Motivational Quotes

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

Best Quotes about Churches

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

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

Amis, Kingsley

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

Havner, Vance

A group touring Westminster Abbey in London heard the guide list the famous people buried within its walls. During a momentary silence a little old lady's voice blurted out loud and clear, Anybody been saved here lately?

The Church cannot be content to live in its stained-glass house and throw stones through the picture window of modern culture.

Brown, Robert Mcafee

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

Moody, Dwight L.

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

Once is orthodox, twice is puritanical.

Melbourne, Lord

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

Shaw, George Bernard

10.

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

11.

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

Thomson, James

12.

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.

13.

Be neither intimate nor distant with the clergy.

Proverb, Irish

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.

The local church is the outcrop of the church universal.

Forsyth, Peter T.

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Carey, George

19.

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

Penn, William

20.

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.

21.

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

22.

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

Thomson, James

23.

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

Nash, L. L.

24.

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

Mott, John R.

25.

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

26.

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

Graham, Billy

27.

The parson knows enough who knows a Duke.

Cowper, William

28.

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

Shedd, Charlie

29.

I have no objections to churches so long as they do not interfere with God's work.

Atkinson, Brooks

30.

The itch of disputing is the scab of the churches.

Wotton, Sir Henry

31.

Where God builds a church the devil builds a chapel.

Luther, Martin

32.

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

Carey, George

33.

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.

34.

If church prelates, past or present, had even an inkling of physiology they'd realize that what they term this inner ugliness creates and nourishes the hearing ear, the seeing eye, the active mind, and energetic body of man and woman, in the same way that dirt and dung at the roots give the plant its delicate leaves and the full-blown rose.

O'Casey, Sean

35.

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.

36.

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

37.

This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive.

Johnson, Samuel

38.

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

Fuller, Thomas

39.

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

40.

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

Weil, Simone

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Ingersoll, Robert Green

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Mencken, H. L.