Pious Quotes - Page 8

• The term ignorant is indeed perhaps an overstatement, implying as it does that something is known somewhere, whereas in reality we are not even sure of this: we in fact cannot aver with any degree of certainty that we are ignorant. Yet this is not so bad; we have at any rate kept our open-mindedness -- that, at least, we may be sure that we have -- and are not in any danger, or so it seems, of freezing into the pious attitudes of those true spiritual bigots whose faces are turned toward eternity and who therefore can see nothing.

  John Ashbery

  Spiritual, Attitude, Reality

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• I wish I could be honest and true, but truth as I see it is not something abstract, a pious generality---It is justice at work, righteous, demanding, disciplined, sincere and unswerving; otherwise, it is not, it cannot be truth at all.

  F. Sionil José

  Justice, Wish, Honest

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• God belongs to all free beings. He is the life of all, the salvation of all ~faithful and unfaithful, just and unjust, pious and impious, passionate and dispassionate, monks and laymen, wise and simple, healthy and sick, young and old just as the effusion of light, the sight of the sun, and the changes of the seasons are for all alike; 'for there is no respect of persons with God.'

  John Climacus

  Wise, Christian, Simple

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• I distrust pious phrases, especially when they issue from my mouth. I try militantly never to be affected by the pious language of the faithful but it is always coming out when you least expect it. In contrast to the pious language of the faithful, the liturgy is beautifully flat.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Issues, Faithful, Trying

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• Have you not often met poor old women who are most faithful to the pious recitation of the Rosary? You also must do all that you can to recite it with fervour. Get right down, at the feet of Jesus: it is a good thing to make oneself small in the presence of so great a God.

  Columba Marmion

  Jesus, Feet, Catholic

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• Unlike Joseph her husband, Mary is neither upright nor pious, but she is not blame for this, the blame lies with the language she speaks if not with the men who invented it, because that language has no feminine form for the words upright and pious.

  Jose Saramago

  Husband, Lying, Men

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• When 9/11 hit, the second thing I said to myself was, 'This really is what religious people do.' Those people flying the plane were very good, very pious, truly faithful believers. There's no other way to paint them. Of course, they are extremists by definition, but they certainly aren't going against Islam in any real way.

  Penn Jillette

  Religious, Real, Muslim Extremists

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Prayer is not a pious decoration of life but the breath of human existence.

  Henri Nouwen

  Prayer, Existence, Decoration

  Henri Nouwen (2013). “The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society”, p.17, Image

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• Religion is an important institution. A nation without religion cannot survive. Yet it is also very important to note that religion is a link between Allah and the individual believer. The brokerage of the pious cannot be permitted. Those who use religion for their own benefit are detestable. We are against such a situation and will not allow it. Those who use religion in such a manner have fooled our people; it is against just such people that we have fought and will continue to fight. Know that whatever conforms to reason, logic, and the advantages and needs of our people conforms equally to Islam. If our religion did not conform to reason and logic, it would not be the perfect religion, the final religion.

  Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

  Fighting, People, Perfect

  "Kemalism, Laicism and Democracy". Book by Ahmet Taner Kışlalı, 1994.

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• How could it occur to anyone to demonstrate that God exists unless one has already allowed Himself to ignore Him? A king's existence is demonstrated by way of subjection and submissiveness. Do you want to try and demonstrate that the king exists? Will you do so by offering a string of proofs, a series of arguments? No. If you are serious, you will demonstrate the king's existence by your submission, by the way you live. And so it is with demonstrating God's existence. It is accomplished not by proofs but by worship. Any other way is but a thinker's pious bungling.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Christian, Kings, Offering

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• Limbo is the place. In Limbo one has natural happiness without the beatific vision; no harps; no communal order; but wine and conversation and imperfect, various humanity. Limbo for the unbaptized, for the pious heathen, the sincere sceptic.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Wine, Afterlife, Order

  Evelyn Waugh (1942). “Put out more flags”

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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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• With age, I have become both more pious and more shameless.

  Mason Cooley

  Age, Aging, Shameless

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• The pious and just honoring of ourselves may be thought the fountainhead from whence every laudable and worthy enterprise issues forth.

  John Milton

  Self, Issues, May

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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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• God works with power, and can make the unwilling willing; if He undertakes the conversion of a soul, it will be converted. All the pious workings of our heart towards God are the fruit and consequence of the powerful working of His grace in us.

  Thomas Goodwin

  Powerful, Heart, Grace

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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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• 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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• I make it a kind of pious rule to go to every funeral to which I am invited, both as I wish to pay a proper respect to the dead, unless their characters have been bad, and as I would wish to have the funeral of my own near relations or of myself well attended.

  James Boswell

  Death, Character, Funeral

  James Boswell (2001). “Boswell's Edinburgh Journals 1767-1786”, Mercat Press Books

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• Political Science carries inseparably with it the study of piety, and that he who is not pious cannot be truly wise.

  Giambattista Vico

  Wise, Political, Study

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• I am so tried by the things said about God. I understand God's patience with the wicked, but I do wonder how he can be so patient with the pious!

  George MacDonald

  God, Wicked, Patient

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• Seven hundred thousand men are said to have perished in the first two expeditions, which had been thus commenced and carried on by the pious zeal of the Christian church, and in the total amount, several million were found numbered with the dead: the awful effects of religious fanaticism presuming upon the aid of heaven.

  Elihu Palmer

  Christian, Religious, Men

  Elihu Palmer (1823). “Principles of Nature Or A Developement of the Moral Causes of Hapiness and Misery Among the Human Species”, p.9

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• Poorly written novels--no matter how pious and edifying the behavior of the characters--are not good in themselves and are therefore not really edifying.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Character, Matter, Behavior

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.174, Macmillan

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• Except for those who think in terms of pious platitudes or dogma or narrow prejudice (and those thoughts we aren't interested in), people don't speak their beliefs easily, or publicly.

  Edward R. Murrow

  Thinking, People, Prejudice

  "This I Believe" radio program, thisibelieve.org. 1951.

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• Philosophers conceive of the passions which harass us as vices into which men fall by their own fault, and, therefore, generally deride, bewail, or blame them, or execrate them, if they wish to seem unusually pious.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Fall, Passion, Men

  "Political Treatise" by Baruch Spinoza, translated by A. H. Gosset, (Ch. 1), 1883.

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