Providence Quotes - Page 22

• Of all the gifts that wise Providence grants us to make life full and happy, friendship is the most beautiful.

  Epicurus

  Friendship, Beautiful, Wise

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• Except by name, Jean Paul Friedrich Richter is little known out of Germany. The only thing connected with him, we think, that has reached this country is his saying,-imported by Madame de Staël, and thankfully pocketed by most newspaper critics,-"Providence has given to the French the empire of the land; to the English that of the sea; to the Germans that of-the air!" Richter: German humorist & prose writer.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Country, Thinking, Air

  Thomas Carlyle (1872). “Works”, p.5

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• It is not the multitude of hard duties, it is not the constraint and contention that advance us in our Christian course. On the contrary, it is the yielding of our wills without restriction and without choice to tread cheerfully every day in the path in which Providence leads us. It is to seek nothing, to be discouraged by nothing, to see our duty in the present moment, and to trust all else without reserve to the will and power of God.

  Francois Fenelon

  Christian, Choices, Path

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• My walk is a public one. My business is in the world, and I must mix in the assemblies of men or quit the post which Providence seems to have assigned me.

  William Wilberforce

  Men, World, Quitting

  Robert I. Wilberforce, Samuel Wilberforce, William Wilberforce (1839). “The Life of William Wilberforce: In Five Volumes”, p.187

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• [D]ivine Providence... keeps the universe open in every direction to the soul.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Soul, Universe

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.259, Harvard University Press

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• To be, contents his natural desire,
  He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;
  But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
  His faithful dog shall bear him company.
  Go wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense
  Weigh thy opinion against Providence.

  Alexander Pope

  Dog, Angel, Thinking

  Alexander Pope, William Roscoe (1847). “The works of Alexander Pope, esq., with notes and illustrations, by himself and others. To which are added, a new life of the author, an Estimate of his poetical character and writings, and occasional remarks by William Roscoe, esq”, p.33

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• Foresight is good when it is subject to the latter, but it becomes excessive when we are in a hurry to avoid something we fear. We rely more on our own efforts than on those of his Providence, and we think we are doing a great deal by anticipating His orders by our own disorder, which causes us to rely on human prudence rather than on his Word.

  Vincent de Paul

  Faith, Thinking, Order

  Saint Vincent de Paul, Pierre Coste (1993). “Correspondence, Conferences, Documents: Apr. 1650-July 1653”, New City Pr

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• Divine Providence is never wanting in things undertaken at Its command. Even though the whole world should rise up and destroy us, nothing could happen but what is pleasing to God. The less there is of man in affairs, the more there is of God.

  Vincent de Paul

  Faith, Men, World

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• Your soul will be blessed, Sister, if you bear patiently the troubles of mind and body His Providence sends you, or which come to you from within and without.

  Vincent de Paul

  Faith, Blessed, Soul

  Saint Vincent de Paul, Pierre Coste (1985). “Correspondence, Conferences, Documents: Apr. 1650-July 1653”

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• There are some women who seem to be born without fear, just as there are people who are born without the ability to feel pain. The painless ones go around putting their hands on hot stoves, freezing their feet to the point of gangrene, scalding the lining of their throats with boiling coffee, because there is no warning anguish. Evolution does not favour them. So too perhaps with the fearless women, because there aren't very many of them around. ... Providence appears to protect such women, maybe out of astonishment.

  Margaret Atwood

  Pain, Fear, Coffee

  Margaret Atwood (2012). “Bluebeard's Egg”, p.112, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• If thy desire to raise thy fortunes encourage thy delights to the casts of fortune, be wise betimes, lest thou repent too late; what thou gettest, thou gainest by abused providence; what thou losest, thou losest by abused patience; what thou winnest is prodigally spent; what thou losest is prodigally lost; it is an evil trade that prodigally drives; and a bad voyage where the pilot is blind.

  Francis Quarles

  Wise, Gambling, Evil

  Francis Quarles (1856). “Enchiridon: containing institutions divine, moral”, p.149

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• Princes rule the people, and their own passions rule Princes; but Providence can over-rule the whole, and draw the instruments of his inscrutable purposes from the vices, no less than the virtues of Kings.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Kings, Passion, People

  Philip Dormer Stanhope (4th earl of Chesterfield.), Charles Caleb Colton (1861). “Lord Chesterfield's advice to his son on men and manners. To which are added, selections from Colton's 'Lacon'.”, p.206

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• As the vine which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak and been lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the thunderbolt, cling round it with its caressing tendrils and bind up its shattered boughs, so is it beautifully ordered by Providence that woman, who is the mere dependent and ornament of man in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when smitten with sudden calamity, winding herself into the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly supporting the drooping head, and binding up the broken heart.

  Washington Irving

  Women, Heart, Sunshine

  Washington Irving (2015). “The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. – The Complete Collection: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, The Voyage, Roscoe, A Royal Poet, A Sunday in London and many more (Illustrated)”, p.30, e-artnow

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• Providence has given the United States the duty of extending Christian civilization. We come as ministering angels, not despots.

  Knute Nelson

  Christian, Angel, Civilization

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• In a sermon entitled “God's Providence,” C. H. Spurgeon said, “Napoleon once heard it said, that man proposes and God disposes. 'Ah,' said Napoleon, 'but I propose and dispose too.' How do you think he proposed and disposed? He proposed to go and take Russia; he proposed to make all Europe his. He proposed to destroy that power, and how did he come back again? How had he disposed it? He came back solitary and alone, his mighty army perished and wasted, having well-nigh eaten and devoured one another through hunger. Man proposes and God disposes.

  Jerry Bridges

  Army, Men, Thinking

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• The mystery of God's providence is a most sublime consideration. It is easy to let our reason run away with itself. It is at a loss when it attempts to search into the eternal decrees of election or the entangled mazes and labyrinths in which the divine providence walks. This knowledge is too wonderful for us. Man can be very confident that God exercises the most accurate providence over him and his affairs. Nothing comes to pass without our heavenly Father. No evil comes to pass without his permissive providence, and no good without his ordaining providence to his own ends.

  Ezekiel Hopkins

  Running, Father, Loss

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• Nature is not personal. She is the compound of all these processes which move through the universe to effect the results we know as Life and of all the ordinances which govern that universe and that make Life continuous. She is no more the Hebrew's Jehovah than she is the Physicist's Force; she is as much Providence as she is Electricity; she is not the Great Pattern any more than she is the Blind Chance.

  Luther Burbank

  Moving, Atheism, Patterns

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• God's Providence controls the universe. It is present everywhere. Providence is the sovereign Logos of God, imprinting form on the unformed materiality of the world, making and fashioning all things. Matter could not have acquired an articulated structure were it not for the directing power of the Logos Who is the Image, Intellect, Wisdom, and Providence of God.

  Anthony the Great

  Christian, World, Matter

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• There is no observation more frequently made by such as employ themselves in surveying the conduct of mankind, than that marriage, though the dictate of nature, and the institution of Providence, is yet very often the cause of misery, and that those who enter into that state can seldom forbear to express their repentance, and their envy of those whom either chance or caution hath withheld from it.

  Samuel Johnson

  Envy, Causes, Chance

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An Essay on His Life and Genius”, p.116

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• Is it not gain to have diminished the faith that it was the duty of the wretched and the miserable to be content with the lot in life which providence had awarded them?

  Charles Bradlaugh

  Atheism, Gains, Miserable

  Charles Bradlaugh (1889). “Humanity's Gain from Unbelief”, p.15, Library of Alexandria

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• God is not only to be known in His blessed and incomprehensible being, for this is something which is reserved for His saints in the age to come. He is also known from the grandeur and beauty of His creatures, from His providence which governs the world day by day, from His righteousness and from wonders which He shows to His saints in each generation.

  John Cassian

  Christian, Blessed, Age

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• Nor bird nor beast
  Could make me wish for anything this day,
  Being old, but that the old alone might die,
  And that would be against God's Providence.

  William Butler Yeats

  Bird, Wish, Would Be

  William Butler Yeats (2010). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume I: The Poems: Revised Second Edition”, p.142, Simon and Schuster

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• Poltinus the Platonist proves by means of the blossoms and leaves that from the Supreme God, whose beauty is invisible and ineffable, Providence reaches down to the things of earth here below. He points out that these frail and mortal objects could not be endowed with a beauty so immaculate and so exquisitely wrought, did they not issue from the Divinity which endlessly prevades with its invisible and unchanging beauty all things.

  Saint Augustine

  Mean, Issues, Religion

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• How strange a checker-work of Providence is the life of man!

  Daniel Defoe

  Life, Men, Strange

  Daniel Defoe, Keeley Halswelle, William Henry Davenport Adams (1871). “The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner”, p.211

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• I am not one of those who have the least anxiety about the triumph of the principles I have stood for. I have seen fools resist Providence before, and I have seen their destruction, as will come upon these again, utter destruction and contempt. That we shall prevail is as sure as that God reigns.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Anxiety, Reign, Fool

  Woodrow Wilson (1956). “The Wilson reader”

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