C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Resignation
Resignation is a daily suicide.
Kiss the rod.
The law of common sense.
Fearless of fortune, and resigned to fate.
Leave to Heaven the measure and the choice.
That what cannot be repaired is not to be regretted.
If God be appeased, I cannot be wretched.
Resignation is the courage of Christian sorrow.
It is the Lord: let Him do what seemeth Him good.
Let that please man which has pleased God.
The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.
What destiny sends, bear! Whoever perseveres will be crowned.
It were no virtue to bear calamities if we did not feel them.
A man that fortune’s buffets and rewards hast ta’en with equal thanks.
No cloud can overshadow a true Christian, but his faith will discern a rainbow in it.
What is resignation? It is putting God between one’s self and one’s grief.
Vulgar minds refuse to crouch beneath their load; the brave bear theirs without repining.
Act well your given part; the choice rests not with you.
One alleviation in misfortune is to endure and submit to necessity.
We must learn to suffer what we cannot evade.
Obedience and resignation are our personal offerings upon the altar of duty.
As you can not do what you wish, you should wish what you can do.
O Lord, I do most cheerfully commit all unto Thee.
Resignation is the name of the angel who carries most of our soul’s burdens.
Believe that each day which shines upon you is the last.
The evil which one suffers patiently as inevitable seems insupportable as soon as he conceives the idea of escaping from it.
We cannot conquer fate and necessity, yet we can yield to them in such a manner as to be greater than if we could.
I pray God that I may never find my will again. Oh, that Christ would subject my will to His, and trample it under His feet.
Misfortunes, in fine, cannot be avoided; but they may be sweetened, if not overcome, and our lives made happy by philosophy.
Now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.
Like the plants that throw their fragrance from the wounded part, breathe sweetness out of woe.
He is greedy of life who is not willing to die when the world is perishing around him.
Let God do with me what He will, anything He will; and whatever it be, it will be either heaven itself, or some beginning of it.
The good we have enjoyed from Heaven’s free will, and shall we murmur to endure the ill?
When a misfortune is impending, I cry, “God forbid”; but when it falls upon me, I say, “God be praised.”
Demand not that events should happen as you wish; but wish them to happen as they do happen, and you will go on well.
To be resigned when ills betide, patient when favors are denied, and pleased with favors given.
Suffering becomes beautiful when any one bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility, but through greatness of mind.
Is it reasonable to take it ill, that anybody desires of us that which is their own? All we have is the Almighty’s; and shall not God have His own when He calls for it?
It is a higher exhibition of Christian manliness to be able to bear trouble than to get rid of it.
With a sigh for what we have not, we must be thankful for what we have, and leave to One wiser than ourselves the deeper problems of the human soul and of its discipline.
“My will, not thine, be done,” turned Paradise into a desert. “Thy will, not mine, be done,” turned the desert into a paradise, and made Gethsemane the gate of heaven.
We should be able to see without sadness our most holy wishes fade like sunflowers, because the sun above us still forever beams, eternally makes new, and cares for all.
Valincourt said, when his library was destroyed by fire, “A man must have profited very little by his books who has not learned how to part with them.”
And peradventure we have more cause to thank Him for our loss than for our winning; for His wisdom better seeth what is good for us than we do ourselves.
“Rest in the Lord; wait patiently for him.” In Hebrew, “Be silent to God, and let him mould thee.” Keep still, and He will mould thee to the right shape.
Make up your mind to the prospect of sustaining a certain measure of pain and trouble in your passage through life. By the blessing of God this will prepare you for it.
Resignation,—not to a whirlwind of inexorable forces, not to powers that cannot see or hear or feel, but to One who lives forever, and who loves us well, and who has given us all that we have, ay, life itself, that we may at His bidding freely give it back to Him.
Dare to look up to God and say: “Deal with me in the future as thou wilt. I am of the same mind as thou art; I am thine. I refuse nothing that pleases Thee. Lead me where Thou wilt; clothe me in any dress Thou choosest.”
If God send thee a cross, take it up willingly and follow him. Use it wisely, lest it be unprofitable. Bear it patiently, lest it be intolerable. If it be light, slight it not. If it be heavy, murmur not. After the cross is the crown.
Resignation is, to some extent, spoiled for me by the fact that it is so entirely conformable to the laws of common-sense. I should like just a little more of the supernatural in the practice of my favorite virtue.
So long as we do not take even the injustice which is done us, and which forces the burning tears from us,—so long as we do not take even this for just and right, we are in the thickest darkness without dawn.
Probably Providence has implanted peevishness and ill-temper in sick and old persons, in compassion to the friends or relations who are to survive; as it must naturally lessen the concern they might otherwise feel for their loss.
Sanctified afflictions are an evidence of our adoption: we do not prune dead trees to make them fruitful, nor those which are planted in a desert; but such as belong to the garden, and possess life.
It has been well said that no man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when to-morrow’s burden is added to the burden of to-day that the weight is more than a man can bear.
I have heard a good story of Charles Fox. When his house was on fire, he found all efforts to save it useless, and, being a good draughtsman, he went up to the next hill to make a drawing of the fire,—the best instance of philosophy I ever heard of.
Nature has made us passive, and to suffer is our lot. While we are in the flesh every man has his chain and his clog; only it is looser and lighter to one man than to another, and he is more at ease who takes it up and carries it than he who drags it.
Our nature is like the sea, which gains by the flow of the tide in one place what it has lost by the ebb in another. A man may acquiesce in the method which God takes to mortify his pride; but he is in danger of growing proud of the mortification.
My soul was not only brought into harmony with itself and with God, but with God’s providence. In the exercise of faith and love, I endured and performed whatever came in God’s providence, in submission, in thankfulness, and silence.
There is more courage needed oftentimes to accept the onward flow of existence, bitter as the waters of Marah, black and narrow as the channel of Jordan, than there is ever needed to bow down the neck to the sweep of the death-angel’s sword.
Patience and submission are very carefully to be distinguished from cowardice and indolence. We are not to repine, but we may lawfully struggle; for the calamities of life, like the necessities of nature, are calls to labor and exercise of diligence.
True resignation, which always brings with it the confidence that unchangeable goodness will make even the disappointment of our hopes, and the contradictions of life, conducive to some benefit, casts a grave but tranquil light over the prospect of even a toilsome and troubled life.
There is but one way to tranquility of mind and happiness; let this, therefore, be always ready at hand with thee, both when thou wakest early in the morning, and all the day long, and when thou goest late to sleep, to account no external things thine own, but to commit all these to God.
Pain and pleasure, good and evil, come to us from unexpected sources. It is not there where we have gathered up our brightest hopes, that the dawn of happiness breaks. It is not there where we have glanced our eye with affright, that we find the deadliest gloom. What should this teach us? To bow to the great and only Source of light, and live humbly and with confiding resignation.
It is resignation and contentment that are best calculated to lead us safely through life. Whoever has not sufficient power to endure privations, and even suffering, can never feel that he is armor proof against painful emotions,—nay, he must attribute to himself, or at least to the morbid sensitiveness of his nature, every disagreeable feeling he may suffer.
Remember that you are an actor in a drama of such sort as the Author chooses. If short, then in a short one; if long, then in a long one. If it be His pleasure that you should act a poor man, see that you act it well; or a cripple, or a ruler, or a private citizen. For this is your business to act well the given part; but to choose it, belongs to another.
I have been a great deal happier since I have given up thinking about what is easy and pleasant, and being discontented because I could not have my own will. Our life is determined for us; and it makes the mind very free when we give up wishing, and only think of bearing what is laid upon us and doing what is given us to do.
Teach us to submit ourselves to Thy chastenings, believing Thy love in them all. Thou hast given us Christ, and in Him eternal life. Oh, how can we think Thou wouldst withhold from us anything else if it were good for us! Lord, let us not choose for ourselves. Choose Thou for us in Thy wisdom and love, and let our hearts approve Thy choice. Be Thou our portion, our light, and our joy in Christ Jesus. Help us ever watchfully to cherish a meek and quiet spirit, ever looking unto Him who was meek and lowly of heart, that we may find rest unto our souls.
We are to take no counsel with flesh and blood; give ear to no vain cavils, vain sorrows and wishes; to know that we know nothing, that the worst and cruelest to our eyes is not what it seems, that we have to receive whatsoever befalls us as sent from God above, and say, “It is good and wise,—God is great! Though He slay me, yet I trust in Him.” Islam means, in its way, denial of self. This is yet the highest wisdom that heaven has revealed to our earth.