Poems & Quotes
Psalms Introduction—1:1
“The Psalms are the voices of the church."
–Ambrose
“They are the epitome of the whole Scripture.”
–Augustine
“They are a little book for all saints.”
–Martin Luther
“They are the anatomy of all parts of the soul.”
–John Calvin
“They are the choice and flower of all things profitable in other books.”
–Richard Hooker
“The Psalms foretell what I, what any shall do and suffer and say.”
–John Donne
“They are the thousand-voiced heart of the church.”
–Isaac Watts
“The Book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing.”
–Charles Spurgeon
Psalm 1
“Meditation chews the cud.”
–Bartholomew Ashwood
Psalm 2
We hear little man speaking his little piece and playing his part—as Shakespeare puts it, “A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage.”
–Dr. J. Vernon McGee
Psalms 3, 4
“Because I fear God, I have no man to fear.”
–Oliver Cromwell
Psalms 9:1—11:1
“One with God is a majority.”
–Martin Luther
Psalms 16:1—17:1
"I do not know what the heart of a villain is—I only know the heart of a righteous man, and it’s frightful.”
–Count Joseph de Maistre
“I see no sin committed but what I too might have committed.”
–Johann von Goethe
Psalms 25:1—27:1
“I have learned that if you fear God, you have no one else to fear.”
–Oliver Cromwell
“Of whom shall I be afraid? One with God is a majority.”
–Martin Luther
Psalms 29, 30
“This psalm is elaborated with a symmetry of which no more perfect specimen exists in Hebrew.”
–Johannes Ewald
“The Psalm of seven thunders.”
–Description of Psalm 29 by Franz Delitzsch
“This Psalm is a magnificent description of a thunderstorm. Its might marches from north to south, the desolation and terror which it causes, the peal of thunder, the flash of lightning, even the gathering fury and lull of the elements, are vividly depicted.”
–J.J. Stewart Perowne
Psalms 36—38
“[Sinners] are self-destroyers by being self-flatterers; Satan could not deceive them, if they did not deceive themselves. But will the cheat last always? No, the day is coming when his iniquity shall be found hateful.”
–Matthew Henry
Psalms 69—72
School Prayer
Now I sit me down in school
Where praying is against the rule.
For this great nation under God
Finds public mention of Him odd.
Any prayer a class recites
Violates the Bill of Rights.
Any time my head I bow
Becomes a Federal matter now.
Teach us of stars, of pole and equator—
Make no mention of their Creator.
Tell of experts in Denmark or Sweden,
But not a word of what Eve did in Eden.
The law is specific, the law is precise—
Praying out loud is no longer nice.
Praying aloud in a public hall
Upsets believers of nothing at all.
In silence alone can we meditate,
And if God should get the credit—great!
This rule, however, has a gimmick in it—
You’ve got to be finished in less than a minute.
So all I ask is a minute of quiet.
If I feel like praying, then maybe I’ll try it.
If not, oh Lord, this plea I make,
Should I die in school, my soul you’ll take.
–Author unknown
Psalms 100—102
They were looking for a king
To slay their foes and lift them high;
Thou cam’st, a little baby thing
That made a woman cry.
–George McDonald
Psalms 103—106
“God remembers that we are dust. We forget it, and when dust gets stuck on itself, it is mud.”
–Dr. George Gill
Psalm 119
“The next great revival will be a revival of the Word of God.”
–Dwight L. Moody
“God is going to win. There will be more saved than there will be lost.”
–Charles Spurgeon
“It is strange that of all the pieces of the Bible which my mother taught me, that which cost me the most to learn, and which was to my childish mind the most repulsive – Psalm 119 – has now become of all the most precious to me in its overflowing and glorious passion of love for the Law of God.”
–John Ruskin
“Walked from Hyde Park corner, repeating the 119th Psalm in great comfort.”
–From the diary of William Wilberforce
Psalms 122-131
“Everything depends on the blessing of God.”
–Old German proverb
Psalms 137-138
Historian Edward Gibbons' five reasons for the decline and fall of Rome
1. The undermining of the dignity and sanctity of the home, which is the basis of human society.
2. Higher and higher taxes; the spending of public money for free bread and circuses for the populace.
3. The mad craze for pleasure; sports becoming every year more exciting, more brutal, more immoral.
4. The building of great armaments when the great enemy was within; the decay of individual responsibility.
5. The decay of religion, fading into a mere form, losing touch with life, losing power to guide the people.
–From The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
“In our youth we had a profound sense of national purpose, which we lost over the years of our rise to glory.”
–Clinton Rosita, Professor of American Institutions at Cornell University
“The difference between what Washington men say in public and what they say in private is greater today than at any time since the war. In public they talk about how optimistic and wonderful the future is, but the private conversations of thoughtful men here in Washington are quite different. For the first time since the war, one begins to hear of doubts that mortal men are capable of solving, or even controlling political, social and economic problems life has placed before them."
–James Weston, Wall Street Journal
“The American dream is vanishing in the midst of terrifying realities and visible signs of decadence in our contemporary society.”
–Dr. Seagraves, Singer, History Professor at Salsbury, NC
“The United States of America in the past 50 years has been dominated to a large extent by persons who do not understand the spiritual heritage bequeathed by their own ancestors.”
–Dr. Albert Hyma, Professor of History at University of Michigan
“America’s coasting downhill on a godless ancestry, and God pity America when we hit the bottom of the hill.”
–Dr. J. Gresham Machen
Psalms 138-139
“Tell God all that is in your heart, as one unloads one's heart, its pleasures and its pains, to a dear friend. Tell Him your troubles, that He may comfort you; tell Him your joys, that He may sober them; tell Him your longings, that He may purify them; tell Him your dislikes, that He may help you to conquer them; talk to Him of your temptations, that He may shield you from them; show Him the wounds of your heart, that He may heal them; lay bare your indifference to good, your depraved tastes for evil, your instability. Tell Him how self-love makes you unjust to others, how vanity tempts you to be insincere, how pride disguises you to yourself as to others. If you thus pour out all your weaknesses, needs, troubles, there will be no lack of what to say. You will never exhaust the subject. It is continually being renewed. People who have no secrets from each other never want for subjects of conversation. They do not weigh their words, for there is nothing to be held back; neither do they seek for something to say. They talk out of the abundance of the heart, without consideration, just what they think. Blessed are they who attain to such familiar, unreserved intercourse with God.”
–Fenelon
“I carry this in the back of my Bible, everywhere I go, and every now and then I get it out and read it. This was written by Fenelon, a great saint and mystic of the Middle Ages.”
–Dr. J. Vernon McGee, in reference to the Fenelon quote above
I wish that my room had a floor;
I don’t so much care for a door.
But this walking around
Without touching the ground
Is getting to be quite a bore.
–Gelett Burgess
Of all the sad surprises
There’s nothing to compare
With treading in the darkness
On a step that isn’t there.
–Author unknown
Psalms 144-150
Dr. A.C. Gaebelein told of a visit he had from an Orthodox Jew: “He stated that he had read the New Testament and found the title of Jesus of Nazareth so often mentioned as the ‘son of man.’ He then declared that there is a warning in the Old Testament not to trust the son of man. As we asked him for the passage he quoted from this Psalm, ‘Trust not…in the son of man in whom there is no salvation.’ We explained to him that if our Lord had been only the son of man and nothing else, if He had not been Immanuel, the virgin-born Son of God, if it were not true as Isaiah stated it, that He is the child born and the Son given, there would be no salvation in Him. But He came God’s Son and appeared in the form of man for our redemption. His argument showed the blindness of the Jew. The statement is given in this Psalm, that man is sinful, that there is no hope in man, he is a finite creature and turns to dust. There is but One in whom salvation, and all man’s needs is found, the God of Jacob, the loving Jehovah.”
–Dr. A.C. Gaebelein, The Book of Psalms