All Quotes By Tag: Religion

“Salahkah bila kita membela seseorang yang kita cintai walaupun sesungguhnya kita tahu ia tak memerlukan pembelaan kita,Salahkah bila kita membelai mesra pakaian sang kekasih walau kita tahu pasti pakaian bukanlah kekasih ituLalu salahkan bila kita melakukannya untuk Tuhan?”

“A lifetime spent in the study of the history of societies since the dawn of mankind presumably inclined him to skepticism and misgivings in regard to any great scheme, religious or political, that set out to create universal happiness in one fell swoop; what it was more likely to create, in his opinion, was universal misery; and his faith in heaven-sent saviors was hardly greater.”

“Somos todos mais místicos do que acreditamos ou queremos crer (…). Temos visto mais do que deixamos transparecer, até para nós mesmos. Seja em momentos de beleza ou dor, seja por meio de alguma reviravolta sutil em nossa vida, ao menos vislumbramos o que cegou os santos; só que, ao contrário dos santos, seguimos em frente como se nada tivesse acontecido. Seguir em frente ciente de que algo aconteceu, apesar de não ter certeza do que foi, nem do que fazer com o que ocorreu, é entrar na dimensão da vida de que trata a palavra religião.”

“Your haughty religious people would have held their heads up to see me as I am tonight, and preached of flames and vengeance,’ cried the girl. ‘Oh, dear lady, why ar’n’t those who claim to be God’s own folks as gentle and as kind to us poor wretches as you, who, having youth, and beauty, and all that they have lost, might be a little proud instead of so much humbler?”

“Did Jesus Christ, he asked, suspect that someday his church would spread to the farthest corners of Earth? Did Jesus Christ, he asked, ever have what we, today, call an idea of the world? Did Jesus Christ, who apparently knew everything, know that the world was round and to the east lived the Chinese (this sentence he spat out, as if it cost him great effort to utter it) and to the west the primitive peoples of America? And he answered himself, no, although of course in a way having an idea of the world is easy, everybody has one, generally an idea restricted to one’s village, bound to the land, to the tangible and mediocre things before one’s eyes, and this idea of the world, petty, limited, crusted with the grime of the familiar, tends to persist and acquire authority and eloquence with the passage of time.”

“Being doped is a pleasure you pay for. There was always opium there for the people — in the end it tainted their whole faith. If the Church had not always stood so watchfully behind the ruling powers, there would not have been such attacks against everything it stood for — although of course it may have been competing with them for the first place among the rulers, as in the Middle Ages. Whenever it was a question of keeping the serfs, and then the paid slaves down, the dope-dealers came unfailingly to the help of the oppressors.”

“The turmoil and dislocations confronting present-day society will not be solved until both the scientific and religious genius of the human race are fully utilized.”

“The noble old synagogue had been profaned and turned into a stable by the Nazis, and left open to the elements by the Communists, at least after they had briefly employed it as a ‘furniture facility.’ It had then been vandalized and perhaps accidentally set aflame by incurious and callous local ‘youths.’ Only the well-crafted walls really stood, though a recent grant from the European Union had allowed a makeshift roof and some wooden scaffolding to hold up and enclose the shell until further notice. Adjacent were the remains of a mikvah bath for the ritual purification of women, and a kosher abattoir for the ritual slaughter of beasts: I had to feel that it was grotesque that these obscurantist relics were the only ones to have survived. In a corner of the yard lay a pile of smashed stones on which appeared inscriptions in Hebrew and sometimes Yiddish. These were all that remained of the gravestones. There wasn’t a Jew left in the town, and there hadn’t been one, said Mr. Kichler, since 1945.”

“Most of the book deals with things we already know yet never learn.”

“There is a faculty in man that will acknowledge the unseen. He may scout and scare religion from him; but if he does, superstition perches near.”

“But that which fanaticism formerly promised to the elect, science now accomplishes for all men. ”

“Holiness was always something richly dim.”

“Montana A great many small failures have brought me to thisDark room where, against the teachings of the church,I lie in the forgiving dark with you and we kissAnd loosen our clothing and feel the hot urgeToward nakedness, man’s natural destination,The slow unbuttoning, unclasping, until at lastWe lie revealed. The fine sensationOf you on my skin. A slender woman as vastAs Montana and I am now heading westOn a winding road through the dark contoursOf mountains and into a valley, coming to restIn a meadow that I recognize as yours. This is what I drove across North Dakota to find: This sweet nest. And put all my failed life behind.”

“My mother was a good Catholic — she went to mass twice a week at St. Mary’s in Richmond, but my father was an Orthodox Eclectic.”

“The sciences were financially supported, honoured everywhere, universally pursued; they were like tall edifices supported by strong foundations. Then the Christian religion appeared in Byzantium and the centres of learning were eliminated, their vestiges effaced and the edifice of Greek learning was obliterated. Everything the ancient Greeks had brought to light vanished, and the discoveries of the ancients were altered out of recognition.”