Clergymen Quotes

As well as the [League of Nations] delegates themselves and their suites, there were innumerable campaigners of one sort and another, male and female, clerical and lay, young and old; all with some notion to publicise, some pet solution to offer, some organisation to promote. They gathered in droves, fanning out through the city, and settling in hotels and pensions, from the Lakeside ones down to tiny obscure back-street establishments. Ferocious ladies with moustaches, clergymen with black leather patches on the elbows of their jackets or cassocks and smelling of tobacco smoke, mad admirals who knew where to find the lost tribes of Israel, and scarcely saner generals who deduced prophetic warnings from the measurement of the pyramids; but one and all believers in the League's historic role to deliver mankind painlessly and inexpensively from the curse of war to the great advantage of all concerned. ~ Malcolm Muggeridge

I questioned the faithful of all communions; I particularly sought the society of clergymen, who are the depositories of the various creeds and have a personal interest in their survival ... all thought the main reason for the quiet sway of religion over their country was the complete separation of church and state. I have no hesitation in stating that throughout my stay in America I met nobody, lay or cleric, who did not agree about that. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

In his closing argument, Hayes apologized to the jury for surrounding them with witnesses who weren't the most upstanding citizens, but explained that was the nature of solving crime. "Dope murders don't occur in front of bankers and clergymen," he said. In ~ Mardi Jo Link

Anyone who makes a decision at our meetings is seen later and referred to a local clergyman, Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish. ~ Billy Graham

...the postwar revolution in America's religious identity had its roots not in the foreign policy panic of the 1950s but rather in the domestic politics of the 1930s and early 1940s. Decades before Eisenhower's inaugural prayers, corporate titans enlisted conservative clergymen in an effort to promote new political arguments embodied in the phrase "freedom under God." As the private correspondence and public claims of the men leading this charge make clear, this new ideology was designed to defeat the state power its architects feared most - not the Soviet regime in Moscow, but Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal administration in Washington. ~ Kevin M. Kruse

One is respected in a community to the extent, and only to the extent, that he or she respects his own position in life. There are doctors, lawyers, and even clergymen who are a disgrace to humanity, and the disciples of Christ were lowly fishermen. I would not, for all the world, have any one of you children grow up to feel that you were less than equal in every way to any other human being who walks the face of the earth. ~ Ralph Moody

If we are now holding late-night talk-show hosts to the same moral accountability as we hold politicians or clergymen, I'm out. I'm gone. ~ Craig Ferguson

The clergyman who lives in the city may have piety, but he must have taste. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Avoid, as you would the plague, a clergyman who is also a man of business. ~ St. Jerome

The nature of oratory is such that there has always been a tendency among politicians and clergymen to oversimplify complex matters. From a pulpit or a platform even the most conscientious of speakers finds it very difficult to tell the whole truth. ~ Aldous Huxley

All sorts of cultists and queer fish teach all kinds of techniques for achieving health, contentment, peace of mind; and for many of their hearers, many of these techniques are demonstrably effective. but do we see respectable psychologists, philosophers and clergymen boldly descending into those odd and sometimes malodorous wells, at the bottom of which poor Truth is so often condemned to sit? yet once more the answer is, no. ~ Aldous Huxley

How do we distinguish between the legitimate skepticism of those who scoffed at cold fusion, and the stifling dogma of the seventeenthcentury clergymen who, doubting Galileo's claim that the earth was not the center of the solar system, put him under house arrest for the last eight years of his life? In part, the answer lies in the distinction between skepticism and closed-mindedness. Many scientists who were skeptical about cold fusion nevertheless tried to replicate the reported phenomenon in their own labs; Galileo's critics refused to look at the pertinent data. ~ Thomas Gilovich

The life of a conscientious clergyman is not easy. I have always considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain. I would rather have chancery suits upon my hands than the cure of souls. ~ Samuel Johnson

What is the function that a clergyman performs in the world? Answer: He gets his living by assuring idiots that he can save them from an imaginary hell. ~ H.L. Mencken

No amount of energy will take the place of thought. A strenuous life with its eyes shut is a kind of wild insanity. ~ Henry Van Dyke

Let us pray for all good and faithful priests who dedicate themselves to their people with generosity and unknown sacrifices. ~ Pope Francis

Across the broad continent of a woman's life falls the shadow of a sword. On one side all is correct, definite, orderly; the paths are straight, the trees regular, the sun shaded; escorted by gentlemen, protected by policemen, wedded and buried by clergymen, she has only to walk demurely from cradle to grave and no one will touch a hair of her head. But on the other side all is confusion. Nothing follows a regular course. The paths wind between bogs and precipices; the trees roar and rock and fall in ruin. ~ Virginia Woolf

That clergyman soon becomes an object of contempt who being often asked out to dinner never refuses to go. ~ St. Jerome

I'm offended by the kind of smarmy religiosity that's all around us, perhaps more in America than in Europe, and not really that harmful because it's not really that intense or even that serious, but just ... you know after a while you get tired of hearing clergymen giving the invocation at various public celebrations and you feel, haven't we outgrown all this? Do we have to listen to this? ~ Steven Weinberg

Tragically misinformed, some Christian believers at first looked upon hippies as promising prospects through whom the Church could present the claims of Jesus Christ. Clergymen mistakenly proclaimed that hippies were searching for truth and meaning and needed only to be guided. Wasn't their talk about love? Weren't they seeking an opportunity to share the love of God with others?

On the contrary, the hippies claimed to have found meaning for existence through conscious expanding drugs. And although they sang of love in chants and groans, they knew nothing of love's commitment and concern and duty towards one's neighbor. They ignored the responsibility of love and dwelt upon their quest for uninhibited physical gratification. ~ Bob Larson

It is indeed time for the clergyman and the psychotherapist to join forces. ~ Carl Jung

There is a species of person called a 'Modern Churchman' who draws the full salary of a beneficed clergyman and need not commit himself to any religious belief. ~ Evelyn Waugh

From a dramatic viewpoint, there are few professions that grant their members entry into other lives, high among them cops, doctors, clergymen, journalists and prostitutes. Perhaps that explains why they figure in so much television and cinema. Their lives are lived in the midst of human drama. ~ Roger Ebert

There is nothing to prove and nothing to protect. I am who I am and it's enough. ~ Richard Rohr

The police have enough work to keep them busy regulating automobile traffic, preventing robberies and crimes of violence and helping lost children and little old ladies find their way home. As long as the police confine themselves to such activities they are respected friends of the public. But as soon as they begin inquiring into people's private morals, they become nothing more than armed clergymen. ~ Alan Watts

My father, Dines Pontoppidan, belonged to an old family of clergymen and was himself a minister. ~ Henrik Pontoppidan

Young people, some of whom are not born into the faith, are being fired up by preachers using basic Islamic scripture and mobilized to wage jihad by radical imams who represent themselves as legitimate Muslim clergymen. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Of all the classes of men, I dislike the most those who make their livings by talking - actors, clergymen, politicians, pedagogues, and so on ... It is almost impossible to imagine a talker who sticks to the facts. Carried away by the sound of his own voice and the applause from the groundlings, he makes inevitably the jump from logic to mere rhetoric. ~ H.L. Mencken

Did Christ finish His work for us? Then there can be no doubt but He will also finish His work in us. ~ John Flavel

Orthodox Christians have the habit of claiming all great men, all men who have held important positions, men of reputation, men of wealth. As soon as the funeral is over clergymen begin to relate imaginary conversations with the deceased, and in a very little while the great man is changed to a Christian - possibly to a saint. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn't it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted? ~ George Carlin

Centuries later, it is often presumed that such a pious tone and environment would create boredom, cynicism, and even open rebellion among any militia. But in an era when faith was a fact of life, prayer was ubiquitous, ritual respected, and the presence of clergymen taken seriously, the result was a fresh discipline and respect - even a chivalric courtliness - among many of the troops. Joan herself was so obviously and sincerely devout that the major captains of her met-at-arms and crossbowmen were more than impressed: they followed her example as best they could. ~ Donald Spoto

A clergyman has nothing to do but be slovenly and selfish - read the newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work, and the business of his own life is to dine."

"There are such clergymen, no doubt, but I think they are not so common as to justify Miss Crawford in esteeming it their general character. I suspect that in this comprehensive and (may I say) commonplace censure, you are not judging from yourself, but from prejudiced persons, whose opinions you have been in the habit of hearing. It is impossible that your own observation can have given you much knowledge of the clergy. You can have been personally acquainted with very few of a set of men you condemn so conclusively. You are speaking what you have been told at your uncle's table."

"I speak what appears to me the general opinion; and where an opinion is general, it is usually correct. Though I have not seen much of the domestic lives of clergymen, it is seen by too many to leave any deficiency of information. ~ Jane Austen

A distinguished clergyman told me that he chose the profession of a clergyman because it afforded the most leisure for literary pursuits. I would recommend to him the profession of a governor. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Better that only a few Catholics should be left, staunch and sincere in their religion, than that they should, remaining many, desire as it were, to be in collusion with the Church's enemies and in conformity with the open foes of our faith. ~ Peter Canisius

For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these, and yet Be thought an idler by the noisy set Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen The martyrs call the world. ~ William Butler Yeats

The next time a prostitute solicits your business, ask for the clergyman's rate. ~ George Carlin

It must be depressing to have your sole purpose in the universe be pointing out other people's mistakes. Am I right, Internet trolls, gossip columnists, and clergymen? ~ Craig Ferguson

I will say you've shown up what thin stuff clergymen were peddling, most of them. When I had a congregation before the war, I used to tell them that the life of their spirit in relation to God was the biggest thing in their lives, and that their part in the economy was nothing by comparison. Now, you people have engineered them out of their part in the economy, in the market place, and they're finding out--most of them--that what's left is just about zero. A good bit short of enough, anyway. ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

As the French say, there are three sexes - men, women, and clergymen. ~ Sydney Smith

Thousands of Christians compromise their faith in Jesus Christ by denying Him. Even some clergymen neglect or deliberately refuse to close a public prayer in the name of Jesus for fear of offending an unbeliever. They cannot endure the persecution that may follow an acknowledgment of Jesus Christ. ~ Billy Graham

I'm as religious as the next man - which is to say I'll keep in with the local parson for form's sake and read the lessons on feast-days because my tenants expect it, but I've never been fool enough to confuse religion with belief in God. That's where so many clergymen ... go wrong ~ George MacDonald Fraser

My father's a clergyman, and he was in the mission field for a certain amount of time in British Honduras, which is now Belize. ~ John Hurt

Adoption gives us the privilege of sons, regeneration the nature of sons. ~ Stephen Charnock

Clergymen, judges, statesmen
the wisest, calmest, holiest persons of their day
stood in the inner circle round about the gallows, loudest to applaud the work of blood, latest to confess themselves miserably deceived. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Some clergymen make a motto, instead of a theme, of their texts. ~ Hosea Ballou

Clergymen almost necessarily fail in two ways as teachers of morals. They condemn acts which do no harm and they condone acts which do great harm. ~ Bertrand Russell

When it was first proposed to establish laboratories at Cambridge, Todhunter, the mathematician, objected that it was unnecessary for students to see experiments performed, since the results could be vouched for by their teachers, all of them of the highest character, and many of them clergymen of the Church of England. ~ Bertrand Russell

He
the country parson
is not witty or learned or eloquent, but holy. ~ George Herbert

Two clergymen disputing whether ordination would be valid without the imposition of both hands, the more formal one said, Do you think the Holy Dove could fly down with only one wing? ~ Horace Walpole

The pulpit is a clergyman's parade; the parish is his field of active service. ~ Robert Southey

All religions worthy of the name are now making great efforts to purify their doctrines and return to their original standpoint, - all except Christianity! You surely know that the nineteenth century Christianity is not the religion taught by Christ. Christ's religion has been changed and corrupted. But Christian clergymen are well aware that if they were to attempt to purify Christianity and bring it back to the religion of Christ, the result would be to reform it out of existence. Christianity stands to-day completely explained. Every step in its development is laid bare and shown to be due to purely natural causes, and it is easy to see how much Christianity adopted from other and older religions. ~ Virchand Gandhi

We came to see that the Great Awakening was actually a reawakening of a deep national desire for the Covenant Way of life. This yearning did not die with the passing of the Puritan era, but only went dormant. It was a desire which would produce a new generation of clergymen who would help to prepare America to fight for her life. ~ Peter Marshall

Send for a clergyman, I wish to be baptised. I have been basely murdered. ~ William Nelson

Now you know how I fooled you," he would say. "Try to figure out on your own how your congressmen and clergymen fool you. There is no restraint that isn't self-imposed: you are all absolutely free. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

Truth is the silliest thing under the sun. Try to get a living by the Truth and go to the Soup Societies. Heavens! Let any clergyman try to preach the Truth from its very stronghold, the pulpit, and they would ride him out of his church on his own pulpit bannister. ~ Herman Melville

It is indolence ... Indolence and love of ease; a want of all laudable ambition, of taste for good company, or of inclination to take the trouble of being agreeable, which make men clergymen. A clergyman has nothing to do but be slovenly and selfish; read the newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work and the business of his own life is to dine. ~ Jane Austen

The world does not consist of 100 percent Christians and 100 percent non-Christians. There are people (a great many of them) who are slowly ceasing to be Christians but who still call themselves by that name: some of them are clergymen. There are other people who are slowly becoming Christians though they do not yet call themselves so. ~ C.S. Lewis

When our founding fathers put their signatures on the Declaration of Independence, those 56 brave people, most of whom by the way were clergymen, they said that we had certain inalienable rights given to us by our creator, and among these life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, life being one of them. I still believe that. ~ Mike Huckabee

In regard to education, something has been done by the Provincial Legislature; but to build churches, and to place clergymen is a work of greater difficulty. ~ John Strachan

I have always considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain. ~ Samuel Johnson

One UniVerse for the Living

While palaces attest to the power of men,
And monuments mark their wars,
Little remains of the women who've been-
Except for the sons that they bore.
But the voices of women were baked into bread
And later buttered with epics
While the souls of their daughters
Stitched with fine thread
Became tapestries stored in attics.
And all through the ages
Men boasted like beasts
Erecting pillars of marble and stone,
But still they found themselves only to be
Sculpted of flesh and bone.
Philosophers pondered the nature of gods
Outlawing temptations that plagued them
And earning themselves, against all odds,
The power to punish the pagans.
By writing themselves into sacred books
The clergymen sealed our fate
To follow decrees that have their roots
In nothing but misguided hate.
So, children of Adam and invisible Eve,
challenge the wisdom of sages.
Don't be so sure sacred scrolls that you read
Aren't filled with human pages.
Walk in the wilderness.
Eat of the fruit.
Don't let them buy you with wages.
Plant your own garden.
Drink of the wine.
Learn how to be courageous.
Hearts that are hardened
To what is divine
Have honored the dead too long.
Search for the stories
Baked into bread
And eat until you are strong. ~ Nancy Boutilier

Privately, in the depths of my heart, I would have given my soul to have stood beside her in a large, yes, a large, fashionable church, crammed with people, with old reverend clergymen, with The Voice that breathed o'er Eden, with palms and the smell of scent, knowing there was a red carpet and confetti outside, and somewhere, a wedding-cake and champagne and a satin shoe to throw after the carriage - if I could have slipped our wedding-ring on to her finger.

Not because I cared for such horrible shows, but because I felt it might possibly perhaps lessen this ghastly feeling of absolute freedom, her absolute freedom, of course. ~ Katherine Mansfield

The religious issue was dragged out, and stirred up flames of hatred and intolerance. Clergymen, mobilizing their heaviest artillery of thunder and brimstone, threatened Christians with all manner of dire consequences if they should vote for the 'in fidel' from Virginia. This was particularly true in New England, where the clergy stood like Gibraltar against Jefferson. ~ Saul K. Padover

Every time God forgives us, God is saying that God's own rules do not matter as much as the relationship that God wants to create with us. ~ Richard Rohr

In the 'bullshit department' a businessman can't hold a candle to a clergyman. ~ George Carlin

The first clergyman was the first rascal who met the first fool. ~ Voltaire

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said "Let us pray." We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land. ~ Desmond Tutu

A civil ruler dabbling in religion is as reprehensible as a clergyman dabbling in politics. Both render themselves odious as well as ridiculous. ~ James Gibbons

Clergymen who publish pious frauds in the interest of the church are the orthodox liars of God. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Sometimes we listen to too many commentators about things that don't affect their lives because they're in a different tax bracket. Or to the so-called clergymen giving their interpretation of God's word, and yet they're not rolling the same way in their own lives. ~ Stevie Wonder

Doctors try to get rid of their patients - clergymen try to get them hooked on the medicine so that they will become addicts to the church. ~ Alan W. Watts

We are dealing, then, with an absurdity that is not a quirk or an accident, but is fundamental to our character as people. The split between what we think and what we do is profound. It is not just possible, it is altogether to be expected, that our society would produce conservationists who invest in strip-mining companies, just as it must inevitably produce asthmatic executives whose industries pollute the air and vice-presidents of pesticide corporations whose children are dying of cancer. And these people will tell you that this is the way the "real world" works. The will pride themselves on their sacrifices for "our standard of living." They will call themselves "practical men" and "hardheaded realists." And they will have their justifications in abundance from intellectuals, college professors, clergymen, politicians. The viciousness of a mentality that can look complacently upon disease as "part of the cost" would be obvious to any child. But this is the "realism" of millions of modern adults.

There is no use pretending that the contradiction between what we think or say and what we do is a limited phenomenon. There is no group of the extra-intelligent or extra-concerned or extra-virtuous that is exempt. I cannot think of any American whom I know or have heard of, who is not contributing in some way to destruction. The reason is simple: to live undestructively in an economy that is overwhelmingly destructive would require of any one of us, or of any small gr ~ Wendell Berry

Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin, and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on Earth. ~ John Wesley

Is there in all the history of human folly a greater fool than a clergymen in politics? ~ Pat Robertson

The first days of January 1942 brought enormous amounts of snow. The reader already knows what snow meant for the clergy. But this time the torture surpassed the bounds of the endurable. At the same time the thermometer hovered between 5 and 15 degrees below zero. From morning till night we scraped, shoveled, and pushed wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of snow to the brook. The work detail consisted of more than 1,000 clergymen, forced to keep moving by SS men and Capos who kicked us and beat us with truncheons.

We had to make rounds with the wheelbarrows from the assembly square to the brook and back. Not a moment of rest was allowed, and much of the time we were forced to run.

At one point I tripped over my barrow and fell, and it took me a while to get up again. An SS man dashed over and ordered me to turn with the full load. He ran beside me, beating me constantly with a leather strap. When I got to the brook I was not allowed to dump out the heavy snow, but had to make a second complete round with it instead.

When the guard finally went off and I tried to let go of the wheelbarrow, I found that one of my hands was frozen fast to it. I had to blow on it with warm breath to get it free. ~ Jean Bernard

It is a curious fact that the lure of a "good investment" seems to haunt clergymen more persistently than any other class of man. Perhaps it is the modern equivalent of the demons in female shape who used to haunt the anchorites of the Dark Ages. ~ George Orwell

One person I do feel a little sorry for, though, is the Archbishop of Canterbury, the most important clergyman in Britain and he's only got two lousy palaces to live in. What sort of life is that for a man of God? I bet if Jesus came back, even he'd be embarrassed for him; I bet he wouldn't be able to look him in the eye. ~ Pat Condell

When we sin and mess up our lives, we find that God doesn't go off and leave us- he enters into our trouble and saves us. ~ Eugene H. Peterson

Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. ~ Charles Dickens

The work of inspection was left to magistrates and clergymen. To the relief of employers, experience showed that magistrates and clergymen had no objection to law-breaking when its purpose was merely the torture of children. ~ Bertrand Russell

The Bible makes it clear that every time that there is a story of faith, it is completely original. God's creative genius is endless. ~ Eugene H. Peterson

Clergymen have much the same in their breeches as other men. ~ Elizabeth Aston

I liked the thought of being a country clergyman. Accordingly I read with care Pearson on the Creed and a few other books on divinity; and as I did not then in the least doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible, I soon persuaded myself that our Creed must be fully accepted. ~ Charles Darwin

The modern teachings of Christianity often preach of a peaceful, merciful, and loving God/Creator. Culturally, this concept of a God of peace is well liked and accepted amongst clergymen and the Christian community alike; however, some scriptural evidence gives us a contradictory and seemingly destructive version of our Creator. ~ David G. McAfee

A man's free will cannot cure him even of the toothache, or a sore finger; and yet he madly thinks it is in its power to cure his soul. ~ Augustus Toplady

There's nobody for me to attack in this matter even with soft and gentle ridicule-and I shouldn't ever think of using a grown up weapon in this kind of a nursery. Above all, I couldn't venture to attack the clergymen whom you mention, for I have their habits and live in the same glass house which they are occupying. I am always reading immoral books on the sly, and then selfishly trying to prevent other people from having the same wicked good time. ~ Mark Twain

[Speaking to a group of female students] Have you any notion how many books are written [by men] about women in the course of one year? (...) Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe? (...)
Professors, schoolmasters, sociologists, clergymen, novelists, essayists, journalists, men who had no qualification save that they were not women (...) were very angry (...) as they wrote (...) about the mental, moral, and physical inferiority of women. (...) Why were they angry? (...)
Possibly when the professor [imagined by V. Woolf as a prototype of patriarchal writer] insisted a little too emphatically upon the inferiority of women, he was concerned not with their inferiority, but with his own superiority. (...) Hence the enormous importance to a patriarch (...) of feeling that great number of people, half the human race indeed [=women], are by nature inferior to himself.
Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. (…) That serves to explain in part the necessity that women so often are to men. And it serves to explain how restless they are under her criticism. For if she begins to tell the truth, the figure in the looking-glass shrinks; his fitness for life is diminished (…)

A Room of One´s Own, chapter 2 ~ Virginia Woolf