Richard Baxter
Be careful how you spend your time: Spend your time in nothing which you know must be repented of.
I preached as never sure to preach again, And as a dying man to dying men.
Unity in things Necessary, Liberty in things Unnecessary, and Charity in all.
You may know God, but not comprehend Him.
If they can see you love them, you can say anything to them.
Dangers bring fears, and fears more dangers bring.
Keep up you conjugal love in constant heat and vigor.
The longer you delay, the more your sin gets strength and rooting. If you cannot bend a twig, how will you be able to bend it when it is a tree?Collection: Tree
This life was not intended to be the place of our perfection, but the preparation for it.Collection: Perfection
Spend your time in nothing which you know must be repented of; in nothing on which you might not pray for the blessing of God; in nothing which you could not review with a quiet conscience on your dying bed; in nothing which you might not safely and properly be found doing if death should surprise you in the act.Collection: Blessing
Keep up a humble sense of your own faults, and that will make you compassionate to othersCollection: Humble
Holiness is nothing else but the habitual and predominant devotion and dedication of soul, and body, and life, and all that we have to God; and esteeming, and loving, and serving, and seeking Him, before all the pleasures and prosperity of the flesh.Collection: Dedication
Christ leads me through no darker rooms than He went through before.Collection: Rooms
Study hard, for the well is deep, and our brains are shallow.Collection: Motivational
Suffering so unbolts the door of the heart, that the Word hath easier entrance.Collection: Heart
A foolish physician he is, and a most unfaithful friend, that will let a sick man die for fear of troubling him; and cruel wretches are we to our friends, that will rather suffer them to go quietly to hell, then we will anger them, or hazard our reputation with them.Collection: Men
Lay siege to your sins, and starve them out by keeping away the food and fuel which is their maintenance and life.Collection: Maintenance
Of all the preaching in the world, I hate that preaching which tends to make the hearers laugh, or to move their minds with tickling levity and affect them as stage plays used to, instead of affecting them with a holy reverence for the name of God.Collection: Hate
Nothing can be rightly known, if God be not known; nor is any study well managed, nor to any great purpose, if God is not studied. We know little of the creature, till we know it as it stands related to the Creator.Collection: Purpose
Use sin as it will use you; spare it not, for it will not spare you; it is your murderer, and the murderer of the world: use it, therefore, as a murderer should be used. Kill it before it kills you.Collection: Use
Tomorrow is always the sluggard's working day; today is his holidayCollection: Holiday
My Lord, I have nothing to do in this World, but to seek and serve thee; I have nothing to do with a Heart and its affections, but to breathe after thee. I have nothing to do with my Tongue and Pen, but to speak to thee, and for thee, and to publish thy Glory and thy Will. What have I to do with all my Reputation, and Interest in my Friends, but to increase thy Church, and propagate thy holy Truth and Service? What have I to do with my remaining Time, even these last and languishing hours, but to look up unto thee, and wait for thy Grace, and thy Salvation?Collection: Heart
Preach to yourselves the sermons which you study, before you preach them to others.Collection: Study
What we most value, we shall think no pains too great to gain.Collection: Pain
Prayer is the breath of the new creature.Collection: Prayer
We must feel toward our people as a father toward his children; yea, the most tender love of a mother must not surpass ours. We must even travail in birth, till Christ be formed in them. They should see that we care for no outward thing, neither liberty, nor honor, nor life, in comparison to their salvation... When the people see that you truly love them, they will hear anything from you...Oh therefore, see that you feel a tender love for your people in your hearts, and let them perceive it in your speech and conduct. Let them see that you spend and are spent for their sakes.Collection: Mother
Make careful choice of the books which you read: let the holy scriptures ever have the pre-eminence, and, next to them, those solid, lively, heavenly treatises which best expound and apply the scriptures, and next, credible histories, especially of the Church... but take heed of false teachers who would corrupt your understandings.Collection: Teacher
Once more consider, there is nothing, but heaven, worth setting our hearts upon.Collection: Heart
Most (Christians) have an ungrounded trust in Christ, hoping that He will pardon, justify and save them, while the world has their hearts, and they live to the flesh. And this trust they take as justifying faith.Collection: Christian
When Christ comes with regenerating grace, he finds no man sitting still, but all posting to eternal ruin, and making haste toward hell; till, by conviction, he first brings them to a stand, and then, by conversion, turn first their hearts, and then their lives, sincerely to himself.Collection: Heart
And though it be their sin and vanity that is the cause, it is nevertheless your sin to be the unnecessary occasion: for you must consider that you live among diseased souls. And you must not lay a stumblingblock in their way, nor blow up the fire of their lust, nor make your ornaments their snares; but you must walk among sinful persons, as you would do with a candle among straw or gunpowder; or else you may see the flame which you would not foresee, when it is too late to quench it.Collection: Block
In our first paradise in Eden there was a way to go out but no way to go in again. But as for the heavenly paradise, there is a way to go in, but not way to go out.Collection: Christian
A little love has made me willingly study, preach, write, and even suffer.Collection: Writing
Dangers breed fears, and fears more dangers bring.Collection: Fear
An ounce of mirth is worth a pound of sorrow.Collection: Sorrow
Surely love is both work and wages.Collection: Love Is
Despair of ever being saved, "except thou be born again," or of seeing God "without holiness," or of having part in Christ except thou "love him above father, mother, or thy own life." This kind of despair is one of the first steps to heaven.Collection: Mother
If family religion were duly attended to and properly discharged, I think the preaching of the Word would not be the common instrument of conversion.Collection: Thinking
It is not a terrible thing to a wretched soul, when it shall lie roaring perpetually in the flames of hell, and the God of mercy himself shall laugh at them; when...God shall mock them instead of relieving them; when none in heaven or earth can help them but God, and he shall rejoice over them in their calamityCollection: Lying
This is the sanctification of your studies: when they are devoted to God, and when He is the end, the object, and the life of them all.Collection: Study
We shall then have joy without sorrow, and rest without weariness...Be of good cheer, Christian, the time is near, when God and thou shalt be near, and as near as thou canst well desire. Thou shalt dwell in his family.Collection: Christian
Paganism attributes the creation of the world to blind chance.Collection: World
I remember myself, that when I was young, I had sometime the company of one ancient godly minister, who was of weaker parts than many others, but yet did profit me more than most; because he would never in prayer or conference speak of God, or the life to come, but with such marvelous seriousness and reverence, as if he had seen the majesty and glory which he talked of.Collection: Prayer
Keep up your conjugal love in a constant heat and vigor. Love will suppress wrath: you cannot have a bitter mind upon small provocations, against those that you dearly love.Collection: Vigor
It is true, that men may have Christ whenever they are willing to comply with His terms. But if you are not willing now, how can you think you shall be willing hereafter?Collection: Men
You little know what you have done, when you have first broke the bounds of modesty; you have set open the door of your fancy to the devil, so that he can, almost at his pleasure ever after, represent the same sinful pleasure to you anew; he hath now access to your fancy to stir up lustful thoughts and desires, so that when you should think of your calling, of your God, or of your soul, your thoughts will be worse than swinish, upon the filth that is not fit to be named. If the devil here get in a foot, he will not easily be got out.Collection: Thinking
If it will be an intolerable thing to suffer the heat of fire for a year or a day, or an hour, what will it be to suffer ten thousand times more for ever? What if thou wert to suffer Lawrence 's death, to be roasted upon a gridiron; or to be scraped or pricked to death as other martyrs were; or if thou wert to feed upon toads for a year together? If thou couldst not endure such things as these, how wilt thou endure the eternal flames ?Collection: Years
Above all be much in secret prayer and meditation. By this you will fetch the heavenly fire that must kindle your sacrifice: remember you cannot decline and neglect your duty to your own hurt alone, many will be losers by it as well as you.Collection: Hurt
Overvalue not therefore the manner of your own worship, and overvilify not other men's of a different mode.Collection: Men