Quotes from Elisabeth Elliot

You either believe God knows what He's doing or you believe He doesn't. You either believe He's worth trusting or you say He's not. And then, where are you? You're at the mercy of chaos not cosmos. Chaos is the Greek word for disorder. Cosmos is the word for order. We either live in an ordered universe or we are trying to create our own reality.

The failure to cultivate the power of peaceful concentration is the greatest single cause of mental breakdown, the great physician William Osler told the students of Yale.

Is it more important to understand than to obey? Is it more important to me to know than to believe?

When life's flight is over, and we unload our cargo at the other end, the fellow who got rid of unnecessary weight will have the most valuable cargo to present to the Lord.

Saral came one day with a idea for drawing the women to hear the Gospel. She would teach them to knit with some pink wool she had been given, 'and they will love me more and like to listen when I talk about Jesus.' Amy could not say yes to that. She explained that the Gospel needed no such frills. It is the power of God for salvation....There was no need for tricks which might open houses...

I don't want anybody treating me as a "person" rather than as a woman. Our sexual differences are the terms of our life, and to obscure them in any way is to weaken the very fabric of life itself. When they are lost, we are lost.

Steadfastness, that is holding on; Patience, that is holding back; Expectancy, that is holding the face up; Obedience, that is holding one's self in readiness to go or do; Listening, that is holding quiet and still as to hear.

How long Lord must I wait? Nevermind child, trust me.

I am not a theologian or a scholar, but I am very aware of the fact that pain is necessary to all of us. In my own life, I think I can honestly say that out of the deepest pain has come the strongest conviction of the presence of God and the love of God.

You can create a climate for him according to your attitude, and this is part of your job as a wife. The home you make and the atmosphere of that home is the world he comes back to from the world of his work. Let it be a place of beauty and peace.

It's only in the cross that we can begin to harmonize this seeming contradiction between suffering and love.

God might have given Adam another man to be his friend, to walk and talk and argue with if that was his pleasure. But Adam needed more than the companionship of the animals or the friendship of a man. He needed a helper, specially designed and prepared to fill that role. It was a woman God gave him, a woman, "meet," fit, suitable, entirely appropriate for him, made of his very bones and flesh.