Love Quote by John Woolman

There is a bracing honesty in Woolman’s admission that his “will and desires” have been “broken”: it’s not a victory lap for piety, it’s a report from the wreckage. In the Quaker universe he inhabited, surrender isn’t theatrics or self-abasement for its own sake; it’s a technology for moral clarity. By naming the collapse of personal desire, Woolman signals that the self - especially the self that wants comfort, status, and safety - is the obstacle to faithful action.

The phrase “with much earnestness” matters. He isn’t claiming saintly calm. He’s confessing urgency, even fear, which makes the turn “to the Lord” feel less like an abstract doctrine and more like a survival move. Quaker spirituality prized the inward, direct encounter with God over religious performance, so this interior pivot is also a political stance: authority is relocated away from institutions and toward conscience.

Context sharpens the stakes. Woolman is remembered for his antislavery witness and for repeatedly choosing social friction over social ease - speaking to slaveholding Friends, refusing dyed clothing produced through exploitation, traveling under harsh conditions. “The dangers before me” aren’t melodrama; they’re the predictable consequences of confronting an economy and culture built on coercion. Subtext: he expects backlash, and he knows his own instincts will bargain for peace. The “broken” will is the price of refusing that bargain.

The line works because it frames moral courage not as swagger but as dependency: a man preparing to walk into conflict by first dismantling the part of himself that most wants to walk away.