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Home  »  Dictionary of Quotations  »  Luther

James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.

Luther

A lie is like a snowball; the farther you roll it, the bigger it becomes.

Be a sinner and sin manfully (fortiter), but believe and rejoice in Christ more manfully still.To Melanchthon.

Cannon and firearms are cruel and damnable machines. I believe them to have been the direct suggestion of the devil.

Divinity should be empress, and philosophy and other arts merely her servants.

Each creature seeks its perfection in another.

Earth hath nothing more tender than a woman’s heart when it is the abode of piety.

Ein Wörtlein kann ihn fallen—A little word can slay him.Of the Pope.

Every great book is an action, and every great action is a book.

Faith is that courage in the heart which trusts for all good to God.

Faith is the creator of the Godhead; not that it creates anything in the Divine Eternal Being, but that it creates that Being in us.

God Himself cannot do without wise men.

God is a tabula rasa, on which nothing more stands written than what thou thyself hast inscribed thereon.

God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees and flowers, and clouds and stars.

Gott ist eine leere Tafel, auf der / Nichts weiter steht, als was du selbst / Darauf geschrieben—God is a blank tablet on which nothing further is inscribed than what thou hast thyself written thereupon.

Great people and champions are special gifts of God, whom He gives and preserves; they do their work and achieve great actions, not with vain imaginations or cold and sleepy cogitations, but by motion of God.

He who receives a sacrament does not perform a good work; he receives a benefit.

Hier stehe ich! Ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir! Amen—Here stand I. I cannot act otherwise. So help me God!At the Diet of Worms.

How soon “not now” becomes “never!”

Human reason is like a drunken man on horseback; set it up on one side, and it tumbles over on the other.

I am more afraid of my own heart than of the Pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great pope, self.

If thou art wise, thou knowest thine own ignorance; and thou art ignorant, if thou knowest not thyself.

Kein schöner Ding ist wohl auf Erden / Als Frauenlieb, wem sie mag werden—There is no finer thing, I ween, on earth than woman’s love to him who may be the object of it.

Love is an image of God, and not a lifeless image; not one painted on paper, but the living essence of the divine nature, which beams full of all goodness.

Men must have righteous principles in the first place, and then they will not fail to perform virtuous actions.

Music is the art of the prophets, the only art which can calm the agitations of the soul.

Music makes people milder and gentler, more moral and more reasonable.

Next to theology I give to music the highest place and honour; and we see how David and all the saints have wrought their godly thoughts into verse, rhyme, and song.

None ever saw the pillars of the firmament; yet it is supported.

Our Lord God commonly gives riches to foolish people, to whom He gives nothing else.

Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in spring-time.

Prayer is a powerful thing; for God has bound and tied himself thereto.

Rast’ ich, so rost’ ich—Rest I, rust I.

Teaching is of more importance than exhortation.

The devil has a great advantage against us, inasmuch as he has a strong bastion and bulwark against us in our own flesh and blood.

The devil is God’s ape.

The faculty of listening is a tender thing, and soon becomes weary and satiated.

The god of this world is riches, pleasure, and pride.

The human heart is like a millstone in a mill; when you put wheat under it, it turns, and grinds, and bruises the wheat into flour; if you put no wheat in, it still grinds on; but then it is itself it grinds and slowly wears away.

The law is what we must do; the gospel what God will give.

Und wenn die Welt voll Teufel wär’ / Und wollt uns gar verschlingen / So fürchten wir uns nicht so sehr, / Es soll uns doch gelingen—And were this all devils o’er, / And watching to devour us, / We lay it not to heart so sore, / Not they can overpower us.

We may not be able to parry evil thoughts, but we may surely guard against their taking root in us and bringing forth evil deeds.

Weder sicher noch gerathen ist, etwas wider Gewissen zu thun. Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir—It is neither safe nor prudent to do aught against conscience. Here stand I, I cannot do otherwise. God be helping me.At the Diet of Worms.

“Were there as many devils in Worms as there are roof-tiles, I would on.”His answer to his friends who pled with him not to go.

When I am angry, I can pray well and preach well.

Where God has built a church, there the devil would also build a chapel.

Whoso can speak well is a man.