Philip Yancey Quotes

Counsel involving right and wrong should never be sought from a man who does not say his prayers.

In a difficult situation one never-failing guide is to ask yourself: "What would Christ have done?" Then do it-as nearly as you can.

Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will - his personal responsibility in the realm of faith and morals.

The point never to lose sight of is to be guided by the correct thing, as you see it. It's the only way to approach such profound matters and retain your integrity.

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

Virtue could see to do what Virtue would by her own radiant light, though sun and moon where in the flat sea sunk.

Theosophy has no code of morals, being itself the embodiment of the highest morality; it presents to its students the highest moral teachings of all religions, gathering the most fragrant blossoms from the gardens of the world-faiths.

Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself. He imposes his own stamp of action, takes responsibility for it, makes it his own.

Let not a man do what his sense of right bids him not to do, nor desire what it forbids him to desire. This is sufficient. The skillful artist will not alter his measures for the sake of a stupid workman.

Preach in your own house and to your own company

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.

I'm not ashamed of anything I've done, because if I feel ashamed, I'm not going to do it in the first place.

Every moral teacher or spiritual adviser gives injunctions about how to live wisely and well. But life is so complicated and full of uncertainty that rules seldom tell us quite what to do.

Temptations are as thick as the leaves of the forest, and no one can be out of the reach of temptation unless he is dead. The great thing is to make people intelligent enough and strong enough, not to keep away from temptation, but to resist it.

The Bible stands alone in human literature in its elevated conception of manhood, in character and conduct.

I have found that the greatest help in meeting any problem with decency and self-respect and whatever courage is demanded, is to know where you yourself stand. That is, to have in words what you believe and are acting from.

It is ill changing the creed to meet each rising temptation. The soul is truer than it seems, and refuses to be trifled with.

The New Testament is remarkable for its pure morality; the best of the Hindoo Scripture, for its pure intellectuality. The readeris nowhere raised into and sustained in a higher, purer, or rarer region of thought than in the Bhagvat-Geeta.... It is unquestionably one of the noblest and most sacred scriptures which have come down to us.

As a lifelong student of the world’s wisdom literature, it is my duty to inform students that “ridding the world of evil” is a goal very different from any recommended by Jesus, Buddha, or Muhammad, though not so different from some recommended by the Josephs Stalin and McCarthy and by Mao Tse Tung.

I love the soul that dares tread the temptations of his years beneath his youthful feet.

Would you say that any one sacred book is superior to all others in the world? ... I say the New Testament, after that, I should place the Koran, which in its moral teachings, is hardly more than a later edition of the New Testament. Then would follow according to my opinion the Old Testament, the Southern Buddhist Tripitaka, the Tao-te-king of Laotze, the Kings of Confucius, the Veda and the Avesta.

There is no better motto which it [culture] can have than these words of Bishop Wilson, "To make reason and the will of God prevail."

Follow the deer? Follow the Christ the King. Live pure, speak true,right wrong, Follow the King-- Else, wherefore born?

...there is one thing that all Satan's cunning and all the snares of temptation cannot take by surprise - an undivided will.

May God grant us the wisdom to discover right, the will to choose it, and the strength to make it endure.