Motivational Quotes

Churches

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

- Proverb, French

Best Quotes about Churches

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

Joyce, James

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Mencken, H. L.

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.

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

Nash, L. L.

10.

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

Moody, Dwight L.

11.

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

12.

The local church is the outcrop of the church universal.

Forsyth, Peter T.

13.

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

Ruskin, John

14.

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

15.

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

Proverb, French

16.

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

17.

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

Carey, George

18.

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

Weil, Simone

19.

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

20.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

21.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

22.

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

Thomson, James

23.

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

Fielding, Henry

24.

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.

25.

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

26.

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

Voltaire

27.

Be neither intimate nor distant with the clergy.

Proverb, Irish

28.

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

29.

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

Shedd, Charlie

30.

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

Havner, Vance

31.

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

Mott, John R.

32.

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

33.

34.

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

Wilder, Billy

35.

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

36.

This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive.

Johnson, Samuel

37.

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

Atkinson, Brooks

38.

My own mind is my own church.

Paine, Thomas

39.

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

40.

Once is orthodox, twice is puritanical.

Melbourne, Lord

41.

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

42.

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

Amis, Kingsley

43.

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

44.

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

45.

One hundred religious persons knit into a unity by careful organizations do not constitute a church any more than eleven dead men make a football team. The first requisite is life, always.

Tozer, A. W.

46.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

47.

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

Pound, Ezra

48.

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

49.

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

Thomson, James

50.

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