Famous Quotes & Sayings

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

Without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure.

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).

Saint Basil

When our Lord says, 'I have not spoken of Myself' (Jn. 12:49), and again, 'As the Father said to Me, so I speak' (Jn. 12:50), and 'The word which you hear is not mine, but the Father's Who sent Me' (Jn. 14:24), and in another place, 'As the Father commanded Me, even so I do' (Jn. 14:31), it is not because He lacks deliberate purpose or power of initiative, nor yet because He has to wait for the preconcerted key-note, that He employs language of this kind. His object is to make it plain that His own will is connected in indissoluble union with the Father.

Saint Basil

No Christian ought to think of himself as his own master, but each should rather so think and act as though given by God to be slave to his like minded brethren (cf. I Cor. 9:19)?

Saint Basil

Human life is but of brief duration. 'All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God shall stand forever' (Isa. 40:6, 8). Let us hold fast to the commandment that abides, and despise the unreality that passes away.

Saint Basil

... if, to me, to live is Christ (Phil. 1:21), truly my words ought to be about Christ, my every thought and deed ought to depend upon His commandments, and my soul to be fashioned after His.

Saint Basil

To Whom does our God say, 'in our image' (Gen. 1:26), to whom if it is not to Him who is 'the brightness of His glory and the express image of His Person' (Heb. 1:3), 'the image of the invisible God' (Col. 1:15)? It is then to His living image, to Him Who has said 'I and My Father are one' (Jn. 10:30), 'He who has seen Me has seen the Father' (Jn. 14:9), that God says, 'Let us make man in our image'.

Saint Basil

Our Savior was crucified for our sakes that by His death He might give us life and train and attract us all to endurance. To Him I press on, and to the Father and to the Holy Spirit. I strive to be found true, judging myself unworthy of this world's goods; and yet not I because of the world, but the world because of me. Think of all these things in your heart; follow them with zeal; fight, as you have been commanded, for the truth to the death: For Christ was made 'obedient' even 'to death'

Saint Basil

The Christian ought not to say anything behind his brother's back with the object of calumniating him, for this is slander, even if what is said is true. He ought to turn away from the brother who speaks evil against him?

Saint Basil

What is the mark of a Christian? That he be purified of all defilement of the flesh and of the spirit in the Blood of Christ, perfecting sanctification in the fear of God and the love of Christ, and that he have no blemish nor spot nor any such thing; that he be holy and blameless and so eat the Body of Christ and drink His Blood; for 'he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgement to himself.' What is the mark of those who eat the Bread and drink the Cup of Christ? That they keep in perpetual remembrance Him who died for us and rose again.

Saint Basil

Liberated from the error of pagan tradition through the benevolence and loving kindness of the good God with the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the operation of the Holy Spirit, I was reared from the very beginning by Christian parents. From them I learned even in babyhood the Holy Scriptures which led me to a knowledge of the truth.

Saint Basil

As the pilot of a vessel is tried in the storm; as the wrestler is tried in the ring, the soldier in the battle, and the hero in adversity: so is the Christian tried in temptation.

Saint Basil

It is not he who begins well who is perfect. It is he who ends well who is approved in God's sight.

Saint Francis de Sales

The test of a preacher is that his congregation goes away saying, not "What a lovely sermon!" but "I will do something."

Saint Francis de Sales

All of us can attain to Christian virtue and holiness, no matter in what condition of life we live and no matter what our life work may be.

Saint Francis de Sales

Every Christian needs a half-hour of prayer each day, except when he is busy, then he needs an hour.

Saint Francis de Sales

He who stays not in his littleness, loses his greatness.