"Criticism is something we can avoid easily by doing nothing, saying nothing, and being nothing."

-- Aristotle

"Though the accomplishment of God's promise is always sure, yet it is often slow, and seems to be crossed and contradicted by Providence, that the faith of believers may be tried, their patience exercised, and mercies long waited for may be the more welcome when they come."

-- Matthew Henry, commenting on Genesis 25:19-28

"Thanksgiving like contentment is a learned attribute. The person who hasn't learned to be content we will not be thankful for he lives with the delusion he deserves more or something better."

-- Robert Flatt

"Thanksgiving is an important ingredient in praying...If all we do is ask, and never thank God for His gifts, we are selfish. Sincere gratitude to God is one of the best ways to put fervor into our praying."

-- Warren Wiersbe

"People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under."

-- Ronald Reagan

"Praise is the best auxiliary to prayer; and he who most bears in mind what has been done for him by God will be most emboldened to supplicate fresh gifts from above."

-- Henry Melville

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union. It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God; to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord.


-- Abraham Lincoln, Thanksgiving Proclamation, October 3, 1863

"If a fellow isn't thankful for what he's got, he isn't likely to be thankful for what he's going to get."

-- Frank A. Clark

"Perhaps it takes a purer faith to praise God for unrealized blessings than for those we once enjoyed or those we enjoy now."

-- A. W. Tozer

"The Word of God is like a lion. You don't have to defend a lion. All you have to do is let the lion loose, and the lion will defend itself."

-- Charles Spurgeon

"If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend."

-- Abraham Lincoln

"It doesn't matter if you're at the foot of the cross, you're still not on it."

-- Stephen Hill

"For in prayer man is linked with God and in that union Satan is baffled and beaten."

-- Leonard Ravenhill

"There are churches being destroyed because the body of Christ, and particularly leadership, is dropping its guard."

-- Jerry Savelle

"Life's most urgent question is: What are you doing for others?"

-- Martin Luther King Jr.

"An outward profession may cause us to be called children of the kingdom; but if we rest in that, and have nothing else to show, we shall be cast out."

-- Matthew Henry, commenting on Matthew 8:12

"Our failure to get control of financial matters in our personal lives will have to be rectified before we can demand accountability from elected officials. Our spoiled Congress is only a reflection of our spoiled selves."

-- Dave Ramsey
www.daveramsey.com

"If moral precepts alone could have reformed mankind, the mission of the Son of God into our world would have been unnecessary."

-- Benjamin Rush

"The evil that has resulted from the error of the schools, in teaching natural philosophy as an accomplishment only, has been that of generating in the pupils a species of atheism. Instead of looking through the works of creation to the Creator himself, they stop short, and employ the knowledge they acquire to create doubts of his existence. They labour with studied ingenuity to ascribe every thing they behold to innate properties of matter, and jump over all the rest by saying, that matter is eternal."

-- Thomas Paine

A Lesson for Children

Pray to God.
Love God.
Fear God.
Serve God.
Take not God's name in vain.
Do not swear.
Do not steal.
Cheat not in your play.
Play not with bad boys.
Call no ill names.
Use no ill words.
Tell no lies.
Hate lies.
Speak the truth.
Spend your time well.
Love your school.
Mind your book.
Strive to learn.
Be not a dunce.

-- The New England Primer, the first textbook printed in America
First printed in 1690, it was the beginning textbook for students for 100 years and continued to be a principal text until 1900.

"Public utility pleads most forcibly for the general distribution of the Holy Scriptures. The doctrine they preach, the obligations they impose, the punishment they threaten, the rewards they promise, the stamp and image of divinity they bear, which produces a conviction of their truths, can alone secure to society, order and peace, and to our courts of justice and constitutions of government, purity, stability and usefulness. In vain, without the Bible, we increase penal laws and draw entrenchments around our institutions. Bibles are strong entrenchments. Where they abound, men cannot pursue wicked courses, and at the same time enjoy quiet conscience."

-- James McHenry

"To the distinguished character of patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian."

-- George Washington

"I lament that we waste so much time and money in punishing crimes and take so little pains to prevent them…we neglect the only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government; that is, the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible; for this Divine Book, above all others, constitutes the soul of republicanism.” “By withholding the knowledge of [the Scriptures] from children, we deprive ourselves of the best means of awakening moral sensibility in their minds."

-- Benjamin Rush

"It has been the error of the schools to teach astronomy, and all the other sciences, and subjects of natural philosophy, as accomplishments only; whereas they should be taught theologically, or with reference to the Being who is the author of them: for all the principles of science are of divine origin. Man cannot make, or invent, or contrive principles: he can only discover them; and he ought to look through the discovery to the Author."

-- Thomas Paine

"To the kindly influence of Christianity we owe that degree of civil freedom, and political and social happiness which mankind now enjoys. . . . Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican forms of government, and all blessings which flow from them, must fall with them."

-- Jedediah Morse

"We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We’ve staked the future of all our political institutions upon our capacity…to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."

-- James Madison

"Whether our religion permits Christians to vote for infidel rulers is a question which merits more consideration than it seems yet to have generally received either from the clergy or the laity. It appears to me that what the prophet said to Jehoshaphat about his attachment to Ahab ["Shouldest thou help the ungodly and love them that hate the Lord?" 2 Chronicles 19:2] affords a salutary lesson."

-- John Jay

"In the beginning of the contest with Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for Divine protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered… do we imagine we no longer need His assistance?"

-- Benjamin Franklin

"Be religiously careful in our choice of all public officers . . . and judge of the tree by its fruits."

-- Elias Boudinot

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

-- John Adams