church Quotes

“Church rules us with a hard rod, Comfort.”

““The story goes that a public sinner was excommunicated and forbidden entry to the church. He took his woes to God. ‘They won’t let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner.’ ‘What are you complaining about?’ said God. ‘They won’t let Me in either.””

“But that’s impossible. Can you imagine Mr. Clutter missing church? Just to sleep?”

“A new sense of ‘church’ had emerged, open and inclusive, replacing the hermetically sealed model that had kept the ‘good folks’ in and the ‘bad folks’ out.”

“You will not clean this up. If there are people in our community who are disparaged and hated and left out because they are mojados (wetbacks) . . . Then we shall be proud to call ourselves a wetback church.”

“– We go to the house of God, Mr Casey said, in all humility to pray to our Maker and not to hear election addresses. – It is religion, Dante said again. They are right. They must direct their flocks. – And preach politics from the altar, is it? asked Mr Dedalus. – Certainly, said Dante. It is a question of public morality. A priest would not be a priest if he did not tell his flock what is right and what is wrong.”

“On Sunday mornings as he passed the church door he glanced coldly at the worshippers who stood bareheaded, four deep, outside the church, morally present at the mass which they could neither see nor hear. Their dull piety and the sickly smell of the cheap hair-oil with which they had anointed their heads repelled him from the altar they prayed at.”

“And well she sang a service, with a fine Intoning through her nose, as was most seemly, And she spoke daintily in French, extremely, After the school of Stratford-atte-Bowe; French in the Paris style she did not know.”

“Others only delude themselves and thus upset families, churches, and all other relationships. In their self-pride and judgment of others, they show great inconsistency.”

“This covenant-keeping love reached its climax in the death of Christ for his church, his bride. That death was the ultimate expression of grace, which is the ultimate expression of God’s glory, which is of infinite value.”

“Marriage is patterned after Christ’s covenant relationship to his redeemed people, the church.”

“The beauty of the covenant-keeping love between Christ and his church shines brightest when nothing but Christ can sustain it.”

“‘I’ll see you in church.’ Tony said ‘I’d like to see the church in you.‘”

“Many leaders in the church do not want to deal with things that relate to the devil.”

“Aware of our deep failings, we pour contempt on our own hearts for wanting more. Oh, we long for intimacy and for adventure; we long to be the beauty of some great story. But the desires set deep in our hearts seem like a luxury, granted only to those women who get their acts together. The message to the rest of us – whether from a driven culture or a driven church – is try harder.”

“I couldn’t believe my grandmother would be lying to me. She went to church every morning of the week and she said grace before every meal, and somebody who did that would never tell lies. I was beginning to believe every word she spoke. ”

“But one Sunday, during the Harvest Festival service, a terrible thing happened. Sampson, who had suffered a very bad night with the young mice, dropped off during the sermon and dreamt he was back in the days before he was reformed. When he woke up he found he was not dreaming. He was chasing mice all over the church. It took a bit of time to remember about brotherly love, and by that time it was too late.”

“In a busy little town, not very far away, there is a church, and in the church there lived a mouse whose name was Arthur. “

“Sampson, the church cat, had listened to so many sermons about the meek being blessed and everybody really being brothers that he had grown quite frighteningly meek and treated Arthur like a brother.”

“ ‘It was all working out so nicely,’ the parson went on sadly, ‘but as it is, you’ll have to go in the morning. A church is no good without a congregation, is it?’ “

“It is not so much that God has a mission for his church in the world, but that God has a church for his mission in the world.”

“Don’t focus on whether your church is dying; keep your focus on being transformed into the leader God can use to transform his people for his mission.”

“Christ commissioned the twelve disciples to heal (Matt. 10:7-8). Later, He commissioned the seventy. His commission was given to all who believe (Mark 16:17-18). It was given to the church (James 5:14-16). These commissions have never been revoked.”

“He could feel the force now very strong, very close, all around, the air was thick with it; outside the church was destruction and chaos, the heart of the Dark, and he could think of nothing that he could do to turn it aside.”

“...legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.”

“My own mind is my own church.”

“That’s quite absurd! You have merely to go to bed and blow out the candle. It is very difficult sometimes to keep awake, especially at church, but there is no difficulty at all about sleeping. Why, even babies know how to do that, and they are not very clever.”

“Aware of our deep failings, we pour contempt on our own hearts for wanting more. Oh, we long for intimacy and for adventure; we long to be the Beauty of some great story. But the desires set deep in our hearts seem like a luxury, granted only to those women who get their acts together. The message to the rest of us – whether from a driven culture or a driven church – is try harder.”

“Charlotte and Emily wore gloves and carried prayerbooks, as did everyone. They were meant to keep silence on their way. ‘It’s so that we can think holy thoughts for church, you see,’ Bunty explained. ‘Not that I ever seem to have any.‘”

“For crowing there was not his equal in all the land. His voice was merrier than the merry organ that plays in the church, and his crowing from his resting place was more trustworthy than a clock.”

“It was Sundays that saved her. After morning church she went straight to the garage, put on her jeans, and though only emergency work was really done on Sundays, the foreman always had something ready for her. Very dirty and happy, she would work until they had to dash home for lunch.”

The belfry of George’s Church sent out constant peals and worshippers, singly or in groups, traversed the little circus before the church, revealing their purpose by their self-contained demeanour no less than by the little volumes in their gloved hands.

Mr M’Coy had tried unsuccessfully to find a place in the bench with the others and, when the party had settled down in the form of a quincunx, he had tried unsuccessfully to make comic remarks. As these had not been well received he had desisted. Even he was sensible of the decorous atmosphere and even he began to respond to the religious stimulus.

Mr Kernan came of Protestant stock and, though he had been converted to the Catholic faith at the time of his marriage, he had not been in the pale of the Church for twenty years. He was fond, moreover, of giving side-thrusts at Catholicism.

“Now we’re working for the church!”

“Mr. Bell made an awfully long prayer. I would have been dreadfully tired before he got through if I hadn’t been sitting by that window. But it looked right out on the Lake of Shining Waters, so I just gazed at that and imagined all sorts of splendid things.”

“Mr. Gresham was a very good man and a very religious man, but he told too many funny stories and made the people laugh in church; he was undignified, and you must have some dignity about a minister, mustn’t you, Matthew?”

That the church was in the hands of the merchants at the moment was obvious enough;

“Church ain’t shucks to a circus.”

Under every article of faith of the church could be put the faith in the service of truth instead of one’s desires.

“I got to go to church and sweat and sweat—I hate them ornery sermons!”