Top 40 Richard Cecil Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “God’s way of answering the Christian’s prayer for more patience, experience, hope and love often is to put him into the furnace of affliction.”

— Richard Cecil

2. “The first step towards knowledge is to know that we are ignorant.”

— Richard Cecil

3. “Method is the very hinge of business, and there is no method without punctuality.”

— Richard Cecil

4. “Prayer is faith passing into action.”

— Richard Cecil

5. “Regeneration is God’s disposing the heart to Himself; conversion is the actual turning of the heart to God.”

— Richard Cecil

6. “An idle man has a constant tendency to torpidity. He has adopted the Indian maxim that it is better to walk than to run, and better to stand than to walk, and better to sit than to stand, and better to lie than to sit. He hugs himself into the notion, that God calls him to be quiet.”

— Richard Cecil

7. “Think of the ills from which you are exempt, and it will aid you to bear patiently those which now you may suffer.”

— Richard Cecil

8. “In the midst of sorrow, faith draws the sting out of every trouble, and takes out the bitterness from every affliction.”

— Richard Cecil

9. “Let family worship be short, savory, simple, plain, tender, heavenly.”

— Richard Cecil

10. “Eloquence is vehement simplicity.”

— Richard Cecil

11. “Faith laughs at the shaking of the spear; unbelief trembles at the shaking of a leaf.”

— Richard Cecil

12. “He who sows, even with tears, the precious seed of faith, hope, and love, shall doubtless come again with joy, bringing his sheaves with him, because it is the very nature of that seed to yield a joyful harvest.”

— Richard Cecil

13. “The Christian’s fellowship with God is rather a habit than a rapture.”

— Richard Cecil

14. “Wisdom prepares for the worst, but folly leaves the worst for the day when it comes.”

— Richard Cecil

15. “Duties are ours; events are God’s. This removes an infinite burden from the shoulders of a miserable, tempted, dying creature. On this consideration only, can he securely lay down his head, and close his eyes.”

— Richard Cecil

16. “All extremes are error. The reverse of error is not truth, but error still. Truth lies between extremes.”

— Richard Cecil

17. “Every year of my life I grow more convinced that it is wisest and best to fix our attention on the beautiful and the good, and dwell as little as possible on the evil and the false.”

— Richard Cecil

18. “Every man will have his own criterion in forming his judgment of others. I depend very much on the effect of affliction. I consider how a man comes out of the furnace; gold will lie for a month in the furnace without losing a grain.”

— Richard Cecil

19. “The history of all the great characters of the Bible is summed up in this one sentence: They acquainted themselves with God, and acquiesced His will in all things...”

— Richard Cecil

20. “Example is more forcible than precept. People look at my six days in the week to see what I mean on the seventh.”

— Richard Cecil

21. “Unbelief starves the soul; faith finds food in famine.”

— Richard Cecil

22. “There is no such thing as a fixed policy, because policy like all organic entities is always in the making.”

— Richard Cecil

23. “If there is any person to whom you feel a dislike, that is the person of whom you ought never to speak.”

— Richard Cecil

24. “Providence is a greater mystery than revelation.”

— Richard Cecil

25. “The man who labors to please his neighbor for his good to edification has the mind that was in Christ. It is a sinner trying to help a sinner. Even a feeble, but kind and tender man, will effect more than a genius, who is rough and artificial.”

— Richard Cecil

26. “Sin, without strong restraints, would pull God from His throne, make the world the minion of its lusts, and all beings bow down and worship.”

— Richard Cecil

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27. “The world looks at ministers out of the pulpit to know that they mean in it.”

— Richard Cecil

28. “The only instance of praying to saints, mentioned in the Bible, is that of the rich man in torment calling upon Abraham; and let it be remembered, that it was practised only by a lost soul and without success.”

— Richard Cecil

29. “The nurse of infidelity is sensuality.”

— Richard Cecil

30. “Every man is an original and solitary character. None can either understand or feel the book of his own life like himself.”

— Richard Cecil

31. “We are urgent about the body; He is about the soul. We call for present comforts; He considers our everlasting rest. And therefore when He sends not the very things we ask, He hears us by sending greater than we can ask or think.”

— Richard Cecil

32. “Philosophy is a proud, sullen detector of the poverty and misery of man. It may turn him from the world with a proud, sturdy contempt; but it cannot come forward and say, here are rest, grace, pardon, peace, strength, and consolation.”

— Richard Cecil

33. “The spirit and tone of your home will have great influence on your children. If it is what it ought to be, it will fasten conviction on their minds, however wicked they may become.”

— Richard Cecil

34. “Our Heavenly Father always sends His children the things they ask, or better things.”

— Richard Cecil

35. “The Christian will find his parentheses for prayer even in the busiest hours of life.”

— Richard Cecil

36. “The Old and New Testaments contain but one scheme of religion. Neither part of this scheme can be understood without the other.”

— Richard Cecil

37. “Nothing can be proposed so wild or so absurd as not to find a party, and often a very large party to espouse it.”

— Richard Cecil

38. “Faith makes all evil good to us, and all good better; unbelief makes all good evil, and all evil worse.”

— Richard Cecil

39. “In viewing the scheme of redemption, I seem like one viewing a vast and complicated machine of exquisite contrivance; what I comprehend of it is wonderful, what I do not, is, perhaps, more so still.”

— Richard Cecil

40. “An accession of wealth is a dangerous predicament for a man. At first he is stunned if the accession be sudden, and is very humble and very grateful. Then he begins to speak a little louder, people think him more sensible, and soon he thinks himself so.”

— Richard Cecil

41. “A wise man looks upon men as he does on horses; all their caparisons of title, wealth, and place, he considers but as harness.”

— Richard Cecil

42. “It is much easier to settle a point than to act on it.”

— Richard Cecil

43. “I could write down twenty cases wherein I wished that God had done otherwise than he did, but which I now see, if I had had my own way, would have led to extensive mischief.”

— Richard Cecil

44. “The religion of a sinner stands on two pillars; namely, what Christ did for us in the flesh, and what he performs in us by his Spirit. Most errors arise from an attempt to separate these two.”

— Richard Cecil

45. “Abraham teaches us the right way of conversing with God : “And Abraham fell on his face, and God talked with him.” When we plead with Him, our faces should be in the dust.”

— Richard Cecil

46. “Religion is such a belief of the Bible as maintains a living influence on the heart.”

— Richard Cecil

47. “Self-will so ardent and active that it will break a world to pieces to make a stool to sit on.”

— Richard Cecil

48. “Time can take nothing from the BIBLE. It is the living monitor. Like the sun, it is the same in its light and influence to man this day which it was years ago. It can meet every present inquiry and console every present loss.”

— Richard Cecil