Quotes from John Calvin

My intention was only to furnish a kind of rudiments, by which those who feel some interest in religion might be trained to true godliness. And I toiled at the task chiefly for the sake of my countrymen the French, multitudes of whom I perceived to be hungering and thirsting after Christ, while very few seemed to have been duly imbued with even a slender knowledge of him.

all those who go around draped with a false sanctimoniousness do it by the devil's prodding; because no one can worship God rightly with outward ceremonies, for true worshipers adore him in spirit and in truth (John 4:24). Secondly

He is the way because he leads us to the Father. He is the truth and the life because in Him we apprehend the Father. Therefore all theology separated from Christ is not only empty but also mad, deceiving and counterfeit.

It is also to be noticed, that   the old man is distinguished by his works, as a tree is by its fruits.  

those for whom prophetic doctrine is tasteless ought to be thought of as lacking taste buds.

God for our sake is willing to stoop down and, by such a wonderfully gentle and intimate invitation, entice us to him, so that we may rest safely and quietly under his protection.

Hence that dread and amazement with which as Scripture uniformly relates, holy men were struck and overwhelmed whenever they beheld the presence of God.

I grant more: thieves and murderers and other evildoers are the instruments of divine providence, and the Lord himself uses these to carry out the judgments that he has determined with himself. Yet I deny that they can derive from this any excuse for their evil deeds. Why?

So infatuated are they by their own   splendor and magnificence, as to imagine that the whole world was made   only for them.

That there exists in the human minds and indeed by natural instinct, some sense of Deity, we hold to be beyond dispute, since God himself, to prevent any man from pretending ignorance, has endued all men with some idea of his Godhead, the memory of which he constantly renews and occasionally enlarges, that all to a man being aware that there is a God, and that he is their Maker, may be condemned by their own conscience when they neither worship him nor consecrate their lives to his service.

The fear he speaks of is that which renders us more cautious, not that which produces despondency, the fear which is felt when the mind confounded in itself resumes its equanimity in God, downcast in itself, takes courage in God, distrusting itself, breathes confidence in God.

Therefore, we are today far from wrong in applying this prophecy to the papists, who urge celibacy and abstinence from foods more forcefully than any precept of God. They

for although the papists say something in passing about faith in Christ and the grace of the Holy Spirit, it is clear that they are much nearer to the heathen philosophers than to Christ and his apostles. As

The church is compared to tents because it has no solid structure in the world. It

We should ask God to increase our hope when it is small, awaken it when it is dormant, confirm it when it is wavering, strengthen it when it is weak, and raise it up when it is overthrown.

There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.

There is no worse screen to block out the Spirit than confidence in our own intelligence.

The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul.

If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house, then in a field,...it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light.

True wisdom consists in two things: Knowledge of God and Knowledge of Self.

The gospel is not a doctrine of the tongue, but of life. It cannot be grasped by reason and memory only, but it is fully understood when it possesses the whole soul and penetrates to the inner recesses of the heart.

Man's nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.

No one can travel so far that he does not make some progess each day. So let us never give up. Then we shall move forward daily in the Lord's way. And let us never despair because of our limited success. Even though it is so much less than we would like, our labour is not wasted when today is better than yesterday!

Our prayer must not be self-centered. It must arise not only because we feel our own need as a burden we must lay upon God, but also because we are so bound up in love for our fellow men that we feel their need as acutely as our own. To make intercession for men is the most powerful and practical way in which we can express our love for them.