wages, but not the work; the harvest, but not the labor; the reaping, but not the sowing; the reward, but not the battle. But it may not be.

Sound doctrine and holy living are the marks of true prophets. Let us remember this. [A] minister's mistakes will not excuse our own.

Once let us see that sin is far viler, and far nearer to us, and sticks more closely to us than we supposed, and we shall be led, I trust and believe, to get nearer to Christ.

We must be holy, because this is the only sound evidence that we have a saving faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Idleness is the devil's best friend. It is the surest way to give him an opportunity of doing us some harm. An idle mind is like an open door, and if Satan does not come through it himself, it is certain he will throw something in to arouse bad thoughts in us.

No prayers can be heard which do not come from a forgiving heart.

Take away the cross of Christ, and the Bible is a dark book.

What would you expect? Sin will not come to you, saying, "I am sin." It would do little harm if it did. Sin always seems "good, and pleasant, and desirable," at the time of commission.

Stop being so sure that you are always right, and others wrong. Don't trust your own opinion, when you find it contrary to that of older men, and especially to that of your own parents. Age gives experience, and therefore deserves respect.

Fathers and mothers, do not forget that children learn more by the eye than they do by the ear... Imitation is a far stronger principle with children than memory. What they see has a much stronger effect on their minds than what they are told.

A good conscience will save no man, wash away no sin, not lift us one hair's breadth towards heaven. Yet a good conscience will be found a pleasant visitor at our bedside in a dying hour.

The storms of winter often bring out the defects in a man's dwelling, and sickness often exposes the gracelessness of a man's soul. Surely anything that makes us find out the real character of our faith is good.

We should never desert a great principle in theology any more than in science, because of apparent difficulties which we are not able at present to remove.

Obedience is the only reality. It is faith visible, faith acting, and faith manifest. It is the test of real discipleship among the Lord's people.

The faith which has not a sanctifying influence on the character is no better than the faith of devils. It is a "dead faith, because it is alone."

A man's state before God may always be measured by his prayers.

A religion which did not flatter the rich, the great, and the learned - a religion which offered no license to the carnal inclinations of man's heart - a religion whose first teachers were poor fishermen, without wealth, rank, or power - a religion could never have turned the world upside down, if it had not been of God.

Sin forsaken is one of the best evidences of sin forgiven.

Nothing I am sure has such a tendency to quench the fire of religion as the possession of money.

Two-thirds of all the strifes, quarrels and lawsuits in the world arise from one single cause - money!

Health is a good thing; but sickness is far better, if it leads us to God.

Inability to distinguish doctrine is spreading far and wide, and so long as the preacher is "clever" and "earnest," hundreds seem to think it must be all right, and call you dreadfully "narrow and uncharitable" if you hint that he is unsound!

I cannot see how any man deserves to be called "holy," who willfully allows himself in sins, and is not humbled and ashamed because of them.

A sin...consists in doing, saying, thinking, or imagining anything that is not in perfect conformity with the mind and law of God

I doubt, indeed, whether we have any warrant for saying that a man can possibly be converted without being consecrated to God. More consecrated he doubtless can be, and will be as his grace increases; but if he was not consecrated to God in the very day that he was converted and born again, I do not know what conversion means.

What is the reason that some believers are so much brighter and holier than others? I believe the difference, in nineteen cases out of twenty, arises from different habits about private prayer. I believe that those who are not eminently holy pray little, and those who are eminently holy pray much.

Value all books in proportion as they are agreeable to Scripture. Those that are nearest to it are the best, and those that are farthest from it, and most contrary to it, the worst.