Piety Quotes

I bought abandon dearAnd sold all piety for pleasure.My own free spirit I have followed,And never will I give up lust.

In England we see people lulled sleep with solid and elaborate discourses of piety, who would be warmed and transported out of themselves by the bellowings and distortions of enthusiasm.

A magnificent achievement that witnesses powerfully to the rich development, harmony, and piety of the Reformed faith.

It is proverbial, of course, that man never learns from history, and, as a rule, in respect to a problem of the present, it can teach us simply nothing. The new must be made through untrodden regions, without suppositions, and often, unfortunately, without piety also.

Censorship, I believe, is the most dangerous enemy to all human communication, and piety of intention is probably the most dangerous, the most virulent and the most self-satisfying.

In the beds which the piety of the public has prepared on every side, stricken men await the verdict of fate.

True piety lies rather in the power to contemplate the universe with a quiet mind.

Whoever leads an auspicious life here and governs the commonwealth rightly, as my most noble father did, who promoted all piety and banished all ignorance, has a most certain way to heaven.

Life was not given for indolent contemplation and study of self, nor for brooding over emotions of piety: Actions and actions only determine the worth.

We must embrace the power of faith, but we must never confuse politics and piety. For me, may I say that it is against my religion to impose my religion.

Among the many strange servilities mistaken for pieties, one of the least lovely is that which hopes to flatter God by despising the world, and vilifying human nature.

I have now lost my barrier between me and death; God grant I may live to be as well prepared for it, as I confidently believe her to have been! If the way to Heaven be through piety, truth, justice and charity, she is there.

It is clear before God and man that the entire war on HIV and AIDS has not been waged with any degree of piety, responsibility and care.

In a society which is structured the wrong way, piety has no effect.

If there is a God, there is a map. If God has a map, his map is the true map.

The child is father of the man: And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.

Piety softens all that courage bears.

I think [audiences are] more aware now of the contradictions in mainstream culture, the phony piety that permeates society, the inhumane hypocrisy.

The reason that Christianity is the best friend of government is because Christianity is the only religion that changes the heart.

We may have the best of intentions in trying to discern God’s will, but we should really stop putting ourselves through the misery of overspiritualizing every decision. Our misdirected piety makes following God more mysterious than it was meant to be

The greatest crimes have been found, in many instances, to be compatible with a superstitious piety and devotion; hence it is justly regarded as unsafe to draw any inference in favor of a man’s morals, from the fervor or strictness of his religious exercises, even though he himself believe them sincere.

The weaker sex, to piety more prone.

A good Christian cannot be a bad husband or father and, as this is equally true in everything, he who has the most piety will shine the most in all the relationships of life.

A virtuous character is likened to an unblemished flower. Piety is a fadeless bud that half opens on earth and expands through eternity. Sweetness of temper is the odor of fresh blooms, and the amaranth flowers of pure affection open but to bloom forever.

Character is in turn the enduring source of virtue. It stands by itself and excites admiration in others. It is not obedience to authority, and while it is often consistent with and reinforced by religious belief, it is not piety.

One of the most repellent spectacles at election times is the pretense of piety on the part of people running for office.

Vice gets more in this vicious world than piety.

We have lost morals, justice, honor, piety and faith, and that sense of shame which, once lost, can never be restored.

Jesus is the purest among the mighty, and the mightiest among the pure, who, with his pierced hand has raised empires from their foundations, turned the stream of history from its old channel, and still continues to rule and guide the ages

Filial Piety is the principle of Heaven, The righteousness of Earth, And the (proper) conduct of the people.

In the matter of piety, poverty serves us better than wealth, and work better than idleness, especially since wealth becomes an obstacle even for those who do not devote themselves to it.

When Poetry thus keeps its place as the handmaiden of piety, it shall attain not a poor perishable wreath, but a crown that fadeth not away.

The old harlot, German philosophy, has finally turned into a church lady.

I cannot however help repeating Piety, because I think it indispensible. Religion in a Family is at once its brightest Ornament & its best Security.

Piety and morality are but the same spirit differently manifested. Piety is religion with its face toward God; morality is religion with its face toward the world.

[Mindfulness] is not concerned with anything transcendent or divine. It serves as an antidote to theism, a cure for sentimental piety, a scalpel for excising the tumor of metaphysical belief. (130)

If you cultivate piety as an end and not a means, you will become a hypocrite.

The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures.

The law of nature instructs most animals to cherish and educate their infant progeny. The law of reason inculcates to the human species the returns of filial piety.

An atheist is but a mad, ridiculous derider of piety, but a hypocrite makes a sober jest of God and religion; he finds it easier to be upon his knees than to rise to a good action.

Earth has nothing more tender than a woman’s heart when it is the abode of piety.

Wherever the fear of God rules in the heart, it will appear both in works of charity and piety, and neither will excuse us from the other.

Oaths are the fossils of piety.

The piety of “having a personal relationship with Christ” … is alien to the New Testament… but evangelicals elevate it to the shibboleth of salvation! Unless you have a personal relationship with Jesus, buster, one day you will be boiling in Hell. Sheesh! Talk about the fury of a personal savior scorned!

Patience, piety, and salutary knowledge spring up and ripen under the harrow of affliction; before there is wine or oil, the grape must be trodden and the oil pressed.

Chastity, like piety, is a uniform grace.

Time is short, your obligations are infinite. Are your houses regulated, your children instructed, the afflicted relieved, the poor visited, the work of piety accomplished?

When obedience is so impious, revolt is a necessity.

Wonder, connected with a principle of rational curiosity, is the source of all knowledge and discover, and it is a principle even of piety; but wonder which ends in wonder, and is satisfied with wonder, is the quality of an idiot.

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.

I didn’t study theology out of piety. I studied it because I wanted to know.

Ancestor worship, or filial piety so characteristic of Asian cultures, for example, does not really resonate with Americans who favor children, not grandparents.

Politics, or controversy, or party spirit, or worldliness, have eaten
out the heart of lively piety in too many of us. The subject of
personal godliness has fallen sadly into the background.

Whenever you remember me, now or hereafter, one word you must remember: God only lives in cozy homes. Man without a cozy home is a man without God. And coziness is the relationship between you and your purity, your piety and your principles to which you have agreed.

The piety of the Hebrew prophets purges their grossness. The circumcision is an example of the power of poetry to raise the low and offensive.

Patience is a noble virtue, and, when rightly exercised, does not fail of its reward.

I have never seen either a drop of piety or a grain of truth or ingenuousness – nay, I have never found common sense in any Jew.

Moral capitalism is possible; if not, its strictures are only a kind of misleading vanity, the rhetoric of a secular piety.

Everyone understood [Charlie Hebdo], as people had understood for hundreds of years, knowing that Rabelaisian tradition of French satire, they knew how to read it. And they understood the kind of release from piety that it represented every week.

The hypocrisy and false piety of the deniers aside, the relationships of gays have no effect on heteros. Especially all the heteros who’ve done such a marvelous job of debasing marriage on their own all these many years.

Piety is the most solid goodness, and the vilest of what is evil is vice.

Piety, religion, and morality are intimately connected with the well being of that state, and indispensable to the administration of civil justice.

Without the restraints of religion and social worship, men become savages much sooner than savages become civilized by means of religion and civil government.

Piety is not an end, but a means: a means of attaining the highest culture by the purest tranquility of soul. Hence it may be observed that those who set up piety as an end and object are mostly hypocrites.

Piety and virtue are not only delightful for the present, but they leave peace and contentment behind them.

I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his ‘divine service.’

In one way or another, this is the oldest story in America: the struggle to determine whether “we, the people” is a moral compact embedded in a political contract or merely a charade masquerading as piety and manipulated by the powerful and privileged to sustain their own way of life at the expense of others.

Indifferent acts are judged by their ends sins are judged by themselves.

In our time the blasphemies are threadbare. Pessimism is now patently, as it always was essentially, more commonplace than piety. Profanity is now more than an affectation – it is a
convention. The curse against God is Exercise I in the primer of minor poetry.

It is significant that it is as difficult to get charity out of piety as to get reasonableness out of rationalism.

Friendship, love, and piety ought to be handled with a sort of mysterious secrecy; they ought to be spoken of only in the rare moments of perfect confidence, to be mutually understood in silence. Many things are too delicate to be thought; many more, to be spoken.

If there is anything I’ve learned, is that piety is smarter than hate, that mercy is preferable even to justice itself, that if you go around the world with friendly look, one does good friends.

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 erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men.

Fear God, and where you go men shall think they walk in hallowed cathedrals.

Piety is the fermentation of the forming mind and the putrefaction of the disintegrating one.

I should like to elbow aside the established pieties and raise my martini glass in salute to the mortal arts of pleasure.

Wherever Christianity has produced what historians call a ‘popular piety’ claiming to be part of the national heritage, anti-Christian reaction among the intelligentsia has followed.

Learning without piety produces a proud device; piety without learning produces a useless one.

To secure integrity there must a lofty sense of duty and a deep responsibility to future times as well as to God.

The emphasis on the “peripheries” is also a distinctively “Franciscan” way of expressing the pope’s respect for untutored popular piety – a respect, I might add, that was shared by St. John Paul II.

Maggie Nelson cuts through our culture’s prefabricated structures of thought and feeling with an intelligence whose ferocity is ultimately in the service of love. No piety is safe, no orthodoxy, no easy irony. The scare quotes burn off like fog.

If God rewarded the righteous immediately, we would soon be engaged in business, not godliness…we would be pursuing not piety,but profit.

Be happy, but be happy through piety.

Piety and holiness of life will propitiate the gods.
[Lat., Deos placatos pietas efficiet et sanctitas.]

A good man regards the root; he fixes the root, and ail else flows out of it. The root is filial piety; the fruit brotherly love.

The signal instances of Providential goodness which we have experienced and which have now almost crowned our labors with complete success demand from us in a peculiar manner the warmest returns of gratitude and piety to the Supreme Author of all good.

Temperance is corporeal piety; it is the preservation of divine order in the body.

There are pretenders to piety as well as to courage.

The clergyman who lives in the city may have piety, but he must have taste.

A constant attention to the work which God entrusts us with is a mark of solid piety.

From my point of view, a great deal of openly expressed piety is insufferable conceit.

Laughter is holier than piety, freedom is sweeter than fame, and in the end it’s love and love alone that really matters.

Faith, and hope, and patience and all the strong, beautiful, vital forces of piety are withered and dead in a prayerless life. The life of the individual believer, his personal salvation, and personal Christian graces have their being, bloom, and fruitage in prayer.

Political Science carries inseparably with it the study of piety, and that he who is not pious cannot be truly wise.

Chastity prays for me, piety sings,
Innocence sweetens my last black breath,
Modesty hides my thighs in her wings,
And all the deadly virtues plague my death!

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.

Yes, yes, children must early be made to practise piety, godliness, and propriety; a person of good breeding is one into whom ‘good maxims’ have been instilled and impressed, poured in through a funnel, thrashed in and preached in.

The happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.

Men always try to make virtues of their weaknesses. Fear of death and fear of life both become piety.

A contemplative life has more the appearance of a life of piety than any other; but it is the divine plan to bring faith into activity and exercise.

You smile with pomp and rigor, you talk of benevolence and virtue; I act with benevolence and virtue and get murdered time after time.

My plan of instruction is extremely simple and limited. They learn, on week-days, such coarse works as may fit them for servants. I allow of no writing for the poor. My object is not to make fanatics, but to train up the lower classes in habits of industry and piety.

Turkey: A large bird whose flesh, when eaten on certain religious anniversaries has the peculiar property of attesting piety and gratitude.

Ethics without virtue is an illusion. What is the highest purpose of ethics? It is to make a person good, that is virtuous.

Faith is nothing but obedience and piety.

Recently, a friend sent me the online musings of a televangelist who advised his thousands of followers that the Federal Reserve achieved satanic ends by manipulating the world’s money supply. Paranoia has replaced piety.

We may learn by practice such things upon earth as shall be of use to us in heaven. Piety, unostentatious piety, is never out of place.

Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world alters the world.

When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, “Who is destroying the world?” You are.

We are plated with piety, not alloyed with it.

The happiness of a people, and the good order and preservation of civil government, essentially depend on piety, religion, and morality.

The man who contemplates the universe with his eyes wide open is the man with the greatest amount of natural piety; not in the religious sense, but in the sense of an intimate harmony with things.

Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.

Of course most people underestimate the warrior characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon and Norman peoples anyway. It takes a heap of piety to keep a Viking from wanting to go sack a city.

Those who misrepresent the normal experiences of life, who decry being controversial, who shun risk, are the enemies of the American way of life, whatever the piety of their vocal professions and the patriotic flavor of their platitudes.

Religion itself becomes offensively monotonous. On every point of vantage are pagodas — stupid stalagmites of stagnant piety.

The civilization you sit in … is now obvious in crisis, perhaps death pangs, twisting grotesquely like a dying animal, swirling down the garbage drain-this civilization was founded on God’s road map.

Love of God is not always the same as love of good.

Let us be done with the notion that religion is confined to petty pieties and small constraints. All too often people who have possessed these pieties have wrought great evil.

The moving finger writes, and having written moves on. Nor all thy piety nor all thy wit, can cancel half a line of it.

To the zealot overcome by his piety and to the journeyman of ideas concerned only with his marketable mental skills, the beginning and end of ideas lies in their efficacy with respect to some goal external to intellectual processes.

If people want to compete for leadership of a religious group, they can compete in piety. A chilling thought. Or funny.

We must labor unceasingly to render our piety reasonable, and our reason pious.

Be faithful in all your exercises of piety and virtue; be always resigned; be satisfied, in the superior part of your soul, to taste, without relish, the contentment of doing God’s will. Thus after the winter the spring will come, with its flowers, and you will hear the voice of the turtle-dove in this land.

In distinguishing between Islamic teachings and social taboos, we must remember that Islam forbids injustice; Injustice against people, against nations, against women. It shuns race, color, and gender as a basis of distinction amongst fellowmen. It enshrines piety as the sole criteria for judging humankind.

Tulsidas’s Ramayana is a notable book because it is informed with the spirit of purity, pity and piety.

There are who mistake the spirit of pugnacity for the spirit of piety, and thus harbor a devil instead of an angel.

All creeds are fallible and uncertain evidences of evangelical piety.

Love is the piety of the affections.

I do not doubt but that genuine piety is the spring of peace of mind; it enables us to bear the sorrows of life, and lessens the pangs of death: the same cannot be said of hypocrisy.

Atheism leads a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation: all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue.

You might think that religion was the one area in which professional jealousy would take a back seat. But no: ecclesiastical memoirs are as viperish as any, though their envy tends to cloak itself in piety.

He who neither drinks, nor smokes, nor dances, he who preaches & even occasionally practice piety, temperance and celibacy, is generally a saint, or a mahatma or more likely a humbug but he certainly won’t make a leader or for that matter a good soldier

Sensible of the importance of Christian piety and virtue to the order and happiness of a state, I cannot but earnestly commend to you every measure for their support and encouragement

Our piety must be weak and imperfect if it do not conquer our fear of death.

I detest the niqab and the burka for their erasure of women and for dangerously equating piety with that disappearance – the less of you I can see, the closer you must be to God.

True patriotism is better than the wrong kind of piety.

Yes, yes, children must early be made to practise piety, godliness, and propriety; a person of good breeding is one into whom good maxims have been instilled and impressed, poured in through a funnel, thrashed in and preached in.

You see, Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice. It makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties. It doubts our concern. It questions our commitment. Because there is no way we can look at what’s happening in Africa, and if we’re honest, conclude that it would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else.

It may be that until now there has been no more potent means for beautifying man himself than piety: it can turn man into so much art, surface, play of colors, graciousness that his sight no longer makes one suffer.—

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

[T]he importance of piety and religion; of industry and frugality; of prudence, economy, regularity and an even government; all . . . are essential to the well-being of a family.

Filipinos everywhere are known for their love of God, their fervent piety and their warm devotion to Our Lady and her rosary

A hypocrite [is the one who] wants to impress others with an external facade of religious piety that he knows is devoid of internal spiritual substance.

Have a sense of piety ever on your mind, and be ever mindful that this is subject to no change, but will last you as long as life and support you in death. Elevate your soul by prayer and by contemplation without mystical enthusiasm.

It is easy to see that when republican virtue fails, slavery ensues.

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.

Piety, like nobility, has its aristocracy.

Without virtue, and without integrity, the finest talents and the most brilliant accomplishments can never gain the respect, and conciliate the esteem, of the truly valuable part of mankind.

Kings were wont to honour philosophers, but if I had such I would honour them as angels that should have such piety in them that they would not seek where they are the second to be the first, and where the third to be the second and so forth.

Piety–warm, soft, and passive as the ether round the throne of Grace–is made callous and inactive by kneeling too much.

A good deal of so-called atheism is itself, from my point of view, theologically significant. It is the working of God in history, and judgement upon the pious. An authentic prophet can be a radical critic of spurious piety, of sham spirituality.

He asks how the evil is to be remedied. I tell him that there seems to be little chance for avoiding the extremes of despotism or anarchy; that the only ground of hope must be the morals of the people, but that these are, I fear, too corrupt.

We fear not God because of any compulsion; our faith is no fetter, our profession is no bondage, we are not dragged to holiness, nor driven to duty. No, our piety is our pleasure, our hope is our happiness, our duty is our delight.

The religion of Jesus Christ aims at nothing less than the utter overthrow of all other systems of religion in the world; denouncing them as inadequate to the wants of man, false in their foundations, and dangerous in their tendency.

The essential commitment and, above all, the visible grace and source of supernatural strength for the Church as the People of God is to persevere and advance constantly in Eucharistic life and Eucharistic piety and to develop spiritually in the climate of the Eucharist.

God is not interested in our public displays of piety. He’s not interested in religion in terms of the outward show. He’s interested in godliness.

The affectation of sanctity is a blotch on the face of piety.

I maintain, against the enemies of the stage, that patterns of piety, decently represented, may second the precepts.

Great praxis demands great piety.