William Law

“What could begin to deny self, if there were not something in man different from self?”

“Nothing hath separated us from God but our own will, or rather our own will is our separation from God.”

“Self is the root, the tree, and the branches of all the evils of our fallen state.”

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

“If you have not chosen the Kingdom of God first, it will in the end make no difference what you have chosen instead.”

“Love and pity and wish well to every soul in the world; dwell in love, and then you dwell in God.”

“All people desire what they believe will make them happy. If a person is not full of desire for God, we can only conclude that he is engaged with another happiness.”

“What can you conceive more silly and extravagant than to suppose a man racking his brains, and studying night and day how to fly?”

“Death is not more certainly a separation of our souls from our bodies than the Christian life is a separation of our souls from worldly tempers, vain indulgences, and unnecessary cares.”

“Hell is nothing else but nature departed or excluded from the beam of divine light.”

“Faith is not a notion, but a real strong essential hunger, an attracting or magnetic desire of Christ, which as it proceeds from a seed of the divine nature in us, so it attracts and unites with its like.”

“Be intent upon the perfection of the present day.”

“God seeth different abilities and frailties of men, which may move His goodness to be merciful to their different improvements in virtue.”

“Humility is nothing else but a right judgment of ourselves.”

“Perfection does not consist in any singular state or condition of life, or in any particular set of duties, but in holy and religious conduct of ourselves in every state of Life.”

“No education can be of true advantage to young women but that which trains them up in humble industry, in great plainness of living, in exact modesty of dress.”

“Ask what Time is, it is nothing else but something of eternal duration become finite, measurable and transitory.”

“Everything in ...nature, is descended out that which is eternal, and stands as a. ..visible outbirth of it, so when we know how to separate out the grossness, death, and darkness. ..from it, we find. ..it in its eternal state.”

“This, and this alone, is Christianity, a universal holiness in every part of life, a heavenly wisdom in all our actions, not conforming to the spirit and temper of the world but turning all worldly enjoyments into means of piety and devotion to God.”

“The Spirit of Love, wherever it is, is its own blessing and happiness, because it is the truth and reality of God in the soul; and therefore is in the same joy of life, and is the same good to itself everywhere and on every occasion. Would you know the blessing of all blessings? It is this God of Love dwelling in your soul, and killing every root of bitterness, which is the pain and torment of every earthly, selfish love. For all wants are satisfied, all disorders of nature are removed, no life is any longer a burden, every day is a day of peace, everything you meet becomes a help to you, because everything you see or do is all done in the sweet, gentle element of Love.”