Motivational Quotes

Churches

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

- Penn, William

Best Quotes about Churches

I have, alas, only one illusion left, and that is the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Smith, Sydney

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

Fielding, Henry

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

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

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

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

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

Amis, Kingsley

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

10.

The local church is the outcrop of the church universal.

Forsyth, Peter T.

11.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

12.

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

Voltaire

13.

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

Ingersoll, Robert Green

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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.

17.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

18.

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

Carey, George

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

22.

The difference between listening to a radio sermon and going to church...is almost like the difference between calling your girl on the phone and spending an evening with her.

Moody, Dwight L.

23.

This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive.

Johnson, Samuel

24.

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

25.

My own mind is my own church.

Paine, Thomas

26.

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

Shedd, Charlie

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

30.

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

Wilder, Billy

31.

The Bible knows nothing of solitary religion.

Wesley, John

32.

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

Moody, Dwight L.

33.

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

Graham, Billy

34.

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

Thomson, James

35.

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

36.

A church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.

Nash, L. L.

37.

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

Thomson, James

38.

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

Mott, John R.

39.

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

40.

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

Ruskin, John

41.

The parson knows enough who knows a Duke.

Cowper, William

42.

A full-dressed ecclesiastic is a sort of go-cart of divinity; an ethical automaton. A clerical prig is, in general, a very dangerous as well as contemptible character. The utmost that those who thus habitually confound their opinions and sentiments with the outside coverings of their bodies can aspire to, is a negative and neutral character, like wax-work figures, where the dress is done as much to the life as the man, and where both are respectable pieces of pasteboard, or harmless compositions of fleecy hosiery.

Hazlitt, William

43.

An instinctive taste teaches men to build their churches with spire steeples which point as with a silent finger to the sky and stars.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

44.

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

Fuller, Thomas

45.

Many people are in a rut and a rut is nothing but a grave--with both ends kicked out.

Havner, Vance

46.

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

Weil, Simone

47.

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

48.

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

Chadwick, Henry

49.

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.

50.

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

Defoe, Daniel