Alexander Schmemann Quotes

• Every evil screams only one message: 'I am good.'

  Alexander Schmemann

  Christian, Duplicity, Evil

  64 Copy quote

• Man is a hungry being. But he is hungry for God. Behind all the hunger of our life is God. All desire is finally a desire for Him.

  Alexander Schmemann

  Men, Desire, Life Is

  Alexander Schmemann (1973). “For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy”, p.14, St Vladimir's Seminary Press

  35 Copy quote

• Centuries of secularism have failed to transform eating into something strictly utilitarian. Food is still treated with reverence...To eat is still something more than to maintain bodily functions. People may not understand what that 'something more' is, but they nonetheless desire to celebrate it. They are still hungry and thirsty for sacramental life.

  Alexander Schmemann

  People, Desire, May

  27 Copy quote

• The only real fall of man is his noneucharistic life in a noneucharistic world.

  Alexander Schmemann

  Real, Fall, Men

  Alexander Schmemann (1973). “For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy”, p.18, St Vladimir's Seminary Press

  26 Copy quote

• It seems to me that any ideology is bad because it is inevitably reductive and identifies other ideologies as evil, and itself with truth, whereas both truth and goodness are always transcendent.

  Alexander Schmemann

  Evil, Goodness, Ideology

  20 Copy quote

• How torturous is the "churchly" language one must speak in church - the tone, style, habit. It is all artificial; there is a total absence of a simple human language. With what a sigh of relief one leaves this world of cassocks, and kissing and church gossip. As soon as one leaves, one sees: wet bare branches, fog which floats over fields, trees, homes. Sky. Early dusk. And it all tells an incredibly simple truth.

  Alexander Schmemann

  Home, Kissing, Simple

  14 Copy quote

• If the Church is in Christ, its initial act is always the act of thanksgiving, of returning the world to God.

  Alexander Schmemann

  Church, World, Christ

  Alexander Schmemann (1973). “For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy”, p.61, St Vladimir's Seminary Press

  18 Copy quote

• For one who thinks food in itself is the source of life, eating is the communion with the dying world, it is communion with death. Food itself is dead, it is life that has died and it must be kept in refrigerators like a corpse.

  Alexander Schmemann

  Thinking, Dying, World

  Alexander Schmemann (1973). “For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy”, p.17, St Vladimir's Seminary Press

  19 Copy quote

• Love is the essence of the holiness of the Church.

  Alexander Schmemann

  Love Is, Essence, Church

  Alexander Schmemann (1988). “The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom”, p.137, St Vladimir's Seminary Press

  11 Copy quote

• Academic theology is false.

  Alexander Schmemann

  Academic, Theology

  11 Copy quote

• Principles are what people have instead of God.

  Alexander Schmemann

  People, Principles

  9 Copy quote

• We should have understood long ago that there is, in this world, religion without God, religion as a center of all idols that possess fallen man, religion that is the justification for these idols.

  Alexander Schmemann

  Men, Long Ago, Should Have

  9 Copy quote

• In the process of replacing the old religions, Christianity became a religion.

  Alexander Schmemann

  Christianity, Process

  11 Copy quote

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