John Owen Quotes

Affliction is a school of virtue; it corrects levity, and interrupts the confidence of sinning.

Men have the power of thinking that they may avoid sin.

Christian morality prefers remorse to precede lust, and then lust not to follow.

No evil propensity of the human heart is so powerful that it may not be subdued by discipline.

Man must vanquish himself, must do himself violence, in order to perform the slightest action untainted by evil.

It is here, my daughters, that love is to be found - not hidden away in corners but in the midst of occasions of sin. And believe me, although we may more often fail and commit small lapses, our gain will be incomparably the greater.

To abstain from sin when one can no longer sin is to be forsaken by sin, not to forsake it.

Being somebody who wants to be religious doesn't make me perfect and doesn't make me necessarily any better than anybody else. It maybe makes me better than I would have been if I didn't have that level.

Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

I do believe in Christ, but I would not hold myself up as any paragon of virtue at all - far from it, really.

No man can become a saint in his sleep.

He that would be angry and sin not, must not be angry with anything but sin.

We men are easily prone to sins of thought. Therefore, He who has formed each heart individually, knowing that the impulse received from the intention constitutes the major element in sin, has ordained that purity in the ruling part of our soul be our primary concern.

I many no longer depend on pleasant impulses to bring me before the Lord. I must rather response to principles I know to be right, whether I feel them to be enjoyable or not.

Most of us want to have enough... good works to get into heaven, but enough bad works to be fun.

Moral character has now some influence in our elections, but not that place which it deserves. The law of public opinion excludes confirmed sots, and persons judicially convicted of high crimes and misdemeanors against the State; but it ought to render the election of all profane swearers, notorious Sabbath breakers, seducers, slanderers, prodigals and riotous persons, as well as the advocates of dueling, impracticable.

Genuine religion is not about speculating about God or the soul or about what happened in the past or will happen in the future; it cares only about one thing—finding out exactly what should or should not be done in this lifetime.

The road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.

I'm just like you - I want to be a good human being. I'm doing my best, and I'm working at it. And I'm trying to be a Christian. I'm always amazed when people walk up to me and say, 'I'm a Christian.' I always think, 'Already? You've already got it?' I'm working at it. And at my age, I'll still be working at it at 96.

I don't smoke, drink, do drugs or even have affairs. If I don't even swear, I should be put in a shrine and sanctified.

See that your chief study be about heart, that there God's image may be planted, and his interest advanced, and the interest of the world and flesh subdued, and the love of every sin cast out, and the love of holiness succeed; and that you content not yourselves with seeming to do good in outward acts, when you are bad yourselves, and strangers to the great internal duties. The first and great work of a Christian is about his heart.

When sin lets us alone we may let sin alone.

In order for good to blossom it must be cultivated and exercised by constant practice, and to be truly righteous there is required a daily pruning of the evil growth of our characters by a daily repen- tance from sin.

Grace is the mother and nurse of holiness, and not the apologist of sin.

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.