Quotes about churches

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

Allen, Fred A. on churches
4 fans of this quote   

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

Amis, Kingsley on churches   

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

Atkinson, Brooks on churches
4 fans of this quote   

"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 on churches   

"It will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation."

Austen, Jane on 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 on churches   

"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 on churches   

"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 on churches   

"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 on churches
3 fans of this quote   

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

Carey, George on churches   

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

Carey, George on churches   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on churches   

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

Chadwick, Henry on churches   

"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 on churches   

"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 on churches   

"The parson knows enough who knows a Duke."

Cowper, William on churches   

"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 on churches   

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

Defoe, Daniel on churches   

"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 on churches   

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

Fielding, Henry on churches   

"The local church is the outcrop of the church universal."

Forsyth, Peter T. on churches   

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

Fuller, Thomas on churches
3 fans of this quote   

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

Gaulle, Charles De on churches   

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

Graham, Billy on churches
3 fans of this quote   

"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 Maria like 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 on churches   

"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 on churches
3 fans of this quote   

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

Havner, Vance on churches   

"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 on churches   

"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 on churches   

"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. on churches   

"A full-dressed ecclesiastic is a sort of go-cart of divinity; an ethical automaton. A clerical prig is, in general, a very dangerous as well as contemptible character. The utmost that those who thus habitually confound their opinions and sentiments with the outside coverings of their bodies can aspire to, is a negative and neutral character, like wax-work figures, where the dress is done as much to the life as the man, and where both are respectable pieces of pasteboard, or harmless compositions of fleecy hosiery."

Hazlitt, William on churches   

"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 on churches   

"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 on churches   

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

Ingersoll, Robert Green on churches   

"The question confronting the Church today is not any longer whether the man in the street can grasp a religious message, but how to employ the communications media so as to let him have the full impact of the Gospel message."

John Paul II on churches   

"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. on churches   

"This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive."

Johnson, Samuel on churches   

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

Joyce, James on churches   

"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 on churches   

"Where God builds a church the devil builds a chapel."

Luther, Martin on churches
5 fans of this quote