Clergyman Quotes

Theater is, of course, a reflection of life. Maybe we have to improve life before we can hope to improve theater.

Nobody is bored when he is trying to make something that is beautiful or to discover something that is true.

It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.

A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbours.

The happiest people seem to be those who have no particular cause for being happy except that they are so.

The aim of education is the knowledge not of facts but of values.

Worry is interest paid on trouble before it comes due.

We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.

It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish.

I'm tired of hearing sin called sickness and alcoholism a disease. It is the only disease I know of that we're spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year to spread.

You haven't lost anything when you know were it is. Death can hide but not divide.

Too many church services start at eleven sharp and end at twelve dull.

Doing leads more surely to talking than talking to doing.

The devil will let a preacher prepare a sermon if it will keep him from preparing himself.

Many people are in a rut and a rut is nothing but a grave - with both ends kicked out.

The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps - we must step up the stairs.

It is one of the ironies of the ministry that the very man who works in God's name is often hardest put to find time for God. The parents of Jesus lost Him at church, and they were not the last ones to lose Him there.

If they had a social gospel in the days of the prodigal son, somebody would have given him a bed and a sandwich and he never would have gone home.

Sometimes your medicine bottle has on it, 'Shake well before using.' That is what God has to do with some of His people. He has to shake them well before they are ever usable.

The reward for success in St. Paul is eviction.

The mind is like a sheet of white paper in this, that the impressions it receives the oftenest, and retains the longest, are black ones.

The greatest truths are the simplest, and so are the greatest men.

Be what you are. This is the first step toward becoming better than you are.

We should be more anxious that our afflictions should benefit us than that they should be speedily removed from us.

We are to seek wisdom and understanding only in the length of days.

Rising health care spending occurs because it is beneficial, not a burden on the economy.

Mankind are apt to be strongly prejudiced in favor of whatever is countenanced by antiquity, enforced by authority, and recommended by custom.

In the power of fixing the attention lies the most precious of the intellectual habits.

In matters of conscience, first thoughts are best. In matters of prudence, last thoughts are best.

Call things by their right names - Glass of brandy and water! That is the current, but not the appropriate name; ask for a glass of liquid fire and distilled damnation.