It is not the situation which makes the man, but the man who makes the situation. The slave may be a freeman. The monarch may be a slave. Situations are noble or ignoble, as we make them.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Character
We win by tenderness. We conquer by forgiveness.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Kindness | Forgiveness
It is wondrous how, the truer we become, the more unerringly we know the ring of truth, can discern whether a man be true or not, and can fasten at once upon the rising lie in word and look and dissembling act – wondrous how the charity of Christ in the heart perceives every aberration from charity in others, in ungentle thought or slanderous tone.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Truth | Discernment
There are three things in the world that deserve no mercy, hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Mercy
It is not the number of books you read, nor the variety of sermons you hear, nor the amount of religious conversation in which you mix, but it is the frequency and earnestness with which you meditate on these things till the truth in them becomes your own and part of your being, that ensures your growth.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Education | Growth | Books
What the world calls virtue is a name and a dream without Christ. The foundation of all human excellence must be laid deep in the blood of the Redeemer’s cross and in the power of his resurrection.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Virtue | Excellence | Resurrection
The true aim of everyone who aspires to be a teacher should be, not to impart his own opinions, but to kindle minds.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Education | Teachers
We are too much haunted by ourselves, projecting the central shadow of self on everything around us. And then comes the Gospel to rescue us from this selfishness. Redemption is this, to forget self in God.
– Frederick W. Robertson
The Gospel | Redemption
Remorse is the consciousness of doing wrong with no sense of love; penitence the same consciousness with the feeling of sorrow and tenderness added.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Repentance
Responsibility is measured, not by the amount of injury resulting from wrong action, but by the distinctness with which conscience has the opportunity of distinguishing between the right and the wrong.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Conscience | Responsibility
The truest view of life has always seemed to me to be that which shows that we are here not to enjoy, but to learn.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Education | Life
If there be anything common to us by nature, it is the members of our corporeal frame; yet the apostle taught that these, guided by the spirit as its instruments, and obeying a holy will, become transfigured, so that, in his language, the body becomes a temple of the Holy Ghost, and the meanest faculties, the lowest appetites, the humblest organs are ennobled by the spirit mind which guides them.
– Frederick W. Robertson
The Holy Spirit | Nature
It is perilous to separate thinking rightly, from acting rightly. He is already half false who speculates on truth and does not do it. The penalty paid by him who speculates on truth without doing it, is, that by degrees the very truth he holds becomes a falsehood.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Hypocrisy
It is not this earth, nor the men who inhabit it, nor the sphere of our legitimate activity, that we may not love; but the way in which the love is given, which constitutes worldliness.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Love | Worldliness
Sacrifice alone, bare and unrelieved, is ghastly, unnatural, and dead; but self-sacrifice, illuminated by love, is warmth and life; it is the death of Christ, the life of God, and the blessedness and only proper life of man.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Character | Sacrifice
You may tame the wild beast; the conflagration of the forest will cease when all the timber and the dry wood are consumed; but you cannot arrest the progress of that cruel word which you uttered carelessly yesterday or this morning.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Gossip
A holy act strengthens the inward holiness. It is a seed of life growing into more life.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Holiness | Strength
The one who will be found in trial capable of great acts of love is ever the one who is always doing considerate small ones.
– Frederick W. Robertson
LoveTrials
On earth we have nothing to do with success or its results, but only being true to God and for God; for it is sincerity and not success which is the sweet savor before God.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Success
Every natural longing has its natural satisfaction. If we thirst, God has created liquids to gratify thirst. If we are susceptible of attachment, there are beings to gratify that love. If we thirst for life and love eternal, it is likely that there are an eternal life and an eternal love to satisfy that craving.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Salvation | Eternal Life
Two thousand years ago there was One here on this earth who lived the grandest life that ever has been lived yet – a life that every thinking man, with deeper or shallower meaning, has agreed to call divine.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Jesus
In these two things the greatness of man consists, to have God so dwelling in us as to impart his character to us, and to have him so dwelling in us that we recognize his presence, and know that we are his, and he is ours. The one is salvation: the other the assurance of it.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Character | The Holy Spirit | Assurance
Defeat in doing right is nevertheless victory.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Good and Evil | Victory
It is a law of our humanity, that man must know good through evil. No great principle ever triumphed but through much evil. No man ever progressed to greatness and goodness but through great mistakes.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Good and Evil
I read hard, or not at all; never skimming, and never turning aside to merely inviting books; and Plato, Aristotle, Butler, Thucydides, Jonathan Edwards, have passed, like the iron atoms of the blood, into my mental constitution.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Books | Reading
Let a man begin with an earnest “I ought,” and if he perseveres, by God’s grace he will end in the free blessedness of “I will.” Let him force himself to abound in small acts of duty, and he will, by and by, find them the joyous habit of his soul.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Perseverance | Joy
The Divine wisdom has given us prayer, not as a means whereby to obtain the good things of earth, but as a means whereby we learn to do without them; not as a means whereby we escape evil, but as a means whereby we become strong to meet it.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Prayer
It is more true to say that our opinions depend upon our lives and habits, than to say that our lives and habits depend on our opinions.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Habits | Life
Multifarious reading weakens the mind more than doing nothing, for it becomes a necessity, at last, like smoking: and is an excuse for the mind to lie dormant whilst thought is poured in, and runs through, a clear stream over unproductive gravel, on which not even mosses grow. It is the idlest of all idleness, and leaves more of impotency than any other.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Books | Reading | Idleness
Hell is as ubiquitous as condemning conscience.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Hell
A principle is one thing; a maxim or rule is another. A principle requires liberality; a rule says, “one tenth.” A principle says, “forgive”; a rule defines “seven times.”
– Frederick W. Robertson
Justice | Liberty
Pray till prayer makes you forget your own wish, and leave it or merge it in God’s will.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Prayer
No one can be great, or good, or happy except through the inward efforts of themselves.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Happiness
A silent man is easily reputed wise. A man who suffers none to see him in the common jostle and undress of life, easily gathers round him a mysterious veil of unknown sanctity, and men honor him for a saint. The unknown is always wonderful.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Character
Imagination ennobles appetites which in themselves are low, and spiritualizes acts which, else, are only animal. But the pleasures which begin in the senses only sensualize.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Reasoning
I will tell you what to hate. Hate hypocrisy; hate cant; hate intolerance, oppression, injustice, Pharisaism; hate them as Christ hated them – with a deep, abiding, God-like hatred.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Virtue | Hatred
Instruction ends in the schoolroom, but education ends only with life. A child is given to the universe to be educated.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Education
True rest is not that of torpor, but that of harmony; it is not refusing the struggle, but conquering in it; not resting from duty, but finding rest in it.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Adversity | Contentment | Struggles
How different is the poet from the mystic. The former uses symbols, knowing they are symbols; the latter mistakes them for realities.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Books
He alone can believe in immortality who feels the resurrection in him already.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Heaven | Resurrection
Evil is but the shadow, that, in this world, always accompanies good. You may have a world without shadow, but it will be a world without light – a mere dim, twilight world. If you would deepen the intensity of the light, you must be content to bring into deeper blackness and more distinct and definite outline, the shade that accompanies it.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Good and Evil
Do you wish to become rich? You may become so if you desire it in no half-way, but thoroughly. Do you wish to master any science or accomplishment? Give yourself to it and it lies beneath your feet. This world is given as the prize for the men in earnest; and that which is true of this world, is truer still of the world to come.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Finances | Perseverance
Life, like war, is a series of mistakes, and he is not the best Christian nor the best general who makes the fewest false steps. Poor mediocrity may secure that, but he is best who wins the most splendid victories by the retrieval of mistakes.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Perseverance
Never does a man know the force that is in him till some mighty affection or grief has humanized the soul.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Suffering | Grief
Love God, and he will dwell with you. Obey God, and he will reveal to you the truth of his deepest teachings.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Holiness
However dark and profitless, however painful and weary, existence may have become, life is not done, and our Christian character is not won, so long as God has anything left for us to suffer, or anything left for us to do.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Suffering | Service
The Christian life is not merely knowing or hearing, but doing the will of Christ.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Christianity
The deepest truths are the simplest and the most common.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Truth
Truth lies in character. Christ did not simply speak the truth; he was truth; truth, through and through; for truth is a thing not of words, but of life and being.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Character | Truth
Only so far as a man believes strongly, mightily, can he act cheerfully, or do anything that is worth doing.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Faith | Cheerfulness
The humblest occupation has in it materials of discipline for the highest heaven.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Service | Discipline
False notions of liberty are strangely common. People talk of it as if it meant the liberty of doing whatever one likes – whereas the only liberty that a man, worthy of the name of man, ought to ask for, is, to have all restrictions, inward and outward, removed that prevent his doing what he ought.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Morality | Liberty
Marriage is not a union, merely between two creatures – it is a union between two spirits; and the intention of that bond is to perfect the nature of both, by supplementing their deficiencies with the force of contrast, giving to each sex those excellencies in which it is naturally deficient.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Marriage
Disagreement is refreshing when two men lovingly desire to compare their views to find out truth. Controversy is wretched when it is only an attempt to prove another wrong. Religious controversy does only harm. It destroys humble inquiry after truth, and throws all the energies into an attempt to prove ourselves right – a spirit in which no man gets at truth.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Truth | Religion
It is not a minister’s wisdom but his conviction which imparts itself to others. Nothing gives life but life. Real flame alone kindles other flame; this was the power of the apostles: “We believe and therefore speak.” Firm faith in what they spoke, that was the basis of the apostles’ strength.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Faith | Wisdom
The truest definition of evil is that which represents it as something contrary to nature. Evil is evil because it is unnatural. A vine which should bear olive-berries – an eye to which blue seems yellow, would be diseased. An unnatural mother, an unnatural son, an unnatural act, are the strongest terms of condemnation.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Good and Evil | Nature
Experience tells us that each man most keenly and unerringly detects in others the vice with which he is most familiar himself.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Hypocrisy
Our higher feelings move our animal nature; and our animal nature, irritated, may call back a semblance of those emotions; but the whole difference between nobleness and baseness lies in the question, whether the feeling begins from below or above.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Reasoning | Nature | Feelings
The office of poetry is not to make us think accurately, but feel truly.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Reasoning
To believe is to be strong. Doubt, cramps energy. Belief is power.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Faith | Believing | Doubt
In God’s world, for those who are in earnest, there is no failure. No work truly done, no word earnestly spoken, no sacrifice freely made, was ever made in vain.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Holiness | Faithful | Sacrifice
Commerce tends to wear off those prejudices which maintain destruction and animosity between nations. It softens and polishes the manners of men. It unites them by one of the strongest of all ties-the desire of supplying their mutual wants. It disposes them to peace by establishing in every state an order of citizens bound by their interest to be the guardians of public tranquility.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Finances
You are tried alone; alone you pass into the desert; alone you are sifted by the world.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Suffering
To turn water into wine, and what is common into what is holy, is indeed the glory of Christianity.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Christianity
Make but few explanations. The character that cannot defend itself is not worth vindicating.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Character
The deep undertone of the world is sadness – a solemn bass, occurring at measured intervals and heard through all other tones. Ultimately, all the strains of this world’s music resolve themselves into that tone; and I believe that, rightly felt, the cross, and the cross alone, interprets the mournful mystery of life, the sorrow of the Highest – the Lord of Life, the result of error and sin, but ultimately remedial, purifying and exalting.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Life | The Cross
Do right, and God’s recompense to you will be the power of doing more right.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Good and Evil | Power