Top 65 Quotes & Sayings by David Livingstone

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Scottish explorer David Livingstone.
Last updated on December 23, 2024.
David Livingstone

David Livingstone was a Scottish physician, Congregationalist, and pioneer Christian missionary with the London Missionary Society, an explorer in Africa, and one of the most popular British heroes of the late 19th-century Victorian era. David was the husband of Mary Moffat Livingstone, from the prominent 18th Century missionary family, Moffat. He had a mythic status that operated on a number of interconnected levels: Protestant missionary martyr, working-class "rags-to-riches" inspirational story, scientific investigator and explorer, imperial reformer, anti-slavery crusader, and advocate of British commercial and colonial expansion.

Fear God and work hard.
I will go anywhere, provided it is forward.
I will place no value on anything I have or may possess except in relation to the kingdom of Christ. — © David Livingstone
I will place no value on anything I have or may possess except in relation to the kingdom of Christ.
I am prepared to go anywhere, provided it be forward.
Nothing earthly will make me give up my work in despair.
I determined never to stop until I had come to the end and achieved my purpose.
If you have men who will only come if they know there is a good road, I don't want them. I want men who will come if there is no road at all.
All that I am I owe to Jesus Christ, revealed to me in His divine Book.
I have found that I have no unusual endowments of intellect, but this day I resolve that I will be an uncommon Christian.
May the time come when rich men and great men would think it an honor to support whole stations of missionaries in Africa, instead of spending their money on hounds and horses.
Remember us in your prayers that we grow not weary in well doing. It is hard to work for years with pure motives, and all the time be looked upon by most of those to whom our lives are devoted as having some sinister object in view. Disinterested labor - benevolence - is so out of their line of thought, that many look upon us as having some ulterior object in view; but He who died for us, and Whom we ought to copy, did more for us than we can do for any one else. He endured the contradiction of sinners. We should have grace to follow in His steps.
I am a missionary, heart and soul. God had an only Son, and He was a missionary and a physician. I am a poor, poor imitation of Him, or wish to be. In this service I hope to live; in it I wish to die!
Self-deception helps us deceive.
Death alone will put a stop to my effort! — © David Livingstone
Death alone will put a stop to my effort!
I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office.
I will place no value on anything I have or may possess, except in relation to the kingdom of Christ. If anything will advance the interests of that kingdom, it shall be given away or kept only in reference to whether giving or keeping will most promote the glory1 of him to whom I owe all my hopes in time and eternity.
Do not think me mad. It is not to make money that I believe a Christian should live. The noblest thing a man can do is, just humbly to receive, and then go amongst others and give.
The mere animal pleasure of travelling in a wild unexplored country is also great. The effect of travel on a man whose heart is in the right place is that the mind is made more self-reliant: it becomes more confident of its own resources, there is greater presence of mind.
There is one safe and happy place, and that is in the will of God.
People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay? All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice.
If success attend me, grant me humility; If failure, resignation to Thy will.
Providence seems to call me to the regions beyond
Men are immortal till their work is done.
I am immortal till my work is accomplished
It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice.
All I can say in my solitude is, May Heaven's rich blessing come down on every one - American, English, Turk - who will help to heal this open sore of the world.
God, send me anywhere, only go with me. Lay any burden on me, only sustain me. And sever any tie in my heart except the tie that binds my heart to Yours.
He who died for us, and Whom we ought to copy, did more for us than we can do for any one else. He endured the contradiction of sinners. We should have grace to follow in His steps.
In this service I hope to live; in it I wish to die!
Without Christ, not one step; with Him, anywhere!
If a commission by an earthly king is considered a honor, how can a commission by a Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?
I saw the duty and inestimable privilege _immediately_ to accept salvation by Christ. Humbly believing that through sovereign mercy and grace I have been enabled so to do, and having felt in some measure its effects on my still depraved and deceitful heart, it is my desire to show my attachment to the cause of Him who died for me by devoting my life to his service.
It is far easier to travel than to write about it.
To be aroused in the dark by five feet of cold, green snake gliding over one's face is unpleasant.
I'd rather be in the heart of Africa in the will of God, than on the throne of England, out of the will of God.
It is my desire to show my attachment to the cause of Him who died for me by devoting my life to His service.
.... the brisk exercise imparts elasticity to the muscles, fresh and healthy blood circulates through the brain, the mind works well, the eye is clear, the step is firm, and a day's exertion always makes the evening's repose thoroughly enjoyable.
Though there is antipathy in the human heart to the gospel of Christ, yet when Christians make their good work shine, all admire them. It is when great disparity exists between profession and practice that we secure the scorn of mankind.
God had only one Son, and He was a missionary. — © David Livingstone
God had only one Son, and He was a missionary.
If we have not enough in our religion . . . to share it with all the world, it is doomed here at home.
It is hard to work for years with pure motives, and all the time be looked upon by most of those to whom our lives are devoted as having some sinister object in view.
Shall I tell you what supported me through all those years of exile among a people whose language I could not understand and whose attitude towards me we always uncertain and often hostile? It was this: "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world".
People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege.
I am willing to go anywhere, anywhere, anywhere-provided it be forward.
I never made a sacrifice. Of this we ought not to talk when we remember the great sacrifice which he made who left His Father's throne on high to give Himself for us.
Oh, that I could dedicate my all to God. This is all the return I can make Him.
Christ alone can save the world, but Christ cannot save the world alone.
Fastings and vigils without a special object in view are time run to waste.
This generation can only reach this generation. — © David Livingstone
This generation can only reach this generation.
And although I see few results, future missionaries will see conversions following every sermon. May they not forget the pioneers who worked in the thick gloom with few rays to cheer, except such as flow from faith in the precious promises of God's Word.
The islands above the falls are covered with foliage as beautiful as can be seen anywhere. Viewed from the mass of rock which overhangs the fall, the scenery was the loveliest I had seen.
God had an only Son and He made Him a missionary.
Terrorism is a word with little content - it is a label for brutalities committed by ‘the enemy’, and from which one’s own acts of destruction are exempted. It is an inchoate and emotionally laden concept, a semantic mirror of our dishonesty and a repository for everything about war that we would like to disavow. Making a sharp distinction between war and terrorism is at best a self-deceptive game.
If you knew the satisfaction of performing such a duty, as well as the gratitude to God which the missionary must always feel, in being chosen for so noble, so sacred a calling, you would have no hesitation in embracing it.
Education has been given us from above for the purpose of bringing to the benighted the knowledge of the Saviour.
The best remedy for a sick church is to put it on a missionary diet.
Cannot the love of Christ carry the missionary where the slave-trade carries the trader? I shall open up a path to the interior or perish.
I'll go anywhere as long as it's forward.
There is a Ruler above, and His Providence guides all things. He is our Friend and has plenty of work for all His people to do. It is such a blessing and a privilege to be led into His work instead of into the service of the hard taskmasters - the Devil and sin.
Sympathy is no substitute for action.
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