Pious Quotes

• Volumes might be written upon the impiety of the pious.

  Herbert Spencer

  Might, Volume, Written

  Herbert Spencer (2016). “First Principles: Great Philosopher”, p.97, 北戴河出版

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• When people come to you for help, do not turn them off with pious words, saying, 'Have faith and take your troubles to God.' Act instead as though there were no God, as though there were only one person in the world who could help -- only yourself.

  Martin Buber

  People, World, Have Faith

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• Plenty of people want to be pious, but no one yearns to be humble.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Humble, People, Want

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• Not all human souls but only the pious ones are divine.

  Georg Hermes

  Soul, Divine, Humans

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• With devotion's visage and pious action we do sugar o'er the devil himself.

  Thomas Fuller

  Hypocrisy, Devil, Hamlet And Ophelia

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• If you are unable to compete with the pious in their good
  deeds, compete with the sinful in their repentance.

  Ibn Rajab

  Religious, Islamic, Competition

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• The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.

  C. S. Lewis

  Pain, Real, Believe

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• A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.

  Aristotle

  Atheist, Believe, Moving

  "Politics". Book by Aristotle. Book V, 1314b.39,

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• Man can and must prevent the tragedy of famine in the future instead of merely trying with pious regret to salvage the human wreckage of the famine, as he has so often done in the past.

  Norman Borlaug

  Regret, Past, Men

  Norman Ernest Borlaug (1971). “Mankind and Civilization at Another Crossroad”

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• Love is swift, sincere, pious, joyful, generous, strong, patient, faithful, prudent, long-suffering, courageous, and never seeking its own; for wheresoever a person seeketh his own, there he falleth from love.

  Thomas a Kempis

  Love, Strong, Long

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• In every loving woman there is a priestess of the past

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Past, Priestesses

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• The pious pretense that evil does not exist only makes it vague, enormous and menacing.

  Aleister Crowley

  Evil, Vagueness, Doe

  "The Confessions of Aleister Crowley". Book by Aleister Crowley. Chapter 33, 1969.

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• Piety is not a goal but a means to attain through the purest peace of mind the highest culture.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Mean, Goal, Mind

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• For the myth is the foundation of life; it is the timeless schema, the pious formula into which life flows when it reproduces its traits out of the unconscious.

  Thomas Mann

  Foundation, Flow, Timeless

  Thomas Mann (1999). “Death in Venice, Tonio Kröger, and Other Writings”, p.290, A&C Black

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• O my God, what must a soul be like when it is in this state! It longs to be all one tongue with which to praise the Lord. It utters a thousand pious follies, in a continuous endeavor to please Him who thus possesses it.

  Teresa of Avila

  Humility, Soul, Tongue

  Teresa of Avila (2004). “The Life of St Teresa of Avila by Herself”, p.131, Penguin UK

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• Some persons think they have to look like a hedgehog to be pious.

  Billy Sunday

  Thinking, Looks, Hedgehogs

  "Billy Sunday, the Man and His Message: With His Own Words which Have Won Thousands for Christ".

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• See, even despite pious statements to the contrary, much of the industrialized world has not yet come to terms with the recognition of the fallacy of what I call the strong man syndrome.

  Wole Soyinka

  Strong, Men, World

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• A pious man is one who would be an atheist if the king were.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Atheist, Kings, Men

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• God intends us to penetrate the world. Christian salt has no business to remain snugly in elegant little ecclesiastical salt cellars; our place is to be rubbed into the secular community, as salt is rubbed into meat, to stop it going bad. And when society does go bad, we Christians tend to throw up our hands in pious horror and reproach the non-Christian world; but should we not rather reproach ourselves? One can hardly blame unsalted meat for going bad. It cannot do anything else. The real question to ask is: Where is the salt?

  John Stott

  Christian, Real, Hands

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• It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it [the Constitution] a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution.

  James Madison

  Reflection, Men, Hands

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (1842). “The Federalist, on the New Constitution, Written in the Year 1788”, p.166

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• Your meditations may be as profound, as exalted, as devout as you like; you may practise every pious exercise you can manage, but all this is as nothing in comparison with the Blessed Sacrament. What we do may be godly, but this sacrament is God Himself!

  Johannes Tauler

  Blessed, Godly, Exercise

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• It is very pious to say and prudent to affirm that the holy Bible can never speak untruth -- whenever its true meaning is understood. But I believe nobody will deny that it is often very abstruse, and may say things which are quite different from wha.

  Galileo Galilei

  Bible, Believe, Prudent

  Galileo Galilei, Raymond John Seeger (1966). “Men of physics: Galileo Galilei, his life and his works”

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• No student of Chinese history can say that the Chinese are incapable of religious experience, even when judged by the standards of medieval Europe or pious India.

  Hu Shih

  Religious, Europe, Chinese

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• The pious ones of Plymouth who, reaching the Rock, first fell upon their own knees and then upon the aborigines.

  William M. Evarts

  Rocks, Plymouth, Knees

  Quoted in Louisville Courier-Journal, 4 July 1913.

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• I am calling attention just to the main points of these tremendously important matters, which can be understood better by pious meditation than explained by human language.

  Martin Chemnitz

  Meditation, Important, Attention

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