471 Quotes by J. C. Ryle

The love of Christ to sinners is the very essence and marrow of the Gospel.

Pride makes us rest content with ourselves – think we are good enough as we are – keep us from taking advice – refuse the gospel of Christ – turn every one to his own way. But pride never reigns anywhere so powerfully as in the heart of a young man.

Sin, in short, is that vast moral disease which affects the whole human race, of every rank and class and name and nation and people and tongue, a disease from which there never was but one born of woman that was free. Need I say that One was Christ Jesus the Lord?

Evening is the time which the higher classes choose for dancing, card playing, and the like; and consequently never get to bed till late at night. If we love our souls, and would not become worldly, let us mind how we spend our evenings. Tell me how a man spends his evenings, and I can generally tell what his character is.

What you think now about the cross of Christ, I cannot tell; but I can wish you nothing better than this – that you may be able to say with the apostle Paul, before you die or meet the Lord, ‘God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.’

The banknote without a signature at the bottom is nothing but a worthless piece of paper. A few strokes of a pen confer on it all its value. The prayer of a poor child of Adam is a feeble thing in itself, but once endorsed by the hand of the Lord Jesus it accomplishes much.

Of all the doctrines of the Bible none is so offensive to human nature as the doctrine of God’s sovereignty.

I am one of those old-fashioned ministers who believe the whole Bible and everything that it contains.

The man who is content to sit ignorantly by his own fireside, wrapped up in his own private affairs, and has no public eye for what is going on in the Church and the world, is a miserable patriot, and a poor style of Christian. Next to our Bibles and our own hearts, our Lord would have us study our own times.