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The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried. — G.K. Chesterton · 1910The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild. — G.K. Chesterton · 1908
St. Cyprian2 quotes
There cannot be salvation for any, except in the Church. — St. Cyprian · 256He cannot have God for his father who has not the church for his mother. — St. Cyprian · 251
Tertullian2 quotes
The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. — Tertullian · 197It is to believed because it is absurd. — Tertullian · 206
Andre Gide1 quote
The whole effect of Christianity was to transfer the drama onto the moral plane. — Andre Gide · 1925
David Hume1 quote
The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity: And whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience. — David Hume · 1748
The most dangerous of devotions, in my opinion, is the one endemic to Christianity: I was not born to be of this world. With a second life waiting, suffering can be endured-especially in other people. The natural environment can be used up. Enemies of the faith can be savaged and suicidal martyrdom praised. — E.O. Wilson · 1998
The pure and genuine influence of Christianity may be traced in its beneficial, though imperfect, effects on the barbarian proselytes of the North. If the decline of the Roman empire was hastened by the conversion of Constantine, his victorious religion broke the violence of the fall, and mollified the ferocious temper of the conquerors. — Edward Gibbon · 1788
Prosperity is the Blessing of the Old Testament; Adversity is the Blessing of the New. — Francis Bacon · 1625
There was really only one Christian, and he died on the cross. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1895
As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents. — George Orwell · 1937
Scratch the Christian and you find the pagan-spoiled. — Israel Zangwill · 1892
We believe that the first time we're born, as children, it's human life given to us; and when we accept Jesus as our Savior, it's a new life. That's what "born again" means. — Jimmy Carter · 1979
Christ of his gentleness Thirsting and hungering, Walked in the wilderness; Soft words of grace He spoke Unto lost desert-folk That listened wondering. — Robert Graves · 1916
Sir, I think all Christians, whether Papists or Protestants, agree in the essential articles, and that their differences are trivial, and rather political than religious. — Samuel Johnson · 1763
He who begins by loving Christianity, better than truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge · 1825
You're born a sinner. By being born you are a sinner and you're going to hell. But you can just apologize and then you can go to heaven. No big deal. If you're a murderer—same thing, it's just apologize and go to heaven. — Sarah Silverman · 2013
St. Jerome1 quote
Christians are not born, but made. — St. Jerome · 403
If Jesus Christ were to come to-day, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it. — Thomas Carlyle · 1881
It had been boldly predicted by some of the early Christians that the conversion of the world would lead to the establishment of perpetual peace. In looking back, with our present experience, we are driven to the melancholy conclusion that, instead of diminishing the number of wars, ecclesiastical influence has actually and very seriously increased it. — William E.H. Lecky · 1869