Church Quotes: Inspiring Words for the Faithful

"For where God built a church, there the Devil would also build a chapel"

"There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being"

"The Church knew what the psalmist knew: Music praises God. Music is well or better able to praise him than the building of the church and all its decoration; it is the Church's greatest ornament"

Igor Stravinsky, Composer

"Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile"

Billy Sunday, Clergyman

"The history of the Church of Rome is a constant leakage of members into such breakaway cults, which go on splitting"

Mary Douglas, Scientist

"I have a friend who lives in the South Side of Chicago. I helped out at a church charity there where they try to give a bit of cohesion to a desperate area. Everyone was very welcoming"

Sara Paretsky, Author

"The first time I sang in the church choir; two hundred people changed their religion"

Fred Allen, Comedian

"The real act of marriage takes place in the heart, not in the ballroom or church or synagogue. It's a choice you make - not just on your wedding day, but over and over again - and that choice is reflected in the way you treat your husband or wife"

Barbara de Angelis, Writer

"In order to the existence of such a ministry in the Church, there is requisite an authority received from God, and consequently power and knowledge imparted from God for the exercise of such ministry; and where a man possesses these, although the bis"

John Wycliffe, Theologian

"The limitless loving devotion to God, and the gift God makes of Himself to you, are the highest elevation of which the heart is capable; it is the highest degree of prayer. The souls that have reached this point are truly the heart of the Church"

Edith Stein, Saint

"A church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints"

Abigail Van Buren, Journalist

"The leadership lost its nerve. Instead of taking the lead in the reform movement... they pulled the plug on it. They tried and are still trying to return the church to the dry ice of the previous century and a half"

Andrew Greeley, Clergyman

"I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit"

Kahlil Gibran, Poet

"Hold firmly that our faith is identical with that of the ancients. Deny this, and you dissolve the unity of the Church"

Thomas Aquinas, Theologian

"It would be far better to be of no church than to be bitter of any"

William Penn, Leader

"Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate"

Ulysses S. Grant, President

"If you will stay with the majority of the Twelve Apostles, and the records of the Church, you will never be led astray"

Joseph Smith, Jr., Clergyman

"I see no faults in the Church, and therefore let me be resurrected with the Saints, whether I ascend to heaven or descend to hell, or go to any other place. And if we go to hell, we will turn the devils out of doors and make a heaven of it"

Joseph Smith, Jr., Clergyman

"The black groups that boycott certain films would do better to get the money together to make the films they want to see, or stay in church and leave us to our work"

Richard Pryor, Actor

"Yet for my part, deeply as I am moved by the religious architecture of the Middle Ages, I cannot honestly say that I ever felt the slightest emotion in any modern Gothic church"

Goldwin Smith, Historian

"The Church as a divine society possess an internal principle of life which is capable of assimilating the most diverse materials and imprinting her own image upon them"

Christopher Dawson, Writer

"With reference to other religions, the Church sees a great difference between them and herself. The other religions are expressions of the human soul seeking God, with some beautiful spiritual insights, but also not without errors. Christianity is rather God seeking humanity"

Francis Arinze, Clergyman

"Remarkable is the greater openness of the Catholic Church towards people of other religious traditions and persuasions. The development has not been without problems, since some people have resisted it and others have pushed openness beyond the desirable point"

Francis Arinze, Clergyman

"May the Lord destroy all the tyrants of the church. Amen"

Michael Servetus, Scientist

"Hypocrites in the Church? Yes, and in the lodge and at the home. Don't hunt through the Church for a hypocrite. Go home and look in the mirror. Hypocrites? Yes. See that you make the number one less"

Billy Sunday, Clergyman

"For the spiritual sense of the Word treats everywhere of the spiritual world, that is, of the state of the church in the heavens, as well as in the earth; hence the Word is spiritual and Divine"

Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist

"The Legislature of Lower Canada, consisting chiefly of Roman Catholics, could hardly be expected to support a church which they were taught to consider heretical, and in Upper Canada the scanty means at the disposal of the Government, precluded all hope"

John Strachan, Clergyman

"The schools would fail through their silence, the Church through its forgiveness, and the home through the denial and silence of the parents. The new generation has to hear what the older generation refuses to tell it"

Simon Wiesenthal, Activist

"My dad would give me $10, which is a lot of money when you're 9, to sing at church, on tables at restaurants, at family functions, just about anywhere"

Katy Perry, Musician

"Baseball is like church. Many attend few understand"

Leo Durocher, Athlete

"When the problems in Northern Ireland started, it was not a question of Protestantism or Catholicism, because the Catholic church was the only church at that time-it was a nationalist conflict"

Harri Holkeri, Politician

"It is one of the ironies of the ministry that the very man who works in God's name is often hardest put to find time for God. The parents of Jesus lost Him at church, and they were not the last ones to lose Him there"

Vance Havner

"It was not just the Church that resisted the heliocentrism of Copernicus"

Tycho Brahe, Scientist

"It is not classified as a pagan religion. The so-called New Age activities and this are not called religions and therefore don't come under the prohibition of mingling church and state that we have in this country"

Dixie Lee Ray, Politician

"The church of St. Peter at Berlin, notwithstanding the total difference between them in the style of building, appears in some respects to have a great resemblance to St. Paul's in London"

Karl Philipp Moritz, Author

"In the past, children learned their values at home, reinforced by organizations such as the Boy Scouts and, of course, their church or synagogue, but in all too many families that is no longer the case"

Paul Weyrich, Critic

"Hollywood is run by people who sit up in their executive office, who are not connected to Mississippi, Alabama, Chicago, South Carolina. They know nothing about that, they don't go to church, and they make their decisions about what they think is right"

Steve Harvey, Actor

"And they turned around and leased it to The Assembly Of God Churches - their headquarters are in Springfield, Missouri. They leased it to them for the first year. Then, after the first year, they will donate it to the church"

Mel Tillis, Musician

"The Foxy character and Inga Marchand are two different people. My fiance calls me Inga. No one around me calls me Foxy. I go to church every Sunday. I go to Bible study every Friday night. I'm saved"

Foxy Brown, Musician

"It is better to go skiing and think of God, than go to church and think of sport"

Fridtjof Nansen, Explorer

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