Top 909 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Theologians - Page 2

Not to decide is to decide.

My purpose is to have American Jews look away from the success story with which they've cheered themselves up, and to have them remember the classical tradition, whatever it is.

Ibn Ata' Allah said: "God may open up for you the gates of obedience, but without opening up for you the gates of acceptance. On the other hand, He may Allow you to fall into disobedience which happens to lead you to the right path. DISOBEDIENCE that teaches you HUMILITY is better than PIETY that fills you with VANITY and ARROGANCE.

Now all the knowledge and wisdom that is in creatures, whether angels or men, is nothing else but a participation of that one eternal, immutable and increased wisdom of God.

The essence of religion consists in the feeling of an absolute dependence.

Every child is a thought in the mind of God, and our task is to recognize this thought and help it toward completion.

Give me a stout heart to bear my own burdens. Give me a willing heart to bear the burdens of others. Give me a believing heart to cast all burdens upon Thee, O Lord.

For Christ, both God and man, must lay hold on us in order that there may be a union between Him and us.

Religion is more like response to a friend than it is like obedience to an expert.

Leadership is an act of submission to God. To be a leader means listening to all kinds of people and situations. Out of that listening, we are hoping to discern the mind of God as best we can. This is the price of leadership - it's an act of sacrifice. So leadership is part and parcel of the work of submission to God.

The eternal destiny of human beings will be measured by how much or how little solidarity we have displayed with the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, and the oppressed. In the end we will be judged in terms of love.

It certainly is the duty of every true Christian, to esteem himself a stranger and pilgrim in this world; and as bound to use earthly blessings, not as means of satisfying lust or gratifying wantonness, but of supplying his absolute wants and necessities.

Whether the prayer of Seneca was granted we do not know; but, as we do not again hear of Marcus, it is probable that he died before his father, and that the line of Seneca, like that of so many great men, became extinct in the second generation.

The sight of nature fascinates, the family tie has a sweet enchantment and patriotism gives the religious spirit a fiery devotion to the powers that it reveres.

The truth only irritates those it enlightens, but does not convert.

They which have no hope of a life to come, may extend their griefs for the loss of this, and equal the days of their mourning with the years of the life of man.

The scientific perspective of the world, especially the living world, inexorably impresses on us a dynamic picture of the world of entities and structures involved in continuous and incessant change and in process without ceasing.

Woven into our lives is the very fire from the stars and the genes from the sea creatures, and everyone, utterly everyone, is kin in the radiant tapestry of being. This relationship is not external or extrinsic to our identity but wells up as the defining truth from our deepest being.

Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.

To help all created things, that is the measure of all our responsibility; to be helped by all, that is the measure of our hope.

Death is like an arrow that is already in flight, and your life lasts only until it reaches you.

If you want to change people by talking about God, then there is only one way: instead of teaching God, you must live God. Because: "teaching" God is unthinkable in any other way than the way you would teach love or poetry. You teach love only through love, poetry only through writing poetry, faith in God only through a contagious way of trusting.

But aesthetics is not religion, and the origins of religion lie somewhere completely different. They lie anyway, these roses smell too sweet and the deep roar of the breaking waves is too splendid, to do justice to such weighty matters now.

The pride of life hath corrupted the judgment of others, and perverted them in the way of religion.

The supernatural birth of Christ, his miracles, his resurrection and ascension, remain eternal truths, whatever doubts may be cast on their reality as historical facts.

In truth there is only one freedom - the holy freedom of Christ, whereby He freed us from sin, from evil, from the devil. It binds us to God. All other freedoms are illusory, false, that is to say, they are all, in fact, slavery.

It must inquire not merely about the circumstances of the time in general, but in particular about the writer's position with regard to these things, the interests and motives, the leading ideas of his literary activity.

The poison of selfishness destroys the world.

To be thoroughly and abidingly happy is not only to get what we all instinctively desire, but to fulfill the purpose of our nature.

Nothing is more common on earth than to deceive and be deceived.

Music is made particularly and principally to charm the spirit and the ear, and to enable us to pass our lives with a little sweetness amidst all the bitterness that we encounter here.

Fly to the Catholic Church! Adhere to the only faith which continues to exist from the beginning, that faith which was preached by Paul and is upheld by the Chair of Peter.

It may be doubted whether any repentance is genuine which is not repentance for sin rather than sins

In Christian terms, evangelization and humanization are not alternatives. Nor are the 'vertical dimension' of faith and the 'horizontal dimension' of love for one's neighbor and political change.

We can always find something to be thankful for, and there may be reasons why we ought to be thankful for even those dispensations which appear dark and frowning.

Open theists affirm the same openness of the future that religious believers assume when they pray and almost all humans assume when they act. The open future is intuitive; but can it be rigorously defended? God in an Open Universe shows that it can. Open theism has always been an attractive view of God; now it becomes a philosophically rigorous one as well.

The real "opium of the people", distracting men's minds from their essential task, is the communist myth of an earthly paradise.

But the mind is here accepted not for the soul, but for that which is the more excellent in the soul.

The Gospels were written to present the life and teachings of Jesus in ways that would be appropriate to different readerships, and for that reason are not all the same. They were not intended to be biographies of Jesus, but selective accounts that would demonstrate his significance for different cultures.

The right to religious freedom has its foundation, not in the church or society or the state, but in the very dignity of the human person.

Have you had a kindness shown? Pass it on.

Christianity is not a message which has to be believed, but an experience of faith that becomes a message.

The Church therefore has one inescapable task: To lift up Christ. When she seeks to lift herself up she becomes weak, but when she acknowledges her own weakness and proclaims her Lord, she is strong.

Who can refute a sneer?

In the New Testament, religion is grace and ethics is gratitude.

Yet God is so one that He admits of distinction, and so admits of distinction that He still remains unity.

Truth knows no color; it appeals to intelligence.

Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards; they simply unveil them to the eyes of men. Silently and imperceptibly, as we wake or sleep, we grow strong or weak; and at last some crisis shows what we have become.

Christmas Eve Saint Francis and Saint Benedight Blesse this house from wicked wight; From the night-mare and the goblin, That is hight good fellow Robin: Keep it from all evil spirits, Fairies, weezels, rats, and ferrets: From curfew time To the next prime.

Physical love is total intimacy. It is the sign that the lovers have nothing to refuse each other, that they belong wholly to each other.

All that is deformed ought to be reformed. The Word of God alone teaches us what ought to be so, and all reform effected otherwise is vain.

The sin of respectable people reveals itself in flight from responsibility.

You will never cease to be the most amazed person on earth at what God has done for you on the inside.

Imagination is a danger thus every totalitarian regime is frightened of the artist. It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination to keep on conjouring and proposing alternative futures to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one.

Jesus Christ came into my prison cell last night, and every stone flashed like a ruby.

Every minister knows it's harder to get the guys to church than the women. We ought to be asking why this is.

To rejoice in another's prosperity is to give content to your lot; to mitigate another's grief is to alleviate or dispel your own.

If you be faithful, you will have that honor that comes from God: his Spirit will say in your hearts, Well done, good and faithful servants.

Have I today done anything to fulfill the purpose for which Thou didst cause me to be born?

It is the characteristic excellence of the strong man that he can bring momentous issues to the fore and make a decision about them. The weak are always forced to decide between alternatives they have not chosen themselves.