Grace Livingston Hill Quotes

It is because people live in the things they possess instead of in their relationship to God that God seems at times to be cruel.

There is no life apart from Christ. Perhaps the reason you are dissatisfied with life is because you’ve been seeking it apart from Him and all you have been getting is an imitation.

And you think the Lord gives attention to such little details as how long a potato should cook?” asked Ruth earnestly. “Why yes, dear,” answered the mother, “if you put a matter, even a little matter, into the Lord’s hands to guide you, and trust that He will, of course He will.

Belief is not an intellectual conviction. Belief is an act of the will, whereby you throw yourself on the promise of God and let Him prove Himself true.

the love of one true man is worth a life’s devotion

But the day will come when you will have to answer for it! You know I didn't come here alone to-day——!" Both men looked startled and glanced uneasily into the shadows, as if there might be someone lurking there. "God came with me and He knows! He'll make you remember some day!

It would be well, in our praying, to sometimes lift the head and see whether the answer to our prayers is not shining in the heavens or standing joy-clothed beside us, or even lying at our feet waiting to be recognized.

Sometimes we are so taken up with the world, or with our own plans and selves, that we haven’t given a thought to God, and He just had to take away the thing in which we were interested to make us give our attention to Him, that we might know His will and get the full blessing He has prepared for us.

Kate as she was at home without varnish or furbelows.

People do not reform after they are married. I would never marry a man to reform him!

I spoke of my father, mother, and sister, but of him whom I love better than all I breathed never a word.

⁠Indeed, dear boy, I do want to go with all my heart if I really ought. I have always wanted to see the ocean and I can't imagine any place I'd rather go. ⁠ - Grace Livingston Hill, Aunt Crete's Emancipation.⁠ ⁠

To make more machines for more people to struggle and buy, to catch up with the great mad procession of the world struggling to get all out of life that was in it --Ah! Why would they not see? Why must so many be blind?

A man would require a brave heart, indeed, to ask any woman he loved to share the hardships and dangers of a missionary's life.

The trouble is we can't see the plan, and so we go fretting because it doesn't fit our ideas.

He had been turned out of Eden. The angel with the flaming sword had bidden him no more think to enter. He must go forth and labor, but God was not dead.

go

You do not know what you can do with God’s help, or rather what God can do with your help.

the children were infatuated with the idea of a kitchen of their own, and wanted everything in sight. They went wild over a new kind of refrigerator that would freeze its own ice, making ice-cream in the bargain, and run by an electric motor; but here Julia Cloud held firm. No such expensive experiment was needed in their tiny kitchen. A small white, old-fashioned kind was good enough for them.

The man who will so dishonor a woman as to marry her when he bears her no love is, to my mind, not only unworthy of being a missionary of Jesus Christ, but also hardly worthy the name man, surely not gentleman

The Lord cares for His own, even in little things." "Do you mean nothing ever happens against your wishes and prayers?" asked Eden almost breathlessly. "Oh, no, but I mean that when you leave it all to Him, He works it out marvelously. I don't mean it always comes the way you have planned it, or want it even, but that if it doesn't, you know it will work out in the end to be even better than you wanted, if you are patient and rest in Him.

teach them how to know God." "Why?" "So that they will be saved. Because it was Christ's command that His disciples should give the message. I am His disciple, so I have to tell the message." "Was there any special stipulation as

O," said the child, disappointed, "I thought you'd maybe seed Him sometime. But He look like you, He do. I thought He was you all's fader." The little girl turned away, but her words lingered in Christie's heart. His Father! How that stirred some memory! His Father in heaven! Had he perhaps spoken wrong when he claimed no relationship with Jesus, the Christ?

In the year 1824, in a pleasant town located between Schenectady and Albany, stood the handsome colonial residence of Hamilton Van Rensselaer. Solemn hedges shut in the family pride and hid the family sorrow, and about the borders of its spacious gardens, where even the roses seemed subdued, there played a child. The stately house oppressed her, and she loved the sombre garden best.

You know it really doesn’t matter about clothes if we look clean and neat and behave well. I think we’ve been placing too high a value on looks anyway. Of course looks do count a little, but they are, after all, only a trifle beside real worth. And, if we can’t impress that girl with our refinement by our actions, why, we can put on all the clothes in the universe, and we won’t be able to do it any better.

Poor credulous Uncle Standish, poor Aunt Lavinia! Strong and fine and good but woefully ignorant and gullible! How little they knew of life! How pleasant to have been like them! And yet, they stagnated in the old town, walking in grooves their forbearers had carved for them, thinking the thoughts that had been taught them. That was not life. Well, why not? He had seen life. And what had it given him? Dust and ashes! A bitter taste! Responsibilities that galled! Hindrances and disappointments! Two daughters whom he did not know! An empty heart and a jaded soul! Ah! Why live?

that one cannot grow strong without being humble. One cannot do great things while self-interest rules. You, my son, have gained one great victory this week over self. I hope it may go on. There are still greater heights to scale. You will have set backs. You’ll find that self is a hard thing to conquer. It will come alive. But if you have really found that you can set self aside and do the thing well that is hardest for you, you have reached a great place in life. There is but one thing higher than that, and that is to let the Lord Christ come in and take Self’s place. If you can learn those two things I shall know why God let all this reversal come to us. I have known all along that there must be some reason why we should thank Him for what has come, and now I begin to see a possible reason.

Help us for Christ’s sake to have our eyes open to sin, so that we shall always know when we are not pleasing Thee.

Thy will, not ours, be done.

and measured swords with their eyes as

In mordern war we sow our harbors and coasts thick with hidden mines ready to explode should the enemy venture within our boarders.

Red and green, blue and yellow, weird fantastic shapes and colors, jiggling and winking and blaring in and out, each one trying to offer a mightier attraction to the eye than the other. Christmas signs. What a travesty on Christmas! The birth of the Savior of the world mixed up with advertisements of beer and toys! Christmas commercialized! She sighed over the way the world was going. Yet Christmas had always been to her the crowning joy of the year. The time when human love and beauty reached up and touched heaven, and earthly hates and passions were forgotten for a little while because of the long-ago birth of the Christ child.

Red and green, blue and yellow, weird fantastic shapes and colors, jiggling and winking and blaring in and out, each one trying to offer a mightier attraction to the eye than the other. Christmas signs. What a travesty on Christmas! The birth of the Savior of the world mixed up with advertisements of beer and toys! Christmas commercialized! She sighed over the way the world was going.

Of course, she was sorry her mother was sick, but Father spoke hopefully, confidently about her, and the rest would probably do her good. It wasn’t as if Mother were hopelessly ill. She was thankful as any of them that that had not come. But Mother had always understood her aspirations, and if she were only at home she would show Father how unreasonable it was for her to have to give up now when only a year and a half more and the goal would be reached and she could become a contributing member of the family, rather than just a housekeeper!

The wallpaper was an ugly, dirty dark red, with tarnished gold designs, torn in places and hanging down, greasy and marred where chairs had rubbed against it and heads had apparently leaned. It certainly was not a charming interior. She curled her lip slightly as she took it all in. This was her home! And she a born artist and interior decorator!

Of course!” he said foolishly. “Then I wish I had come sooner. I wish I had never gone—from you!” “Oh, Father, do you really? How many times I have wished that!” The blue eyes were full of wistful eagerness now. It had meant a great deal to her! Why had it? Was that her mother looking at him through her eyes? Was he going stark-staring crazy? It was Alice’s look. Alice was looking through those eyes of her daughter as one might look through a window!

But no! Those empty places across the table! That ivy-covered church down the street surrounded by its white gravestones showing in the dusk! A world of horror in France between! Other gravestones, too, and an empty sinful world! Ah! No, he was not a boy again!

I was thinking how much you remind me of a man I have been reading about in the Bible. Jehoram is his name. Ever make his acquaintance?” “Not especially,” answered Greeves coldly, with evident annoyance at the digression. “He was one of those old Israelite-ish kings, wasn’t he?” “Yes, a king, but he blamed God for the results of his own actions.” “Mm! Yes. I see! But how am I to blame for having a daughter like that? Didn’t God make her what she is? Why couldn’t she have been the right kind of a girl? How was I to blame for that?

The minister pitied his new friend from the bottom of his heart, and yet there was a humorous side to the situation. To think of a man of this one’s attainments and standing being afraid of a mere girl, afraid of two girls! His own children!

The court had handed her over to his charge. What a mistake! He should have had her when she was young if he was ever to hope to do anything with her. But he must do something. He reached out suddenly and took possession of the cigarette and case before the surprised girl had time to protest.

I guess the best way to understand that,” he said thoughtfully, “is to think what it meant to be born into this world the first time. You did not exist in this world, you know, until you received the life of your parents. Then you were born and became a citizen of this world, gradually growing in the knowledge and privileges of it.” Jeff was watching him eagerly, weighing every word. “In the same way,” went on John, “you do not exist so far as the spiritual world is concerned until you receive the life of God. Then He says you are born spiritually and can begin to grow in the knowledge and blessings of the spiritual world.

Young people seldom have fears.

Every girl ought to be brought up to know a little about cooking, even if she does have some other employment.

loveliness of the spot. “It only needs one thing to make it perfect,” declared Tom, “and that’s a book and somebody to read to us. Miss Vic, why didn’t you bring a book along?” “Why, I did,” said that good lady with a sudden remembrance of how much she had enjoyed the afternoon. “I did bring a book, but I’m afraid it won’t be just what you would like.” It suddenly seemed the most uninteresting book she could have found, and she wished

Well pleased, with a sigh of relief he dropped into the chair and sat watching her, talking idly, as one who is feeling his way to a pleasant intimacy of whose nature he is not quite sure. She was very sweet and sympathetic about the examinations, told how she hated them herself and thought they ought to be abolished; said he

into the outer office for a moment with a telegram which

…instead of seething with indignation over injustice, one must expect to take it for granted, and leave with God the responsibility of doing away with it.

He watched his former schoolmates as they flocked in now, boisterously, each one with a noisy greeting. They were the same people. He could recognize them, in spite of their disguises of modern garments. Yet they seemed to have changed indefinably, to have coarsened and cheapened themselves, to have grown brazen and hard. It wasn’t just that they were older—the make-up of the girls had hidden age to a certain extent—it was that they seemed to have lost illusions, to be without that eager look of youth with its natural hopefulness. They were not old enough to have lost those things. It was almost as if they had lost joy or all hope of it. He had seen that look on men and women of the world, but these who had lived in the home town and grown up with him, these ought not to have it, not yet anyway—not so soon. Why, in some cases it almost seemed as if they were wildly unhappy and were trying to keep the world from finding it out, as if their very laughter were hollow with pain!

went right to the spot, and would save putting up much else. Hannah shut her lips and tried to make the line of them look pleasant, but

are

something that cast out fear and gave her soul a sense of being cleansed and made fit in spite of sins and mistakes and indifference of the past. Yet she sensed that she must walk softly all the rest of her days if she would hope to keep this deep, underlying delight in her heart.

It was one thing to have something wrenched from you and to bow to God’s will; it was a step further to hand that precious thing over and let Him do His will.

Life had heretofore run in such smooth, conventional grooves as to have been almost prosaic; and now to be suddenly plunged into romance and mystery unbalanced him for the time.

The tickets might be returned perhaps, but where would she go?

She seemed awfully pleasant and sweet, and her mother wasn’t like that a bit. I knew her mother very well indeed.” “Well, Mamma, you have to remember she had a father, too.

Science and knowledge changed from year to year, but there had not been wanting those in every age who had found God by searching for Him with all their hearts, and by taking Him at His Word.

upon the world. She understood that perhaps even up to the very day before, they had most of them been merry, careless boys; but now they were men, made so in a night by the horrible sin that had brought about this thing called War.

In college he had been too much engrossed with other things to listen to the arguments, or to be influenced by the general atmosphere of unbelief

The world is the same in any generation, and human life is the same. Good and bad are the same. Kicking over pleasant helpful rules and running wild doesn't change results.

Daphne, "only I haven't seen any more fireflies. I guess we'll have to ask Mrs. Gassner what it is. I'm sure she'd have some solution of the mystery. She always seems to know everything that's going on in the neighborhood. She came over

Aunt Crete gasped with joy. The thought of the ocean, was wonderful. she had dreamed of it many times,but never had seen it, because she was always the one who could just as well stay at home as not. ⁠ - Grace Livingston Hill, Aunt Crete's Emancipation

and she never found herself willing to put one by unanswered. There was always some question that needed answering, some point on which her young convert to Jesus Christ needed enlightenment. Then, too, she found herself growing nearer to Jesus because of this friendship with one who was just learning to trust Him in so childlike and earnest a way. "Do you know," she said confidingly to Ruth Summers one day, "I cannot make myself see Christie Bailey as homely? It doesn't seem possible to me. I think she is mistaken. I know I shall find something handsome about her when I see her, which I shall some day.

You couldn't shake my belief in Jesus any more than you could shake my in my mother or father. Because I have known them. If you told me hadn't had a mother and she was't really good and kind to me, I'd just smile and pity you because you never knew her. But I have, you know. I don't blame you, for you've never known Jesus.

There is much perplexity and sadness about whether a soul taken from this earth out of the midst of life not lived for God, and spending its last moments in delirium, can be saved. But why does not comfort come to such questioners from the thought of the power of the God who made that soul, to speak to it even in delirium? It is not strange that God should speak to one of his creatures now any more than that he spoke to Adam or to Moses.

O let me ne'er forget That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.

Sometime perhaps you will learn that prejudice often blinds people to some of the rarest things in life. I often wonder if we don’t miss out that way in trying to learn about God and things of the other world.

Just what do you mean by being saved?” she asked at length. “Why, saved from punishment from yer sin. That’s eternal separation from God, ya know. I’m saved!” He said it with an air of quiet conviction that was startling. “How do you know?” asked Mary Elizabeth. “Because Christ said so,” said the boy. “He said, ‘He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.’ Mr. Saxon drilled us a lot on that. He said we might havta tell someone someday that was dying and afraid.” “And

You were almost a child then, a bonny child, but untried. But now I can see the dear lines that time and care and pain and sickness and trouble and poverty have engraved on your face, and they have only made you more lovely. I think it’ll be like that in heaven, Margaret, we’ll see the lines that life has put upon us; in some it will have cut away all the faults and mistakes and follies, and there will be little left, but with those who have been faithful in the testings, it will show up a wondrous beauty!

him

Dear Lord, here is something again that I don't know how to manage and can't do anything about. Won't You please take over, and help me to trust it utterly to You? Show me just what to say and do.

The Schuylers were one of the few families in those

Time

Dear Father,” she prayed, “please take care of this for me. Don’t let me have to go anywhere or do anything with that MacCallummore man, please, dear Lord.” When she arose she looked about her with eyes that were touched with peace again. Now she mustn’t just sit here and brood over this thing. She had given it into God’s hands, and that was all there was to do at present.

Don’t ever fancy, no matter how hard a thing you have to go through, that your experience is unique. This old world has been going on a good many hundred years, and there are precious few situations that haven’t happened over and over again. Cheer up, child; that’s a model letter, and you’re a good little sport!

But I was in a hurry, so I let him drive. I wasn’t thinking about formalities then. I knew I ought to get back home quickly. Anyhow, he was so respectful I knew he was all right.” “Hmm! There are respectful crooks sometimes! But never mind; go on.

Those flowers! How wonderful it would have been if they had been hers! If she had been a girl with friends who could send farewell greetings in such a costly style! Why, all these gifts, the wedding that had preceded them, had been but the fulfillment of her childish fairy dreamings—all the things she had most wished for in life—and now they had come, and how empty they were! How one’s heart could starve in the midst of plenty!

It had been a matter of deep speculation and anxiety between herself and her sister whether this darling of their hearts would find her old companion of her childhood days the same true knight as when he went away; and whether if he were changed for the worse the girl’s young eyes would be clear enough to see and hold herself to her own fine course. But they might have known, she sighed pleasantly to her relieved heart. Janet was not the kind of girl to idealize an unworthy object. She was not weak enough to deceive herself with false excuses.

The chauffeur returned at midnight to say that he had found no clue to the young master. He had even ventured so far as to call at the door and ask to speak with the young lady; but she had declared most decidedly that she knew nothing of his where-abouts. He was very sure about that lost ten dollars. It seemed somehow that he had been ill-used. Nobody had thought to save him any supper, either.

She had tried to talk to Gemmie about it once the day before, and Gemmie had said all girls felt “queer” at the thought of being married. All nice girls, that is. Sherrill couldn’t see why that had anything to do with the matter. It wasn’t a matter of nicety. Gemmie was talking about a shrinking shyness probably, and it wasn’t that at all. It was a great awesomeness at the thought of the miracle of two lives wrought into one, two souls putting aside all others and becoming one perfect life.

How glad she was that none of them were really intimate friends. All of them new friends from Aunt Pat’s circle of acquaintances. Her own girlhood friends were all too poor or too far away to be summoned.

Aunt Pat,” she said mournfully, “why do you suppose this had to happen to me? Why did I have to be punished like this?” “I wouldn’t call it punishment, child,” said the old lady, patting Sherrill’s shoulder. “I’d say it was a blessing the Lord sent to save you from a miserable life with a man who would have broken your heart.” “But if that is so,” wailed Sherrill, “why didn’t He stop me before it went so far? Before it would hurt so much?” The old lady was still a minute and then said, “Perhaps He did, and you wouldn’t listen. Perhaps you had some warnings that you wouldn’t heed. I don’t know. You’ll have to look into your own life for that.

She had a feeling as she listened that she had been sitting in a dark place all her life, and that during the last three weeks light had slowly begun to break. It seemed that tonight the light was like glory all around her. These people actually lived with God, referred everything to Him, wanted nothing that He did not send. They were in a distinct and startling sense a separated people, and she was beginning to long with all her heart that she might truly be one with them.

Isn’t that your Battledore-and-shuttlecock lady of the reception?” murmured Copeland with a grin. Sherrill giggled. “Mrs. Battersea,” she prompted. “Yes, I thought it was something like that.” The lady brought her heavy body down the car steps and arrived on the platform a few feet from them. Copeland stooped a little closer and spoke softly: “What do you say if we give her something to talk about? Do you mind if I kiss you good-bye?” For answer Sherrill gave him a lovely mischievous smile and lifted her lips to meet his.

Thanks for the warning, but you see, I'm working for God and I can't quit till He says so. If I'm worth anything to Him He'll take care of me.

an

reminding him of what he once intended to be before he ate the apple of wisdom and became as the gods and devils.

Mother always says that when things seem to be in a tangle to us it’s just that God is executing an especially intricate and marvelous pattern in our lives, and we must be pliable in His hands, so as not to hinder. Lord, have Thy way with me today!

grow