Pope Francis Quotes

The more a church flourishes, the more, I believe, do hypocrites get in, just as you see many a noxious creeping thing come and get in a garden after a shower of rain. The very things that make glad the flowers bring out these noxious things. And so hypocrites get in and steal much of the church's sap away.

Too many of us are lonely ministers practicing a lonely ministry.

As I went between the Islamic Society in my college and university, the mosque, the halal takeaway, and visited the homes of my male Muslim friends, it was entirely possible for me to get through my day without interacting in any meaningful way with a single non-Muslim.

It's painfully obvious to see that as Americans we can sometimes be wrapped up in our own affairs.

Sin is very important to the soul because sin is what disintegrates the soul; it's what attacks the soul. Sin kind of is to the soul what cancer is to the body.

Religion is inwardly focused and driven only to sustain itself.

Everything in our lives is encouraging us to turn inward with all the technology that we have available to us.

My second novel began after my family moved from New York City to North Carolina, and I watched my son walk into kindergarten at a school in which he was the only Jewish child out of 600 students - and this in the middle of the Bible Belt.

The Arab population does not want to turn inward and be isolated.

Alas! Much has been done of late to promote the production of dwarfish Christians. Poor, sickly believers turn the church into an hospital, rather than an army. Oh, to have a church built up with the deep godliness of people who know the Lord in their very hearts, and will seek to follow the Lamb wherever he goes!

Sin is bad in the eye, worse in the tongue, worse still in the heart, but worst of all in the life.

The Devil's strategy for our times is to trivialize human existence and isolate us from one another while creating the delusion that the reasons are time pressures, work demands or economic anxieties.

We must avoid the spiritual disease of the Church that can become self-referential: when this happens, the Church itself becomes sick. It’s true that accidents can happen when you go out into the street, as can happen to any man or woman. But if the Church remains closed onto itself, self-referential, it grows old. Between a Church that goes into the street and gets into an accident and a Church that is sick with self-referentiality, I have no doubts in preferring the first.

Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherised upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats 5 Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question … 10 Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.

Christ came to bring healing to those who are spiritually sick-you say that you are perfectly well, so you must go your own way and Christ will go in another direction-towar ds sinners.

A hermit who has been shut up in his cell in a college has contracted a sort of mould and rust upon his soul.

When a human body is out of balance we call that disease, which indicates dis-ease of the body. Likewise, when the body of Christ becomes unbalanced, disease occurs... Health will occur only when everything is brought back into balance. The task of church leadership is to discover and remove growth-restricting diseases and barriers so that natural, normal growth can occur.

I do not think the devil cares how many churches you build, if only you have lukewarm preachers and people in them.

Lonely people console themselves with self-absorption or curiosity.

I stare into a thin, web-like crack above the urinal's handle and think to myself that if I were to disappear into that crack, say somehow miniaturize and slip into it, the odds are good that no one would notice I was gone. No... one... would... care. In fact some, if they noticed my absence, might feel an odd, indefinable sense of relief. This is true: the world is better off with some people gone. Our lives are not all interconnected. That theory is crock. Some people truly do not need to be here.

I've never met anyone who wanted to be a terrorist. They are desperate people.

Lies had deserted me, and I felt as lonely as though they had been my only friends.

It is the psychic depression of decadence which has come to this place and time. It is what happens to people who ignore their artists and deny their children. It is a terminal case of involutional melancholia which comes from within and cannot be cured by T.V. or psychotherapy or anything but a creative life, which is hard to come by in a country where it doesn't pay to do anything for yourself.

I've always felt somewhat out of place with other kids my own age", said River. "I was constantly reminded by people's reaction to our names and our diet that we seemed weird to them.

Almost all Japanese animation is produced with hardly any basis taken from observing real people, you know. It's produced by humans who can't stand looking at other humans. And that's why the industry is full of otaku!