Sermon quotes on success
Henry Ward Beecher
We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.
Henry Ward Beecher
Success is full of promise till one gets it, and then it seems like a nest from which the bird has flown.
John Calvin
Men (and woman) are undoubtedly more in danger from prosperity than from adversity. for when matters go smoothly, they flatter themselves, and are intoxicated by their success.
Francis Chan
Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.
Thomas Edison
Unfortunately, there seems to be far more opportunity out there than ability…. We should remember that good fortune often happens when opportunity meets with preparation.
Bill Gates
Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.
Jack Hyles
If I labor for God, I fail. If I labor with God, I succeed.
George Herbert
Sometimes the best gain is to lose.
Timothy Keller
If you have money, power, and status today, it is due to the century and place in which you were born, to your talents and capacities and health, none of which you earned. In short, all your resources are in the end the gift of God.
John Knox
Those who have arrived at any very eminent degree of excellence in the practice of an art or profession have commonly been actuated by a species of enthusiasm in their pursuit of it. They have kept one object in view amidst all the vicissitudes of time and torture.
Florence Nightingale
I attribute my success to this – I never gave or took any excuse.
Albert Schweitzer
Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.
Hudson Taylor
Many Christians estimate difficulties in the light of their own resources, and thus attempt little and often fail in the little they attempt. All God’s giants have been weak men who did great things for God because they reckoned on His power and presence with them.
Zig Ziglar
Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.
Herbert Bayard Swope
I can’t give you a surefire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure; try to please everybody all the time.
John Stott
His authority on earth allows us to dare to go to all the nations. His authority with us leaves us no other choice. And his presence in heaven gives us our only hope of success.
Whit Hobbs
Success is waking up in the morning, whoever you are, wherever you are, however old or young, and bounding out of bed because there’s something out there that you love to do, that you believe in, that you’re good at—something that’s bigger than you are, and you can hardly wait to get at it again today.
O.A. Battista
You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments or publicity.
Maria Bamford
“My therapist says I’m afraid of success. I guess I could understand that, because after all, fulfilling my potential would really cut into my sitting-around time.”
Seth Godin
The myth seems to be that you’re born with some magic combination of parents, DNA, and lucky breaks, and they conspire to determine what you accomplish in life. Nonsense. And a good thing, too, because it means that for all of us, there’s a wide-open path—if we choose to do something about it.
Taken from the preface to Pick Four: Zig Ziglar’s Legendary Goals Program, Updated and Simplified (The Domino Project, 2011).
Mark Batterson
Success has nothing to do with how gifted or how resourced you are; it has everything to do with glorifying God in any and every situation by making the most of it. Success is spelled stewardship, and stewardship is spelled success.
The Circle Maker: Praying Circles Around Your Biggest Dreams and Greatest Fears, Zondervan, 2016, p.29.
Mark Batterson
Success is handing the baton to those who come behind us and cheering them on as they run farther and faster than we did.
Double Blessing: Don’t Settle for Less Than You’re Called to Bless, Multnomah, 2019.
Stephen W. Smith
We can prostitute our very souls in our attempts to be successful. We can sell out, cave in and go morally bankrupt chasing the god of success. Knowing this perilous potential, Jesus himself warns us that we can lose our souls by too much gaining, saying, “What kind of deal is it to get everything you want but lose yourself? What could you ever trade your soul for?” (Matthew 16:26). It is no deal at all to lose our soul in striving after the goddess of success. In doing so we pay the ultimate price—a price we do not, in fact, need to pay.
Taken from Inside Job by Stephen W. Smith (c) 2009 by Stephen W. Smith. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought that takes success for its standards.
Ethics (1949)
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