John Milton Quotes

What wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear without the knowledge of evil? He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian.

There is more security in self-denial, mortification, and other like virtues, than in an abundance of tears.

To gain the spiritual ascendancy over ourselves, and the influences with which we are surrounded, through a rigid course of self-discipline, is our first consideration, it is our first labor, before we can pave the way for our children to grow up without sin unto salvation.

God is better served in resisting a temptation to evil than in many formal prayers.

A true Christian man is distinguished from other men, not so much by his beneficent works, as by his patience.

Self-denial is indispensable to a strong character, and the highest kind comes from a religious stock.

Why comes temptation but for man to meet And master and make crouch beneath his foot, And so be pedestaled in triumph?

The test of character is having the ability to meet challenges.

Believe it or not, when you fast in the Spirit, God makes you more equipped to deal with hunger, irritability, and temptation.

One cannot possibly understand the teaching of the saints unless one has a pure mind and is trying to imitate their life.

Prosperity is a more refined and severer test of character than adversity as one hour of summer sunshine produces greater corruption than the longest winter day.

The devil is in constant conspiracy against a preacher who really prays, for it has been said that what a minister is in his prayer closet is what he is, no more, no less.

Avoiding the temptation to sin and being patient upon that, is greater than being patient whilst being afflicted with trials.

We can think of Lent as a time to eradicate evil or cultivate virtue, a time to pull up weeds or to plant good seeds. Which is better is clear, for the Christian ideal is always positive rather than negative.

Saints spring and thrive most internally, when they are most externally afflicted. Afflictions are the mother of virtue.

If a man does not argue with the thoughts that the enemy secretly sows in us, but by prayer to God uproots conversation with them, this is a sign that his mind has attained wisdom, and that he has found a short path.

To set the mind above the appetites is the end of abstinence, which one of the Fathers observes to be not a virtue, but the groundwork of virtue.

Whosoever will list himself under the banner of Christ, must, in the first place and above all things, make war upon his own lusts and vices. It is in vain for any man to usurp the name of Christian, without holiness of life, purity of manners, benignity and meekness of spirit.

There are no temptations from which assailed virtue may not gain strength, instead of falling before them, vanquished and subdued.

A virtue never tested is no virtue at all.

The generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it.

Virtue is only a conflict by which we get the mastery of our failings; that, by which every man proves his peculiar power of understanding the will and spirit of God, is only a silent working of the inner man.

Where there is no temptation, there is no virtue.

Human character is never found "to enter into its glory," except through the ordeal of affliction. Its force cannot come forth without the offer of resistance, nor can the grandeur of its free will declare itself, except in the battle of fierce temptation.

Saintliness is also a temptation.