Thomas Chalmers famous quotes

Such is the grasping tendency of the human heart, that it must have a something to lay hold of—and which, if wrested away without the substitution of another something in its place, would leave a void and a vacancy as painful to the mind, as hunger is to the natural system…. The heart must have something to cling to…
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Heart #Mind #Vacancy

Faith is like the hand of the beggar that takes the gift while adding nothing to it.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Christian #Hands #Christian Inspirational

Every man is a missionary, now and forever, for good or for evil, whether he intends or designs it or not.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Men #Evil #Forever

A man's needs are few. The simpler the life, therefore, the better. Indeed, only three things are truly necessary in order to make life happy: the blessing of God, the benefit of books, and the benevolence of friends.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Book #Happy Life #Men

The best way to overcome the world is not with morality or self-discipline. Christians overcome the world by seeing the beauty and excellence of Christ. They overcome the world by seeing something more attractive than the world: Christ
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Christian #Self #Discipline

The heart is not so constituted, and the only way to dispossess it of an old affection is by the expulsive power of a new one
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Heart #Way #Affection

Regardless of how large, your vision is too small.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Vision

Infidelity gives nothing in return for what it takes away. What, then, is it worth? Everything valuable as a compensating power. Not a blade of grass that withers, or the ugliest weed that is flung away to rot and die, but reproduces something.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Weed #Giving #Infidelity

Every man is a missionary, now and forever, for good or for evil, whether he intends or designs it or not. He may be a blot radiating his dark influence outward to the very circumference of society, or he may be a blessing spreading benediction over the length and breadth of the world. But a blank he cannot be: there are no moral blanks; there are no neutral characters.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Character #Dark #Men

There are no moral blanks; there are no neutral characters.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Character #Moral

It is not scholarship alone, but scholarship impregnated with religion, that tells on the great mass of society. We have no faith in the efficacy of mechanic's institutes, or even of primary and elementary schools, for building up a virtuous and well conditioned peasantry, so long as they stand dissevered from the lessons of Christian piety.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Christian #Education #School

Not till we come to a simple reliance on the blood and mediation of the Saviour, shall we know what it is either to have trust in God, or know what it is to walk before Him without fear, in righteousness and true holiness.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Simple #Blood #Holiness

Judging from the tendency and effect of his arguments, an atheist does not appear positively to refuse that a God may be... His verdict on the doctrine of God is only that it is not proven. It is not that it is disproven. He is but an atheist. He is not an anti-theist.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Atheist #Judging #Atheism

Even in the fiercest uproar of our stormy passions, conscience, though in her softest whispers, gives to the supremacy of rectitude the voice of an undying testimony.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Passion #Voice #Giving

Guard against that vanity which courts a compliment, or is fed by it.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Vanity #Compliment #Court

Thousands of men breathe, move, and live; pass off the stage of life and are heard of no more. Why? They did not a particle of good in the world; and none were blest by them, none could point to them as the instrument of their redemption; not a line they wrote, not a word they spoke, could be recalled, and so they perished--their light went out in darkness, and they were not remembered more than the insects of yesterday. Will you thus live and die, O man immortal? Live for something.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Moving #Men #Yesterday

In the wildest anarchy of man's insurgent appetites and sins there is still a reclaiming voice,--a voice which, even when in practice disregarded, it is impossible not to own; and to which, at the very moment that we refuse our obedience, we find that we cannot refuse the homage of what ourselves do feel and acknowledge to be the best, the highest principles of our nature.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Men #Practice #Voice

The human mind feels restless and dissatisfied under the anxieties of ignorance. It longs for the repose of conviction; and to gain this repose it will often rather precipitate its conclusions than wait for the tardy lights of observation and experiment. There is such a thing, too, as the love of simplicity and system,--a prejudice of the understanding which disposes it to include all the phenomena of nature under a few sweeping generalities,--an indolence which loves to repose on the beauties of a theory rather than encounter the fatiguing detail of its evidences.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Ignorance #Light #Simplicity

I have no sympathy whatever with those who would grudge our workmen and our common people the very highest acquisitions which their taste or their time or their inclination would lead them to realize.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Education #People #Acquisition

Shakespeare is an intellectual miracle.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Miracle #Intellectual

By the very constitution of our nature moral evil is its own curse.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Evil #Moral #Constitution

If it be the characteristic of a worldly man that he desecrates what is holy, it should be of the Christian to consecrate what is secular, and to recognize a present and presiding divinity in all things.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Christian #Men #Divinity

Enthusiasm is a virtue rarely to be met with in seasons of calm and unruffled prosperity. Enthusiasm flourishes in adversity, kindles in the hour of danger, and awakens to deeds of renown. The terrors of persecution only serve to quicken the energy of its purposes. It swells in proud integrity, and, great in the purity of its cause, it can scatter defiance amidst hosts of enemies.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Integrity #Adversity #Enemy

O Heavenly Father, convert my religion from a name to a principle! Bring all my thoughts and movements into an habitual reference to Thee!
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Father #Names #Movement

Acts of virtue ripen into habits; and the goodly and permanent result is the formation or establishment of a virtuous character.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Character #Virtue #Habit

Enthusiasm is a virtue rarely to be met with in seasons of calm and unruffled prosperity.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Enthusiasm #Calm #Prosperity

The brute animals have all the same sensations of pain as human beings, and consequently endure as much pain when their body is hurt; but in their case the cruelty of torment is greater, because they have no mind to bear them up against their sufferings, and no hope to look forward to when enduring the last extreme pain.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Hurt #Pain #Animal

I want to feel my own nothingness, I want to give myself up in absolute resignation to God, to lie prostrate and passive at His feet, with no other disposition in my heart than that of merging my will into His will, and no other language in my mouth than that of prayer for the perfecting of His strength in my weakness.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Christian #Prayer #Lying

Christ came to give us a justifying righteousness, and He also came to make us holy — not chiefly for the purpose of evidencing here our possession of a justifying righteousness — but for the purpose of forming and fitting us for a blessed eternity.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Blessed #Giving #Purpose

It is more blessed to give than to receive, and therefore less blessed to receive than to give.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Blessed #Giving #Wealth

... moral evil is its own curse.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Evil #Moral #Curse

The Bible is like a wide and beautiful landscape seen afar off, dim and confused; but a good telescope will bring it near, and spread out all its rocks and trees and flowers and v__ulant fields and winding rivers at one's very feet. That telescope is the Spirit's teaching.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Beautiful #Confused #Flower

O God, impress upon me the value of time, and give regulation to all my thoughts and to all my movements.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Giving #Movement #Regulation

The sum and substance of the preparation needed for a coming eternity is that you believe what the Bible tells you, and do what the Bible bids you.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Believe #Preparation #Substance

With the magnificence of eternity before us, let time, with all its fluctuations, dwindle into its own littleness.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Time #Magnificence #Eternity

Infidelity is one of those coinages,-a mass of base money that won't pass current with any heart that loves truly, or any head that thinks correctly. And infidels are poor sad creatures; they carry about them a load of dejection and desolation, not the less heavy that it is invisible. It is the fearful blindness of the soul.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Heart #Thinking #Soul

Prayer does not enable us to do a greater work for God. Prayer is a greater work for God.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Prayer #Doe #God Prayer

The character wherewith we sink into the grave at death is the very character wherewith we shall reappear at the resurrection.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Death #Character #Resurrection

The public! why, the public's nothing better than a great baby.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Baby

Write your name in kindness, love and mercy on the hearts of the thousands you come in contact with year by year, and you will never be forgotten.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Kindness #Heart #Writing

I take one decisive and immediate step, and resign my all to the sufficiency of my Saviour.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Decision #Steps #Sufficiency

I feel my disease, and I feel that my want of alarm and lively affecting conviction forms its most obstinate ingredient; I try to stir up the emotion, and feel myself harassed and distressed at the impotency of my own meditations. But why linger without the threshold in the face of a warm and urgent invitation? "Come unto me." Do not think it is your office to heal one part of the disease, and Christ's to heal the remainder.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Thinking #Office #Meditation

It has been said that there is nothing more uncommon than common sense.
-- Thomas Chalmers

#Common Sense #Common #Said