Frederick William Robertson

“No one can be great, or good, or happy except through the inward efforts of themselves.”

“The Divine wisdom has given us prayer, not as a means whereby to obtain the good things of earth, but as a means whereby we learn to do without them; not as a means whereby we escape evil, but as a means whereby we become strong to meet it.”

“It is more true to say that our opinions depend upon our lives and habits, than to say that our lives and habits depend on our opinions.”

“A silent man is easily reputed wise. A man who suffers none to see him in the common jostle and undress of life, easily gathers round him a mysterious veil of unknown sanctity, and men honor him for a saint. The unknown is always wonderful.”

“Instruction ends in the schoolroom, but education ends only with life. A child is given to the universe to be educated.”

“We win by tenderness. We conquer by forgiveness.”

“The humblest occupation has in it materials of discipline for the highest heaven.”

“Two thousand years ago there was One here on this earth who lived the grandest life that ever has been lived yet - a life that every thinking man, with deeper or shallower meaning, has agreed to call divine.”

“To turn water into wine, and what is common into what is holy, is indeed the glory of Christianity.”

“Men... are bettered and improved by trial, and refined out of broken hopes and blighted expectations.”

“However dark and profitless, however painful and weary, existence may have become, life is not done, and our Christian character is not won, so long as God has anything left for us to suffer, or anything left for us to do.”

“The office of poetry is not to make us think accurately, but feel truly.”

“Only so far as a man believes strongly, mightily, can he act cheerfully, or do anything that is worth doing.”

“There are three things in the world that deserve no mercy, hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny.”

“It is not the situation that makes the man, but the man who makes the situation.”

“The true aim of everyone who aspires to be a teacher should be, not to impart his own opinions, but to kindle minds.”

“Pray till prayer makes you forget your own wish, and leave it or merge it in God's will.”

“Love is not a union merely between two creatures, it is a union between two spirits.”

“In God's world, for those who are in earnest, there is no failure. No work truly done, no word earnestly spoken, no sacrifice freely made, was ever made in vain.”

“The one who will be found in trial capable of great acts of love is ever the one who is always doing considerate small ones.”