Famous Quotes & Sayings

Will Durant

Historically the belief in heaven and the belief in utopia are like compensatory buckets in a well: when one goes down the other comes up. When the classic religions decayed, communistic agitation rose in Athens (430 B.C.), and revolution began in Rome (133 B.C.); when these movements failed, resurrection faiths succeeded, culminating in Christianity; when, in our eighteenth century, Christian belief weakened, communism reappeared. In this perspective the future of religion is secure.

Whitley Strieber

The upheavals of adolescence silenced 'A Christmas Carol' for a few years. I became a firebrand atheist. Christmas - humbug! Too commercial! Then I became an agnostic. Christmas was a pro-forma affair, basically a chore. Buy mother a book, dad a new tie, my brother and sister small gifts. Pretend thanks for the fountain pens and shirts I received.

Whitley Strieber

Every Christmas now for years, I have found myself wondering about the point of the celebration. As the holiday has become more ecumenical and secular, it has lost much of the magic that I remember so fondly from childhood.

Whitley Strieber

I put the copy of 'A Christmas Carol' that my grandfather had first read to me 60 years ago on my desk, and I began to write. The result, for better or for worse, is the 'Christmas Spirits.' I plan to read it to my grandson.

Sarah Silverman

I hope the Jews did kill Christ, I'd do it again in a second.

Sarah Palin

Thanksgiving is for real Americans not Indians. We founded this Christian nation. Why if it wasn’t for the God-fearing pilgrims, the natives would still be running around in loin cloths shooting at things with their arrows.

Sara Zarr

I'm always in a place that is sincere but conflicted about different things that come with being a Christian and being an active, churchgoing Christian.

Sara Zarr

I wanted to be free to write the way I wanted to write, and my impression of Christian publishing, at least in fiction, was that there wasn't room for what I wanted to write.

Sara Evans

I'm holding up, Lord willing and the creek don't rise.

Sara Gilbert

Yeah, I started when I was 6 years old. My brother and sister would get all of these presents at Christmas time from the cast and crew of their show and I was jealous. So I decided that I had to become an actor.

Samuel P. Huntington

Religiosity distinguishes America from most other Western societies. Americans are also overwhelmingly Christian, which distinguishes them from many non-Western peoples. Their religiosity leads Americans to see the world in terms of good and evil to a much greater extent than most other peoples.

Samuel P. Huntington

There will be associations and partnerships between some Muslim countries and some Christian countries. Those already exist. And they may shift as different regimes come and go and interests change.

Samuel P. Huntington

I think it's hard to talk about the Muslim world and Christian world as blocks.

William Faulkner

. . .in August in Mississippi there’s a few days somewhere about the middle of the month when suddenly there’s a foretaste of fall, it’s cool, there’s a lambence, a soft, a luminous quality to the light, as though it came not from just today but from back in the old classic times. It might have fauns and satyrs and the gods and---from Greece, from Olympus in it somewhere. It lasts just for a day or two, then it’s gone. . .the title reminded me of that time, of a luminosity older than our Christian civilization.

Wil Wheaton

I'm so fed up with being told that I'm a bad person because I don't subscribe to the same exact narrow views [Christians] have.

Ronald Reagan

The real question today is not when human life begins, but, what is the value of human life? The abortionist who reassembles the arms and legs of a tiny baby to make sure all its parts have been torn from its mother's body can hardly doubt whether it is a human being. The real question for him and for all of us is whether that tiny human life has a God-given right to be protected by the law - the same right we have.

Ronald Reagan

Christmas can be celebrated in the school room with pine trees, tinsel and reindeers, but there must be no mention of the man whose birthday is being celebrated. One wonders how a teacher would answer if a student asked why it was called Christmas.

Ronald Reagan

Without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure.

Ronald Reagan

And we're also remembering the guiding light of our Judeo-Christian tradition. All of us here today are descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, sons and daughters of the same God. I believe we are bound by faith in our God, by our love for family and neighborhood, by our deep desire for a more peaceful world, and by our commitment to protect the freedom which is our legacy as Americans. These values have given a renewed sense of worth to our lives. They are infusing America with confidence and optimism that many thought we had lost...

Saint Augustine

Order your soul; reduce your wants; live in charity; associate in Christian community; obey the laws; trust in Providence.

Saint Augustine

He who thinks he lives without sin puts aside not sin, but pardon.

Saint Augustine

God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination.

Saint Augustine

Christ is not valued at all, unless he is valued above all.

Saint Augustine

Without God, we cannot. Without us, God will not

Saint Augustine

He who does not have the church as his mother, does not have God as his father.

Saint Augustine

Trust the past to the mercy of God, the present to His love, and the future to His providence.

Saint Augustine

In all trouble you should seek God. You should not set Him over against your troubles, but within them. God can only relieve your troubles if you in your anxiety cling to Him. Trouble should not really be thought of as this thing or that in particular, for our whole life on earth involves trouble; and through the troubles of our earthly pilgrimage we find God.

Saint Augustine

A Christian is: a mind through which Christ thinks, a heart through which Christ loves, a voice through which Christ speaks, and a hand through which Christ helps.

Saint Basil

We must always be on guard lest, under the pretext of keeping one commandment, we be found breaking another.

Saint Basil

I reckon silence more profitable than speech, for? in the words of the Preacher, 'The words of wise men are heard in quiet' (Eccles. 9:17).

Saint Basil

Persecution has come upon us, right honorable brethren, and persecution in the severest form. Shepherds are persecuted that their flocks may be scattered. And the worst of all is that those who are being treated ill cannot accept their sufferings in proof of their testimony, nor can the people reverence the athletes as in the army of martyrs, because the name of Christians is applied to the persecutors. The one charge which is now sure to secure severe punishment is the careful keeping of the traditions of the Fathers.

Saint Basil

Whatever requires an undue amount of thought or trouble or involves a large expenditure of effort and causes our whole life to revolve, as it were, around solicitude for the flesh must be avoided by Christians.

Saint Basil

... the more have been your trials, look for a more perfect reward from your just Judge. Do not take your present troubles ill. Do not lose hope. Yet a little while and your Helper will come to you and will not tarry (cf. Hab. 2:3).