Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Lukewarm people give money to charity and to the church...so long as it doesn't impinge on their standard of living. Lukewarm people tend to choose what is popular over what is right. Lukewarm people don't really want to be saved from their sin; they want to be saved from the penalty of their sin. Lukewarm people rarely share their faith with their neighbors, coworkers, or friends. Lukewarm people are thankful for their luxuries and comforts, and rarely consider trying to give as much as possible to the poor.

Blessed be the man whose work drives him. Something must drive men; and if it is wholesome industry, they have no time for a thousand torments and temptations.

The Christmas spirit does not shine out in the Christian snob. For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor -- spending and being spent -- to enrich their fellow humans, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others -- and not just their own friends -- in whatever way there seems need.

I have never united myself to any church because I found difficulty in giving my assent without mental reservation to the long, complicated statements of Christian doctrine which characterize the articles of belief and the usual confession of faith.

Long before you were conceived by your parents, you were conceived in the mind of God.

Everybody has an instinctive desire to do good things and avoid evil. But that desire is sterile as long as we have no experience of what it means to be good.

An army is strengthened by labor and enervated by idleness.

Non-churchgoer s tend to see Christians as takers rather than givers. When Christians sacrifice and give wildly to the poor, that is truly a light that glimmers. The Bible teaches that the church is to be that light, that sign of hope, in an increasingly dark and hopeless world.

For more than 160 years, through the initiative of the French bishop Charles de Forbin Janson, the childhood of Jesus has become the icon for the commitment of Christian children who help the Church in her task of evangelization by prayer, sacrifice and gestures of solidarity....Thousands of children meet the needs of other children, driven by the love that the Son of God, become a child, brought to the earth. I say thanks to these little ones and I pray that they will always be missionaries.

All Christian worship is a witness of the resurrection of Him who liveth for ever and ever. Because He lives, "now abideth faith, hope, charity."

I have a long-lasting gratitude and trust for what UNICEF does.

So long as there is a human being who does not know Jesus Christ, I am his debtor to serve him until he does.

There was never law, or sect, or opinion did so much magnify goodness, as the Christian religion doth.

If you want to give the devil a nervous breakdown, just get up every day and see how much good you can do.

When someone steals another's clothes, we call them a thief. Should we not give the same name to one who could clothe the naked and does not? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat unused in your closet belongs to the one who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor.

The Bible is one long story of God meeting our rebellion with His rescue, our sin with His salvation, our guilt with His grace, our badness with His goodness. The overwhelming focus of the Bible is not the work of the redeemed but the work of the Redeemer. Which means that the Bible is not first a recipe for Christian living but a revelation book of Jesus who is the answer to our un-Christian living.

My conscience is killing me, isn't it? And when you're immortal that can be a really long and ignominious death

Long pains, with use of bearing, are half eased.

I have long been convinced that the Christian Eucharist is but a continuation of the Eleusinian mysteries. St Paul, in using the word teleiois, almost confirms this.

As Christians, we have an additional reason to love and serve the poor; for in them we see the face and the flesh of Christ, who made himself poor so to enrich us with his poverty.

Patience is the ability to suffer a long time under the mistreatment of others without growing resentful or bitter.

All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you.If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens.But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction.

I realize there are few sectors that can do what philanthropy does, which is look at big problems, take a long term view, try to develop strategies for addressing the root causes and then go about solving them.

Art shows us how to see things that are constructive and good, and to be an active part of that.