C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Providence
We must follow, not force Providence.
God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.
Duties are ours; events are God’s.
Chance is a nickname for Providence.
God’s providence is on the side of clear heads.
He who sends the storm steers the vessel.
Heaven trims our lamps while we sleep.
There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.
Nothing with God can be accidental.
Providence protects us in all the details of our lot.
Everything that happens in this world is a part of a great plan of God running through all time.
God hangs the greatest weights upon the smallest wires.
A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the Lord directeth his steps.
Gifts come from on high in their own peculiar forms.
The superfluous blossoms on a fruit tree are meant to symbolize the large way in which God loves to do pleasant things.
He that doth the ravens feed, yea, providently caters for the sparrow, be comfort to my age.
He that will watch Providence shall never want a Providence to watch.
Surely the equity of Providence has balanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar enjoyments.
We are not to lead events, but to follow them.
There is a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft, to keep watch for the life of poor Jack.
Now is it surprising, because it is Providence that has given us the country and the art of man that has built the cities.
Providence is but another name for natural law. Natural law itself would go out in a minute if it were not for the divine thought that is behind it.
We are apt to believe in Providence so long as we have our own way; but if things go awry, then we think, if there is a God, He is in heaven, and not on earth.
Surely there are in every man’s life certain rubs, doublings, and wrenches, which pass a while under the effects of chance, but at the last, well examined, prove the mere hand of God.
Providence certainly does not favor individuals, but the deep wisdom of its counsels extends to the instruction and ennoblement of all.
It is not given to our weak intellects to understand the steps of Providence as they occur: we comprehend them only as we look back upon them in the far-distant past.
God’s plans, like lilies pure and white, unfold; we must not tear the close-shut leaves apart; time will reveal the calyxes of gold.
A cockle-fish may as soon crowd the ocean into its narrow shell, as vain man ever comprehend the decrees of God!
We sometimes had those little rubs which Providence sends to enhance the value of its flavors.
But he never would believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden.
He who ruleth the raging of the sea knows also how to check the designs of the ungodly. I submit myself with reverence to His Holy Will. O Abner, I fear my God, and I fear none but Him.
The heavens do not send good haps in handfuls, but let us pick out our good by little, and with care, from out much bad, that still our little world may know its king.
However benevolent may be the intentions of Providence, they do not always advance the happiness of the individual. Providence has always higher ends in view, and works in a pre-eminent degree on the inner feelings and disposition.
Duties are ours; events are God’s. This removes an infinite burden from the shoulders of a miserable, tempted, dying creature. On this consideration only can he securely lay down his head and close his eyes.
It is remarkable that Providence has given us all things for our advantage near at hand; but iron, gold, and silver, being both the instruments of blood and slaughter and the price of it, nature has hidden in the bowels of the earth.
I asked a hermit once in Italy how he could venture to live alone, in a single cottage, on the top of a mountain, a mile from any habitation? He replied that, “Providence was his very next-door neighbor.”
You may say, “I wish to send this ball so as to kill the lion crouching yonder, ready to spring upon me. My wishes are all right, and I hope Providence will direct the ball.” Providence won’t. You must do it; and if you do not, you are a dead man.
Providence has a wild, rough, incalculable road to its end, and it is of no use to try to whitewash its huge, mixed instrumentalities, or to dress up that terrific benefactor in a clean shirt and white neckcloth or a student in divinity.
Divine Providence tempers His blessings to secure their better effect. He keepys our joys and our fears on an even balance, that we may neither presume nor despair. By such compositions God is pleased to make both our crosses more tolerable and our enjoyments more wholesome and safe.
The decrees of Providence are inscrutable. In spite of man’s short-sighted endeavors to dispose of events according to his own wishes and his own purposes, there is an Intelligence beyond his reason, which holds the scales of justice, and promotes his well-being, in spite of his puny efforts.
Long may it remain in this mixed world a question not easy of decision, which is the more beautiful evidence of the Almighty’s goodness, the soft white hand formed for the ministrations of sympathy and tenderness, or the rough hard hand which the heart softens, teaches, and guides in a moment.
To make our reliance upon Providence both pious and rational, we should, in every great enterprise we take in hand, prepare all things with that care, diligence, and activity, as if there were no such thing as Providence for us to depend upon; and again, when we have done all this, we should as wholly and humbly rely upon it, as if we had made no preparations at all.
If God but cares for our inward and eternal life, if by all the experiences of this life He is reducing it and preparing for its disclosure, nothing can befall us but prosperity. Every sorrow shall be but the setting of some luminous jewel of joy. Our very morning shall be but the enamel around the diamond; our very hardships but the metallic rim that holds the opal, glancing with strange interior fires.
Round about what is lies a whole mysterious world of what might be—a psychological romance of possibilities and things that do not happen. By going out a few minutes sooner or later, by stopping to speak with a friend at a corner, by meeting this man or that, or by turning down this street instead of the other, we may let slip some great occasion of good, or avoid some impending evil, by which the whole current of our lives would have been changed. There is no possible solution to the dark enigma but the one word “Providence.”