Take a leap of faith and lead a life of forgiveness and love with these top 100 Corrie ten Boom quotes.
Known as a hero of the Holocaust, her work gives us countless nuggets of truth and faith we can all learn from as we live our day-to-day lives.
Corrie ten Boom grew up in a religious family and this pushed her to act and serve society—going beyond differences to offer shelter, security, and food for those in need during the Nazi occupation.
Learn more about her brave acts through the quotes below.
Best Corrie ten Boom Quotes
1. “Hold everything in your hands lightly. Otherwise, it hurts when God pries your fingers open.”
2. “What wings are to a bird, and sails to a ship, so is prayer to the soul.”
3. “Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.”
4. “Do you know what hurts so very much? It’s love.”
5. “Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer, is too small to be made into a burden.”
6. “This is what the past is for! Every experience God gives us, every person He puts in our lives, is the perfect preparation for the future that only He can see.”
7. “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”
8. “In darkness, God’s truth shines most clear.”
9. “Love is the strongest force in the world, and when it is blocked, that means pain.”
10. “Worrying is carrying tomorrow’s load with today’s strength—carrying two days at once. It is moving into tomorrow ahead of time.”
11. “You can never learn that Christ is all you need, until Christ is all you have.”
12. “Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.”
13. “Trying to do the Lord’s work in your own strength is the most confusing, exhausting, and tedious of all work. But when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, then the ministry of Jesus just flows out of you.”
14. “Some knowledge is too heavy—you cannot bear it. Your Father will carry it until you are able.”
15. “There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.”
16. “If you look at the world, you’ll be distressed. If you look within, you’ll be depressed. If you look at God, you’ll be at rest.”
17. “Happiness isn’t something that depends on our surroundings. It’s something we make inside ourselves.”
18. “Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?”
19. “Don’t bother to give God instructions; just report for duty.”
Corrie ten Boom Quotes on God and Religion
20. “Dear Jesus, how foolish of me to have called for human help when You are here.”
21. “God’s viewpoint is sometimes different from ours—so different that we could not even guess at it unless He had given us a Book which tells us such things.”
22. “In the Bible, I learn that God values us not for our strength or our brains, but simply because He has made us.”
23. “There are no ‘if’s’ in God’s world, and no places that are safer than other places.”
24. “It is not my ability, but my response to God’s ability, that counts.”
25. “When we are powerless to do a thing, it is a great joy that we can come and step inside the ability of Jesus.”
26. “If God has shown us bad times ahead, it’s enough for me that He knows about them. That’s why He sometimes shows us things, you know—to tell us that this too is in His hands.”
27. “The center of His will is our only safety. Let us pray that we may always know it!”
28. “There is no panic in Heaven! God has no problems, only plans.”
29. “When I try, I fail. When I trust, He succeeds.”
30. “And our wise Father in heaven knows when we’re going to need things, too. Don’t run out ahead of Him.”
31. “Perhaps only when human effort had done it’s best and failed, would God’s power alone be free to work.”
32. “We never know how God will answer our prayers, but we can expect that He will get us involved in His plan for the answer.”
33. “If we are true intercessors, we must be ready to take part in God’s work on behalf of the people for whom we pray.”
34. “When you are covered by His wings, it can get pretty dark.”
35. “With Jesus even in our darkest moments, the best remains and the very best is yet to be.”
36. “Let God’s promises shine on your problems.”
37. “The blacker the night around us grew, the brighter, and truer, and more beautiful burned the word of God.”
38. “Let us remember that our present sufferings serve to prepare us for entering into the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
39. “Lord Jesus, I offer myself for Your people—in any way, any place, any time.”
Corrie ten Boom Quotes on Wisdom and Life
40. “Worry is a cycle of inefficient thoughts whirling around a center of fear.”
41. “Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future.”
42. “When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.”
43. “The tree on the mountain takes whatever the weather brings. If it has any choice at all, it is in putting down roots as deeply as possible.”
44. “Child, you have to learn to see things in the right proportions. Learn to see great things great, and small things small.”
45. “If the devil cannot make us bad, he will make us busy.”
46. “And here I felt a strange leaping of my heart—God did! My job was to simply follow His leading one step at a time, holding every decision up to him in prayer.”
47. “If the Gospels were truly the pattern of God’s activity, then defeat was only the beginning.”
48. “Books do not age as you and I do. They will speak still when you and I are gone, to generations we will never see. Yes, the books must survive.”
49. “A religion that is small enough for our understanding would not be big enough for our needs.”
50. “God has plans—not problems—for our lives.”
51. “Life in Ravensbruck took place on two separate levels, mutually impossible. One, the observable, external life, grew every day more horrible. The other, the life we lived with God, grew daily better, truth upon truth, glory upon glory.”
52. “We must be so careful that we do not refuse the cross that the Lord has given us to carry.”
53. “The circle of white cotton told me that when we’re feeling poorest—when we’ve lost a friend, when a dream has failed, when we seem to have nothing left in the world to make life beautiful—that’s when God says, ‘You’re richer than you think.’”
54. “Lord, You turn the wheels of the galaxies. You know what makes the planets spin.”
55. “The worst can happen, but the best remains.”
56. “Surrender to the Lord Jesus Christ must not be partial, but total.”
57. “It was one thing to believe that such things were possible thousands of years ago, another to have it happen now, to us, this very day.”
58. “I’ve never met anybody who said that they were sorry that the Lord Jesus had entered their hearts.”
59. “Ask Jesus to come into your life. He will give you riches no man can take away from you.”
Corrie ten Boom Quotes on Love
60. “Whenever we cannot love in the old, human way, God can give us the perfect way.”
61. “Love is larger than the walls which shut it in.”
62. “Mama’s love had always been the kind that acted itself out with soup pot and sewing basket. But now that these things were taken away, the love seemed as whole as before.”
63. “She sat in her chair at the window and loved us. She loved the people she saw in the street and beyond.”
64. “Her love took in the city, the land of Holland, the world.”
65. “Surely, there is no more wretched sight than the human body unloved and uncared for.”
66. “When He tells us to love our enemies He gives, along with the command, the love itself.”
67. “Your love in me is stronger than the hatred.”
68. “You say we could lose our lives for this child. I would consider that the greatest honor that could come to my family.”
69. “God never measures the mind. He always put His tape measure in the heart.”
70. “Whatever in our life is hardest to bear, love can transform into beauty.”
71. “I do not know how long I continued my prayer, but this I do know—my fear was gone! Interceding for others had released me!”
72. “Willem didn’t try to change people, just to serve them.”
73. “When He tells you to love your enemies, He gives you the love that He demands from you.”
74. “What I spent, I had; what I saved, I lost; what I gave, I have.”
75. “When the time comes that some of us will have to die, you will look into your heart and find the strength you need—just in time.”
76. “If people can be taught to hate, they can be taught to love!”
77. “Love. How did one show it? How could God Himself show truth and love at the same time in a world like this? By dying. The answer stood out for me sharper and chillier than it ever had before that night—the shape of a Cross etched on the history of the world.”
78. “The fruit of the Holy Spirit makes us right with God, and God’s love in us makes us right with men. Through that we can forgive—even love—our enemies. Jesus Himself makes us ready for His coming.”
79. “For that which is in your heart can never be taken from you.”
Corrie ten Boom Quotes on Values and Morality
80. “Forgiveness is the key that unlocks the door of resentment and the handcuffs of hatred. It is a power that breaks the chains of bitterness and the shackles of selfishness.”
81. “Joy runs deeper than despair.”
82. “Faith is like radar that sees through the fog—the reality of things at a distance that the human eye cannot see.”
83. “How often it is a small, almost unconscious event that makes a turning point.”
84. “And for all these people alike, the key to healing turned out to be the same. Each had a hurt he had to forgive.”
85. “If God sends us on strong paths, we are provided strong shoes.”
86. “He uses our problems for His miracles. This was my first lesson in learning to trust Him completely.”
87. “His will is our hiding place. Lord Jesus, keep me in your will! Don’t let me go mad by poking about outside of it!”
88. “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was you.”
89. “Discernment is God’s call to intercession, never to faultfinding.”
90. “The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation.”
91. “The real sin lay in thinking that any power to help and transform came from me. Of course it was not my wholeness, but Christ’s that made the difference.”
92. “Young and old, poor and rich, scholarly gentlemen and illiterate servant girls—only to Father did it seem that they were all alike.”
93. “What feeds the soul matters as much as what feeds the body.”
94. “Everyone needs the Holy Spirit to understand spiritual truths.”
95. “Many people make the mistake of thinking they can measure the certainty of salvation by their feelings.”
96. “More than anyone else, it is the new convert who will come under the fire of the enemy.”
97. “It was strange that a society which hid the facts of sex from children made no effort to shield them from death.”
98. “Oh, this was the great ploy of Satan in that kingdom of his—to display such blatant evil that one could almost believe one’s own secret sins didn’t matter.”
99. “How was it possible, packed so close, to be so utterly and miserably alone?”
100. “Clouds, too, can give light if only the sun shines on them.”
If You Were in Corrie Ten Boom’s Shoes, Would You Also Do the Same?
In a time of war, courage and faith are hard to come by. However, Corrie and her family rose above fear to help Jews escape the Holocaust during World War II; in the end, saving nearly 800 lives. That’s a feat only someone with great faith and belief in God can do. She was one of the most inspiring individuals who put her experiences—both painful and good—into words that many of us still get guidance from. Her writings revolve around the themes of love, forgiveness, and having faith in times of great peril. She believed that it is only through these things that we’ll achieve inner peace and be able to help those in need—whenever, wherever, and whoever they may be.
Did Corrie ten Boom’s words inspire you to live life with love and forgiveness? What lessons did you get from her experiences and writing? Comment them down below.
