Top 192 Quotes & Sayings by John Bunyan - Page 2

If you are not a praying person, you are not a Christian.

I am content with what I have, little be it, or much.

I come from the Town of Stupidity; it lieth about four degrees beyond the City of Destruction.

The best prayer I ever prayed had enough sin to damn the whole world.

To run and work the law commands, but gives us neither feet nor hands. But better news the gospel brings, it bids us fly and gives us wings.

Great grace and small gifts are better than great gifts and no grace.

Our sins, when laid upon Christ, were yet personally ours, not his; so his righteousness, when put upon us, is yet personally his, not ours.

Old truths are always new to us, if they come with the smell of heaven upon them.

A tender heart is a wakeful, watchful heart. It watches against sin in the soul, sin in the family, sin in the calling, sin in spiritual duties and performances.

It is easier going out of the way when we are in, than going in when we are out.

Temptation provokes me to look upward to God.

Temptations, when we meet them at first, are as the lion that reared upon Samson; but if we overcome them, the next time we see them we shall find a nest of honey within them.

Such is the effect of the grace of God in the heart of a pilgrim; while on one hand he sees the propensity of his evil nature to every sin which has been committed by others, and is humbled; he also confesses, that, by no power of his own, is he preserved, but ever gives the glory to the God of all grace, by whose power alone he is kept from falling.

Humility is the light of the understanding.

And, indeed, this is one of the greatest mysteries in the world; namely, that a righteousness that resides in heaven should justify me, a sinner on earth!

Doth Jesus Christ stand up to plead for us with God, to plead with him for us against the devil? Let this teach us to stand up to plead for him before men, to plead for him against the enemies of his person and gospel.

Take heed of driving so hard after this world, as to hinder thyself and family from those duties towards God, which thou art by grace obliged to; as private prayer, reading the scriptures, and Christian conference. It is a base thing for men so to spend themselves and families after this world, as that they disengage their heart to God's worship.

Let dissolution come when it will, it can do the Christian no harm, for it will be but a passage out of a prison into a palace; out of a sea of troubles into a haven of rest; out of a crowd of enemies, to an innumerable company of true, loving, and faithful friends; out of shame, reproach, and contempt, into exceeding great and eternal glory.

Faith is a fruit, work, or gift of the Spirit of God, whereby a poor soul is enabled through the mighty operation of God, in a sense of its sins and wretched estate to lay hold on the righteousness, blood, death, resurrection, ascension, intercession, and coming again of the Son of God which was crucified without the gates of Jerusalem, for eternal life.

a man there was, though some did count him mad, the more he cast away the more he had.

If you do not put a difference between justification wrought by the Man Christ without, and sanctification wrought by the Spirit of Christ within, you are not able to divide the word aright; but contrariwise, you corrupt the word of God.

…just as Christian came up to the Cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, fell from off his back, and began to tumble down the hill, and so it continued to do till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre. There it fell in, and I saw it no more!

I have given Him my faith, and sworn my allegiance to Him; how, then, can I go back from this, and not be hanged as a traitor?

Riches and power, what is there more in the world? For money answereth all things-that is, all but soul concerns. It can neither be a price for souls while here, nor can that, with all the forces of strength, recover one out of hell fire.

To pray rightly, you must make God your hope, stay, and all. Right prayer sees nothing substantial or worth being concerned about except God.

Nae man can tether time nor tide.

The heart must be beaten or bruised, and then the sweet scent will come out.

Sincerity is the same in a corner alone, as it is before the face of the world. It knows not how to wear two vizards, one for an appearance before men, and another for a short snatch in a corner; but it must have God, and be with him in the duty of prayer. It is not lip-labour that it doth regard, for it is the heart that God looks at, and that which sincerity looks at, and that which prayer comes from, if it be that prayer which is accompanied with sincerity.

There is no way to kill a man's righteousness but by his own consent.

Prayer is a shield to the soul

Faith receiveth the promise, embraceth it, and comforteth the soul unspeakably with it. Faith is so great an artist in arguing and reasoning with the soul, that it will bring over the hardest heart that it hath to deal with. It will bring to my remembrance at once, both my vileness against God, and his goodness towards me; it will show me, that though I deserve not to breathe in the air, yet that God will have me an heir of glory.

Words easy to be understood do often hit the mark, when high and learned ones do only pierce the air.

Dost thou understand me, sinful soul? He wrestled with justice, that thou mightest have rest; He wept and mourned, that thou mightest laugh and rejoice; He was betrayed, that thou mightest go free; was apprehended, that thou mightest escape; He was condemned, that thou mightest be justified; and was killed, that thou mightest live; He wore a crown of thorns, that thou mightest wear a crown of glory; and was nailed to the cross, with His arms wide open, to show with what freeness all His merits shall be bestowed on the coming soul; and how heartily He will receive it into His bosom?

Talkative represents the man or woman who delights in talking about divine things but has only theoretical knowledge of such things. No actual personal heart experience correlates to the matters they love to discuss so eloquently. They are often highly esteemed by others, but those closest to them would quickly betray a life out-of-sync with their words. The mask fashioned by fluency with all subjects divine hides their real life.

I love to hear my Lord spoken of, and wherever I have seen the print of His shoe in the earth, there have I coveted to put mine also.

Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

To-despise the world is the way to enjoy heaven; and blessed are they who delight to converse with God by prayer.

Therefore, I bind these lies and slanderous accusations to my person as an ornament; it belongs to my Christian profession to be vilified, slandered, reproached and reviled, and since all this is nothing but that, as God and my conscience testify, I rejoice in being reproached for Christ's sake.

Hope has a thick skin and will endure many a blow; it will put on patience as a vestment and will endure all things (if they be of the right kind) for the joy that is set before it. Hence patience is called patience of hope,' because it is hope that makes the soul exercise long-suffering under the cross until the time comes to enjoy the crown!

Great sins do draw out great grace; and where guilt is most terrible and fierce, there the mercy of God in Christ, when showed to the soul, appears most high and mighty.

Sleep is sweet to the labouring man.

There hath not one tear dropped from thy tender eye against thy lusts, the love of this world, or for more communion with Jesus Christ, but as it is now in the bottle of God.

Without the Spirit man is so infirm that he cannot, with all other means whatsoever, be enabled to think one right saving thought of God, of Christ, or of his blessed things.

The God in whose hands are all our days and ways, did cast into my hand (one day) a book of Martin Luther's ; it was his Comment on the Galatians! ... I found my condition in his experience so largely and profoundly handled, as if his book had been written out of my heart ... I do prefer this book of Martin Luther upon the Galatians, excepting the Holy Bible, before all the books that ever I have seen, as most fit for a wounded conscience.

If you release me today, I'll preach tomorrow.

I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.

There is a warning here for true pilgrims. Beware of the talker, but also be careful not to judge too quickly those whom God has blessed with both genuine grace and a fluency to speak of divine mercy in ways more eloquent than others. The proof is in the life-not a perfect life, but a life that both delights in divine truth and magnifies God, the only giver of the sovereign grace that always produces the truly fruitful, fragrant life.

Then I saw that there was a way to hell, even from the gates of heaven.

Sincerity carries the soul in all simplicity to open its heart to God.

There can be but one will the master in our salvation, but that shall never be the will of man, but of God; therefore man must be saved by grace.

I preach deliverance to others, I tell them there is freedom, while I hear my own chains clang.

Prayer is an ordinance of God, that must continue with a soul so long as it is on this side glory.

It gave me no pleasure to see people drink in my opinions if they seemed ignorant of Jesus Christ and the value of being saved by Him. Sound conviction for sin, especially the sin of unbelief, and a heart set on fire to be saved by Christ, with a strong yearning for a truly sanctified soul-this was what delighted me; those were the souls I considered blessed.

It is the opener of the heart of God, and a means by which the soul, though empty, is filled.

Though the world disregard the society of God's children now, yet there is a time coming in which they would be glad to have the least company with them.

Every time you have with your mouth said well of godliness, and yet gone on in wickedness; or every time you have condemned sin in others, and yet have not refrained it yourselves; I say, every such word and conclusion that hath passed out of thy mouth, sinner, it shall be as a witness against thee in the day of God, and the Lord Jesus Christ.

If thou hast sinned, lie not down without repentance; for the want of repentance, after one has sinned, makes the heart yet harder and harder.

Be of good cheer, Jesus Christ maketh thee whole.

Christ is the desire of nations, the joy of angels, the delight of the Father. What solace then must that soul be filled with, that has the possession of Him to all eternity!

Here is the life of prayer, when in or with the Spirit, a man being made sensible of sin, and how to come to the Lord for mercy; he comes, I say, in the strength of the Spirit, and crieth Father. That one word spoken in faith is better than a thousand prayers, as men call them, written and read, in a formal, cold, lukewarm way.