167 Quotes About Apathy

The best ground, unfilled and neglected, soonest runs out into rank weeds. A man of knowledge that is either negligent or uncorrected cannot but grow wild and godless.

We are so little and vain that the esteem of five or six persons about us is enough to content and amuse us.

The majority is the best way, because it is visible, and has strength to make itself obeyed. Yet it is the opinion of the least able.

A greater sorrow than a man not seeing a need is the man who sees it and does nothing about it. But a still greater sorrow is the man who sees the need and can do something about it but won't.

When we become too glib in prayer we are most surely talking to ourselves.

A lot of people quit looking for work as soon as they find a job.

My fear is not that our great movement, known as the Methodists, will eventually cease to exist or one day die from the earth. My fear is that our people will become content to live without the fire, the power, the excitement, the supernatural element that makes us great.

The sensitivity of men to small matters, and their indifference to great ones, indicates a strange inversion.

It is the black work of an ungodly man or an atheist that God is not in all his thoughts. What comfort can be had in the being of God without thinking of him with reverence and delight? A God forgotten is as good as no God to us.

The idea that everything would happen exactly as it does regardless of whether we pray or not is a specter that haunts the minds of many who sincerely profess belief in God. It makes prayer psychologically impossible, replacing it with dead ritual at best.

The immortality of the soul is a matter which is of so great consequence to us and which touches us so profoundly that we must have lost all feeling to be indifferent about it.

Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes it fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.

As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.

There are many who stumble in the noon-day, not for want of light, but for want of eyes.

It is a sad day for any congregation when those who compose it can be counted on to be there at the social function, there at the place of business, but cannot be counted on when the interests of the Kingdom are at stake and when the Son of God goes forth to war.

Christian Youth, I need to ask why you sit in the padded pews of your fathers while all around the darkness takes your cities and your friends.

Among the many reasons assignable for the sad decay of true Christianity, perhaps the neglecting to assemble ourselves together, in religious societies, may not be one of the least.

You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.

At times one hesitates to reprove or admonish evil-doers, either because one seeks a more favorable moment or fears his rebuke might make them worse, and further, discourage weak brethren from seeking to lead a good and holy life, or turn them aside from the faith. In such circumstances forbearance is not prompted by selfish considerations but by well advised charity.

Folks don't want to be shaken. They would rather sit still. They want to come to church Sunday morning, listen to you for an hour, get up and walk out the door, go home and eat dinner, and forget about what you said.

Our clerics neither evangelize like the apostles, nor go to war like the secular lords, nor toil like laborers.

What makes the Dead Sea dead? Because it is all the time receiving, never giving out anything. Why is it that many Christians are cold? Because they are all the time receiving, never giving out anything.

The man who has nothing more than a kind of Sunday religion -- whose Christianity is like his Sunday clothes put on once a week, and then laid aside -- such a man cannot, of course, be expected to care about growth in grace.

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.

How little chance the Holy Ghost has nowadays. The churches and missionary societies have so bound Him in red tape that they practically ask Him to sit in a corner while they do the work themselves.

A man may be so bold of his predestination, that he forget his conversation.

Haste and rashness are storms and tempests, breaking and wrecking business; but nimbleness is a full fair wind blowing it with speed to the haven.

The mouse that hath but one hole is quickly taken.

The average person who claims to believe in God (as does the vast majority in America) is too preoccupied with himself to give God much time or serious thought.

As we live a life that is about as unlike Jesus as you can get, a life of comfort and coddling undreamt of by billions around the world; a lifestyle in the top 10% of the earth today (-in debt up to our eyeballs all the while) - the fact is that we don't really CARE that we have lost original Christianity, do we? We are too busy, man. Don't bother us with that kind of talk.

We are too apt to rest in a bare profession of faith, and to think that this will save us; it is a cheap and easy religion to say, "We believe in the articles of the Christian faith;" but it is a great delusion to imagine that this is enough to bring us to heaven.

If you are contented with a sound creed and a little morality in your lives, you are in an awful state. I would not like to die in your state for a thousand worlds.

Has life become so filled with efforts to cover every financial contingency, to realize one's full earthly potential, and finally to retire comfortably, that without realizing it we are finding our hope in this world rather than in God?

Let the Christian mark this well that once he has perceived the will of God in his spirit's intuition his whole being needs to be employed actively in executing God's will. He should not be passive.

God has no place for undercover agents.

If the Lord should always be swift to hear us, how slow should we be in hearing him, and while we have our desires, forget most of our duties.

Neglect does more for the soul than make it miss salvation. It despoils it of its capacity for salvation.

No one is likely to remember what is entirely uninteresting to him.

Some persons believe everything that their kindred, their parents, and their tutors believe. The veneration and the love which they have for their ancestors incline them to swallow down all their opinions at once, without examining what truth or falsehood there is in them. Men take their principles by inheritance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they are born heirs to them.

Many people hear the Word of God, but to some of them it is only words; they do not accept it as the Word of God. What a paradox it is that all creation obeys His Word except we who are made in the image of God and have the ability to choose.

If the Lord should always be swift to hear us, how slow should we be in hearing him, and while we have our desires, forget most of our duties.

It is hard to interest those who have everything in those who have nothing.

There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousands truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away.

O slow of heart to believe and trust in the constant presence and overruling agency of our almighty Savior!

To enjoy sensuous pleasures daily is no evidence of spirituality. On the contrary, those who go on with God and disregard their own feelings are the truly spiritual ones.

It is a shame for a person to have been a Christian for years but not to have advanced beyond the knowledge of his salvation.

Until we get some of God's people right, we cannot hope to get sinners regenerated.

I may say with truth that there is only about one in ten who professes Christianity who will turn round and glorify God with a loud voice. Nine out of ten are still born Christians. You never hear of them.

The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us.

Let me beg you, not to rest contented with the commonplace religion that is now so prevalent.

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

We regard God as an airman regards his parachute; it's there for emergencies but he hopes he'll never have to use it.

How far are they from offering violence to themselves in hearing, who come to the word in a dull, drowsy manner, as if they came to church to take a receipt to make them sleep. The word is to feed; it is strange to sleep at meat. The word judgeth men: it is strange for a prisoner to fall asleep at the bar.

Today, few Americans are aware of the spiritual epidemic that wiped out the land of our Christian forefathers. Even fewer are aware that the same epidemic has reached our own shores, spreading like a virus.

We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God.

Often we become apathetic in our lives until we face a severe storm. Whether loss of a job, health crisis, loss of a loved one, or financial struggle; God often brings storms into our lives to change our perspective, to shift the focus from ourselves and our lives to Him.

Non-praying is lawlessness, discord, anarchy.

O slow of heart to believe and trust in the constant presence and overruling agency of our almighty Savior!

A life devoted to trifles, not only takes away the inclination, but the capacity for higher pursuits. The truths of Christianity have scarcely more influence on a frivolous than on a profligate character.

The head learns new things, but the heart forever practices old experiences.

Oh, it is sad for a poor Christian to stand at the door of the promise, in the dark night of affliction, afraid to draw the latch, whereas he should then come boldly for shelter as a child into his father's house.

Look, as a painted man is no man, and as painted fire is no fire, so a cold prayer is no prayer.

He that hath no cross deserves no crown.

I don't like these cold, precise, perfect people, who, in order not to speak wrong, never speak at all, and in order not to do wrong, never do anything.

There can be no revival when Mr. Amen and Mr. Wet-Eyes are not found in the audience.

The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.

Do you fancy that the eternal God is to be put off with these vain resolutions and to be mocked with these idle dreams of what you will do, when you do nothing whatever? Oh, may God save you from such a delusion!

Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.

If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.

Negligence is the rust of the soul that corrodes through all her best resolves.

God does not do business with people who do not mean business with Him.

To be discontinuous from God as I am discontinuous from you would be annihilation.

He that forgets his friend is ungrateful to him; but he that forgets his Savior is unmerciful to himself.

The martyrs to vice far exceed the martyrs to virtue, both in endurance and in number. So blinded are we to our passions, that we suffer more to insure perdition than salvation.

Other duties become pressing and absorbing and crowd our prayer. "Choked to death" would be the coroner's verdict in many cases of dead praying if an inquest could be secured on this dire, spiritual calamity.

Superficial Christians are apt to be eccentric. Mature Christians are so near the Lord that they are not afraid of missing His guidance. They are not always trying to promote their loyalty to God by their independence from others.

A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.

I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived, architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it, so I signed up for acting instead.

I believe in my soul that there are more at this day being lost for want of decision than for any other thing.

I continually am confronted by Christians, even active members of major churches, who have never heard this taught in their local congregations. We have a lowest-common-denominator Christianity being taught in so many denominations that has produced a people who simply do not know some of the most basic Christian truths.

It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Many come to bring their clothes to church rather than themselves.

Take heed of driving so hard after this world, as to hinder thyself and family from those duties towards God, which thou art by grace obliged to; as private prayer, reading the scriptures, and Christian conference. It is a base thing for men so to spend themselves and families after this world, as that they disengage their heart to God's worship.

The most generous vine, if not pruned, runs out into many superfluous stems and grows at last weak and fruitless: so doth the best man if he be not cut short in his desires, and pruned with afflictions.

Let me beg you, not to rest contented with the commonplace religion that is now so prevalent.

It is possible to miss God's perfect will for our lives through carelessness or disobedience.

One cloud is enough to eclipse all the sun.

There is no accounting for the ignorance of unbelief, as any minister of Christ knows by painful experience.

Concealed talent brings no reputation.

A little carelessness brings in defeat.

None so deaf as those that will not hear.

Not to decide is to decide.

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.

During the last times, men will be lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. When you think of our sports-driven society, and our media-driven society, and our leisure-driven society, then you understand we are living in the last days.

A hermit who has been shut up in his cell in a college has contracted a sort of mould and rust upon his soul.

Those years, months, weeks, days, and hours, that are not filled up with God, with Christ, with grace, and with duty, will certainly be filled up with vanity and folly. The neglect of one day, of one duty, of one hour, would undo us, if we had not an Advocate with the Father.

Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all - the apathy of human beings.

He was one of those men who possess almost every gift, except the gift of the power to use them.

The world never burned a casual Christian at the stake.

I note that some whom I greatly love and esteem, who are, in my judgment, among the very choicest of God's people, nevertheless, travel most of the way to heaven by night.

The mundane tasks of everyday life can lull you to apathy and push God to the back of your mind. Refuse to become self-sufficient in life. You need God every day, whether you're facing a storm or not.

How much of these destructive elements, esteemed by men, does the devil bring into the church, until all the high, unworldly and holy aims, and heavenly objects of the church are retired and forgotten?

He who runs from God in the morning will scarcely find Him the rest of the day.

Certain things, if not seen as lovely or detestable, are not being correctly seen at all.

Since the days of Pentecost, has the whole church ever put aside every other work and waited upon Him for ten days, that the Spirit's power might be manifested? We give too much attention to method and machinery and resources, and too little to the source of power.

Remember. O my soul, the fig tree was charged, not with bearing noxious fruit, but no fruit.

There is a time when to avoid trouble is to store up trouble and when to seek for a lazy and a cowardly peace is to court a still greater danger.

It is the misfortune of kings that they scarcely ever do the good they have a mind to do; and through surprise, and the insinuations of flatterers, they often do the mischief they never intended.

I will not judge a person to be spiritually dead whom I have judged formerly to have had spiritual life, though I see him at present in a swoon (faint)as to all evidences of the spiritual life. And the reason why I will not judge him so is this -- because if you judge a person dead, you neglect him, you leave him; but if you judge him in a swoon,(faint) though never so dangerous, you use all means for the retrieving of his life.

Sleeping on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.

The particular sin of omission which gives ground to the evil spirits is the believer's passivity.

Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.

A Christian ought to realize what the weights laid on his spirit are. If he encounters it in the morning and does not deal with it at once, he experiences defeat the whole day long.

I am certain that to preach the wrath of God with a hard heart, a cold lip, a tearless eye, and an unfeeling spirit is to harden men, not benefit them.