Quotes about Sermons

Sweet are the uses of adversity, 
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; 
And this our life, exempt from human haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
I would not change it

The best sermons are lived, not preached.

Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

Our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.

And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.

Text of Sermon when Edward III ascended the throne, 1 Feb. 1327. Walsingham Vox Populi, vox Dei. The voice of the people, the voice of God.

A good sermon leaves you wondering how the preacher knew all about you.

In the greatest sermon that was ever preached, the greatest man who ever lived gave the wisest counsel that has ever been given, in which He said, "lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, . . ." (Matthew 6:20.) Laying up earthly treasures is such an exciting process that we spend most of our time working at it. But Jesus pointed out some advantages to treasures in heaven. The moth and the rust cannot get at treasures in heaven quite so easily. Treasures in heaven are more permanent. They are more satisfying. There are only two reasons why we are not as successful as we would like to be in laying up earthly treasures. One is that we sometimes get into the wrong business; and the second reason is that even though we may be in the right business, we do not always work at it effectively. Interestingly enough, these are the same reasons why we fail in laying up treasures in heaven.

The Sermon on the Mount does not provide humanity with a complete guide to personal, social and economic problems. It sets forth spiritual attitudes, moral principles of universal validity, such as " Love your enemies," "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them," and it leaves to Christians the task-the admittedly difficult task-of applying them in any given situation.

Perhaps it may turn out a sang, Perhaps turn out a sermon.

If a man write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mouse-trap than his neighbor, tho' he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door. [Mrs. Yule stated in The Docket, Feb. 1912, that she copied this in her handbook from a lecture delivered by Emerson. The 'mouse-trap' quotation was the occasion of a long controversy, owing to Elbert Hubbard's claim to its authorship.]

It is easier to go six miles to hear a sermon, than to spend one quarter of an hour in meditating on it when I come home.

I have been uplifted today and the previous days by the optimistic sermons of those who have preceded me. I am grateful for a happy church, a church that brings security and understanding and faith in the lives of its people. This is a church that is not only optimistic but also has a firm foundation. It has been reiterated many times already. The optimism of this conference brought to my mind the little experience of two Vermont farmers. It seems that in Vermont we get a great deal of rain, and the hills are green as a result. One day a farmer was walking down a back road, and it was very muddy, and suddenly he came upon a large puddle, and in the middle of the puddle he saw a straw hat. He thought he recognized it. He tiptoed over and lifted it up, and lo and behold under it was his friend Zeb, and he was right up to his neck in the mud. He said, "Zeb, it looks like you have a problem. Do you need some help?" Zeb said, "No thanks, Zeke, I'll be all right. I have got a good horse under me." Well, I have felt that kind of optimism throughout this conference. Spiritually speaking, we have some great horses under us, and I am grateful for that kind of faith and testimony.

We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.

You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips.

Americans are so tense and keyed up that it is impossible even to put them to sleep with a sermon.

Few sinners are saved after the fiirst twenty minutes of a sermon.

Let us have Wine and Women, Mirth and Laughter Sermons and soda-water the day after.

I do not know a warning that I judge more necessary to be given to those who are called this day, than to charge them not to trade too much with their natural gifts, and abilities, and learning. These are talents in their kind; but it is the Spirit that must manage all that learning they have, or it will prejudice them, and you also. I have known some good men who have been so addicted to their study, that they have thought the last day of the week sufficient to prepare for their ministry, though they employ all the rest of the week in other studies. But your business is to trade with your spiritual abilities. . . . A man may preach a very good sermon, who is otherwise himself; but he will never make a good minister of Jesus Christ, whose mind and heart [are] not always in the work. Spiritual gifts will require continual ruminating on the things of the Gospel in our minds.

It is a blind goose that cometh to the fox's sermon.

When my mouth shall be filled with dust, and the worm shall feed, and feed sweetly upon me, when the ambitious man shall have no satisfaction if the poorest alive tread upon him, nor the poorest receive any contentment in being made equal to princes, for they shall be equal but in dust. *Called by His Majesty's household the Doctors Own Funeral Sermon

Since I am coming to that holy room Where, with thy choir of saints for evermore I shall be made thy music, as I come I tune the instrument here at the door, And what I must do then, think here before. Whilst my physicians by their love are grown Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie Flat on this bed, that by them may be shown That this is my southwest discovery, PER FRETUM FEBRIS, by these straits to die, I joy that in these straits I see my west; For though their currents yield return to none, What shall my west hurt me? As west and east In all flat maps (and I am one) are one, So death doth touch the resurrection. Is the Pacific Sea my home? Or are The eastern riches? Is Jerusalem? Anyan, and Magellan, and Gibraltar, All straits, and none but straits, are ways to them, Whether where Japhet dwelt, or Cham, or Shem. We think that Paradise, and Calvary, Christ's cross, and Adam's tree, stood in one place; Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me; As the first Adam's sweat surrounds my face, May the last Adam's blood my soul embrace. So, in his purple wrapp'd receive me, Lord, By these his thorns give me his other crown; And as to others' souls I preached thy word, Be this my text, my sermon to mine own: "Therefore, that he may raise, the Lord throws down."

Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral.

Conclude not from all this that I have renounced the Christian religion. . . . Far from it. I see in every page something to recommend Christianity in its purity, and something to discredit its corruptions. . . . The ten commandments and the sermon on the mount contain my religion.

When I read great literature, great drama, speeches, or sermons, I feel that the human mind has not achieved anything greater than the ability to share feelings and thoughts through language.

Jesus once declared that God is "good to the ungrateful and the wicked" (St. Luke 6:35), and I remember preaching a sermon on this text to a horrified and even astonished congregation who simply refused to believe (so I gathered afterwards) in this astounding liberality of God. That God should be in a state of constant fury with the wicked seemed to them only right and proper, but that God should be kind towards those who were defying or disobeying His laws seemed to them a monstrous injustice. Yet I was but quoting the Son of God Himself, and I only comment here that the terrifying risks that God takes are part of His Nature. We do not need to explain or modify His unremitting love towards mankind.

If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.

I think that to have known one good, old man-one man, who, through the chances and mischances of a long life, has carried his heart in his hand, like a palm-branch, waving all discords into peace-helps our faith in God, in ourselves, and in each other more than many sermons,

A verse may find him who a sermon flies.

Modern poverty is not the poverty that was blest in the Sermon on the Mount.