Clergy Quotes - Page 7

• Of learned men, the clergy show the lowest development of professional ethics. Any pastor is free to cadge customers from the divines of rival sects, and to denounce the divines themselves as theological quacks.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Atheism, Rivals

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• It has not been without bitter resistance by the clergy that woman's property and educational rights have advanced. Woman's anti-slavery work, her temperance work, her demand for personal rights, for political equality, for religious freedom and every step of kindred character has met with opposition from the church as a body and from the clergy as exponents of its views.

  Matilda Joslyn Gage

  Religious, Educational, Character

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• [If] the nature of ... government [were] a subordination of the civil to the ecclesiastical power, I [would] consider it as desperate for long years to come. Their steady habits [will] exclude the advances of information, and they [will] seem exactly where they [have always been]. And there [the] clergy will always keep them if they can. [They] will follow the bark of liberty only by the help of a tow-rope.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Government, Years, Long

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• In respect to religion and the healing art, all nations are still in a state of barbarism. In the most civilized countries the priest is still but a Powwow, and the physician a Great Medicine.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Country, Art, Healing

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “A Week On The Concord And Merrimack Rivers (Annotated Edition)”, p.215, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Priests and physicians should never look one another in the face. They have no common ground, nor is there any to mediate betweenthem. When the one comes, the other goes. They could not come together without laughter, or a significant silence, for the one's profession is a satire on the other's, and either's success would be the other's failure.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Laughter, Doctors, Silence

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.197, Delphi Classics

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• Let no one think that I do not love the old ministers. They were, probably, the best men in their generation, and they deserve that their biographies should fill the pages of the town histories. If I could but hear the "glad tidings" of which they tell, and which, perchance, they heard, I might write in a worthier strain than this.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Writing, Men, Thinking

  Henry David Thoreau (2008). “Cape Cod: Illustrated Edition of the American Classic”, p.48, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The world's a ship on its voyage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow.

  Herman Melville

  Religion, World, Voyages

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• In our calling, we have to choose; we must make our fortune either in this world or in the next, there is no middle way.

  Stendhal

  Success, Calling, World

  Stendhal (2016). “The Red and the Black: World Classics”, p.51, World Classic

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• The military and the clergy cause us much annoyance; the clergy and the military, they empty our wallets and rob our intelligence.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Military, Causes, Empty

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• The first reform must be the attitude. The ministers of the Gospel must be people who can warm the hearts of the people, who walk through the dark night with them, who know how to dialogue and to descend themselves into their people's night, into the darkness, but without getting lost. The people of God want pastors, not clergy acting like bureaucrats or government officials.

  Pope Francis

  Leadership, Attitude, Heart

  "A Big Heart Open to God: An interview with Pope Francis". Interview with Antonio Spadaro, S.J., www.americamagazine.org. September 30, 2013.

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• The elite attack religious people and clergy with a vengeance.

  Tim LaHaye

  Christian, Religious, People

  Tim F. LaHaye, Beverly LaHaye (1994). “A Nation Without a Conscience”

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• The great object was to get rid of Christianity, and to convert our churches into halls of science. The plan was not to make open attacks on religion, although we might the clergy and bring them into contempt where we could: but to establish a system of state - we said national - schools, from which all religion was to be excluded.

  Orestes Brownson

  Christian, Religious, School

  Orestes Augustus Brownson (1833). “An Address on Intemperance: Delivered in Walpole, N.H. February 26, 1833”

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• I never liked the Hierarchy of the Church-an equality in the teacher of Religion, and a dependence on the people, are republican sentiments-but if the Clergy combine, they will have their influence on Government

  Rufus King

  Teacher, Government, People

  Rufus King (1971). “The Life and Correspondence of Rufus King: 1755-1794”

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• The Christian religion, when divested of the rags in which they [the clergy] have enveloped it, and brought to the original purity and simplicity of it's benevolent institutor, is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty, science, and the freest expansion of the human mind.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Christian, Simplicity, Mind

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, correspondence, and miscellanies from the papers of T. Jefferson”, p.463

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• By dividing the people of God as clergy and laymen, we have made the latter a majority of lame men.

  Richard P. Stanley

  Men, People, Church

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• The religious superstition is encouraged by means of the institution of churches, processions, monuments, festivities....The so-called clergy stupefy the masses....They befog the people and keep them in an eternal condition of stupefaction.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Religious, Mean, People

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• It is impossible to approve in Catholic publications of a style inspired by unsound novelty which seems to deride the piety of the faithful and dwells on the introduction of a new order of Christian life, on new directions of the Church, on new aspirations of the modern soul, on a new vocation of the clergy, on a new Christian civilisation.

  Pope Pius X

  Christian, Order, Faithful

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• That diabolical Hell conceived principle of persecution rages amoung some and to their eternal Infamy the Clergy can furnish their Quota of Imps for such business.

  James Madison

  Religious, Religion, Liberty

  James Madison (1867). “1769-1793. v.2. 1794-1815. v.3. 1816-1828. v.4. 1829-1836”, p.12

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• The Church, rightly conceived, is the whole covenant people called to serve in the world. The clergy are also part of the laity, and their true function is to help equip the laity to be the Servant People. If they turn aside to rule and to secure their own status, they have betrayed the calling of the special ministry.

  Franklin Littell

  Betrayal, People, Special

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• Whatever your life's pursuit -- art, poetry, sculpture, music, whatever your occupation may be -- you can be as spiritual as clergy, always living a life of praise.

  Hazrat Inayat Khan

  Spiritual, Art, Sculpture

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• And sometimes the clergy are blindsided by that. Other times they realize that ahead of time and say they're not going to use those terms. So it gets complicated for sure.

  Michael Emerson

  Use, Complicated, Sometimes

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I ask the clergy why don't I see myself represented in leadership? And I'm told, and this happens quite a bit, "We don't think about race when we hire. We just hire the best person for the job."

  Michael Emerson

  Jobs, Thinking, Race

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I think there are a lot of closet charismatics out there. A lot of [clergy] personally have had their vocations saved because of their experience of Christ and the Holy Spirit through the renewal, but they discovered it wasn't cool [to say so out loud] because it was considered fringe. They got the message from the environment not to talk about it very much. I think the time has come for the closet charismatics to come out.

  Ralph Martin

  Thinking, Messages, Spirit

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

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• Far, far from the clergy be the love of novelty!

  Pope Pius X

  Novelty, Catholicism

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• Methinks some creeds in vestries and churches do forget the hunter wrapped in furs by the Great Slave Lake, and that the Esquimauxsledges are drawn by dogs, and in the twilight of the northern night the hunter does not give over to follow the seal and walrus on the ice. They are of sick and diseased imaginations who would toll the world's knell so soon. Cannot these sedentary sects do better than prepare the shrouds and write the epitaphs of those other busy living men? The practical faith of all men belies the preacher's consolation.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Dog, Twilight, Writing

  Henry David Thoreau (1906). “The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: Journal, ed. by B. Torrey, 1837-1846, 1850-Nov. 3, 1861”

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