Clergymen Quotes - Page 5

• I'm as religious as the next man - which is to say I'll keep in with the local parson for form's sake and read the lessons on feast-days because my tenants expect it, but I've never been fool enough to confuse religion with belief in God. That's where so many clergymen... go wrong

  George MacDonald Fraser

  Religious, Men, Lessons

  George MacDonald Fraser (2013). “Flashman in the Great Game: A Novel”, p.90, Penguin

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• A distinguished clergyman told me that he chose the profession of a clergyman because it afforded the most leisure for literary pursuits. I would recommend to him the profession of a governor.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Leisure, Pursuit, Distinguished

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.229, Graphic Arts Books

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• The entitlement mentality so carefully cultivated by liberal academics, politicians, clergymen, and journalists continues to corrode the self-sufficiency that once defined the American character.

  Mona Charen

  Character, Self, Entitlement

  Mona Charen (2006). “Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help and the Rest of Us”, Sentinel

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• The capitalist has this over the politician and the clergyman; he has in practice done more to raise the standard of living of the poor than all the government and church programs in history....Monsanto and the Archer Daniels Midland Company have fed more hungry people than all the...soup kitchens combined.

  Dinesh D'Souza

  Archer, Soup Kitchens, Government

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• Who would condescend to strike down the mere things that he does not fear? Who would debase himself to be merely brave, like any common prizefighter? Who would stoop to be fearless--like a tree? Fight the thing that you fear. You remember the old tale of the English clergyman who gave the last rites to the brigand of Sicily, and how on his death-bed the great robber said, 'I can give you no money, but I can give you advice for a lifetime: your thumb on the blade, and strike upwards.' So I say to you, strike upwards, if you strike at the stars.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Stars, Fighting, Giving

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.201, Simon and Schuster

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• Sometimes we listen to too many commentators about things that don't affect their lives because they're in a different tax bracket. Or to the so-called clergymen giving their interpretation of God's word, and yet they're not rolling the same way in their own lives.

  Stevie Wonder

  Giving, Way, Rolling

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• Clergymen almost necessarily fail in two ways as teachers of morals. They condemn acts which do no harm and they condone acts which do great harm.

  Bertrand Russell

  Teacher, Two, Way

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.356, Routledge

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• Never, ever ask a former clergyman to say the blessing over a holiday dinner. Not if you like your dinner warm, anyway.

  Mary Kay Andrews

  Holiday, Blessing, Dinner

  "Blue Christmas". Book by Mary Kay Andrews, 2006.

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• From a dramatic viewpoint, there are few professions that grant their members entry into other lives, high among them cops, doctors, clergymen, journalists and prostitutes. Perhaps that explains why they figure in so much television and cinema. Their lives are lived in the midst of human drama.

  Roger Ebert

  Drama, Doctors, Cinema

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• [Regarding] the convention that clergymen are more virtuous than other men. Any average selection of mankind, set apart and told that it excels the rest in virtue, must tend to sink below the average.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Average, Atheism

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Why Men Fight: A Method of Abolishing the International Duel”, p.117, Lulu Press, Inc

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• The nature of oratory is such that there has always been a tendency among politicians and clergymen to oversimplify complex matters. From a pulpit or a platform even the most conscientious of speakers finds it very difficult to tell the whole truth.

  Aldous Huxley

  Oratory, Matter, Politician

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• Clergymen and people who use phrases without wisdom sometimes talk of suffering as a mystery. It is really a revelation.

  Oscar Wilde

  People, Suffering, Phrases

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: De profundis, "Epistola : in carcere et vinculis"”, p.105, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• Of all the classes of men, I dislike the most those who make their livings by talking - actors, clergymen, politicians, pedagogues, and so on. .... It is almost impossible to imagine a talker who sticks to the facts. Carried away by the sound of his own voice and the applause from the groundlings, he makes inevitably the jump from logic to mere rhetoric.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Talking, Class

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.174, Knopf

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• When our founding fathers put their signatures on the Declaration of Independence, those 56 brave people, most of whom by the way were clergymen, they said that we had certain inalienable rights given to us by our creator, and among these life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, life being one of them. I still believe that.

  Mike Huckabee

  Father, Believe, Pursuit Of Happiness

  The Republican Presidential debate on Fox News Channel in Orlando, Fla., www.nytimes.com. October 21, 2007.

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• I explained we lost the porch to the flood. Father hasn't gotten around to rebuilding it, although he's quite a good carpenter. He says if Jesus was a carpenter, its good enough for a clergyman. But I don't remember that Jesus let his house fall down.

  Franny Billingsley

  Jesus, Father, Fall

  Franny Billingsley (2011). “Chime”, p.20, Penguin

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• For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these, and yet Be thought an idler by the noisy set Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen The martyrs call the world.

  William Butler Yeats

  Sweet, Work, Together

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.78, Simon and Schuster

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• That clergyman soon becomes an object of contempt who being often asked out to dinner never refuses to go.

  St. Jerome

  Dinner, Contempt, Refuse

  St. Jerome (2012). “The Sacred Writings of Saint Jerome (Annotated Edition)”, p.199, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Every politician, clergyman, educator, or physician, in short, anyone dealing with human individuals, is bound to make grave mistakes if he ignores these two great truths of population zoology: (1) no two individuals are alike, and (2) both environment and genetic endowment make a contribution to nearly every trait.

  Ernst Mayr

  Mistake, Two, Physicians

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• How deep a wound to morals and social purity has that accursed article of the celibacy of the clergy been! Even the best and most enlightened men in Romanist countries attach a notion of impurity to the marriage of a clergyman. And can such a feeling be without its effect on the estimation of the wedded life in general? Impossible! and the morals of both sexes in Spain, Italy, France, and. prove it abundantly.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Country, Sex, Men

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Illustrated)”, p.3377, Delphi Classics

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• My father was a clergyman and always said: 'Hate the sin but love the sinner.'

  George McGovern

  Father, Hate, Sin

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• Young people, some of whom are not born into the faith, are being fired up by preachers using basic Islamic scripture and mobilized to wage jihad by radical imams who represent themselves as legitimate Muslim clergymen.

  Ayaan Hirsi Ali

  Islamic, People, Scripture

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• The word soul has lost its meaning and even its plausibility.... Faith, hope and love can no longer be seen simply as virtues or graces; they are processes in flesh and blood... (the clergyman) will find that whether he wants it or not, he is also a front-line mental health worker or he will be so regarded by the specialists in mental health. It is on the pastoral role and the tasks of shepherding that the psychological disciples have the greatest impact in theological work.

  Paul Pruyser

  Past, Impact, Blood

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• A man who is good enough to go to heaven is good enough to be a clergyman.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Not Good Enough, Heaven

  "The Sayings of Doctor Johnson".

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• My fathers a clergyman, and he was in the mission field for a certain amount of time in British Honduras, which is now Belize.

  John Hurt

  Father, Fields, Certain

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, film.avclub.com. March 22, 2007.

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• Clergymen have much the same in their breeches as other men.

  Elizabeth Aston

  Men, Religion

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