#religion

For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#courage #ethics #honor #morality #religion

I believe I am not mistaken in saying that Christianity is a demanding and serious religion. When it is delivered as easy and amusing, it is another kind of religion altogether. ↗

— Neil Postman

#consumer-culture #religion #age

He didn't like religion, hadn't liked it for years, but he adored churches, loved them like old scientific instruments whose time is long past but are nevertheless fascinating and strange. ↗

— Bruce Robinson

#architecture #atheism #buildings #churches #religion

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#neighbor #ordinary-people #religion #art

…the doctrinal differences between Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism are not anywhere near as important as doctrinal differences among Christianity and Islam and Judaism. Holy wars are not fought over them because verbalized statements about reality are never presumed to be reality itself. ↗

— Robert M. Pirsig

#war #art

The art of life is to live in the present moment and to make that moment as perfect as we can by the realization that we are the instruments and expression of God himself. ↗

— Emmet Fox

#expression #god #life #religion #art

I may grow rich by an art I am compelled to follow; I may recover health by medicines I am compelled to take against my own judgment; but I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve and abhor. ↗

— Thomas Jefferson

#religion #art

We...believe that art is religious, because it is one of man's highest aspirations. There is no such thing as pagan art, only good and bad art. ↗

— Irving Stone

#creativity #judgement-of-art #religion #spirituality #art

...observe the difference between your attitude to illusions and mine. You have to defend the religious illusion with all your might. If it becomes discredited - and indeed the threat to it is great enough - then your world collapses. There is nothing left for you but to despair of everything, of civilization and the future of mankind. From that bondage I am, we are, free. Since we are prepared to renounce a good part of our infantile wishes, we can bear it if a few of our expectations turn out to be illusions. ↗

— Sigmund Freud

#religion #science #attitude

It’s the strangest thing about this church - it is obsessed with sex, absolutely obsessed. Now, they will say we, with our permissive society and rude jokes, are obsessed. No. We have a healthy attitude. We like it, it’s fun, it’s jolly; because it’s a primary impulse it can be dangerous and dark and difficult. It’s a bit like food in that respect, only even more exciting. The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese, and that in erotic terms is the Catholic Church in a nutshell. ↗

— Stephen Fry

#humour #morality-without-religion #religion #sex #attitude