J. C. Ryle Quotes

We are too ready to imagine that we are religious, because we know something of religion. We appropriate to ourselves the pious sentiments we read, and we talk as if the thoughts of other men's heads were really the feelings of our own hearts. But piety has not its seat in the memory, but in the affections, for which however the memory is an excellent purveyor, though a bad substitute.

Christmas... is not an external event at all, but a piece of one's home that one carries in one's heart.

As some to Church repair, not for the doctrine, but the music there.

Those who pray from the heart do not think about the prayer they are saying, but about the God to whom they pray.

Worship or prayer is not to be performed with the lips, but with the heart.

Faith is the function of the heart.

THINGS JESUS NEVER SAID: "You should come with me to church.

It is the color which love wears, and cheerfulness, and joy--these three. It is the light in the window of the face by which the heart signifies to father, husband, or friend that it is at home and waiting.

Making one object, in outward or inward nature, more holy to a single heart is reward enough for a life; for the more sympathies we gain or awaken for what is beautiful, by so much deeper will be our sympathy for that which is most beautiful,--the human soul!

If God be near a church, it must pray. And if he be not there, one of the first tokens of his absence will be a slothfulness in prayer.

This Christianity is not a cultural thing. It is not something that should be just a small part of your life; it is not something that you do on Sunday... Christianity is not about you being just like the world all the time and then coming to church on Sunday. If that is your Christianity... you are not Christian.

Heading towards that inner home will take you places-both inside yourself and in the external world-which your heart will recognize as its native environment, even though you have never been there before.

Writing has made me a better man. It has put me in contact with those fleeting moments which prove the existence.

Return to me, for my heart wants you only. Hurry home, hurry home, won't you please hurry home to my heart.

Our sweetest experiences of affection are meant to be suggestions of that realm which is the home of the heart.

Work with yourself. Work. If you have a partner, so much the better. Speak. Use whatever process is appropriate. Know that this universe is compassionate, aware and alive. This is a universe of life. This is not a material enterprise. It is a spiritual enterprise and it is filled with loving assistance. This is a thought form that must be in place in order for you to receive assistance.

If my mind be not engaged in worship, it is as though I worshipped not.

What good is all our busy religion if God isn't in it? What good is it if we've lost majesty, reverence, worship-an awareness of the divine? What good is it if we've lost a sense of the Presence and the ability to retreat within our own hearts and meet God in the garden?

No degree of speculative knowledge of religion is any certain sign of true piety.

You can't save souls in an empty church.

What is to reach the heart must come from above; if it does not come from thence, it will be nothing but notes, body without spirit.

To us, our house was not unsentient matter -- it had a heart, and a soul, and eyes to see us with; and approvals and solicitudes and deep sympathies; it was of us, and we were in its confidence, and lived in its grace and in the peace of its benediction.

A lot of blues music seems like it's moving away from God, or the center, and Gospel music is moving towards it. It's embracing a higher reality. When you look a little closer, the way that I define it or explain it, is that the blues is the naked cry of the human heart, apart from God. People are searching for union with God. They're searching to be home. There's something in people that seeks this union with their creator. Why am I here? Where am I going? What's it all about? Who am I? All this kind of stuff.

Religion! Is what you hear at church religion? Is that which can bend and turn, and descend and ascend, to fit every crooked phase of selfish, worldly society, religion? Is that religion which is less scrupulous, less generous, less just, less considerate for man, than even my own ungodly, worldly, blinded nature? No! When I look for religion, I must look for something above me, and not something beneath.