Top 300 J. C. Ryle Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “Beware of manufacturing a God of your own: a God who is all mercy, but not just; a God who is all love, but not holy; a God who as a heaven for every body, but a hell for none; a God who can allow good and bad to be side by side in time, but will make no distinction between good and broad in eternity. Such a God is an idol of your own, as truly an idol as any snake or crocodile in an Egyptian temple. The hands of your own fancy and sentimentality have made him. He is not the God of the Bible, and beside the God of the Bible there is no God at all.”

— J. C. Ryle

152. “If God has given His Son to die for us, let us beware of doubting His kindness and love in any painful providence of our daily life.”

— J. C. Ryle

153. “Wherever we may be, or whatever our circumstances, the Lord Jesus sees them. We are never beyond the reach of His care.”

— J. C. Ryle

154. “By affliction Christ shows us our emptiness and weakness, draws us to the throne of grace, purifies our affections, weans us from the world, and makes us long for heaven.”

— J. C. Ryle

155. “People will never set their faces decidedly towards heaven, and live like pilgrims, until they really feel that they are in danger of hell.”

— J. C. Ryle

156. “The surest mark of true conversion is humility.”

— J. C. Ryle

157. “The Gospel was not meant merely to reside in our intellect, memories, and tongues, but to be seen in our lives.”

— J. C. Ryle

158. “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.”

— J. C. Ryle

159. “Be very sure of this,-people never reject the Bible because they cannot understand it. They understand it only too well; they understand that it condemns their own behavior; they understand that it witnesses against their own sins, and summons them to judgment.”

— J. C. Ryle

160. “However corrupt our hearts, and however wicked our past lives, there is hope for us in the Gospel.”

— J. C. Ryle

161. “Believe me, you cannot stand still in your souls. Habits of good or evil are daily strengthening in your hearts. Every day you are either getting nearer to God, or further off.”

— J. C. Ryle

162. “What youth sows, old age must reap.”

— J. C. Ryle

163. “There is something sadly wrong when it is more important to us whether others are a part of our denomination, rather than whether they repent of sin, believe on Christ and live holy lives.”

— J. C. Ryle

164. “The ‘means of grace’ are such as Bible reading, private prayer, and regularly worshiping God in Church, wherein one hears the Word taught and participates in the Lord’s Supper.”

— J. C. Ryle

165. “Whatever others around you think, don’t you ever be ashamed of being a Christian.”

— J. C. Ryle

166. “Nothing is so fickle and uncertain as popularity. It is here today and gone tomorrow. It is a sandy foundation, and sure to fail those who build upon it.”

— J. C. Ryle

167. “A Christian is nothing more than a sinner who has found out their sinfulness, and has learned the blessed secret of living by faith in Christ.”

— J. C. Ryle

168. “The true Christian delights to hear something about their Master. They like those sermons best which are full of Christ.”

— J. C. Ryle

169. “A zealous Savior ought to have zealous disciples.”

— J. C. Ryle

170. “When the Lord Jesus Christ gives a man remission of sins, He also gives him repentance.”

— J. C. Ryle

171. “Let us learn to be patient in the days of darkness, if we know anything of vital union with Christ.”

— J. C. Ryle

172. “The faith that has not a sanctifying influence on the character is no better than the faith of devils.”

— J. C. Ryle

173. “That preaching is sadly defective which dwells exclusively on the mercies of God and the joys of heaven, yet never sets forth the terrors of the Lord and the miseries of hell.”

— J. C. Ryle

174. “Sicknesses, losses, crosses, anxieties and disappointments seem absolutely needful to keep us humble, watchful and spiritual-minde d. They are as needful as the pruning knife to the vine and the refiner’s furnace to the gold.”

— J. C. Ryle

175. “Millions of people profess and call themselves Christians, whom the Apostle Paul would not have called Christians at all.”

— J. C. Ryle

176. “Let us read the Bible reverently and diligently, with an honest determination to believe and practice all we find in it.”

— J. C. Ryle

177. “The Gospel which we possess was not given to us only to be admired, talked of, and professed – but to be practiced.”

— J. C. Ryle

178. “On the one hand stand salvation by free grace for Christ’s sake; but on the other stands renewal of the carnal heart by the Spirit. We must be changed as well as forgiven; we must be renewed as well as redeemed.”

— J. C. Ryle

179. “Make it a part of every day’s business to read and meditate on some portion of God’s Word. Private means of grace are just as needful every day for our souls as food and clothing are for our bodies.”

— J. C. Ryle

180. “Let it be a settled principle in our minds that the first and chief business of the Church of Christ is to preach the Gospel.”

— J. C. Ryle

181. “If the Bible is not the Word of God and inspired, the whole of Christendom for 1800 years has been under an immense delusion – half the human race has been cheated and deceived, and churches are monuments of folly. If the Bible is the Word of God and inspired, all who refuse to believe it are in fearful danger; they are living on the brink of eternal misery. No man, in his sober senses, can fail to see that the whole subject demands most serious attention.”

— J. C. Ryle

182. “The first step towards attaining a higher standard of holiness is to realize more fully the amazing sinfulness of sin.”

— J. C. Ryle

183. “The chief end for which Christ lived and died: To provide eternal redemption for sinners.”

— J. C. Ryle

184. “Miserable indeed is that religious teaching which calls itself Christian, and yet contains nothing of the cross.”

— J. C. Ryle

185. “Do you wish to grow in grace and be a holy Christian? Then never forget the value of prayer.”

— J. C. Ryle

186. “Just as the first sign of life in an infant when born into the world is the act of breathing, so the first act of men and women when they are born again is praying.”

— J. C. Ryle

187. “Never be satisfied with the world’s standard of Christianity!”

— J. C. Ryle

188. “Where no visible fruit can be found, there you may be sure is no conversion.”

— J. C. Ryle

189. “The Bible applied to the heart by the Holy Ghost is the chief means by which men are built up and established in the faith, after their conversion. It is able to cleanse them, to sanctify them, to instruct them in righteousness, and to furnish them thoroughly for all good works.”

— J. C. Ryle

190. “When you cannot answer a skeptic, be content to wait for more light; but never forsake a great principle.”

— J. C. Ryle

191. “Christmas is a season which almost all Christians observe in one way or another. Some keep it as a religious season. Some keep it as a holiday. But all over the world, wherever there are Christians, in one way or another Christmas is kept.”

— J. C. Ryle

192. “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.”

— J. C. Ryle

193. “The man who is content to sit ignorantly by his own fireside, wrapped up in his own private affairs, and has no public eye for what is going on in the Church and the world, is a miserable patriot, and a poor style of Christian. Next to our Bibles and our own hearts, our Lord would have us study our own times.”

— J. C. Ryle

194. “When I speak of a man growing in grace, I mean simply this – that his sense of sin is becoming deeper, his faith stronger, his hope brighter, his love more extensive, his spiritual mindedness more marked.”

— J. C. Ryle

195. “What you think now about the cross of Christ, I cannot tell; but I can wish you nothing better than this – that you may be able to say with the apostle Paul, before you die or meet the Lord, ‘God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.’”

— J. C. Ryle

196. “We can never make too much of Christ. He is worthy of all the honor that we can give Him.”

— J. C. Ryle

197. “Love should be the silver thread that runs through all your conduct.”

— J. C. Ryle

198. “Two-thirds of all the strifes, quarrels, and lawsuits in the world arise from one simple cause-money.”

— J. C. Ryle

199. “One single soul saved shall outlive and outweigh all the kingdoms of the world.”

— J. C. Ryle

200. “Imagination is the hotbed where this sin is too often hatched. Guard your thoughts, and there will be little fear about your actions.”

— J. C. Ryle