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PROVIDENCe quotes
Resignation and faith behold God in the smallest hair that falls; and the happiest life is that of him who has bound together all the affairs of life, great and small, and intrusted them to God.
God hangs the greatest weights upon the smallest wires.
Everything that happens in the world is part of a great plan of God running through all time.
Some one has said that in war providence is on the side of the strongest regiments. And I have noticed that providence is on the side of clear heads and honest hearts;—and wherever a man walks faithfully in the ways that God has marked out for him, providence, as the Christian says,—luck, as the heathen says,—will be on that man's side.—In the long run you will find that God's providence is in favor of those that keep his laws, and against those that break them.
A cockle-fish may as soon crowd the ocean into its narrow shell, as vain man ever comprehend the decrees of God.
Every blade of grass in the field is measured; the green cups and the colored crowns of every flower are curiously counted; the stars of the firmament wheel in cunningly calculated orbits; even the storms have their laws.
In the huge mass of evil as it rolls and swells, there is ever some good working toward deliverance and triumph.
Providence is a greater mystery than revelation. The state of the world is more humiliating to our reason than the doctrines of the Gospel. A reflecting Christian sees more to excite his astonishment, and to exercise his faith, in the state of things between Temple Bar and St. Paul's, than in what he reads from Genesis to Revelations.
Duties are ours; events are God's.—This removes an infinite burden from the shoulders of a miserable, tempted, dying creature.—On this consideration only can he securely lay down his head and close his eyes.
Happy the man who sees a God employed in all the good and ill that checker life.
The longer I live, the more faith I have in Providence, and the less faith in my interpretation of Providence.
We are not to lead events, but follow them.
Providence is like a curious piece of arras, made up of thousands of shreds, which single we know not what to make of, but put together they present us with a beautiful history.
He that will watch providences, shall never want providences to watch.
The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of man; and if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?
The providence that watches over the affairs of men, works out of their mistakes, at times, a healthier issue than could have been accomplished by their own wisest forethought.
To doubt the providence of God is presently to wax impatient with his commands.
What mockeries are our most firm resolves.—To will is ours, but not to execute. We map our future like some unknown coast, and say here is a harbor, there a rock; the one we will attain, the other shun, and we do neither; some chance gale springs up, and bears us far o'er some unfathomed sea.
Either all is chance, and being but chance is of no consequence, or God rules the world, and all is well.—Whatever befalls is just and right, and therefore not unendurable.
By going a few minutes sooner or later, by stopping to speak with a friend on the corner, by meeting this man or that, or by turning down this street instead of the other, we may let slip some impending evil, by which the whole current of our lives would have been changed. There is no possible solution in the dark enigma but the one word, "Providence."
Our Lord God doeth work like a printer, who setteth the letters backward; we see and feel well His setting, but we shall see the print yonder—in the life to come.
To the dim and bewildered vision of humanity, God's care is more evident in some instances than in others; and upon such instances men seize, and call them providences. It is well that they can; but it would be gloriously better if they could believe that the whole matter is one grand providence.
Who finds not Providence all good and wise, alike in what it gives and what denies?
All nature is but art, unknown to thee; all chance, direction which thou canst net see; all discord, harmony not understood; all partial evil, universal good.
He who is truly religious finds a providence not more truly in the history of the world, than in his own personal and family history.—The rainbow which hangs a splendid circle in the heights of heaven, is also formed by the same sun in the dew-drop of the lowly flower.
We must follow, not force providence.
There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will.
God's plans, like lilies pure and white unfold.—We must not tear the close-shut leaves apart.—Time will reveal the calyxes of gold.
To make our reliance upon providence both pious and rational, we should prepare all things with the same care, diligence, and activity, as if there were no such thing as providence for us to depend upon; and then, when we have done all this, we should as wholly and humbly rely upon it, as if we had made no preparation at all.
God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.
I once asked a hermit in Italy how he could venture to live alone, in a single cottage, on the top of a mountain, a mile from any habitation? He replied, that Providence was his next door neighbor.
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