Motivational Quotes

Churches

In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs.

- Weil, Simone

Best Quotes about Churches

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

The local church is the outcrop of the church universal.

Forsyth, Peter T.

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

The root of almost every schism and heresy from which the Christian Church has suffered, has been because of the effort of men to earn, rather than receive their salvation; and the reason preaching is so commonly ineffective is, that it often calls on people to work for God rather than letting God work through them.

Ruskin, John

The question confronting the Church today is not any longer whether the man in the street can grasp a religious message, but how to employ the communications media so as to let him have the full impact of the Gospel message.

John Paul II

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

Carlyle, Thomas

Many are called but few are chosen. There are sayings of Christ which suggest that the Church he came to establish will always be a minority affair.

Norman, Edward

But a priest's life is not supposed to be well-rounded; it is supposed to be one-pointed -- a compass, not a weathercock.

Huxley, Aldous

In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs.

Weil, Simone

10.

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

Mencken, H. L.

11.

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

Graham, Billy

12.

What makes a church great in the eyes of God? Participation, proclamation, preservation, and propagation. Every church ought to exhibit all four.

Hawkins, O. S.

13.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

14.

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

15.

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

16.

This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive.

Johnson, Samuel

17.

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

Fuller, Thomas

18.

Standards of conduct appropriate to civil society or the workings of a democracy cannot be purely and simply applied to the Church.

Ratzinger, Cardinal Joseph

19.

A woman's asking for equality in the church would be comparable to a black person's demanding equality in the Ku Klux Klan.

Daly, Mary

20.

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

21.

The Pope is an idol whose hands are tied and whose feet are kissed.

Voltaire

22.

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

23.

The Church has always been willing to swap off treasures in heaven for cash down.

Ingersoll, Robert Green

24.

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

25.

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

26.

The act of bell ringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people.

Pound, Ezra

27.

The itch of disputing is the scab of the churches.

Wotton, Sir Henry

28.

A Church which has lost its memory is in a sad state of senility.

Chadwick, Henry

29.

Those who marry God can become domesticated too -- it's just as hum-drum a marriage as all the others. The word Love means a formal touch of the lips as in the ceremony of the Mass, and Ave Marialike dearest is a phrase to open a letter. This marriage like the world's marriages was held together by habits and tastes shared in common between God and themselves -- it was God's taste to be worshipped and their taste to worship, but only at stated hours like a suburban embrace on a Saturday night.

Greene, Graham

30.

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

Ruskin, John

31.

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.

32.

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

Proverb, French

33.

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

34.

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

35.

The greatest hindrances to the evangelization of the world are those within the church.

Mott, John R.

36.

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

Joyce, James

37.

Yes, I see the Church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.

King Jr. Martin Luther

38.

The priesthood in many ways is the ultimate closet in Western civilization, where gay people particularly have hidden for the past two thousand years.

Spong, John

39.

Church attendance is as vital to a disciple as a transfusion of rich, healthy blood to a sick man.

Moody, Dwight L.

40.

His creed no parson ever knew, for this was still his simple plan, to have with clergymen to do as little as a Christian can.

Doyle, Sir Francis

41.

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

Carey, George

42.

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

Wilder, Billy

43.

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

44.

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

45.

The separation of church and state is a source of strength, but the conscience of our nation does not call for separation between men of state and faith in the Supreme Being.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

46.

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

47.

48.

Once is orthodox, twice is puritanical.

Melbourne, Lord

49.

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.

50.

My own mind is my own church.

Paine, Thomas