Martin Luther
Believest thou? then thou wilt speak boldly. Speakest thou boldy? then thou must suffer. Sufferest thou? then thou shalt be comforted. For faith, the confession thereof, and the cross do follow one another.Collection: Faith
No one would be happier than Luther to be commended by the testimony of the time that he had been neither slack nor deceitful in maintaining the course of truth, but had shown quite enough and even too much vehemence.Collection: Would Be
Indeed, to spur your Baal to action, I will taunt and challenge you ... to create as much as a single frog in the name and by the power of free choice, though the heathen and ungodly magicians in Egypt were able to create many.... I will not set you the heavy task of creating lice, which they could not produce eitherCollection: Egypt
If anywhere the day is made holy for the mere day's sake - if anyone set up its observance on a Jewish foundation, then I order you to work on it, to ride on it, to dance on it, to feast on it, to do anything that shall remove this encroachment on Christian liberty.Collection: Christian
You see then, that Diatribe truly possesses a free choice in her handling of Scriptures, so that words of one and the same type are for her obliged to prove endeavor in one place and freedom in another, exactly as she pleases.Collection: Choices
The confidence and faith of the heart alone make both God and an idol. If your faith and trust be right, then is your god also true; and, on the other hand, if your trust be false and wrong, then you have not the true God; for these two belong together faith and God. That now, I say, upon which you set your heart and put your trust is properly your god.Collection: Heart
I think these things [firearms] were invented by Satan himself, for they can't be defended against with (ordinary) weapons and fists. All human strength vanishes when confronted with firearms. A man is dead before he sees what's coming.Collection: Men
Heaven and earth, all the emperors, kings, and princes of the world, could not raise a fit dwelling-place for God; yet, in a weak human soul, that keeps His Word, He willingly resides.Collection: Kings
A man must be able to affirm, I know for certain, that what I teach is the only Word of the high Majesty of God in heaven, his final conclusion and everlasting, unchangeable truth, and whatsoever concurs and agrees not with this doctrine, is altogether false, and spun by the devil.Collection: Men
Oh! how great and glorious a thing it is to have before one the Word of God! With that we may at all times feel joyous and secure; we need never be in want of consolation, for we see before us, in all its brightness, the pure and right way.Collection: Needs
The Holy Ghost is not a Sceptic, and He has not inscribed in our hearts uncertain opinions, but, rather, affirmations of the strongest sorts.Collection: Heart
We come to the New Testament, where again a host of imperative verbs is mustered in support of that miserable bondage of free-choice, and the aid of carnal Reason with her inferences and similes is called in, just as in a picture or a dream you might see the King of the flies with his lances of straw and shields of hay arrayed against a real and regular army of seasoned human troops. That is how the human dreams of Diatribe go to war with the battalions of divine words.Collection: Dream
Sacred scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth.Collection: Scary
There is no rustic so rude but that, if he dreams or fancies anything, it must be the whisper of the Holy Ghost, and he himself a prophet.Collection: Dream
How often have not the demons called 'Nix,' drawn women and girls into the water, and there had commerce with them, with fearful consequences.Collection: Girl
from you, my dear Erasmus, let me obtain this request, that just as I bear with your ignorance in these matters, so you in turn will bear with my lack of eloquence.Collection: Ignorance
A man who has no part in the grace of God, cannot keep the commandments of God, or prepare himself, either wholly or in part, to receive grace; but he rests of necessity under the power of sin.Collection: Men
The irony is I stopped going to church a few weeks later.Collection: Church
As concerning faith we ought to be invincible, and more hard, if it might be, than the adamant stone; but as touching charity, we ought to be soft, and more flexible than the reed or leaf that is shaken with the wind, and ready to yield to everything.Collection: Yield
Love is an image of God, and not a lifeless image, but the living essence of the divine nature which beams full of all goodness.Collection: Valentines Day
Daily there have to be many troubles and trials in every house, city, and country. No station in life is free of suffering and pain, both from your own, like your wife or children or household help or subjects, and from the outside, from your neighbors and all sorts of accidental trouble.Collection: Country
God indeed tempteth no man; but yet we ask, in this petition, that he would keep and preserve us, lest the devil, the world, and our own flesh delude and draw us away from the true faith, and throw us into superstition, distrust, despair, and other grievous sins and wickedness; and that, if we should be tempted therewith even to the highest degree, we still may conquer, and at last triumph over them.Collection: Men
The believing man hath the Holy Ghost; and where the Holy Ghost dwelleth, He will not suffer a man to be idle, butstirreth him up to all exercises of piety and godliness, and of true religion, to the love of God, to the patient suffering of afflictions, to prayer, to thanksgiving, and the exercise of charity towards all men.Collection: Prayer
The soul can do without everything except the word of God, without which none at all of its wants are provided for.Collection: Soul
Faith ever says, "If Thou wilt," not "If Thou canst.Collection: Ifs
I should have no compassion on these witches; I should burn them all.Collection: Religious
I was born to fight devils and factions. It is my business to remove obstacles, to cut down thorns, to fill up quagmires and to open and make straight paths. If I must have some failing let me rather speak the truth with too great sincerity than once to act the hypocrite and conceal the truth.Collection: Hypocrite
There is no wisdom save in truth. Truth is everlasting, but our ideas about truth are changeable. Only a little of the first fruits of wisdom, only a few fragments of the boundless heights, breadths and depths of truth, have I been able to gather.Collection: Wisdom
Works indeed are good, and God strictly requires them of us, but they do not make us holy.Collection: Holy
Being by his faith replaced afresh in paradise and created anew, he (the believer)does not need works for his justification, but that he may not be idle, but that he may exercise his own body and preserve it. His works are to be done freely, with the sole object of pleasing God.Collection: Exercise
Thus, dear friends, I have said it clearly enough, and I believe you ought to understand it and not make liberty a law.Collection: Believe
The Jews are the most miserable people on earth. They are plagued everywhere, and scattered about all countries, having no certain resting place. They sit as on a wheelbarrow, without a country, people or government... but they are rightly served, for seeing they refused have Christ and his gospel, instead of freedom they must have servitude.Collection: Country
If by any effort of reason I could conceive how God, Who shows so much anger and iniquity, could be merciful and just, there would be no need of faith.Collection: Anger
It is a miracle how God has so long preserved His Book! How great and glorious it is to have the Word of God!Collection: Bible
The word and works of God is quite clear, that women were made either to be wives or prostitutes.Collection: Wife
Glory to God in highest heaven, Who unto man His Son hath given; While angels sing with tender mirth, A glad new year to all the earth.Collection: New Year
When asked what he would do if he knew the world would end tomorrow, Martin Luther said, "I would plant a tree."Collection: Peace
Personally I declare that I owe the Pope no other obedience than that to Antichrist.Collection: Pope
Human nature is like a drunk peasant. Lift him into the saddle on one side, over he topples on the other side.Collection: Drunk
All who call on God in true faith...will certainly be heard.Collection: Prayer
Demons live in many lands, but particularly in Prussia.Collection: Religious
The heart overflows with gladness, and leaps and dances for the joy it has found in God. In this experience the Holy Spirit is active, and has taught us in the flash of a moment the deep secret of joy. You will have as much joy and laughter in life as you have faith in God.Collection: Faith
Let your holy Angel have charge concerning us, that the wicked one have no power over us.Collection: Angel
So great are the effectiveness and power of the Word of God that the more it is persecuted the more it flourishes and grows.Collection: Effectiveness
what the situation will be like in the world before the Lord returns, namely, Christ will be despised, and the preachers of the Gospel will be regarded as fools.Collection: World
The law works fear and wrath; grace works hope and mercy.Collection: Wrath
What are the things we should pray for? First, our personal troubles...The greatest trouble we can ever know is thinking that we have no trouble for we can become hard-hearted and insensible to what is inside of us.Collection: Prayer