Religious Quotes

Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his reason.

It is rare to see a rich man religious; for religion preaches restraint, and riches prompt to unlicensed freedom.

I have no problem with people's religious beliefs. I just don't happen to have any.

I already had the sense that I was someone who was more spiritual than specifically religious. ... I'm really interested in those things that are more far-reaching than culture, nationality, race, religion.

I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth.

The problem with writing about religion is that you run the risk of offending sincerely religious people, and then they come after you with machetes.

If Christ is risen, nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen-nothing else matters.

Yes, God wants you to do signs and wonders. But the love of God manifested through you is what people really need. So you first must see His face. You must become so close to His very heartbeat that you can feel what others feel.

Love of Allah is the power of the heart, the sustenance of the heart, the light of the heart.

We are at fault for not slaying the Jews.

The kind of poetry I write, lyric poetry, I think is really concerned with intimacy, with mystery. That needn't be religious mystery, there are mysteries to do with everyday life.

I also found that for myself, since I've had no religious education, it was so interesting to see the different versions of heaven and what life on earth means.

God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does.

The cross stands high above the opinions of men and to that cross all opinions must come at last for judgment.

[Spiritual friendship] is eagerly helping one another know, serve, love, and resemble God in deeper and deeper ways.

I consider the government of the U.S. as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises.

It is because we underrate thought, because we do not see what a great element it is in religious life, that there is so little of practical and consistent religion among us.

And at thirty-eight a brilliant exponent of arms and a knight of the great fighting and religious Order of St John, the Chevalier de Villegagnon had absolutely no use for common sense himself, but respected it in the laity.

In the end, worship can never be a performance, something you're pretending or putting on. It's got to be an overflow of your heart...Worship is about getting personal with God, drawing close to God.

Obedience to the call of Christ nearly always costs everything to two people- the one who is called, and the one who loves that one.

Often a man goes on for years imaging that the religious teaching that had been imparted to him since childhood is still intact, while all the time there is not a trace of it left in him.

The Devil, it is true, is not exactly a doctor who has taken degrees, but he is very learned, very expert for all that. He has not been carrying on his business during thousands of years for nothing.

In perplexities-when we cannot tell what to do, when we cannot understand what is going on around us, let us be calmed and steadied and made patient by the thought that what is hidden from us is not hidden from Him

That human behavior is more influenced by things outside of us than inside. The situation is the external environment. The inner environment is genes, moral history, religious training.

My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become.

Love is the motivating principle by which the Lord leads us along the way towards becoming like Him, our perfect example. Our way of life, hour by hour, must be filled with the love of God and love for others.

In contemplative prayer we seek to become the person we are called to be, not by thinking of God, but by being with God. Simply to be with God is to be drawn into being the person God calls us to be

If we live the faith in our daily life, then our work too becomes a chance to spread the joy of being a Christian.

Christianity does not involve the belief that all things were made for man. it does involve the belief that god loves man and for his sake became man and died.

We have become so engrossed in the work of the Lord that we have forgotten the Lord of the work.

The best way to overcome the world is not with morality or self-discipline. Christians overcome the world by seeing the beauty and excellence of Christ. They overcome the world by seeing something more attractive than the world: Christ

Strive to make every person feel special. After all, every person you meet is made in the image of God.

God never ends anything on a negative; God always ends on a positive.

The United States, which has been called the home of the persecuted and the dispossessed, has been since its founding an asylum for emotional orphans. For over three hundred years, refugees from political oppression, religious persecution, famine, poverty, and a rigid class system which limited educational and economic opportunities have been leaving their native villages and cities and coming to the United States in search of freedom and a better life.

I have talked with people that have no assurance of sins forgiven. They want to feel saved before they're willing to commit themselves to Christ. But I believe that the only ones whom God actually witnesses by His Spirit are born of Him, are the people whether they say it or not, that come to Jesus Christ and say something like this: 'Lord Jesus, I'm gonna obey You and love You and serve You and do what You want me to do as long as I live even if I go to hell at the end of the road simply because You are worthy to be loved, obeyed and served. And I'm not trying to make a deal with You.'

There is a religious principle: Love thy neighbour as thyself. But it's also an economic asset. If you've got a neighbour, you've got help, and this implies another limit. If you want to have neighbours, you can't have a limitless growth economy. You have to prefer to have a neighbour rather than to own your neighbour farm.

Can you worship a God who isn't obligated to explain His actions to you? Could it be your arrogance that makes you think God owes you an explanation?

Good religious poetry... is likely to be most justly appreciated and most discriminately relished by the undevout.

There's no such thing as perfect people. There's no such thing as a perfect life. So come as you are, broken and scarred. Lift up your heart and be amazed and be changed by a perfect God.

I think what happens in a religious life is that we have those experiences of affirmation and that one starts to live a Christian life or a Jewish life or a Muslim life or a Buddhist life, by affirming that affirmation each day. Each day you say 'Yes' to that Yes. So the life of being a Christian for example, is always a life of double affirmation, that you each day say 'Yes' to those counter-experiences of saying 'Yes', even when you're not experiencing them at that time, you're remaining loyal to that experience.

Of course, even the general designation 'religious' includes various basic ideas or convictions, for example, the indestructibility of the soul, the eternity of its existence, the existence of a higher being, etc. But all these ideas, regardless of how convincing they may be for the individual, are submitted to the critical examination of this individual and hence to a fluctuating affirmation or negation until emotional divination or knowledge assumes the binding force of apodictic faith.

Modern marriage is first and foremost a romantic and private union, but the tax laws and inheritance laws and religious implications that still surround this institution indicate that marriage has evolved without casting away its earlier purposes or assumptions. It's like we just keep building on this thing, piling new advancements on the old model.

y feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders.

Even when your body does nothing, sin can be active in your mind. When your soul inwardly repulses the evil one's attack by means of prayer, attention, remembrance of death, godly sorrow and mourning the body, too, takes its share of holiness, having acquired freedom from evil actions. This is what the Lord meant by saying that someone who cleans the outside of the cup has not cleansed it inside, but clean the inside and the whole cup will be clean

The lazy Christian has his mouth full of complaints, when the active Christian has his heart full of comforts.

God’s grace does not come to people who morally outperform others, but to those who admit their failure to perform and who acknowledge their need for a Savior.

It is the property of the religious spirit to be the most refining of all influences. No external advantages, no culture of the tastes, no habit of command, no association with the elegant, or even depth of affection, can bestow that delicacy and that grandeur of bearing which belong only to the mind accustomed to celestial conversation,--all else is but gilt and cosmetics, beside this, as expressed in every look and gesture.

If anyone does not in accord with the Holy Fathers acknowledge the holy and ever virgin and immaculate Mary was really and truly the Mother of God, inasmuch as she, in the fullness of time,and without seed, conceived by the Holy Spirit, God in the Word Himself, who before all time was born of God the Father, and without loss of integrity brought Him forth, and after His birth preserved her virginity inviolate, let him be condemned.

Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way......What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything....Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.

We were a religious, practicing, Catholic family - Mass together on Sunday, Catholic schools, and parents who practiced everything they preached. A great gift was their total absence of any derogatory talk about people of any race or culture and we were on a street of many faiths, though no other races at that early time.