A Quote by Lew Wallace

Repentance must be something more than mere remorse for sins: it comprehends a change of nature befitting heaven.

Lew Wallace

Quote Topics

Change Heaven Mere More Must Nature Remorse Repentance Sins Something Than

Quote Author

Lew Wallace
American - Military man
April 10, 1827 - February 15, 1905

Each life is unique. But for all, repentance will surely include passing through the portal of humble prayer. Our Father in Heaven can allow us to feel fully the conviction of our sins. He knows the depths of our remorse. He can then direct what we must do to qualify for forgiveness.

Henry B. Eyring

Remorse is impotence, impotence which sins again. Repentance alone is powerful; it ends all.

Honore de Balzac

It may be doubted whether any repentance is genuine which is not repentance for sin rather than sins

Augustus Hopkins Strong

Repentance, as we know, is basically not moaning and remorse, but turning and change.

J. I. Packer

The saints were people like all of us. Many of them came out of great sins, but by repentance they attained the Kingdom of Heaven. And everyone who comes there comes through repentance, which the merciful Lord has given us through His sufferings.

Silouan the Athonite

There's a difference between remorse and repentance. Remorse is being sorry for being caught. Repentance is being sorry enough to stop.

Greg Laurie

There is great danger, yea many times most danger, in the smallest sins... Greater sins do sooner startle the soul, and awaken and rouse up the soul to repentance, than lesser sins do. Little sins often slide into the soul, and breed, and work secretly and undiscernibly in the soul, till they come to be so strong, as to trample upon the soul and to cut the throat of the soul.

Thomas Brooks

Repentance is more than just sorrow for the past; repentance is a change of mind and heart, a new life of denying self and serving the Savior as king in self's place.

J. I. Packer

The Blessed Sacrament is the magnet of souls. There is a mutual attraction between Jesus and the souls of men. Mary drew Him down from heaven. Our nature attracted Him rather than the nature of angels. Our misery caused Him to stoop to our lowness. Even our sins had a sort of attraction for the abundance of His mercy and the predilection of His grace. Our repentance wins Him to us. Our love makes earth a paradise to Him; and our souls lure Him as gold lures the miser, with irresistible fascination

Frederick William Faber

This is a key point which the secularists are missing: they think that stressing God's mercy means that sins are no longer sins. On the contrary, God's mercy is a great gift of grace precisely because sins are sins and they call for repentance and forgiveness.

Thomas J. Paprocki

Rejoicing and repentance must go together. Repentance without rejoicing will lead to despair. Rejoicing without repentance is shallow and will only provide passing inspiration instead of deep change.

Timothy Keller

It will require more than a few hours of fasting and prayer to cast out such demons as selfishness, worldliness, and unbelief. Repentance, to be of any avail, must work a change of heart and of conduct.

Theodore L. Cuyler

To say that we are sorry for our sins is mere hypocrisy, unless we show that we are really sorry for them, by giving them up. Doing is the very life of repentance.

J. C. Ryle

The solution to staying on the right side of the fine line between using and abusing grace is repentance. The road to repentance is godly sorrow (2 Corinthians 7:10). Godly sorrow is developed when we focus on the true nature of sin as an offense against God rather than something that makes us feel guilty.

Jerry Bridges

There are two principles inherent in the very nature of things, recurring in some particular embodiments whatever field we explore - the spirit of change, and the spirit of conservation. There can be nothing real without both. Mere change without conservation is a passage from nothing to nothing. . . . Mere conservation without change cannot conserve. For after all, there is a flux of circumstance, and the freshness of being evaporates under mere repetition.