False Devotion Quotes

See Christians, Jews, one heavy sabbath keep, And all the western world believe and sleep.

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

Shepherds don't look after sheep because they love them - although I do think some shepherds like their sheep too much. They look after their sheep so they can, first, fleece them and second, turn them into meat. That's much more like the priesthood as I know it.

The whole image is that eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions God's infinite love. That's the message we're brought up with, isn't it? Believe or die! Thank you, forgiving Lord, for all those options.

Sometimes we emulate the Pharisees more than we imitate Christ.

I've done everything for the wrong reasons. All the good works people credit to me are nothing because I did them expecting God to repay me. I thought if I worked hard enough, God would have to give me what I wanted. The truth is I've never served the Lord at all. I was always serving myself.

Do not have Jesus Christ on your lips, and the world in your heart.

Their sighing, canting, grace-proud faces, their three-mile prayers, and half-mile graces.

People talk about imitating Christ, and imitate Him in the little trifling formal things, such as washing the feet, saying His prayer, and so on; but if anyone attempts the real imitation of Him, there are no bounds to the outcry with which the presumption of that person is condemned.

An idol of the mind is as offensive to God as an idol of the hand.

You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.

Many come to bring their clothes to church rather than themselves.

The compelled mother loves her child as the caged bird sings. The song does not justify the cage nor the love the enforcement.

Piety is different from superstition. To carry piety to the extent of superstition is to destroy it. The heretics reproach us with this superstitious submission. It is doing what they reproach us with.

When I contrast the loving Jesus, comprehending all things in his ample and tender charity, with those who profess to bear his name, marking their zeal by what they do not love, it seems to me as though men, like the witches of old, had read the Bible backward, and had taken incantations out of it for evil, rather than inspiration for good.

Poor humanity, to saddle the gods with such a responsibility and throw in a vindictive temper. What griefs they hatch for themselves, what festering sores for us, what tears for our prosperity! This is not piety, this oft-repeated show of bowing a veiled head before a graven image; this bustling to every altar; this kow-towing and prostration on the ground with palms outspread before the shrines of the gods; this deluging of vow on vow. True piety lies rather in the power to contemplate the universe with a quiet mind.

The martyr who longs for the flames can be no right candidate for them.

Religion has accepted the monstrous heresy that noise, size, activity and bluster make a man dear to God.

Religion is one of the safest places to hide from God.

Martyrs have been sincere. And so have tyrants. Wise men have been sincere. And so have fools.

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.

The man that takes up religion for the world will throw away religion for the world.

The people who talk the most about God are people who are the least like God.

Only Zorbas become Buddhas - and Buddha was never a monk, A monk is one who has never been a Zorba and has become enchanted by the words of Buddhas. A monk is an imitator, he is false, pseudo. He imitates Buddhas. He may be Christian, he may be Buddhist, he may be a Hindu - that doesn't make much difference - but he imitates Buddhas.

There is no greater threat to our devotion to Christ than our service for Christ.