“The best thing in married life, for the sake of which everything ought to be suffered and done is the fact that God gives children and commands us to bring them up to serve Him. To do this is the noblest and most precious work on earth, because nothing may be done which pleases God more than the saving of souls. If the need were to arise, all of us should be ready to die in order to bring a soul to God. So you see how rich in good works the estate of marriage is. God lays souls into the lap of married people, souls begotten from their own body, on which they may practice all Christian works. For when they teach their children the Gospel, parents are certainly their apostles, bishops, and ministers.”

-- Martin Luther

“He who has children must think it is a pledge that God has committed to his charge; as if a man should commit his goods to his friend when he departs out of his house and gives him his key, or gives him his purse to keep.  Therefore fathers and mothers must keep their children as things committed to them by God upon this condition, that they have to render an account for them.  …
Besides this, fathers and mothers, and masters must consider that that which God has committed to their charge must be referred to God.  And therefore their children must be so taught, that they may be always God’s.  For as for the earthly fathers, they must not think that their children belong only to them, that God does not have constant and sovereign possession of them…”

 -- John Calvin -  From sermon on 1 Timothy 6:20-21.

“Thomas Merton said, ‘The least of learning is done in the classroom,’ and he is so right,” says Card. “The bulk of what I’ve learned whether academically, musically, or personally is through interacting with people, which is why I think community is so important to our growth as Christians.” 

--Michael Card

"It is in vain, 0 men, that you seek within yourselves the cure for your miseries. All your insight only leads you to the knowledge that it is not in yourselves that you will discover the true and the good. The philosophers promised them to you, and have not been able to keep their promises... Your principal maladies are pride, which cuts you off from God, and sensuality, which binds you to the earth; and they have done nothing but foster at least one of these maladies. If they have given you God for your object, it has only been to pander to your pride; they have made you think that you were like Him and resembled Him by your nature. And those who have grasped the vanity of such a pretension have cast you down into the other abyss by making you believe that your nature was like that of the beasts of the field, and have led you to seek your good in lust, which is the lot of animals.” 

-- Blaise Pascal

"Has anyone provided a proof of God’s inexistence? Not even close.
Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here? Not even close.
Have the sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life? Not even close.
Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought? Close enough.
Has rationalism in moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral? Not close enough.
Has secularism in the terrible twentieth century been a force for good? Not even close to being close.
Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy of thought and opinion within the sciences? Close enough.
Does anything in the sciences or in their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational? Not even in the ballpark.
Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt? Dead on."

-- David Berlinski - The Devils Delusion

“How strange the gospel is. In one sense I am not restored. How painfully obvious. Sin clings, weaknesses and failings abound. Anxiety, anger, idolatry. But in another sense, a deeper sense, I am restored. Perfectly, already. Simul justus et peccator. Deeper Magic from before the dawn of time. It really is true.”

—Dane Ortlund

”This is a picture of the road to Christ Jesus. It is no
roundabout road of the law; it is no obeying this, that, and the other; it is a
straight road: "Believe, and live." It is a road so hard, that no
self-righteous man can ever tread it, but so easy, that every sinner, who knows
himself to be a sinner may by it find his way to heaven.”

-- Charles Spurgeon

"Therefore the afflicted conscience has no remedy against despair and eternal death except to take hold of the promise of grace offered in Christ, that is, this righteousness of faith, this passive or Christian righteousness, which says with confidence: “I do not seek active righteousness. I ought to have and perform it; but I declare that even if I did have it and perform it, I cannot trust in it or stand up before the judgment of God on the basis of it. Thus I put myself beyond all active righteousness, all righteousness of my own or of the divine Law, and I embrace only that passive righteousness which is the righteousness of grace, mercy, and the forgiveness of sins.” In other words, this is the righteousness of Christ and of the Holy Spirit, which we do not perform but receive, which we do not have but accept, when God the Father grants it to us through Jesus Christ.

"As the earth itself does not produce rain and is unable to acquire it by its own strength, worship, and power but receives it only by a heavenly gift from above, so this heavenly righteousness is given to us by God without our work or merit. As much as the dry earth of itself is able to accomplish in obtaining the right and blessed rain, that much can we men accomplish by our own strength and works to obtain that divine, heavenly, and eternal righteousness. Thus we can obtain it only through the free imputation and indescribable gift of God."

-- Martin Luther, Lectures on Galatians