Quotes about chapel (51 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“The history of the castle at Wiśnicz Nowy is enlivened by many legends. Many well-known artists visited the castle in centuries past. Till now, many elements of old architecture (towers, chapel) have survived, together with some details of interior design.”

Marek Żukow-Karczewski (1961) Polish historian, journalist and opinion journalist

The castle of Kmita and Lubomirski at Wiśnicz Nowy, "Aura" 2, 1991-02, p. 18-20. http://agro.icm.edu.pl/agro/element/bwmeta1.element.agro-bd5a073d-07bd-4353-9edc-6bf8ea3d43c5?q=de70f1df-826d-4538-9cee-535aa9902521$5&qt=IN_PAGE

History , Past

“When I put the penis in the vulva of my partner, strangely she almost always makes a comparison with a dildo … my chapel is too big not to enjoy.”

Rocco Siffredi (1964) Italian pornographic actor, director, producer and entrepreneur

from "The Zoo of 105"

Making love

“If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces.”

William Shakespeare The Merchant of Venice

Portia, Act I, scene ii.
The Merchant of Venice (1596–7)

Men

“For where God built a church, there the Devil would also build a chapel…Thus is the Devil ever God's ape.”

Martin Luther book Table Talk

67. Compare "Where God hath a temple, the Devil will have a chapel", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, part III, section 4, member 1, subsection 1
Table Talk (1569)

God

“They are preserving the sanctity of marriage, so that two gay men who've been together for twenty-five years can't get married, but a guy can still get drunk in Vegas and marry a hooker at the Elvis chapel! The sanctity of marriage is saved!”

Lea DeLaria (1958) American actress and singer

Box Lunch

Men , Marriage , Guy

“The darkness. Goddamn the darkness. It seemed to Garraty they had been buried alive in it. Immured in it. Dawn was a century away. Many of them would never see the dawn. Or the sun. They were buried six feet deep in the darkness. All they needed was the monotonous chanting of the priest, his voice muffled but not entirely obscured by the new-packed darkness, above which the mourners stood. The mourners were not even aware that they were here, they were alive, they were screaming and scratching and clawing at the coffin-lid darkness, the air was flaking and rusting away, the air was turning into poison gas, hope fading until hope itself was darkness, and above all of it the nodding chapel-bell voice of the priest and the impatient, shuffling feet of mourners anxious to be off into the warm May sunshine. Then, overmastering that, the sighing, shuffling chorus of the bugs and the beetles, squirming their way through the earth, come for the feast…I could go crazy, Garraty thought. I could go right the fuck off my rocker.”

Stephen King book The Long Walk

The Long Walk (1979)

Way , Sun , Hope

“People who prefer e-books… think that books merely take up space. This is true, but so do your children and Prague and the Sistine Chapel.”

Joe Queenan (1950) American writer

Source: One for the Books

Children , People , Books , Thinking

“Starlight and comet tails burned the tips of endless grass below into hammered silver. Like thousands of tapers in the chapel, just blown out but still glowing.
If one could drown in the grass… it might be the best way to die.”

Gregory Maguire book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Way , Grass

“By this time trapped inside the drug's reverie I could have sprayed out Michelangelo's Last Judgement on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. A yacht would be a beggar's handcart by comparison.”

Ralph Steadman book The Joke's Over

The America's Cup, p. 55
The Joke's Over (2006)

Time

“In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land (1922), Line 385 et seq.

Home , Grass

“The next monument visited was the great Jain temple built only a few years before by Shantidas Jhaveri, one of the wealthiest men of Gujarat in his day and high in favour both with Shah Jahan and after him with Aurangzeb. …In 1638, however, when Mandelslo visited the place, this temple which he calls ‘ the principal mosque of the Banyas ’ was in all its pristine splendour and ‘ without dispute one of the noblest structures that could be seen’. ‘It was then new,’ he adds, ‘ for the Founder, who was a rich Banya merchant, named Shantidas, was living in my time.
As Mandelslo’s description is the earliest account we have of this famous monument, which was desecrated only seven years after visit by the Orders of Aurangzeb, then viceroy of Gujarat (1645), we shall reproduce it at some length. It stood in the middle of a great court which was enclosed by a high wall of freestone. All about this wall on the inner side was a gallery, similar to the cloisters of the monasteries in Europe, with a large number of cells, in each of which was placed a statue in white or black marble. These figures no doubt represented the Jain Tirthankars, but Mandelslo may be forgiven when he speaks of each of them as ‘ representing a woman naked, sitting, and having her legs lying cross under her, according to the mode of the country. Some of the cells had three statues in them, namely, a large one between two smaller ones.’ At the entrance to the temple stood two elephants of black marble in life- size and on one of them was seated an effigy of the builder. The walls of the temple were adorned with figures of men and animals. At the further end of the building were the shrines consisting of three chapels divided from each other by wooden rails. In these were placed marble statues of the Tirthankars with a lighted lamp before that which stood in the central shrine. One of the priests attending the temple was busy receiving from the votaries flowers which were placed round the images, as also oil for the lamps that hung before the rails, and wheat and salt as a sacrifice. The priest had covered his mouth and nose with a piece of linen cloth so that the impurity of his breath should not profane the images.”

Shantidas Jhaveri (1580–1659) Indian jewellery and bullion trader during Mughal era

Description of the temple built by Shantidas Jhaveri. Mandelslo’s Travels In Western India (a.d.1638-9) https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.531053 p. 23-25

Life , Men , Flowers , Lying

“God never had a church but there, men say,
The Devil a chapel hath raised by some wyles.
I doubted of this saw, till on a day
I westward spied great Edinburgh’s Saint Gyles.”

William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649) British writer

Posthumous Poems, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "Where God hath a temple, the Devil will have a chapel", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part iii, Section 4, Member 1, Subsection 1 .

Men , God

“Wherever God erects a house of prayer,
The Devil always builds a chapel there;
And 'twill be found, upon examination,
The latter has the largest congregation.”

Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) English trader, writer and journalist

Pt. I, l. 1. Compare: "Where God hath a temple, the Devil will have a chapel", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, part iii, section 4, Memb. 1, Subsect. 1.
The True-Born Englishman http://www.luminarium.org/editions/trueborn.htm (1701)

God , Housing

“The journalists have constructed for themselves a little wooden chapel, which they also call the Temple of Fame, in which they put up and take down portraits all day long and make such a hammering you can't hear yourself speak.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

D 20
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook D (1773-1775)

“Imagine an immense plain.... in the middle, a small Gothic chapel surrounded by trees.... around that a hundred tents made of white canvas.... in open-air kitchens huge pots of boiling soup, incredible ragouts..”

Eugène Boudin (1824–1898) French painter

Quote of Boudin in a letter to his brother, 1857; as cited in the descritption of 'The Pardon of Saint-Anne-La-Palud' by the Met-museum https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/744059]
Boudin described in his typical way the scene of the sacred procession of the Pardon of Saint-Anne-la-Palud, a major religious festival in Brittany, that he witnessed in 1857
1850s - 1870s

Imagination , Tree

“You're a real bastard," Obie said finally, his frustration erupting, like a Coke exploding from a bottle after you shake it. "You know that?" Archie turned and smiled at him benevolently, like a goddamn king passing out favors. "Jesus," Obie said, exasperated. "Don't swear, Obie," Archie chided him. "You'll have to tell it in confession." "Look who's talking. I don't know how you had the nerve to receive communion in the chapel this morning." "It doesn't take nerve, Obie. When you march down the rail, you're receiving The Body, man. Me, I'm just chewing a wafer they buy by the pound in Worcester." Obie looked away in disgust. "And when you say 'Jesus', you're talking about your leader. But when I say 'Jesus,' I'm talking about a guy who walked the earth for thirty-three years like any other guy but caught the imagination of some PR cats. PR for Public Relations, in case you don't know, Obie.”

Robert Cormier book The Chocolate War

Obie didn't bother to answer. You couldn't ever win an argument with Archie.
Source: The Chocolate War (1974), p. 8

Smile , Guy , Imagination , Cats

“Where God hath a temple, the Devil will have a chapel.”

Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy

Section 4, member 1, subsection 1.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part III

God

“I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this chapel were shut,
And ‘Thou shalt not’ writ over the door,
So I turned to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore,

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 10.

Love , Flowers , Joy

“His remains will be transported back to Quezon City on Sunday morning. A mass will be held at the Arlington Memorial Chapel in Araneta Avenue, Quezon City where his remains will be cremated.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2012, Statement: on the Passing of His Father Rep. Salvador H. Escudero III

Memory

“At present no Government dare say a word to the Church—that overgrown and monstrous abuse assumes airs as if it were not an abuse. It is a wen upon the head and pretends to be the head, and no administration is strong enough to say a word against it. With 14,000 Dissenting Chapels in England and Wales, with two-thirds of Scotland in dissenting ranks, with five-sixths of Ireland hostile to the Church, how comes it that this scandalous abuse puts on the character of a national and useful institution? Simply because it has the Crown and the Peers on its side by tradition and the constitution, and has gained great power in the Commons thro' our defective representation. Let the representation be amended, and then the Church will be more humble, and will submit, of necessity, to be overhauled as one of the departments of the State.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Letter to Charles Villiers (15 July 1852), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 201-202.
1850s

Hostility , Strong

“And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sunlight
And the legends of the green chapels.”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

" Poem in October http://www.bigeye.com/october.htm", st. 5 (1946)

“No sooner is a temple built to God, but the Devil builds a chapel hard by.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

God

“Our father's remains now lie in state at the main chapel of Mt. Carmel Church in New Manila, Quezon City.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2012, Statement: on the Passing of His Father Rep. Salvador H. Escudero III

Lie

“Stone towers appeared early in the Loire River valley. The massive ruin at Langeais, recently dated 992, was once a broad tower with four corner turrets. Today it stands in the park of a fifteenth-century chateau. Not far off, at Loches, the tower is the earliest surviving great tower to combine within its walls a hall, the lord’s chamber, and a chapel. Recent analysis of the wood used in the original building has dated this tower between 1012 and 1035.”

Marilyn Stokstad (1929–2016) art historian

Source: Medieval castles (2005), Ch. 1 : The Great Tower : Norman and Early Plantagenet Castles

Appearance

“If the famous Clementi, whom I found here (Italy) in the year 1766, and bought of his father for seven years, is not still a Catholic, the fault is not with me.—I assured the Pope I would not endeavour to convert him. Meeting him one Sunday when we were in the country, I asked him—" Why he did not go to mass" (there was a Catholic chapel about ten miles distant) : he said—" There was no horse."—" No horse! Why don't you take the grey horse?"—"O quello, Signore, scappa via.( O that one, Gentleman, run off. )"—" Take then the black poney."—" E quello casca subito.( And that one falls quickly.)" So what with the horse that fell, and the horse that ran away, I fear Signior Clementi attended mass as seldom as you do a sermon.”

Peter Beckford (1643–1710) Governor of Jamaica

Familiar letters from Italy, to a friend in England (1805) by Sir Peter Beckford (1740-1811), Vol. 2

Fear , Distant , Horse , Country

“Carol was discovering that the one thing that can be more disconcerting than intelligent hatred is demanding love. "She supposed that she was being gracefully dull and standardized in the Smails' presence, but they scented the heretic, and with forward-stooping delight they sat and tried to drag out her ludicrous concepts for their amusement. They were like the Sunday-afternoon mob starting at monkeys in the Zoo, poking fingers and making faces and giggling at the resentment of the more dignified race… They were staggered to learn that a real tangible person, living in Minnesota, and married to their own flesh-and-blood relation, could apparently believe that divorce may not always be immoral; that illegitimate children do not bear any special and guaranteed form of curse; that there are ethical authorities outside of the Hebrew Bible; that men have drunk wine yet not died in the gutter; that the capitalistic system of distribution and the Baptist wedding-ceremony were not known in the Garden of Eden;… that there are Ministers of the Gospel who accept evolution; that some persons of intelligence and business ability do not always vote the Republican ticket straight;… that a violin is not inherently more immoral than a chapel organ… 'Where does she get all them the'ries?'”

Sinclair Lewis book Main Street

marveled Uncle Whittier Smail.
Main Street (1920)

Love , Men , Children , Intelligence

“It was June, 1933, one week after Commencement, when Kay Leiland Strong, Vassar '33, the first of her class to run around the table at the Class Day dinner, was married to Harald Petersen, Reed '27, in the chapel of St. George's Church, P. E., Karl F. Reiland, Rector.”

Mary McCarthy book The Group

Source: The Group (1963), Ch. 1, first lines of novel

Strong

“If the soul of Roman Catholicism is to be found in partisan politics, then it's probably time to shutter up the chapel”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

24
Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991), The Catholic Writer Today (2013)

Soul , Time

“That dualism of the Church and the Chapel taken together has been one of the most potent influences in the life of our country. The one fostering, perhaps, more than the other, the respect for authority and tradition and the sense of historical continuity; the other laying its main emphasis on individual obedience to eternal law. They both have defects of their qualities, but they have both been, and are, and will be great social forces with great political consequences. Both at their best penetrate life with serious purpose, and are in constant war with that spirit of secularism which finds its paradise in idleness and frivolity, with which no country can ever prosper.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Cornwall (23 June 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), p. 55.
1927

Life , War , Law , Sense

“I think it possible that Marxism was the first attempt, for our time, outside the formal religions, at a world-mind, a world-ethic. It went wrong, could not prevent itself from dividing and subdividing, like all the other religions, into smaller and smaller chapels, sects, and creeds. But it was an attempt.”

Doris Lessing book The Golden Notebook

Introduction (1971)
The Golden Notebook (1962)

World , Religion , Thinking , Time

“The competitive struggle forces men and women to spend an excessive amount of time in the kitchen of life and thereby denies them maximum opportunity of appropriating the values of library, conservatory, chapel and living room.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Property (1935)

Life , Women , Men , Time

“Two small aisles on each side of this chapel present a touching instance of the equality of the grave; which brings down the oppressor to a level with the oppressed, and mingles the dust of the bitterest enemies together.”

Washington Irving book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.

"Westminster Abbey".
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819–1820)

“The little White Chapel
Is ringing its bell
With a ring-a-ding-dong,
All day long”

Eleanor Farjeon Nursery Rhymes of London Town

Whitechapel
Nursery Rhymes of London Town (1916)

“Antonio always prayed in the room before the fight at the last when the well-wishers and the followers were gone. If there was time at the ring nearly everyone slipped into the chapel to pray once before the paseo. Antonio knew I prayed for him and never for myself. I was not fighting and I had quit praying for myself during the Spanish Civil War when I saw the terrible things that happened to other people and I felt that to pray for oneself was selfish and egotistical.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Source: The Dangerous Summer (1985), Ch. 9

War , People , Time , Fight

“{Music symbolizes the loss of faith, of common belief. ] The small, intimate church is closed, the organs are dead, it is sadder than before. Only those whom fate designs for the eternal mass of infinite love remain. They compose only a very small chapel of clarity in space and time.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline (1894–1961) French writer

45
Mea culpa; suivi de la vie et l'oeuvre de Semmelweis (1937)

Love , Fate , Faith , Music

“It struck me as I waited that all great enterprises are about logistics. Not genius or inspiration or flights of imagination, skill or cunning, but logistics. Building pyramids or landing spacecraft on Jupiter or invading whole continents or painting divine scenes over the roofs of chapels: logistics.”

Tom McCarthy (writer) book Déjà vu

Source: Remainder (2005), Ch. 11.

Imagination , Waiting , Painting

“How can there be a religion which has no rigid dogmas demanding belief on pain of eternal damnation, no theological postulates, even no fixed theology, no credo distinguishing it from antagonistic or rival religions? How can there be a religion which has no papal head, no governing ecclesiastic body, no church, chapel or congregational system, no binding religious form of any kind obligatory on all its adherents, no one administration and discipline? For the Hindu priests are mere ceremonial officiants without any ecclesiastical authority or disciplinary powers and the Pundits are mere interpreters of the Shastra, not the lawgivers of the religion or its rulers. How again can Hinduism be called a religion when it admits all beliefs, allowing even a kind of high-reaching atheism and agnosticism and permits all possible spiritual experiences, all kinds of religious adventures? The only thing fixed, rigid, positive, clear is the social law, and even that varies in different castes, regions, communities. The caste rules and not the Church; but even the caste cannot punish a man for his beliefs, ban heterodoxy or prevent his following a new revolutionary doctrine or a new spiritual leader.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Indian Spirituality and Life (1919)

Pain , Religion , Law , Communication

“My father considered that anyone who went to chapel and didn't drink alcohol was not to be tolerated. I grew up in that belief.”

Richard Burton (1925–1984) Welsh actor

In Playboy Interviews http://books.google.com/books?id=rfoZAAAAYAAJ, Playboy Press, 1967, p. 100

Alcohol , Drink

“In all the Romish [Catholic] countries of Europe, France, Italy, Germany, etc., the God Christ, as well as his mother, are described in their old pictures and statues to be black. The infant God in the arms of his black mother, his eyes and drapery white, is himself perfectly black. If the reader doubts my word he may go to the Cathedral at Moulins—to the famous Chapel of the Virgin at Loretto—to the Church of the Annunciata—the Church at St. Lazaro or the Church of St. Stephen at Genoa—to St. Francisco at Pisa—to the Church at Brixen in Tyrol and to that at Padua—to the Church of St. Theodore at Munich—to a church and to the Cathedral at Augsburg, where a black virgin and child as large as life—to Rome and the Borghese chapel of Maria Maggiore—to the Pantheon—to a small chapel of St. Peters on the right hand side on entering, near the door; and in fact, to almost innumerable other churches in countries professing the Romish religion.”

Godfrey Higgins book Anacalypsis

Vol. I., p. 138.
Anacalypsis (published 1833)

Life , God , Religion , Christ

“Now let us consider how many relics of the true cross there are in the world. An account of those merely with which I am acquainted would fill a whole volume, for there is not a church, from a cathedral to the most miserable abbey or parish church, that does not contain a piece. Large splinters of it are preserved in various places, as for instance in the Holy Chapel at Paris, whilst at Rome they show a crucifix of considerable size made entirely, they say, from this wood. In short, if we were to collect all these pieces of the true cross exhibited in various parts, they would form a whole ship's cargo. The Gospel testifies that the cross could be borne by one single individual;..”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Traité des reliques http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32136/32136-h/32136-h.html, translators: Krasinski, Valerian, Count, approximately 1780-1855. P. 233.

World , Parting

“I heard one of the teaching pastors at Willow Creek speak on the rich young ruler text that Rich (Mullins) had talked about in Wheaton's chapel. The teaching pastor had said, "now this doesn't mean you have to go sell your rollerblades and golf clubs," and he went on to "contextualize" the teaching to show that we just need to be careful not to make idols of our things. I wasn't so sure about that. Jesus doesn't tell the man to be a better steward, or to treat his workers fairly, or not to make money an idol. He tells this highly educated and devoutly religious young man that he lacks one thing: giving up everything he owns to give the poor.”

Shane Claiborne The Irresistible Revolution

Source: The Irresistible Revolution (2006), p. 103

Money , Education

“There is a dreadful discrepancy between Michelangelo's works and the words put into the mouth of Charlton Heston, who represents him here, and this picture — which is mostly about a prolonged wrangle between the sculptor and Pope Julius II (Rex Harrison), who keeps sweeping into the Sistine Chapel and barking, "When will you make an end of it?"”

Pauline Kael (1919–2001) American film critic

isn't believable for an instant.
"The Agony and the Ecstasy," p. 11.
5001 Nights at the Movies (1982)

“I feel at home in Hindu temples. I like how complicated they are. Being in a great Hindu temple is like being in a forest. You can wander around all day. People kind of leave you alone. When you wander around temples when there isn't a ceremony, there's a kind of peacefulness about them, and I recognize the scenes and the icons. That's Shiva doing this, that's Parvati doing that. Whereas when I go to the Vatican, I have to have someone explain to me what the Sistine Chapel is all about. So I'm at home in Hinduism in that sense, I know what it's all about.”

Wendy Doniger (1940) American Indologist

About her intent to practice Hinduism
Q&A with Wendy Doniger, the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor and author of The Hindus

People , Peace , Feeling , Home

“Dodgson was overcome by the beauty of Cologne Cathedral. I found him leaning against the rails of the Choir and sobbing like a child. When the verger came to show us over the chapels behind the Choir, he got out of the way, he said that he could not bear the harsh voice of the man in the presence of so much beauty.”

Henry Liddon (1829–1890) British theologian

The Russian Journal, ed. Morton Cohen (1979), p. 13.

Beauty , Way

“I recall the sudden arpeggios of laughter lilting across the tender, springtime grass — gay-welling, far-floating, fluent, spontaneous, a bell-like feminine fluting, then suppressed; as though snuffed swiftly and irrevocably beneath the quiet solemnity of the vespered air now vibrant with somber chapel bells.”

Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man

Source: Invisible Man (1952), Chapter 5.

Laughter , Grass

“Creeds pass, an inexhaustible supply of faith remains, with which man proceeds to rebuild temples, churches, chapels and shrines.”

William Osler (1849–1919) Canadian pathologist, physician, educator, bibliophile, historian, author, cofounder of Johns Hopkins Hospi…

The Faith that Heals (1910)
Context: Nothing in life is more wonderful than faith — the one great moving force which we can neither weigh in the balance nor test in the crucible. Intangible as the ether, ineluctable as gravitation, the radium of the moral and mental spheres, mysterious, indefinable, known only by its effects, faith pours out an unfailing stream of energy while abating nor jot nor tittle of its potency. Well indeed did St. Paul break out into the well-known glorious panegyric, but even this scarcely does justice to the Hertha of the psychical world, distributing force as from a great storage battery without money and without price to the children of men.
Three of its relations concern us here. The most active manifestations are in the countless affiliations which man in his evolution has worked out with the unseen, with the invisible powers, whether of light or of darkness, to which from time immemorial he has erected altars and shrines. To each one of the religions, past or present, faith has been the Jacob's ladder. Creeds pass, an inexhaustible supply of faith remains, with which man proceeds to rebuild temples, churches, chapels and shrines.

Faith

“Except during my childhood, when I was probably influenced by Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel depiction of God with a flowing white beard, I have never tried to project the Creator in any kind of human likeness. The vociferous debates about whether God is male or female seem ridiculous to me.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Living Faith (2001), p. 222
Post-Presidency
Context: Except during my childhood, when I was probably influenced by Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel depiction of God with a flowing white beard, I have never tried to project the Creator in any kind of human likeness. The vociferous debates about whether God is male or female seem ridiculous to me. I think of God as an omnipotent and omniscient presence, a spirit that permeates the universe, the essence of truth, nature, being, and life. To me, these are profound and indescribable concepts that seem to be trivialized when expressed in words.

God , Childhood

“He was too big to be nailed to the wall
Of a stone chapel, yet still we crammed him
Between the boards of a black book.”

R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) Welsh poet

"A Welsh Testament"
Tares (1961)
Context: Even God had a Welsh name:
He spoke to him in the old language;
He was to have a peculiar care
For the Welsh people. History showed us
He was too big to be nailed to the wall
Of a stone chapel, yet still we crammed him
Between the boards of a black book.

Books

“We looked out from the little pulpit in that little church and talked about how something so big started from a place so small. Just a lot of committed people of faith in church on one side of the street, and all the power of Alabama in the state capitol right across the street. As a young lawyer, I used to listen to Dr. King in chapel at Spelman College. One of the thngs I liked about him was that he didn't pretend to be a great powerful know-it-all.”

Marian Wright Edelman (1939) American children's rights activist

As quoted in Mother Jones Magazine May-Jun 1991. Vol. 16, No. 3. p. 77 http://books.google.com.mx/books?id=IecDAAAAMBAJ&dq=%22Take+the+first+step+in+faith.+You+don%27t+have+to+see+the+whole+staircase%2C+just+take+the+first+step.%22&q=%22Take+the+first+step+in+faith.+You+don%27t+have+to+see+the+whole+staircase%2C+just+take+the+first+step.%22#v=snippet&q=%22Take%20the%20first%20step%20in%20faith.%20You%20don't%20have%20to%20see%20the%20whole%20staircase%2C%20just%20take%20the%20first%20step.%22&f=false. ISSN 0362-8841.
Context: In Montgomery, Alabama, Jonah and I went to the Civil Rights Memorial, and then we walked around to Dexter Baptist Church and went up into Martin's pulpit. I'd forgotten what a little place it was. We looked out from the little pulpit in that little church and talked about how something so big started from a place so small. Just a lot of committed people of faith in church on one side of the street, and all the power of Alabama in the state capitol right across the street. As a young lawyer, I used to listen to Dr. King in chapel at Spelman College. One of the thngs I liked about him was that he didn't pretend to be a great powerful know-it-all. I remember him discussing openly his gloom, depression, his fears, admitting that he didn't know what the next step was. He would then say: "Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step."

People , Faith

“Of course the avaricious man of our day, be he landlord, merchant, industrialist, does not adore sacks of coins or bundles of banknotes in some little chapel and upon some little altar. He does not kneel before these spoils of other men, nor does he address prayers or canticles to them amidst odorous clouds of incense. But he proclaims that money is the only good, and he yields it all his soul. A cult sincere, without hypocrisy, never growing weary, never forsworn. Whenever he says, in the debasement of his heart and his speech, that he loves money for the delights it can purchase, he lies or he terribly deceives himself, this very assertion being belied at the very moment he utters it by every one of his acts, by the infinite toil and pains to which he gladly condemns himself in order to acquire or conserve that money which is but the visible figure of the Blood of Christ circulating throughout all His members.”

Léon Bloy (1846–1917) French writer, poet and essayist

Source: Pilgrim of the Absolute (1947), pp. 89-90

Money , Soul , Pain , Heart

“Our loss, indeed, will always remain loss, and no preaching or teaching can ever make it otherwise. But the question is whether it shall weaken and embitter, or strengthen and purify us, and lead us to raise to the dead we mourn a monument in our lives that shall be better than any pillared chapel or storied marble tomb.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 8 : Suffering and Consolation
Life and Destiny (1913)

Loss , Making love , Dead , Question