Robert A. Cook Quotes

In employing fiction to make truth clear and goodness attractive, we are only following the example which every Christian ought to propose to himself.

Obedience is the Christian's crown.

The Christian who keeps his heart diligently in little things shall be kept from great falls.

A holy life is not an ascetic, or gloomy or solitary life, but a life regulated by divine truth and faithful in Christian duty. It is living above the world while we are still in it.

The gospel is not a philosophy of repression, as so many regard it. It is a plan of freedom that gives discipline to appetite and direction to behavior.

Discipline is doing what you really don't want to do so you can do what you really want to do.

A Christian who does not pray for those who govern is not a good Christian.

Do not follow vain desires; for verily he who prospers is preserved from lust, greed and anger.

Whatever requires an undue amount of thought or trouble or involves a large expenditure of effort and causes our whole life to revolve, as it were, around solicitude for the flesh must be avoided by Christians.

There has never been any country at every moment so virtuous and so wise that it has not sometimes needed to be saved from itself.

Nothing can be more cruel than the leniency which abandons others to their sin. Nothing can be more compassionate than the severe reprimand which calls another Christian in one’s community back from the path of sin.

Our duty as Christians is always to keep heaven in our eye and earth under our feet.

Because we call ourselves Christians, our actions need to reflect Christ.

A perfect practice of Christianity would, of course, consist in a perfect imitation of the life of Christ -- I mean, in so far as it was applicable in one's own particular circumstance. Not in an idiotic sense -- it doesn't mean that every Christian should grow a beard, or be a bachelor, or become a travelling preacher. It means that every single act and feeling, every experience, whether pleasant or unpleasant, must be referred to God.

My purpose in life, my goal for the NBA is to preach God's word - not just try to beat everybody over the head with a Bible but just being a good example and always conducting myself in a Christian-like manner.

I have naturally formed the habit of restraining my thoughts. A thoughtless word hardly ever escaped my tongue or pen. Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth. We find so many people impatient to talk. All this talking can hardly be said to be of any benefit to the world. It is so much waste of time. My shyness has been in reality my shield and buckler. It has allowed me to grow. It has helped me in my discernment of truth.

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.

Fasting is futile unless it is accompanied by an incessant longing for self-restraint.

A true Christian, living an obedient life, is a constant rebuke to those who accept the moral standards of this world.

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 like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

I think as Christians, we all have the same calling, and that calling is to love God with all our heart, mind, and soul and love others as ourselves and to glorify God in everything that we do.

We must guard against allowing anger to drag us into sin.

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