Pious Quotes - Page 8

• 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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• Curiously, the most serious religious people, or the most concerned scholars, those who constantly read the Bible as a matter of professional or pious duty, can often manage to evade a radically involved dialogue with the book they are questioning.

  Thomas Merton

  Religious, Book, People

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• Peace will not be preserved by pious sentiments.

  Winston Churchill

  Sentiments

  Winston Churchill (2012). “Churchill: The Power of Words”, p.494, Da Capo Press

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• The type of religion which rejoices in the pious sound of traditional phrases, regardless of their meanings, or shrinks from "controversial" matters, will never stand amid the shocks of life.

  John Gresham Machen

  Sound, Phrases, Matter

  John Gresham Machen (1923). “Christianity and Liberalism”, p.1, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• But, irreverently consorting with these grave, reputable, and pious people, these elders of the church, these chaste dames and dewy virgins, there were men of dissolute lives and women of spotted fame, wretches given over to all mean and filthy vice, and suspected even of horrid crimes. It was strange to see that the good shrank not from the wicked, nor were the sinners abashed by the saints.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Mean, Men, People

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1982). “Tales and Sketches”, p.285, Library of America

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• It is true that infidelity cannot withstand the force of reason and argument; but true godly example can come nearer the lifespot of religion. It knocks at the door of the heart. If the truths of Christianity were seconded by the devoted and pious lives of all her professed disciples, the unbelief of the world would soon cease. Private example of godliness is what the world most needs.

  Ichabod Spencer

  Heart, Godly, Doors

  Ichabod Smith Spencer (1851). “A Pastor's Sketches”, p.62

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• No one who reads and reveres the New Testament should doubt for a second that the pious poor and marginalized have something to teach all of us - including German theologian-bishops - about the truth of the Gospel and the mysteries of the Kingdom of God.

  George Weigel

  Doubt, Bishops, Kingdoms

  Source: eppc.org

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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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• 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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• The argument of socialists, that people really want to share, beyond a reasonable level of charity, is rubbish, though it is espoused by a lot of rich, pious hypocrites who want to share only enough to avoid widespread starvation, mob violence, and government seizure of more of their incomes.

  Conrad Black

  Hypocrite, Government, People

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• I am not afraid of the priests. They have tried upon me all their various batteries, of pious whining, hypocritical canting, lying and slandering, without being able to give me one moment of pain.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Pain, Lying, Giving

  Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence and Papers, 1808-1816”, p.507, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Oh, Brethren, it is sickening work to think of your cushioned seats, your chants, your anthems, your choirs, your organs, your gowns, and your bands, and I know not what besides, all made to be instruments of religious luxury, if not of pious dissipation, while ye need far more to be stirred up and incited to holy ardor for the propagation of the truth as it is in Jesus.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Religious, Jesus, Thinking

  Spurgeon, Charles H. (2015). “The Complete Works of C. H. Spurgeon, Volume 15: Sermons 848 to 907”, p.120, Delmarva Publications, Inc.

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• Because the bill vests in the said incorporated church an authority to provide for the support of the poor and the education of poor children of the same, an authority which, being altogether superfluous if the provision is to be the result of pious charity, would be a precedent for giving to religious societies as such a legal agency in carrying into effect a public and civil duty.

  James Madison

  Religious, Children, Agency

  James Madison, Ralph Ketcham “Selected Writings of James Madison”, Hackett Publishing

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• [Middleton] contended that the religious leaders of the fourth century had admitted, eulogised, and habitually acted upon principles that were diametrically opposed, not simply to the aspirations of a transcendent sanctity, but to the dictates of the most common honesty. He showed that they had applauded falsehood, that they had practised the most wholesale forgery, that they had habitually and grossly falsified history, that they had adopted to the fullest extent the system of pious frauds, and that they continually employed them to stimulate the devotion of the people.

  William Edward Hartpole Lecky

  Religious, Honesty, People

  William Edward Hartpole Lecky (1870). “History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe”, p.154

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• Once you get past the grand normative claims made in the West for literature, especially the novel, in the post-Christian era - that it is a secular substitute for religion, hallmark of modern civilization, a priori liberal and cosmopolitan, with authors appearing to implicitly embody such pious ideals - you encounter a less agreeable reality: parochialism, blinkered views, even racial prejudices of the kind the bourgeoisie have held everywhere.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Christian, Past, Reality

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Unattainable wishes are often "pious." This seems to indicate that only profane wishes are fulfilled.

  Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

  Wish, Unattainable, Fulfilled

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• Religion is the pious worship of God.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Religion, Worship

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• There is in superstition a senseless fear of God; religion consists in the pious worship of Him.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Superstitions, Worship

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, De Natura Deorum, I. 42, p. 770-71, 1922.

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• A pious fraud.
  [Lat., Pia fraus.]

  Ovid

  Deceit, Fraud

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• Liberty of thinking, and of expressing our thoughts, is always fatal to priestly power, and to those pious frauds on which it is commonly founded.

  David Hume

  Thinking, Liberty, Fraud

  David Hume, Stephen Copley, Andrew Edgar (2008). “Selected Essays”, p.33, Oxford University Press

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• A very prosperous people, flushed with great victories and successes, are seldom so pious, so humble, so just, or so provident as to perpetuate their happiness.

  Francis Atterbury

  Humble, People, Victory

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• It is a good thing to read books, and need not be a bad thing to write them, but in any case, it is a pious thing to collect them.

  Frederick Locker-Lampson

  Book, Writing, Needs

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• A good deal of so-called atheism is itself, from my point of view, theologically significant. It is the working of God in history, and judgement upon the pious. An authentic prophet can be a radical critic of spurious piety, of sham spirituality.

  James Luther Adams

  Views, Judgement, Atheism

  James Luther Adams (1986). “The Prophethood of All Believers”, Beacon Press (MA)

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• I never took the bus. Never. Walking meant you were eccentric or pious or a loser - riding the bus meant you were insane or masochistic and worse than a loser.

  Susan Straight

  Insane, Riding, Eccentric

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