Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Volumes might be written upon the impiety of the pious.

Moral crusade: Public activity undertaken by middle-aged men who are cheating on their wives or diddling little boys. Moral crusades are particularly popular among those seeking power for their own personal pleasure, politicians who can't think of anything useful to do with their mandates, and religious professionals suffering from a personal inability to communicate with their god.

Public displays of puritanical religiosity mask the private perversions of the real Washington behind closed doors.

Thus one can observe that those who proclaim piety as their goal and purpose usually turn into hypocrites.

Hypocrisy is oftenest clothed in the garb of religion.

Periodical godliness is perpetual hypocrisy.

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.

Since the primary motive of the evil is disguise, one of the places evil people are most likely to be found is within the church. What better way to conceal one's evil from oneself as well as from others than to be a deacon or some other highly visible form of Christian within our culture

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.

Those most moved to tears by every word of a preacher are generally weak and a rascal when the feelings evaporate.

You might think that religion was the one area in which professional jealousy would take a back seat. But no: ecclesiastical memoirs are as viperish as any, though their envy tends to cloak itself in piety.

Some hypocrites and seeming mortified men, that held down their heads, were like the little images that they place in the very bowing of the vaults of churches, that look as if they held up the church, but are but puppets.

Each single thing can be referred more easily to the hand and rod of God. This is nothing more or less than wishing to please God by a lie.

A man compounded of law and gospel is able to cheat a whole country with his religion and then destroy them under color of law.

Atheists have not produced so much evil as hypocrites have produced, or even simply those who preached God without being prepared for Him, daring to pronounce His name with unsanctified lips.

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.

I have noticed that the Christianity of a certain class of respectable people begins when they open their prayer-books at eleven o'clock on Sunday morning, and ends when they shut them up again at one o'clock on Sunday afternoon. Nothing so astonishes and insults Christians of this sort as reminding them of their Christianity on a week-day.

At its heart, legalism is a desire to appear holy. It is trying to be justified before men and not God.

I admire the serene assurance of those who have religious faith. It is wonderful to observe the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.

Look into the world--how often do you behold a sordid wretch, whose straight heart is open to no man's affliction, taking shelterbehind an appearance of piety, and putting on the garb of religion, which none but the merciful and compassionate have a title to wear.

That very church which the world likes best is sure to be that which God abhors.

For man may pious texts repeat, And yet religion have no inward seat

It is a terribly easy matter to be a minister of the gospel and a vile hypocrite at the same time.

They are hypocrites, they think the Church is a cage to keep God in, so he will stay locked up there and not go wandering about the earth during the week, poking his nose into their business, and looking in the depths and darkness and doubleness of their hearts, and their lack of true charity; and they believed they need only be bothered about him on Sundays when they have their best clothes on and their faces straight, and their hands washed and their gloves on, and their stories all prepared.