John Owen Quotes

He who comes to take the love of God can have no taste for the love of the world.

Let me forget the world and be swallowed up in the desire to glorify God.

The more quickly we loosen our grip on the things of the world the more firmly we can take hold of the things of eternity.

A man ought to live in this world like a lotus leaf, which grows in water but is never moistened by water; so a man ought to live in the world - his heart to God and his hands to work.

Strive to see God in all things without exception. Do not smother yourself...If you start smothering yourself with a host of cares and longings and wishes ... you will be disabling yourself from serving God with all your heart.

Put personal ambition away from you, and then you will find consolation in living or in dying, whatever may happen to you.

The best measure of a successful life is the way we turn away, we renounce, and even by the way we depart it.

Let go of this world and take hold of God with both hands.

Do not let pleasure distract you from meditation, from the way. Free yourself from pleasure and pain.

Men there are, who having quite done with the world, all its merely worldly contents are become so far indifferent, that they carelittle of what mere worldly imprudence they may be guilty.

To give up the world is to forget the ego, to know it not at all - living in the body, but not of it.

How can I keep my soul in me, so that it doesn't touch your soul? How can I raise it high enough, past you, to other things?

Come, follow me, and leave the world to its babblings.

Set not your heart upon the world, since God hath not made it your portion.

If I had a prayer, it would be this: "God, spare me from the desire for love, approval, or appreciation. Amen."

Jnana teaches that the world should be given up, but not on that account to be abandoned. To be in the world but not of it-is the true test of the sannyasin.

There is but one way to tranquility of mind and happiness, and that is to account no external things thine own, but to commit all to God.

Let no knowledge satisfy but that which lifts above the world, which weans from the world, which makes the world a footstool.

To need nothing is divine, and the less a man needs the nearer does he approach to divinity.

God has given you this good stuff so that you can show the world a person who enjoys blessings, but who is still totally obsessed with God.

The Christian is the most contented man in the world, but he is the least contented with the world.

The only true method of action in this world is to be in it, but not of it.

somehow one must love the world without being worldly.

I know now: I do not hope for anything. I do not fear anything, I have freed myself from both the mind and the heart, I have mounted much higher, I am free .

Resignation is a quality of the saintly souls.