Quotes About Devotion

Read not the word carelessly, but with seriousness and affection; as the oracle of heaven, the well of salvation, the book of life.

A shaking hand may as well write a line steadily, as we can keep our hearts fixed in prayer without the Spirit of God.

He who has no love in his heart to God, you may set him down for an apostate.

Prayer is the spiritual pulse of the soul, by which it beats strongly after God.

A godly person chooseth Christ and grace before the most illustrious things under the sun:

Love is a holy fuel. It fires the affections, steels the courage, and carries a Christian above the love of life, and the fear of death.

Leave not off reading the Bible till you find your hearts warmed. Read the word, not only as a history, but labor to be affected with it. Let it not only inform you, but inflame you.

Piety does not exclude industry.

To serve God, to love God, to enjoy God, is the sweetest freedom in the world.

A godly man spiritualizes duty; he is not only for the doing of holy things but for the holy doing of things.

The reason why God has given us a thinking faculty, is that we may think on his Name. When our thoughts run out in vain things, we should think with ourselves thus: Did God give us this talent to misemploy? Did he give us thoughts that we should think of everything but him?

Worldly business often crowds into our duties, and while our mouths are speaking to God, our hearts are thinking of the world:

Be often among the godly. They are the salt of the earth—and will help to season you. Their counsel may direct you; their prayers may enliven you. Such holy sparks may be thrown into your breasts as may kindle devotion in you. It is good to be among the saints, to learn the trade of godliness: "He who walks with wise men shall be wise" (Proverbs 13:20).

What are Raphael's Madonnas but the shadow of a mother's love, fixed in permanent outline forever?

Love is its own eternity.

And oh, Claudia, Claudilla, ask me to do something -something that I can do. Do not ask me to forget you or to be indifferent to you. Do not ask me to have no interest in how you pass your time. But if we are separated, set me a task, something that will be a daily link with you.

It is only dogs that never bite their masters.

In love's service, only the wounded soldier can serve.

series of infatuations for admired writers.

I suppose it seems ignoble to you that a great oak of a man should go about the world like a blind man about an empty house merely because a chit of a girl has been withdrawn from it. No, no, you cannot understand this, my adored one, but I understand and grow pale...You will laugh at me, but I think he goes about the hemispheres to pass the time between now and his old age.

But you don't love something because you're blind to its faults, right? You love it despite its flaws.

How much good fortune had been strewn her way, starting with a man who still put up with her crankiness and irrationalities, who stayed loyal and devoted to her, as if she were the flag of his country.

Maybe, in the end, that's all that love was—doing the hard thing.

But if Viraf had been unable to light her funeral pyre, she had done it for him. She had climbed on top of the neatly arranged pile of wood and lay down; she had lit the match that brought alive the flames that had devoured her. With her words she had birthed a fire that had scorched all of them. The fire had consumed her, turning her future and her dreams to ash;