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All people desire what they believe will make them happy. If a person is not full of desire for God, we can only conclude that he is engaged with another happiness.

William Law

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William Law
Age: 75 †
Born: 1686
Born: January 1
Died: 1761
Died: April 9
Theologian
Writer
King's Cliffe
Northamptonshire
People
Happy
Christian
Desire
Conclude
Another
Engagement
Persons
Engaged
Person
Full
Believe
Religious
Make
Happiness

More quotes by William Law

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We may justly condemn ourselves as the greatest sinners we know because we know more of the folly of our own heart than we do of other people's.
William Law
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You have no questions to ask of any body, no new way that you need inquire after no oracle that you need to consult for whilst you shut yourself up in patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God, you are in the very arms of Christ, your heart is His dwelling-place, and He lives and works in you.
William Law
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Love and pity and wish well to every soul in the world dwell in love, and then you dwell in God.
William Law
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Until we are renewed in the spirit of our mind and illumined in every part, our very virtues are but taught practices grafted upon a corrupt bottom
William Law
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Reading is good, hearing is good, conversation and meditation are good but then, they are only good at times and occasions, in a certain degree, and must be used and governed with such caution as we eat and drink and refresh ourselves, or they will bring forth in us the fruits of intemperance.
William Law
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Whatever littleness and vanity is to be observed in the minds of women, it is, like the cruelty of butchers, a temper that is wrought into them by that life which they are taught and accustomed to lead.
William Law
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He who has learned to pray has learned the greatest secret of a holy and happy life.
William Law
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When therefore the first spark of a desire after God arises in thy soul, cherish it with all thy care, give all thy heart into it it is nothing less than a touch of the divine loadstone, that is to draw thee out of the vanity of time, into the riches of eternity.
William Law
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What can you conceive more silly and extravagant than to suppose a man racking his brains, and studying night and day how to fly?
William Law
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If contempt of the world and heavenly affection is a necessary temper of christians, it is necessary that this temper appear in the whole course of their lives, in their manner of using the world, because it can have no place anywhere else.
William Law
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If you have not chosen the Kingdom of God first, it will in the end make no difference what you have chosen instead.
William Law
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All that is sweet, delightful, and amiable in this world, in the serenity of the air, the fineness of seasons, the joy of light, the melody of sounds, the beauty of colors, the fragrancy of smells, the splendor of precious stones, is nothing else but Heaven breaking through the veil of this world.
William Law
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Perfection does not consist in any singular state or condition of life, or in any particular set of duties, but in holy and religious conduct of ourselves in every state of Life.
William Law
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Read whatever chapter of scripture you will, and be ever so delighted with it - yet it will leave you as poor, as empty and unchanged as it found you unless it has turned you wholly and solely to the Spirit of God, and brought you into full union with and dependence upon him.
William Law
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As all types and figures in the Law were but empty shadows without the coming of Christ, so the New Testament is but a dead letter without the Holy Spirit in redeemed men as the living power of a full salvation.
William Law
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God smiles when we praise and thank Him continually. Few things feel better than receiving heartfelt praise and appreciation from someone else. God loves it, too. An amazing thing happens when we offer praise and thanksgiving to God. When we give God enjoyment, our own hearts are filled with joy.
William Law
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Where has the Scripture made merit the rule or measure of charity?.
William Law
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Perhaps there cannot be a better way of judging of what manner of spirit we are of, than to see whether the actions of our life are such as we may safely commend them to God in our prayers.
William Law
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The sun meets not the springing bud that stretches towards him with half the certainty that God, the source of all good, communicates himself to the soul that longs to partake of him.
William Law
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The will is that which has all power it makes heaven and it makes hell: for there is no hell but where the will of the creature is turned from God, nor any heaven but where the will of the creature worketh with God.
William Law