Idol Worship Quotes

There are many idols but I would categorize them into three: heroes who are strong enough to lay themselves bare to the people and cowards who hide behind symbols and crafted figures. Then there is one who rules over them. They all love the same thing; praise and adoration. The question is, to whom does the glory belong to, really? ~ DON SANTO

When a man makes a reverent face before a face that is no face - that is idol worship! ~ Menachem Mendel Of Kotzk

One thing I must tell you. Idolatry in India does not mean anything horrible. It is not the mother of harlots. ~ Swami Vivekananda

Some may be helped by images, some may not. Some require an image outside, others one inside the brain. ~ Swami Vivekananda

Despite the many iniquities that have found entrance into the practices of image-worship as it is in vogue now, I do not condemn it. Ay, where would I have been if I had not been blessed with the dust of the holy feet of that orthodox, image-worshipping Brahmin! ~ Swami Vivekananda

So that when man can be in great distress having been betrayed and deserted by all friends he may find consolation in the idea that an ever true friend was still there to help him, to support him and that He was Almighty and could do anything. The idea of God is helpful to man in distress.
Society has to fight out this belief as well as was fought the idol worship and the narrow conception of religion. Similarly, when man tries to stand on his own legs, and become a realist he shall have to throw the faith aside, and to face manfully all the distress, trouble, in which the circumstances may throw him. ~ Bhagat Singh

Too much faith in personality has a tendency to produce weakness and idolatry, but intense love for the Guru makes rapid growth possible. ~ Swami Vivekananda

We are all born idolaters, and idolatry is good, because it is in the nature of man. Who can get beyond it? Only the perfect man, the God-man. The rest are all idolaters. So long as we see this universe before us, with its forms and shapes, we are all idolaters. This is a gigantic symbol we are worshipping. He who says he is the body is a born idolater. ~ Swami Vivekananda

Those reformers who preach against image-worship, or what they denounce as idolatry - to them I say "Brothers, if you are fit to worship God-without-form discarding all external help, do so, but why do you condemn others who cannot do the same?" ~ Swami Vivekananda

You've built yourselves a god from silver and gold.
How does that differ from idol worship, except
Those people worship one god and you a hundred? ~ Dante Alighieri

As for [Amiri] Baraka, he and I have disagreements. I mean, he becomes a demagogue when there's an audience. He's a nice guy in private. I mean I like the guy; he's a terrific writer. I've published two of his books. Baraka is one of these fundamentalists who is prone to idol worship. ~ Ishmael Reed

You don't really get to choose. We worship you, and that makes you our God. ~ Brandon Sanderson

The idol is the expression of religion. ~ Swami Vivekananda

My hectic work schedule does not often permit me time to visit temples, but my conversations with God don't depend on idol worship. Inside my heart, I have developed and sustained a direct communication with Him. ~ Emraan Hashmi

To understand is to forgive. That's not true. Forgiveness has been exaggerated. Forgiveness is a Christian idea and Spain has never been a Christian country. It has always had its own special idol worship within the Church. 'Otra Virgen más'. I suppose that was why they had to destroy the virgins of their enemies. Surely it was deeper with them, with the Spanish religion fanatics, than it was with the people. The people had grown away from the Church because the Church was in the government and the government had always been rotten. This was the only country that the reformation never reached. They were paying for the Inquisition now, all right. ~ Ernest Hemingway

I am an idol worshipper; for I understand what idol worship means, and the idolater does not. ~ Idries Shah

The test of having ceased to be an idolater is: "When you say 'I', does the body come into your thought or not? If it does, then you are still a worshipper of idols." ~ Swami Vivekananda

Many of us do not believe in any form of idolatry; but they have no right to object when others do it. ~ Swami Vivekananda

I've had many idols growing up. The inclination for idol worship comes naturally to me. Or it did, anyway. I think I've gotten over it. It came as naturally to me as wanting to act. ~ Kevin Corrigan

This external worship of images has, however, been described in all our Shastras as the lowest of all the low forms of worship. But that does not mean that it is a wrong thing to do. ~ Swami Vivekananda

Our Lord approved neither idol worship or idle worship but ideal worship in Spirit and truth. ~ Vance Havner

Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

We may worship a picture as God, but not God as the picture. God in the picture is right, but the picture as God is wrong. God in the image is perfectly right. There is no danger there. This is the real worship of God. But the image-God is a mere Pratika. ~ Swami Vivekananda

Worship of society and popular opinion is idolatry. ~ Swami Vivekananda

As to the so-called Hindu idolatry - first go and learn the forms they are going through, and where it is that the worshippers are really worshipping, whether in the temple, in the image, or in the temple of their own bodies. First know for certain what they are doing - which more than ninety per cent of the revilers are thoroughly ignorant of - and then it will explain itself in the light of the Vedantic philosophy. ~ Swami Vivekananda

It's not enough, and so limiting, to teach the simplistic value of a designer's material wear. Give children the gift of values that will last far beyond [a] fad's temporal popularity. ~ T.F. Hodge

We are not called to embody Jesus ourselves; He has already been incarnated and is still even now! No, we are not called to be Jesus; we are called to fall at His feet and worship Him. We are called to affirm that "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth." [John 1:14] And it is through this worship, through recognizing His rightful place, that we are finally humbled.

When we are consumed with God's glory, we forget to worry about our own. When our eyes are fixed on Him as the source of all goodness and truth and beauty, we accept that we are not. When we are enamored by His worth and majesty, we can stop being so enamored with ourselves. And fascinatingly, when we seek God's glory, we'll be able to appreciate it in the people around us. Instead of seeing them as threats to our own glory, we will see them as beautiful reflections of His. ~ Hannah Anderson

Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than find as quickly as possible someone to worship. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky

Miaow

Consider me.
I sit here like Tiberius,
inscrutable and grand.
I will let "I dare not"
wait upon "I would"
and bear the twangling
of your small guitar
because you are my owl
and foster me with milk.
Why wet my paw?
Just keep me in a bag
and no one knows the truth.
I am familiar with witches
and stand a better chance in hell than you
for I can dance on hot bricks,
leap your height
and land on all fours.
I am the servant of the Living God.
I worship in my way.
Look into these slit green stones
and follow your reflected lights
into the dark.

Michel, Duc de Montaigne, knew.
You don't play with me.
I play with you. ~ Mark Haddon

To worship ourselves rather than Christ is idolatry; but to dismiss anything of ourselves, including our bodies, as of trivial importance is a form of blasphemy. ~ Francis George

The beauty of Christ and his gospel continues to captivate millions of believers all over the world and drive them to passionate worship while it simultaneously disgusts, angers, or bores millions of others. ~ Jared C. Wilson

Behind everything in London is something else, and, behind that, is something else still; and so on through the centuries, so that London as we see her is only the latest manifestation of other Londons, and to lover her is to plunge into ancestor-worship. ~ Henry Vollam Morton

The third group called to silence is women. This group is not composed of all women all the time but rather of specific women who were asking questions and speaking in the service. The larger context of these verses demands that we understand these questioning women to be a disruption of the peace and order of the service. This is the reason Paul wrote that 'women should keep silent in the churches' (v. 34). Paul's concern is not just with women (for men too are called to be silent in church); his broader concern is with silence, peace, and order in the worship assembly. This perspective allows us rightly to understand the rest of this chapter, 14:34-40. Paul next tells these specific women to 'be in submission.' We tend to think of this as submission to MEN, but the larger context makes this improbable. Our patriarchal and man-centered culture over the millennia has distorted the meaning of this command to submit. Rather than commanding submission to men, the apostle is commanding SUBMISSION TO THE ORDER OF THE WORSHIP SERVICE, that is, submission to the Holy Spirit. This reading helps us understand the next phrase: 'even as the law says.' Normally LAW in Paul refers to the Old Testament, but it can also have a wider meaning. Nowhere in the Old Testament are women called to be silent, nor are they called to submit to their husbands. Yet there is excellent evidence for biblical and broadly Jewish concern for SILENCE IN WORSHIP before God or the Word of God or while learning f ~ Alan G. Padgett

We must worship in truth. Worship is not just an emotional exercise but a response of the heart built on truth about God. "The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth" (Psm. 145:18). Worship that is not based on God's Word is but an emotional encounter with oneself. ~ Erwin W. Lutzer

In the West, the insane are so many that they are put in an asylum, in China the insane are so unusual that we worship them. ~ Lin Yutang

Now they had to sit in separate places and sometimes they'd even have to sit outside and look through the windows. But they did worship together. ~ Michael Emerson

Twenty years ago at a conference I attended of theologians and professors of religion, an Indian Christian friend told the assembly, "We are going to hear about the beauties of several traditions, but that does not mean that we are going to make a fruit salad." When it came my turn to speak, I said, "Fruit salad can be delicious! I have shared the Eucharist with Father Daniel Berrigan, and our worship became possible because of the sufferings we Vietnamese and Americans shared over many years." Some of the Buddhists present were shocked to hear I had participated in the Eucharist, and many Christians seemed truly horrified. To me, religious life is life. I do not see any reason to spend one's whole life tasting just one kind of fruit. We human beings can be nourished by the best values of many traditions. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Joblessness makes you live without the fear of being fired ~ Sunday Adelaja

Lizzie had no answer for how a whore could quiver from the caress of a man, or find tears at words that were sweet. After all, hadn't she been told she was beautiful before? Perfect? Worthy of worship?

She hadn't. ~ Shewanda Pugh

Church: if the world could see a snapshot of our worship today, would they perceive that we believe our God is worthy of praise? ~ Matt Papa

the world had enough trouble without insisting all worship God the same way. ~ Helen Bryan

Remember [the Ideal Woman] will not necessarily be the idol of women, but of men. In their circle of women friends, they are more likely the object of scorn. But, observe such women carefully. There is much to learn from them. ~ Helen B. Andelin

This wasn't music to dance to - it was music to worship, music to fill in the gaps of my soul, to bring me to a place where there was no pain. ~ Sarah J. Maas

Public worship occurs when the people of God assemble for the express purpose of giving to the Lord the glory due His name and enjoying the joy of His promised special presence with His own people. ~ Ligon Duncan

In worship, God imparts himself to us. ~ C.S. Lewis

It is when we experience God most closely that our hearts burn most passionately to show his compassion to others. ~ Dillon Burroughs

The man who has the sense of the body being himself cannot possibly worship God as formless; whatever worship he makes will be worship in form alone, not otherwise. ~ Ramana Maharshi

Whereas Jesus demanded of the Jews the rejection of the tribalist Jahweh whom they identified with Israel, the race, the community the political state as object of worship and desire, the Sufis, born in an atmosphere of pure monotheism, demanded what Jesus of the first century A.D. would demand if he were to relive his early life again in present-day monotheistic Christendom. This does not mean that Jesus did not demand, like the Sufis, the cleansing of the soul from the personal deities it may worship besides God, but it does mean that the main weight of his teaching centered around the Jewish preoccupation with the tribe as God."
"The object and deal of Sufism is, therefore, identically the same as that of the radical self-transformation of Jesus. Both aimed at the state of consciousness in which God is the sole subject, the sole determiner and the sole object of love and devotion. The tradition of both later influenced each other and succeeded in developing the same kind of preparatory disciplines leading towards the end. Finally, both referred to the final end of these processes as 'oneness' and their reference was in each case exposed to the same dangers of misunderstanding, indeed to the same misunderstanding. The oneness of Jesus was misunderstood as unity and fusion of being, and thus gave rise to the greatest materialization of an essentially spiritual union history has ever seen. The oneness of the highest Sufi state was likewise misunderstood and gave rise to ~ Ismail R. Al-Faruqi

It is He who is revealed in every face, sought in every sign, gazed upon by every eye, worshipped in every object of worship, and pursued in the unseen and the visible. Not a single one of His creatures can fail to find Him in its primordial and original nature.

al-Futûhât al-Makkiyya ~ Ibn Arabi

There is no love for God without love for man ~ Sunday Adelaja

The better (i.e., the more accurately) we know God through his Word, the more genuine our worship will be. In fact, the moment we veer from what is true about God, we're engaging in idolatry. Regardless of what we think or feel, there is no authentic worship of God without a right knowledge of God. ~ Bob Kauflin

On the Sivaratri day after performing the routine, the devotee shall go to the temple of Siva and perform worship. ~ Sushil Singh

Until the blood from my pen runs dry, I shall worship the Greek body, the Greek mind, and the Greek soul.
Until my tears land upon Greek soil, I shall forever live in exile. ~ Pietros Maneos

When something becomes so important to you that it drives your behavior and commands your emotions, you are worshipping it. ~ J.D. Greear

many things tempt our hearts to put them first and God second. We must root out the desire to worship these things and focus on the true God. The ~ Richard J. Foster

Do not say, 'But it is hypocritical to thank God with my tongue when I don't feel thankful in my heart.' There is such a thing as hypocritical thanksgiving. Its aim is to conceal ingratitude and get the praise of men. That is not your aim. Your aim in loosing your tongue with words of gratitude is that God would be merciful and fill your words with the emotion of true gratitude. You are not seeking the praise of men; you are seeing the mercy of God. You are not hiding the hardness of ingratitude, but hoping for the in-breaking of the Spirit.

Thanksgiving with the Mouth Stirs Up Thankfulness in the Heart

Moreover, we should probably ask the despairing saint, 'Do you know your heart so well that you are sure the words of thanks have no trace of gratitude in them?' I, for one, distrust my own assessment of my motives. I doubt that I know my good ones well enough to see all the traces of contamination. And I doubt that I know my bad ones well enough to see the traces of grace. Therefore, it is not folly for a Christian to assume that there is a residue of gratitude in his heart when he speaks and sings of God's goodness even though he feels little or nothing. To this should be added that experience shows that doing the right thing, in the way I have described, is often the way toward being in the right frame. Hence Baxter gives this wise counsel to the oppressed Christian:

'Resolve to spend most of your time in thanksgiving and praising God. If y ~ John Piper

Any man who's done anything less than worship you should be fucking shot! ~ Jodi Ellen Malpas