Philip Yancey Quotes

We often pray for purity, unselfishness, for the highest qualities of character, and forget that these things cannot be given, but must be earned.

It is only when men begin to worship that they begin to grow.

Trying harder doesn’t work for me. Slowly I’ve learned to pray for God’s help and He has become my greatest love and desire.

Our good nature and endearing qualities will not arouse the answers to our prayers. Rather it is our mischievous, dishonest attributes that provide the master keys to heaven. When we identify and work to transform our self-centered qualities and crooked characteristics, the key turns and the gates unlock. Blessings and good fortune are now free to rain down upon us.

I believe that God is the source of all the universal, timeless principles. And to Him, I give all the credit and the glory. However, to a person who is not religious, I believe they can live to the highest level of their conscience and develop spiritual intelligence that surpasses most people, including many religious people, who profess but do not practice.

Soul development should take precedence over all things.

Every man who steeps himself in the spiritual possibilities of his heart is a valuable helper in the building of the spiritual pyramid which will someday reach to heaven.

Am I getting nobler, better, more helpful, more humble, as I get older? Am I exhibiting the life that men take knowledge of as having been with Jesus, or am I getting more self-assertive, more deliberately determined to have my own way? It is a great thing to tell yourself the truth.

The superior man loves his soul; the inferior man loves his property.

Character is the spiritual body of the person, and represents the individualization of vital experience, the conversion of unconscious things into self-conscious men.

The only way we can be of use to God is to let Him take us through the crooks and crannies of our own characters.

I'm more concerned about who you're becoming than what you're doing.

Try to be all you can be to be the best human being you can be. Try to be that in your church, in your temple. Try to be that in your classroom. Do it because it is right to do.

It's disheartening to write goals from year to year, looking back only to see you are in the same place. You can make so many promises that you get sick of yourself, but what is it that God can't do?

Education is the art of making man ethical.

I believe that ideal character in its perfection is potentially in every man who is born into the world.

Allah does not change the condition of a people until they change themselves

Spiritual principles do not change, but we do.

Character must be kept bright as well as clean.

Prayer doesn't just change things - it changes us. If we are diligent in seeking God, slowly and surely we become better people.

True change is within; leave the outside as it is.

We are apt to think that everything that happens to us is to be turned into useful teaching; it is to be turned into something better than teaching, into character. We shall find that the spheres God brings us into are not meant to teach us something but to make us something.

Spiritual light rarely comes to those who merely sit in the darkness waiting for someone to flick the switch.

Good character improves every aspect of a person’s life.

Assume a virtue, if you have it not. That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat; Of habits devil, is angel yet in this.