Billy Sunday Quotes

Temptation is the devil looking through the keyhole. Yielding is opening the door and inviting him in.

I don't believe there are devils enough in hell to pull a boy out of the arms of a godly mother.

Being a kind, emperor, or president is mighty small potatoes compared to being a mother. Commanding an army is little more than sweeping a street compared with training a boy or girl. The mother of Moses did more for the world than all the kinds that Egypt ever had. Oh, you wait until you reach the mountains of eternity, then read the mothers' names in God's Hall of Fame.

I am an old-fashioned preacher of the old-time religion, that has warmed this cold world's heart for two thousand years.

There are two hundred and fifty-six names given in the Bible for the Lord Jesus Christ, and I suppose this was because He was infinitely beyond all that any one name could express.

Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.

The fellow that has no money is poor. The fellow that has nothing but money is poorer still.

It would be a godsend if the Church would suffer persecution today; she hasn't suffered it for hundreds of years. She is growing rich and lagging behind. Going back.

Sinners cannot find God for the same reason that criminals cannot find a policeman: They aren't looking!

There is nothing in the world of art like the songs mother used to sing.

God Almighty never intended that the devil should triumph over the Church. He never intended that the saloons should walk rough-shod over Christianity.

Unless you have made a complete surrender and are doing his will it will avail you nothing if you've reformed a thousand times and have your name on fifty church records.

Whenever a day comes when I can stand and preach God's Word without an agony of anxiety lest the people will not accept Christ; whenever a day comes when I can see men and women coming down the aisles without joy in my heart, I'll quit preaching.

Listen, I'm against sin. I'll kick it as long as I've got a foot, I'll fight it as long as I've got a fist, I've butt it as long as I've got a head, and I'll bite it as long as I've got a tooth. And when I'm old, fistless, footless, and toothless, I'll gum it till I go home to glory and it goes home to perdition.

Whiskey is all right in its place - but its place is hell.

Some homes need a hickory switch a good deal more than they do a piano.

Whiskey and beer are all right in their place, but their place is in hell.

Let's quit fiddling with religion and do something to bring the world to Christ.

Better die an old maid, sister, than marry the wrong man.

It is not what you have on you, but what you have in you.

Enthusiasm is as good a thing in the Church as fire is in a cook stove.

Jesus Christ was God's revenue officer.

The devil says I'm out, but the Lord says I'm safe.

They tell me a revival is only temporary; so is a bath, but it does you good.

I dare not exercise personal liberty if it infringes on the liberty of others.

Trying to run a church without revivals can be done when you can run a gasoline engine on buttermilk.

Lord save us from off-handed, flabby-cheeked, brittle-boned, weak-kneed, thin-skinned, pliable, plastic, spineless, effeminate, ossified, three-karat Christianity.

After all is said that can be said upon the liquor traffic, its influence is degrading upon the individual, the family, politics and business, and upon everything that you touch in this old world.

There are individuals who have never done anything for Jesus Christ, and I have no doubt there are preachers as well, who have never done anything for the God Almighty.

When may a revival be expected? When the wickedness of the wicked grieves and distresses the Christian.

The rivers of America will run with blood filled to their banks before we will submit to them taking the Bible out of our schools.

I believe that a long step toward public morality will have been taken when sins are called by their right names.

The trouble with many men is that they have got just enough religion to make them miserable. If there is not joy in religion, you have got a leak in your religion.

More men fail through lack of purpose than lack of talent.

Hypocrites in the Church? Yes, and in the lodge and at the home. Don't hunt through the Church for a hypocrite. Go home and look in the mirror. Hypocrites? Yes. See that you make the number one less.

You can't measure manhood with a tape line around his biceps.

They tell me that I rub the fur the wrong way. I don't; let the cat turn around.

And if you think that anybody is going to frighten me, you don't know me yet.

Personal liberty is not personal license.

Some ministers say, 'If you don't repent you'll die and go to a place the name of which I can't pronounce.' I can! You'll go to hell!

Some persons have lived manly or womanly lives, and they lack but one thing - open confession of the Lord Jesus Christ. Some men think that they must come to him in a certain way - that they must be stirred by emotion or something like that.

Yank some of the groans out of your prayers and shove in some shouts.

The world is wrong side up. It needs to be turned upside down in order to be right side up.

If you want to drive the devil out of the world, hit him with a cradle instead of a crutch

I believe there is no doctrine more dangerous to the Church today than to convey the impression that a revival is something peculiar in itself and cannot be judged by the same rules of causes and effect as other things.

You might as well try and dam Niagara Falls with toothpicks as to stop the reform wave sweeping our land.

A revival does two things. First, it returns the Church from her backsliding and second, it causes the conversion of men and women; and it always includes the conviction of sin on the part of the Church. What a spell the devil seems to cast over the Church today!

Being a king, emperor, or president is mighty small potatoes compared to being a mother.

I have been, and will go on, fighting that damnable, dirty, rotten business with all the power at my command.

An excuse is a skin of a reason stuffed with a lie.

I have more respect for the devil than for some preachers I have met; the devil believes the Bible is the Word of God!

When the English language gets in my way, I walk over it.

At Kansas City, Kansas, before the saloons were closed, they were getting ready to build an addition to the jail. Now the doors swing idly on the hinges and there is nobody to lock in the jails.

The Bible will always be full of things you cannot understand, as long as you will not live according to those you can understand.

Churches don't need new members half so much as they need the old bunch made over.

O Devil, why do you hit us when we are down? Old boy, I know that you have no time for me, and I guess that you have about learned that I have no time for you. I will never apologize for anything I have ever done against you. If I have ever said anything that has does not hurt you, tell me about it, and I'll take it out of my sermon.

Jesus gave his life on the cross for any who will believe. We're not redeemed by silver or gold. Jesus paid for it with his blood.

The reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be only a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and comcribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile, and the children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent.

Give your face to God, and He will put his shine on it.

Wealth is not the standard of worth. Some people put cash before character.

The church is not a dormitory for sleepers, it is an institution for workers; it is not a rest camp, it is a front line trench.

Christianity means a lot more than church membership.

What have you given the world it never possessed before you came?

Home is the place we love best and grumble the most.

It is not necessary to be in a big place to do big things.

Some persons think that they have to look like a hedgehog to be pious.

God likes a little humor, as is evidence by the fact that he made the monkeys, the parrot
and some of you people.

I challenge you to show me where the saloon has ever helped business, education, church, morals or anything we hold dear.

When the word of God says one thing and scholarship says another, scholarship can go to hell.

Try praising your wife, even if it does frighten her at first.

The man who votes for the saloon is pulling on the same rope with the devil, whether he knows it or not.

The reason you don't like the Bible, you old sinner, is because it knows all about you.