Motivational Quotes

Churches

We praise Him, we bless Him, we adore Him, we glorify Him, and we wonder who is that baritone across the aisle and that pretty woman on our right who smells of apple blossoms. Our bowels stir and our cod itches and we amend our prayers for the spiritual life with the hope that it will not be too spiritual.

- Cheever, John

Best Quotes about Churches

The Church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones.

Beecher, Henry Ward

Church is the only place where someone speaks to me and I do not have to answer back.

Gaulle, Charles De

I don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.

Wilder, Billy

Be neither intimate nor distant with the clergy.

Proverb, Irish

He was of the faith chiefly in the sense that the church he currently did not attend was Catholic.

Amis, Kingsley

The itch of disputing is the scab of the churches.

Wotton, Sir Henry

And of all plagues with which mankind are cursed, ecclesiastic tyranny's the worst.

Defoe, Daniel

A glorious Church is like a magnificent feast; there is all the variety that may be, but every one chooses out a dish or two that he likes, and lets the rest alone: how glorious soever the Church is, every one chooses out of it his own religion, by which he governs himself, and lets the rest alone.

Selden, John

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

Paine, Thomas

10.

There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being.

Joyce, James

11.

It is indolence... Indolence and love of ease; a want of all laudable ambition, of taste for good company, or of inclination to take the trouble of being agreeable, which make men clergymen. A clergyman has nothing to do but be slovenly and selfish; read the newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work and the business of his own life is to dine.

Austen, Jane

12.

I'm a priest, not a priestess. Priestess implies mumbo jumbo and all sorts of pagan goings-on. Those who oppose us would love to call us priestesses. They can call us all the names in the world -- it's better than being invisible.

Heyward, Carter

13.

It's about time we quit playing church in these services that start at eleven o clock sharp and end at twelve o clock dull.

Havner, Vance

14.

A little, round, fat, oily man of God.

Thomson, James

15.

People have described me as a management bishop but I say to my critics, Jesus was a management expert too.

Carey, George

16.

Wherever we find the Word of God surely preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to the institution of Christ, there, it is not to be doubted, is a church of God.

Calvin, John

17.

The priesthood is a marriage. People often start by falling in love, and they go on for years without realizing that love must change into some other love which is so unlike it that it can hardly be recognized as love at all.

Murdoch, Iris

18.

The local church is the outcrop of the church universal.

Forsyth, Peter T.

19.

The problem is not that the churches are filled with empty pews, but that the pews are filled with empty people.

Shedd, Charlie

20.

Archbishop -- A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.

Mencken, H. L.

21.

The old cathedrals are good, but the great blue dome that hangs over everything is better.

Carlyle, Thomas

22.

Here, the churches seemed to shrink away into eroding corners. They seem to have ceased to be essential parts of American life. They no longer give life. It is the huge buildings of commerce and trade which now align the people to attention. These in their massive manner of steel and stone say, Come unto me all ye who labor, and we will give you work.

O'Casey, Sean

23.

How can a bishop marry? How can he flirt? The most he can say is I will see you in the vestry after service.

Smith, Sydney

24.

I think a bishop who doesn't give offence to anyone is probably not a good bishop.

Thomson, James

25.

Nearly all the evils in the Church have arisen from bishops desiring power more than light. They want authority, not outlook.

Ruskin, John

26.

Too hot to go to Church? What about Hell?

Poster In Dayton, Ohio

27.

Though the church has many critics, it has no rivals.

28.

The Bible knows nothing of solitary religion.

Wesley, John

29.

30.

A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.

Mencken, H. L.

31.

It is one of the ironies of the ministry that the very man who works in God's name is often hardest put to find time for God. The parents of Jesus lost Him at church, and they were not the last ones to lose Him there.

Havner, Vance

32.

It would be far better to be of no church than to be bitter of any.

Penn, William

33.

The Christian church is a society of sinners. It is the only society in the world, membership in which is based upon the single qualification that the candidate shall be unworthy of membership.

Morrison, Charles C.

34.

The church exists to train its member through the practice of the presence of God to be servants of others, to the end that Christlikeness may become common property.

Brown, William Adams

35.

I never weary of great churches. It is my favorite kind of mountain scenery. Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral.

Stevenson, Robert Louis

36.

There is not in the universe a more ridiculous, nor a more contemptible animal, than a proud clergyman.

Fielding, Henry

37.

Where God builds a church the devil builds a chapel.

Luther, Martin

38.

I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.

Swift, Jonathan

39.

Cheever, John

40.

Many come to bring their clothes to church rather than themselves.

Fuller, Thomas

41.

He who is near the Church is often far from God.

Proverb, French

42.

Churchgoers are like coals in a fire. When they cling together, they keep the flame aglow; when they separate, they die out.

Graham, Billy

43.

My own mind is my own church.

Paine, Thomas

44.

I believe with all my heart that the Church of Jesus Christ should be a Church of blurred edges.

Carey, George

45.

The church is so subnormal that if it ever got back to the New Testament normal it would seem to people to be abnormal.

Havner, Vance

46.

She say, Celie, tell the truth, have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God.

Walker, Alice

47.

We sing in a church, why can we not dance there?

Shaw, George Bernard

48.

Once is orthodox, twice is puritanical.

Melbourne, Lord

49.

Mass ought to be in Latin, unless you could do it in Greek or Chinese. In fact, any abracadabra that no bloody member of the public or half-educated ape of a clargimint could think he understood.

Pound, Ezra

50.

What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say I know instead of I am learning, and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for skepticism and activity.

Shaw, George Bernard