William Booth Quotes & Sayings

I must assert in the most unqualified way that it is primarily and mainly for the sake of saving the soul that I seek the salvation of the body. — William Booth

Go straight for souls, and go for the worst. — William Booth

Don't instill, or allow anybody else to instill into the hearts of your girls the idea that marriage is the chief end of life. If you do, don't be surprised if they get engaged to the first empty, useless fool they come across. — William Booth

You cannot warm the hearts of people with God's love if they have an empty stomach and cold feet. — William Booth

It is against stupidity in every shape and form that we have to wage our eternal battle. But how can we wonder at the want of sense on the part of those who have had no advantages, when we see such plentiful absence of that commodity on the part of those who have had all the advantages? — William Booth

I am for the world's salvation, I will quarrel with no means that promises help. — William Booth

Most Christians would like to send their recruits to Bible college for five years. I would like to send them to hell for five minutes. That would do more than anything else to prepare them for a lifetime of compassionate ministry. — William Booth

I am not waiting for a move of God, I am a move of God! — William Booth

The chief danger of the 20th century will be religion without the Holy Spirit, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven without hell. — William Booth

You must pray with all your might. That does not mean saying your prayers, or sitting gazing about in church or chapel with eyes wide open while someone else says them for you. It means fervent, effectual, untiring wrestling with God. This kind of prayer be sure the devil and the world and your own indolent, unbelieving nature will oppose. They will pour water on this flame. — William Booth

Work as if everything depended upon work and pray as if everything depended upon prayer. — William Booth

Some men's passion is for gold. some men's passion is for art. some men's passion is for fame. my passion is for souls — William Booth

The chief danger that confronts the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, heaven without hell. — William Booth

We must wake ourselves up! Or somebody else will take our place, and bear our cross, and thereby rob us of our crown. — William Booth

There appears to be a deeply embedded uneasiness in our culture about throwing away junk that can be reused. Perhaps, in part, it is guilt about consumption. Perhaps it also feels unnatural. Mother Nature doesn't throw stuff away. Dead trees, birds, beetles and elephants are pretty quickly recycled by the system. — William Booth

There are different kinds of fire; there is false fire. No one knows this better than we do, but we are not such fools as to refuse good bank notes because there are false ones in circulation; and although we see here and there manifestations of what appears to us to be nothing more than mere earthly fire, we none the less prize and value, and seek for the genuine fire which comes from the altar of the Lord. — William Booth

God loves with a great love the man whose heart is bursting with a passion for the impossible. — William Booth

To get a man soundly saved it is not enough to put on him a pair of new breeches, to give him regular work, or even to give him a University education. These things are all outside a man, and if the inside remains unchanged you have wasted your labor. You must in some way or other graft upon the man's nature a new nature, which has in it the element of the Divine. — William Booth

If I thought I could win one more soul to the Lord by walking on my head and playing the tambourine with my toes, I'd learn how! — William Booth

Not called!' did you say?
'Not heard the call,' I think you should say.
Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father's house and bid their brothers and sisters and servants and masters not to come there. Then look Christ in the face - whose mercy you have professed to obey - and tell Him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish His mercy to the world. — William Booth

If you want to change the future, then you are going to have to trouble the present. — William Booth

But what is the use of preaching the Gospel to men whose whole attention is concentrated upon a mad, desperate struggle to keep themselves alive? — William Booth

Faith and works should travel side by side, step answering to step, like the legs of men walking. First faith, and then works; and then faith again, and then works again
until they can scarcely distinguish which is the one and which is the other. — William Booth

Will you go to His feet and place yourself entirely at His disposal? — William Booth

While women weep, as they do now,
I'll fight
While little children go hungry, as they do now,
I'll fight
While men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now,
I'll fight
While there is a drunkard left,
While there is a poor lost girl upon the streets,
While there remains one dark soul without the light of God,
I'll fight-I'll fight to the very end! — William Booth

Let the business of the world take care of itself ... My business is to get the world saved; if this involves the standing still of the looms and the shutting up of the factories, and the staying of the sailing of the ships, let them all stand still. When we have got everybody converted they can go on again, and we shall be able to keep things going then by working half time and have the rest to spend in loving one another and worshipping God. — William Booth

I will tell you the secret: God has had all that there was of me. There have been men with greater brains than I, even with greater opportunities, but from the day I got the poor of London on my heart and caught a vision of what Jesus Christ could do with me and them, on that day I made up my mind that God should have all of William Booth there was. And if there is anything of power in the Salvation Army, it is because God has had all the adoration of my heart, all the power of my will, and all the influence of my life. — William Booth

It is impossible to comfort men's hearts with the love of God when their feet are perishing with cold. — William Booth

The greatness of the man's power is the measure of his surrender. — William Booth

Without excuse and self-consideration of health or limb or life, true soldiers fight, live to fight, love the thickest of the fight, and die in the midst of it. — William Booth

The tendency of fire is to go out; watch the fire on the altar of your heart. Anyone who has tended a fireplace fire knows that it needs to be stirred up occasionally. — William Booth

We have to recognise, that the gin-palace, like many other evils, although as poisonous, is still a natural outgrowth of our social conditions. The tap-room in many cases is the poor man's only parlour. Many a man takes to beer, not from the love of beer, but from a natural craving for the light, warmth, company, and comfort which is thrown in along with the beer, and which he cannot get excepting by buying beer. Reformers will never get rid of the drink shop until they can outbid it in the subsidiary attractions which it offers to its customers. — William Booth

There are men so incorrigibly lazy that no inducement that you can offer will tempt them to work; so eaten up by vice that virtue is abhorrent to them, and so inveterately dishonest that theft is to them a master passion. When a human being has reached that stage, there is only one course that can be rationally pursued. Sorrowfully, but remorselessly, it must be recognized that he has become lunatic, morally demented, incapable of self-government, and that upon him, therefore, must be passed the sentence of permanent seclusion from a world in which he is not fit to be at large. — William Booth

Good cookery is not an extravagance but an economy, and many a tasty dish is made by our Continental friends out of materials which would be discarded indignantly by the poorest tramp in Whitechapel. — William Booth

Before we go to our knees to receive the Baptism of Fire, let me beg of you to see to it that your souls are in harmony with the will and purpose of the Holy Spirit whom you seek. — William Booth

Why should the devil have all the best tunes? — William Booth

There is a day coming when there will be a religion without repentance, a salvation without the Holy Ghost, a Heaven without Hell. — William Booth

The profession of a prostitute is the only career in which the maximum income is paid to the newest apprentice. — William Booth

Look well to the fire of your souls, for the tendency of fire is to go out. — William Booth

A man's labor is not only his capital but his life. When it passes it returns never more. To utilize it, to prevent its wasteful squandering, to enable the poor man to bank it up for use hereafter, this surely is one of the most urgent tasks before civilization. — William Booth

Your days at the most cannot be very long, so use them to the best of your ability for the glory of God and the benefit of your generation. — William Booth

Secular music, do you say, belongs to the devil? Does it? Well, if it did I would plunder him for it, for he has no right to a single note of the whole seven. Every note, and every strain, and every harmony is divine, and belongs to us. — William Booth

Look! Don't be deceived by appearances - men and things are not what they seem. All who are not on the rock are in the sea! — William Booth

I must go, not only to those who need me, but to those who need me most. — William Booth

Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. — William Booth

If Moses had operated through committees the Israelites never would have got across the Red Sea. — William Booth

Can we go too fast in saving souls? If anyone still wants a reply, let him ask the lost souls in Hell. — William Booth

Some of my best men are women! — William Booth