87 Quotes by Billy Sunday
Billy Sunday, a prominent American evangelist of the early 20th century, captivated audiences with his passionate preaching style and fervent commitment to spreading the Christian faith. Known for his dynamic stage presence and powerful oratory skills, Sunday drew massive crowds and played a significant role in the rise of the fundamentalist movement in the United States. Through his energetic sermons, he sought to bring about personal salvation and societal transformation, addressing issues such as alcoholism, immorality, and social inequality.
Sunday's approach blended elements of showmanship and religious zeal, using captivating stories, humor, and vivid imagery to engage his listeners and call them to repentance. His impact extended beyond the pulpit, as he also became a prominent advocate for various social causes, including temperance and the rights of workers. While his style and methods were controversial and drew criticism from some quarters, Sunday's influence on American religious and social history is undeniable, leaving a lasting legacy of passionate evangelism and a call for personal transformation.
Billy Sunday Quotes
Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.
One reason sin flourishes is that it is treated like a cream puff instead of a rattlesnake.
If you are a stranger to prayer, you are a stranger to the greatest source of power known to human beings.
The reason you don't like the Bible, you old sinner, is because it knows all about you.
Being a kind, emperor, or president is mighty small potatoes compared to being a mother. Commanding an army is little more than sweeping a street compared with training a boy or girl. The mother of Moses did more for the world than all the kinds that Egypt ever had. Oh, you wait until you reach the mountains of eternity, then read the mothers' names in God's Hall of Fame.
Let's quit fiddling with religion and do something to bring the world to Christ.
Hell is the highest reward that the devil can offer you for being a servant of his.
Temptation is the devil looking through the keyhole. Yielding is opening the door and inviting him in.
The church is not a dormitory for sleepers, it is an institution for workers; it is not a rest camp, it is a front line trench.
Churches don't need new members half so much as they need the old bunch made over.
The backslider likes the preaching that wouldn't hit the side of a house, while the real disciple is delighted when the truth brings him to his knees.
They tell me a revival is only temporary; so is a bath, but it does you good.
If you lack joy, your Christianity must be leaking somewhere
The fellow that has no money is poor. The fellow that has nothing but money is poorer still.
Some persons think they have to look like a hedgehog to be pious.
Conversion is a complete surrender to Jesus. It's a willingness to do what he wants you to do.
Sinners cannot find God for the same reason that criminals cannot find a policeman: They aren't looking!
Christianity means a lot more than church membership.
Lord save us from off-handed, flabby-cheeked, brittle-boned, weak-kneed, thin-skinned, pliable, plastic, spineless, effeminate, ossified, three-karat Christianity.
At Kansas City, Kansas, before the saloons were closed, they were getting ready to build an addition to the jail. Now the doors swing idly on the hinges and there is nobody to lock in the jails.
You can't measure manhood with a tape line around the biceps.
When the word of God says one thing and scholarship says another, scholarship can go to hell.
Your reputation is what people say about you. Your character is what God and your wife know about you.
When is a revival needed? When carelessness and unconcern keep the people asleep.
You might as well try and dam Niagara Falls with toothpicks as to stop the reform wave sweeping our land.
There are two hundred and fifty-six names given in the Bible for the Lord Jesus Christ, and I suppose this was because He was infinitely beyond all that any one name could express.
Jesus gave his life on the cross for any who will believe. We're not redeemed by silver or gold. Jesus paid for it with his blood.
An excuse is a skin of a reason stuffed with a lie.
Whiskey and beer are all right in their place, but their place is in hell.
The only way to keep a broken vessel full is to keep it always under the tap.
God likes a little humor, as is evidence by the fact that he made the monkeys, the parrot -- and some of you people.
A revival does two things. First, it returns the Church from her backsliding and second, it causes the conversion of men and women; and it always includes the conviction of sin on the part of the Church. What a spell the devil seems to cast over the Church today!
It is not necessary to be in a big place to do big things.
We have a God who delights in impossibilities.
The Bible will always be full of things you cannot understand, as long as you will not live according to those you can understand.
The devil says I'm out, but the Lord says I'm safe.
Wealth is not the standard of worth. Some people put cash before character.
Hypocrites in the Church? Yes, and in the lodge and at the home. Don't hunt through the Church for a hypocrite. Go home and look in the mirror. Hypocrites? Yes. See that you make the number one less.
If you don't do your part, don't blame God.
God Almighty never intended that the devil should triumph over the Church. He never intended that the saloons should walk rough-shod over Christianity.
Try praising your wife, even if it does frighten her at first.
The law tells me how crooked I am. Grace comes along and straightens me out.
The world is wrong side up. It needs to be turned upside down in order to be right side up.
Live so that when the final summons comes you will leave something more behind you than an epitaph on a tombstone or an obituary in a newspaper.
Some ministers say, 'If you don't repent you'll die and go to a place the name of which I can't pronounce.' I can! You'll go to hell!
After all is said that can be said upon the liquor traffic, its influence is degrading upon the individual, the family, politics and business, and upon everything that you touch in this old world.
If you are strangers to prayer you are strangers to power.
Trying to run a church without revivals can be done when you can run a gasoline engine on buttermilk.
Whenever a day comes when I can stand and preach God's Word without an agony of anxiety lest the people will not accept Christ; whenever a day comes when I can see men and women coming down the aisles without joy in my heart, I'll quit preaching.
Some persons have lived manly or womanly lives, and they lack but one thing - open confession of the Lord Jesus Christ. Some men think that they must come to him in a certain way - that they must be stirred by emotion or something like that.
More men fail though lack of purpose than lack of talent.
Give your face to God, and He will put his shine on it.
The saloon is a liar. It promises good cheer and sends sorrow. It promises prosperity and sends adversity. It promises happiness and sends misery.... It is God's worst enemy and the devil's best friend.
Home is the place we love best and grumble the most.
It would be a godsend if the Church would suffer persecution today; she hasn't suffered it for hundreds of years. She is growing rich and lagging behind. Going back.
I am the sworn, eternal and uncompromising enemy of the liquor traffic.
The saloon is a liar. It promises good cheer and sends sorrow.
It is not what you have on you, but what you have in you.
Yank some of the groans out of your prayers and shove in some shouts.
Enthusiasm is as good a thing in the Church as fire is in a cook stove.
If you have no joy in your religion, there's a leak in your Christianity somewhere.
And if you think that anybody is going to frighten me, you don't know me yet.
When may a revival be expected? When the wickedness of the wicked grieves and distresses the Christian.
The reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be only a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and comcribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile, and the children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent.
The trouble with many men is that they have got just enough religion to make them miserable. If there is not joy in religion, you have got a leak in your religion.
The man who votes for the saloon is pulling on the same rope with the devil, whether he knows it or not.
There are individuals who have never done anything for Jesus Christ, and I have no doubt there are preachers as well, who have never done anything for the God Almighty.
Riches have never yet given anybody either peace or rest.
America didn't need repeal, she needed repentance!
Personal liberty is not personal license.
The Bible says forgive your debtors; the world says "sue them for their dough."
The rivers of America will run with blood filled to their banks before we will submit to them taking the Bible out of our schools.
If there is not Hell, a good many preachers are obtaining money under false pretenses.
Get somebody else for Jesus Christ and you will get a new vision of life, a new vision of what it means.
Religion needs a baptism of horse sense.
Whiskey is all right in its place - but its place is hell.
Better die an old maid, sister, than marry the wrong man.
When the English language gets in my way, I walk over it.
The Democratic party of Florida has put a temperance plank in its platform and the Republican party of every state would nail that plank in their platform if they thought it would carry the election.
Unless you have made a complete surrender and are doing his will it will avail you nothing if you've reformed a thousand times and have your name on fifty church records.
You can't raise the standard of women's morals by raising their pay envelope. It lies deeper than that.
There is a mighty power in a mother's hand. There's more power in a woman's hand than there is in a king's scepter. And there is a mighty power in a mother's kiss — inspiration, courage, hope, ambition, in a mother's kiss.
If good preaching could save the world, it would have been done long ago.
Being a king, emperor, or president is mighty small potatoes compared to being a mother.
What have you given the world it never possessed before you came?
If you want to drive the devil out of the world, hit him with a cradle instead of a crutch
There is no law, divine or human, that the saloon respects.
― Billy Sunday Quotes
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
