Douglas William Jerrold Quotes

A religion cannot be sustained by the number of its lip-followers denying in their lives its tenets.

We use religion like a trolley-car--we ride on it only while it is going our way.

I became an altar boy because of the solemn face, but I got thrown out at fourteen for laughing. Because the priest used to mumble everything except the church plate takings.

The open secret of many Bible believing Churches is that a vanishingly small percentage of those talking about prayer and Bible reading are actually doing what they are talking about.

There is a Sunday conscience as well as a Sunday coat; and those who make religion a secondary concern put the coat and conscience carefully by to put on only once a week.

I only go to mass when somebody asks me, but when I get in trouble I call for a priest.

I smoked, I drank, I did all the kicking my heels up type things, but I went to Mass on Sunday.

Religion should be the rule of life, not a casual incident in it.

Many people conceive of religion as something apart from everyday affairs of the world. They think of it in terms of ceremony or ritual or sermons and often it strikes them as being dull or not particularly interesting. Religion may be described in many ways. I like to think of it as a medicine, a healing medicine for the mind.

We are a temple-building and a temple-attending people.

It is hard for many people today to make the distinction between religion and religiosity, the latter a dangerous parody of the former.

The same church members who yell like Comanche Indians at a ball game on Saturday sit like wooden Indians in church on Sunday.

To withhold our bodies from religion is to exclude religion from our lives.

Religion is the one and sole interest of the people of India.

If you're not worshiping God on Monday the way you [did] the day before, perhaps you're not worshiping Him at all.

Serving God is doing good to man, but praying is thought an easier service and therefore more generally chosen.

The man who never fasts is no more in the way to heaven than the man who never prays.

Every time you walk a mile to church and carry a Bible with you, you preach a sermon a mile long.

How many observe Christ's birthday! How few, His precepts!

How anyone can remain a Catholic - I mean who has ever been aroused to think, and is not biased by the partialities of childish years - after seeing Catholicism here in Italy I cannot conceive.

Many people profess Christianity. Very few live it-almost none. And when you live it people may think you're crazy. It has been truthfully said that the world is equally shocked by one who repudiates Christianity as by one who practices it.

People who wear their religion on their sleeves talk a lot about going to Sunday school, reading the Bible, and doing good works. And I suppose there's no harm in that. But if I'd gone to the trouble to pull all this together ... and people never paid any attention to it, never bothered to try to find out how the world worked, then I think I'd get annoyed.

Many people have just enough natural religion to make them immune to the real thing.

We look after religion as the butcher did after his knife, when he had it in his mouth.

Who goes to bed, and doth not pray, Maketh two nights to every day!