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If anyone would tell you the shortest, surest way to all happiness and all perfection, he must tell you to make a rule to yourself to thank and praise God for everything that happens to you.

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
Must
Praise
Way
Perfection
Make
Rule
Would
Anyone
Happiness
Shortest
Tell
Surest
Happens
Thankfulness
Everything
Thank

More quotes by 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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God seeth different abilities and frailties of men, which may move His goodness to be merciful to their different improvements in virtue.
William Law
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Now if you will stop here and ask yourself why you are not as pious as the primitive Christians were, your own heart will tell you that it is neither through ignorance nor inability, but purely because you never thoroughly intended it.
William Law
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They, therefore, who are hasty in their devotions and think a little will do, are strangers both to the nature of devotion and the nature of man they do not know that they are to learn to pray, and that prayer is to be learnt as they learn other things, by frequency, constancy, and perseverance.
William Law
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The Prophet had made dishonorable proposals to my wife... under cover of his asserted 'Revelation.'... Smith told his wife Jane the Lord had commanded that he should take plural wives, to add to his glory... Joseph asked her to give him half her love she was at liberty to keep the other half for her husband.
William Law
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Receive every day as a resurrection from death, as a new enjoyment of life.
William Law
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If, therefore, a man will so live as to show that he feels and believes the most fundamental doctrines of Christianity, he must live above the world.
William Law
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Death is not more certainly a separation of our souls from our bodies than the Christian life is a separation of our souls from worldly tempers, vain indulgences, and unnecessary cares.
William Law
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The greatest saint in the world is not he who prays most or fasts most it is not he who gives alms, or is most eminent for temperance, chastity or justice. It is he who is most thankful to God.
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 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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Wherever thou goest, whatever thou dost at home, or abroad, in the field, or at church, do all in a desire of union with Christ, in imitation of His tempers and inclinations, and look upon all as nothing, but that which exercises, and increases the spirit and life of Christ in thy soul.
William Law
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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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He who complains of the weather, complains of the God who ordained the weather!
William Law
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Men are not in hell because God is angry with them. They are in wrath and darkness because they have done to the light , which infinitely flows forth from God , as that man does to the light who puts out his own eyes .
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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You are to think of yourself as only existing in this world to do God's will. To think that you are your own is as absurd as to think you are self-created. It is an obvious first principle that you belong completely to God.
William Law
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We must alter our lives in order to alter our hearts, for it is impossible to live one way and pray another.
William Law
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Ask what Time is, it is nothing else but something of eternal duration become finite, measurable and transitory.
William Law
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From morning to night keep Jesus in thy heart, long for nothing, desire nothing, hope for nothing but to have all that is within thee changed into the spirit and temper of the holy Jesus.
William Law