Top 70 Hannah Whitall Smith Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Be not afraid of rowing slowly. Be afraid of standing still.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

2. “Keep your mind on the things you want and off the things you don’t want.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

3. “Nothing can separate you from God’s love, absolutely nothing. God is enough for time, God is enough for eternity. God is enough!”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

4. “For the mother is and must be, whether she knows it or not, the greatest, strongest and most lasting teacher her children have.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

5. “Once I knew what it was to rest upon the rock of God’s promises, and it was indeed a precious resting place, but now I rest in His grace. He is teaching me that the bosom of His love is a far sweeter resting-place than even the rock of His promises.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

6. “Unless you’re lead dog, the scenery never changes.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

7. “By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were compassed about seven days.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

8. “If we will only surrender ourselves utterly to the Lord, and will trust Him perfectly, we shall find our souls “mounting up with wings as eagles” to the “heavenly places” in Christ Jesus, where earthly annoyances or sorrows have no power to disturb us.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

9. “There is no happiness in the world equal to the happiness of being good.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

10. “God’s care for us is more watchful and more tender than the care of any human father could possibly be.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

11. “Thanks be unto God which always causeth us to triumph in Christ!”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

12. “You have trusted Him as your dying Savior; now trust Him as your living Savior. Just as much as He came to deliver you from future punishment did He also come to deliver you from present bondage. Just as truly as He came to bear your stripes for you has He come to live your life for you.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

13. “No soul can be really at rest until it has given up all dependence on everything else and has been forced to depend on the Lord alone. As long as our expectation is from other things, nothing but disappointment awaits us.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

14. “Before the acorn can bring forth the oak, it must become itself a wreck. No plant ever came from any but a wrecked seed.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

15. “Where the soul is full of peace and joy, outward surrounding and circumstances are of comparatively little account.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

16. “Faith, like sight is nothing apart from God. You might as well shut your eyes and look inside, and see whether you have sight as to look inside to discover whether you have faith.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

17. “God loves us, and the will of love is always blessing for its loved ones.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

18. “Perfect obedience would be perfect happiness, if only we had perfect confidence in the power we were obeying.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

19. “Put together all the tenderest love you know of, multiply it by infinity, and you will begin to see glimpses of the love and grace of God.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

20. “God will help us become the people we are meant to be, if only we will ask Him.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

21. “It is wonderful what miracles God works in wills that are utterly surrendered to Him.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

22. “Look upon your chastening as God’s chariots sent to carry your soul into the high places of spiritual achievement.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

23. “Our God is so wonderfully good, and lovely, and blessed in every way that the mere fact of belonging to Him is enough for an untellable fullness of joy!”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

24. “Keep your face upturned to Christ as the flowers do to the sun. Look, and your soul shall live and grow.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

25. “When all else is gone, God is left, and nothing changes Him.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

26. “Nothing else is needed to quiet all your fears, but just this, that GOD IS.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

27. “Foundations to be reliable must always be unshakable.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

28. “Those who are God’s without reserve are, in every sense, content.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

29. “You must hand yourself and all your inward experiences, your temptations, your temperament, your frames and feelings, all over into the care of your God, and leave them there. He made you and therefore He understands you, and knows how to manage you, and you must trust Him to do it.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

30. “I shall be glad to see thee back, daughter, for I miss thee dreadfully. I wish I did not! I was taking a nap in my chair today, and I thought I heard thee rustling thy papers, and I looked over at thy table expecting to see thee, and alas! thee was not there, and it was dreadful.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

31. “The mother eagle teachers her little ones to fly by making their nest so uncomfortable that they are forced to leave it and commit themselves to the unknown world of air outside. An just so does our God to us.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

32. “The soul that gives thanks can find comfort in everything; the soul that complains can find comfort in nothing.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

33. “Follow the crowd and you will never be followed by a crowd.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

34. “If we want to be comforted, we must make up our minds to believe every single solitary word of comfort God has ever spoken.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

35. “An idea is a curious thing. It will not work unless you do.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

36. “If our hearts are full of our own wretched “I ams” we will have no ears to hear His glorious, soul-satisfying “I Am.””

— Hannah Whitall Smith

37. “You find no difficulty in trusting the Lord with the management of the universe and all the outward creation, and can your case be any more complex or difficult than these, that you need to be anxious or troubled about His management of it?”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

38. “Sight is not faith, and hearing is not faith, neither is feeling faith; but believing when we neither see, hear, nor feel is faith; and everywhere the Bible tells us our salvation is to be by faith. Therefore we must believe before we feel, and often against our feelings, if we would honor faith.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

39. “My soul was always so full of aspirations, that a God was a necessity to me. I was like a bird with an instinct of migration upon me, and a country to migrate to was as essential as it is to the bird.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

40. “For the decisions of our will are often so directly opposed to the decisions of our emotions, that, if we are in the habit of considering our emotions as the test, we shall be very apt to feel like hypocrites in declaring those things to be real which our will alone has decided.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

41. “To be a mother is the greatest vocation in the world. No being has a position of such great power and influence. She holds in her hands the destiny of nations, for to her is necessarily committed the making of the nation’s citizens.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

42. “We must take our troubles to the Lord, but we must do more than that, we must leave them there.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

43. “If the Lord sets you to guard a lonely post in perfect stillness from all active work, you ought to be just as content as to be in the midst of the active warfare. It is no virtue to love the Master’s work better than the Master’s will.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

44. “You can’t get to second base keeping one foot on first.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

45. “Christ came into the world to save sinners, not good people, and your unworthiness is your greatest claim for His salvation.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

46. “A happy heart can walk in triumphant indifference through a sea of external trouble; while internal anguish cannot find happiness in the most favorable surroundings.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

47. “Man’s Christianity teaches sacrifice to save ourselves; Christ’s Christianity teaches sacrifice to save others. Man’s Christianity produces the fruitless selfishness of too much of our religion. Christ’s Christianity produces the blessed unselfishness of lives that are poured out for others, as was His.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

48. “This way of seeing our Father in everything makes life one long thanksgiving and gives a rest of heart, and, more than that, a gayety of spirit, that is unspeakable.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

49. “The apple in June is a perfect apple for June. It is the best apple that June can produce. But it is very different from the apple in October, which is a perfected apple.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith

50. “Thee may tell Aunt Janet from me that she might as well try to stop the stars in their courses as to try to stop a love affair.”

— Hannah Whitall Smith