Quotes about Will

The Sermon on the Mount is God's formula for revival. The Beatitudes are His recipe for His kingdom to come and His will to be done on the earth as it is in heaven.

Schooling people in the ways of ongoing discernment produces a greater receptivity to the tradition of the church and at the same time creates the freedom that will make them more responsive to the will of God throughout their lives.

This idea of the transcendent power of the Supreme Being is essentially connected with that by which the whole duty of man is summed up: obedience to His will.

But just a minute, Mr. Poor Man; consider whether you can, in fact, enter. What if you're poor, and also happen to be greedy? What if you're sunk in destitution, and at the same time on fire with avarice? So if that's what you're like, whoever you are that are poor, it's not because you haven't wanted to be rich, but because you haven't been able to. So God doesn't inspect your means, but he observes your will.

Will is to grace as the horse is to the rider.

In a word, human kingdoms are established by divine providence. And if any one attributes their existence to fate, because he calls the will or the power of God itself by the name of fate, let him keep his opinion, but correct his language.

But those who are of opinion that, apart from the will of God, the stars determine what we shall do, or what good things we shall possess, or what evils we shall suffer, must be refused a hearing by all, not only by those who hold the true religion, but by those who wish to be the worshippers of any gods whatsoever, even false gods. For what does this opinion really amount to but this, that no god whatever is to be worshipped or prayed to?

Therefore God, who made the visible heaven and earth, does not disdain to work visible miracles in heaven or earth, that He may thereby awaken the soul which is immersed in things visible to worship Himself, the Invisible. But the place and time of these miracles are dependent on His unchangeable will, in which things future are ordered as if already they were accomplished.

How, then, does an order of causes which is certain to the foreknowledge of God necessitate that there should be nothing which is dependent on our wills, when our wills themselves have a very important place in the order of causes?

Choose to love whomsoever thou wilt: all else will follow.

For a man does not therefore sin because God foreknew that he would sin. Nay, it cannot be doubted but that it is the man himself who sins when he does sin, because He, whose foreknowledge is infallible, foreknew not that fate, or fortune, or something else would sin, but that the man himself would sin, who, if he wills not, sins not. But if he shall not will to sin, even this did God foreknow.

For even the vice which by the force of habit and long continuance has become a second nature, had its origin in the will.