Heathen Quotes

the modern return to heathenism has been a return not even to the heathen youth but rather to the heathen old age. But ~ G.K. Chesterton

God has often given His people favor in the sight of heathen masters (as Joseph and Daniel), and has magnified the sufficiency of His grace by preserving their souls in the midst of the most unpromising environments. His saints are found in very unlikely places. ~ Arthur W. Pink

One of the popular songs in Tyler's rebellion was the familiar couplet: "When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?" Shakespeare refers to it in "Hamlet," where the grave-diggers speak as follows: "First Clown. Come, my spade. There is no ancient gentleman but gardners, ditchers and grave-makers; they hold up Adam's profession. Second Clown. Was he a gentleman? First Clown. He was the first that ever bore arms. Second Clown. Why, he had none. First Clown. What, art a heathen? How dost thou understand the Scripture? The Scripture says, Adam digged; could he dig without arms?" (Act 5, ~ William Shakespeare

Lucinda," Elizabeth said for the third time in an hour, "I cannot tell you how sorry I am about this." Five days ago, Lucinda had arrived at the inn at the Scottish border where she joined Elizabeth for the journey to Ian Thornton's house. This morning, their hired coach broke an axle, and they were now ignominiously ensconced on the back of a hay wagon belonging to a farmer, their trunks and valises tipping precariously to and fro along the rutted path that evidently passed for a road in Scotland. The prospect of arriving in a hay wagon on Ian Thornton's doorstep was so horrible that Elizabeth preferred to concentrate on her guilt, rather than her forthcoming meeting with the monster who had ruined her life.
"As I said the last time you apologized, Elizabeth," Lucinda replied, "it is not your fault, and therefore not your responsibility to apologize, for the deplorable lack of roads and conveyances in this heathen country."
"Yes, but if it weren't for me you wouldn't be here."
Lucinda sighed impatiently, clutched the side of the hay wagon as it made a particularly sharp lurch, and righted herself. "And as I have already admitted, if I hadn't been deceived into mentioning Mr. Thornton's name to your uncle, neither of us would be here. You are merely experiencing some nervousness at the disagreeable prospect of confronting the man, and there is no reason in the world-"The wagon tipped horribly and they both clutched at the sides of it for leverage. "-no reason ~ Judith McNaught

He stole glances at the heathen faces of Bodien and Gaylord, the suffering, yet oddly consoled, eyes and mouth of Basellecci, noting the brave enthusiasm of men who had never dreamed of anything very definite, and it occurred to him through the reek of his person that there was only one hope for him, and for all people who had lost, through intelligence, the hope of immortality. "We must love and delight in each other and in ourselves!" he cried. ~ Edward Lewis Wallant

My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that "for yesterday, today, and tomorrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward for yesterday forward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passing day." This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Who claims that the heathen's view of the world is incorrect? Life gives you nothing! It is ruled by false gods! Nothing remains true to you but your own self; provided you remain true to it. ~ Franz Grillparzer

I wasn't drunk," Alynwick grumbled. "I tchin' for a fight, aye, but no' drunk."
"Careful," Black said with some amusement, "your cultured English accent is giving way to your heathen Highland one. ~ Charlotte Featherstone

Luck, if it mean nothing more than an event of which the cause is not apparent, is a term that may be employed without error; but if it means, as it generally does, an event which has no cause at all, a mere chance, it is a bad word, a heathen term; drop it from your vocabulary; trust nothing to luck, nor expect anything from it; avoid all practical use or dependence upon this or its kindred words, fate, chance, fortune. ~ John Angell James

If I die very young, hear this:
I was never anything but a kid playing.
I was a heathen like the sun and the water,
I had the universal religion only people don't have.
I was happy because I didn't ask for anything at all,
Or tried to find anything,
And I didn't find any more explanation
Than the word explanation having no meaning at all. ~ Alberto Caeiro

I myself beheld the King
Charge at the head of all his Table Round,
And all his legions crying Christ and him,
And break them; and I saw him, after, stand
High on a heap of slain, from spur to plume
Red as the rising sun with heathen blood,
And seeing me, with a great voice he cried,
"They are broken, they are broken!" for the King,
However mild he seems at home, nor cares
For triumph in our mimic wars, the jousts -
For if his own knight cast him down, he laughs
Saying, his knights are better men than he -
Yet in this heathen war the fire of God
Fills him: I never saw his like: there lives
No greater leader. ~ Alfred Tennyson

War, murder, slavery, extermination, and debauchery, - this has again and again been the result of carrying civilization and the blessed gospel to the isles of the sea and the heathen without the law. Nor ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

Many of the slaves believe such stories, and think it is not worth while to exchange slavery for such a hard kind of freedom. It is difficult to persuade such that freedom could make them useful men, and enable them to protect their wives and children. If those heathen in our Christian land had as much teaching as some Hindoos, they would think otherwise. They would know that liberty is more valuable than life. They would begin to understand their own capabilities, and exert themselves to become men and women. ~ Harriet Jacobs

Nearly all the synth work on Heathen is mine and some of the piano. ~ David Bowie

Our speech accurately reflects the prejudices of the ruling group. Since the rulers and the rich and the educated (who directed language) generally lived in cities, we developed such words as "villain," which meant a rustic; "heathen" and "pagan," which also indicated those who dwelt in the country; "boor," which meant a farmer; and many other such words which downgraded rural inhabitants. ~ Sydney J. Harris

The heathen could only be eliminated as a force if their culture was completely erased. ~ Tariq Ali

I happen to be a devout atheist. I don't believe in God. I still go to church
I'm not a heathen. I go to an atheist church. We have crippled guys who stand up and testify that they were crippled, and they still are. ~ Paula Poundstone

The true Mason is not creed-bound. He realizes with the divine illumination of his lodge that as Mason his religion must be universal: Christ, Buddha or Mohammed, the name means little, for he recognizes only the light and not the bearer. He worships at every shrine, bows before every altar, whether in temple, mosque or cathedral, realizing with his truer understanding the oneness of all spiritual truth. All true Masons know that they only are heathen who, having great ideals, do not live up to them. They know that all religions are but one story told in divers ways for peoples whose ideals differ but whose great purpose is in harmony with Masonic ideals. North, east, south and west stretch the diversities of human thought, and while the ideals of man apparently differ, when all is said and the crystallization of form with its false concepts is swept away, one basic truth remains: all existing things are Temple Builders, laboring for a single end. No true Mason can be narrow, for his Lodge is the divine expression of all broadness. There is no place for little minds in a great work. ~ Manly P. Hall

Our standing before God depends, not upon the amount of light we have received, but upon the use we make of what we have. Thus even the heathen who choose the right as far as they can distinguish it are in a more favorable condition than are those who have had great light, and profess to serve God, but who disregard the light, and by their daily life contradict their profession. The ~ Ellen G. White

Do you think the ability to sleep in counts as a special skill?" I asked Dad, trying to sound torn over the decision.
"Yes, list that. And don't forget to write that you can eat an entire meal in under five minutes," he replied. I laughed. It was true; I did tend to inhale my food.
"Oh, the both of you! Why don't you just write down that you're an absolute heathen!" My mother went storming from the room. ~ Kiera Cass

Men at the close of the dark Ages may have been rude and unlettered and unlearned in everything but wars with heathen tribes, more barbarous than themselves, but they were clean. They were like children; the first beginnings of their rude arts have all the clean pleasure of children. We have to conceive them in Europe as a whole living under little local governments, feudal in so far as they were a survival of fierce wars with the barbarians, often monastic and carrying a far more friendly and fatherly character, still faintly imperial as far as Rome still ruled as a great legend. But in Italy something had survived more typical of the finer spirit of antiquity; the republic, Italy, was dotted with little states, largely democratic in their ideals, and often filled with real citizens. But the city no longer lay open as under the Roman peace, but was pent in high walls for defence against feudal war and all the citizens had to be soldiers. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Nothing has contributed so much to the obscuring of Christian truth in the eyes of the heathen,
and has hindered so much the diffusion of Christianity through the world, as the disregard of [non-resistance] by men calling themselves Christians, and the permission of war and violence to Christians. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Abigail!" Mrs. Gardener says sharply. "We do not throw things in class. Move your clothespin to blue, please. You'll have to miss recess." Thank God the little heathen is missing recess. Maybe I'll try to get in a game of handball. As long as she isn't there to torture me, the other kids will probably let me play. ~ Andrea Ring

What the heathen had in their wood, we have in our opinions. ~ Martin Luther

They said this flat was converted but I think its still heathen ~ Dodie Smith

You are a sinner and a heathen," he said. Akua nodded. The teachers had told them this before. "Your mother had no husband when she came here to me, pregnant, begging for help. I helped her because that is what God would have wanted me to do. But she was a sinner and heathen, like you."
Again Akua nodded. The fear was starting to settle somewhere in her stomach, making her feel nauseated.
"All people on the black continent must give up their heathenism and turn to God. Be thankful that the British are here to show you how to live a good and moral life. ~ Yaa Gyasi

He then eyed Tristan and took a step back, stumbling over his cloak. "You must be the earl's twin brother. But your eyes ... how are they so green?"
"They were brown until your heathen of a cousin shot me through the heart," Tristan said crossly. ~ Chelsea Fine

I would like to quote a very prejudicial doctrine that was handed down by the Supreme Court in 1823. It said that the Indian Nations do not have title to their lands because they weren't Christians. That the first Christian Nations to discover an area of heathen lands has the absolute title. This doctrine should be withdrawn and renounced to establish a new basis for relationship between indigenous peoples and other peoples of the world. ~ Floyd Red Crow Westerman

The greater the interest involved in a truth the more careful, self-distrustful, and patient should be the inquiry.I would not attack the faith of a heathen without being sure I had a better one to put in its place, because, such as it is, it is better than nothing. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Then you've had a good day of it, I suppose."

"Then you suppose wrong," said Lymond shortly. "I've had a damned carking afternoon. A Moslem would blame my Ifrit, a Buddhist explain the papingo was really my own great-grandmother, and a Christian, no doubt, call it the vengeance of the Lord. As a plain, inoffensive heathen, I call it bloody annoying. ~ Dorothy Dunnett

PSA98.1 O sing unto the LORD a new song; for he hath done marvellous things: his right hand, and his holy arm, hath gotten him the victory. PSA98.2 The LORD hath made known his salvation: his righteousness hath he openly shewed in the sight of the heathen. ~ Anonymous

I was struck, as always, that a heathen poet from long ago should know so much of the human heart, and how little that heart changes, though great cities fall and new dispensations sweep away the old and pagan creeds. ~ Geraldine Brooks

Nobody had ever instructed him that a slave-ship, with a procession of expectant sharks in its wake, is a missionary institution, by which closely-packed heathen are brought over to enjoy the light of the Gospel. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

The quarrels and divisions about religion were evils unknown to the heathen. The reason was because the religion of the heathen consisted rather in rites and ceremonies than in any constant belief. ~ Francis Bacon

All wars are sacred,to those who have to fight them. If the people who started wars didn't make them sacred, who would be foolish enough to fight? But, no matter what rallying cries the orators give to the idiots who fight, no matter what noble purposes they assign to wars, there is never but one reason for a war. And that is money. All wars are in reality money squabbles. But so few people ever realize it. Their ears are too full of bugles and drums and the fine words from stay-at-home orators. Sometimes the rallying cry is 'save the Tomb of Christ from the Heathen!' Sometimes it's 'down with Popery!' and sometimes 'Liberty!' and sometimes 'Cotton, Slavery and States' Rights! ~ Margaret Mitchell

The religion of Jesus is founded in the Unity of God, and this principle chiefly gave it triumph over the rabble of heathen gods then acknowledged. Thinking men of all nations rallied readily to the doctrine of one only God, and embraced it with the pure-morals which Jesus inculcated. ~ Thomas Jefferson

A raging, glowering full moon had come up, was peering down over the side of the sky well above the patio.
That was the last thing she saw as she leaned for a moment, inert with fatigue, against the doorway of the room in which her child lay. Then she dragged herself in to topple headlong upon the bed and, already fast asleep, to circle her child with one protective arm, moving as if of its own instinct.
Not the meek, the pallid, gentle moon of home. This was the savage moon that had shone down on Montezuma and Cuauhtemoc, and came back looking for them now. The primitive moon that had once looked down on terraced heathen cities and human sacrifices. The moon of Anahuac. ("The Moon Of Montezuma") ~ Cornell Woolrich

It is to be kept in mind that the generations of men do not wait for the convenience of the church in respect to their evangelization. Men are born and die whether or not Christians are ready to give them the Gospel. And hence, if the church of any generation does not evangelize the heathen of that generation, those heathen will never be evangelized at all. It is always true in the work of evangelization that the present can never anticipate the future, and that the future can never replace the past. What is to be done in soul saving must be done by that generation. ~ J. Oswald Sanders

Heathen, n. A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something he can see and feel. ~ Ambrose Bierce

How 'bout some coffee?" Jake said as he hurried over to the coffee pot on the stove and filled a mug with the remainder of the steaming brew. When he got to the table with it, however, he stopped and looked helplessly from Lucinda to Elizabeth, obviously not certain who ought properly to be served first.
"Coffee," Lucinda informed him dampeningly when he took a step toward her, "is a heathen brew, unfit for civilized people. I prefer tea."
"I'll have coffee," Elizabeth said hastily. Jake flashed her a grateful smile, put the mug before her, then returned to the stove. Rather than look at Ian, Elizabeth stared, as if fascinated, at Jake Wiley's back while she sipped her coffee. ~ Judith McNaught

Sum all the gifts that man is endowed with, and we give our greatest share of admiration to his energy. And today, if I were a heathen, I would rear a statue to Energy and fall down and worship it! ~ Mark Twain

They love the heathen on the other side of the globe. They can pray for him, pay money to have the Bible put into his hand, and missionaries to instruct him; while they despise and totally neglect the heathen at their own doors. Such is, very briefly, my view of the religion of this land; ~ Frederick Douglass

That uncivilized heathen nations should first be civilized, and then Christianized, is a sentiment of the past. Now it is coming more and more to be acknowledged, that the Bible is the great civilizer of the nations. ~ Stephen Return Riggs

In the countryside where the communal pattern was least disturbed, the new religion found the ground less favorable. The villagers (pagani) and the heath-dwellers (heathen) clung longest to the ancient cults. ~ Eric Hoffer

With a menacing crunch, bark chunks splintered as the demon's claws gouged into the tree where my head had been seconds before.
I launched into a graceful ninja-like front roll, then stood my ground to face the monstrous heathen, fearless in my determination to vanquish the deadly foe.
Nah, just kidding. I bolted, discretion being the better part of not getting dead.
A & E Kirk (2012-01-07). Demons at Deadnight (Divinicus Nex Chronicles series Book 1) (p. 4). A&E Kirk. Kindle Edition. ~ A&E Kirk

All my desire was the conversion of the heathen ... I declare, now I am dying, I would not have spent my life otherwise for the whole world. ~ David Brainerd

Hamish's family were unusual in that they had always celebrated Christmas - tree, turkey, presents and all. In parts of the Highlands, like Lochdubh, the old spirit of John Knox still wandered, blasting anyone with hellfire should they dare to celebrate this heathen festival. Hamish had often pointed out that none other than Luther was credited with the idea of the Christmas tree, having been struck by the sight of stars shining through the branches of an evergreen. But to no avail. Lochdubh lay silent and dark beside the black waters of the loch. ~ M.C. Beaton

But GOD was above them, who laughed his Enemies and the Enemies of his People to Scorn, making them as a fiery Oven: Thus were the Stout Hearted spoiled, having slept their last Sleep, and none of their Men could find their Hands: Thus did the LORD judge among the Heathen, filling the Place with dead Bodies! ~ John Mason

All men who give up themselves in obedience unto God, they are received in Christ's obedience, viz. in the fulfilling of the obedience, the Jew and the Christian, and so likewise the heathen who has neither the law nor Gospel. ~ Jakob Bohme

The image the Republicans have of themselves needs the image they have of the Democrats to bring it into sharp focus. The Democrats are plainly a disreputable crowd; the Republicans, by contrast, are men of standing and sobriety. Many a middle-class American in many a small town has had to explain painfully why he chose to be a Democrat. No middle-class American need feel uneasy as a Republican. Even when he is a minority
for example, among the heathen on a college campus
he can, like any white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant, warm himself before his little fire of self-esteem. ~ Clinton Rossiter

Gundar isn't so much a ship's captain as a reformed pirate and a heathen." [Evanlyn] looked apologetically at Gundar. "No offense, Gundar."
The skirl shrugged cheerfully. "None taken, little lady. It's a pretty fair description. Not sure about the reformed part," he added thoughtfully. ~ John Flanagan

The idea of fate permeated the religion of the Vikings at every turn. Everything in the universe, even the Gods, was subject to it. ~ Daniel McCoy

Well. You never have to be on with me. I promise," I said, kicking out my legs and lying down on the blanket. "You can do your crosswords and drink your heathen coffee and chill. You're not my sovereign. ~ Heather Cocks

I was a witness of the execution at Horsemonger-lane this morning ... I believe that a sight so inconceivably awful as the wickedness and levity of the immense crowd collected at that execution this morning could be imagined by no man, and could be presented in no heathen land under the sun. The horrors of the gibbet and of the crime which brought the wretched murderers to it, faded in my mind before the atrocious bearing, looks and language, of the assembled spectators ... When the two miserable creatures who attracted all this ghastly sight about them were turned quivering into the air, there was no more emotion, no more pity, no more thought that two immortal souls had gone to judgment, no more restraint in any of the previous obscenities, than if the name of Christ had never been heard in this world, and there were no belief among men but that they perished like beasts. ~ Charles Dickens

Is it, perhaps, possible that there are two kinds of Civilization-one for home consumption and one for the heathen market? ~ Mark Twain

There have been some nations who could do nothing but construct tombs, and these are the only traces which they have left. They are the heathen. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Death comes in many shapes and sizes, but it always comes. No one escapes the little tag on the big toe. The four horsemen approach. The rider on the red horse says, "This good and faithful servant is ready. He knoweth war." The rider on the black horse says, "This good and faithful servant is ready. He knoweth plague." The rider on the pale horse says, "This good and faithful servant is ready. He knoweth death." The rider on the white horse says, "Fuck this good and faithful servant. He is a non-Christian homosexual, for God's sake. You brought me all the way out here for a fucking fag, a heathen. I didn't die for this dingbat's sins." The irascible rider on the white horse leads the other three lemmings away. The hospital bed hurts my back. ~ Rabih Alameddine

Following the Lord's authority, one of the distinctives of
Christian cultural understanding is that it also is minimally concerned with politics. The restoration of the nations is not, in any important sense, a political process. Rather, the process is one of baptism and catechism. The means given for the conversion of the heathen were the waters of baptism and the words of instruction. When the lessons have been learned, there will of course be some political consequences. But they will be minimal for the simple reason that the state itself, in a nation that has come to repentance, will also be minimal. For the Christian, the political realm is a creature to be redeemed, sinful like the rest of us and with a long way to go before it retires to more biblical proportions. ~ Douglas Wilson

In the draws the smoke coming off the ground like mist and the thin black trees burning on the slopes like heathen candles. ~ Cormac McCarthy

But the acknowledging of one God, eternal, infinite, and omnipotent, may more easily be derived, from the desire men have to know the causes of natural bodies, and their several virtues, and operations; than from the fear of what was to befall them in time to come. For he that from any effect he seeth come to pass, should reason to the next and immediate cause thereof, and from thence to the cause of that cause, and plunge himself profoundly in the pursuit of causes; shall at last come to this, that there must be, as even the heathen philosophers confessed, one first mover; that is, a first, and an eternal cause of all things; which is that which men mean by the name of God: and all this without thought of their fortune; the solicitude whereof, both inclines to fear, and hinders them from the search of the causes of other things; and thereby gives occasion of feigning of as many gods, as there be men that feign them. ~ Christopher Hitchens

I would not attack the faith of a heathen without being sure I had a better one to put in its place. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

We pity the poor heathen who worships a god of stone, and yet we worship a god of gold. Where ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

If anyone does not refrain from the love of money, he will be defiled by idolatry and so be judged as if he were one of the heathen. ~ Polycarp

The practice of all ages and all countries (whether Christian or heathen, polite or barbarous) hath been ... to do honour to those who are invested with public authority. ~ Francis Atterbury

After the Guam conference ended, it was reported that Pope Gregory ceased to pray for peace in the world. Two special Masses were sung in the basilica: the Exsurge quare obdormis, Mass against the Heathen, and the Reminiscere, Mass in Time of War; then, the report says His Holiness retired to the mountains to meditate and pray for justice. ~ Walter M. Miller Jr.

Nothing spoils human nature more than false zeal. The good nature of a heathen is more God-like than the furious zeal of a Christian. ~ Benjamin Whichcote

The equation of the Western left-hand path with Satanism is inaccurate insofar as the practice of the left-hand path predates the imposition of the Judeo-Christian ideology in Europe. There was - and still is - the practice of the left-hand path philosophy in a purely pagan or heathen (i.e. pre-Christian) context, which does not need to refer to Satan or Lucifer to be intelligible. ~ Stephen E. Flowers

Jarret condemns the burnings, but does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear. As for the beatings, the tarring and feathering, and the destruction of "heathen houses of devil-worship," he has a simple answer: "Join us! Our doors are open to every nationality, every race! Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again." He's had notable success with this carrot-and-stick approach. ~ Octavia E. Butler

A heathen philosopher once asked a Christian, 'Where is God'? The Christian answered, 'Let me first ask you, Where is He not?' ~ Aaron Arrowsmith

In the moment of surrender, I let go of all the theological or social questions which had kept me from Him for countless years. I simply let them go. There was the sense, profound and wordless, that if He knew everything I did not have to know everything, and that, in seeking to know everything, I'd been, all of my life, missing the entire point. No social paradox, no historic disaster, no hideous record of injustice or misery should keep me from Him. No question of Scriptural integrity, no torment over the fate of this or that atheist or gay friend, no worry for those condemned and ostracized by my church or any other church should stand between me and Him….I didn't have to know how He was going to save the unlettered and the unbaptized, or how He would redeem the conscientious heathen who had never spoken His name. I didn't have to know how my gay friends would find their way to Redemption or how my hardworking secular humanist friends could or would receive the power of His Saving Grace. I didn't have to know why good people suffered agony or died in pain. He knew. And it was his knowing that overwhelmed me… ~ Anne Rice

These men were conscious of the Fall, if they were conscious of nothing else; and the same is true of all heathen humanity. Those who have fallen may remember the fall, even when they forget the height. Some such tantalising blank or break in memory is at the back of all pagan sentiment. ~ G.K. Chesterton

It is possible to evangelize the world in this generation, if the Church will but do her duty. The trouble is not with the heathen. A dead Church will prevent it, if it is prevented. Why should it not be accomplished? God will have all men to be saved and come unto the knowledge of the truth. The resources of the Church are boundless. Let the will of the Church be brought into line with the will of God, and nothing will be found to be impossible. May God grant it! ~ Griffith John

The heretic is the one who speaks against the community from a place within its territory. He is the enemy within. The heathen, by contrast, is safely behind the walls, excluded by his own invincible arrogance. ~ Roger Scruton

However, there's no theme or concept behind Heathen, just a number of songs but somehow there is a thread that runs through it that is quite as strong as any of my thematic type albums. ~ David Bowie

Limbo is the place. In Limbo one has natural happiness without the beatific vision; no harps; no communal order; but wine and conversation and imperfect, various humanity. Limbo for the unbaptized, for the pious heathen, the sincere sceptic. ~ Evelyn Waugh

The dark picture which St. Paul, in addressing the Romans, draws of the heathenism of his day, is fully sustained by Seneca, Tacitus, Juvenal, Persius, and other heathen writers of that age, and shows the absolute need of redemption. "The world," says Seneca, in a famous passage, "is full of crimes and vices. More are committed than can be cured by force. There is an immense struggle for iniquity. Crimes are no longer bidden, but open before the eyes. Innocence is not only rare, but nowhere."83 ~ Philip Schaff

Ignore their heathen prayers and help us blow those little bastards [the Viet Cong] straight to Hell. Amen. ~ Hal Moore

Are you going to shoot me?' Vengeous sneered. 'I wouldn't be surprised. What would a thing like you know about honor? Only a heathen would bring a gun to a sword fight.'
And only a moron would bring a sword to a gunfight. ~ Derek Landy

I tried to picture her in a class, any class, anywhere on campus, and failed miserably. I pictured her frolicking in a forest glade around some guy she'd just sacrificed to a heathen god. That image worked way better. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

Oh, please." Loki stepped back, examining me with a look of disappointment. "It's only a matter of degree. So I killed a god. Big deal! He went to Niflheim and became an honored guest in my daughter's palace. And my punishment? You want to know my punishment?"

"You were tied on a stone slab," I said. "With poison from a snake dripping on your face. I know."

"Do you?" Loki pulled back his cuffs, showing me the raw scars on his wrists. "The gods were not content to punish me with eternal torture. They took out their wrath upon my two favorite sons–Vali and Narvi. They turned Vali into a wolf and watched with amusement while he disemboweled his brother Narvi. Then they shot and gutted the wolf. The gods took my innocent sons' own entrails…" Loki's voice cracked with grief. "Well, Magnus Chase, let's just say I was not bound with ropes."

Something in my chest curled up and died–possibly my hope that there was any kind of justice in the universe. "Gods."

Loki nodded. "Yes, Magnus. The gods. Think about that when you meet Thor."

"I'm meeting Thor?"

"I'm afraid so. The gods don't even pretend to deal in good and evil, Magnus. It's not the Aesir way. Might makes right. So tell me… do you really want to charge into battle on their behalf? ~ Rick Riordan

I like it that he's fucked up like me, that he's wicked and sinful and makes no excuses for it. I like it that he doesn't care that I might be a little wicked and sinful too.

I like it that he's taught me how to play poker and that I've made him watch Harry Potter ... and read the books. (He hadn't touched them before me, the heathen.) I like it that I get to travel the world with him every time he decides to take me on one of his bargains, that my room has become a collection of kinckknacks of us. ~ Laura Thalassa

The man peered through the doorway - a blond bearded man with steel blue eyes, who first considered her holding Niall's sword, and then Niall in her bed. She couldn't believe he would grin at them. The heathen. His friend was sick and could be dying and Gunnolf was grinning?
What kind of a friend did that?
"I should have known you would be in a lass' bed while I have been searching for you everywhere. Not to mention trying to locate our horses, and the lass we should be finding. Is the woman protecting you with your own sword, mon?" Gunnolf laughed.
"He was wounded and is now feverish. There is naught to jest about," Anora said harshly.
Gunnolf laughed again. "I hope you plan to wed the lass, Niall. She appears to be just the one for you. Every mon needs a woman who will fight to protect him. ~ Terry Spear

All heathen books are poisoned through and through with this striving after praise and honor. ~ Martin Luther

Why this strange indifferences to missions? Why these scant contributions? Why does money fail to be forthcoming when approved men and women are asking to be sent to proclaim the "unsearchable riches of Christ" to the heathen? ~ Lottie Moon

Most of what's known about religious practices in pre-Hispanic Mexico has come to us through a Catholic parish priest named Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón, one of the few who ever became fluent in the Nahuatl language. He spent the 1620s writing his "Treatise on the Superstitions and Heathen Customs that Today Live Among the Indians Native to This New Spain". He'd originally meant it to be something of a "field guide to the heathens" to help priests recognize and exterminate indigenous religious rites and their practitioners. In the process of his documentation, though, it's clear from his writings that Father Ruiz de Alarcón grew sympathetic. He was particularly fascinated with how Nahuatl people celebrated the sacred in ordinary objects, and encouraged living and spirit realities to meet up in the here and now. He noted that the concept of "death" as an ending did not exactly exist for them. When Aztec people left their bodies, they were presumed to be on an exciting trip through the ether. It wasn't something to cry about, except that the living still wanted to visit with them. People's sadness was not for the departed, but for themselves, and could be addressed through ritual visiting called Xantolo, an ordinary communion between the dead and the living. Mexican tradition still holds that Xantolo is always present in certain places and activities, including marigold fields, the cultivation of corn, the preparation of tamales and pan de muerto. Interestingly, farmers' markets ar ~ Barbara Kingsolver

I will imagine you Venus tonight and pray, pray, pray to your star like a Heathen. ~ John Keats

I shoot the man who told me my womanism is of the devil
As if he knew the demons that trouble me
These demons that trouble me
Have no trouble shooting you
They shoot you
They will not pray
For God's forgiveness
I always knew
I had a little bit of heathen in me.
Always knew
I had a lot of woman in me.
We shoot you ~ Hannah V. Sawyerr

Christianity, contrasted with the Jewish system of emblems, is truth in the sense of reality, as substance is opposed to shadows, and, contrasted with heathen mythology, is truth as opposed to falsehood. ~ Richard Whately

Ah! the best righteousness of our man-of-war world seems but an unrealized ideal, after all; and those maxims which, in the hope of bringing about a Millennium, we busily teach to the heathen, we Christians ourselves disregard. ~ Herman Melville

We should give heed to what has been said by the heathen poet: "Do not yield to evils but proceed more boldly against them."15 ~ Martin Luther

If heathen prayers were indeed the best of all, then mine should count big time. ~ Will Schwalbe

An old Russian proverb . . . "Where hangs the smoke of hate burns a fiercer fire called fear."
The trick . . . was to keep that fire alive, but to know at the same time it might consume you also. Then the truck was to make the fear invisible in the smokes of hatred. Having accomplished that, you would own men's souls and your power would be absolute, so long as you never allowed men to see that their hate was but fear, and so long as you, afraid, knowing it, hence more shrewd and cautious than the rest, did not become a corpse at the hands of the hating fearful.
There, in a nutshell, was the recipe for dictatorship. Over the proletariat. Over the godly believers. Over the heathen. Over all men, even those who imagined they were free and yet could be made to hate.
Frighten; then furnish the whipping boys. Then seize. ~ Philip Wylie

I didn't mind being unpopular at school, because everyone else was a heathen. ~ Jeanette Winterson

You think about that," Miss Maudie was saying. "It was no accident. I was sittin' there on the porch last night, waiting. I waited and waited to see you all come down the sidewalk, and as I waited I thought, Atticus Finch won't win, he can't win, but he's the only man in these parts who can keep a jury out so long in a case like that. And I thought to myself, well, we're making a step - it's just a baby-step, but it's a step."
"'t's all right to talk like that - can't any Christian judges an' lawyers make up for heathen juries," Jem muttered. ~ Harper Lee

O father, father
Gone from us, lost to us,
The church lies bereft,
Alone,
Desecrated, desolated.
And the heathen shall build
On the ruins
Their world without God.
I see it.
I see it. ~ T. S. Eliot

Young man, sit down: when God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without your aid or mine. ~ William Carey

In a manner to us incomprehensible and inexplicable, [the Savior] bore the weight of the sins of the whole world; not only of Adam, but of his posterity; and in doing that, opened the kingdom of heaven, not only to all believers and all who obeyed the law of God, but to more than one-half of the human family who die before they come to years of maturity, as well as to the heathen, who, having died without law, will, through His mediation, be resurrected without law, and be judged without law, and thus participate, according to their capacity, works and worth, in the blessings of His atonement. ~ John Taylor

It is from the well of St. Dunstan' said he, 'In which betwixt sun and sun, he baptised five hundred heathen Danes and Britons - blessed be his name!' And applying his black beard to the pitcher, he took a draught much more moderate in quantity than his encomium seemed to warrant. ~ Walter Scott

Christianity is the religion of melancholy and hypochondria. Islam, on the other hand, promotes apathy, and Judaism instills its adherents with a certain choleric vehemence, the heathen Greeks may well be called happy optimists. ~ Franz Grillparzer

Since Christ is the Word of God and the Truth of God, he may be received even by those who have not heard of his manifestation in the flesh ... We have, therefore. the hope that even among the heathen there may be some, like Socrates, who, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit working through the truth of nature and conscience, have found the way of life and salvation. ~ Augustus Hopkins Strong