Quotes by Clerics - Page 3

It is thy duty oftentimes to do what thou wouldst not thy duty too to leave undone that thou wouldst do.
Thomas à Kempis
Christ the Lord is risen today Sons of men and angels say. Raise your joys and triumphs high Sing ye heavens and earth reply.
Charles Wesley
For when the wine is in the wit is out.
Thomas Becon
When I was young I was sure of everything in a few years having been mistaken a thousand times I was not half so sure of most things as I was before at present I am hardly sure of anything but what God has revealed.
John Wesley
Every dog must have his day.
Jonathan Swift
Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls it tolls for thee.
John Donne
Death be not proud though some have called Thee Mighty and dreadful for thou art not so.
John Donne
One short sleep past will wake eternally And death shall be no more Death thou shalt die.
John Donne
Any fool can criticize and many of them do.
Archbishop C. Garbett
A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong which is but saying ... that he is wiser today than yesterday.
Jonathan Swift
There is nothing in this world constant but inconstancy.
Jonathan Swift
Between cowardice and despair valour is gendered.
John Donne
No great thing conies to any man unless he has courage.
Cardinal James Gibbons
An excuse is a lie guarded.
Jonathan Swift
He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
Jonathan Swift
Complaint is the largest tribute Heaven receives.
Jonathan Swift
If there is anything that can be called genius it consists chiefly in the ability to give that attention to a subject which keeps it steadily in the mind till we have surveyed it accurately on all sides.
Thomas Reid
Comparisons are odious.
Archbishop Boiardo
We are so fond of each other because our ailments are the same.
Jonathan Swift
Certainly this is a duty not a sin. "Cleanliness is indeed next to godliness."
John Wesley
She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on her with a pitchfork.
Jonathan Swift
Hark the herald angels sing "Glory to the new-born king." Peace on earth and mercy mild God and sinners reconciled!
Charles Wesley
See the Gospel Church secure And founded on a Rock! All her promises are sure Her bulwarks who can shock? Count her every precious shrine Tell to after-ages tell Fortified by power divine The Church can never fail.
Charles Wesley
All His glory and beauty come from within and there He delights to dwell His visits there are frequent His conversation sweet His comforts refreshing and His peace passing all understanding.
Thomas à Kempis
The first springs of great events like those of great rivers are often mean and little.
Jonathan Swift
I won't quarrel with my bread and butter.
Jonathan Swift
There's none so blind as they that won't see.
Jonathan Swift
That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.
Jonathan Swift
She looks as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.
Jonathan Swift
No wise man ever wished to be younger.
Jonathan Swift
Zsa Zsa Gabor when asked which of the Gabor women was the oldest said "She'll never admit it but I believe it is Mama." When men grow virtuous in their old age they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.
Jonathan Swift
No Spring nor Summer beauty hath such grace As I have seen in one Autumnal face.
John Donne
Dignity high station or great riches are in some sort necessary to old men in order to keep the younger at a distance who are otherwise too apt to insult them upon the score of their age.
Jonathan Swift
When the world has once begun to use us ill it afterwards continues the same treatment with less scruple or ceremony as men do to a whore.
Jonathan Swift
Let us act on what we have since we have not what we wish.
Cardinal Newman
If you cast away one cross you will certainly find another and perhaps a heavier.
Thomas à Kempis
If you bear the cross unwillingly you make it a burden and load yourself more heavily but you must bear it.
Thomas à Kempis
There is no man in this world without some manner of tribulation or anguish though he be king or pope.
Thomas à Kempis
He put this engine [a silver pocket watch] into our ears, which made an incessant noise, like that of a water-mill: and we conjecture it is either some unknown animal, or the god that he worships; but we are more inclined to the latter opinion, because he assured us, (if we understood him right, for he expressed himself very imperfectly) that he seldom did any thing without consulting it. He called it his oracle, and said, it pointed out the time for every action of his life.
Jonathan Swift
A wise lover values not so much the gift of the lover as the love of the giver.
Thomas à Kempis
We will consider every hand who will try to take our weapons, as an Israeli hand.
Hassan Nasrallah
Not every affection which seems good is to be immediately followed. Neither is every opposite affection to be immediately avoided. Sometimes it is expedient to use restraint even in good desires and wishes, lest through importunity you fall into distraction of mind, lest through want of discipline you become a stumbling block to others.
Thomas à Kempis
I would not that death should take me asleep. I would not have him meerly seise me, and only declare me to be dead, but win me, and overcome me. When I must shipwrack, I would do it in a Sea, where mine impotencie might have some excuse; not in a sullen weedy lake, where I could not have so much as exercise for my swimming.
John Donne
Man is immortal, his salvation is hereafter, The state has no immortality, its salvation is now or never
Cardinal Richelieu
It is not really a small thing when in small things we resist self.
Thomas à Kempis
Methinks I lied all winter, when I sworeMy love was infinite, if spring makes it more.
John Donne
When God grabs you by the scruff of the neck then although theoretically you have a freedom to say 'no', in another sense, actually, you can't say no because it's like Jeremiah. 'God, you have cheated me. You called me to be a prophet against the people that I love, and all that I proclaim is words of doom and judgement.' And yet if I say "I will shut up", I can't.
Desmond Tutu
Not, how much of my money will I give to God, but, how much of God’s money will I keep for myself?
John Wesley
The Dead Sea in the Middle East receives fresh water, but it has no outlet, so it doesn't pass the water out. It receives beautiful water from the rivers, and the water goes dank. I mean, it just goes bad. And that's why it is the Dead Sea. It receives and does not give. In the end generosity is the best way of becoming more, more, and more joyful.
Desmond Tutu
O! I shall soon despair, when I shall seeThat Thou lovest mankind well, yet wilt not choose me,And Satan hates me, yet is loth to lose me.
John Donne
I joy, that in these straits I see my west;
John Donne
In man - in the history of mankind, this has happened many times, and occupation leaders cling on to the land that they're occupying. People fight to liberate their land. But in the end, the people's will is what achieves victory.
Hassan Nasrallah
The will is the keystone in the arch of human achievement. It is the culmination of our complex mental faculties. It is the power that rules minds, men and nations.
Thomas Parker Boyd
A man who truly knows himself realizes his own worthlessness, and takes no pleasure in the praises of men.
Thomas à Kempis
These reasonings will furnish us with an adequate definition of a true critic: that he is a discoverer and collector of writers’ faults. Which may be farther put beyond dispute by the following demonstration: that whoever will examine the writings in all kinds, wherewith this ancient sect has honoured the world, shall immediately find, from the whole thread and tenor of them, that the ideas of the authors have been altogether conversant and taken up with the faults and blemishes, and oversights, and mistakes of other writers; and let the subject treated on be whatever it will, their imaginations are so entirely possessed and replete with the defects of other pens, that the very quintessence of what is bad does of necessity distil into their own, by which means the whole appears to be nothing else but an abstract of the criticisms themselves have made.
Jonathan Swift
For this kind of commodity will not bear exportation, the flesh being of too tender a consistence to admit a long continuance in salt, although perhaps I could name a country which would be glad to eat up our whole nation without it.
Jonathan Swift
That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.
Jonathan Swift
We of this age have discovered a shorter, and more prudent method to become scholars and wits, without the fatigue of reading or of thinking.
Jonathan Swift
You have one business on earth – to save souls.
John Wesley
When I was young I was sure of everything; in a few years, having been mistaken a thousand times, I was not half so sure of most things as I was before; at present, I am hardly sure of anything but what God has revealed to me." - John Wesley
John Wesley