Pious Quotes - Page 3

• Armed Soldier, terrible as Death, relentless as Doom; doing God's judgement on the Enemies of God. It is a phenomenon not of joyful nature; no, but of awful, to be looked at with pious terror and awe.

  Thomas Carlyle

  History, Judgement, Soldier

  Thomas Carlyle (1871). “Works”, p.144

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• Let not a single day pass without your learning a verse, half a verse, or a fourth of it, or even one letter of it; nor without attending to charity, study and other pious activity.

  Chanakya

  Half, Charity, Letters

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• The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods.

  Plato

  Psychology, Wish, Firsts

  Plato (2012). “The Trial and Death of Socrates: Four Dialogues”, p.9, Courier Corporation

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• These are my politics: to change what we can; to better what we can; but still to bear in mind that man is but a devil weakly fettered by some generous beliefs and impositions; and for no word however sounding, and no cause however just and pious, to relax the stricture on these bonds.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Men, Generosity, Evil

  'More New Arabian Nights: The Dynamiter' (1885) 'Epilogue of the Cigar Divan'

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• There are occasions on which it is noble to dare to stand alone. To be pious among infidels, to be disinterested in a time of general venality, to lead a life of virtue and reason in the midst of sensualists, is a proof of a mind intent on nobler things than the praise or blame of men, of a soul fixed in the contemplation of the highest good, and superiour to the tyranny of custom and example.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Soul, Individuality

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An essay on his life and genius”, p.287

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• The blood of heroes is closer to the Lord than the ink of scholars and the prayers of the pious.

  Julius Evola

  Prayer, Hero, Blood

  Julius Evola (2011). “Metaphysics of War”, p.43, Arktos

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• Until the building of Solomons temple the unity of worship according to it had, properly speaking, never had any existence; and, moreover, it is easy to read between the lines that even after that date it was more a pious wish than a practical demand.

  Julius Wellhausen

  Unity, Wish, Read Between The Lines

  Julius Wellhausen (2013). “Prolegomena to the History of Israel: With a Reprint of the Article 'Israel' from the Encyclopaedia Britannica”, p.36, Cambridge University Press

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• The Gods have proclaimed Christ to have been most pious, but the Christians are a confused and vicious sect.

  Porphyry

  Christian, Confused, Vicious

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• ... I am not afraid of priests. They have tried upon me all their various batteries of pious whining, hypocritical canting, lying and slandering. I have contemplated their order from the Magi of the East to the Saints of the West and I have found no difference of character, but of more or less caution, in proportion to their information or ignorance on whom their interested duperies were to be played off. Their sway in New England is indeed formidable. No mind beyond mediocrity dares there to develop itself.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Lying, Father

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• That is again the same story played on a more subtle level. That's what the religious people have been doing down the ages - pious egoists they have been. They have made their ego even more decorated; it has taken the color of religion and holiness. Your ego is better than the ego of a saint; your ego is better, far better - because your ego is very gross, and the gross ego can be understood and dropped more easily than the subtle. The subtle ego goes on playing such games that it is very difficult. One will need absolute awareness to watch it.

  Rajneesh

  Religious, Taken, Color

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• When being is divorced from doing, pious thoughts become an adequate substitute for washing dirty feet.

  Brennan Manning

  Dirty, Feet, Adequate

  Brennan Manning (2015). “Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging”, p.124, NavPress

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• Theology is like a map. Merely learning and thinking about the Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and less exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God--experiences compared with which many thrills of pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further you must use the map.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Confused, Real

  C.S. Lewis (1960). “Mere Christianity”

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• When a certain shameless fellow mockingly asked a pious old man what God had done before the creation of the world the latter aptly countered that he had been building hell for the curious.

  John Calvin

  Men, Done, World

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• He (Intellectuals) claims that label to compensate for his own inadequacies. It's as old as that saying: tell me what you boast of and I'll tell you what you lack. Our daily bread. The incompetent always present themselves as experts, the cruel as pious, sinners as excessively devout, usurers as benefactors, the small-minded as patriots, the arrogant as humble, the vulgar as elegant and the feeble-minded as intellectual.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Humble, Intellectual, Experts

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• While we exert ourselves to grow beyond our humanity, to leave the human behind us, God becomes human; and we must recognize that God wills that we be human, real human beings. While we distinguish between pious and godless, good and evil, noble and base, God loves real people without distinction.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Real, People, Evil

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• People have learned by bitter experience that the "European fraternal union of peoples" cannot be achieved by mere phrases and pious wishes, but only by profound revolutions and bloody struggles; they have learned that the question is not that of a fraternal union of all European peoples under a single republican flag, but of an alliance of the revolutionary peoples against the counter-revolutionary peoples, an alliance which comes into being not on paper, but only on the battlefield.

  Friedrich Engels

  Struggle, Communication, People

  Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels (1975). “Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: collected works”, Intl Pub

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• Do you fast? Then feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, visit the sick, do not forget the imprisoned, have pity on the tortured, comfort those who grieve and who weep, be merciful, humble, kind, calm, patient, sympathetic, forgiving, reverent, truthful and pious, so that God might accept your fasting and might plentifully grant you the fruits of repentance.

  Saint John Chrysostom

  Spiritual, Humble, Grieving

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• What if I pulled through and the pious faction contentedly claimed that their prayers had been answered? That would somehow be irritating.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Prayer, What If, Factions

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Mortality”, p.19, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• The Lord help us!' he soliloquised in an undertone of peevish displeasure, while relieving me of my horse: looking, meantime, in my face so sourly that I charitably conjectured he must have need of divine aid to digest his dinner, and his pious ejaculation had no reference to my unexpected advent.

  Emily Bronte

  Horse, Ejaculation, Needs

  Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte (2009). “The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.370, Penguin

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• Peace cannot be built on exclusivism, absolutism, and intolerance. But neither can it be built on vague liberal slogans and pious programs gestated in the smoke of confabulation. There can be no peace on earth without the kind of inner change that brings man back to his "right mind." p. 31

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Peace, Men

  Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Merton (2007). “Gandhi on Non-Violence”, p.31, New Directions Publishing

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• I'm not very pious about anything, fortunately, but I'm skewering myself first. I'm skewering things that I care about and things that are important to me and then just my own foibles.

  Paul Beatty

  Important, Care, Firsts

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Although we tend to think about saints as holy and pious, and picture them with halos above their heads and ecstatic gazes, true saints are much more accessible. They are men and women like us, who live ordinary lives and struggle with ordinary problems. What makes them saints is their clear and unwavering focus on God and God's people.

  Henri Nouwen

  Struggle, Men, Thinking

  "Bread For the Journey". Book by Henri J. M. Nouwen, 1996.

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• Jesus once caused a sick man to arise on the Sabbath and take up his bed, whereupon the pious of the land raised a great outcry. But Jesus answered with superior contempt that the Sabbath was there for the sake of man, not man for the sake of the Sabbath; consequently, man was also master over the Sabbath.

  Alfred Rosenberg

  Jesus, Men, Land

  "The Myth of the Twentieth Century". Book by Alfred Rosenberg, p. 229, 1930.

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• 872, Ivar, King of the Northmen of all Ireland and Britain , ended his life." He had conquered Mercia and East Anglia. He had captured the major stronghold of the kingdom of Strathclyde, Dumbarton. Laden with loot and seemingly invincible, he settled in Dublin and died there peacefully two years later. The pious chroniclers report that he "slept in Christ." Thus it may be that he had the best of both worlds.

  Winston Churchill

  Kings, Years, Two

  Winston Churchill (2004). “A History of the English Speaking Peoples 01. The Birth of Britain.”

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• No one who has lived in the world as long as you & I have, can entertain the pious delusion that it is engineered upon principles of benevolence... the cosmos remains always beautiful and profoundly interesting in every corner-and if I had as many lives as a cat I would leave no corner unexplored.

  Thomas Huxley

  Beautiful, Cat, Thinking

  "Huxley: From Devil's Disciple to Evolution's High Priest". Book by Adrian Desmond (p. 588), 1997.

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