Quotes from Richard Baxter

If you must needs have your pleasures, you should not have put yourselves into that calling that requireth you to make God and His service your pleasure, and restraineth you so much from fleshly pleasures.

Do you know that much of the Christian warfare consisteth in the combat between the flesh and the Spirit; and that is the very difference between a true Christian and a wicked wretch, that one liveth after the Spirit, and mortifieth the deeds and desires of the body, and the other liveth after the flesh?

Desire a thousand times more to be godly, than to seem so.

God has made the desire of our own happiness so necessary to the soul of man, that it cannot be separated from our desire to please him. Therefore, both in respect to God, and to our own happiness, "we must believe that he is the everlasting Rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

The ministry is another kind of business than too many excellent preachers take it to be.

Recreations for a student must be especially for the exercise of his body, he having before him such variety of delights for his mind; and they must be as whetting is with the mower, only to be used so far as is necessary to his work.

I know necessity may cause the Church to tolerate the weak; but woe to us if we tolerate and indulge our own weakness.

Good ends will not justify evil actions. What

Prayer is the breath of the new creature.

You will cast away your cards and dice when you find the sweetness of youthful learning.

This life was not intended to be the place of our perfection, but the preparation for it.

If life be long, I will be glad, Tthat I may long obey; If short, yet why should I be sad, To soar to endless day?