Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes
Quotes by Reinhold Niebuhr

God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.
- Reinhold Niebuhr (Serenity Prayer)

Related topics: Positive Inspirational Motivational Favorite-Quotes

God Quotes

The wise man in the storm prays God,
not for safety from danger,
but for deliverance from fear.
It is the storm within which endangers him,
not the storm without.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are most like God when we forgive.
- Anonymous

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves,
Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.
- Marianne Williamson

When God closes a door, he opens a window.
- Anonymous

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy
is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet,
alone with the heavens, nature and God.
Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be.
- Anne Frank

God is not what you imagine
or what you think you understand.
If you understand you have failed.
- Saint Augustine

You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won't feel insecure about you.
We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us.
- Marianne Williamson

Morality is of the highest importance -
but for us, not for God.
- Albert Einstein

Difficulties show men what they are.
In case of any difficulty,
remember that God has pitted you
against a rough antagonist
that you may be a conqueror,
and this cannot be without toil.
- Epictetus

There are nine requisites for contented living:
HEALTH enough to make work a pleasure;
WEALTH enough to support your needs;
STRENGTH enough to battle with difficulties and forsake them;
GRACE enough to confess your sins and overcome them;
PATIENCE enough to toil until some good is accomplished;
CHARITY enough to see some good in your neighbor;
LOVE enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others;
FAITH enough to make real the things of God;
HOPE enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Life repeats itself mindlessly -
unless you become mindful, it will go on repeating like a wheel.
That's why Buddhists call it the wheel of life and death,
the wheel of time.
It moves like a wheel: birth is followed by death,
death is followed by birth;
love is followed by hate, hate is followed by love;
success is followed by failure,
failure is followed by success. Just see!
If you can watch just for a few days,
you will see a pattern emerging, a wheel pattern.
One day, a fine morning, you are feeling so good and so happy,
and another day you are so dull,
so dead that you start thinking of committing suicide.
And just the other day you were so full of life,
so blissful that you were feeling thankful to God,
that you were in a mood of deep gratefulness,
and today there is great complaint
and you don't see the point why one should go on living...
And it goes on and on, but you don't see the pattern.
Once you see the pattern, you can get out of it.
- Osho

Pitiful is the person who is afraid of taking risks.
Perhaps this person will never
be disappointed or disillusioned;
perhaps she won't suffer the way
people do when they have a dream to follow.
But when the person looks back -
and at some point everyone look back -
she will hear her heart, saying,
"What have you done with the miracles
that God planted in your days?
What have you done with the talents
God bestowed on you?"
- Paulo Coelho

Man plans, God laughs
- Yiddish Proverb

Prayer doesn't change God, but changes him who prays
- Soren Kierkegaard

Know thyself, and thou shalt know the Universe and God.
- Pythagoras

The function of prayer is not to influence God,
but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
- Soren Kierkegaard

Work Hard. Do your best. Keep your word.
Never get too big for your britches.
Trust in God. Have no fear;
and Never forget a friend.
- Harry S. Truman

What you are is God's gift to you:
what you become is your gift to god.
- Anthony Dalla Villa

If I am capable of grasping God objectively,
I do not believe, but precisely because
I cannot do this I must believe.
- Soren Kierkegaard

We should take care not to make the intellect our god;
it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
- Albert Einstein

I distrust those people who know so well
what God wants them to do,
because I notice it always coincides
with their own desires.
- Susan B. Anthony

I think wholeness is God's design for us;
and that often amounts to embracing contradictions.
- Bono

Non-violence requires a double faith,
faith in God and also faith in man.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

God is, even though the whole world deny him.
Truth stands, even if there be no public support.
It is self-sustained.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

There is a secret wisdom-of-the-ages
that holds the key to breaking our
cycle of self-imposed suffering.
The secret wisdom is, "Life is not supposed to be fair."
This is not sad news. This is GLORIOUS news!
Life is not broken. Nothing is wrong.
God has not failed, died, or gone on vacation.
The world is working perfectly. We just misunderstood.
Somewhere along the way, someone got the idea that
life was "supposed" to be "fair,"
and all the trouble started -
expectation, disappointment, resentment, anger -
a whole cycle of suffering that began
with the belief that life is "supposed" to be "fair."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Each of us holds a different image of God.
There are as many perspectives on
the nature of God as there are people.
However much any of us may choose to argue,
or to fight and kill, for our point of view,
the nature of God is an unanswerable question.
Perhaps there is a specific answer,
that we will never learn - in this lifetime.
Perhaps the nature of God is so complex and multifaceted
that each view of God describes an aspect of the complex whole.
Or perhaps the nature of God is actually defined by our beliefs.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Wise Quotes

The wise man does not lay up his own treasures.
The more he gives to others, the more he has for his own.
- Lao Tzu

Excellence is the result of
caring more than others think wise,
risking more than other's think safe,
dreaming more than others think practical,
and expecting more than others think possible.
- Anonymous

If you wish to succeed in life,
make perseverance your bosom friend,
experience your wise counselor,
caution your elder brother,
and hope your guardian genius.
- Joseph Addison

He is a wise man who does not grieve
for the things which he has not,
but rejoices for those which he has.
- Epictetus

Take risks: if you win, you will be happy;
if you lose, you will be wise.
- Anonymous

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere,
while the pessimist sees only the red stoplight.
The truly wise person is colorblind.
- Albert Schweitzer

Before beginning a Hunt, it is wise to ask someone
what you are looking for before you begin looking for it.
- A. A. Milne (Winnie-The-Pooh)

He who knows others is wise.
He who knows himself is enlightened.
- Lao Tzu

Every day is a new beginning -
a day for a new plan and new action.
If today, in conscious awareness, you choose
the same plan as yesterday, you are wise.
If you choose a different plan, you are equally wise.
Whatever you choose, choose with intention.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no evil.
- Japanese pictorial maxim (the Three Wise Monkeys)

The more he became truly wise,
the more he distrusted everything he knew.
- Voltaire

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down
on the tracks of history
to wait for the train of the future to run over him.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

To be idle is a short road to death
and to be diligent is a way of life;
foolish people are idle,
wise people are diligent.
- The Buddha

Everyone is wise, until he speaks.
- Irish proverb

A wise man hears one word and understands two.
- Yiddish Proverb

Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it.
- Publilius Syrus

A wise man will make haste to forgive,
because he knows the true value of time,
and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.
- Samuel Johnson

I have always been regretting that
I was not as wise as the day I was born.
- Henry David Thoreau

A wise man can learn more from a foolish question
than a fool can learn from a wise answer.
- Bruce Lee

Wise men put their trust in ideas
and not in circumstances
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is always wise to look ahead,
but difficult to look further than you can see.
- Winston Churchill

Early to bed and early to rise,
makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
- Benjamin Franklin

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers.
You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.
- Naguib Mahfouz

For the wise man looks into space
and he knows there is no limited dimensions.
- Lao Tzu

All this worldly wisdom was once
the unamiable heresy of some wise man.
- Henry David Thoreau

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance;
the wise grows it under his feet.
- J. Robert Oppenheimer

Thoughtful people seldom share exactly the same opinion -
the same point-of-view.
The wise ones understand that they know nothing -
for virtually none of our experience is truly factual -
and they graciously honor all other opinions.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Man Quotes

Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
- George Eliot

I cannot trust a man to control others
who cannot control himself.
- Robert E. Lee

If a man can... make a better mousetrap,
the world will make a beaten path to his door.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you talk to a man in a language he understands,
that goes to his head.
If you talk to him in his language,
that goes to his heart.
- Nelson Mandela

The fear of death follows from the fear of life.
A man who lives fully, is prepared to die at any time.
- Mark Twain

The man who is successful is the man who is useful.
- Bourke Cockran

Each man is the architect of his own fate.
- Appius Claudius

Every man and woman is born into the world
to do something unique and something distinctive;
and if he or she does not do it,
it will never be done.
- Benjamin E. Mays

Man's enemies are not demons, but human beings like himself.
- Lao Tzu

Take a chance! All life is a chance.
The man who goes farthest is generally
the one who is willing to do and dare.
- Dale Carnegie

The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready
for his opportunity when it comes.
- Benjamin Disraeli

Whatever your life's work is, do it well.
A man should do his job so well that the living,
the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

During the first period of a man's life
the greatest danger is not to take the risk.
- Soren Kierkegaard

Intent is what can make a man succeed
when his thoughts tell him that he is defeated.
- Carlos Castaneda

I wept because I had no shoes
until I met a man who had no feet.
- old Persian Proverb

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is no limit to what a man can do
or where he can go,
if he doesn't mind who gets the credit.
- Robert Woodruff

If a man does not know what port he is steering for,
no wind is favorable to him.
- Seneca

Thank you for visiting these quotes and sayings.

Read my Articles on Becoming Your Best Self.

See more Motivational Quotes.

You may read our disclaimer about our privacy policy, terms of use, participation in affiliate programs, copyright policy.