Piety Quotes

“Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters of nature and the gods. For these men know that, once ignorance is put aside, that wonderment would be taken away, which is the only means by which their authority is preserved.”
― Baruch De Spinoza, Ethics

“My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests.”
― George Santayana, Soliloquies in England & Later Soliloquies

“Being kind to someone, only to look kind to others, defeats the purpose of being kind.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.”
― Robert Heinlein

“Since Jimmy Carter, religious fundamentalists play a major role in elections. He was the first president who made a point of exhibiting himself as a born again Christian. That sparked a little light in the minds of political campaign managers: Pretend to be a religious fanatic and you can pick up a third of the vote right away. Nobody asked whether Lyndon Johnson went to church every day. Bill Clinton is probably about as religious as I am, meaning zero, but his managers made a point of making sure that every Sunday morning he was in the Baptist church singing hymns.”
― Noam Chomsky

“He was very religious; he believed that he had a secret pact with God which exempted him from doing good in exchange for prayers and piety.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Aleph and Other Stories

“As sinners we are like addicts - addicted to ourselves and our own projects. The theology of glory simply seeks to give those projects eternal legitimacy. The remedy for the theology of glory, therefore, cannot be encouragement and positive thinking, but rather the end of the addictive desire. Luther says it directly: "The remedy for curing desire does not lie in satisfying it, but in extinguishing it." So we are back to the cross, the radical intervention, end of the life of the old and the beginning of the new.

Since the theology of glory is like addiction and not abstract doctrine, it is a temptation over which we have no control in and of ourselves, and from which we must be saved. As with the addict, mere exhortation and optimistic encouragement will do no good. It may be intended to build up character and self-esteem, but when the addict realizes the impossibility of quitting, self-esteem degenerates all the more. The alcoholic will only take to drinking in secret, trying to put on the facade of sobriety. As theologians of glory we do much the same. We put on a facade of religious propriety and piety and try to hide or explain away or coddle our sins....

As with the addict there has to be an intervention, an act from without. In treatment of alcoholics some would speak of the necessity of 'bottoming out,' reaching the absolute bottom where one can no longer escape the need for help. Then it is finally evident that the desire can never be satisfied, but must be extinguished. In matters of faith, the preaching of the cross is analogous to that intervention. It is an act of God, entirely from without. It does not come to feed the religious desires of the Old Adam and Eve but to extinguish them. They are crucified with Christ to be made new.”
― Gerhard O. Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther's Heidelberg Disputation, 1518

“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. Therefore atheism did never perturb states; for it makes men wary of themselves, as looking no further: and we see the times inclined to atheism (as the time of Augustus Cæsar) were civil times. But superstition hath been the confusion of many states, and bringeth in a new primum mobile, that ravisheth all the spheres of government. The master of superstition is the people; and in all superstition wise men follow fools; and arguments are fitted to practice, in a reversed order.”
― Francis Bacon

“I am not perfect, but if I looked perfect to everyone I must have been rocking imperfect perfectly to a few imperfect souls that seek imperfection vs. perfection, in an imperfect world where God asks us to seek perfection for our imperfect souls.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Short devotions are the bane of deep piety. Calmness, grasp, strength, are never the companions of hurry.”
― E.M. Bounds, Power Through Prayer

“Very well. He'd lighten up. As a matter of fact, he felt as light as the bubbly froth that flew from the lips of the waves. Whatever else his long, unprecedented life might have been, it had been fun. Fun! If others should find that appraisal shallow, frivolous, so be it. To him, it seemed now to largely have been some form of play. And he vowed that in the future he would strive to keep that sense of play more in mind, for he'd grown convinced that play--more than piety, more than charity or vigilance--was what allowed human beings to transcend evil.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“Belief must be something different from a mixture of opinions about God and the world, and of precepts for one life or for two. Piety cannot be an instinct craving for a mess of metaphysical and ethical crumbs.”
― Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers

“Take heed, you bear in mind the piety you owe unto your country and unto your fellow countrymen, whose slaughter by the treachery of the Payneham shall be unto your disgrace everlasting. Unless you press hardily forward to defend them. Fight therefore for your country, and if it be that death overtake you, suffer it willingly for your country’s sake. For death itself is victory, and a healing unto the soul.”
― Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain

“The afflictions of the wicked exasperate them, enrage them, stone and pave them, obdurate and petrify them, but they do not crucify them. The afflictions of the godly crucify them. And when I am come to that conformity with my Saviour, as to fulfill his sufferings in my fiesh, (as I am, when I glorify him in a Christian constancy and cheerfulness in my afflictions) then I am crucified with him, carried up to his cross...”
― John Donne

“Simple, sincere people seldom speak much of their piety; it shows itself in acts rather than in words, and has more influence than homilies or protestations.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“In the abstract you know that music exists and is beautiful. But don’t therefore pretend, when you hear Mozart, to go into raptures which you don’t feel. If you do, you become one of those idiotic music-snobs … unable to distinguish Bach from Wagner, but mooing with ecstasy as soon as the fiddles strike up. It’s exactly the same with God. The world’s full of ridiculous God-snobs. People who aren’t really alive, who’ve never done any vital act, who aren’t in any living relation with anything; people who haven’t the slightest personal or practical knowledge of what God is. But they moo away in churches, they coo over their prayers, they pervert and destroy their whole dismal existences by acting in accordance with the will of an arbitrarily imagined abstraction which they choose to call God. Just a pack of God-snobs. They’re as grotesque and contemptible as the music-snobs … but nobody has the sense to say so. The God-snobs are admired for being so good and pious and Christian. When they’re merely dead and ought to be having their bottoms kicked and their noses tweaked to make them sit up and come to life.”
― Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point

“The afflictions of the wicked exasperate them, enrage them, stone and pave them, obdurate and petrify them, but they do not crucify them. The afflictions of the godly crucify them. And when I am come to that conformity with my Saviour, as to fulfill his sufferings in my flesh, (as I am, when I glorify him in a Christian constancy and cheerfulness in my afflictions) then I am crucified with him, carried up to his cross...”
― John Donne

“Ida Rhew was bending low, pulling a pan of rolls from the oven. God, sang a cracking Negro voice from the transistor radio. God don't never change. The gospel program. It was something that haunted Charlotte, though she'd never mentioned it to anyone. If Ida hadn't had that racket turned up so loud they might have heard what was going on in the yard, might have known something was wrong. But then (tossing in her bed at night, trying restlessly to trace events to a possible First Cause) it was she who had made pious Ida work on Sunday in the first place. Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. Jehovah in the Old Testament was always smiting down people for far less.”
― Donna Tartt, The Little Friend

“Ida Rhew was bending low, pulling a pan of rolls from the oven. God, sang a cracking Negro voice from the transistor radio. God don't never change. The gospel program. It was something that haunted Charlotte, though she'd never mentioned it to anyone. If Ida hadn't had that racket turned up so loud they might have heard what was going on in the yard, might have known something was wrong. But then (tossing in her bed at night, trying restlessly to trace events to a possible First Cause) it was she who had made pious Ida work on Sunday in the first place. Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. Jehovah in the Old Testament was always smiting people down for far less.”
― Donna Tartt, The Little Friend

“En horas de profunda impiedad, planeamos la aniquilación del género humano, lo más miserable que hemos urdido se acomoda a su devoción.”
― Goethe, Fausto

“Piety in regard to the dead: to do everything for what does not exist.”
― Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

“Being pious is not the same as being true.”
― Dr Aisling O'Donnell, THE MAP: Archetypes of the Major Arcana

“Without praying, there is no acts of piety.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“So modern scientists are the pious cult of yesteryear?”

"Exactly. Their dated dogma of immediacy and parsimony, while digestible, is ultimately untrue and will fail them in the end. Experimenters are always ahead of the zeitgeist, we’ll just have to wait for the world to catch up.”
― Larry Fort, Still Standing

“My parents spoke of piety, of love, and of humility. I have really tried hard. But as long as there was a God in my world, I couldn't even get close to my goals. My humility was not humble enough. My love remained nonetheless far less than the love of Christ or of the saints or even my own mother's love. And my piety was forever poisoned by grave doubts. Now that God is gone, I feel that all this is mine; piety toward life, humility before my meaningless fate, and love for the other children who are afraid, who are ill, who are cruel.”
― Ingmar Bergman, Images: My Life in Film

“The modern woman will note with pleasant surprise that Mary of Nazareth, while being completely devoted to the will of God, was far from being a timidly submissive woman or one whose piety was repellent to others. On the contrary, she was a woman who did not hesitate to proclaim that God vindicates the humble and the oppressed and removes the powerful people of this world from their privileged positions. (Marialis Cultus)”
― Pope Paul VI

“Call it pious, but whether unified or divided, the civilized will try to live worlds apart from violence.”
― Criss Jami

“Is that what they teach you at the convent? That the gods demand the hearts from our bodies?”
― Robin LaFevers, Grave Mercy

“And I would find a way to serve both my god and my heart. Surely He does not give us hearts so we may spend our lives ignoring them.”
― Robin LaFevers, Grave Mercy

“And yet by nature the servants are born free; for no man is by nature a slave.”
― Philo of Alexandria, The Works of Philo