Church Quotes

Then the singing enveloped me. It was furry and resonant, coming from everyone's very heart. There was no sense of performance or judgment, only that the music was breath and food.

Anne Lamott

I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let me speak plainly: The United States of America is and must remain a nation of openness to people of all beliefs. Our very unity has been strengthened by this pluralism. That's how we began; this is how we must always be. The ideals of our country leave no room whatsoever for intolerance, anti-Semitism, or bigotry of any kind -- none. The unique thing about America is a wall in our Constitution separating church and state. It guarantees there will never be a state religion in this land, but at the same time it makes sure that every single American is free to choose and practice his or her religious beliefs or to choose no religion at all. Their rights shall not be questioned or violated by the state.-- Remarks at the International Convention of B'nai B'rith, 6 September 1984

Ronald Reagan

The husband is the head of the wife just in so far as he is to her what Christ is to the Church - read on - and give his life for her (Eph. V, 25). This headship, then, is most fully embodied not in the husband we should all wish to be but in him whose marriage is most like a crucifixion; whose wife receives most and gives least, is most unworthy of him, is - in her own mere nature - lease lovable. For the Church has not beauty but what the Bride-groom gives her; he does not find, but makes her, lovely. The chrism of this terrible coronation is to be seen not in the joys of any man's marriage but in its sorrows, in the sickness and sufferings of a good wife or the faults of a bad one, in his unwearying (never paraded) care or his inexhaustible forgiveness: forgiveness, not acquiescence. As Christ sees in the flawed, proud, fanatical or lukewarm Church on earth that Bride who will one day be without spot or wrinkle, and labours to produce the latter, so the husband whose headship is Christ-like (and he is allowed no other sort) never despairs.

C.S. Lewis

Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.

Richard Feynman

The churches must learn humility as well as teach it.

George Bernard Shaw

The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of. Our attention would have been on God.

C.S. Lewis

The Christian church is an encyclopaedia of prehistoric cults and conceptions of the most diverse orgiin and that is why it is so capable of proselytising: it always could and it can still go wherever it pleases and it always found and it always finds something similar to itself to which it can adapt itself and gradually impose upon it a Christian meaning.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they're sinners can bring democracy the tolerance it requires to survive

Ronald Reagan

Don't give your money to the church. They should be giving their money to you.

George Carlin

Church was doing what he often did when dropped - lying on his back with all four legs in the air, pretending to be dead in order to induce guilt in his owners.

Cassandra Clare

It is very difficult sometimes to keep awake, especially at church, but there is no difficulty at all about sleeping.

Oscar Wilde

Shall I ask you how the church is to be filled, if a man is neither to take orders with a living, nor without?

Jane Austen

My sister having so much to do, was going to church vicariously, that is to say, Joe and I were going.

Charles Dickens

You must mind and not lower the Church in people's eyes by seeming to be frightened about it for such a little thing.

George Eliot