Spiritual Arrogance Quotes

We must be careful to avoid spiritual elitism. Everything we are and anything we possess as believers in Christ is a gift of grace. Pure hearts before God must be cleansed from any hint of spiritual pride.

A cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to Hell than a prostitute.

The fierce words of Jesus addressed to the Pharisees of His day stretch across the bands of time. Today they are directed not only to fallen televangelists but to each of us. We miss Jesus' point entirely when we use His words as weapons against others. They are to be taken personally by each of us. This is the form and shape of Christian Pharisaism in our time. Hypocrisy is not hte prerogative of people in high places. The most impoverished among us is capable of it. Hypocrisy is the natural expression of what is meanest in us all.

You've been acting like Jesus owes you a favor, but he's a little smart for you to fool.

If we see pride among people who have no idea about Dharma, it is understandable. However, if afflictive emotions and haughtiness are present among Dharma practitioners, it is great disgrace to practice

A preacher who doesn't believe he's that bad will attract people who don't think they're that bad. And that's bad.

The Devil is not the Prince of Matter; the Devil is the arrogance of the spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt. The Devil is grim because he knows where he is going, and, in moving, he always returns whence he came.

Other sins find their vent in the accomplishment of evil deeds, whereas pride lies in wait for good deeds, to destroy them.

Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good - above all, that we are better than someone else - I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil.

He was very religious; he believed that he had a secret pact with God which exempted him from doing good in exchange for prayers and piety.

There are many paths to God. What really bothers me - and what I think is the height of arrogance and stupidity - is when one group believes their way is the only way. That really gets my dander up.

People who parade their holiness are operating dangerously close to the sin of pride.

I don't get anywhere meditating," she said. "I see people sitting there with their eyes closed, a smile on their lips or else grave-faced and arrogant, concentrating on absolutely nothing, convinced that they're in touch with God or with the Goddess. So instead, let's listen to some music together.

As no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints.

Religion to me is when man gets ahold of spirituality: "My god is right, yours is wrong." Religion to me is the human condition. "If you're a Muslim, you can't be a Christian." That to me is religion.

One can become as intellectually arrogant about spirituality as about empirical science.

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

Mortification from a self-strength, carried on by ways of self-invention, unto the end of a self-righteousness, is the soul and substance of all false religion in the world.

When a man gets up so high (spiritual mountaintop) that he cannot reach down and save poor sinners, there is something wrong.

It infuriates me that when people forget what it's like not to be a Christian, and they get into other people's face about their life or their beliefs. It's amazing to me that people feel their relationship is so solid with God that they have enough time on their hands to question mine or to fix mine.

Some of the most unkind,judgmental people I've ever known go to church every Sunday and read the Bible. I don't know how some people are able to disassociate their own cruelty and shortcomings from their religious obligations and convictions, but many are able to do that.

Christians believe themselves to be the aristocracy of heaven upon earth, they are admitted to the spiritual court, while millions of men in foreign lands have never been presented. They bow their knees and say they are 'miserable sinners,' and their hearts rankle with abominable pride. Poor infatuated fools! Their servility is real and their insolence is real but their king is a phantom and their palace is a dream.

There is not in the universe a more ridiculous, nor a more contemptible animal, than a proud clergyman.

A spoiled saint, a Pharisee, an inquisitor, or a magician, makes better sport to Hell than a mere common tyrant or debauchee.

But, actually, so many of the clerics that I've met, particularly the Church of England clerics, are people of such extraordinary smugness and arrogance and conceitedness who are extraordinarily presumptuous about the significance of their position in society.