Neal A. Maxwell Quotes

The glory of God always comes at the sacrifice of self.

To follow Jesus means putting him first, and stripping ourselves of all the things that oppress our hearts.

The denial of ourselves which Christ has so diligently commanded his disciples from the beginning will at last dominate all the desires of our heart.

To achieve important things, we have to sacrifice what's important to us. That's an idea that's very central to Indian thinking.

All sorts of spiritual gifts come through privations, if they are accepted.

Until you have given up yourself to Him, you will not have a real self.

God, I want what you want more than I want what I want.

We cannot embrace His cross, and yet refuse our own. We cannot raise the cup of His remembrance to our lips, without a secret pledge to Him, to one another, to the great company of the faithful in every age that we, too, hold ourselves at God's disposal, that we will ask nothing on our own account, that we will pass simply into the Divine hand to take us whither it will.

To take up the cross of Christ is no great action done once for all; it consists in the continual practice of small duties which are distasteful to us.

If we feel that any habit or pursuit, harmless in itself, is keeping us from God and sinking us deeper in the things of earth; if we find that things which others can do with impunity are for us the occasion of falling, then abstinence is our only course. Abstinence alone can recover for us the real value of what should have been for our help but which has been an occasion of falling. ... It is necessary that we should steadily resolve to give up anything that comes between ourselves and God.

I do not appeal to you to screw up your courage and sacrifice for Christ. I appeal to you to renounce all you have to obtain life that satisfies your deepest longings.

The decision to give ourselves to others is a daily taking up of the cross.

A complete fast is a complete and literal denial of self. It is the truest prayer.

When you give yourself away you find that a new and more real self has somehow been given to you.

Deny yourself! You must deny yourself! That is the song that never ends.

To gain your heart's desire you have to lose some part of your old life, your old self. To do that you have to have courage; without it, you can't make the leap. And if you don't make the leap you have only three choices: You can hate yourself for not taking the chance, you can hate the person from whom you've sacrificed your happiness, or you can hate the one who offered you happiness, and blame them for your lack of courage, convince yourself it wasn't real.

Following Jesus means taking up one's own cross to accompany him on his path, an uncomfortable path that is not one of success or earthly glory, but which leads to true freedom, the freedom from selfishness and sin.

Real magic can never be made by offering someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.

Such self-denial 'may appear demanding,' but it will allow you, so to speak, to be and to breathe within the heart of the church.

Since I am I, I must make an act of self-surrender, however small or however easy, in living to God rather than to my self.

Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it.

O Lord, self-renunciation is not the work of one day, nor children's sport; yea, rather in this word is included all perfection.

Renunciation is in our blood.

Renunciation, and renunciation alone, is the real secret, the Mulamantra, of all Realisation.

They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death are the allurements that act on the heart of man.