30 David Brainerd Quotes

If you hope for happiness in the world, hope for it from God, and not from the world.

Ardent love or desire introduced, as passionately longing to please and glorify the Divine Being, to be in every respect conformed to him, and in that way to enjoy him.

Be careful to make a good improvement of precious time.

I bless God for this retirement: I never was more thankful for anything than I have been of late for the necessity I am under of self-denial in many respects.

I was a little better than speechless all day. O my God, I am speedily coming to Thee! Hasten the day, O Lord, if it be Thy blessed will. Oh, come, Lord Jesus, come quickly.

Further, Take heed that you faithfully perform the business you have to do in the world, from a regard to the commands of God; and not from an ambitious desire of being esteemed better than others.

The whole world appears to me like a huge vacuum, a vast empty space, whence nothing desirable, or at least satisfactory, can possibly be derived; and I long daily to die more and more to it; even though I obtain not that comfort from spiritual things which I earnestly desire.

Worldly pleasures, such as flow from greatness, riches, honors, and sensual gratifications, are infinitely worse than none.

I care not where I go, or how I live, or what I endure so that I may save souls. When I sleep I dream of them; when I awake they are first in my thoughts.

I have withstood the power of convictions a long time; and therefore I fear I shall be finally left of God.

The idea that everything would happen exactly as it does regardless of whether we pray or not is a specter that haunts the minds of many who sincerely profess belief in God. It makes prayer psychologically impossible, replacing it with dead ritual at best.

Oh, how precious is time, and how it pains me to see it slide away, while I do so little to any good purpose.

When you cease from labor, fill up your time in reading, meditation, and prayer: and while your hands are laboring, let your heart be employed, as much as possible, in divine thoughts.

As the most extravagant errors were received among the established articles of their faith, so the most infamous vices obtained in their practice, and were indulged not only with impunity, but authorized by the sanction of their laws.

We are a long time in learning that all our strength and salvation is in God.

I fear God never showed mercy to one so vile as I.

The all-seeing eye of God beheld our deplorable state; infinite pity touched the heart of the Father of mercies; and infinite wisdom laid the plan of our recovery.

God was so precious to my soul that the world with all its enjoyments appeared vile. I had no more value for the favor of men than for pebbles.

In the silences I make in the midst of the turmoil of life I have appointments with God. From these silences I come forth with spirit refreshed, and with a renewed sense of power. I hear a voice in the silences, and become increasingly aware that it is the voice of God.

I am more weary of life, I think, than ever I was.

As long as I see anything to be done for God, life is worth having; but O how vain and unworthy it is to live for any lower end!

Once more, Never think that you can live to God by your own power or strength; but always look to and rely on him for assistance, yea, for all strength and grace.

No amount of scholastic attainment, of able and profound exposition of brilliant and stirring eloquence can atone for the absence of a deep impassioned sympathetic love for human souls.

I love to live on the brink of eternity.

Give yourself to prayer, to reading and meditation on divine truths: strive to penetrate to the bottom of them and never be content with a superficial knowledge.

We should always look upon ourselves as God's servants, placed in God's world, to do his work; and accordingly labor faithfully for him; not with a design to grow rich and great, but to glorify God, and do all the good we possibly can.

Of late God has been pleased to keep my soul hungry almost continually, so that I have been filled with a kind of pleasing pain. When I really enjoy God, I feel my desires of Him the more insatiable and my thirstings after holiness more unquenchable.

I have a secret thought from some things I have observed, that God may perhaps design you for some singular service in the world.

I am an old sinner; and if God had designed mercy for me, he would have called me home to himself before now.

A few of the sublimest geniuses of Rome and Athens had some faint discoveries of the spiritual nature of the human soul, and formed some probable conjectures, that man was designed for a future state of existence.