Horton Quotes & Sayings

In essence, don't wait for the host to move you to the children's table. — Michael S. Horton

Death is the final wake-up call. — Douglas Horton

The gospel is not something you can just tack on to another worldview. On the contrary, it makes you rethink everything from the ground up, from the center out. — Michael S. Horton

Remember only the good, the bad will never forget you. — Douglas Horton

The mind can't delete what the heart won't let go of. — Peggy Toney Horton

To desire to be an artist is to desire to be a complete man in respect to some one function, to realize yourself utterly. A man is a poor thing who is content not to be an artist. — Charles Horton Cooley

God's downward descent to us in grace reversed by our upward ascent in pragmatic enthusiasm, we are increasingly becoming a sheep without a Shepherd - and all in the name of mission. Instead of churching the unchurched, we are well on our way to even unchurching the churched. — Michael S. Horton

Kindliness seems to exist primarily as an animal instinct, so deeply rooted that mental degeneracy, which works from the top down,does not destroy it until the mind sinks to the lower grades of idiocy. — Charles Horton Cooley

And where there are shadows, there is light, Liebchen. — J.W. Horton

Tip of the day- Don't smash your face! — Tony Horton

Death is feared as birth is forgotten. — Douglas Horton

Works are witnesses to, not the basis of, our right standing before God. — Michael S. Horton

To awake from death is to die in peace. — Douglas Horton

The key to maturity is time and community. Discernment and godly wisdom develop in a community that spans generations. The church is called to be this place where the [God's] Spirit uses normal patterns and rhythms of the Christian life in a community, so that we may bear fruit like a well-watered tree. Despite common appearances, the church is the place where God's new creation is coming into existence and being sustained by the Spirit like a great vineyard. — Michael Horton

Everything that the Bible identifies as sin and our nature recognizes as such is something essentially good gone wrong. More precisely, it is something God has made that we have corrupted. Augustine defined the essence of sin as being curved in on ourselves — Michael S. Horton

We are passive receivers of the gift of salvation, but we are thereby rendered active worshipers in a life of thanksgiving that is exhibited chiefly in loving service to our neighbors. — Michael S. Horton

What could be more exciting than an October day? It's your birthday, Fourth of July and Christmas all rolled into one. — Peggy Toney Horton

Many Christians wonder if it is good for children to have them in the regular service. After all, they cannot understand what is going on. But imagine saying that you're not going to have toddlers sit at the table for meals with the family because they do not understand the rituals or manners. Or keeping infants isolated in a nursery with nothing but mobiles and squeaky toys because they cannot understand the dialogue of the rest of the family around them. We know, instinctively, that it's important for our children to acquire language and the ordinary rituals of their family environment in order to become mature. — Michael S. Horton

Being "ordinary" means that we reject the idolatry of pursuing excellence for selfish reasons. We aren't digging wells in Africa to prove our worth or value. We aren't serving in the soup kitchen or engaging in spiritual disciplines because we long to be unique, radical, and different. When we do these things for selfish reasons, God becomes a tool for winning our lifetime achievement award. Our neighbors become instruments in the crafting of our sense of meaning, impact, and identity. What we do for God is really for ourselves. — Michael S. Horton

The chief misery of the decline of the faculties, and a main cause of the irritability that often goes with it, is evidently the isolation, the lack of customary appreciation and influence, which only the rarest tact and thoughtfulness on the part of others can alleviate. — Charles Horton Cooley

Why do you have a gun in your suitcase? — Elizabeth Horton-Newton

Iciness enshrouds my body - a foretaste of death's chill. — Peggy Toney Horton

Institutions - government, churches, industries, and the like - have properly no other function than to contribute to human freedom; and in so far as they fail, on the whole, to perform this function, they are wrong and need reconstruction. — Charles Horton Cooley

I can do things at 45, not because I can do a bunch of pull-ups, it's because I do Yoga! — Tony Horton

Sending his emissaries to sinners rather than sinners trying to make their way to God by their own skill, cleverness, imagination, or efforts. God has already accommodated himself to our weakness. He is not far from us, if we will but attend to the ministry of the Word. Therefore, we must resist "the sky's the limit" when it comes to accommodation. The Bible must be read, sung, and preached in the common language of the people, but when we introduce skits, musicals, and puppet shows on the basis of wanting to bring God down to the level of the people, they can only conclude that God has not already accommodated himself sufficiently through the ministry of the Word. — Michael S. Horton

The actual God of many Americans ... is simply the current of American life. — Charles Horton Cooley

You pursue excellence when you care about something other than your own excellence. — Michael S. Horton

When I cease to enjoy what I'm doing, then I shall do something mundane ~ like clean my house. — Peggy Toney Horton

Russell Brand has announced that he plans to write a series of children's books. First up: 'Horton Hears a Heroin Dealer.' — Joan Rivers

Whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul, I shall recall the memory of warm, sunny, late summer afternoons like this one, and be comforted greatly. — Peggy Toney Horton

How was church today?" In most times and places of the church, this would have been an unlikely question. In fact, the hearer might have been confused. Why? Because it's like asking how the meals at home have been this week — Michael S. Horton

No one will be offended if we tell them that they are good people who could be a little better. The offense comes when we tell them that they - and we - are ungodly people who cannot impress God or escape his tribunal. Until our preaching of the law has exposed our hearts and God's holiness at that profound level, our hearers will never flee to Christ alone for safety even if they come to us for advice. — Michael Horton

Burning desire is the eternal flame. — Douglas Horton

We cannot, therefore, blame the courts, public schools, media, or government for our own theological unfaithfulness. We are the ones - the prophets and priests - who have contributed to this "Ichabod," this departure of God's glory in our time. Only by returning to sound, effective God-centered preaching and teaching can we restore the confidence not only of Christians themselves in God's greatness, but of an unbelieving world that is more apathetic toward our benign, helpless, happy deity than hostile. — Michael S. Horton

Baptism is not only a sacrament of our union with Christ; it is also a sacrament of our communion as the body of Christ. — Michael Horton

Our weaknesses are an opportunity for God to show his strength. — Michael Horton

As the pretensions of modernity are unmasked today, it is a good time for us to recover our nerve, "always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks [us] for a reason for the hope that is in [us]" (1Pe 3:15). By breaking into our history, sharing our history, and transforming that history from the inside out, God has indeed made himself the object of our knowledge. — Michael S. Horton

My ears hurt as if being tugged upon by pliers - yet I welcome the pain, as it heralds the completion of my journey to reunite with my Welsh ancestors. I hear them clearly now:
We be *Tylwyth Teg*, the Fair Folk. We be your kinsfolk. *Mae ein gwaed yn eich gwaed*. Our blood is your blood. We be the Dea-kinsmen. Magick is our way. — Horton Deakins

Only when we start with the gospel - the most controversial point of Christian faith - are we ready to talk about who God is and how we know him. — Michael S. Horton

The triune God is the sun on this horizon, and we orient ourselves to this sun, not the other way around. Instead of starting with ourselves - our plans, purposes, dreams, and accomplishments - and seeking to learn how God can serve our goals and desires, we begin with God, who is life, and who freely created, sustains, and directs history to his ends. — Michael S. Horton

One of the great reasons for the popularity of strikes is that they give the suppressed self a sense of power. For once the human tool knows itself a man, able to stand up and speak a word or strike a blow. — Charles Horton Cooley

To persuade is more trouble than to dominate, and the powerful seldom take this trouble if they can avoid it. — Charles Horton Cooley

Ah, September! You are the doorway to the season that awakens my soul ... but I must confess that I love you only because you are a prelude to my beloved October. — Peggy Toney Horton

A talent somewhat above mediocrity, shrewd and not too sensitive, is more likely to rise in the world than genius. — Charles Horton Cooley

Gymnastics is definitely my job, but the great thing about that is I love my job. — Jonathan Horton

If you love something let it go free. If it doesn't come back, you never had it. If it comes back, love it forever. — Douglas Horton

Excuses are a list of self imposed obstacles that prevent you from having a better life. — Tony Horton

I feel like I'm twenty again. — Elizabeth Horton-Newton

The Next Big Thing is Christ's return. Until then, we live in hope that changes our ordinary lives here and now. — Michael S. Horton

Our families, including us, do not need more quality time, but more quantity time. — Michael S. Horton

When we hate a person, with an intimate, imaginative, human hatred, we enter into his mind, or sympathize
any strong interest will arouse the imagination and create some sort of sympathy. — Charles Horton Cooley

Like a dying ember, the child in us can flare up again when we least expect it.. — Peggy Toney Horton

When I was 22, I finally reached that huge goal. Now I'm going for another one. It's so satisfying. It's something that I worked for for so long, and just to know that I got it feels so great. — Jonathan Horton

You don't get off easy, you just get to finish faster! — Tony Horton

You can padlock a building, but you can't padlock an idea. — Myles Horton

Another big difference about not being in college: In college, you're on the team, you're competing for the NCAA - luckily I had a full scholarship and I was taken care of - then all of a sudden you're a pro and you've got to take care of yourself. I'm gonna keep doing the same thing, keep training, and hopefully everything works out. — Jonathan Horton

On played the Mayor's daughters in Horton Hears a Who: I had never done animation, so I thought it would be cool to try something different. — Selena Gomez

A line I like to use is, "Every day is training. Every day of life is a pursuit of perfection." — Jonathan Horton

We've forgotten that God showers his extraordinary gifts through ordinary means of grace, loves us through ordinary fellow image bearers, and sends us out into the world to love and serve others in ordinary callings. — Michael S. Horton

The idea of freedom is quite in accord with a general, though vague, sentiment among us; it is an idea of fair play, of giving everyone a chance; and nothing arouses more general and active indignation among our people than the belief that some one or some class is not getting a fair chance. — Charles Horton Cooley

If youth is the period of hero-worship, so also is it true that hero-worship, more than anything else, perhaps, gives one the sense of youth. To admire, to expand one's self, to forget the rut, to have a sense of newness and life and hope, is to feel young at any time of life. — Charles Horton Cooley

Since freedom is not a fixed thing that can be grasped and held once for all, but a growth, any particular society, such as our own, always appears partly free and partly unfree. In so far as it favors, in every child, the development of his highest possibilities, it is free, but where it falls short of this it is not. — Charles Horton Cooley

Do your best and forget the rest. — Tony Horton

As we discussed earlier, the gospel is "folly to Gentiles" (1Co 1:23) not only because of its message (namely, a crucified Messiah crowned King of kings in his bodily resurrection as the beginning of the new creation) but because of its very form. — Michael S. Horton

We are not saved by sound church order and discipline but we are served by it. — Michael Horton

God uses means. Natural laws and human ingenuity are his tools, even when we do not see his hand. He didn't just establish these laws and then step away. As contemporary science reminds us, apparent chaos is ubiquitous. Things should fall apart, but they don't. Not for one moment could the cosmos sustain itself apart from the Father's loving word, which he speaks in his Son and by his Spirit. — Michael S. Horton

This question lies at the heart of the debates over justification: Is the promissory covenant subsumed under (or absorbed into) the covenants of law, resulting in a covenatal nomism? Or are the two covenant always distinguished and, on the point of justification, to be treated in fact as antithetical means of inheriting eternal life? P.22 — Michael S. Horton

The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity. — Douglas Horton

No one is charismatic. Someone becomes charismatic in history, socially. The question for me is once again the problem of humility. If the leader discovers that he is becoming charismatic not because of his or her qualities but because mainly he or she is being able to express the expectations of a great mass of people, then he or she is much more of a translator of the aspirations and dreams of the people, instead of being the creator of the dreams. In expressing the dreams, he or she is recreating these dreams. If he or she is humble, I think that the danger of power would diminish. — Myles Horton

By recognizing a favorable opinion of yourself, and taking pleasure in it, you in a measure give yourself and your peace of mind into the keeping of another, of whose attitude you can never be certain. You have a new source of doubt and apprehension. — Charles Horton Cooley

It is nothing new when young people want churches to pander to them. What is new is the extent to which churches have obliged. — Michael S. Horton

Each New Year, we have before us a brand new book containing 365 blank pages. Let us fill them with all the forgotten things from last year - the words we forgot to say, the love we forgot to show, and the charity we forgot to offer. — Peggy Toney Horton

As C. S. Lewis pointed out, it is not that our desires are too strong (as Stoicism would have it), but that they are too weak. 3 The irony of our lives is that we demand the ephemeral, momentary glories of this fading age, too easily amused and seduced by the trivial, when ultimate joy is held out to us. — Michael S. Horton

The imaginations which people have of one another are the solid facts of society. — Charles Horton Cooley

The need to exert power, when thwarted in the open fields of life, is the more likely to assert itself in trifles. — Charles Horton Cooley

In an economy of grace, there is enough to go around. The Father's love and generosity are not scarce. His table is brimming with luxurious fare. That is why we invite those who cannot repay us. After all, it is not our table, but his. — Michael S. Horton

If you want to be an athlete, there's no way around it: You have to go to the gym. You can't Google your way to it. — Michael Horton

It was the storm that would forever change the course of human destiny. — Jeff W. Horton

We ought to care for those closest to us in terms of relatedness. After our immediate family, we ought to pursue our calling diligently as employees and provide just incentives (perhaps through profit-sharing) and reasonable care for our workers as employers. We should seek the wisdom of teachers and elders in society and look to them for leadership, while rejecting their folly when it is discerned. We must put our children and their education, both at home and in school, before our own entertainment, pleasure, and success. We ought not to tolerate insolence or haughtiness in them; nor ought we to punish them too severely, but should lead them as good teachers, by example and patient instruction. — Michael S. Horton

Our individual lives cannot, generally, be works of art unless the social order is also. — Charles Horton Cooley

How was the sermon?" "Was it a good service?" Same blank stare from the ancestors. In those days, churches didn't have to be rockin' it, nobody expected the preacher to hit it out of the park, and the service was, well, a service. — Michael S. Horton

The Next Big Thing is not another Pentecost or another apostle or another political or social cause. It is Christ's return. — Michael S. Horton

Outreach begins with a well-taught laity, stirred by the great truths of Scripture. — Michael S. Horton

All of our faith and practice arise out of the drama of Scripture, the "big story" that traces the plot of history from creation to consummation, with Christ as its Alpha and Omega, beginning and end. And out of the throbbing verbs of this unfolding drama God reveals stable nouns - doctrines. From what God does in history we are taught certain things about who he is and what it means to be created in his image, fallen, and redeemed, renewed, and glorified in union with Christ. As the Father creates his church, in his Son and by his Spirit, we come to realize what this covenant community is and what it means to belong to it; what kind of future is promised to us in Christ, and how we are to live here and now in the light of it all. The drama and the doctrine provoke us to praise and worship - doxology - and together these three coordinates give us a new way of living in the world as disciples. — Michael S. Horton

To serve our earthly superiors is to serve our heavenly Superior; therefore, our attention, efficiency, and diligence are to be motivated not by whether the boss shows enough respect for our work, but by the fact that God our heavenly Father is pleased when we help build a good car or house, use our time at work efficiently, or read and pray with our family. We can endure many of the frustrations of working conditions when we realize that the dignity of our work is measured by God's satisfaction, not merely by our employer's. — Michael S. Horton

Turn off your mind, and focus on what you've got to do - task at hand. — Tony Horton

A church that is deeply aware of it's misery and nakedness before a holy God will cling tenaciously to an all sufficient Savior, while one that is self-confident and relatively unaware of its inherent sinfulness will reach for religion and morality whenever it seems convenient — Michael Horton

Early on, I said to myself that I would like to write a kind of moral and spiritual history of a place. It sounds a little pretentious, I know. But that's really what I set for myself. — Horton Foote

No matter what you do if it isn't genuine it's not worth doing, if it isn't meant with good heart it's not worth saying, and if it's a darkness around you perhaps it's not worth remembering. — E.E.D. Horton

I'm no perfect gymnast. I want to go out and eat junk food, or I maybe don't sleep as much as I should, or some days I'll leave the gym and think, "Maybe I should have worked a little harder. Maybe I'm not as tired as I need to be." Every day you push a little harder, eat a little better, maybe go to bed a little earlier. — Jonathan Horton

No one can drive us crazy unless we give them the keys. — Douglas Horton

The critic said, but don't you feel awkward about biting the hand that feeds you? I said no, I enjoy just gnawing it up to the shoulder. — Myles Horton

The Nazis victimized some people for what they did, some for what they refused to do, some for what they were, and some for the fact that they were. — John Horton Conway

Being sorry is the highest act of selfishness, seeing value only after discarding it. — Douglas Horton

So get on with life, with love, with service - fully realizing that God already has the perfect service he requires of us in his Son and now our neighbor needs our imperfect help. — Michael S. Horton

There's very few of us who are able to be successful, which is why so many guys out of college can't continue the sport. It's unfortunate because there's just no financial backing. I've been very blessed with sponsors. — Jonathan Horton

Faith in our associates is part of our faith in God. — Charles Horton Cooley

The fact that makes sin so utterly sinful is that it is ultimately against God. — Michael S. Horton

The idealist's program of political or economic reform may be impracticable, absurd, demonstrably ridiculous; but it can never be successfully opposed merely by pointing out that this is the case. A negative opposition cannot be wholly effectual: there must be a competing idealism; something must be offered that is not only less objectionable but more desirable. — Charles Horton Cooley

Money is good, love is wealth. — Douglas Horton