Early Church Quotes

The early church was strikingly different from the culture around it in this way - the pagan society was stingy with its money and promiscuous with its body. A pagan gave nobody their money and practically gave everybody their body. And the Christians came along and gave practically nobody their body and they gave practically everybody their money. ~ Timothy Keller

One of the things that happened when the church moved from meetings in homes to having purpose-built buildings beginning before, but accelerated during, the Constantinian era, is that while the church itself was becoming less Jewish in character, it began to apply a more and more Old Testament hermeneutic to its discussions about church, ministry, and sacraments. The church began to be seen as a temple or basilica, the Lord's Supper began to be seen as a sacrifice, and naturally enough the ones offering the sacrifices, just as in Leviticus, were seen to be priests. There was the further move in this direction when Sunday began to be seen as the Sabbath, another example of this same sort of hermeneutic. There were considerable problems with this whole hermeneutic from the start, since nowhere in the New Testament is there set up a class of priests or clerics to administer any sacraments. Indeed, nowhere was there a clear separation between life in the home and life in church. What has often been missed in the discussions of the effects of all this is that it ruled women out of ministry in the larger church and indeed ruled them out of celebrating the Lord's Supper as well, since in the Old Testament only males were priests and only priests could offer sacrifices. ~ Ben Witherington III

I think they'd barely recognize us as brothers and sisters. If we told them, church is on Sundays, and we have an awesome band...if the found out 1/6th of the earth's population claimed to be Christians, I'm not sure they could reconcile the suffering happening on our watch while we're living in excess...

But listen, early church, we have a monthly event called 'Mocha chicks', we have choir practice every Wednesday, we organize retreats with door prizes, we're raising $3 million for an outdoor amphitheater, we have catchy t-shirts, we don't smoke or say the f-word, we go to bible study every semester...

the local church would be the heartbeat of the city. ~ Jen Hatmaker

Sometimes silences are pregnant and sometimes not. It is hard to know what to make of the silence of much of the New Testament about the Lord's Supper. Perhaps it is simply an accident of time and circumstance. There was not a felt need to address the matter. What we should not likely conclude is that it was not seen as an important matter in the latter part of the first century A.D. What we can observe is that the Lord's Supper continued to be an in-home ceremony taken in the context of a fellowship meal. We also now know it was important in both Gentile and Jewish contexts in the church in the second half of the first century, and beyond. We see no evidence anywhere in this material that clerics of any kind are in charge of the meal and its distribution. Even in the Didache, prophets, who were mouthpieces for God, are only allowed to say the thanksgiving prayer as often as they like. The low ecclesiology, coupled with the ever-present eschatology, suggest that the Didache does indeed go back to the end of the first century A.D. But one precedent in the Didache does stand out: the Lord's Supper is for baptized Christians, and in particular for those who repent of their sins. We are on the way to the church of the Middle Ages in some respects, but we have not begun to localize or confine grace to the elements of the Lord's Supper itself and then have it controlled by clerics. ~ Ben Witherington III

As long as we see church life as a meeting we'll miss its reality and its depth. If the truth were told, the Scriptures tell us very little about how the early church met. It tells us volumes about how they shared life together. They didn't see the church as a meeting or an institution, but as a family living under Father. ~ Wayne Jacobsen

It is not possible to live biblical Christianity without being committed to a lifestyle of praying, fasting, giving, serving, and blessing our enemies. A form of Christianity devoid of any of these five elements is not New Testament Christianity. We are all called to fast regularly.

There is no Bible passage that excludes 21st century people in the Western world from the Sermon on the Mount lifestyle because we are too busy or too important, or for any other reason. When we come face to face with Jesus one day, He will not make an exception for us because we lived in the 21st century. What He called the early Church to do is what He calls all believers to do, and He provides the same grace to us to respond. ~ Mike Bickle

No wild beasts are so deadly to humans as most Christians are to each other. ~ Ammianus Marcellinus

Africa will have replaced Europe and the United States as the center of Christianity. By 2050, Uganda alone is expected to have more Christians than the largest four or five European nations combined. And like the early church, the growth in the church in the Majority World is taking place primarily with the poor on center stage. ~ Steve Corbett

Because I know that the early Greeks and Romans and the early Europeans at that age did not see racism as we see it now - because racism was created to justify slavery to build the capital for capitalism - and back in the day they respected talent over race. We had an African Pope in the late 5th century, we had an African Emperor of Rome, and early church Fathers were black. ~ Immortal Technique

The early church was married to poverty, prisons and persecutions. Today, the church is married to prosperity, personality, and popularity. ~ Leonard Ravenhill

God has equipped us with his Holy Spirit simply to tell our own story---the good, the bad, and the real. The best part is no one can argue with us. It's our story. And when others realize you don't need a degree in evangelism, they become empowered to tell their own God-story. It's not that complicated. Maybe the early church thrived because they didn't pay people to be the professional 'church people'---they all were 'it. ~ Thom Schultz

We need to pledge ourselves anew to the cause of Christ. We must capture the spirit of the early church. Wherever the early Christians went, they made a triumphant witness for Christ. Whether on the village streets or in the city jails, they daringly proclaimed the good news of the gospel. ~ Martin Luther

The most 'authoritative' accounts of a historical Jesus come from the four canonical Gospels of the Bible. Note that these Gospels did not come into the Bible as original and authoritative from the authors themselves, but rather from the influence of early church fathers, especially the most influential of them all: Irenaeus of Lyon who lived in the middle of the second century. Many heretical gospels existed by that time, but Irenaeus considered only some of them for mystical reasons. He claimed only four in number; according to Romer, 'like the four zones of the world, the four winds, the four divisions of man's estate, and the four forms of the first living creatures
the lion of Mark, the calf of Luke, the man of Matthew, the eagle of John. ~ Frank Butcher

The Latin Church, which I constantly find myself admiring, despite its occasional astounding imbecilities, has always kept clearly before it the fact that religion is not a syllogism, but a poem. It is accused by Protestant dervishes of withholding the Bible from the people. To some extent this is true; to some extent the church is wise; again to the same extent it is prosperous.
...
Rome indeed has not only preserved the original poetry of Christianity; it has also made capital additions to that poetry -- for example, the poetry of the saints, of Mary, and of the liturgy itself. A solemn high mass is a thousand times as impressive, to a man with any genuine religious sense in him, as the most powerful sermon ever roared under the big top by Presbyterian auctioneer of God. In the face of such overwhelming beauty it is not necessary to belabor the faithful with logic; they are better convinced by letting them alone.

Preaching is not an essential part of the Latin ceremonial. It was very little employed in the early church, and I am convinced that good effects would flow from abandoning it today, or, at all events, reducing it to a few sentences, more or less formal. In the United States the Latin brethren have been seduced by the example of the Protestants, who commonly transform an act of worship into a puerile intellectual exercise; instead of approaching God in fear and wonder these Protestants settle back in their pews, cross their legs, and listen t ~ H.L. Mencken

Today, on our own turf, we face pagan ignorance about God every bit as deep as that which the early church faced in the Roman Empire. ~ J.I. Packer

In early church polemics, Jews are deemed no longer worthy of their own Scriptures because they have failed to accept Christ as the Messiah. ~ Jack Schwartz

The Revelation speaks powerfully today, and its message to us is the same as it was to the early Church: that "there is not a square inch of ground in heaven or on earth or under the earth in which there is peace between Christ and Satan.". ~ Gary North

Some have immersed themselves in internet materials that magnify, exaggerate, and in some cases invent shortcomings of early Church leaders. Then they draw incorrect conclusions that can affect testimony. Any who have made these choices can repent and be spiritually renewed. ~ Quentin L. Cook

We don't actually have rich and poor together instead we have a family. What does it mean? If you have resources, you hold them with open hands. The mark of the early church was that they began sharing and it said there were no needy persons among them. They ended poverty as they created this new loving community. ~ Shane Claiborne

Disagreements over the interpretation of Genesis 1 are not new. Early church fathers such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Augustine wrestled with this issue hundreds of years ago. However, the debate within Christian circles over the age of creation has intensified during the last 150 years, largely in response to the Darwinian theory of evolution. ~ Gregory A. Boyd

A tremor of apprehension encircled the room. None of the ladies required any preparation to pronounce on a question of morals; but when they were called ethics it was different. The club, when fresh from the "Encyclopedia Brittanica," the "Reader's Handbook" or Smith's "Classical Dictionary," could deal confidently with any subject; but when taken unawares it had been known to define agnosticism as a heresy of the Early Church and Professor Froude as a distinguished histologist; and such minor members as Mrs. Leveret still secretly regarded ethics as something vaguely pagan. ~ Edith Wharton

Never was the victory of patience more complete than in the early church. The anvil broke the hammer by bearing all the blows that the hammer could place upon it. The patience of the saints was stronger than the cruelty of tyrants. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Much of today's church relies more on a book the early church didn't have, than the Holy Spirit they did. ~ Bill Johnson

The early Church was birthed and sustained in almost constant persecution and pressures ~ Greg Gordon

Online discussion boards and Facebook groups, where covert communities of queers, feminists, and Christians of color gather and find solace - to Matt these replicate the early church in the New Testament, where gatherings were organic and happened in homes or in secret, for fear of persecution. ~ Lyz Lenz

That is the power of the Eucharist. At the communion table you have rich and poor together in the early church and they were being challenged. ~ Shane Claiborne

Doubting Thomas was the one who gave the strongest and most conclusive testimony to the absolute Deity of the Savior which ever came from the lips of a man! Just as the railing thief became the one to own Christ's Lordship from the cross, just as timid Joseph and Nicodemus were the ones who honored the dead body of the Savior, just as the women were the boldest at the sepulcher, just as unfaithful Peter was the one whom Christ bade "Feed my sheep," just as the prime persecutor of the early church became the apostle to the Gentiles, so the sceptical and materialistic Thomas was the one to say "My Lord and my God." Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound! ~ Arthur W. Pink

The early Church had nothing but the Old Testament. The New Testament lies hidden in the Old; the Old Testament lies open in the New. ~ Randall Terry

The future of the church is also about looking back and looking at where we see these wonderful renewals and what we can learn from the early church. I think it is a really exciting time where Phyllis Tickle said every few hundred years the church needs a rummage sale where we can get rid of some of the clutter. ~ Shane Claiborne

It looked like a loaf of bread crossed at an angle with a fish. "Loaves and fishes? Like the miracle Jesus performed?" Ryan tried to understand. "Symbols of Ceres, the goddess of agriculture," Emily responded, "and Neptune, god of the sea - to signify that the most august emperor was the source of all sustenance, of life itself." "Couldn't the church fathers have come up with one thing that was truly original?" Emily laughed. "One thing I've learned: there's nothing original under the sun god. Really, someone should set the record straight about the early church fathers' plagiarism. ~ Kenneth Atchity

What God declares the believing heart confesses without the need of further proof. Indeed, to seek proof is to admit doubt, and to obtain proof is to render faith superfluous. Everyone who possesses the gift of faith will recognize the wisdom of those daring words of one of the early Church fathers: I believe that Christ died for me because it is incredible; I believe that He rose from the dead because it is impossible. ~ A.W. Tozer

Today there survives more than 25,0000 partial and complete, ancient handwritten manuscript copies of the New Testament. These hand written manuscripts have allowed scholars and textual critics to go back and verify that the Bible we have in our possession today is the same Bible that the early church possessed 2,000 years ago. ~ Charlie Campbell

In his work The Book of Church Growth, Thom Rainer explained, "Prayer is the power behind the principles. There simply is no more important principle in church growth than prayer. The prayers of the early church unleashed the power of God to add thousands to the church. It happened then. It is happening in some churches today. And it can happen in your church."13 ~ Ed Stetzer

IN THE HISTORY of the formation of the New Testament canon, locating canon lists produced by the early church is quite important. The reason for this is that these lists are seen to testify to a conscious desire on the part of the leaders of the early church to form and close a New Testament canon. The earlier the date of a list, therefore, the better evidence one has of an earlier canon consciousness. It is well known, however, that these kinds of lists belong almost exclusively to the fourth century. ~ Craig D. Allert

When the early Church recited the Apostles Creed, it was simultaneously their greatest act of rebellion, and their greatest act of submission. ~ Matt Chandler

No one can have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother. ~ Cyprian

A helpful image to express this sort of thing is a wheel with spokes centered on a single hub. The hub of the wheel is God; we the spokes. Out on the rim of the wheel the spokes are furthest from one another, but at the center, the hub, the spokes are most united to each other. They are a single meeting in the one hub. The image was used in the early church to say something important about that level of life at which we are one with each other and one with God. The more we journey towards the Center the closer we are both to God and to each other. The problem of feeling isolated from both God and others is overcome in the experience of the Center. This journey into God and the profound meeting of others in the inner ground of silence is a single movement. Exterior isolation is overcome in interior communion. ~ Martin Laird

If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

The early church braved the sword to gather with God's people, and Christians in our day will hardly brave the rain. That's a problem - one that's bigger than church attendance. This is a love-for-Jesus problem. How we treat his bride equals how we treat him. ~ J.A. Medders

Saints of the early church reaped great harvests in the field of prayer and found the mercy seat to be a mine of untold treasures. ~ Charles Spurgeon

Too often scholars have thought and even suggested that what happened during and after Constantine was that the church sought to replace the pagan temples, priests, and sacrifices with their own. This is at best a half truth. If this had been primarily what was going on, we would have expected to find priestesses showing up in the mainstream church in and after the time of Constantine, since there were certainly priestesses in the pagan temples. But this we do not find in the historical record. This is because the church of that period was not merely trying to supplant pagan religion with Christian religion, though some of that was going on. More to the point, there was a rising tide of anti-Judaism, and one of its manifestations was this Old Testament hermeneutic. The Torah had been claimed as the church's book, Jews were being ostracized and then later ghettoized, and a hermeneutic of ministry was being adopted which co-opted the Old Testament for church use when it came to priests, temples, and sacrifices, and indeed sacraments in general. Thus ironically enough while the structure of the ecclesial church was becoming more Old Testamental, the church hierarchy was not only becoming less tolerant of Jews, it was forgetting altogether the Jewish character of Jesus' ministry and his modifications of the Passover that led to the Lord's Supper celebration of the early church in the first place. ~ Ben Witherington III

So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent - and often even vocal - sanction of things as they are. But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

...do we realize that this cheap grace has turned back upon us like a boomerang? The price we are having to pay today in the shape of the collapse of the organized Church is only the inevitable consequence of our policy of making grace available to all at too low a cost. We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale, we baptized, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation unasked and without condition. Our humanitarian sentiment made us give that which was holy to the scornful and unbelieving. We poured forth unending streams of grace. But the call to follow Jesus in the narrow way was hardly ever heard. Where were those truths which impelled the early Church to institute the catechumenate, which enabled a strict watch to be kept over the frontier between the Church and the world, and afforded adequate protection for costly grace? What had happened to all those warnings of Luther's against preaching the gospel in such a manner as to make men rest secure in their ungodly living? Was there ever a more terrible or disastrous instance of the Christianizing of the world than this? What are those three thousand Saxons put to death by Charlemagne compared with the millions of spiritual corpses in our country today? With us it has been abundantly proved that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generations. Cheap grace has turned out to be utterly merciless to our Evangelical church. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

These were specific enablements given to certain believers for the purpose of authenticating or confirming God's Word when it was proclaimed in the early church before the Scriptures were written. The temporary sign gifts included prophecy (revelatory prophecy7), miracles, healings, tongues, and interpretation of tongues. The sign gifts had a unique purpose: to give the apostles credentials, that is, to let the people know that these men all spoke the truth of God. Once the Word of God was inscripturated, the sign gifts were no longer needed and they ceased ~ John F. MacArthur

The Bible does not authorize us, either by the words of the Lord or His apostles, to believe that the gifts of healing were granted only to the early church; ~ Andrew Murray

How can we have revival when we value a book the early Church didn't have over the Holy Spirit they did have? ~ Kris Vallotton

Certain things happened in the early church. Women who had never had any freedom suddenly have the ability to stand up and speak and be treated as equals within the life of the church. ~ Tony Campolo

Women are the first witnesses to the resurrection and pillars of the early church. ~ John Ortberg

It was a real surprise to me to come across the evidence that Christianity might once have been a danced religion. Certainly, some of the early church leaders thought this was great and spoke of what seems to have been circle dancing, perhaps around an altar. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

The church lacks purpose, because we have lost the true power of the Holy Spirit. In the book of acts we saw miracles, and a true purpose driven church, we have traded in our power for money, and material wealth.In most churches preaching has been watered down to motivational speaking. The power of the gospel, is now a distant thought, how do we get a renewal of the power of God, by become the church. Most Christians leave Jesus at church, the power comes when Jesus lives not in the church but in the inside of us. In most churches preaching is being heard, that says God no longer does miracles. But I believe that the greatest miracle of the early Church was there power to live, and die for God. ~ Jordan Wells

The Fathers intent desire is that none would 'perish'. The promise God has given us is one of 'liberation'- Freedom. Being set free "from" captivity and reconciled "to" your Father. Intimacy with Jesus garners son-ship with Abba. As Jesus "demonstrated" that Son-ship of Grace he said, 'I only "say" and "do" what I hear the Father saying and doing'. Proclaiming the Kingdom of God by "Do'in the Stuff". The early church 'got' Jesus. John Wimber 're-got' Jesus and began proclaiming the Kingdom and demonstrating it as any loving son would of his Father. Now, we are no longer refuges but 'Bona Fide' citizens in good standing with our King and our new country. Where Love, Mercy, Grace; Peace 'rains' on us eternally here and now. 'The Already But Not Yet' (Ruis)."

~R. Alan Woods [2013] ~ R. Alan Woods

Ministry. Sadly, there has never been a city on earth that is not saturated with human sin and corruption. Indeed, to paraphrase a Woody Allen joke, cities are just like everywhere else, only much more so. They are both better and worse, both easier and harder to live in, both more inspiring and oppressive, than other places. As redemptive history unfolds, we begin to see how the tension of the city will be resolved. The turn in the relationship between the people of God and the pagan city becomes a key aspect of God's plan to bless the nations and redeem the world. In the New Testament, we find cities playing an important role in the rapid growth of the early church and in spreading the gospel message of God's salvation. ~ Timothy Keller

Three centuries of early Christian and Jewish documentation, not to mention the nearly unanimous opinion of contemporary scholars, recognize James the brother of Jesus as the head of the first Christian community ... Why then has James been almost wholly excised from the New Testament and his role in the early church displaced by Peter and Paul in the imaginations of most modern Christians? ~ Reza Aslan

As the early church fathers delighted in saying, Christ took what was ours so that we might receive what was His. ~ Sinclair B. Ferguson

Jesus is challenging that when addressing "who is your neighbor" and he has a lot of hard things to say about family, "unless you hate your own family you are not going to be a disciple." He is challenging the limits of our compassion and our love as if someone's kid suffers it should be as devastating to us as if it were our own kid. That is what the early church said. ~ Shane Claiborne

The word "canon" is derived from a Hebrew word signifying "reed" (qaneh) and by extension "measuring stick." It enters into the Greek language as "canon" (kanon) with a wider semantic range signifying exemplary standards in relation to literary works, grammatical rules, and even certain human beings. The word was coined in the early church to indicate an absolutely authoritative, complete list of God-inspired books, which was the standard of truth (Athanasius, 39th Festal Letter). Although such a list was considered closed, it is clear that the creation of the canon did not happen in an instant. It had a long and complex history before such closure occurred. The historian Josephus (AD 95) describes a closed list of inspired books that had been authoritative for all Jews for centuries (Against Apion 8). ~ J. Daniel Hays

Sermon On the Mount: "You have heard it said of old..."

"Jesus was referring to the 'letter of the Mosaic law' of the OT then went on to illustrate that He embodied the fulfillment of that 'law' and that now we may walk in the 'Law of the Spirit' thereby realizing the 'liberty' He came to 'engift' us with. We therefore are no longer subject to judgement but rather Grace as we 'abide' in Him. Additionally, the 'early church' fathers of which Paul was the first are what God intended the Ecclesia to be developed and built upon".

~R. Alan Woods [2012] ~ R. Alan Woods

Whether a person is straight or gay, Republican, Democrat, good person, not a good person, they're all welcome, because to me, church is a place you're supposed to get healed and whole and loved. ~ Joel Osteen

Christianity is the enemy of liberty and civilization. ~ August Bebel

Some church-raised young adults experience similar self-doubt when it comes to making spiritual judgments. Instead of equipping them to make thoughtful, prayerful decisions and then to trust God for the outcome, the church has instilled a debilitating fear of sin or "stepping out of God's will." How can we expect the next generation to move forward with confidence into God's future when they are scared of making a misstep?1 ~ Lysa TerKeurst

The great thing about church is that it has people in it - and people can be tricky ~ Tyana Parr

The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. ~ Francis Pharcellus Church

The Church of Reason, like all institutions of the System, is based not on individual strength but upon individual weakness. What's really demanded in the Church of Reason is not ability, but inability. Then you are considered teachable. A truly able person is always a threat. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

What has officially been declared as the basis of theological studies in the Roman Catholic Church has been enormously influenced by Islam and Muslim beliefs.

Funny old world, isn't it? ~ Karl Wiggins

Preaching that makes a church Christ-like under grace takes a double miracle: the sinful preacher must be shaped by grace to preach; and sinful listeners must be awakened by grace to listen together week by week in humble expectancy. Only God can do this. So praying before the sermon is not a formality. Unless God works, the whole thing will be a waste of time. ~ Christopher Ash

Authentic Christianity has a horror of the pessimism of inertia. It is pessimist, profoundly pessimist in the sense that it knows that the creature comes from nothingness, and that all that issues from nothing essentially tends of itself to return to nothing: but it's optimism is incomparably deeper than it's pessimism; for it knows that the creature comes from God, and all that comes from God tends to return to Him. ~ Jacques Maritain

You cannot teach an old dog new tricks ~ William Camden

Reading makes all other learning possible. We have to get books into our children's hands early and often. ~ Barack Obama

Although not of the quality of my later work, I feel there is some quality to it [my early work] in an art sense, and probably some additional quality in a biographical sense. ~ E. J. Hughes

Eliot's own reflections on the primitive mind as a model for nondualistic thinking and on the nature and consequences of different modes of consciousness were informed by an excellent education in the social sciences and philosophy. As a prelude to our guided tour of the text of The Waste Land, we now turn to a brief survey of some of his intellectual preoccupations in the decade before he wrote it, preoccupations which in our view are enormously helpful in understanding the form of the poem. Eliot entered Harvard as a freshman in 1906 and finished his doctoral dissertation in 1916, with one of the academic years spent at the Sorbonne and one at Oxford. At Harvard and Oxford, he had as teachers some of modern philosophy's most distinguished individuals, including George Santayana, Josiah Royce, Bertrand Russell, and Harold Joachim; and while at the Sorbonne, he attended the lectures of Henri Bergson, a philosophic star in Paris in 1910-11. Under the supervision of Royce, Eliot wrote his dissertation on the epistemology of F. H. Bradley, a major voice in the late-nineteenth-, early-twentieth-century crisis in philosophy. Eliot extended this period of concentration on philosophical problems by devoting much of his time between 1915 and the early twenties to book reviewing. His education and early book reviewing occurred during the period of epistemological disorientation described in our first chapter, the period of "betweenness" described by Heidegger and Ortega y Gasset, the ~ Jewel Spears Brooker

It seems disrespectful to me to see ladies in church in very short skirts or skimpy, sleeveless tops. I would imagine that it could be distracting to men who are trying to keep their minds on God. ~ Elisabeth Elliot

The Church became both more accessible and less imposing. It threw itself open to risk. ~ Lance Morrow

So our building of the visible Church becomes much like any natural business function, using natural means and natural motives. ~ Francis Schaeffer

Sully and Church stuff their gangly selves in the backseat of my car so Wallace can sit in the passenger seat.
„No hanky panky up there," Sully says.
„Yeah," Church adds. „If I see a hand cross those seats, it will get smacked."
„Smacked?" Sully says. „If I see a hand cross those seats, I'll chop it off and burn it. ~ Francesca Zappia

Your death and my death are mainly of importance to ourselves. The black plumes will be stripped off our hearses within the hour; tears will dry, hurt hearts close again, our graves grow level with the church-yard, and although we are away, the world wags on. It does not miss us; and those who are near us, when the first strangeness of vacancy wears off, will not miss us much either. ~ Alexander Smith

Our forefathers looked upon nature with more reverence and horror, before the world was enlightened by learning and philosophy, and loved to astonish themselves with the apprehensions of witchcraft, prodigies, charms, and inchantments. There was not a village in England that had not a ghost in it, the church-yards were all haunted, every large common had a circle of fairies belonging to it, and there was scarce a shepherd to be met with who had not seen a spirit. ~ Joseph Addison

When we hold our church-meetings we record our minutes and resolutions, but the Holy Spirit only puts down the acts. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Nothing in the world was more important than my daughter's happiness, even though I'd never understood why she always had to choose the most difficult and painful of paths. But a mother doesn't have to understand anything, she simply has to love and protect. And feel proud. Knowing that we could give her almost everything, she nevertheless set off early in search of her independence. She'd had her stumbles and her failures, but she insisted on facing any storms alone. ~ Paulo Coelho

But I've grown thoughtful now. And you have lost Your early-morning freshness of surprise At being so utterly mine: you've learned to fear The gloomy, stricken places in my soul, And the occasional ghosts that haunt my gaze. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

Bunny was a good soul and a strong believer but she would have been that way whether she went to church or not, wouldn't she. church doesn't make you a better person. ~ Ellen Wittlinger

Dave Stark has taken the best of recent marketplace management concepts and married them to timeless biblical principles of leadership, translating business jargon into ministry language. The combination is an encouraging and practical guide to Christ-centered ministry leadership. This book will be helpful to anyone involved in leading a church or serious about modeling servant leadership. ~ Jonathan Reckford

So the worthless rose up against the honoured, those of no reputation against such as were renowned, the foolish against the wise, the young against those advanced in years. ~ The Church Fathers

I look back on some of my early reviews of others, and realize to my chagrin that I've been as guilty as anybody else on that front. ~ Thomas L. Dumm

I'm spiritual. I'm religious. I'm a strong Christian and I'm a Catholic but I go to a Presbyterian Church. Occasionally I go to the Catholic church too. I take communion. I haven't transferred my membership or anything. ~ Wesley Clark

Have you ever felt, in the course of reading a detective novel, a guilty thrill of relief at having a character murdered before he can step onto the page and burden you with his actual existence? Detective stories always have too many characters anyway. And characters mentioned early on but never sighted, just lingering offstage, take on an awful portentous quality. Better to have them gone. ~ Jonathan Lethem

People aren't going to go bankrupt anymore if they have a serious illness, which was a serious issue here in the country before the Affordable Care Act. And, in fact, the expense of expanding health care for those who need the subsidy is picked up by the federal government for most of the early years. ~ Deval Patrick

The true church is not an organization controlled by the rules of men but a holy collection of living stones with Jesus Christ as the Cornerstone. ~ Brother Yun

The afternoon and the early evening slide by in a lidded daze where the ability to think in any identifiable way disappears and where every moment seems to be an eternity. ~ James Frey

Transcendentalism is, we might say, an early form of anarchism. The Transcendentalists also did not call themselves anarchists, but there are anarchist ideas in their thinking and in their literature. They were all suspicious of authority. We might say that the Transcendentalism played a role in creating an atmosphere of skepticism towards authority, towards government. ~ Howard Zinn

The representation of the tabernacle arose out of the temple of Solomon as its root, in dependence on the sacred ark, for which there is early testimony, and which in the time of David, and also before it, was sheltered by a tent. ~ Julius Wellhausen

The church converteth the whole world by blood and prayer. ~ Martin Luther

Children also have artistic ability, and there is wisdom in there having it! The more helpless they are, the more instructive are the examples they furnish us; and they must be preserved free of corruption from an early age. ~ Paul Klee

Nevertheless it is probable that the hearing rather early in life such views maintained and praised may have favoured my upholding them under a different form in my 'Origin of Species. ~ Charles Darwin

The idea that the profits of capital are really the rewards of a just society for the foresight and thrift of those who sacrificed the immediate pleasures of spending in order that society might have productive capital, had a certain validity in the early days of capitalism, when productive enterprise was frequently initiated through capital saved out of modest incomes. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr

May a merciful God preserve me from a Christian Church in which everyone is a saint! I want to be and remain in the church and little flock of the fainthearted, the feeble and the ailing, who feel and recognize the wretchedness of their sins, who sigh and cry to God incessantly for comfort and help, who believe in the forgiveness of sins. ~ Martin Luther

An oyster has hardly any more reasoning power than a scientist has; and so it it is reasonably certain that this one jumped to the conclusion that the nineteen million years was a preparation for him; but that would be just like an oyster, which is the most conceited animal there is, except man. And anyway, this one could not know, at that early date, that he was only an incident in a scheme, and that there was some more in the scheme yet. ~ Mark Twain

Do not weep for those who have found Death's embrace early, for they weep for us that linger on in this mortal world of pain. ~ Stewart Stafford

When I grew up in the early '90s, the new World Wide Web felt like a gimmick, and I had no idea of the changes in store. In the summers, I'd backpack through Europe, follow the Grateful Dead. I had a car and a tent and traveled around the Great Lakes and out West. Jack Kerouac was my guiding light, his 'On the Road' a sacred text. ~ Tony D'Souza

When you play the bars, you pay your dues. It does matter that you know those things [songs]. And the great thing for me, too, is that I draw on that stuff as influences. It's also stuff that you put in the tank that you pull from to make records. ~ Eric Church

Our patriotism comes straight from the Romans. This is why French children are encouraged to seek inspiration for it in Corneille. It is a pagan virtue, if these two words are compatible. The word pagan, when applied to Rome, early possesses the significance charged with horror which the early Christian controversialists gave it. The Romans really were an atheistic and idolatrous people; not idolatrous with regard to images made of stone or bronze, but idolatrous with regard to themselves. It is this idolatry of self which they have bequeathed to us in the form of patriotism. ~ Simone Weil