Explore Quotes by Elisabeth Elliot

A broken heart is a reminder of our only source of power.

I believe a woman, in order to be a good wife, must be (among other things) both sensual and maternal.

The one who loves knows better than anyone else how to conduct himself, how to serve the one he loves. Love prescribes an answer in a given situation as no mere rule can do.

If your goal is purity of heart, be prepared to be thought very odd.

I seek the lessons God wants to teach me, and that means that I ask why.

Loneliness is a required course for leadership.

We want to avoid suffering, death, sin, ashes. But we live in a world crushed and broken and torn, a world God Himself visited to redeem. We receive his poured-out life, and being allowed the high privilege of suffering with Him, may then pour ourselves out for others.

Discipline, for the Christian, begins with the body. We have only one. It is this body that is the primary material given to us for sacrifice. We cannot give our hearts to God and keep our bodies for ourselves.

Sometimes life is so hard you can only do the next thing.Whatever that is just do the next thing.God will meet you there.

One way to begin to see how vastly indulgent we usually are is to fast. It is a long day that is not broken by the usual three meals. One finds out what an astonishing amount of time is spent in the planning, purchasing, preparing, eating, and cleaning up of meals.

The process of shaping the child, shapes also the mother herself. Reverence for her sacred burden calls her to all that is pure and good, that she may teach primarily by her own humble, daily example.

One morning I was reading the story of Jesus' feeding of the five thousand. The disciples could find only five loaves of bread and two fishes. 'Let me have them,' said Jesus. He asked for all. He took them, said the blessing, and broke them before He gave them out. I remembered what a chapel speaker...had said: 'If my life is broken when given to Jesus, it is because pieces will feed a multitude, while a loaf will satisfy only a little lad.'

But the things that we feel most deeply we ought to learn to be silent about, at least until we have talked them over thoroughly with God.

What sort of world might it have been if Eve had refused the servants offer and had said to him instead, “let me not be like God. Let me be what I was made to be - let me be a woman'?

A little quiet reflection will remind me that yes to God always leads in the end to joy.

Heaven is not here, it's There. If we were given all we wanted here, our hearts would settle for this world rather than the next. God is forever luring us up and away from this one, wooing us to Himself and His still invisible Kingdom, where we will certainly find what we so keenly long for

The pain of loneliness is one way in which he wants to get our attention. We may be earnestly desiring to be obedient and holy. But we may be missing the fact that it is here, where we happen to be at this moment and not in another place or another time, that we may learn to love Him - here where it seems He is not at work, where He seems obscure or frightening, where He is not doing what we expected Him to do, where He is most absent. Here and nowhere else is the appointed place. If faith does not got to work here, it will not work at all.

A real woman understands that man was created to be the initiator, and she operates on that premise. This is primarily a matter of attitude. I am convinced that the woman who understands and accepts with gladness the difference between masculine and feminine will be, without pretense or self-consciousness, womanly.

In order to learn what it means to be a woman we must start with the One who made her.

The world cries for men who are strong--strong in conviction, strong to lead, to stand, to suffer. I pray that you will be that kind of man--glad that God made you a man, glad to shoulder the burden of manliness in a time when to do so will often bring contempt.

There are those who insist that it is a very bad thing to question God. To them, “why?” is a rude question. That depends, I believe, on whether it is an honest search, in faith, for His meaning, or whether it is the challenge of unbelief and rebellion.