Famous Quotes & Sayings

Gilbert K. Chesterton

The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

When people impute special vices to the Christian Church, they seem entirely to forget that the world (which is the only other thing there is) has these vices much more. The Church has been cruel; but the world has been much more cruel. The Church has plotted; but the world has plotted much more. The Church has been superstitious; but it has never been so superstitious as the world is when left to itself.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

How much larger your life would be if you were smaller in it...

Gilbert K. Chesterton

We do not want, as the newspapers say, a church that will move with the world. We want a church that will move the world.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

At least five times, with the Arian and the Albigensian, with the Humanist skeptic, after Voltaire and after Darwin, the Christian Faith has to all appearance, gone to the dogs? But, in each of these five cases, it was the dog that died.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

The great majority of people will go on observing forms that cannot be explained; they will keep Christmas Day with Christmas gifts and Christmas benedictions; they will continue to do it; and some day suddenly wake up and discover why.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

The more we are proud that the Bethlehem story is plain enough to be understood by the shepherds, and almost by the sheep, the more do we let ourselves go, in dark and gorgeous imaginative frescoes or pageants about the mystery and majesty of the Three Magian Kings.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

What life and death may be to a turkey is not my business; but the soul of Scrooge and the body of Cratchit are my business.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

It is still bad taste to be an avowed atheist. But now it is equally bad taste to be an avowed Christian.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Any one thinking of the Holy Child as born in December would mean by it exactly what we mean by it; that Christ is not merely a summer sun of the prosperous but a winter fire for the unfortunate.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Islam was something like a Christian heresy. The early heresies had been full of mad reversals and evasions of the Incarnation, rescuing their Jesus from the reality of his body even at the expense of the sincerity of his soul.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?

John Eldredge

Most Christians are still living with an Old Testament view of their heart. Jeremiah 17:9 says, 'My heart is deceitfully wicked.' No, it's not. Not after the work of Christ, because the promise of the new covenant is a new heart.

John Dryden

The fortitude of a Christian consists in patience, not in enterprises which the poets call heroic, and which are commonly the effects of interest, pride and worldly honor.

John Lothrop Motley

A good lawyer is a bad Christian.

John Lydon

I have values. But morals are Christian. There's no religion here. Values. Don't hurt when you don't need to, but don't let anybody step over that line - it's an invisible line, but it's respect for somebody's space.

John Locke

He that denies any of the doctrines that Christ has delivered, to be true, denies him to be sent from God, and consequently to be the Messiah; and so ceases to be a Christian.

John Locke

Now, I appeal to the consciences of those that persecute, torment, destroy, and kill other men upon pretence of religion, whether they do it out of friendship and kindness towards them or no? I say, if all this be done merely to make men Christians and procure their salvation, why then do they suffer whoredom, fraud, malice and such-like enormities, which (according to the Apostle) manifestly relish of heathenish corruption, to predominate so much and abound amongst their flocks and people?

John Locke

If the Gospel and the Apostles may be credited, no man can be a Christian without charity, and without that faith which works, not by force, but by love.

John Locke

Whosoever will list himself under the banner of Christ, must, in the first place and above all things, make war upon his own lusts and vices. It is in vain for any man to usurp the name of Christian, without holiness of life, purity of manners, benignity and meekness of spirit.

John Lennon

And so this is Christmas...what have you done?

John Lennon

The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.

John Lennon

At one time I was so much involved in the religious bullshit that I used to go around calling myself a Christian Communist, but as Janov says, religion is legalised madness.

John Lennon

People always got the image I was an anti-Christ or antireligion. I'm not. I'm a most religious fellow. I was brought up a Christian and I only now understand some of the things that Christ was saying in those parables. Because people got hooked on the teacher and missed the message. All this bit about electing a President. We pick our own daddy out of a dog pound of daddies.

John Lennon

And So This Is Christmas; And What Have We Done? Another Year Over; A New One Just Begun; And So Happy Christmas; I Hope You Have Fun; The Near And The Dear Ones; The Old And The Young.

John Lennon

A very Merry Christmas And a happy New Year Let's hope it's a good one Without any fear.

John le Carre

The greatest threat to mankind comes from the renunciation of individual scruple in favor of institutional denominators. . . . Real heroism lies, as it always will, not in conformity or even patriotism, but in acts of solitary moral courage. Which, come to think of it, is what we used to admire in our Christian savior

Jimmy Carr

I was a Christian. I didn't want to have sex before marriage, I was a bit uptight and not very self-confident. I was a virgin until I was 26.

Julie Burchill

I believe, literally, in the God of the Old Testament, whom I understand as the Lord of the Jews and the Protestants. I'm a Christian Zionist, as well as a Christian feminist and a Christian socialist.

Julie Burchill

It may be a cliche, but it's true - the build-up to Christmas is so much more pleasurable than the actual day itself.