All Quotes By Tag: Religion

“I shoplifted from your height and got me somewindow ledge religionSince then,I have been tryingto drop dead”

“As a Christian from a Muslim background, I find it fascinating that the culture of confusion speedily brands someone that criticizes Islam to be a racist. Islam is religion, not a race. People from many races and ethnicities embrace Islam. Calling someone a racist for criticizing Islam ignores Islam’s racial and ethnic diversity. And so one could more justifiably call such a confused use of the term ‘racist’ to be, well racist itself.”

“Love of God is not a thing which we produce in ourselves by excessive brooding or by self-hypnotism or by any other method. It is a permanent flame, slowly burning in the caverns of all our hearts. […] The basis of all religions is this love of God. For if this love of God were not vital to us, all that the great prophets have been trying to preach would have been unreal and futile. If it were not a real experience which in some sense is shared by us all, an experience which ennobles us and raises us far above the selfish pettinesses of life, no prophet and no religious deed would be able to appeal to our higher natures and establish the claims of religion.”

“We all live as if it is better to seek peace instead of war, to tell the truth instead of lying, to care and nurture rather than to destroy. We believe that these choices are not pointless, that it matters which way we choose to live. Yet if the Cosmic Bench is truly empty, then “who sez” that one choice is better than the others? We can argue about it, but it’s just pointless arguing, endless litigation. If the Bench is truly empty, then the whole span of human civilization, even if it lasts a few million years, will be just an infinitesimally brief spark in relation to the oceans of dead time that preceded it and will follow it. There will be no one around to remember any of it. Whether we are loving or cruel in the end would make no difference at all.Once we realize this situation there are two options. One is that we can simply refuse to think out the implications of all this. We can hold on to our intellectual belief in an empty Bench and yet live as if our choices are meaningful and as if there is a difference between love and cruelty. Why would we do that? A cynic might say that this is a way of “having one’s cake and eating it, too.” That is, you can get the benefit of having a God without the cost of following him. But there is no integrity in that. The other option is to recognize that you do know there is a God. You could accept the fact that you live as if beauty and love have meaning, as if there is meaning in life, as if human beings have inherent dignity—all because you know God exists. It is dishonest to live as if he is there and yet fail to acknowledge the one who has given you all these gifts.”

“Історично склалося так, що найнебезпечніші люди світу – то люди Божі… особливо тоді, коли їхнім божествам щось загрожує.”

“Perhaps it is natural for the god of the poor to be akin to the god of the dead, for there is something about poverty that smells of death”

“It looked as though knowing that you were right meant nothing; they all knew they were right. Weeks had no intention of undermining the boy’s faith, but he was deeply interested in religion, and found it an absorbing topic of conversation. He had described his own views accurately when he said that he very earnestly disbelieved in almost everything that other people believed. Once Philip asked him a question, which he had heard his uncle put when the conversation at the vicarage had fallen upon some mildly rationalistic work which was then exciting discussion in the newspapers.”But why should you be right and all those fellows like St. Anselm and St. Augustine be wrong?””You mean that they were very clever and learned men, while you have grave doubts whether I am either?” asked Weeks.”Yes,” answered Philip uncertainly, for put in that way his question seemed impertinent.”St. Augustine believed that the earth was flat and that the sun turned round it.””I don’t know what that proves.””Why, it proves that you believe with your generation. Your saints lived in an age of faith, when it was practically impossible to disbelieve what to us is positively incredible.””Then how d’you know that we have the truth now?””I don’t.”Philip thought this over for a moment, then he said:”I don’t see why the things we believe absolutely now shouldn’t be just as wrong as what they believed in the past.””Neither do I.””Then how can you believe anything at all?””I don’t know.”Philip asked Weeks what he thought of Hayward’s religion.”Men have always formed gods in their own image,” said Weeks. “He believes in the picturesque.”Philip paused for a little while, then he said:”I don’t see why one should believe in God at all.”

“… it might have resulted far better for mankind if Greece had been the source of the religion of modern civilization, and not Palestine”

“The medieval European, who shared the fundamental assumptions of his Muslim contemporary, would have agreed with him in ascribing religious movements to religious causes, and would have sought no further for an explanation. But when Europeans ceased to accord first place to religion in their thoughts, sentiments, interests, and loyalties, they also ceased to admit that other men, in other times and places, could have done so. To a rationalistic and materialistic generation, it was inconceivable that such great debates and mighty conflicts could have involved no more than ‘merely’ religious issues. And so historians, once they had passed the stage of amused contempt, devised a series of explanations, setting forth for what they described as the ‘real’ or ‘ultimate’ significance ‘underlying’ religious movements and differences. The clashes and squabbles of the early churches, the great Schism, the Reformation, all were reinterpreted in terms of motives and interests reasonable by the standards of the day—and for religious movements of Islam too explanations were found that tallied with the outlook and interests of the finders.”

“Black and white, good and evil, is just a way to simplify life and make it easier for people to deal with. People love it too; that’s why so many people go to church on a Sunday.”

“I know exactly what is at stake, Captain. You are trying to convince yourself that whatever cause you follow is worth that girl’s death.I know all about gods, Captain. I know that a god that demands a child’s life is not a god worth saving.
Choose.
”

“Her voice became vibrant and raw, veined with passion. “You can never go back to the past. You can’t heal their wounds or your own. Even God will not do this for you,” and this was a bit controversial with her audience, but she believed she had proof: “Jesus himself was not healed–he came back from the dead with the wounds still in his hands and his body. He came back changed, but not healed. Saying ‘I’m sorry’ is saying that you will be different from now on. Your identity stretches to accomodate this thing you did to them. And in this way a relationship is formed between the person you have hurt and yourself.”

“To live the life isTo be no cause of grief to anyone.To be kind to all people and to love them with a pure spirit.Should opposition or injury happen to us, to bear it, to be as kind as ever can be, and through all, to love the people. Should calamity exist in the greatest degree, to rejoice, for these things are the gifts and favors of God.To be silent concerning the faults of others, to pray for them, and to help them, through kindness, to correct their faults.To look always at the good and not at the bad. If a man has ten good qualities and one bad one, look at the ten and forget the one. And if a man has ten bad qualities and one good one, to look at the one and forget the ten.Never to allow ourselves to speak one unkind word about another, even though that other be our enemy.To do all of our deeds in kindness.To cut our hearts from ourselves and from the world.To be humble.To be servants of each other, and to know that we are less than anyone else.To be as one soul in many bodies, for the more we love each other, the nearer we shall be to God; but to know that our love, our unity, our obedience must not be by confession, but of reality.To act with cautiousness and wisdom.To be truthful.To be hospitable.To be reverent.To be the cause of healing for every sick one,a comforter for every sorrowful one,a pleasant water for every thirsty one.a heavenly table for every hungry one,a star to every horizon,a light for every lamp,a herald to everyone who yearns for the kingdom of God.”

“The power of language transcends the need for survival, and the components of the human brain required for it are too complex and advanced to have developed over time.”

“We are word-shaped beings who live word-shaped lives within word-shaped communities.”