Christians of numerous denominations observe Lent each year typically with the goals of truly remembering their great need for God, along with taking away a habit or guilty pleasure that they realize they’ve either come to rely on, have been enjoying or prioritizing more than fellowship with God, or spend far too much of their time doing. Some popular things to give up include soda, sugar, social media, TV, or even actions like gossiping or complaining. Then, it is common to replace the time and energy spent on those habits or addictions on spiritual practices instead—such as praying, fasting, studying the Bible or helping others. When the hunger pains (sometimes literal if fasting from food for a meal or a certain period of time, otherwise figurative from the yearning for the habit) are obvious, it’s a good reminder for participants that God—and only God—gives them everything they need. The noticeable absence of a vice, constant craving, or simply the unnecessary act that they are intentionally cutting off/out allows someone the opportunity to reflect on why this is normally their go-to crutch, or at least the realization that the “needs” that days are filled with are not always actually beneficial. Striving to live in a self-aware way that is more spiritual—more about serving and trusting in God and loving others, less about pleasing ourselves—is a strong, underlying motive for participating in Lent. So, enjoy these 75 quotes about the purposeful period of time known as Lent, which can involve giving things up, prioritizing prayer, growing closer to God, preparing for Easter, and finding ways to care more for the good of others than for self.
75 Lent Quotes
- “Lent is a time for discipline, for confession, for honesty, not because God is mean or fault-finding or finger-pointing but because he wants us to know the joy of being cleaned out, ready for all the good things he now has in store. — N.T. Wright
- “When people give up chocolate or meat or alcohol or coffee, it is not because we Christians think that if we enjoy something, it must be bad. Coffee, meat, alcohol and especially chocolate are very good things that show God’s goodness, creativity, and provision. Of course, Christians ought to be interested and working toward breaking habits of sin — gossip, lust, judgment, anger, pride, and so on — but this is called repentance, which is certainly not limited to Lent. I’m not giving up Facebook in the same way that I’m repenting of (and trying to give up) anxiety or impatience with my toddler.” — Tish Harrison Warren
- “There are three elements that are almost always part of Lent: prayer, giving something up, and giving something back.” — Elizabeth Hyndman
- “Lent affords us the opportunity to search the depths of our sin and experience the heights of God’s love.” — Chuck Colson
- “In light of your longed-for return, we choose to deny ourselves (fast) certain pleasures for this brief season; but we’re not looking to get one thing from you, Jesus—just more of you.” — Scotty Smith
- “What is more important than the practices we take on is the heart attitude behind them. If there’s anything we should give up this time of year, it’s our sense of superiority either to those outside the church or those inside the church who do things differently than we do. The cross levels us all. And that’s true whether or not you practice Lent.” — Trevin Wax
- “Fasting makes sense if it really chips away at our security and, as a consequence, benefits someone else, if it helps us cultivate the style of the good Samaritan, who bent down to his brother in need and took care of him.” — Pope Francis
- “In the here and now, may we embrace the power of his resurrection to live a godly life.” — Joni Eareckson Tada
- “True intimacy with God always brings humility.” — Beth Moore
- “We need to take time to connect with the poor, resist our unceasing cravings, and pray. But we also need to gather with friends and family, share in God’s good provision, eat delicious food, tell stories that encourage us all, and celebrate the risen Lord.” ― Chris Seay
- “What we see in Christ is sacrificial love. Merciful love. Love that values the well-being of others above itself. Love that will generously and fully pour itself out, whatever the cost, in order that the beloved might benefit, flourish, and thrive.” — Krish Kandiah
- “The central focus of fasting remains to draw near to God. It reveals sins from which we must repent. Fasting is an act of worship that changes our spiritual and physical posture toward God.” — Timothy Willard
- “Seek a relationship when you pray, not answers. You won’t always find answers, but you will always find Jesus.” — Father Mike Schmitz
- “While I am asking God how I should observe an upcoming Lenten season, I may remember where I spiritually was during Lent the previous year and reflect on what has changed and what has stayed the same. I hear and read the familiar stories about Jesus as he approached the cross and am reminded that while my circumstances change, the truths of the gospel remain the same.” — Charlotte Donlon
- “No act of virtue can be great if it is not followed by advantage for others. So, no matter how much time you spend fasting, no matter how much you sleep on a hard floor and eat ashes and sigh continually, if you do no good to others, you do nothing great.” — John Chrysostom
- “Each year, around the latter part of winter, Lent arrives. It nearly always surprises me. Here it is, once again, summoning me to change how I typically live.” — W. David O. Taylor
- “Although Lent is often the excuse people use to test drive a new diet or make good on their New Year’s resolution, that is not its purpose. Lent is a time when we prepare for Holy Week by meditating on our fragility before God and our desperate need for a Savior. It is a time when we remember why Jesus had to die. During Lent, we surrender an idol that has assumed improper centrality in our lives, and then we watch as our souls shrink and groan when that idol is taken away. We understand with new clarity that our hearts are indeed ‘idol factories,’ and that we would be hopelessly self-destructive and broken had Christ not intervened.” — Sharon Hodde Miller
- “Fasting is more about longing for the power and presence of Jesus than restricting our appetites.” — Gary Rohrmayer
- “Don’t love the world’s ways. Don’t love the world’s goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father. Practically everything that goes on in the world—wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important—has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from him.” — Eugene H. Peterson
- “These special holidays give rise to various liturgical calendars that suggest we should mark our days not only with the cycles of the moon and seasons, but also with occasions to tell our children the stories of our faith community’s past so that this past will have a future, and so that our ancient way and its practices will be rediscovered and renewed every year.” ― Brian D. McLaren
- “Ash Wednesday, with its visible sign of dust and ashes on our foreheads, is a forcible reminder of our own frailty and mortality and sinfulness. We don’t like to remember those parts of ourselves, but on this day, it is literally rubbed onto us.” — Paul J. Willis
- “The devil wishes to assure some people that there’s no need for repentance, and others that there’s no hope for mercy. Some people are deceived into thinking they are too good for the gospel while others are accused into thinking they are too bad for the gospel.” — Russell D. Moore
- “Exchange what can never satisfy you for the only thing that can.” — Wendy Speake
- “Because Nature, and especially human nature, is fallen it must be corrected and the evil within it must be mortified.” — C.S. Lewis
- “We live in a world of evaluations, assessments, and measurements, but Jesus turns his gaze deeper because he knows that what is measurable can be faked.” — Scot McKnight
- “You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working, and just so, you learn to love by loving. All those who think to learn in any other way deceive themselves.” — St. Francis de Sales
- “What if we view this desert time of Lent as not just a time to reflect or to lament or to confess or to fast, but a time where we learn to be free?” — Megan Westra
- “For many grow languid in praying; and in the freshness of their conversion they pray fervently, afterwards languidly, afterwards coldly, afterwards negligently; they become, as it were, careless. The enemy is awake; you are sleeping. Our Lord Himself, in the Gospel, gave us the precept, ’that men ought always to pray, and not to faint.’” — St. Augustine
- “Lent comes providentially to awaken us, to shake us from our lethargy.” — Pope Francis
- “Fasting from any nourishment, activity, involvement or pursuit—for any season—sets the stage for God to appear. Fasting is not a tool to pry wisdom out of God’s hands or to force needed insight about a decision. Fasting is not a tool for gaining discipline or developing piety (whatever that might be). Instead, fasting is the bulimic act of ridding ourselves of our fullness to attune our senses to the mysteries that swirl in and around us.” — Dan B. Allender
- “Lent is a time of going very deeply into ourselves…What is it that stands between us and God? Between us and our brothers and sisters? Between us and life, the life of the Spirit? Whatever it is, let us relentlessly tear it out, without a moment’s hesitation.” — Catherine Doherty
- “Give something, however small, to the one in need. For it is not small to one who has nothing. Neither is it small to God, if we have given what we could.” — St. Gregory Nazianzen
- “How might I better align my daily cadence to God’s? How saturated are my purposes and desires in his? How obedient am I to his calling on my life? Does my fasting matter if I am not living obediently? Does my fasting matter if I live insistent upon satisfying my own cravings?” — Timothy Willard
- “Like a great waterwheel, the liturgical year goes on relentlessly irrigating our souls, softening the ground of our hearts, nourishing the soil of our lives until the seed of the Word of God itself begins to grow in us, comes to fruit in us, ripens in us the spiritual journey of a lifetime.” — Joan D. Chittister
- “Light has a way of welcoming in the truth and letting it put its feet up, which in turn means that everything not like it, though it may invite itself over, can’t get comfortable enough to stay.” — Jackie Hill Perry
- “You must certainly beware of just revising, not reducing, your pleasures. You can see some people searching out unusual liquors as a substitute for the usual wine. … The result is that the observance of Lent means, not the repression of old lusts, but the occasion for new enjoyments.” — St. Augustine
- “The command to love and serve—not merely tolerate—each other requires more commitment and sacrifice than we care to give, and so we do the polite minimum from afar. The seasons of Lent and Easter bring thoughts of surrender and sacrifice.” — Nana Dolce
- “…the liturgical traditions of the Church, all its cycles and services, exist, first of all, in order to help us recover the vision and the taste of that new life which we so easily lose and betray, so that we may repent and return to it. … It is through her liturgical life that the Church reveals to us something of that which “the ear has not heard, the eye has not seen, and what has not yet entered the heart of man, but which God has prepared for those who love Him.” ― Alexander Schmemann
- “Lent is a fitting time for self-denial; we would do well to ask ourselves what we can give up in order to help and enrich others by our own poverty. Let us not forget that real poverty hurts: no self-denial is real without this dimension of penance. I distrust a charity that costs nothing and does not hurt.” — Pope Francis
- “Realising your potential and spirituality begins with seeing yourself as imperfect with the intent of working towards perfection.” — Victor Vote
- “It is what we do routinely, not what we do rarely, that delineates the character of a person.” — Joan D. Chittister
- “In order to know the Good News about Jesus holistically, beyond something that we work out in our brains like a word problem, we try to enter into this story with our bodies.” — Tish Harrison Warren
- “O Lord, make this Lenten season different from the other ones. Let me find you again. Amen.” — Henri Nouwen
- “Our sacrifices in this season are so minuscule as to be laughable, except that our Father seems only too willing to use our tiny offerings as portals for his grace. Every hunger pang or caffeine craving becomes a holy prompt—pray, trust, surrender. The whole season becomes a bit delicious with anticipation: Easter is coming!” — Carolyn Arends
- “The self-denial involved in the period of Lent isn’t about just giving up chocolates or beer; it’s about trying to give up a certain set of pictures of God which are burned into our own selfish wants.” — Rowan Williams
- “The kingdom of God ought to reshape our vision of what matters.” — Russell D. Moore
- “I think that that’s really important to have those seasons where you do some really serious soul searching and deep introspection and really carry the weightiness of that.” — Megan Westra
- “At its simplest, Lent is a season where you commit to a deeper holiness and more vibrant discipleship.” — George Sinclair
- “The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night.” — John Piper
- “Action without prayer thins out into something very exterior. A prayerless life can result in effective action and accomplish magnificent things, but if there is no developed interiority, the action never enters into the depth and intimacy of relationships.” — Eugene H. Peterson
- “Without the breath of God, we are but dust. On the brink of Lent, Ash Wednesday helps us remember the life and death stakes in our own stories.” — Carolyn Arends
- “When you put down your phone, it’s easier to lift up your eyes.” — Wendy Speake
- “Fasting is more about replacing than it is about abstaining — replacing normal activities with focused times of prayer and feeding on the Word of God.” — Gary Rohrmayer
- “The lent period of fasting should be passionately pursued.” ― Lailah Gifty Akita
- “It is better not to fast, and be thereby humbled, than to fast and be self-satisfied therewith.” — Blaise Pascal
- “God did not give the Bible so we could master him or it; God gave the Bible so we could live it, so we could be mastered by it. The moment we think we’ve mastered it, we have failed to be readers of the Bible.” — Scot McKnight
- “Peace is an attribute of God, seen in the risen Christ. It is woven into God’s intention for humanity and is therefore possible and powerful—a potent way to live and lead for the good of others.” — Todd Hunter
- “We are frail, sinful people who need to often reconsider our priorities, motives, and commitments. And fasting, which has both historical and biblical precedent, is a great way to foster reorientation.” — Kevin P. Emmert
- “And isn’t that what freedom is supposed to be? The ability to not do as I please, but the power to do what is pleasing.” — Jackie Hill Perry
- “Does a life of spiritual discipline, Scripture, and truth-telling open our eyes to see the ways that we are always, on this side of eternity, restless for the true intimacy and union that await us?” — Charlotte Donlon
- “Every day that we’re not practicing godliness we’re being conformed to the world of ungodliness around us.” — Jerry Bridges
- “Perhaps some of us are indeed chasing righteousness, hoping it will bring life. More likely, we’re addicted to something else that promises the same: CrossFit, essential oils, or something garden variety like money, sex, or a particular relationship that’s captured our attention. We 21st-century Westerners love self-improvement, ever seeking the next upgrade for our lives and selves. We believe in it; we deeply believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” — Rachel Gilson
- “Fasting confirms our utter dependence upon God by finding in Him a source of sustenance beyond food.” — Dallas Willard
- “Ash Wednesday is full of joy… The sources of all sorrow is the illusion that of ourselves we are anything but dust.” — Father Thomas Merton
- “You could say that prayer without fasting is like boxing with one hand tied behind your back, and that fasting without prayer is, well, dieting.” — Matt Fradd
- “Have patience with all things, but first of all with yourself.” — St. Francis de Sales
- “I imagine Lent for you and for me as a great departure from the greedy, anxious anti-neighborliness of our economy, a great departure from our exclusionary politics that fears the other, a great departure from self-indulgent consumerism that devours creation. And then an arrival in a new neighborhood, because it is a gift to be simple, it is a gift to be free; it is a gift to come down where we ought to be.” ― Walter Brueggemann
- “We must trust in the mighty power of God’s mercy. We are all sinners, but His grace transforms us and makes us new.” — Pope Benedict XVI
- “Jesus is not a commitment among other commitments, but rather the commitment of our lives. Therefore, as Augustine points out, we must take care to order our loves properly, ensuring that our affections are set on Christ and not another.” — Chuck Colson
- “May God empower your inner strength through the power of the Holy Spirit.” — Lailah Gifty Akita
- “If the invitation of Lent is to practice abstaining from something to focus more fully on who God is and how God is at work in the world, then I need to fast from my dependence on criticism.” — Megan Westra
- “Some things don’t need to be cut back. They need to be cut off.” — Beth Moore
- “So often we want Jesus to manage the effects of sin without actually addressing the root issue. But Jesus loves us too much to offer only a superficial solution. He knows the hidden sins of our hearts, and He lovingly insists on dealing with those first.” ― Asheritah Ciuciu
- “One of the chief functions of fasting is to temporarily remove distractions from our lives in order to focus more intentionally on Him. Through fasting, we remove those low maintenance security blankets that have gradually morphed into God-supplanting idols.” — Sharon Hodde Miller
- “Self-denial means knowing only Christ, and no longer oneself. It means seeing only Christ, who goes ahead of us, and no longer the path that is too difficult for us[…]. Self-denial is saying only: He goes ahead of us; hold fast to him.” ― Dietrich Bonhoeffer Check out:- 5 meatless meal ideas for Lent- 15 easy weeknight shrimp recipes for Lent- 7 Mexican meatless recipes
