Pharisees Quotes - Page 2

• 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.

  Brennan Manning

  Christian, Jesus, Taken

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• To preach the Bible as 'the handbook for life,' or as the answer to every question, rather than as the revelation of Christ, is to turn the Bible into an entirely different book. This is how the Pharisees approached Scripture, as we can see clearly from the questions they asked Jesus. For the Pharisees, the Scriptures were a source of trivia for life's dilemmas.

  Michael Horton

  Bible, Jesus, Book

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• The sentiments attributed to Christ are in the Old Testament. They were familiar in the Jewish schools and to all the Pharisees, long before the time of Christ, as they were familiar in all the civilizations of the earth - Egyptian, Babylonian, and Persian, Greek, and Hindu.

  Joseph McCabe

  School, Civilization, Long

  "The Sources of the Morality of the Gospels". Book by Joseph McCabe, 1914.

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• [Jews are] murderers of the Lord, assassins of the prophets, rebels against God, God haters,... advocates of the devil, race of vipers, slanderers, calumniators, dark-minded people, leaven of the Pharisees, sanhedrin of demons, sinners, wicked men, stoners, and haters of righteousness.

  Gregory of Nyssa

  Dark, Men, Race

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• Who is telling us about the false self today? Who is even equipped tell us? Many clergy have not figured this out for themselves, since even ministry can be a career decision or an attraction to "religion" more than the result of an encounter with God or themselves. Formal religious status can maintain the false self rather effectively, especially if there are a lot of social payoffs like special respect, titles, salaries, a good self image, or nice costumes. It is no accident that the religious "Pharisees" became the symbolic bad guys in the Jesus story.

  Richard Rohr

  Religious, Jesus, Nice

  Richard Rohr (2013). “Immortal Diamond: The search for our true self”, p.35, SPCK

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• The Bible in itself is not the Word of God. The Word of God is a person. Neither does the Bible have life, power or light in itself any more than did the Jewish Torach. These attributes may be ascribed to the Bible only by virtue of its relationship to Him who is Word, Life, Power and Light. Life is not in the book, as the Pharisees supposed, but only in the Man of the book .

  Robert D. Brinsmead

  Bible, Book, Biblical

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• I'm a committed Christian. I worship in my own way. That's my business. That's not the business of the pharisees who are going to preach to me about what I do and then do something else.

  Howard Dean

  Christian, Mind Your Own Business, Way

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• [On refusing to be silenced:] I do not pretend to be John the Baptist rebuking the Pharisees. I do not claim to be Nathan upbraiding David. I aspire only to be Balaam's ass, castigating his master.

  Katharina Zell

  Speaking Up, Baptists, Ass

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• We must remember that the people of all the States are entitled to all the privileges and immunities of the citizen of the several States. We should bear this in mind, and act in such a way as to say nothing insulting or irritating. I would inculcate this idea, so that we may not, like Pharisees, set ourselves up to be better than other people.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Religious, Ideas, People

  Abraham Lincoln (2008). “The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln”, p.274, Wildside Press LLC

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• A week filled up with selfishness, and the Sabbath stuffed full of religious exercises, will make a good Pharisee, but a poor Christian. There are many persons who think Sunday is a sponge with which to wipe out the sins of the week. Now, God's altar stands from Sunday to Sunday, and the seventh day is no more for religion than any other. It is for rest. The whole seven are for religion, and one of them for rest.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Christian, Religious, Exercise

  Henry Ward Beecher (1858). “Life Thoughts”, p.8

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• As Christ's ministry drew to its close, its severity and its gentleness both increased; its severity to the class from whom it never turned away. Side by side through all His manifestations of Himself, there were the two aspects: "He showed Himself froward " (if I may quote the word) to the self-righteous and the Pharisee; and He bent with more than a woman's tenderness of 'yearning love over the darkness and sinfulness, which in its great darkness dimly knew itself blind, and in its sinfulness stretched out a lame hand of faith, and groped after a Divine deliverer.

  Alexander MacLaren

  Self, Hands, Class

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 68), 1895.

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• I am alone; all drowns in the Pharisees' hypocrisy. To live your life is not as simple as to cross a field.

  Boris Pasternak

  Life, Simple, Hypocrisy

  Doctor Zhivago "Zhivago's Poems: Hamlet" (1958) (translation by Max Hayward and Manya Harari)

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• Every way that we try to make our kids good that isn’t rooted in the good news of the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ is a damnable, crushing, despair-breedin g, Pharisee-produc ing law.

  Elyse Fitzpatrick

  Crush, Jesus, Kids

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• I grew up fundamentalist, evangelical, Protestant. Those are my roots, and they are good roots. But it means the Pharisees are my people. I grew up with an image of God that was not helpful -- largely the face of my father expanded.

  William P. Young

  Father, Mean, Roots

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

  C. S. Lewis

  Sports, Tyrants, Saint

  C. S. Lewis (1995). “The Screwtape Letters”, Bantam Classics

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• ... men... who say that there is no one in our times and in our midst who is able to keep the Gospel commandments and become like the holy Fathers? To them the Master rightly says with a loud voice, 'Woe to you scribes and Pharisees (Mt. 23:13)! Woe to you, blind guides of the blind (Mt. 23:16), because you do not enter into the kingdom, and you hinder those who wish to enter' (Mt. 23:13).

  Symeon the New Theologian

  Christian, Father, Men

  Saint Symeon (the New Theologian) (1980). “Symeon New Theologian”, p.312, Paulist Press

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• Sooner mayest thou trust thy pocket to a pickpocket than give loyal friendship to the man who boasts of eyes to the heart never mounts in dew! Only when man weeps he should be alone, not because tears are weak, but they should be secret. Tears are akin to prayer,--Pharisees parade prayers, imposters parade tears.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Prayer, Eye, Heart

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• According to Miller, Pharisee Judaism is not a religion at all, but a secret society posing as a religion, a "sect with Judaism as a rite." She cites Moses Mendelssohn who wrote "Judaism is not a religion but a Law religionized."

  Edith Starr Miller

  Law, Secret, Citing

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• Gluttony should be destroyed by self-control; unchastity by desire for God and longing for the blessings held in store; avarice by compassion for the poor; anger by goodwill and love for all men; worldly dejection by spiritual joy; listlessness by patience, perseverance and offering thanks to God; self-esteem by doing good in secret and by praying constantly with a contrite heart; and pride by not judging or despising anyone in the manner of the boastful Pharisee (cf. Lk. 18:11-12), and by considering oneself the least of all men.

  John of Damascus

  Christian, Spiritual, Perseverance

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• We can hardly say that the Pharisees had an accurate ‘knowledge’ of man when they pointed to the sins (the real sins) of publicans and sinners. This judgment, which separated knowledge of man from self-knowledge, was as nothing in God’s eyes. The Jew did not have a better understanding because he was able to judge the heathen. In the sphere of abstract morality this could possibly be said, but this is not Biblical morality - O man, who judgest others!

  G. C. Berkouwer

  Real, Eye, Biblical

  G. C. Berkouwer (1962). “Man: The Image of God”, p.27, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• I can remember the lush spring excitement of language in childhood. Sitting in church, rolling it around my mouth like marbles--tabernacle and pharisee and parable, tresspass and Babylon and covenant.

  Penelope Lively

  Spring, Childhood, Church

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• Knapsack of the Metaphysicians.- Those who boast so mightily of the scientificality of their metaphysics should receive no answer; it is enough to pluck at the bundle which, with a certain degree of embarrassment, they keep concealed behind their back; if one succeeds in opening it, the products of that scientificality come to light, attended by their blushes: a dear little Lord God, a nice little immortality, perhaps a certain quantity of spiritualism, and in any event a whole tangled heap of 'wretched poor sinner' and Pharisee arrogance.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Philosophy, Nice, Light

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• Yet the order of the acts is planned And the end of the way inescapable. I am alone; all drowns in the Pharisees' hypocrisy.

  Boris Pasternak

  Order, Hypocrisy, Way

  Doctor Zhivago "Zhivago's Poems: Hamlet" (1958) (translation by Max Hayward and Manya Harari)

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• Tears are akin to prayer - Pharisees parade prayers, imposters parade tears.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Prayer, Tears, Parades

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• About Mahatma Gandhi: Great in taking decisions, great in executing them, Mahatma Gandhi was incomparably great in the last stand which he made on behalf of his country. He is undoubtedly one of the greatest men the world has ever seen. The world hath need of him, and if he is mocked and jeered at by "the people of importance," "the people with a stake in this country," - the Scribes and Pharisees of the days of Christ - he will be gratefully remembered, now and always, by a nation which he led from victory to victory.

  Chittaranjan Das

  Country, Men, People

  "Collected Works of Deshbandhu" by Manindra Dutta, 1917.

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