Quotes from Philip Yancey

we persevere because we believe rewards will come.

Oswald Chambers once said that the Psalms teach you how to pray; Job teaches you how to suffer; the Song of Solomon teaches you how to love; Proverbs teaches you how to live; and Ecclesiastes teaches you how to enjoy.

The presence of another caring person doubles the amount of pain a person can endure

Make it so the poor are no longer despised and thrown away. Look at them standing about — like wildflowers, which have nowhere else to grow.

A cease-fire between human beings depends upon a cease-fire with God.

Do you know the difference between an optimist and a pessimist? A pessimist says, 'Oh dear, things can't possibly get any worse.' An optimist says, 'Don't be so sad. Things can always get worse.

True health is the strength to live, the strength to suffer, and the strength to die.

When a doctoral student at Princeton asked, "What is there left in the world for original dissertation research?" Albert Einstein replied, "Find out about prayer. Somebody must find out about prayer.

Grace dispensers give out of their own bounty, in gratitude (a word with the same root as grace) for what we have received from God. We serve others not with some hidden scheme of making converts, rather to contribute to the common good, to help humans flourish as God intended.

Faith, I've concluded, means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse.

From Jesus I learn that, whatever activism I get involved in, it must not drive out love and humility, or otherwise I betray the kingdom of heaven.

The Christian knows to serve the weak not because they deserve it but because God extended his love to us when we deserved the opposite. Christ came down from heaven, and whenever his disciples entertained dreams of prestige and power he reminded them that the greatest is the one who serves. The ladder of power reaches up, the ladder of grace reaches down.