Quotes About Reflection

Rather than walk about holy places we can thus pause in our thoughts, examine our heart, and visit the wheel promised land.

It was easy for you to say these things, since you either knew you were not writing to Luther, but for the general public, or you did not reflect that it was Luther you were writing against, whom I hope you allow nonetheless to have some acquaintance with Holy Writ and some judgment in respect of it.

The Bible is alive, it speaks to me; it has feet, it runs after me; it has hands, it lays hold of me.

it has been and always will be my desire not to attack even those whom public repute disgraces. I am not delighted at the faults of any man, since I am very conscious myself of the great beam in my own eye, nor can I be the first to cast a stone at the adulteress.

Jerome] is a man quite without either judgment or application.

your thoughts concerning God are too human.

What man, if he were God, would humble himself to lie in the feedbox of a donkey or to hang upon a cross?

Before you pray, check to see whether you believe or doubt that you will be heard. If you are doubting or uncertain, or if you are merely trying a prayer to see what happens, your prayer won't be worth anything.

When you understand this—and you should because "what hast thou that thou didst not receive?"—you will not flatter yourself on the one hand and on the other hand you will not carry yourself with the thought of resigning from the ministry when you are insulted, reproached, or persecuted.

So also in the gospel (Matt. 16:13, 15) "Who do men say that the Son of Man is? But you (that is, you who are gods), who do you say that I am?

We need a millstone around our neck to keep us humble.

If I go back home to Wittenberg, I'll lie down in a coffin and give the maggots a fat doctor to eat.

I more fear what is within me than what comes from without.

For more than twenty years I was a pious monk, read Mass daily, and so weakened myself with fasting and praying that I would not have been long for this life had I continued. Yet all this taken together cannot help me in even one little crisis to be able to say before God: 'All this I have done, now please consider it, and be gracious to me.' What else did I achieve with this than to plague myself uselessly, impair my health, and waste my time?

For the statement of Isaiah (28:19) is true: "Trouble gives understanding"; likewise, hunger is the best condiment. For those who are afflicted have a better understanding of the Holy Scriptures; the smug and prosperous read them as if they were some poem written by Ovid.

Thus although Nebuchadnezzar no longer remembered his dream, yet he could not forget the impression it made.

Whenever you are being praised, remember it is not you who is being praised but Christ, to whom all praise belongs.

No one can worthily speak or hear any Scripture, unless he is touched in conformity with it, so that he feels inwardly what he hears and says outwardly and says, "Ah, this is true!

If I examine myself I find enough unholiness to shock me. But when I look at Christ in me I find that I am altogether holy.

If you picture the Bible to be a mighty tree and every word a little branch, I have shaken every one of those branches because I wanted to know what it was and what it meant.

I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.

True humility does not know that it is humble. If it did, it would be proud from the contemplation of so fine a virtue.

[W]e are the heirs of a past of rope, fire, and murder. I for one am not ashamed of this past. My shame is for those who became so inhuman that they could inflict this torture upon us.

There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.