Elisabeth Elliot was a Christian author and speaker who lived from December 21, 1926, to June 15, 2015. In 1956, Jim Elliot, her first husband, was killed while attempting to establish missionary contact with the Auca people of eastern Ecuador. She later served the tribe members who killed her husband for two years as a missionary. After spending many years in South America, she returned to the United States and quickly rose to fame as a speaker and author of more than twenty books.
100 Elisabeth Elliot Quotes
- “Failure means nothing now, only that it taught me life.”
2. “Maturity starts with the willingness to give oneself.”
3. “Loneliness is a required course for leadership.”
4. “Faith does not eliminate questions. But faith knows where to take them.”
5. “There is nothing worth living for, unless it is worth dying for.”
6. “It is today for which we are responsible. God still owns tomorrow.”
7. “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
8. “The fact that I am a woman does not make me a different kind of Christian, but the fact that I am a Christian makes me a different kind of woman.”
9. “By trying to grab fulfillment everywhere, we find it nowhere.”
10. “Whatever dark tunnel we may be called upon to travel through, God has been there.”
11. “Faith’s most severe tests come not when we see nothing, but when we see a stunning array of evidence that seems to prove our faith vain.”
12. “It is in our acceptance of what is given that God gives Himself.”
13. “Some of God’s greatest mercies are in his refusals. He says no in order that he may, in some way we cannot imagine, say yes.”
Elisabeth Elliot Quotes on Prayer
14. “One does not surrender a life in an instant. That which is lifelong can only be surrendered in a lifetime.”
15. “She is free not by disobeying the rules but by obeying them.”
16. “Teach me to treat all that comes to me with peace of soul and with firm conviction that Your will governs all.”
17. “Marriage teaches us that even the most intimate human companionship cannot satisfy the deepest places of the heart. Our hearts are lonely, ‘til they rest in Him.’”
18. “Of one thing I am perfectly sure: God’s story never ends with ‘ashes.”
19. “To love God is to love His will. It is to wait quietly for life to be measured by One who knows us through and through. It is to be content with His timing and His wise appointment.”
20. “A disordered life speaks loudly of disorder in the soul.”
21. “The will of God is never exactly what you expect it to be. It may seem to be much worse, but in the end it’s going to be a lot better and a lot bigger.”
22. “Don’t dig up in doubt what you planted in faith.”
23. “Stand true to your calling to be a man. Real women will always be relieved and grateful when men are willing to be men”
24. “Some day, even you will see that there’s sense in this. Your suffering is never for nothing.”
Elisabeth Elliot Quotes on Discipline
25. “When the will of God crosses the will of man, somebody has to die.”
26. “Nothing that comes to me is devoid of divine purposes.”
27. “God withholds blessing only in wisdom, never in spite or aloofness.”
28. “The world cries for men who are strong; strong in conviction, strong to lead, to stand, to suffer.”
27. “A little leavening of dissatisfied temper will spread through a group and change outlooks.”
28. “Christ is sufficient. We do not need ‘support groups’ for each and every separate tribulation.”
29. “When obedience to God contradicts what I think will give me pleasure, let me ask myself if I love Him.”
30. “Freedom begins way back. It begins not with doing what you want but with doing what you ought – that is, with discipline.”
31. “Possibly His very withholding is in order that the boy may learn, at this crucial juncture in his life, to turn to God in prayer for a deeply felt need.”
32. “The gate is narrow but not the life. The gate opens out into largeness of life.”
Elisabeth Elliot Quotes About Life
33. “Stand true to your calling to be a man. Real women will always be relieved and grateful when men are willing to be men.”
34. “The same God who urges us to obey also furnishes the desire as well as the strength to do so. Our part is to exercise our wills.”
35. “The life of faith is lived one day at a time, and it has to be lived, not always looked forward to as though the real living were around the next corner.”
36. “The man whose eye is single for the glory of Another can be trusted.”
37. “Let not him who accepts light in an instant despise him who gropes months in the shadows.”
38. “The world looks for happiness through self-assertion. The Christian knows that joy is found in self-abandonment. ‘If a man will let himself be lost for My sake,’ Jesus said, ‘he will find his true self.”
39. “The Cross means suffering. Suffering’s meaning is to be learned through the Cross.”
40. “Is it more important to understand than to obey? Is it more important to me to know than to believe?”
41. “Love does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it is glad with all good men when truth prevails.”
42. “Fear arises when we imagine that everything depends on us.”
Famous Elisabeth Elliot Quotes
43. “The husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the Head of the Church. And the wife is there to bless and support and help him.”
44. “Matters of the heart still can never put us beyond His love and redemption.”
45. “The secret is Christ in me, not in a different set of circumstances.”
46. “Does our faith rest on having prayers answered as we think they should be answered, or does it rest on that mighty love that went down into death for us?”
47. “Let not him who accepts light in an instant despise him who gropes months in shadows.”
48. “You can never lose what you have offered to Christ.”
49. “Holiness presupposes constant growth through an ongoing relationship with the One who has called us to be holy.”
50. “Sometimes when we are called to obey, the fear does not subside and we are expected to move against the fear. One must choose to do it afraid.”
51. “Love is not anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own ideas.”
52. “If men and women were surer of their God there would be more genuine manliness, womanliness, and godliness in the world, and a whole lot less fear of each other.”
53. “He puts those tears into His bottle, for He gave you the love that brings those tears and He made you so you could cry, and you cast it all on the rock that never moves.”
54. “Women still dream and hope, pin their emotions on some man who doesn’t reciprocate, and end up in confusion.”
Elizabeth Elliott Quotes You Can Learn A Lot From
55. “Restlessness and impatience change nothing except our peace and joy. Peace does not dwell in outward things, but in the heart prepared to wait trustfully and quietly on Him who has all things safely in His hands.”
56. “The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances.”
57. “If your goal is purity of heart, be prepared to be thought very odd.”
58. “Worship is not an experience. Worship is an act, and this takes discipline. We are to worship ”in spirit and in truth.” Never mind about the feelings. We are to worship in spite of them.”
59. “Young people sometimes say to me, ‘I’ll just die if the Lord calls me to be a missionary,’ or words to that effect.”
60. “Learning to pray is learning to trust the wisdom, the power, and the love of our Heavenly Father, always so far beyond our dreams.”
61. “We never know what God has up His sleeve. You never know what might happen; you only know what you have to do now.”
62. “Worry is the antithesis of trust. You simply cannot do both. They are mutually exclusive.”
Positive Elizabeth Elliott Quotes
63. “The deepest things that I have learned in my own life have come from the deepest suffering. And out of the deepest waters and the hottest fires have come the deepest things that I know about God.”
64. “No marriage can survive without forgiveness. Marriage is a long term commitment between two sinners.”
65. “Is the distinction between living for Christ and dying for Him so great? Is not the second the logical conclusion of the first?”
66. “God has promised to supply all our needs. What we don’t have now, we don’t need now.”
67. “Faith is not a feeling. Faith is willed obedience in action.”
68. “Leave it all in the Hands that were wounded for you”
69. “isn’t the problems that determine our destiny. It’s how we respond.”
70. “Cruelty and wrong are not the greatest forces in the world. There is nothing eternal in them. Only love is eternal.”
71. “God never denies us our heart’s desire, except to give us something better.”
72. “The person to whom I am carrying a plate of food is someone whom it is an honor to serve. For he has been invited to eat and drink at the table of a King.”
Elizabeth Elliott Quotes TO Live By
73. “By trying to grab fulfillment everywhere, we find it nowhere.”
74. “Is the distinction between living for Christ and dying for Him so great? Is not the second the logical conclusion of the first?”
75. “Life becomes not only far simpler, but surprisingly joyful and free.”
76. “The gate is narrow but not the life. The gate opens out into largeness of life.”
77. “A woman ought to be honest with a man who shows interest in her.”
78. “A wedding is a celebration of marriage, of an institution ordained by God at the creation of man, to be entered into with solemnity as well as with joy.”
79. “The Devil has made it his business to monopolize on three elements—noise, hurry, and crowds. He will not allow quietness.”
80. “If your goal is purity of heart, be prepared to be thought very odd.”
81. “Of all things difficult to rule, none were more so than my will and affections.”
82. “Fear arises when we imagine that everything depends on us.”
83. “The fact that I am a woman does not make me a different kind of Christian, but the fact that I am a Christian does make me a different kind of woman.”
84. “While I disparage the exercise of building one’s self-esteem, I indulge in it every time I imagine myself free from the defects I perceive in someone else.”
85. “Things which sound like platitudes become vital, living and powerful when you have to learn them in dark tunnels.”
Inspirational Elizabeth Elliott Quotes
86. “Whoever is ashamed of marriage is also ashamed of being thought a man, or else he thinks that he can make himself better than God made him.”
87. “Nothing that comes to me is void of divine purpose. In seeking to see the whole with God’s eyes, we can find the peace which human events so often destroy.”
88. “When the time comes to die, make sure that all you have to do is die!”
89. “God is God. Because He is God, He is worthy of my trust and obedience. I will find rest nowhere but in His holy will that is unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what he is up to.”
90. “By trying to grab fulfillment everywhere, we find it nowhere.”
91. “There is, in fact, no redemptive work done anywhere without suffering.”
92. “He is always doing something—the very best thing, the thing we ourselves would certainly choose if we knew the end from the beginning. He is at work to bring us to our full glory.”
93. “There is no hope for any of us until we confess our helplessness . Then we are in a position to receive grace,”
94. “Learning to pray is learning to trust the wisdom, the power, and the love of our Heavenly Father, always so far beyond our dreams.”
95. “You are loved with an everlasting love, and underneath are the everlasting arms.”
96. “We cannot give our hearts to God and keep our bodies to ourselves.”
97. “To me, a lady is not frilly, flouncy, flippant, frivolous, and fluff-brained, but she is gentle, she is gracious, she is godly, and she is giving. You and I have the gift of femininity. The more womanly we are, the more manly men will be, and the more God is glorified. Be women, be only women, be real women in obedience to God.”
98. “There is always enough time to do the will of God. For that we can never say, ‘I don’t have enough time.’ When we find ourselves frantic and frustrated, harried, harassed, and hassled, it is a sign that we are running on our own schedule, not God’s.”
99. “She is free not by disobeying the rules but by obeying them.”
100. “It would seem that unless we see through and beyond the physical, we shall not even see the physical as we ought to see it, as the very vehicle for the glory of God.”
Additional Read: 9 Things You Should Know About Elisabeth Elliot