#religion

Let books be your dining table, / And you shall be full of delights. / Let them be your mattress,/And you shall sleep restful nights ↗

— Ephraim the Syrian

#religion #religion

A soft and sheltered Christianity, afraid to be lean and lone, unwilling to face the storms and brave the heights, will end up fat and foul in the cages of conformity. ↗

— Vance Havner

#comfort #conformity #religion #religion

The soul ... has a slow and dark birth, more mysterious than the birth of the body. When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets. ↗

— James Joyce

#soul #religion

I don't trust Catholics," I said, "because they take advantage of you." "And Protestants?" he asked with a laugh. "I loathe the way they fumble around with their consciences." "And atheists?" He was still laughing. "They bore me because all they ever talk about is God. ↗

— Heinrich Böll

#religion

And inasmuch as they erred it might be made known; And inasmuch as they sought wisdom they might be instructed; And inasmuch as they sinned they might be chastened, that they might repent; And inasmuch as they were humble they might be made strong, and blessed from on high, and receive knowledge from time to time. ↗

— Doctrine and Covenants

#religion #weakness #wisdom #religion

We want to be saved from our misery, but not from our sin. We want to sin without misery, just as the prodigal son wanted inheritance without the father. The foremost spiritual law of the physical universe is that this hope can never be realized. Sin always accompanies misery. There is no victimless crime, and all creation is subject to decay because of humanity’s rebellion from God. ↗

— R.C. Sproul

#gospel #justice #sin #religion

You must promise me. You can't desire the end without desiring the means.' Ah, but one can, he thought, one can: one can desire the peace of victory without desiring the ravaged towns. ↗

— Graham Greene

#religion #religion

[Religion must remain an outlet for people who say to themselves, 'I am not the kind of person I want to be.' It must never sink into an assemblage of the self-satisfied.] - Last words of Toure Bomoko ↗

— Frank Herbert

#religion

Not many years before the Happening, one of your country's largest religious bodies officially declared that their book was holier than their God, thus simultaneously and corporately breaking several commandments of their own religion, particularly the first one. Of course they liked the book better! It was full of magic and contradictions that they could quote to reinforce their bigoted and hateful opinions, as I well know, for I chose many parts of it from among the scrolls and epistles that were lying around in caves here and there. They're correct that a god picked out the material; they just have the wrong god doing it. (The small god in Ch. 44) ↗

— Sheri S. Tepper

#religion #religion

Being lost is the way, how else can you be found? ↗

— Elizabeth Cunningham

#religion