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134 quotes that mention god and religion in so many words. Each one is checked against the book it comes from.
God helps them that help themselves
God bless us every one!
Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same
The soul selects her own society
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
God Almighty first planted a garden.
This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that GOD IS DEAD!
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.
All right, then, I’ll go to hell
It must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven
For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
These are the times that try men’s souls.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Brevity is the soul of wit
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath.
As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods,
They kill us for their sport.
Hell is empty,
And all the devils are here.
We are most dishonourable towards our God: he is not PERMITTED to sin.
Love to one only is a barbarity, for it is exercised at the expense of all others. Love to God also!
A discerning one might easily regard himself at present as the animalization of God.
The belly is the reason why man does not so readily take himself for a God.
Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.
There is an innocence in lying which is the sign of good faith in a cause.
Hope is the second soul of the unhappy.
As a coal is revived by incense, so prayer revives the hopes of the heart.
Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.
There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and shallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.”
Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.
True irreverence is disrespect for another man’s god.
In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made School Boards.
Those who see any difference between soul and body have neither.
Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.
It is only the gods who taste of death. Apollo has passed away, but Hyacinth, whom men say he slew, lives on. Nero and Narcissus are always with us.
Prisons are built with stones of law, brothels with bricks of religion.
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The fox provides for himself, but God provides for the lion.
As the plough follows words, so God rewards prayers.
The soul of sweet delight can never be defiled.
Prayers plough not; praises reap not; joys laugh not; sorrows weep not.
AFFLICTION, n. An acclimatizing process preparing the soul for another and bitter world.
BAPTISM, n. A sacred rite of such efficacy that he who finds himself in heaven without having undergone it will be unhappy forever. It is performed with water in two ways—by immersion, or plunging, and by aspersion, or sprinkling.
BATH, n. A kind of mystic ceremony substituted for religious worship, with what spiritual efficacy has not been determined.
CANONICALS, n. The motley worn by Jesters of the Court of Heaven.
CHRISTIAN, n. One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.
DATARY, n. A high ecclesiastic official of the Roman Catholic Church, whose important function is to brand the Pope’s bulls with the words Datum Romae. He enjoys a princely revenue and the friendship of God.
DELUSION, n. The father of a most respectable family, comprising Enthusiasm, Affection, Self-denial, Faith, Hope, Charity and many other goodly sons and daughters.
ELYSIUM, n. An imaginary delightful country which the ancients foolishly believed to be inhabited by the spirits of the good. This ridiculous and mischievous fable was swept off the face of the earth by the early Christians—may their souls be happy in Heaven!
EUCHARIST, n. A sacred feast of the religious sect of Theophagi. A dispute once unhappily arose among the members of this sect as to what it was that they ate. In this controversy some five hundred thousand have already been slain, and the question is still unsettled.
EVANGELIST, n. A bearer of good tidings, particularly (in a religious sense) such as assure us of our own salvation and the damnation of our neighbors.
EXHORT, v.t. In religious affairs, to put the conscience of another upon the spit and roast it to a nut-brown discomfort.
FAITH, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
FORGETFULNESS, n. A gift of God bestowed upon doctors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.
GALLOWS, n. A stage for the performance of miracle plays, in which the leading actor is translated to heaven. In this country the gallows is chiefly remarkable for the number of persons who escape it.
GNOSTICS, n. A sect of philosophers who tried to engineer a fusion between the early Christians and the Platonists. The former would not go into the caucus and the combination failed, greatly to the chagrin of the fusion managers.
HEAVEN, n. A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you expound your own.
HOMOEOPATHY, n. A school of medicine midway between Allopathy and Christian Science. To the last both the others are distinctly inferior, for Christian Science will cure imaginary diseases, and they can not.
ICHOR, n. A fluid that serves the gods and goddesses in place of blood.
IDLENESS, n. A model farm where the devil experiments with seeds of new sins and promotes the growth of staple vices.
INFANCY, n. The period of our lives when, according to Wordsworth, “Heaven lies about us.” The world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.
JOSS-STICKS, n. Small sticks burned by the Chinese in their pagan tomfoolery, in imitation of certain sacred rites of our holy religion.
KORAN, n. A book which the Mohammedans foolishly believe to have been written by divine inspiration, but which Christians know to be a wicked imposture, contradictory to the Holy Scriptures.
LECTURER, n. One with his hand in your pocket, his tongue in your ear and his faith in your patience.
MAMMON, n. The god of the world’s leading religion. The chief temple is in the holy city of New York.
MAYONNAISE, n. One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.
MONDAY, n. In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game.
MONSIGNOR, n. A high ecclesiastical title, of which the Founder of our religion overlooked the advantages.
NIRVANA, n. In the Buddhist religion, a state of pleasurable annihilation awarded to the wise, particularly to those wise enough to understand it.
OLYMPIAN, adj. Relating to a mountain in Thessaly, once inhabited by gods, now a repository of yellowing newspapers, beer bottles and mutilated sardine cans, attesting the presence of the tourist and his appetite.
ORTHODOX, n. An ox wearing the popular religious yoke.
PALACE, n. A fine and costly residence, particularly that of a great official. The residence of a high dignitary of the Christian Church is called a palace; that of the Founder of his religion was known as a field, or wayside. There is progress.
PANTHEISM, n. The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.
PILGRIM, n. A traveler that is taken seriously. A Pilgrim Father was one who, leaving Europe in 1620 because not permitted to sing psalms through his nose, followed it to Massachusetts, where he could personate God according to the dictates of his conscience.
PIRACY, n. Commerce without its folly-swaddles, just as God made it.
PRAY, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
PRELATE, n. A church officer having a superior degree of holiness and a fat preferment. One of Heaven’s aristocracy. A gentleman of God.
PRESBYTERIAN, n. One who holds the conviction that the government authorities of the Church should be called presbyters.
PRIMATE, n. The head of a church, especially a State church supported by involuntary contributions. The Primate of England is the Archbishop of Canterbury, an amiable old gentleman, who occupies Lambeth Palace when living and Westminster Abbey when dead. He is commonly dead.
RACK, n. An argumentative implement formerly much used in persuading devotees of a false faith to embrace the living truth. As a call to the unconverted the rack never had any particular efficacy, and is now held in light popular esteem.
RECTOR, n. In the Church of England, the Third Person of the parochial Trinity, the Curate and the Vicar being the other two.
RELIGION, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
RESPONSIBILITY, n. A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one’s neighbor. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star.
REVERENCE, n. The spiritual attitude of a man to a god and a dog to a man.
RITE, n. A religious or semi-religious ceremony fixed by law, precept or custom, with the essential oil of sincerity carefully squeezed out of it.
RITUALISM, n. A Dutch Garden of God where He may walk in rectilinear freedom, keeping off the grass.
RUBBISH, n. Worthless matter, such as the religions, philosophies, literatures, arts and sciences of the tribes infesting the regions lying due south from Boreaplas.
RUSSIAN, n. A person with a Caucasian body and a Mongolian soul. A Tartar Emetic.
SACERDOTALIST, n. One who holds the belief that a clergyman is a priest. Denial of this momentous doctrine is the hardest challenge that is now flung into the teeth of the Episcopalian church by the Neo-Dictionarians.
SAINT, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.
SCRIPTURES, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.
TELEPHONE, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
TURKEY, n. A large bird whose flesh when eaten on certain religious anniversaries has the peculiar property of attesting piety and gratitude. Incidentally, it is pretty good eating.
UNIVERSALIST, n. One who forgoes the advantage of a Hell for persons of another faith.
Wall STREET, n. A symbol of sin for every devil to rebuke. That Wall Street is a den of thieves is a belief that serves every unsuccessful thief in place of a hope in Heaven. Even the great and good Andrew Carnegie has made his profession of faith in the matter.
WIDOW, n. A pathetic figure that the Christian world has agreed to take humorously, although Christ’s tenderness towards widows was one of the most marked features of his character.
The aversion to lying is often a hidden ambition to render our words credible and weighty, and to attach a religious aspect to our conversation.
It is difficult to define love; all we can say is, that in the soul it is a desire to rule, in the mind it is a sympathy, and in the body it is a hidden and delicate wish to possess what we love—Plus many mysteries.
What renders us so changeable in our friendship is, that it is difficult to know the qualities of the soul, but easy to know those of the mind.
Gratitude is as the good faith of merchants: it holds commerce together; and we do not pay because it is just to pay debts, but because we shall thereby more easily find people who will lend.
Moderation cannot claim the merit of opposing and overcoming Ambition: they are never found together. Moderation is the languor and sloth of the soul, Ambition its activity and heat.
Humility is the true proof of Christian virtues; without it we retain all our faults, and they are only covered by pride to hide them from others, and often from ourselves.
The tendency of a person to allow himself to be degraded, robbed, deceived, and exploited might be the diffidence of a God among men.
A soul which knows that it is loved, but does not itself love, betrays its sediment: its dregs come up.
A thing that is explained ceases to concern us—What did the God mean who gave the advice, “Know thyself!” Did it perhaps imply “Cease to be concerned about thyself! become objective!”—And Socrates?—And the “scientific man”?
Not their love of humanity, but the impotence of their love, prevents the Christians of today—burning us.
The pia fraus is still more repugnant to the taste (the “piety”) of the free spirit (the “pious man of knowledge”) than the impia fraus. Hence the profound lack of judgment, in comparison with the Church, characteristic of the type “free spirit”—as ITS non-freedom.
It is a curious thing that God learned Greek when he wished to turn author—and that he did not learn it better.
The devil has the most extensive perspectives for God; on that account he keeps so far away from him:—the devil, in effect, as the oldest friend of knowledge.
Around the hero everything becomes a tragedy; around the demigod everything becomes a satyr-play; and around God everything becomes—what? perhaps a “world”?
Piety is not an end, but a means: a means of attaining the highest culture by the purest tranquillity of soul.
Truth belongs to the man, error to his age. This is why it has been said that, while the misfortune of the age caused his error, the force of his soul made him emerge from the error with glory.
Faith is private capital, kept in one’s own house. There are public savings-banks and loan-offices, which supply individuals in their day of need; but here the creditor quietly takes his interest for himself.
We are no sooner about to learn some great lesson than we take refuge in our own innate poverty of soul, and yet for all that the lesson has not been quite in vain.
To sit in judgment on the departed is never likely to be equitable. We all suffer from life; who except God can call us to account? Let not their faults and sufferings, but what they have accomplished and done, occupy the survivors.
It would not be worth while to see seventy years if all the wisdom of this world were foolishness with God.
Of true religions there are only two: one of them recognises and worships the Holy that without form or shape dwells in and around us; and the other recognises and worships it in its fairest form. Everything that lies between these two is idolatry.
From a strict point of view we must have a reformation of ourselves every day, and protest against others, even though it be in no religious sense.
Perfection is the measure of heaven, and the wish to be perfect the measure of man.
Credo Deum! That is a fine, a worthy thing to say; but to recognise God where and as he reveals himself, is the only true bliss on earth.
Kepler said: ‘My wish is that I may perceive the God whom I find everywhere in the external world, in like manner also within and inside me.’ The good man was not aware that in that very moment the divine in him stood in the closest connection with the divine in the Universe.
What is predestination? It is this: God is mightier and wiser than we are, and so he does with us as he pleases.
Faith, Love, and Hope once felt, in a quiet sociable hour, a plastic impulse in their nature; they worked together and created a lovely image, a Pandora in the higher sense, Patience.
Lamps make oil-spots, and candles want snuffing; it is only the light of heaven that shines pure and leaves no stain.
The incurable evil of religious controversy is that while one party wants to connect the highest interest of humanity with fables and phrases, the other tries to rest it on things that satisfy no one.
What are tragedies but the versified passions of people who make Heaven knows what out of the external world?
Yorick Sterne was the finest spirit that ever worked. To read him is to attain a fine feeling of freedom; his humour is inimitable, and it is not every kind of humour that frees the soul.
Art rests upon a kind of religious sense: it is deeply and ineradicably in earnest. Thus it is that Art so willingly goes hand in hand with Religion.
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.