Quoting Chambers

Are you a collector of quotations? The use of pithy quotes, taken from sources both famous and obscure, can spice and invigorate your conversation and writings. Classic collections of quotes, such a Bartlett’s and Oxford, continue to serve as standard references.

One of my most personally rewarding freelance editing assignments some years ago was to compile a categorized set of quotations from Oswald Chambers’ intriguing, in-depth devotional work. Treasures From My Utmost for His Highest, published as a coffee table-style gift book by Barbour Publishing, Inc., required months of studying Chambers’ writings. Chambers, a lecturer and chaplain, died of an illness during World War I. His famous devotional was taken from lectures he presented between 1911 and 1917. Those of you who have read My Utmost For His Highest know how challenging and intellectual was Chambers’ communication style and how amazingly relevant each statement he produced.

Some examples of what I derived in my compilation:

“Whenever we put other things [besides God] first, there is confusion.”

“We are sent by God to lift up Jesus Christ, not to give wonderfully beautiful discourses.”

“If we do only what we feel inclined to do, some of us would do nothing forever and ever. . . . Do now what you will have to do some day.”

“Patience is not indifference; patience conveys the idea of an immensely strong rock withstanding all onslaughts.”

“God’s way is always the way of suffering, the way of the ‘long, long trail.’ . . . If there is no strain, there is no strength.”

“It is in the valley that we have to live for the glory of God.”

“. . . . God is my Father, He loves me, I shall never think of anything He will forget, why should I worry? . . . [W]hat an impertinence worry is!”