Nikolai Gogol Quotes

There is a great difference between Christianity and religion at the south. If a man goes to the communion table, and pays money into the treasury of the church, no matter if it be the price of blood, he is called religious.

A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.

I'm an atheist and I thank God for it.

The reason people don't take Christianity very seriously anymore is because all people do is put it on their business cards and blab to get on television.

Opposite to godliness is atheism in profession, and idolatry in practice. Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind, that it never had many professors.

It is better to be an outspoken atheist than a hypocrite.

I've long been offended by not-so-godly pro football players I've known who showed up for pregame chapel - Sunday-only Christians rubbing the proverbial rabbit's foot - then after victories declared it was 'God's will' that their team won.

An atheist is but a mad, ridiculous derider of piety, but a hypocrite makes a sober jest of God and religion; he finds it easier to be upon his knees than to rise to a good action.

... what such people miscall their religion, is a vent for their bad humours and arrogance.

Whoever is a hypocrite in his religion mocks God, presenting to Him the outside and reserving the inward for his enemy.

Unsaintly saints are the tragedy of Christianity.

Give a man religion without reminding him of his filth, and the result will be arrogance in a three- piece suit.

The most genuine and efficacious charity is that which greases the paws of the priests; such charity covers a multitude of sins.

The form of godliness may exist with secret and with open wickedness, but the power of godliness cannot.

The worst thing about religion was religious people.

No men stand more in fear of God than those who most deny Him.

I was at this time living, like so many Atheists or Antitheists, in a whirl of contradictions. I maintained that God did not exist. I was also very angry with God for not existing. I was equally angry with Him for creating a world.

Periodical godliness is perpetual hypocrisy.

For atheism and polytheism there is no special problem of suffering, nor need there be for every kind of monotheism.

He that puts on a religious habit abroad to gain himself a great name among men, and at the same time lives like an atheist at home, shall at the last be uncovered by God and presented before all the world for a most outrageous hypocrite.

Because the church has moved away from the gospel anytime you move away from the gospel, you at the same time move toward pretense, you move toward image-keeping, you move toward the need to pretend.

[Dom Juan] believes neither in Heaven, nor the saints, nor God, nor the Werewolf.

That raises a terrible question. How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with Pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshiping an imaginary God.

For in religion as in friendship, they who profess most are ever the least sincere.

We need to stop giving people excuses not to believe in God. You've probably heard the expression 'I believe in God, just not organized religion'. I don't think people would say that if the church truly lived like we are called to live.