Top 90 Richard Sibbes Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Times are bad, God is good.”

— Richard Sibbes

2. “There is more mercy in Christ than sin in us.”

— Richard Sibbes

3. “When we go to God by prayer, the devil knows we go to fetch strength against him, and therefore he opposes us all he can.”

— Richard Sibbes

4. “Self-emptiness prepares us for spiritual fullness.”

— Richard Sibbes

5. “Satan gives Adam an apple, and takes away Paradise. Therefore in all temptations let us consider not what he offers, but what we shall lose.”

— Richard Sibbes

6. “Measure not God’s love and favour by your own feeling. The sun shines as clearly in the darkest day as it does in the brightest. The difference is not in the sun, but in some clouds which hinder the manifestation of the light thereof.”

— Richard Sibbes

7. “God can pick sense out of a confused prayer.”

— Richard Sibbes

8. “Whatsoever God takes away from His children, He either replaces it with a much greater favor or else gives strength to bear it.”

— Richard Sibbes

9. “It is better to go bruised to heaven than sound to hell.”

— Richard Sibbes

10. “It is a destructive addition to add anything to Christ.”

— Richard Sibbes

11. “What coward would not fight when he is sure of victory?”

— Richard Sibbes

12. “The life of a Christian is wondrously ruled in this world, by the consideration and meditation of the life of another world.”

— Richard Sibbes

13. “The winter prepares the earth for the spring, so do afflictions sanctified prepare the soul for glory.”

— Richard Sibbes

14. “No sin is so great but the satisfaction of Christ and His mercies are greater; it is beyond comparison. Fathers and mothers in tenderest affections are but beams and trains to lead us upwards to the infinite mercy of God in Christ.”

— Richard Sibbes

15. “When we grow careless of keeping our souls, then God recovers our taste of good things again by sharp crosses.”

— Richard Sibbes

16. “Gospel repentance is not a little hanging down of the head. It’s a working of the heart until your sin becomes more odious to you than any punishment for it.”

— Richard Sibbes

17. “Heaven is not heaven without Christ. It is better to be in any place with Christ than to be in heaven itself without him. All delicacies without Christ are but as a funeral banquet. Where the master of the feast is away, there is nothing but solemnness. What is all without Christ? I say the joys of heaven are not the joys of heaven without Christ; he is the very heaven of heaven.”

— Richard Sibbes

18. “A man may be a false prophet and yet speak the truth.”

— Richard Sibbes

19. “The whole life of a Christian should be nothing but praises and thanks to God; we should neither eat nor sleep, but eat to God and sleep to God and work to God and talk to God, do all to His glory and praise.”

— Richard Sibbes

20. “Those that look to be happy must first look to be holy.”

— Richard Sibbes

21. “It is Christ’s manner to trouble our souls first, and then to come with healing in his wings.”

— Richard Sibbes

22. “It is good to divert our sorrow for other things to the root of all, which is sin. Let our grief run most in that channel, that as sin bred grief, so grief may consume sin.”

— Richard Sibbes

23. “What the heart liketh best, the mind studieth most.”

— Richard Sibbes

24. “Death is only a grim porter to let us into a stately palace.”

— Richard Sibbes

25. “See a flame in a spark, a tree in a seed. See great things in little beginnings.”

— Richard Sibbes

26. “What unthankfulness is it to forget our consolations, and to look upon matters of grievance. To think so much upon two or three crosses as to forget an hundred blessing.”

— Richard Sibbes

27. “There are no men more careful of the use of means than those that are surest of a good issue and conclusion, for the one stirs up diligence in the other. Assurance of the end stirs up diligence in the means. For the soul of a believing Christian knows that God has decreed both.”

— Richard Sibbes

28. “The way to cover our sin is to uncover it by confession.”

— Richard Sibbes

29. “Poverty and affliction take away the fuel that feeds pride.”

— Richard Sibbes

30. “A curse lies upon those that, when the truth suffers, have not a word to defend it.”

— Richard Sibbes

31. “Christ quickens none but the dead. Why do not the papists attain to this grace of justification? They never see themselves wholly dead, but join some life to the natural estate of man. Therefore Christ quickens them not.”

— Richard Sibbes

32. “What a support to our faith is this, that God the Father, the party offended by our sins, is so well pleased with the work of redemption!”

— Richard Sibbes

33. “God knows we have nothing of ourselves, therefore in the covenant of grace he requires no more than he gives, but gives what he requires, and accepts what he gives.”

— Richard Sibbes

34. “There is not a minute of time in all of our life but we must either be near to God or we will be undone.”

— Richard Sibbes

35. “It is atheism to pray and not wait on hope.”

— Richard Sibbes

36. “Sin is not so sweet in the committing as it is heavy and bitter in the reckoning.”

— Richard Sibbes

37. “Christ came down from heaven, and emptied himself of majesty in tender love to souls; shall we not come down from our high conceits to do any poor soul good? Shall man be proud after God hath been humble?”

— Richard Sibbes

38. “This is a life of faith, for God will try the truth of our faith, so that the world may see that God has such servants as will depend upon His bare word.”

— Richard Sibbes

39. “The depths of our misery can never fall below the depths of mercy.”

— Richard Sibbes

40. “A man knows no more in religion than he loves and embraceth with the affections of his soul.”

— Richard Sibbes

41. “Peace and joy are two main fruits of Christ’s kingdom. Let the world be as it will, if we cannot rejoice in the world, yet we may rejoice in the Lord. His presence makes any condition comfortable.”

— Richard Sibbes

42. “Providence is the perpetuity and continuance of creation.”

— Richard Sibbes

43. “A sharp reproof sometimes is a precious pearl, and a sweet balm. The wounds of secure sinners will not be healed with sweet words.”

— Richard Sibbes

44. “If Christ has once possessed the affections, there is no dispossessing of him again. A fire in the heart overcomes all fires without.”

— Richard Sibbes

45. “God’s children improve all advantages to advance their grand end; they labour to grow better by blessings and crosses, and to make sanctified use of all things.”

— Richard Sibbes

46. “Christ does not choose you because you are good, but to make you good.”

— Richard Sibbes

47. “In the godly, holy truths are conveyed by way of a taste; gracious men have a spiritual palate as well as a spiritual eye. Grace alters the spiritual taste.”

— Richard Sibbes

48. “Let weak Christians know that a spark from heaven, though kindled under green wood that sobs and smokes, yet it will consume all at last.”

— Richard Sibbes

49. “The love of a wife to her husband may begin from the supply of her necessities, but afterwards she may love him also for the sweetness of his person; so the soul first loves Christ for salvation but when she is brought to Him and finds what sweetness there is in Him then she loves Him for Himself.”

— Richard Sibbes

50. “The Christian will desire to see the beauty of God in his house, that his soul might be ravished in the excellency of the object, and that the highest powers of his soul, his understanding, will, and affections might be fully satisfied, that he might have full contentment.”

— Richard Sibbes