The Beatitudes

The man who is poor in spirit is the man who has realized that things mean nothing, and that God means everything. (William Barclay)

If the sermon on the Mount is the precis of all Christian doctrine, the eight beatitudes are the precis of the whole of the Sermon on the Mount. (Jacques Benigne Bossuet)

We have too many men of science, too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom, and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. (Omar Bradley)

The character which we find in the Beatitudes is, beyond all question, nothing less than our Lord's own character, put into words. It is the description set side by side with an example. (Billy Graham)

"Poor in spirit" refers, not precisely to humility, but to an attitude of dependence on God and detachment from earthly supports. (Ronald Knox)

The more we live and try to practice the Sermon on the Mount, the more shall we experience blessing. (Martyn Lloyd Jones)

Meek endurance and meed obedience, the accepting of His dealings, of whatever complexion they are and however they may tear and desolate our hearts, without murmuring, without sulking, without rebellion or resistance, is the deepest conception of the meekness which Christ pronounced blessed. (Alexander Maclaren)

Beatitudes, just by virtue of having been spoken by Him, have enriched our moral existence beyond imagination, putting a yeast of love into the unlovely dough of human greed and human spite and human willfulness so that it can rise marvelously. (Malcolm Muggeridge)

The beatitudes are a call to us to see ourselves, to live with ourselves, in a way that probably does not come easily to most of us. (Simon Tugwell)