Piety Quotes - Page 11

• Marriage is the strictest tie of perpetual friendship, and there can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity; and he must expect to be wretched, who pays to beauty, riches, or politeness that regard which only virtue and piety can claim.

  Samuel Johnson

  Marriage, Integrity, Ties

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1836). “The works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: with an essay on his life and genius”, p.41

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• All holy piety in public, and all peeled grapes and self-indulgence in private.

  Terry Pratchett

  Self, Holy, Grapes

  Terry Pratchett (2008). “Small Gods: (Discworld Novel 13)”, p.232, Random House

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• For the most part neoconservatives are people who were once liberals but sobered up. The neoliberal is one who has always been a liberal but now replaces the sentimental pieties with brusque slogans ("High-Tech!") and unpronounceable programs. All else stays the same.

  Emmett Tyrrell

  People, Sentimental, Program

  4 Copy quote

• Those who misrepresent the normal experiences of life, who decry being controversial, who shun risk, are the enemies of the American way of life, whatever the piety of their vocal professions and the patriotic flavor of their platitudes.

  Henry Wriston

  Life, Patriotic, Risk

  4 Copy quote

• The piety of the Hebrew prophets purges their grossness. The circumcision is an example of the power of poetry to raise the low and offensive.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Symbolism, Example, Circumcision

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.209, Harvard University Press

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I hope all of you will inherit and carry forward the fine traditions of China's religious circle in patriotism and religious piety and in upholding peace.

  Jia Qinglin

  Religious, Circles, Tradition

  4 Copy quote

• Piety, religion, and morality are intimately connected with the well being of that state, and indispensable to the administration of civil justice.

  Joseph Story

  Justice, Religion, Administration

  Joseph Story (1842). “A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States”, p.260

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I cannot however help repeating Piety, because I think it indispensible. Religion in a Family is at once its brightest Ornament & its best Security.

  Samuel Adams

  Thinking, Ornaments, Helping

  Samuel Adams (1968). “The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1778-1802”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• One should put forth great effort in matters of learning. One should read books concerning military matters, and direct his attention exclusively to
  the virtues of loyalty and filial piety. Reading Chinese poetry, linked
  verse, and waka is forbidden. One will surely become womanized if he gives
  his heart such knowledge of such elegant and delicate refinements. Having
  been born into the house of a warrior, one's intentions should be to grasp
  the long and the short swords and to die

  Kato Kiyomasa

  Loyalty, Military, Reading

  23 Copy quote

• In one way or another, this is the oldest story in America: the struggle to determine whether “we, the people” is a moral compact embedded in a political contract or merely a charade masquerading as piety and manipulated by the powerful and privileged to sustain their own way of life at the expense of others.

  Bill Moyers

  Spiritual, Powerful, Struggle

  "Bill Moyers: 'That Sound You Hear Is the Shredding of the Social Contract'" by Bill Moyers, www.motherjones.com. December 13, 2013.

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• We must embrace the power of faith, but we must never confuse politics and piety. For me, may I say that it is against my religion to impose my religion.

  John Ashcroft

  Scary, May, Embrace

  7 Copy quote

• To speak of ‘limits to growth’ under a capitalistic market economy is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior society. The moral pieties, that are voiced today by many well-meaning environmentalists, are as naive as the moral pieties of multinationals are manipulative. Capitalism can no more be ‘persuaded’ to limit growth than a human being can be ‘persuaded’ to stop breathing. Attempts to ‘green’ capitalism, to make it ‘ecological’, are doomed by the very nature of the system as a system of endless growth.

  Murray Bookchin

  Nature, Warrior, Breathing

  "Remaking Society: Pathways to a Green Future". Book by Murray Bookchin, 1990.

  81 Copy quote

  Show source

• The genuflection toward 'fairness' is a familiar newsroom piety, in practice the excuse for a good deal of autopilot reporting and lazy thinking but in theory a benign ideal. In Washington, however, a community in which the management of news has become the single overriding preoccupation of the core industry, what 'fairness' has often come to mean is a scrupulous passivity, an agreement to cover the story not as it is occurring but as it is presented, which is to say as it is manufactured.

  Joan Didion

  Mean, Thinking, Practice

  FaceBook post by Joan Didion from Aug 25, 2011

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The child is father of the man: And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.

  William Wordsworth

  Children, Father, Men

  "My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold" l. 1 (1807). Wordsworth also used the last three lines as the epigraph for his poem "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" (1807). See Milton 43

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ancestor worship, or filial piety so characteristic of Asian cultures, for example, does not really resonate with Americans who favor children, not grandparents.

  Alan Dundes

  Children, Grandparent, Asian Culture

  91 Copy quote

• Things of heaven cannot be obtained by perseverance; they are the grace of God. To open to this and trust in it is how belief is crystallized into faith. We cannot pay for it in any form, in any way, by our goodness, by our piety, by our great qualities, merits, or virtues; nothing. It is a gift, and all we can do is receive it.

  Hazrat Inayat Khan

  Spiritual, Perseverance, Heaven

  13 Copy quote

• Never, my dear Sir, do you take it into your head that I do not love you; you may settle yourself in full confidence both of my love and my esteem; I love you as a kind man, I value you as a worthy man, and hope in time to reverence you as a man of exemplary piety.

  Samuel Johnson

  Love, Friendship, Men

  Samuel Johnson (2014). “The Letters of Samuel Johnson, Volume II: 1773-1776”, p.267, Princeton University Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are not to consider ourselves, while here, as at church or school, to listen to the harangues of speculative piety; we are here to talk of the political interests committed to our charge.

  Fisher Ames

  School, Political, Church

  Fisher Ames (1871). “Speeches of Fisher Ames in Congress, 1789-1796”, p.12

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are who mistake the spirit of pugnacity for the spirit of piety, and thus harbor a devil instead of an angel.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Mistake, Angel, Devil

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The great Christian art did not die because all possible forms had been used up; it died because faith was being transformed into piety. Now, the same conquest of the outside world that brought in our modern individualism, so different from that of the Renaissance, is by way of relativizing the individual. It is plain to see that man's faculty of transformation, which began by a remaking of the natural world, has ended by calling man himself into question.

  Andre Malraux

  Christian, Art, Men

  "The Voices of Silence". Book by Andre Malraux, Doubleday, Part IV, Chapter VI, 1953.

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• The intellectual's ... playfulness, in its various manifestations, is likely to seem to most men a perverse luxury; in the United States the play of the mind is perhaps the only form of play that is not looked upon with the most tender indulgence. His piety is likely to seem nettlesome, if not actually dangerous. And neither quality is considered to contribute very much to the practical business of life.

  Richard Hofstadter

  Men, Play, Luxury

  "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life". Book by Richard Hofstadter (p. 33), 1974.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The whole life of Christians ought to be an exercise of piety, since they are called to sanctification. It is the office of the law to remind them of their duty and thereby to excite them to the pursuit of holiness and integrity. But when their consciences are solicitous how God may be propitiated, what answer they shall make, and on what they shall rest their confidence, if called to his tribunal, there must then be no consideration of the requisitions of the law, but Christ alone must be proposed for righteousness, who exceeds all the perfection of the law.

  John Calvin

  Christian, Integrity, Exercise

  John Calvin (1985). “On God and Political Duty: Calvin”, Prentice Hall

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every object in nature is impressed with God's footsteps, and every day repeats the wonders of creation. There is not an object, be it pebble or pearl, weed or rose, the flower-spangled sward beneath, or the star-spangled sky above, not a worm or an angel, a drop of water or a boundless ocean, in which intelligence may not discern, and piety adore, the providence of Him who took our nature that He might save our souls.

  Thomas Guthrie

  Weed, Nature, Stars

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 427, 1895.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Young men, you who have any piety at all, what sort is it? Is it a hot-house plant, which must be framed and glassed, lest March, that bold young fellow, should shake the life out.of it in his rough play among the flowers? or is it a hardy shrub, which rejoices when the wild winds course along the heather or howl above the crest of Lebanon ' We need, believe me, the bravery of godliness to bear true witness for our Master now.

  William Morley Punshon

  Flower, Believe, Men

  William Morley Punshon (1873). “Lectures and Sermons”, p.9, Adam, Stevenson

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Piety's hard enough to take among the poor who have to practice it. A rich man's piety stinks. It's insufferable.

  Archibald MacLeish

  Men, Practice, Atheism

  Archibald MacLeish (1958). “J. B.”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source