Top 100 Donald Miller Quotes
#1. I think it is easier to do bad things than to do good things. And there is something in that basic fact, some little clue to the meaning of the universe.
Donald Miller
#2. All my books have been titled based on a piece of the prose from inside the book.
Donald Miller
#3. If you quote a poem in a sermon today, some people think you are being mushy, but if you quoted one back in the day, people would have felt you were getting to the core of an idea, to the real, whole truth of it.
Donald Miller
#4. People who live great stories know failure isn't a judgment, it's an education.
Donald Miller
#5. We have to be taught to be good. It doesn't come natural.
Donald Miller
#6. I don't read a lot of inspirational books for life. But for writing, I think the two best books are The War of Art and William Zinsser's On Writing Well. I read a lot of classics;
Donald Miller
#7. Sometimes the story we're telling the world isn't half as endearing as the one that lives inside us.
Donald Miller
#8. I love this about Christian spirituality. It cannot be explained, and yet it is beautiful and true. It is something you feel, and it comes from the soul.
Donald Miller
#9. Good stories must travel through conflict. And in epic stories, the conflict must become unbearable.
Donald Miller
#10. When we look back on our lives, what we will remember are the crazy things we did, the times we worked harder to make a day stand out.
Donald Miller
#11. If you have a beautiful story, it has to have conflict. If you don't have conflict, it can't be a good story.
Donald Miller
#12. I always thought the Bible was more of a salad thing, you know, but it isn't. It's a chocolate thing.
Donald Miller
#13. It is when people do not allow God to show up through them ... that the world collapses in on itself.
Donald Miller
#14. Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.
Donald Miller
#15. When something happens to you, you have two choices in how to deal with it. You can either get bitter, or get better.
Donald Miller
#16. Maybe, these ideas are pointing to something mystical and true. And perhaps i am judging hte idea, not by its merit, but by the fashionable or unfashionable delivery of the message.
Donald Miller
#17. If the abortion issue is important to me, this is how you tackle that issue.
Donald Miller
#18. I'm starting to wonder if the whole point of life is to be thankful and to live in such a way others are thankful for theirs as well.
Donald Miller
#19. Television drives me crazy sometimes because everybody is so good-looking, and yet you walk through the aisles of the grocery stores, and nobody looks like that.
Donald Miller
#20. If the Gospel of Jesus is relational, that is, if our brokenness will be fixed not by our understanding of theology but by God telling us who we are, then this would require a kind of intimacy of which only Heaven knows.
Donald Miller
#22. Life has a peculiar feel when you look back on it that it doesn't have when you're actually living it. It's as though the whole thing were designed to be understood in hindsight, as though you'll never know the meaning of your experiences until you've had enough of them to provide reference.
Donald Miller
#23. I used to write when I was in the mood or felt inspired. Anymore, I write whether I feel inspired or not. It's a discipline. So that's definitely different. It's part of maturing as a person and as a professional.
Donald Miller
#24. I heard once that real love doesn't ask what is in it for me; it just gives unconditionally. It just tries to take the weight out of somebody else's pack, lessen his load, and if it gets reciprocated, that's great, but that isn't what you did it for.
Donald Miller
#25. There are about 360,000 churches in America, so we could mentor a million kids within a short period of time if everyone signed on, which, of course, is a pipedream, but we're going to reach toward that.
Donald Miller
#26. Jason decided to stop yelling at his daughter and, instead, created a better story to invite her into.
Donald Miller
#27. Every human being is searching for a deep sense of meaning, and yet we're all chasing success. We've confused one for the other.
Donald Miller
#28. Those of us who are never satisfied with our accomplishments secretly believe nobody will love us unless we're perfect.
Donald Miller
#29. The ambitions we have will become the stories we live.
Donald Miller
#30. I could not have known then that everybody, every person, has to leave, has to change like seasons; they have to or they die. The seasons remind me that I must keep changing.
Donald Miller
#31. The repentance we are called to is about choosing one audience over another.
Donald Miller
#32. It's true our lives can pass small and unnoticed by the masses, and we are no less dignified for having lived quietly. In fact, I've come to believe there's something noble about doing little with your life save offering love to a person who is offering it back.
Donald Miller
#33. Because it is so scatterbrained and has absolutely no charts and graphs, I'm actually quite surprised the Bible sells.
Donald Miller
#35. We don't know how much we are capable of loving until the people we love are being taken away, until a beautiful story is ending.
Donald Miller
#36. I know now, from experience, that the path to joy winds through this dark valley. I think every well-adjusted human being has dealt squarely with his or her own depravity.
Donald Miller
#37. The words alone, lonely, and loneliness are three of the most powerful words in the English language ... those words say that we are human; they are like the words hunger and thirst. But they are not words about the body, they are words about the soul.
Donald Miller
#38. The reason I like writing a memoir is because it isn't preachy.
Donald Miller
#40. Perhaps one of the reasons I've avoided standing on the point toward the horizon is the second you stand up and point toward a horizon, you realize how much there is to lose.
Donald Miller
#41. It's all connected with the belief human love is conditional. But human love isn't conditional. No love is conditional. If love is conditional, it's just some sort of manipulation masquerading as love.
Donald Miller
#42. The most often repeated commandment in the Bible is "Do not fear." It's in there over two hundred times.
Donald Miller
#43. Believing in God is as much like falling in love as it is making a decision. Love is both something that happens to you and something you decide upon.
Donald Miller
#44. I kept asking Him to say it again, but He wouldn't. I guess it's because I heard Him the first time, you know.
Donald Miller
#45. For me, the beginning of sharing my faith with people began by throwing out Christianity and embracing Christian spirituality, a nonpolitical mysterious system that can be experienced but not explained.
Donald Miller
#46. By accepting God's love for us, we fall in love with Him, and only then do we have the fuel we need to obey.
Donald Miller
#47. I asked God to help me understand the story of the forest and what it means to be a tree in that story.
Donald Miller
#48. When you build a city near no mountains and no ocean, you get materialism and traditional religion. People have too much time and lack inspiration.
Donald Miller
#49. people can't live without a story, without a role to play.
Donald Miller
#50. It costs personal fear to be authentic but the reward is integrity, and by that I mean a soul fully integrated, no difference between his act and his actual person.
Donald Miller
#51. If you don't feel free and be yourself, you can't connect. Find people who accept your quirks. They'll heal your soul.
Donald Miller
#52. I don't trust people to accept who I am in process. I'm the kind of person who wants to present my most honest, authentic self to the world - so I hide backstage and rehearse honest and authentic lines until the curtain opens.
Donald Miller
#53. I love to give charity, but I don't want to be charity. This is why I have so much trouble with grace.
Donald Miller
#54. It's encouraging to watch what people will do to contribute to a love story. It's as though we universally recognize the union of souls is worth sacrificing for.
Donald Miller
#55. Meaningful stories have lots and lots of conflict. If we avoid conflict, our stories won't be meaningful.
Donald Miller
#56. Work on your character and a good life will come to you.
Donald Miller
#57. It is worthy of note that the Chinese and Japanese characters for money and gold are the same.
Donald Miller
#58. Some people skip through life; some people are dragged through it.
Donald Miller
#59. When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.
Donald Miller
#60. We live on top of the created world, I think to myself, not in it.
Donald Miller
#61. I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made fo figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently.
Donald Miller
#62. I love writing books - I really do. If I could just quit everything and work on a book every day, I would love that most.
Donald Miller
#63. I once listened to an Indian on television say that God was in the wind and the water, and I wondered at how beautiful that was because it meant you could swim in Him or have Him brush your face in a breeze.
Donald Miller
#64. The more I try to impress people, the more I separate myself from them. Vulnerability attracts love.
Donald Miller
#65. The Kingdom of Heaven runs on righteousness, but the Kingdom of Earth runs on oil. ERNEST BEVIN, CHURCHILL'S MINISTER OF LABOUR AND NATIONAL SERVICE London,
Donald L. Miller
#66. Donald had reached its further edge, and could hear the rush of the stream from the deep obscurity of the abyss below, when there rose from the opposite side a strain of the most delightful music he had ever heard.
Hugh Miller
#67. To know there is a better story for your life and to choose something other is like choosing to die.
Donald Miller
#68. Even our beliefs have become trend statements. We don't even believe things because we believe them anymore. We only believe things because they are cool things to believe.
Donald Miller
#69. When we do what God wants us to do, we are blessed, we are spiritually healthy.
Donald Miller
#70. I loved the fact that it wasn't my responsibility to change somebody, that it was God's, that my part was just to communicate love and approval.
Donald Miller
#71. Everybody wants to be somebody fancy. Even if they're shy.
Donald Miller
#72. Half the time I don't know what I'm trying to say.
Donald Miller
#73. Naked people look funny when they are for-real naked, outside-a-magazine naked.
Donald Miller
#74. He said, Don, when something hard happens to you, you have two choices in how to deal with it. You can either get bitter, or better. I chose to get better. It's made all the difference.
Donald Miller
#75. You'd think God would come right out and tell us what to do in the Bible, but He doesn't. He mostly tells stories, and He rarely stops the story to say what the point is. He just lets the characters and conflict hang in the air like smoke.
Donald Miller
#76. Too much of our time is spent trying to chart God on a grid, and too little is spent allowing our hearts to feel awe. By reducing Christian spirituality to formula, we deprive our hearts of wonder.
Donald Miller
#77. The sexual conquest is huge with men in terms of affirming themselves and their feelings of masculinity. That's a misguided kind of affirmation. That is not helpful, but that stuff happens.
Donald Miller
#78. The mountains themselves call us into greater stories.
Donald Miller
#79. The problem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest.
Donald Miller
#80. Relationships unlock certain parts of who we are supposed to be.
Donald Miller
#81. I think a lot of the shame-based religious and political methodology has more to do with keeping people contained than with setting them free. And I'm no fan of it.
Donald Miller
#82. SOMEBODY ONCE TOLD ME WE WILL NEVER FEEL loved until we drop the act, until we're willing to show our true selves to the people around us.
Donald Miller
#83. Of all the principles I'd learn about story, the idea that a character is what he does remains the hardest to actually live.
Donald Miller
#84. We don't need as much as we have. Hardly any of us need as much money as we have. It's true what they say about the best things in life being free.
Donald Miller
#85. I will love you like God, because of God, mighted by the power of God. I will stop expecting your love, demanding your love, trading for your love, gaming for your love. I will simply love.
Donald Miller
#86. Christian spirituality was not a children's story. It wasn't cute or neat. It was mystical and odd and clean, and it was reaching into dirty. There was wonder in it and enchantment.
Donald Miller
#87. Maybe life isn't meaningless ... Maybe just YOUR life is meaningless
Donald Miller
#88. God has spoken, and when God speaks, the majority has spoken.
Donald Miller
#89. I want my spirituality to rid me of hate, not give me reason for it.
Donald Miller
#90. For a long time, I thought I was good at relationships because I was charming.
Donald Miller
#91. I am quitting this thing, but not what you think. I am not going away. I will give you this, my love, and I will not bargain or barter any longer. I will love you, as sure as He has loved
Donald Miller
#92. When I was in love there was somebody in the world who was more important than me, and that, given all that happened at the fall of man, is a miracle, like something God forgot to curse.
Donald Miller
#93. If you want to bond with your friends, do something very hard with them, something that you won't be able to do alone.
Donald Miller
#94. IS THERE ANYTHING MORE TOXIC THAN THE FEAR of being judged? Judgment shuts us down and makes us hide. It keeps us from being ourselves, which keeps us from connecting with other people.
Donald Miller
#95. I have sometimes wondered if the greatest desire of man is to be known and loved anyway.
Donald Miller
#96. There was also no character arc. Change only comes when we face the difficulty of reality head-on. Fantasy changes nothing, which is why, once we're done fantasizing, it feels like a bankrupt story.
Donald Miller
#97. Remarkably, the most common regret of the dying was this: they wish they'd had the courage to live a life true to themselves and not the life others expected of them.
Donald Miller
#98. I know a little of why there is blood in my body, pumping life into my limbs and thought into my brain. I am wanted by God.
Donald Miller
#99. If I do not introduce people to Jesus, then I don't believe Jesus is an important person. It doesn't matter what I say.
Donald Miller
#100. The risk of being known is also the decision to be criticized by some.
Donald Miller
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
