William Barclay Quotes

William Barclay shares blunt advice on effort and the cost of gaining skill.

13 quotes

  1. All life is based on the fact that anything worth getting is hard to get. There is a price to be paid for anything. Scholarship can only be bought at the price of study, skill of craft or technique can only be bought at the price of practice, and eminence in any sport can only be bought at the price of training and discipline.

  2. Real repentance means coming not only to be sorry for the consequences of sin but to hate sin itself.

  3. There is a time when to avoid trouble is to store up trouble, and when to seek for a lazy and a cowardly peace is to court a still greater danger.

  4. When we believe that God is Father, we also believe that such a father's hand will never cause his child a needless tear. We may not understand life any better, but we will not resent life any longer.

  5. The only way to get our values right is to see, not the beginning, but the end of the way, to see things not only in the light of time but in the light of Eternity.

  6. The Christian is called upon to be the partner of God in the work of the conversion of men.

  7. Pride is the ground in which all the other sins grow, and the parent from which all the other sins come.

  8. Every discouraging sermon is a wicked sermon... There could hardly be a more un-Christian way of living than to go about in such a way as to depress and to discourage other people.

  9. God does not choose a person for ease and comfort and selfish joy but for a task that will take all that head and heart and hand can bring to it. God chooses a man in order to use him.

  10. Instead of our petulant, fretful, irritable human hastiness we should cultivate in our souls the patience which has learned to wait on God.

  11. In the time we have it is surely our duty to do all the good we can to all the people we can in all the ways we can.

  12. Religion fails if it cannot speak to men as they are.

  13. We have a duty to encourage one another. Many a time a word of praise or thanks or appreciation or cheer has kept a man on his feet. Blessed is the man who speaks such a word.