We are religious by nature. [ Charles H. Parkhurst ]
Religion is life essential. [ George MacDonald ]
Religion implies revelation. [ Roswell D. Hitchcock ]
Much religion, but no goodness. [ Proverb ]
To be of no Church is dangerous. [ Samuel Johnson ]
The religion of humanity is love. [ Mazzini ]
A good life is the only religion. [ Proverb ]
Adversity reminds men of religion. [ Livy ]
Cities seldom change religion only. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
No religion but blasphemes a little. [ Victor Hugo ]
Religion is not an end, but a means. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Religion, richest favor of the skies. [ Cowper ]
Religion is using everything for God. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]
Religion gives a dignity to distress. [ James Hervey ]
Religion is the pious worship of God. [ Cicero ]
Solitude is the religion of the soul. [ A. Dumas pere ]
Religion is not a method, but a life. [ Amiel ]
Religion is civilization, the highest. [ Earl of Beaconsfield ]
He has no religion who has no humanity. [ Arab. Proverb ]
The best religion is the most tolerant. [ Mme. de Girardin ]
Religion is the basis of civil society. [ Burke ]
Jest not with the eye or with religion. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Science is the natural ally of religion. [ Theodore Parker ]
Religion, if in heavenly truths attired,
Needs only to be seen to be admired. [ Cowper ]
A Gothic church is a petrified religion. [ Coleridge ]
No profit to honor, no honor to religion. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Restore to God His due in tithe and time. [ George Herbert ]
Sacred religion! Mother of Form and Fear! [ Samuel Daniel ]
The eye and religion can bear no jesting. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
A woman whom we truly love is a religion. [ Mme. de Girardin ]
Let us think less of men and more of God. [ Bailey ]
No religion but can boast of its martyrs. [ Proverb ]
Religion without joy, - it is no religion. [ Theodore Parker ]
The source of all good and of all comfort. [ Burke ]
Religion crowns the statesman and the man,
Sole source of public and of private peace. [ Young ]
No man's religion ever survives his morals. [ South ]
Religious contention is the devil's harvest. [ La Fontaine ]
Every established religion was once a heresy. [ Buckle ]
Religion is no more national than conscience. [ Mirabeau ]
Science and art are the handmaids of religion. [ Francois Delsarte ]
It matters not what religion an ill man is of. [ Proverb ]
Religion a stalking horse to shoot other fowl. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
The best profession of religion is a good life. [ E. W ]
A religious life is a struggle, and not a hymn. [ Mme. de Stael ]
No matter what religion a knave or a fool is of. [ Proverb ]
Here shall the Press the People's right maintain,
Unawed by influence and unbribed by gain;
Here Patriot Truth her glorious precepts draw,
Pledged to Religion, Liberty, and Law. [ Joseph Story ]
Religion is not removed by removing superstition. [ Cicero ]
An advantageous religion never wanted proselytes. [ Proverb ]
How shall I speak thee, or thy power address,
Thou god of our idolatry, the Press?
By thee, religion, liberty, and laws,
Exert their influence, and advance their cause:
By thee, worse plagues than Pharaoh's land befell.
Diffused, make earth the vestibule of hell;
Thou fountain, at which drink the good and wise,
Thou ever bubbling spring of endless lies,
Like Eden's dread probationary tree.
Knowledge of good and evil is from thee! [ Cowper ]
Life and religion are one, or neither is any thing. [ George MacDonald ]
Freedom is a new religion, the religion of our time. [ Heine ]
One is of Martin's religion, another is of Luther's. [ Proverb ]
Religion, credit, and the eye are not to be touched. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Love and religion are both stronger than friendship. [ Benjamin Disraeli ]
Religion is not a dogma nor an emotion, but a service. [ R. D. Hitchcock ]
Religion - that voice of the deepest human experience. [ Matthew Arnold ]
Fanaticism is to religion what hypocrisy is to virtue. [ Palissot ]
Hypocrisy is oftenest clothed in the garb of religion. [ Hosea Ballou ]
Love is a religion of which the great pontiff is Nature.
A man has no more religion than he acts out in his life. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]
Music is the child of prayer, the companion of religion. [ Chateaubriand ]
Religion is as necessary to reason as reason to religion. [ Washington ]
Religion is among the most powerful causes of enthusiasm. [ Burke ]
Sympathy with Nature is a part of the good man's religion. [ F. H. Hedge ]
Bigotry murders religion to frighten folks with her ghost. [ Colton ]
To be furious in religion is to be irreligiously religious. [ William Penn ]
A man devoid of religion, is like a horse without a bridle. [ From the Latin ]
A religion without its mysteries is a temple without a God. [ Robert Hall ]
Religion to be permanently influential must be intelligent. [ E. L. Magoon ]
Religion is not in want of art; it rests on its own majesty. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Religion is the best armor in the world, but the worst cloak. [ Bunyan ]
Abstinence is many times very helpful to the end of religion. [ Tillotson ]
That charity which is the perfection and ornament of religion. [ Addison ]
To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion - all in one. [ John Ruskin ]
Men and women existed before creeds; love is the only religion. [ Mrs. Campbell Praed ]
Pretty women without religion are like flowers without perfume. [ Heinrich Heine ]
Nature teaches us to love our friends, but religion our enemies. [ Proverb ]
Religion worships God, while superstition profanes that worship. [ Seneca ]
For time consecrates, and what is gray with age becomes religion. [ Schiller ]
Nothing can be hostile to religion which is agreeable to justice. [ Gladstone ]
Superstition is the only religion of which base souls are capable. [ Joubert ]
I am sorry to see how small a piece of religion will make a cloak. [ Sir William Waller ]
The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Science ever has been, and ever must be, the safeguard of religion. [ Sir David Brewster ]
Superstition is but the fear of belief; religion is the confidence. [ Lady Blessington ]
No man troubleth the beggar with questioning his religion or politics. [ Lamb ]
In religion, the sentiment is all; the ritual or ceremony indifferent. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
The religion that fosters intolerance needs another Christ to die for it. [ Beecher ]
Philosophy is as far separated from impiety as religion is from fanaticism. [ Diderot ]
Religion converts despair, which destroys, into resignation, which submits. [ Lady Blessington ]
A woman by whom we are loved is a vanity; a woman whom we love is a religion. [ E. de Girardin ]
Living religion grows not by the doctrines, but by the narratives of the Bible. [ Jean Paul ]
In religion as in friendship, they who profess most are ever the least sincere. [ Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan ]
There is no religion without mystery. God Himself is the great secret of nature. [ Chateaubriand ]
Religion is nothing if it is not everything; if existence is not filled with it. [ Mme. de Staël ]
The natural religion of the pagan philosophers was mixed with fancies and dreams. [ Saurin ]
True religion is a life unfolded within, not something forced on us from without. [ William Ellery Channing ]
Willmott, the English essayist, says poetry is the natural religion of literature. [ W. R. Alger ]
Instinct harmonizes the interior of animals, as religion does the interior of men. [ Jacobi ]
A religion which requires persecution to sustain it is of the devil's propagation. [ Hosea Ballou ]
The religion of Christ is peace and goodwill, that of Christendom war and ill-will. [ Landor ]
Secure their religion; season their younger years with prudent and pious principles. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
Every genius has most power in his own language, and every heart in its own religion. [ Jean Paul ]
Faith in a better than that which appears is no less required by art than by religion. [ John Sterling ]
Want of humility or self-denial is simply the want of all religion, of all moral worth. [ Carlyle ]
How can there be pride in a contrite heart? Humility is the earliest fruit of religion. [ Hosea Ballou ]
Ceremony and great professing renders friendships as much suspected as it does religion. [ Wycherley ]
The more tender our spirits are made by religion, the more ready we are to let in grief. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
The perfect flower of religion opens in the soul only when all self-seeking is abandoned. [ John Burroughs ]
The Christian religion, rightly understood, is the deepest and choicest price of philosophy. [ Sir Thomas Moore ]
Reason is a permanent blessing of God to the soul. Without it there can be no large religion. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]
Religion is a higher and supernatural life, mystical in its roots and practical in its fruits. [ Amiel ]
Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion, history, romance and art would be useless. [ Balzac ]
Religion without piety hath done more mischief in the world than all other things put together. [ Proverb ]
Superstition is an unreasoning fear of God; religion consists in the pious worship of the gods. [ Cicero ]
Never trust anybody not of sound religion, for he that is false to God can never be true to man. [ Lord Burleigh ]
Religion is no friend to laziness and stupidity, or to supine and sottish despondencies of mind. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
Pedantry in learning is like hypocrisy in religion - a form of knowledge without the power of it. [ Addison ]
Nature has planted passions in the heart of man for the wisest purposes both of religion and life. [ Fox ]
As soon as beauty is sought, not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Nature and religion are the bands of friendship, excellence and usefulness are its great endearments. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
General infidelity is the hardest soil which the propagators of a new religion can have to work upon. [ Paley ]
Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy: a very stupid daughter of a very wise mother. [ Voltaire ]
In paganism light is mixed with darkness, and religion and truth are blended with superstition and error. [ Lindley Murray ]
Religion is neither a theology nor a theosophy, but a discipline, a law, a yoke, an indissoluble engagement. [ Joubert ]
Sincerity is the indispensable ground of all conscientiousness, and by consequence of all heartfelt religion. [ Kant ]
The passions are the gales of life; and it is religion only that can prevent them from rising into a tempest. [ Dr. Watts ]
I would give nothing for the Christianity of a man whose very dog and cat were not the better for his religion. [ Rowland Hill ]
The great men of the earth are but the markingstones on the road of humanity; they are the priests of its religion. [ Mazzini ]
A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. [ Francis Bacon ]
Religion is an everlasting lodestar, that beams the brighter in the heavens the darker here on earth grows the night. [ Carlyle ]
In morals, what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion, what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. [ Mrs. Jameson ]
Can that which is the greatest virtue in philosophy, doubt, be in religion, what we priests term it, the greatest of sins? [ Bovee ]
Mythology is not religion. It may rather be regarded as the ancient substitute, the poetical counterpart, for dogmatic theology. [ Hare ]
Superstition is certainly not the characteristic of this age. Yet some men are bigoted in politics who are infidels in religion. [ Junius ]
Nothing has wrought more prejudice to religion, or brought more disparagement upon truth, than boisterous and unseasonable zeal. [ Barrow ]
Art rests on a kind of religious sense, on a deep, steadfast earnestness; and on this account it unites so readily with religion. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Without a belief in personal immortality, religion surely is like an arch resting on one pillar, like a bridge ending in an abyss. [ Max Muller ]
Superstition always inspires littleness, religion grandeur of mind; the superstitious raises beings inferior to himself to deities. [ Lavater ]
Obedience, we may remember, is a part of religion, and therefore an element of peace; but love which includes obedience is the whole. [ George Sewell ]
Have I a religion, have I a country, have I a love, that I am ready to die for? are the first trial questions to itself of a true soul. [ John Ruskin ]
You know the Ark of Israel and the calf of Belial were both made of gold. Religion has never yet changed the metal of her one adoration. [ Ouida ]
Art is based on a strong sentiment of religion, - on a profound and mighty earnestness; hence it is so prone to co-operate with religion. [ Goethe ]
Look out for a people entirely destitute of religion. If you find them at all, be assured that they are but few degrees removed from brutes. [ Hume ]
Without poetry our science will appear incomplete, and most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry. [ Matthew Arnold ]
When you see a man with a great deal of religion displayed in his shop-window, you may depend upon it he keeps a very small stock of it within. [ Spurgeon ]
The generality of friends puts us out of conceit with friendship; just as the generality of religious people puts us out of conceit with religion. [ Rochefoucauld ]
It is iniquitous, unjust, and most impolitic to persecute for religion's sake. It is against natural religion, revealed religion, and sound policy. [ Chief Justice Mansfield ]
The love of liberty that is not a real principle of dutiful behavior to authority is as hypocritical as the religion that is not productive of a good life. [ Bishop Butler ]
I think we cannot too strongly attack superstition, which is the disturber of society; nor too highly respect genuine religion, which is the support of it. [ Rousseau ]
Too many instances there are of daring men, who by presuming to sound the deep things of religion, have cavilled and argued themselves out of all religion. [ Thomas à Kempis ]
Religion is the eldest sister of philosophy: on whatever subjects they may differ, it is unbecoming in either to quarrel, and most so about their inheritance. [ Landor ]
A man would live in Italy (a place of pleasure), but he would choose to die in Spain (where they say the Catholic religion is professed with great strictness). [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, and learning, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last! [ Swift ]
All religions are more or less mixed with superstitions. Man is not reasonable enough to content himself with a pure and sensible religion, worthy of the Deity. [ Voltaire ]
The mathematics are friends to religion, inasmuch as they charm the passions, restrain the impetuosity or imagination, and purge the mind from error and prejudice. [ Arbuthnot ]
Had religion been a mere chimaera, it would long ago have been extinct; were it susceptible of a definite formula, that formula would long ago have been discovered. [ Renan ]
Can that which is the greatest virtue in philosophy, doubt (called by Galileo the father of invention), be in religion what the priests term it, the greatest of sins? [ Bovee ]
Science always goes abreast with the just elevation of the man, keeping step with religion and metaphysics; or, the state of science is an index of our self-knowledge. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Too austere a philosophy makes few wise men; too rigorous politics, few good subjects; too hard a religion, few religious persons whose devotion is of long continuance. [ St. Evremond ]
See, indeed, that your daughter is thoroughly grounded and experienced in household duties; but take care, through religion and poetry, to keep her heart open to heaven. [ Richter ]
The pagan religion, which prohibited only some of the grosser crimes, and which stopped the hand but meddled not with the heart, might have crimes that were inexplicable. [ Montesquieu ]
Unwillingness to acknowledge whatever is good in religion foreign to our own has always been a very common trait of human nature; but it seems to me neither generous nor just. [ Mrs. L. M. Child ]
Genius, without religion, is only a lamp on the outer gate of a palace. It may serve to cast a gleam of light on those that are without while the inhabitant sits in. darkness. [ Hannah More ]
Superstition is passing away without return. Religion cannot pass away. The burning of a little straw may hide the stars in the sky; but the stars are there, and will re-appear. [ Carlyle ]
Life is a mission. Every other definition of life is false, and leads all who accept it astray. Religion, science, philosophy, all agree in this, that every existence is an aim. [ Mazzini ]
I would have every zealous man examine his heart thoroughly, and I believe he will often find that what he calls a zeal for his religion is either pride, interest, or ill-repute. [ Addison ]
Religion is again here, for whoever will piously struggle upward, and sacredly, sorrowfully refuse to speak lies, which indeed will mostly mean refuse to speak at all on that topic. [ Carlyle ]
When I beheld human affairs involved in such dense darkness, the guilty exulting in their prosperity, and pious men suffering wrong, what religion I had began to reel backward and fall. [ Claudius, Claudian ]
Art itself, in all its methods, is the child of religion. The highest and best works in architecture, sculpture and painting, poetry and music, have been born out of the religion of Nature. [ James Freeman Clarke ]
No man can quite emancipate himself from his age and country, or produce a model in which the education, the religion, the politics, the usages, and the arts of his times shall have no share. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared that the sense of being well dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity which religion is powerless to bestow. [ Emerson ]
To revenge a wrong is easy, usual, and natural, and, as the world thinks, savors of nobleness of mind; but religion teaches the contrary, and tells us it is better to neglect than to requite it. [ J. Beaumont ]
For my part, it is not the mystery of the incarnation which I discover in religion, but the mystery of social order, which associates with heaven that idea of equality which prevents the rich from destroying the poor. [ Napoleon I ]
Many men want wealth, - not a competence alone, but a five-story competence. Everything subserves this; and religion they would like as a sort of lightning-rod to their houses, to ward off by and by the bolts of Divine wrath. [ Beecher ]
Superstition is related to this life, religion to the next; superstition allies itself to fatality, religion to virtue; it is by the vitality of earthly desires we become superstitious, and by the sacrifice of these desires that we become religious. [ Mme. de Staël ]
Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation, all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy in the minds of men. [ Bacon ]
The true greatness and the true happiness of a country consist in wisdom; in that enlarged and comprehensive wisdom which includes education, knowledge, religion, virtue, freedom, with every influence which advances and every institution which supports them. [ Henry Giles ]
When misfortunes happen to such as dissent from us in matters of religion, we call them judgments; when to those of our own sect, we call them trials: when to persons neither way distinguished, we are content to attribute them to the settled course of things. [ Shenstone ]
There is no security in a good disposition if the support of good principles - that is to say, of religion, of Christian faith - be wanting. It may be soured by misfortune, it may be corrupted by wealth, it may be blighted by neediness, it may lose all its original brightness, if destitute of that support. [ Southey ]
What if a man save my life with a draught that was prepared to poison me? The providence of the issue does not at all discharge the obliquity of the intent. And the same reason holds good even in religion itself. It is not the incense, or the offering that is acceptable to God, but the purity and devotion of the worshipper. [ Seneca ]
The works of nature and the works of revelation display religion to mankind in characters so large and visible that those who are not quite blind may in them see and read the first principles and most necessary parts of it, and from thence penetrate into those infinite depths filled with the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. [ Locke ]
Good-nature is that benevolent and amiable temper of mind which disposes us to feel the misfortunes and enjoy the happiness of others, and, consequently, pushes us on to promote the latter and prevent the former; and that without any abstract contemplation on the beauty of virtue, and without the allurements or terrors of religion. [ Fielding ]
Art neither belongs to religion, nor to ethics; but, like these, it brings us nearer to the Infinite, one of the forms of which it manifests to us. God is the source of all beauty, as of all truth, of all religion, of all morality. The most exalted object, therefore, of art is to reveal in its own manner the sentiment of the Infinite. [ Victor Cousin ]
I look upon enthusiasm, in all other points but that of religion, to be a very necessary turn of mind; as indeed it is a vein which nature seems to have marked with more or less strength, in the tempers of most men. No matter what the object is, whether business pleasures or the fine arts: whoever pursues them to any purpose must do so con amore. [ Melmoth ]
Since I have known God in a saving manner, painting, poetry, and music have had charms unknown to me before. I have received what I suppose is a taste for them, or religion has refined my mind and made it susceptible of impressions from the sublime and beautiful. O, how religion secures the heightened enjoyment of those pleasures which keep so many from God, by their becoming a source of pride! [ Henry Martyn ]
The mother, under whose sole influence the child is for years, from whom it acquires its tastes and character, should not only be educated, but educated in the most thorough manner, and have her mind stored with varied learning, so that she may be able to answer the multitude of questions that will be put to her by her inquisitive child on art, science, literature, and religion, and thus to stimulate his curiosity, and awaken his mind. [ E. B. Ramsay ]
Business is religion, and religion is business. The man who does not make a business of his religion has a religious life of no force, and the man who does not make a religion of his business has a business life of no character.
The world is God's workshop; the raw materials are His; the ideals and patterns are His; our hands are "the members of Christ," our reward His recognition. Blacksmith or banker, draughtsman or doctor, painter or preacher, servant or statesman, must work as unto the Lord, not merely making a living, but devoting a life. This makes life sacramental, turning its water into wine. This is twice blessed, blessing both the worker and the work. [ Maltbie Babcock ]