If I’m an ass, I should say so. If I don’t, somebody else will. If I say it first, that disarms them.
Courts are places where the ending is written first and all that precedes is simply vaudeville.
Turgenev was a very serious fellow but he could make me laugh because a truth first encountered can be very funny. When someone else’s truth is the same as your truth, and he seems to be saying it just for you, that’s great.
The sun himself is weak when he first rises, and gathers strength and courage as the day gets on.
Every honest researcher I know admits he’s just a professional amateur. He’s doing whatever he’s doing for the first time. That makes him an amateur. He has sense enough to know that he’s going to have a lot of trouble, so that makes him a professional.
Let each one of us, if we have done nothing for Christ, begin to do something now. The distribution of tracts is the first thing.
We shall not long have love to man if we do not first and chiefly cultivate love to God.
If God be near a church, it must pray. And if he be not there, one of the first tokens of his absence will be a slothfulness in prayer.
You’ll never be a winner of souls unless you’re first a weeper for souls.
Whenever GOD determines to do a great work, HE first sets HIS people to pray.
The kind of sermon which is likely to break the hearer’s heart is that which first has broken the preacher’s heart, and the sermon which is likely to reach the heart of the hearer is the one which has come straight from the heart of the preacher.
Habits, soft and pliant at first, are like some coral stones, which are easily cut when first quarried, but soon become hard as adamant.
The first thing in faith is knowledge. What we know we must also agree unto. What we agree unto we must rest upon alone for salvation. It will not save me to know that Christ is a Saviour; but it will save me to trust Him to be my Saviour.
True belief and true repentance are twins: it would be idle to attempt to say which is born first. All the spokes of a wheel move at once when the wheel moves, and so all the graces commence action when regeneration is wrought by the Holy Ghost. Repentance, however, there must be.
Revival begins by Christians getting right first and then spills over into the world.
Hundreds would never have known want if they had not first known waste.
To achieve great things, we must first dream.
What you want to ignite in others must first burn inside yourself.
Consistency, madam, is the first of Christian duties.
Take my love. One day share my life. Be my dearest, first on earth.