Pious Quotes - Page 4

• Money does all things for reward. Some are pious and honest as long as they thrive upon it, but if the devil himself gives better wages, they soon change their party.

  Seneca the Younger

  Money, Party, Long

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• The real test of your Christianity is not how pious you look at the Lord's table on Sunday, but how you act at the breakfast table at home. If it takes two cups of coffee to make you fit to live with, you had better go to the mourner's bench.

  Vance Havner

  Real, Coffee, Hypocrite

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• For man may pious texts repeat, And yet religion have no inward seat

  Thomas Hood

  Men, Religion, Inward

  Thomas Hood (1871). “The poetical works of Thomas Hood, ed. by W.M. Rossetti”, p.46

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• Oh! if people were but acquainted with piety, they would not fear it so much, or give it so unattractive a character; 'tis the balm of life, and perhaps in the world it is believed to consist of bitterness, harshness, uncouthness; but, take my word for it, nothing is more gentle, more yielding, more loving than a pious soul.

  Eugenie de Guerin

  Character, People, Giving

  Eugénie de Guérin (1866). “Letters of Eugénie de Guérin”, p.137

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• May is a pious fraud of the almanac A ghastly parody of real Spring Shaped out of snow and breathed with eastern wind.

  James Russell Lowell

  Spring, Real, Wind

  James Russell Lowell (1871). “The poetical works of James Russell Lowell”, p.372

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• In pious times, ere priest-craft did begin, Before polygamy was made a sin; When man, on many, multipli'd his kind, Ere one to one was cursedly confin'd: When Nature prompted, and no Law deni'd Promiscuous use of concubine and bride; Then, Israel's monarch, after Heaven's own heart, His vigorous warmth did variously impart To wives and slaves: and, wide as his command, Scatter'd his Maker's image through the land.

  John Dryden

  Heart, Men, Israel

  John Dryden, “Absalom And Achitophel”

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• The habit of ubiquitous interventionism, combining pinprick strikes by precision weapons with pious invocations of high principle, would lead us into endless difficulties. Interventions must be limited in number and overwhelming in their impact.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Impact, Numbers, Principles

  Margaret Thatcher (2017). “Statecraft”, p.32, HarperCollins UK

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• The pious farmer, who ne'er misses pray'rs, With patience suffers unexpected rain; He blesses Heav'n for what its bounty spares, And sees, resign'd, a crop of blighted grain. But, spite of sermons, farmers would blaspheme, If a star fell to set their thatch on flame.

  Mary Wortley Montagu

  Stars, Rain, Flames

  Mary Wortley Montagu, James Archibald Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie Wharncliffe (1837). “The Letters and Works: In Three Volumes”, p.425

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• The ameliorating march of the last few centuries has been initiated by the heretics of each age, though I concede that the men and women denounced and persecuted as infidels by the pious of one century are frequently claimed as saints by the pious of a later generation.

  Charles Bradlaugh

  Men, Atheism, Age

  Charles Bradlaugh (1889). “Theological Essays”, p.119, Library of Alexandria

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• God build’s God’s kingdom. But God ordered this world in such a way that His own work within that world takes place through the human beings that reflect His image. That is central to the notion of being made in God’s image. He has enlisted us to act as His stewards in the project of creation. So the objection about us trying to build God’s kingdom by our own efforts, though it seems humble and pious, can actually be a way of hiding from responsibility, of keeping one’s head well down when the boss is looking for volunteers.

  N. T. Wright

  Humble, Responsibility, Volunteer

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• Do you know...what I think is a great pity? It is this: that we have all become such skeptics that we hardly believe what our pious grandmothers told us.

  Isak Dinesen

  Believe, Grandmother, Thinking

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• Dancing serves no necessary use, no profitable, laudable, or pious end at all. It is only from the inbred pravity, vanity, wantonness, incontinency, pride, profaneness, or madness of man's depraved nature.

  William Prynne

  Dance, Pride, Men

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• In our own times, you see, an emperor came to the city of Rome, where there's the temple of an emperor, where there's a fisherman's tomb. And so that pious and Christian emperor, wishing to beg for health, for salvation from the Lord, did not proceed to the temple of a proud emperor, but to the tomb of a fisherman, where he could imitate that fisherman in humility, so that he, being thus approached, might then obtain something from the Lord, which a haughty emperor would be quite unable to earn.

  Saint Augustine

  Christian, Humility, Cities

  Saint Augustine of Hippo (2003). “Sermons III/11”, p.286

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• One can find in the Yiddish tongue and in the Yiddish spirit expressions of pious joy, lust for life, longing for the Messiah, patience and deep appreciation of human individuality.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Appreciation, Expression, Joy

  Isaac Bashevis Singer's Nobel Lecture, www.nobelprize.org. December 8, 1978.

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• We are too ready to imagine that we are religious, because we know something of religion. We appropriate to ourselves the pious sentiments we read, and we talk as if the thoughts of other men's heads were really the feelings of our own hearts. But piety has not its seat in the memory, but in the affections, for which however the memory is an excellent purveyor, though a bad substitute.

  Hannah More

  Religious, Memories, Heart

  Hannah More (1814). “The Works of Hannah More: Including Several Pieces Never Before Published ...”, p.98

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• When Jesus came to earth, demons recognized him, the sick flocked to him, and sinners doused his feet and head with perfume. Meanwhile he offended pious Jews with their strict preconceptions of what God should be like. Their rejection makes me wonder, could religious types be doing just the reverse now? Could we be perpetuating an image of Jesus that fits our pious expectations but does not match the person portrayed so vividly in the Gospels?

  Philip Yancey

  Religious, Jesus, Feet

  Philip Yancey (2010). “The Jesus I Never Knew Study Guide”, p.82, Harper Collins

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• God is alpha and omega in the great world: endeavor to make him so in the little world; make him thy evening epilogue and thy morning prologue; practice to make him thy last thought at night when thou sleepest, and thy first thought in the morning when thou awakest; so shall thy fancy be sanctified in the night, and thy understanding rectified in the day; so shall thy rest be peaceful, thy labors prosperous, thy life pious, and thy death glorious.

  Francis Quarles

  God, Morning, Night

  Francis Quarles (1856). “Enchiridion: Containing Institutions Divine Contemplative Practical: Moral Ethical Oeconomical Political”, p.59

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• The aspiring youth that fired the Ephesian domeOutlives in fame the pious fool that rais'd it.

  Colley Cibber

  Ephesians, Fool, Youth

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• Thou breeze, That mak'st an organ of the mighty sea, Obedient to thy wilful phantasies, Provoke him not to scorn; but soft and low, As pious maid awakes her aged sire, On tiptoe stealing, whisper in his ear The tidings of the young god's victory.

  Hartley Coleridge

  Sea, Victory, Ears

  Hartley Coleridge (1851). “Poems by Hartley Coleridge”, p.310

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• The improbability of a malicious story serves but to help forward the currency of it, because it increases the scandal. So that, in such instances, the world is like the pious St. Austin, who said he believed some things because they were absurd and impossible.

  Laurence Sterne

  Scandal, Austin, Stories

  Laurence Sterne (1803). “The works of Laurence Sterne, with a life of the author, written by himself”

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• In this way, Allah will love the pious person because He, the Most Exalted, loves those who are pious, truthful, charitable, devout, and are sincere to Him and to His Prophet.

  Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah

  Way, Truthful, Sincere

  "The mutual love between Allah and His servants". english.bayynat.org.lb.

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• Dear Friends all, A thousand Christmas pleasures and blessings to you -- good resolutions and bright hopes for the New Year! Amen. People who can't be witty exert themselves to be pious or affectionate.

  George Eliot

  New Year, Witty, Blessing

  George Eliot (1898). “Works: George Eliot's life”

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• We wish that this column, rising towards heaven among the pointed spires of so many temples dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce in all minds a pious feeling of dependence and gratitude. We wish, finally, that the last object to the sight of him who leaves his native shore, and the first to gladden his who revisits it, may be something which shall remind him of the liberty and the glory of his country. Let it rise! let it rise, till it meet the sun in his coming; let the earliest light of the morning gild it, and the parting day linger and play on its summit!

  Daniel Webster

  Country, Gratitude, Morning

  Daniel Webster (1843). “An Address Delivered at the Completion of the Bunker Hill Monument, June 17, 1843”, p.59

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• Now if you will stop here and ask yourself why you are not as pious as the primitive Christians were, your own heart will tell you that it is neither through ignorance nor inability, but purely because you never thoroughly intended it.

  William Law

  Christian, Heart, Ignorance

  William Law (2011). “A Serious Call to A Devout”, p.24, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• What do we do with ourselves when we find we have failed to become the adults we dreamed as pious children?

  Joanna Brooks

  Children, Adults

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