Clicky

Inspirational Elisabeth Elliot Quotes – Viral Believer
Skip to content

Inspirational Elisabeth Elliot Quotes

Who Was Elisabeth Elliot?

Elisabeth Elliot was an American Christian author and speaker. Her first husband, Jim Elliot, was murdered in 1956 while attempting to establish contact with the Auca people (now known as Huaorani) of eastern Ecuador.

She later spent two years living among the people who had murdered her husband as a missionary in South America before returning to the United States and writing over 20 Christian books.

elisabeth elliot

At her passing, many notable Christians remarked on her inspirational life. Here are a few examples.

“I have never known anyone who has given more of themselves, their intellect and their heart to the church in this country than Elisabeth Elliot.”- Billy Graham

“Elisabeth was a woman of extraordinary courage. She modeled not only how to live for Christ, but also how to die for Christ.” – Max Lucado

“Her words are saturated with her love for Jesus…She is an example of what it means to ‘live’ your faith in every moment.” – Joyce Meyer

The following quotes by Elisabeth Elliot are some of the most inspirational and encouraging words I’ve ever read. Much like her life, these quotes are full of hope and joy. It is my prayer that you will find them as inspiring as I have.

Elisabeth Elliot Quotes

Elisabeth Elliot Quotes On Womanhood

“The fact that I am a woman does not make me a different kind of Christian, but the fact that I am a Christian makes me a different kind of woman.”

Elisabeth Elliot

“It is a naive sort of feminism that insists that women prove their ability to do all the things that men do. This is a distortion and a travesty. Men have never sought to prove that they can do all the things women do. Why subject women to purely masculine criteria? Women can and ought to be judged by the criteria of femininity, for it is in their femininity that they participate in the human race. And femininity has its limitations. So has masculinity. That is what we’ve been talking about. To do this is not to do that. To be this is not to be that. To be a woman is not to be a man. To be married is not to be single – which may mean not to have a career. To marry this man is not to marry all the others. A choice is a limitation.”

Elisabeth Elliot

“I believe a woman, in order to be a good wife, must be (among other things) both sensual and maternal.”

Elisabeth Elliot

“TO understand the meaning of womanhood we have to start with God. If He is indeed “Creator of all things visible and invisible” He is certainly in charge of all things, visible and invisible, stupendous and miniscule, magnificent and trivial. God has to be in charge of details if He is going to be in charge of the overall design.”

Elisabeth Elliot

“–so the woman who accepts the limitations of womanhood finds in those very limitations her gifts…”

Elisabeth Elliot

“I don’t want anybody treating me as a “person” rather than as a woman. Our sexual differences are the terms of our life, and to obscure them in any way is to weaken the very fabric of life itself. When they are lost, we are lost.”

Elisabeth Elliot

“God might have given Adam another man to be his friend, to walk and talk and argue with if that was his pleasure. But Adam needed more than the companionship of the animals or the friendship of a man. He needed a helper, specially designed and prepared to fill that role. It was a woman God gave him, a woman, “meet,” fit, suitable, entirely appropriate for him, made of his very bones and flesh.”

Elisabeth Elliot

Elisabeth Elliot Quotes On Friendship

“The disciplined Christian will be very careful what sort of counsel he seeks from others. Counsel that contradicts the written Word is ungodly counsel. Blessed is the man that walketh not in that.”

Elisabeth Elliot

“A young woman asked the great preacher Charles Spurgeon if it was possible to reconcile God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility. “Young woman,” said he. “You don’t reconcile friends”

Elisabeth Elliot

Elisabeth Elliot Quotes On The Bible

“The principles of gain through loss, of joy through sorrow, of getting by giving, of fulfillment by laying down, of life out of death is what the Bible teaches, and the people who have believed it enough to live it out in simple, humble, day-by-day practice are people who have found the gain, the joy, the getting, the fulfillment, the life.”

Elisabeth Elliot

“He (Jim) was given new assurance, and wrote to his parents of his intention to go to Ecuador. Understandably, they, with others who knew Jim well, wondered if perhaps his ministry might not be more effective in the United States, where so many know so little of the Bible’s real message. He replied:  “I dare not stay home while Quichuas [and I would add, unreached and unengaged peoples group; natalia] perish. What if the well-filled church in the homeland needs stirring? They have the Scriptures, Moses, and the prophets, and a whole lot more. Their condemnation is written on their bank books and in the dust of their Bible covers.”

Elisabeth Elliot

The Word of God I think of as a straight edge, which shows up our own crookedness. We can’t really tell how crooked our thinking is until we line it up with the straight edge of Scripture.

Elisabeth Elliot

“Faith is not inferred from the happy way things work. It is an act of will, a choice, based on the unbreakable Word of a God who cannot lie, and who showed us what love and obedience and sacrifice mean, in the person of Jesus Christ.”

Elisabeth Elliot

Elisabeth Elliot Quotes On Suffering

“To be a follower of the Crucified means, sooner or later, a personal encounter with the cross. And the cross always entails loss.”

Elisabeth Elliot

“The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances.”

Elisabeth Elliot

“Of one thing I am perfectly sure: God’s story never ends with ‘ashes.’”

Elisabeth Elliot

“God’s presence did not change the fact of my widowhood. Jim’s absence thrust me, forced me, hurried me to God, my only hope and my only refuge.” 

Elisabeth Elliot

“This is where faith begins—in the wilderness, when you are alone and afraid, when things don’t make sense.”

Elisabeth Elliot

“Things to do in suffering:

1. Recognize it.

2. Accept it.

3. Offer it to God as a sacrifice.

4. Offer yourself with it.”

Elisabeth Elliot

“The deepest things I have learned in my own life have come from the deepest suffering. And out of the deepest waters and the hottest fires have come the deepest things I know about God.” 

Elisabeth Elliot

“The bigger our pain now, the bigger that “weight of glory” will be. It’s mysterious, it’s unimaginable, but it’s going to be, and for that we give thanks.”

Elisabeth Elliot

“He puts those tears into His bottle, for He gave you the love that brings those tears and He made you so you could cry, and you cast it all on the Rock that never moves.”

Elisabeth Elliot

Elisabeth Elliot Quotes On Death

“George Macdonald said, ‘If you knew what God knows about death you would clap your listless hands’, but instead I find old people in North America just buying this whole youth obsession. I think growing older is a wonderful privilege. I want to learn to glorify God in every stage of my life.”

Elisabeth Elliot

“The principles of gain through loss, of joy through sorrow, of getting by giving, of fulfillment by laying down, of life out of death is what the Bible teaches, and the people who have believed it enough to live it out in simple, humble, day-by-day practice are people who have found the gain, the joy, the getting, the fulfillment, the life.”Elisabeth Elliot

“We want to avoid suffering, death, sin, ashes. But we live in a world crushed and broken and torn, a world God Himself visited to redeem. We receive his poured-out life, and being allowed the high privilege of suffering with Him, may then pour ourselves out for others.”

Elisabeth Elliot

“The other wives and I talked together one night about the possibility of becoming widows. What would we do? God gave us peace of heart, and confidence that whatever might happen, His Word would hold. We knew that ‘when He Putteth forth His sheep, He goeth before them.’ God’s leading was unmistakable up to this point. Each of us knew when we married our husbands that there would never be any question about who came first — God and His work held held first place in each life. It was the condition of true discipleship; it became devastatingly meaningful now.

It was a time for soul-searching, a time for counting the possible cost. Was it the thrill of adventure that drew our husbands on? No. Their letters and journals make it abundantly clear that these men did not go out as some men go out to shoot a lion or climb a mountain. Their compulsion was from a different source. Each had made a personal transaction with God, recognising that he belonged to God, first of all by creation, and secondly by redemption through the death of His Son, Jesus Christ. This double claim on his life settled once and for all the question of allegiance. It was not a matter of striving to follow the example of a great Teacher. To conform to the perfect life of Jesus was impossible for a human being. To these men, Jesus Christ was God, and had actually taken upon Himself human form, in order that He might die, and, by His death, provide not only escape from the punishment which their sin merited, but also a new kind of life, eternal both in length and in quality. This meant simply that Christ was to be obeyed, and more than that, that. He would provide the power to obey”

Elisabeth Elliot

“All the Scriptural metaphors about the death of the seed that falls into the ground, about losing one’s life, about becoming the least in the kingdom, about the world’s passing away—all these go on to something unspeakably better and more glorious. Loss and death are only the preludes to gain and life. It was a temptation to foreshorten the promises, to look for some prompt fulfillment of the loss-gain principle….”

Elisabeth Elliot

Share These Quotes

Elisabeth Elliot’s quotes are a treasure trove of wisdom, inspiration, and encouragement for women. In this blog post, we’ve shared some of her most powerful quotes on womanhood, suffering, death, and the Bible. Share your favorite quote or two from these wise words with friends or family today!

Pastor Duke Taber
Pastor Duke Taber

Pastor Duke Taber

All articles have been written or reviewed by Pastor Duke Taber.
Pastor Duke Taber is an alumnus of Life Pacific University and Multnomah Biblical Seminary.
He has been in pastoral ministry since 1988.
Today he is the owner and managing editor of 3 successful Christian websites that support missionaries around the world.
He is currently starting a brand new church in Mesquite NV called Mesquite Worship Center, a Non-Denominational Spirit Filled Christian church in Mesquite Nevada.