John Calvin "Unless we fix certain hours in the day for prayer, it easily slips from our memory." "That we may be prepared to receive all his benefits with true gratitude and thanksgiving, while our prayers remind us that they proceed from his hand." "Now, in order that true religion may shine upon us, we ought to hold that it must take its beginning from heavenly doctrine." "Men will never worship God with a sincere heart, or be roused to fear and obey Him with sufficient zeal, until they properly understand how much they are indebted to His mercy." "The human testimonies which go to confirm it will not be without effect, if they are used in subordination to that chief and highest proof, as secondary helps to our weakness." "Unless men establish their complete happiness in God, they will never give themselves truly and sincerely to him." "No one can get even the slightest taste of right and sound doctrine unless he be a pupil of Scripture." "To make intercession for men is the most powerful and practical way in which we can express our love for them." "For, until men feel that they owe everything to God, that they are cherished by his paternal care, and that he is the author of all their blessings, so that nought is to be looked for away from him, they will never submit to him in voluntary obedience..." "All things are of God; and, therefore, why should it not be lawful to dedicate to his glory everything that can properly be employed for such a purpose?" "The Lord has not redeemed you so you might enjoy pleasures and luxuries, but rather so you should be prepared to endure all sorts of evils." "God tolerates even our stammering, and pardons our ignorance whenever something inadvertently escapes us - as, indeed, without this mercy there would be no freedom to pray." "We are not thus convinced if we look merely to ourselves and not also to the Lord, who is the sole standard by which this judgment must be measured." "Our prayer must not be self-centered. It must arise not only because we feel our own need as a burden we must lay upon God, but also because we are so bound up in love for our fellow men that we feel their need as acutely as our own." "The ceremony of lifting up our hands in prayer is designed to remind us that we are far removed from God, unless our thoughts rise upward." "When God wants to judge a nation, He gives them wicked rulers." "To know God as the Master and Bestower of all good things, who invites us to request them of Him, and still not go to Him and ask of Him – this would be of as little profit as for a man to neglect a treasure, buried and hidden in the earth, after it had been pointed out to him." "We shall never be clothed with the righteousness of Christ except we first know assuredly that we have no righteousness of our own" "Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves." "All truth is from God; and consequently, if wicked men have said anything that is true and just, we ought not to reject it; for it has come from God." "We must remember that Satan has his miracles, too." "Let the first rule of right prayer then be, to have our heart and mind framed as becomes those who are entering into converse with God." "However many blessings we expect from God, His infinite liberality will always exceed all our wishes and our thoughts." "A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent." "Faith is like an empty, open hand stretched out towards God, with nothing to offer and everything to receive." "I gave up all for Christ, and what have I found? Everything in Christ." "There is no knowing that does not begin with knowing God." "Let our chief goal, O God, be your glory, and to enjoy You forever." "Satan is an astute theologian." "Prayers will never reach God unless they are founded on free mercy." "There is no inconsistency when God raises up those who have fallen prostrate." "Whoever is not satisfied with Christ alone, strives after something beyond absolute perfection.' "Scripture is like a pair of spectacles which dispels the darkness and gives us a clear view of God." "We cannot rely on God's promises without obeying his commandments." "Whatever a person may be like, we must still love them because we love God." "Hatred grows into insolence when we desire to excel the rest of mankind and imagine we do not belong to the common lot; we even severely and haughtily despise others as our inferiors." "There is not one little blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make men rejoice." "The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul." "The surest source of destruction to men is to obey themselves." "Humility is the beginning of true intelligence." "It is foolish to attempt to prove to infidels that Scripture is the Word of God. This cannot be known except by faith." "Nothing is more dangerous than to be blinded by prosperity." "If a preacher is not first preaching to himself, better that he falls on the steps of the pulpit and breaks his neck than preaches that sermon." "Our true wisdom is to embrace with meek docility, and without reservation, whatever the holy scriptures have delivered." "While all men seek after happiness, scarcely one in a hundred looks for it from God." "Joy is a quiet gladness of heart as one contemplates the goodness of God's saving grace in Christ Jesus." "Free will does not enable any man to perform good works, unless he is assisted by grace..." "It is entirely the work of grace and a benefit conferred by it that our heart is changed from a stony one to one of flesh, that our will is made new, and that we, created anew in heart and mind, at length will what we ought to will." "The pastor ought to have two voices: one, for gathering the sheep; and another, for warding off and driving away wolves and thieves." "When I took the leap, I had faith I would find a net; Instead I learned I could fly." "It is, therefore, faith alone which justifies, and yet the faith which justifies is not alone." "The one condition for spiritual progress is that we remain sincere and humble." "I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels." "Nothing, including human suffering, happens by chance." "Human will does not by liberty obtain grace, but by grace obtains liberty." "Peace is not to be purchased by the sacrifice of truth." "All the blessings we enjoy are Divine deposits, committed to our trust on this condition, that they should be dispensed for the benefit of our neighbors." "Seeing that a Pilot steers the ship in which we sail, who will never allow us to perish even in the midst of shipwrecks, there is no reason why our minds should be overwhelmed with fear and overcome with weariness." "The word "hope" I take for faith, and indeed hope is nothing else but the constancy of faith." "There is no worse screen to block out the Spirit than confidence in our own intelligence." "We must make the invisible kingdom visible in our midst." "Faith brings a man empty to God, that he may be filled with the blessings of God." "We should never insult others on account of their faults, for it is our duty to show charity and respect to everyone." "Man's nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols." "You must submit to supreme suffering in order to discover the completion of joy." "That man is truly humble who neither claims any personal merit in the sight of God, nor proudly despises brethren, or aims at being thought superior to them..." "A man that extols himself is a fool and an idiot" "If everything proceeded according to their wishes, they would not understand what it means to follow God." "Lawful worship consists in obedience alone." "Since we are all naturally prone to hypocrisy, any empty semblance of righteousness is quite enough to satisfy us instead of righteousness itself." "By predestination, we mean the eternal decree of God, by which He determined with Himself whatever He wished to happen with regard to every man." "God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation." "We must guard against depriving believers of anything disclosed about predestination in Scripture, lest we seem either wickedly to defraud them of the blessing of their God or to accuse and scoff at the Holy Spirit for having published what it is in any way profitable to suppress." "All events whatsoever are governed by the secret counsel of God." "We unjustly defraud God of his right, unless each of us lives and dies in dependence on His sovereign pleasure." "Let that ethical philosophy therefore of free-will be far from a Christian mind." "Free-will cannot will good and of necessity serves sin." "Free will does not enable any man to perform good works, unless he is assisted by grace." "This is plainly to ascribe divinity to 'free will.'" "There are people who are known to be very liberal, yet they never give without scolding or pride or even insolence." "But a faithful believer will in all circumstances mediate on the mercy and fatherly goodness of God." "There is nothing in afflictions which ought to disturb our joy." "Justification is the main hinge on which salvation turns." "Christ is much more powerful to save than Adam was to destroy." "A perfect faith is nowhere to be found, so it follows that all of us are partly unbelievers." "No one knows the one-hundredth part of the sin that clings to his soul." "God works in his elect in two ways: inwardly, by his Spirit; outwardly, by his Word." "We should forever keep in mind that we must not brood on the wickedness of man, but realize that he is God’s image-bearer." "Let this be our rule for goodwill and helpfulness, that whenever we are able to assist others we should behave as stewards who must someday give an account of ourselves." "Being humbled, we learn to call upon his strength which alone makes us stand up under such a load of afflictions." "The more we are oppressed by the cross, the fuller will be our spiritual joy." "All the arts come from God and are to be respected as divine inventions.." "There is also an old proverb, that they who pay much attention to the body generally neglect the soul." "It is a most blessed thing to be subject to the sovereignty of Lord."