The Jews fastened their religion upon the Western world, not because it was more reasonable than the religions of their contemporaries - as a matter of fact, it was vastly less reasonable than many of them - but because it was far more poetical.
In Job and the Psalms we shall find more sublime ideas, more elevated language, than in any of the heathen versifiers of Greece or Rome.
Without poetry, religion becomes obscure, false, and malignant; without philosophy, licentious in all wantonness, and lascivious to the point of self-castration.
[The Psalms are] a Little Bible, wherein everything contained in the entire Bible is beautifully and briefly comprehended.
I still read Donne, particularly his love poems.
Try the Lamentations of Jeremiah. They always pick me up.
The book of Job is pure Arab poetry of the highest and most antique cast.
One of the things that is wonderful about hymns is that they are a sort of universally shared poetry, at least among certain populations.
When Poetry thus keeps its place as the handmaiden of piety, it shall attain not a poor perishable wreath, but a crown that fadeth not away.
The Athanasian Creed is the most splendid ecclesiastical lyric ever poured forth by the genius of man.
Good religious poetry... is likely to be most justly appreciated and most discriminately relished by the undevout.
I think the connection between poetry and theology, which is profound in Western tradition - there is a great deal of wonderful religious poetry - both poetry and theology push conventional definitions and explore perceptions that might be ignored or passed off as conventional, but when they are pressed yield much larger meanings, seem to be part of a much larger system of reality.
Dr Donne's verses are like the peace of God; they pass all understanding.
Pity! Religion has so seldom found A skilful guide into poetic ground! The flowers would spring where'er she deign'd to stray And every muse attend her in her way.
In the history of old Jewish literature there was never any basic difference between the poet and the prophet. Our ancient poetry often became law and a way of life.
I sometimes wish I had been educated a Catholic, in order to unite the poetry of religion with its higher principles. Are they necessarily inseparable? Is man really so much of a philosopher, that he can conceive of truth in its abstract purity, and divest life and the affections of all the aids of the imagination?
