#nit

When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself? ↗

— W. Somerset Maugham

#christianity #god #religion #sacrifice #religion

The worst moment for an atheist is when he is really thankful and has no one to thank. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#christianity #religion #religion

But is the unicorn a falsehood? It's the sweetest of animals and a noble symbol. It stands for Christ and for chastity; it can be captured only by setting a virgin in the forest, so that the animal, catching her most chaste odor, will go and lay its head in her lap, offering itself as prey to the hunters' snares." "So it is said, Adso. But many tend to believe that it's a fable, an invention of the pagans." "What a disappointment," I said. "I would have liked to encounter one, crossing a wood. Otherwise what's the pleasure of crossing a wood? ↗

— Umberto Eco

#fables #mythology #religion #symbolism #unicorns

But people didn't have to pay as much attention to the awful truth. As the living legend of the cruel tyrant in the city and the gentle holy man in the jungle grew, so, too, did the happiness of the people grow. They were all employed full time as actors in a play they understood, that any human being anywhere could understand and applaud. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#religion #truth #religion

Christ came to take away our sins, not our minds. ↗

— William Sloane Coffin Jr.

#christianity #religion #religion-and-children #yale #religion

How will a person know, Selina, when the soul that has the affinity with hers is near it?" She answered, "She will know. Does she look for air, before she breathes it? This love will be guided to her; and when it comes, she will know. And she will do anything to keep that love about her, then. Because to lose it will be like a death to her. ↗

— Sarah Waters

#love #margaret #selina #death

If there is a single fact which anyone who seriously studies the history of Christianity cannot help but be struck by, it is the almost complete absence of documents regarding the man whose name this great international religion bears -- Jesus Christ. We know of him only what is told to us in the New Testament gospels, that is, practically nothing. ↗

— Savitri Devi

#religion

I think this is a very important thing to understand about Christianity. It was from its very beginnings, it seems, a religion of great quarrels and wars, and it wooed the power of temporal authorities, and made them part of itself in the hope of resolving through sheer force its many arguments. ↗

— Anne Rice

#power #religion

Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female. ↗

— Barbara W. Tuchman

#barbara-tuchman #catholic-church #christianity #religion #religion

You can see the same immorality or amorality in the Christian view of guilt and punishment. There are only two texts, both of them extreme and mutually contradictory. The Old Testament injunction is the one to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (it occurs in a passage of perfectly demented detail about the exact rules governing mutual ox-goring; you should look it up in its context (Exodus 21). The second is from the Gospels and says that only those without sin should cast the first stone. The first is a moral basis for capital punishment and other barbarities; the second is so relativistic and "nonjudgmental" that it would not allow the prosecution of Charles Manson. Our few notions of justice have had to evolve despite these absurd codes of ultra vindictiveness and ultracompassion. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#christianity #compassion #guilt #immorality #justice