My Year in J.R. Miller Quotes: December Edition

From “Turning Northward”: (Scripture reference for book is Deuteronomy 2:3)
     (From Introduction):
     • “While we live we must be moving on.”
     • “When we stop we begin to die.”
     • “Rest is necessary, but only to renew our strength that we may press on again.”
(From book):
     • “It would not be well if we were released from the daily round, though it is monotonous. We owe much to it. It trains us.”
     • “We must not let our life run forever and only in a little circle, but must reach out, learn new lessons, venture into new lives, leave our narrow past, and grow into something that means more.”
     • “We must not allow our narrow occupation to dwarf our souls.”
     • “Our work itself is valuable and noble, and we must never be ashamed of it and must do it with zest and enthusiasm.”
     • “We never can get on to higher things if we insist on clinging to our past and carrying it with us. We can make progress only by forgetting.”
     • “Some people keep compassing regretfully the mountains of their one year’s mistakes through all the following year.” (See Scripture Reference)
     • “Worry undoes no folly, corrects no mistakes, brings back nothing you have lost.”
     • “To err is human. We learn by making mistakes. Nobody ever does anything perfectly the first time he tries it. The artist spoils yards of canvas and reams of paper in mastering his art. It is the same in living. It takes most of lifetime to learn how to do work passably well.”
     • “There is a strange power in the divine goodness which can take our mistakes and follies, and out of them bring beauty, blessing, and good. Forget your blunders, put them into the hands of Christ, leave them with him to deal with as he sees fit, and he will show them to you afterward as marks of loveliness, no longer as blunders, but as the very elements of perfection.”
     • “Move entirely out of the past. It is gone, and you have nothing whatever more to do with it. If it has been unworthy, it should be abandoned for something worthy. If it has been good, it should inspire us to things yet better.”
      • “It is possible for us to have all the semblance of life in our religious profession, in our orthodoxy of belief, in our morality, in our Christian achievements, in our conduct, in our devotion to the principles of right and truth, and yet not have life in us.”
     • Discoursing upon one’s prayer to be “clean all through”: “It is to this we are called each New Year, for example, each birthday. We are summoned to leave our routine Christian life, the commonplace godliness that has so long satisfied us, and turn northward.”
      • “The true life within us should become diviner continually in its beauty, purer, stronger, sweeter, even when the physical life is wasting.”
     • “The hard things are not meant to mar our life – they are meant to make it all the braver, the worthier, the nobler. Adversities and misfortunes are meant to sweeten our spirits, not to make them sour and bitter.”
     • “We cannot fulfill our Master’s requirements for us as Christians unless we are ready for self-forgetful devotion to service.”