A Quote by Mary Russell Mitford

Our English people are much addicted to raising idols, and then revenging themselves on their own idolatry by knocking down and demolishing the poor bits of wood and stone that they had worshipped as gods. How many literary reputations have been so treated!

Mary Russell Mitford

Quote Topics

Addicted Been Bits Down Down And English English People Gods Had How Idolatry Idols Knocking Literary Many Much Our Own People Poor Raising Stone Themselves Then Treated Wood

Quote Author

Mary Russell Mitford
English - Author
December 16, 1787 - January 10, 1855

How glad the heathens would have been, That worship idols, wood and stone, If they the book God had seen.

Isaac Watts

The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone, the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood

George Bernard Shaw

Those who worship gold in a world so corrupt as this we live in have at least one thing to plead in defense of their idolatry--the power of their idol. It is true that, like other idols, it can neither move, see, hear, feel, nor understand; but, unlike other idols, it has often communicated all these powers to those who had them not, and annihilated them in those who had. This idol can boast of two peculiarities; it is worshipped in all climates, without a single temple, and by all classes, without a single hypocrite.

Charles Caleb Colton

I don't think I'm wrong when I say that the most beautiful objects of the "stone age" were made of skin, fabric, and especially wood. The "stone age" ought to be called the "wood age." How many African statues are made of stone, bone, or ivory? Maybe one in a thousand! And prehistoric man had no more ivory at his disposal than African tribes. Maybe even less. He must have had thousands of wooden fetishes, all gone now.

Pablo Picasso

It took many years to cleanse Arabia of its “false idols.” It will take many more to cleanse Islam of its new false idols-bigotry and fanaticism-worshipped by those who have replaced Muhammad's original vision of tolerance and unity with their own ideals of hatred and discord. But the cleansing is inevitable, and the tide of reform cannot be stopped. The Islamic Reformation is already here. We are all living in it.

Reza Aslan

We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of idolatry.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.

Zora Neale Hurston

Gods are called many by the error of some who worshipped many deities, thinking as they did the planets and other stars were gods, and also the separate parts of the world.

Thomas Aquinas

As a child I did a lot of imaginary bits, you know. It depends on the individual, I enjoyed then knocking the nail in, I enjoy knocking nails in walls to hang pictures up, but I also enjoy thinking 'I'm gonna do that' but I actually won't do it, I enjoy imagining doing things just as much.

John Lennon

Fame, power, and gold, are loved for their own sakes - are worshipped with a blind, habitual idolatry.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

I am always struck by how difficult it is for people to see how much cruelty they are bringing not only upon animals but upon themselves and their loved ones and other people, how much we are screwing up the planet, how much we are hurting our own health, how hard it is to change all that, how eager people are to make a buck at everybody else's expense - all those things are discouraging.

Neal Barnard

It was horrifying. You wouldn't believe how people are treated there. You could see that these people had withdrawn so far that they just lived in their own minds. They did terrible things to themselves.

Kate Millett

This is the deal: we are happy to single out people as superior just as long as they don't accept the description themselves. We want heroes and idols but we also want egalitarianism and that requires proclamations of humility from our Gods.

Julian Baggini

This is the deal: we are happy to single out people as superior just as long as they don't accept the description themselves. We want heroes and idols, but we also want egalitarianism, and that requires proclamations of humility from our gods.

Julian Baggini

Today, idols are not made of wood, stone, or brass. They are made of money, sex, and power.