Quotes about Acts

Luke thus provides the last part of the prophetic pattern, that of rejection by the people. As Simeon foretold, this will be worked out in the subsequent narrative in terms of a division within Israel between those who do and those who do not accept this prophet. But this ominous opening already suggests a reason why many Jews later on in Acts reject the Gospel, precisely because it is meant for all (cf. e.g., Acts 13:44—52).

The greatness of the world in which we live is the accumulated goodness of many small and seemingly inconsequential acts.

If my little acts of virtue can be mistaken for imperfections, imperfections can just as easily be mistaken for virtue.

In the Gospels—Jesus is the prophet to his people. In Acts and the Epistles—Jesus is the priest for his people. In the book of Revelation—Jesus is the King over his people.

Practice routinely purposeful kindnesses and intelligent acts of beauty.

We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love.

Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.

The selfishness of an age that has devoted itself to the mere cult of pleasure has tainted the whole human race with an error that makes all our acts more or less lies against God.

Free will is not given to us merely as a firework to be shot off into the air. There are some men who seem to think their acts are freer in proportion as they are without purpose, as if a rational purpose imposed some kind of limitation upon us. That is like saying that one is richer if he throws money out the window than if he spends it.

for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present, and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously.

The test of a man is in his immediate acts, and not in ultra-sentiments; and if those acts are consistently informed with selfishness and bitterness, if those at home hear his steps with dread, and feel a joyful relief on his departure, how empty are his expressions of sympathy for the suffering or down trodden how futile his membership of a philanthropic society.