"In the greatest difficulties, in the heaviest trials, in the deepest poverty and necessities, He has never failed me; but because I was enabled by His grace to trust Him He has always appeared for my help. I delight in speaking well of His name."

"There were few people, perhaps, more passionately fond of travelling, and seeing fresh places, and new scenes, than myself; but now, since, by the grace of God, I have seen beauty in the Lord Jesus, I have lost my taste for these things."

"My business is, with all my might to serve my own generation; in doing so I shall best serve the next generation, should the Lord Jesus tarry... The longer I live, the more I am enabled to realize that I have but one life to live on earth, and that this one life is but a brief life, for sowing, in comparison with eternity, for reaping."

"It often astonishes me that I did not see the importance of meditation upon Scripture earlier in my Christian life. As the outward man is not fit for work for any length of time unless he eats, so it is with the inner man. What is the food for the inner man? Not prayer, but the Word of God -not the simple reading of the Word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe. No, we must consider what we read, ponder over it, and apply it to our hearts."

"Through faith in the Lord Jesus alone can we obtain forgiveness of our sins, and be at peace with God; but, believing in Jesus, we become, through this very faith, the children of God; have God as our Father, and may come to Him for all the temporal and spiritual blessings which we need."

"The Spirit and the Word must be combined. If I look to the Spirit alone without the Word, I lay myself open to great delusions also. If the Holy Ghost guides us at all, He will do it according to the Scriptures and never contrary to them."

"It is a common temptation of Satan to make us give up the reading of the Word and prayer when our enjoyment is gone; as if it were of no use to read the Scriptures when we do not enjoy them, and as if it were no use to pray when we have no spirit of prayer."

"When sight ceases, it is the time for faith to work. The greater the difficulties, the easier it is for faith. As long as human possibilities for success remain, faith does not accomplish things as easily as when all natural prospects fail."

"A brother with small earnings may ask,''Should I also give? My earning are already so small that my family can barely make ends meet.'' My reply is, ''Have you ever considered that the very reason your earnings remain so small may be because you spend everything on yourself? If God gave you more, you would only use it to increase your own comfort instead of looking to see who is sick or who has no work at all that you might help them."

"Now what is food for the inner man? Not prayer, but the Word of God; and here again, not the simple reading of the Word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water passes through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering it over and applying it to our hearts."

"The more I am in a position to be tried in faith with reference to my body, my family, my service for the Lord, my business, etc., the more shall I have opportunity of seeing God's help and deliverance; and every fresh instance, in which He helps and delivers me, will tend towards the increase of my faith."

"A child rightly trained may be a world-wide blessing, with an influence reaching onward to eternal years. But a neglected or misdirected directed child may live to blight and blast mankind, and leave influences of evil which shall roll on in increasing volume till they plunge into the gulf of eternal perdition."

"Christians do not practically remember that while we are saved by grace, altogether by grace, so that in the matter of salvation works are altogether excluded; yet that so far as the rewards of grace are concerned, in the world to come, there is an intimate connection between the life of the Christian here and the enjoyment and the glory in the day of Christ's appearing."

"If honest of heart and uprightness before God were lacking or if I did not patiently wait on God for instruction, or if I preferred the counsel of my fellow-men to the declarations of the Word of God, I made great mistakes."

"On the ground of our own goodness we cannot "expect "to have our prayers answered. But Jesus is worthy, and for His sake we may have our prayers answered. There is nothing too choice, too costly, or too great for God to give Him. He is worthy. He is the spotless, holy Child, who under all circumstances acted according to the mind of God. And if we trust in Him, if we hide in Him, if we put Him forward and ourselves in the background, depend on Him and plead His name, we may expect to have our prayers answered."

"It is true that the faith, which I am enabled to exercise, is altogether God's own gift; it is true that He alone supports it, and that He alone can increase it; it is true that, moment by moment, I depend upon Him for it, and that, if I were only one moment left to myself, my faith would utterly fail..."

"At last I saw Christ as my Saviour. I believed in Him and gave myself to Him. The burden rolled from off me, and a great love for Christ filled my soul. That was more than fifty years ago. I loved Jesus Christ then, but I loved Him more the year after, and more the year after that, and more every year since"

"As a warning to parents, I mention that my father preferred me to my brother, which was very injurious to both of us. To me, as tending to produce in my mind a feeling of self-elevation; and to my brother, by creating in him a dislike both towards my father and me."

"If we hold fast our confidence in Him, but our faith is also, by the exercise, strengthened: and so it comes, that, if we walk with God in any measure of uprightness of heart, the trials of faith will be greater and greater."

"I deliberately try not to cater for the commercial market, so I can't see myself in competition, you know, with second or third generation rock stars."

"A lot of people who were writing when I came through originally as a singer-songwriter have disappeared."

"I am about the arrangements and the layers of depth in the music."

"My records do not require a lot of thought of 'What is this?' and 'What is that?' That would be too contrived for me."

"I put out records to this day that are not necessarily in a sequence of anything. Some could be written a while back, some not. There is no set pattern."

"My thinking musically has always been more advanced - it is difficult to get it down onto paper sometimes, even now."

"For a long time, I couldn't actually deal with playing concerts; it was a totally alien concept to me, 'cause I was used to playing in clubs and dance halls."

"You learn to read the audiences after a while, and there are all different kinds of gigs."

"I don't feel comfortable doing interviews. My profession is music, and writing songs. That's what I do. I like to do it, but I hate to talk about it."

"Being famous was extremely disappointing for me. When I became famous it was a complete drag and it is still a complete drag."

"As a developing musician, skiffle became a platform for me to start playing music."

"Even today, skiffle is a defining part of my music. If I get the opportunity to just have a jam, skiffle is what I love to play."

"Every performance is different. That's the beauty of it."

"I do see value in music criticism. Most of the criticism I have received over the years has been very good."

"I don't think nostalgia has to be negative."

"I educated myself. To me, school was boring."

"I learnt from Armstrong on the early recordings that you never sang a song the same way twice."

"I never bought the commercial thing, at any stage of the game."

"I never paid attention to what was contemporary or what was commercial, it didn't mean anything to me."

"I think Paul McGuinness and U2 created the Irish music industry. It certainly wasn't there before that."

"I understood jazz, I understood how it worked. That's what I apply to everything."

"I'd love to live in Ireland but I'd like to live as me, not what someone thinks I am. People don't understand - I lived there before I was famous."

"I'm not a rock singer and I don't want to be a rock singer. I'm not interested. It doesn't seem to get across."

"If you're a pop singer, you don't need to evolve. You just get a set together, have some hit songs and play them over and over."

"It was really strange for me when I started to play concerts in America where the audiences were all sitting down."

"Large audiences did not suit my low-key approach."

"My ambition when I started out was to play two or three gigs a week. And that's what I'm doing."

"Skiffle was a name that was attached to what was, in essence, American folk music with a beat."

"The first piece of music that captured my imagination was probably Ray Charles Live At Newport."

"The point of jazz is, you do something and then you go on."

"When I started studying tenor saxophone as a kid in Belfast, I did so with a guy named George Cassidy, who was also a big inspiration."