William Booth Quotes

Our learning ought to be our lives' amendment, and the fruits of our private study ought to appear in our public behavior.

Anyway, I believe you don't fix the inside by putting something on the outside.

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.

Human improvement is from within outward.

All real education is the architecture of the soul.

My future's about trying to be a better man.

We must alter our lives in order to alter our hearts, for it is impossible to live one way and pray another.

I have seen myself lose intolerance, narrowness, bigotry, complacence, pride and a whole bushel-basket of other intellectual vices through my contact with Nature and with men. And when you take weeds out of a garden it gives you room to grow flowers. So, every time I lost a little self-satisfaction, or arrogance, I could plant some broadness or love of my own in its place, and after a while the garden of my mind began to bloom and be fragrant and I found myself better equipped for my work and more useful to others as a consequence.

I find that my upbringing in the Church and my relationship with God are huge benefits to me in helping me become the kind of person that I want to become.

I'm always fascinated with how a person becomes a good quality person, a productive person, and how it happened to me, because I was a terror.

It is never too early to try and plant [good principles] in a child, and never too late to cultivate them in the most neglected person.

There is no man that lives who does not need to be drilled, disciplined, and developed into something higher and nobler and better than he is by nature. Life is one prolonged birth.

Let a man begin in earnest with "I ought," and he will end, by God's grace, if he persevere, with "I will." Let him force himself to abound in all small offices of kindliness, attention, affectionateness, and all these for God's sake. By and by he will feel them become the habit of his soul.

We have real difficulty here because everyone thinks of changing the world, but where, oh where, are those who think of changing themselves? People may genuinely want to be good, but seldom are they prepared to do what it takes to produce the inward life of goodness that can form the soul. Personal formation into the likeness of Christ is arduous and lifelong.

I am one of those who believe that spiritual progress is a rule of human life, but the approach to perfection is slow and painful. If a woman elevates herself in one respect and is retarded in another, it is because the rough trail that leads to the mountain peak is not free of ambushes of thieves and lairs of wolves.

Soul development should take precedence over all things.

Infinite toil would not enable you to sweep away a mist; but by ascending a little, you may often look over it altogether. So it is with our moral improvement: we wrestle fiercely with a vicious habit, which could have no hold upon us if we ascended into a higher moral atmosphere.

There can be no progress-real, moral prgress-except in the individual and by the individual himself.

The primary goal of spiritual life is human transformation.

God’s priority isn’t your destination but your development. God’s priority isn’t the dream but the dreamer.

Repentance may begin instantly, but reformation often requires a sphere of years.

The test of progress is the amount of renunciation that one has attained.

The main thing God gets out of your life is not the achievements you accomplish. It's the person you become.

He that has energy enough in his constitution to root out a vice should go a little further, and try to plant a virtue in its place; otherwise he will have his labor to renew. A strong soil that has produced weeds may be made to produce wheat with far less difficulty than it would cost to make it produce nothing.