To live among such excellent helps as our libraries afford, to have so many silent wise companions whenever we please.

— Richard Baxter

We may reconcile ourselves to the world at our peril, but it will never reconcile itself to us. . . . This unwillingness to die, doth actually impeach us of high treason against the Lord : is it not a choosing of earth before him ; and taking these present things for our happiness, and consequently asking them our very God (469)?

— Richard Baxter

What a silly, frail, and forward pieces are the best of men (647)!

— Richard Baxter

What if you had once seen he'll open, and all the damned there in their easeless torments, and had heard them crying out of their slothfulness in the day of their visitation, and wishing that they had but another life to live, and that God would but try them once again; one crying out of this neglect of duty, and another of his loitering and trifling, when he should have been laboring for his life; what manner of person would you have been after such a sight as this ? (284)

— Richard Baxter

What if you had seen haven open as Stephen did, and all the saints there triumphing in glory, and enjoying the end of their labors and sufferings, what a life would you lead after such a sight as this! Why, you will see this with your eyes before it be long. Thou hast the more cause to doubt a great deal, because thou never didst doubt and yet more because thou hast been so careless in thy confidence. What do these expressions discover, but a willful neglect of thy own salvation? As a shipmaster that should let his vessel alone, and mind other matters, and say, I will venture it among the rocks, and sands, and gulfs, and waves, and winds; I will never double myself to know whether it shall come safe to the harbor; I will trust God with it; it will speed as well as other men's vessels do. Indeed, as well as other men's that are as careless and idle, but not so well as other men's that are diligent and watchful. What horrible abuse of God is this, for men to pretend that they trust God with their souls only to cloak their own willful negligence! (290-291)

— Richard Baxter

What interest hath this empty world in me? And what is there in it that may seem so lovely, as to entice my desires and delight from thee, or make me both to come away? When I look about me with a deliberate, undeceived eye, methinks this world is a howling wilderness, and most of the inhabitants are untamed, hideous monsters. All its beauty I can wink into blackness, and all its mirth I can think into sadness ; I can drown all its pleasures in a few penitent tears, and the wind of a sigh will scatter them away (650).

— Richard Baxter

When shall I be past these soul-tormenting fears, and cares, and griefs, and passions? When shall I be out of this frail, this corruptible, ruinous body; this soul-contradicting, ensnaring, deceiving flesh? When shall I be out of this vain and vexatious world, whose pleasures are mere deluding dreams and shadows whose miseries are real, numerous, and incessant? How long shall I see the church of Christ lie trodden under the feet of persecutors ; or else, as a ship in the hands of foolish guides, though the supreme Maker doth moderate all for the best? (642-3)

— Richard Baxter

[W]hen the pleasure is at the sweetest, death is the nearest (461)[.]

— Richard Baxter

When the world is worth nothing, then heaven is worth something. I leave every Christian to judge by his own experience, whether we do not overlove the world more in prosperity than in adversity (374) [.]

— Richard Baxter

While doubt cannot be expelled, it can be subdued.

— Richard Baxter