Top 40 Philip Gulley Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Community is a beautiful thing; sometimes it even heals us and makes us better than we would otherwise be.”

— Philip Gulley

2. “Truth doesn’t need elaboration or embellishment; it can stand on its own two legs. All the adornment in the world doesn’t make the truth any more true.”

— Philip Gulley

3. “We just never know. We think we do. We think we have life figured out, and in our arrogance we become hard. But life has a way of humbling us, of softening us.”

— Philip Gulley

4. “When love takes you by the hand and leaves you better, that is home. That’s the place to stake your claim and build your life.”

— Philip Gulley

5. “Oddity, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. What one person rejects as lunacy, another reveres as truth.”

— Philip Gulley

6. “I wonder if gratefulness is the bridge from sorrow to joy, spanning the chasm of our anxious striving. Freed from the burden of unbridled desires, we can enjoy what we have, celebrate what we’ve attained, and appreciate the familiar. For if we can’t be happy now, we’ll likely not be happy when.”

— Philip Gulley

7. “Sometimes what we think we need isn’t what we need at all, and what gets thrown in for good measure is that which fills our hearts.”

— Philip Gulley

8. “There’s danger in thinking joy is a matter of location. If we can’t find joy where we are, we probably won’t find it anywhere.”

— Philip Gulley

9. “When we’re young, we think we know all there is to know. Then we grow older, and the more we learn, the more we realize how little we actually know. It takes a wise man to realize just how much he doesn’t know.”

— Philip Gulley

10. “There are things we see with our eyes, sitting high and looking out. And there are things we see with our hearts, sitting still and looking in.”

— Philip Gulley

11. “When we are honest, we admit how agreeable it can feel to be singled out for favored treatment. The biggest barrier to equality for all is that inequality for some feels good.”

— Philip Gulley

12. “Instead of viewing God as one who helps me accomplish my purposes, it is now my joy to help God accomplish the divine purpose – seeking the best for others and seeking the growth of the beloved, which is to say everyone.”

— Philip Gulley

13. “People feel guilty enough at funerals without having more guilt heaped on. I would prefer a bighearted preacher giving my eulogy, someone inclined to widen heaven’s doors. I don’t want to leave folks wondering whether I made it.”

— Philip Gulley

14. “Sometimes we come to gratitude too late. It’s only after blessing has passed on that we realize what we had.”

— Philip Gulley

15. “Write letters to your grandmother. She will love it. And leave you money in her will.”

— Philip Gulley

16. “People did not come to God through Jesus as much as they saw the priorities of God in Jesus.”

— Philip Gulley

17. “I believe God loves everyone.”

— Philip Gulley

18. “Many false claims are made about God. They exact a heavy toll on people who believe every utterance from the pulpit must surely be the gospel truth.”

— Philip Gulley

19. “Reality has a long history of not altering itself to make us happy or comfortable.”

— Philip Gulley

20. “When I lifted up the Bible as my ultimate authority, I made my leather-bound, gold-engraved Bible into a paper calf.”

— Philip Gulley

21. “If you have to choose between following money or following your heart, go with your heart. There are some choices we make that cannot be corrected. Squandering your life in a job that shrivels your soul isn’t one of them. Use your gifts. Follow your heart.”

— Philip Gulley

22. “Thus are the changes wrought in a man’s life – that courage is treasured more than comfort and, in that choice, victory is gained.”

— Philip Gulley

23. “In any crowd there is a malcontent or two, and the Easter crowd is no exception. Someone invariably demands I speak out against the Easter Bunny. I am captivated by a great number of subjects, but have never worked up the enthusiasm to preach against rabbits, real or mythic. These are the same people who complain about Santa at Christmas and want me to take a swipe at Halloween.”

— Philip Gulley

24. “Love, even that love which is imagined, is sometimes all we have to get us through.”

— Philip Gulley

25. “They said I lacked ambition, which wasn’t true. They confused contentment for stagnation, a common mistake.”

— Philip Gulley

26. “We are not to worship the Bible; we are to worship the One the Bible reveals.”

— Philip Gulley

27. “A New World. A world where God has set up housekeeping, where God will live right with us, and we with Him. He’ll wipe the tears from our eyes, and death will die. No more crying, no more sorrow, no more pain, no more.”

— Philip Gulley

28. “The leaves of our blessed lives fall to the ground and if we’re wise like my grandfather, we gather them in a pile and keep them safe lest the winds of forgetfulness blow them away.”

— Philip Gulley

29. “We don’t need to be beautiful for Christ to take us in. He is equally at home when we’re broken-down and dirty.”

— Philip Gulley

30. “When I was in second grade, my teacher, Miss Maxwell, read from The Harmony Herald that one in every four children lived in China. I remember looking over the room, guessing which children they might be. I wasn’t sure where China was, but suspected it was on bus route three. I recall being grateful I didn’t live in China because I didn’t care for Chinese food and couldn’t speak the language.”

— Philip Gulley

31. “This is how foreign grace was to her, that when she heard it she mistook it for heresy. There are some people, I am sorry to say, who wouldn’t recognize grace if it stood at their door wearing a name tag.”

— Philip Gulley

32. “Both his parents had died of heart problems, which he feared would happen to him, so he’d begun to jog and was hit by a truck.”

— Philip Gulley

33. “There’ll be times,” Pastor Taylor had told Sam in a quiet, hesitant voice, “when your flock will minister to you. Dark nights of the soul when it feels you’ve lost your way. And you have to let them. Sam, you have to let them help you.”

— Philip Gulley

34. “Every effort to safeguard what is considered truth inevitably leads to the crippling of truth, for the very act of enshrining a belief and treating it as settled truth and infallible doctrine is to declare that the search for truth has concluded. Any religion with a regard for truth must resist every effort to bring its search for truth to an end. This includes the formation of creeds, which by their nature are presented as conclusive and indisputable.”

— Philip Gulley

35. “But if religion is more than the attainment of power and privilege, if it is the doorway into beauty and mystery and meaning, then not only is divinity unnecessary but it is an impediment, for it implies that enlightenment is beyond the reach of mortals.”

— Philip Gulley

36. “Dr. Neely’s theory is that if you’re not willing to get poked with a needle, then you’re probably not sick enough to see a doctor.”

— Philip Gulley

37. “I had met my wife in college. Her name was Barbara, and she was the first woman besides my mother to show the faintest interest in me. It took six years to persuade her to marry me.”

— Philip Gulley

38. “For a minister, that was pretty inconsiderate of him to go and get killed during Lent,” she said.”

— Philip Gulley

39. “Life, not lectures, inspires us to change.”

— Philip Gulley

40. “In this unsettled world, it is good to have this steadiness – the Christmas Eve service, the peal of the bell, the star atop the Peacocks’ silo, the saints burdened with concern. There is a holiness to memory, a sense of God’s presence in these mangers of the mind. Which might explain why it is that the occasions that change the least are often the very occasions that change us the most.”

— Philip Gulley

41. “Too many times we pray for ease, but that’s a prayer seldom met. What we need to do is pray for roots that reach deep into the Eternal, so when the rains fall and the winds blow, we won’t be swept asunder.”

— Philip Gulley