Wills Quotes

1. "Honestly, I cannot understand what people mean when they talk about the freedom of the human will. I have a feeling, for instance, that I will something or other; but what relation this has with freedom I cannot understand at all. I feel that I will to light my pipe and I do it; but how can I connect this up with the idea of freedom? What is behind the act of willing to light the pipe? Another act of willing? Schopenhauer once said: Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will (Man can do what he will but he cannot will what he wills)."
Author: Albert Einstein

2. "Harness the imagination: Sometimes curbing her, sometimes giving her rein, for she is the whole of happiness. She sets to rights even the understanding. She sinks to tyranny, not satisfied with mere faith, but demanding works. Thus she becomes the mistress of life itself. She does so with pleasure or with pain, according to the nonsense presented. She makes people contented or discontented with themselves. By dangling before some nothing but the specter of their eternal suffering, she becomes the scourge of these fools. To others she shows nothing but fortune and romance, while merrily laughing. Of all this she is capable if not held in check by the wisest of wills."
Author: Baltasar Gracián

3. "Verse 12 [of Ex. 12) tells us that the judgment of Yahweh is not only on the Egyptians but also on their deities. This is probably an allusion to the fact that Egyptians would often pray for the safety of their firstborn, particularly firstborn sons, as was the custom in many ancient patriarchal cultures. The death of the firstborn would be seen as a sign of the anger or perhaps the impotence of their gods. This is worth pondering when it comes to the death of Jesus as God's only begotten, or beloved, Son. Would Jesus' contemporaries have assumed his death was a manifestation of God's wrath? Probably so. In any event, Yahweh is showing his superiority over the spirits behind the pagan deities, and thus we should not overlook the supernatural struggle that is implied to be behind the contest of wills between Moses and Pharaoh."
Author: Ben Witherington III

4. "God may not always will for us to be physically healed in these earthly bodies or tangibly prosperous, but He always wills for us to be free from strongholds."
Author: Beth Moore

5. "A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction to a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day."
Author: Bill Watterson

6. "I'm from the Bob Wills and the Little Richard school of music. Bob Wills did what the hell he thought, Little Richard did what he thought, and those were my big influences."
Author: Buck Owens

7. "Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself"
Author: C.S. Lewis

8. "The writer who possesses the creative gift of fantasy owns something of which he is not always master; something that, at times, strangely wills and works for itself."
Author: Charlotte Brontë

9. "No one is more miserable than the person who wills everything and can do nothing."
Author: Claudius

10. "This might just be two people in a queue, but this has become a mighty battle of wills - a war between all that is right and all that is wrong - and it is I and I alone standing at the gates between one minor slight in the queue-munity, and outright supermarket-based anarchy. In many ways, I am doing this for you."
Author: Danny Wallace

11. "The poem has a social effect of some kind whether or not the poet wills it to have. It has a kenetic force, it sets in motion...elements in the reader that would otherwise remain stagnant."
Author: Denise Levertov

12. "I have eavesdropped with impunity on the lives of people who do not exist. I have peeped shamelessly into hearts and bathroom closets. I have leaned over shoulders to follow the movements of quills as they write love letters, wills and confessions. I have watched as lovers love, murderers murder and children play their make-believe. Prisons and brothels have opened their doors to me; galleons and camel trains have transported me across sea and sand; centuries and continents have fallen away at my bidding. I have spied upon the misdeeds of the mighty and witnessed the nobility of the meek. I have bent so low over sleepers in their beds that they might have felt my breath on their faces. I have seen their dreams."
Author: Diane Setterfield

13. "Marriage is more than your love for each other. It has a higher dignity and power, for it is God's holy ordinance, through which He wills to perpetuate the human race till the end of time. In your love you see only your two selves in the world, but in marriage you are a link in the chain of the generations, which God causes to come and to pass away to His glory, and calls into His kingdom. In your love, you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsability towards the world and mankind. Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal - it is a status, an office. Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the king, so it is marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sight of God and man."
Author: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

14. "See that the mind is honest, first; the rest may follow or not as God wills. [That] the fundamental treason to the mind ... is the one fundamental treason which the scholar's mind must not allow is the bond uniting all the Oxford people in the last resort."
Author: Dorothy L. Sayers

15. "...free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply."
Author: Flannery O'Connor

16. "Wise Blood was written by an author congenitally innocent of theory, but one with certain preoccupations. That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death has been a stumbling block for readers who would prefer to think it a matter of no great consequence. For them Hazel Motes' integrity lies in his trying with such vigor to get rid of the ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of his mind. For the author Hazel's integrity lies in his not being able to. Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen."
Author: Flannery O'Connor

17. "Political realism refuses to identify the moral aspirations of a particular nation with the moral laws that govern the universe. As it distinguishes between truth and opinion, so it distinguishes between truth and idolatry. All nations are tempted — and few have been able to resist the power for long — to clothe their own aspirations and action in the moral purposes of the universe. To know that nations are subject to the moral law is one thing, while to pretend to know with certainty what is good and evil in the relations among nations is quite another. There is a world of difference between the belief that all nations stand under the judgment of God, inscrutable to the human mind, and the blasphemous conviction that God is always on one's side and that what one wills oneself cannot fail to be willed by God also."
Author: Hans J. Morgenthau

18. "Verily, Allah lets [a person] enjoy a blessing for as long as He wills. But when He is no longer thanked for it, He turns it into a punishment."
Author: Hasan Al Basri

19. "Those who used the Nine Rings became mighty in their day, kings, sorcerers, and warriors of old. They obtained glory and great wealth, yet it turned to their undoing. They had, as it seemed, unending life, yet life became unendurable to them. They could walk, if they would, unseen by all eyes in this world beneath the sun, and they could see things in worlds invisible to mortal men; but too often they beheld only the phantoms and delusions of Sauron. And one by one, sooner or later, according to their native strength and to the good or evil of their wills in the beginning, they fell under the thraldom of the ring that they bore and under the domination of the One, which was Sauron's. And they became for ever invisible save to him that wore the Ruling Ring, and they entered into the realm of shadows. The Nazgûl were they, the Ringwraiths, the Enemy's most terrible servants; darkness went with them, and they cried with the voices of death."
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

20. "Stupid to speak of blame when the wills of the immortals are involved."
Author: Jacqueline Carey

21. "Okay," I sighed, interrupting before a battle of wills erupted. "So we will have to scout the wall first. We can-Apollo!"The god looked up. In his hands, the Newton balls knocked off of each other once more. "What?" he asked."What?" I shot him an annoyed look. "Seriously. Have you've never seen a Newton's Cradle before? Every time you move the first ball, it's going to move the rest of the balls.""No." His gaze dipped to the cradle. "Gravity is cool.""Oh my gods," I moaned, slumping in my seat. "My brain hurts."Apollo let go of the silver ball once more, and then placed the cradle on the edge of Marcus' desk."
Author: Jennifer L. Armentrout

22. "Nobody wants to read about the honest lawyer down the street who does real estate loans and wills. If you want to sell books, you have to write about the interesting lawyers - the guys who steal all the money and take off. That's the fun stuff."
Author: John Grisham

23. "Books fall from Garry Wills like leaves from a maple tree in a sort of permanent October."
Author: John Leonard

24. "Woe to us if we get our satisfaction from the food in the kitchen and the TV in the den and the sex in the bedroom with an occasional tribute to the cement blocks in the basement! God wills to be displayed and known and loved and cherished and worshiped."
Author: John Piper

25. "God's will is that none should perish. Judgement isn't His desire...but His necessity. The good must bring evil to an end, or else it would cease to be good. And yet His mercy is still greater than His judgement. His heart always wills for redemption. And therein lies the hope."
Author: Jonathan Cahn

26. "The will of God, the creator and ruler of the universe, embraces all possible wills, His own as well as that of every man born into this world. If this is so, intervened Jesus with sudden insight, then each man is a part of God."
Author: José Saramago

27. "Mastema prefers absolutes. He wants fences on the world and everything in its place, neat and tidy as a churchyard garden. God is not like that. God is boundless. For all his wisdom, Mastema cannot comprehend Yahweh's need for surprises. An omniscient Being would naturally yearn for things beyond His control, futures He could not see, wills He could influence but not command. Strange, yes. It is odd when the puppeteer desires his wooden slaves to cut their strings, yet that is exactly what He did when he granted humans free will."
Author: Kirby Crow

28. "Families are designed to nurture the minds, wills, and emotions of its members so that the barriers created by fear of the unknown can be replaced by the confidence that comes from knowing you are loved whether you succeed or fail."
Author: Leigh A. Bortins

29. "The march of humanity, springing as it does from an infinite multitude of individual wills, is continuous."
Author: Leo Tolstoy

30. "A man can do all things if he but wills them."
Author: Leon Battista Alberti

31. "You see that stones are worn away by time,Rocks rot, and twoers topple, even the shrinesAnd images of the gods grow very tired,Develop crack or wrinkles, their holy willsUnable to extend their fated term,To litigate against the Laws of Nature.And don't we see the monuments of menCollapse, as if to ask us, "Are not weAs frail as those whom we commemorate?"?Boulders come plunging down from the mountain heights,Poor weaklings with no power to resistThe thrust that says to them, Your time has come!But they would be rooted in steadfastnessHad they endured from time beyond all time,As far back as infinity. Look about you!Whatever it is that holds in its embraceAll earth, if it projects, as some men say,All things out of itself, and takes them backWhen they have perished, must itself consistOf mortal elements. The parts must addUp to the sum. Whatever gives awayMust lose in the procedure, and gain againWhenever it takes back."
Author: Lucretius

32. "It's one thing to affirm that God is free to do as God wills in thisworld. The real crunch comes in allowing God the freedom andtrust to act in one's own life. John Indermark"
Author: Lynelle Clark

33. "»Wie, kleine Unverschämte,« rief er, »du hast die Kühnheit, mir in den Mund zu furzen?« Und er preßte den Mund sogleich wieder an. »Ja, mein Herr,« sagte ich, indem ich ihm einen zweiten Wind hineinließ, »so behandle ich solche, die mir den Arsch küssen.« — »Nun gut, furze, furze nur, kleine Hure, wenn du dich nicht zurückhalten kannst, furze, soviel du willst und soviel du kannst!"
Author: Marquis De Sade

34. "We have lived for too long in a world, and tragically in a Church, where the wills and affections of human beings are regarded as sacrosanct as they stand, where God is required to command what we already love, and to promise what we already desire."
Author: N.T. Wright

35. "Words form the sinew and muscle that hold societies upright, he argued. Consider the Koran, the Bible, the American Constitution, but also letters from fathers to sons, last wills, blessings, curses. Thousands upon thousands of words infused with the full spectrum of emotions fill in the nooks and corners of human life."
Author: National Geographic Magazine

36. "I will learn to lead ?eets. I will win. I will sharpen myself into asword. I will give my soul. I will dive to hell in hopes of one day rising to freedom. I willsacri?ce. And I will grow my legend and spread it amongst the peoples of all the worldsuntil I am ?t to lead the armies that will break the chains of bondage, because I am notsimply an agent of the Sons of Ares. I am not simply a tactic or a device in Ares'sschemes. I am the hope of my people. Of all people in bondage."
Author: Pierce Brown

37. "Mary is a woman who loves. How could it be otherwise? As a believer who in faith thinks with God's thoughts and wills with God's will, she cannot fail to be a woman who loves. We sense this in her quiet gestures, as recounted by the infancy narratives in the Gospel. We see it in the delicacy with which she recognizes the need of the spouses at Cana and makes it known to Jesus. We see it in the humility with which she recedes into the background during Jesus' public life, knowing that the Son must establish a new family and that the Mother's hour will come only with the Cross, which will be Jesus' true hour (cf. Jn 2:4; 13:1). When the disciples flee, Mary will remain beneath the Cross (cf. Jn 19:25-27); later, at the hour of Pentecost, it will be they who gather around her as they wait for the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 1:14)."
Author: Pope Benedict XVI

38. "Actions yield result by the ordinance of God as He wills."
Author: Ramana Maharshi

39. "The same strength which has extended our power beyond a continent has also interwoven our destiny with the destiny of many peoples and brought us into a vast web of history in which other wills, running in oblique or contrasting directions to our own, inevitably hinder or contradict what we most fervently desire. We cannot simply have our way, not even when we believe our way to have the "happiness of mankind" as its promise."
Author: Reinhold Niebuhr

40. "The wheel weaves as the wheel wills"
Author: Robert Jordan

41. "When the rose is gone and the garden fadedyou will no longer hear the nightingale's song.The Beloved is all; the lover just a veil. The Beloved is living; the lover a dead thing.If love withholds its strengthening care,the lover is left like a bird without care,the lover is left like a bird without wings.How will I be awake and awareif the light of the Beloved is absent?Love wills that this Word be brought forth."
Author: Rumi

42. "Es gibt ein spanisches Sprichwort", sagte er, "das mich immer fasziniert hat. 'Nimm, was du willst, und bezahl dafür, sagt Gott."
Author: Tana French

43. "Grace works ahead of us to draw us toward faith, to begin its work in us. Even the first fragile intuition of conviction of sin, the first intimation of our need of God, is the work of preparing, prevening grace, which draws us gradually toward wishing to please God. Grace is working quietly at the point of our desiring, bringing us in time to despair over our own unrighteousness, challenging our perverse dispositions, so that our distorted wills cease gradually to resist the gift of God."
Author: Thomas C. Oden

44. "Yes, she is the fruit that willSustain me and yes, she bringsA rain that I know can chillBut it is a rain so sweet and singsA song my soul insistsThat I follow, if I would existAs more than I have ever, ever beenIf my mother calls it evil, then I embrace the sin"
Author: Walter Dean Myers

45. "On the other hand, for the whole human being who wills, feels, and represents, external reality is given simultaneously and with as much certitude as his own self."
Author: Wilhelm Dilthey

46. "At our age the imagination across the sorry facts lifts usto make roses stand before thorns. Surelove is cruel and selfish and totally obtuse—at least, blinded by the light, young love is. But we are older,I to love and you to be loved, we have,no matter how, by our wills survived to keepthe jeweled prize always at our finger tips.We will it so and so it is past all accident."
Author: William Carlos Williams

47. "Would you know who is the greatest saint in the world? It is not he who prays most or fasts most; it is not he who gives most alms or is most eminent for temperance, chastity or justice; but it is he who is always thankful to God, who wills everything that God wills, who receives everything as an instance of God's goodness and has a heart always ready to praise God for it. Could you therefore work miracles, you could not do more for yourself than by this thankful spirit, for it turns all that it touches into happiness."
Author: William Law

48. "What is the highest secret to victory and peace? To will what God wills, and strike a league with destiny."
Author: William R. Alger

49. "Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;Make dust our paper and with rainy eyesWrite sorrow on the bosom of the earth,Let's choose executors and talk of wills"
Author: William Shakespeare

50. "Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens to the which our wills are gardeners."
Author: William Shakespeare

Wills Quotes Pictures