Motivational Quotes

Churches

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

- Carlyle, Thomas

Best Quotes about Churches

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

Amis, Kingsley

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

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

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

Gaulle, Charles De

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

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

Carlyle, Thomas

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

Ruskin, John

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.

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?

10.

The parson knows enough who knows a Duke.

Cowper, William

11.

The local church is the outcrop of the church universal.

Forsyth, Peter T.

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Mencken, H. L.

15.

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

Atkinson, Brooks

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.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Joyce, James

20.

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

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.

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

Fuller, Thomas

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Wilder, Billy

26.

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

Nash, L. L.

27.

The Bible knows nothing of solitary religion.

Wesley, John

28.

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

Ingersoll, Robert Green

29.

Too hot to go to Church? What about Hell?

Poster In Dayton, Ohio

30.

The first time I sang in the church choir; two hundred people changed their religion.

Allen, Fred A.

31.

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

Chadwick, Henry

32.

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.

33.

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

34.

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

Graham, Billy

35.

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

Smith, Sydney

36.

Where God builds a church the devil builds a chapel.

Luther, Martin

37.

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

Pound, Ezra

38.

Once is orthodox, twice is puritanical.

Melbourne, Lord

39.

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

40.

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

41.

42.

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

43.

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

Mott, John R.

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Defoe, Daniel

47.

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

Havner, Vance

48.

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

49.

The itch of disputing is the scab of the churches.