Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes

I can't afford to have thoughts in my head about me that God doesn't have in His.

Our first problem is that our attitude towards sin is more self-centred than God-centred. We are more concerned about our own "Victory" over sin than we are about the fact that our sin grieve the heart of God. We cannot tolerate failure in our struggle with sin chiefly because we are success oriented, not because we know it is offensive to God.

Sociologists have a theory of the looking-glass self: You become what the most important person in your life (wife, father, boss, etc.) thinks you are. How would my life change if I truly believed the Bible's astounding words about God's love for me, if I looked in the mirror and saw what God sees?

Christ, being man, had to see impurity and denounced it; but God, infinitely higher, does not see iniquity and cannot be angry.

Vice and virtue chiefly imply the relation of our actions to men in this world; sin and holiness rather imply their relation to God and the other world.

If you saw you as God sees you, you would smile a lot.

I would like the secular world to know that the Scriptures are about the things that we wrestle with every day. The Scriptures are not ignorant. Life is really hard. We know that things don't always go well and that our hearts don't naturally obey God.

The Bible is full of wealth, miracles, goodness and badness.

Classical theology defines sin as 'rebellion against God.' The answer is not incorrect as much as it is shallow and insulting to the human being. Every person deserves to be treated with dignity even if he or she is a 'rebellious sinner'.

Of all the judgments we pass in life, none is more important than the judgment we pass on ourselves.

Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.

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

That which we call sin in others is experiment for us.

To me the thought of oneself as low and humble is a sin and ignorance.

Be happy! God sees in you another God. God sees you as another God. God sees you and He as One.

The physical was never the best part of the body.

We need to see ourselves as basic miracles.

Mankind thinks either too much or too little of sin.

Yes, it is true. I am a miracle. I am a miracle like a tree is a miracle, like a flower is a miracle. Now, if I am a miracle, can I do a bad thing? I can't, because I am a miracle, I am a miracle. . . .

True humility is not an abject, groveling, self-despising spirit; it is but a right estimate of ourselves as God sees us.

It is not humility to underrate yourself. Humility is to think of yourself as God thinks of you. It is to feel that if we have talents God has given them to us. And let it be seen that, like freight in a vessel, they tend to sink us low. The more we have, the lower we ought to lie.

Who are we? We're not perfect but we're not worthless. Scripture tells us that we're beautifully made, but broken.

... in a wicked way, it is an incentive to good living to observe the spice of enjoyment there is to a godly soul in a very little sin.

By virtue of Creation, and still more the Incarnation, nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see.

The healthiest and holiest people are the people who laugh at themselves the most. Failure helps us take God more seriously and ourselves less seriously.