Famous Quotes & Sayings

Ronald Knox Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 36 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Ronald Knox.

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Famous Quotes By Ronald Knox

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The hall-mark of American humour is its pose of illiteracy. — Ronald Knox

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Hope is something that is demanded of us; it is not, then, a mere reasoned calculation of our chances. Nor is it merely the bubbling up of a sanguine temperament; if it is demanded of us, it lies not in the temperament but in the will... Hoping for what? For delivereance from persecution, for immunity from plague, pestilence, and famine...? No, for the grace of persevering in his Christian profession, and for the consequent achievement of a happy immortality. Strictly speaking, then, the highest exercise of hope, supernaturally speaking, is to hope for perseverance and for Heaven when it looks, when it feels, as if you were going to lose both one and the other. — Ronald Knox

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Only those of us, I think, who were born under Queen Victoria know what it feels like to assume, without questioning, that England is permanently top nation, that foreigners do not matter, and that if the worst comes to the worst, Lord Salisbury will send a gunboat. — Ronald Knox

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Only man has dignity; only man, therefore, can be funny. — Ronald Knox

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When suave politeness, tempering bigot zeal, corrected 'I believe' to 'one does feel'. — Ronald Knox

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If a man tells you that he is fond of the Imitation, view him with sudden suspicion; he is either a dabbler or a Saint. — Ronald Knox

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We Catholics have not only to do our best to keep down our own warring passions and live decent lives, which will often be hard enough in this odd world we have been born into. We have to bear witness to moral principles which the world owned yesterday and has begun to turn its back on today. We have to disapprove of some of the things our neighbors do, without being stuffy about it; we have to be charitable towards our neighbors and make great allowances for them, without falling into the mistake of condoning their low standards and so encouraging them to sin. Two of the most difficult and delicate tasks a man can undertake; and it happens, nowadays, not only to priests, to whom it comes as part of their professional duty, but to ordinary lay people...So we must know what are the unalterable principles we hold, and why we hold them; we must see straight in a world that is full of moral fog. — Ronald Knox

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He who travels in the Barque of Peter had better not look too closely into the engine room. — Ronald Knox

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Can anything matter, unless there is Somebody who minds? — Ronald Knox

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The great argument used now against any theological proposition is not, that it is untrue, or unthinkable, or unedifying, or unscriptural, or unorthodox, but simply, that the modern mind cannot accept it. — Ronald Knox

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O God, for as much as without Thee We are not enabled to doubt Thee, Help us all by Thy grace To convince the whole race It knows nothing whatever about Thee. — Ronald Knox

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It doesn't do to say that heresy produces the development of doctrine, because that annoys the theologians. But it is true to say that as a matter of history the development of doctrine has been largely a reaction on the Church's part to the attacks of heresy. — Ronald Knox

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It is possible to argue that the true business of faith is not to produce emotional conviction in us, but to teach us to do without it. — Ronald Knox

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Dogmas may fly out at the window but congregations do not come in at the door. — Ronald Knox

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The motor-car, in brining us all closer together, by making it easy to have luncheon two counties away, has driven us all further apart, by making it unnecessary for us to know the people in the next bungalow. And so, once again, we have to thank civilization for nothing. — Ronald Knox

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A baby is a loud noise at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other. — Ronald Knox

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Your see, it is no ordinary task. If you translate, say, the Summa of St. Thomas, you expect to be cross-examined by people who understand philosophy and by people who understand Latin; no one else. If you translate the Bible, you are liable to be cross-examined by anybody; because everybody thinks he knows already what the Bible means. — Ronald Knox

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Long before I had ever seen a ritualistic service I became a Ritualist. — Ronald Knox

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Order is the cipher by which Mind speaks to mind in the midst of chaos. — Ronald Knox

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If you have a sloppy religion you get a sloppy atheism. — Ronald Knox

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We can only abandon the Catholic Church for some spiritual home which is more of a home than the Catholic Church . . . Where are we to bind such a revelation, such a spiritual home, such sources of inspiration? Nowhere; there is no other system in the world which does even to claim what the Catholic Church claims. Are we to abandon the Catholic faith for something less than the Catholic faith? — Ronald Knox

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There was a young man who said "God
Must find it exceedingly odd
To think that the tree
Should continue to be
When there's no one about in the quad."

Reply:
"Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd;
I am always about in the quad.
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God. — Ronald Knox

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No preacher would deliberately judge the credibility of his message by the credulity of his audience. But the prevalent irreligion of the age does exercise a continual unconscious pressure upon the pulpit; it makes preachers hesitate to affirm doctrines whose affirmation would be unpopular. And a doctrine which has ceased to be affirmed is doomed, like a disused organ, to atrophy. That — Ronald Knox

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It is so stupid of modern civilisation to have given up believing in the devil when he is the only explanation of it. — Ronald Knox

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All men who have ideals ... live by some kind of faith, by committing themselves to some kind of loyalty which is not universally recognized as the common property of all thinking men. They must have something-something outside themselves, to make them feel life is worth living, that good rather than evil is the explanation of the world. — Ronald Knox

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Roman Catholics have always been able to appeal to the traditions of holy Mother the Church. But the Church of England, as such, has nothing to appeal to. How can we [Anglicans] pretend to appeal to Church traditions, when we have cut ourselves off from the main stream of it and any exposition of it must needs be a raking up of old dead documents, instead of obedience to a living voice? And how can we pretend to appeal to the Bible, when the Bible is for everyman's private interpretation, and not expounded by authority? — Ronald Knox

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You must believe, sooner or later, in a Mind which brought mind into existence out of matter, unless you are going to sit down before the hopeless metaphysical contradiction of saying that matter somehow managed to develop itself into mind. — Ronald Knox

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It appears, then, that the two processes are going on side by side, the decline of Church membership and the decline of dogma; the evacuation of the pew and the jettisoning of cargo from the pulpit. — Ronald Knox

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The prevailing attitude of the speakers was one of heavy disagreement with a number of things which the reader had not said. — Ronald Knox

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Knox was engaged in a theological discussion with scientist John Scott Haldane. 'In a universe containing millions of planets,' reasoned Haldane, 'is it not inevitable that life should appear on at least one of them?' 'Sir,' replied Knox, 'if Scotland Yard found a body in your cabin trunk, would you tell them: 'There are millions of trunks in the world; surely one of them must contain a body? I think the would still want to know who put it there.' — Ronald Knox

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The study of comparative religions is the best way to become comparatively religious. — Ronald Knox

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Always tell the truth, and people will never believe you. — Ronald Knox

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But in disclaiming the dead, you are yourself disclaimed by the dead. If you are not prepared to blush for Alexander the Sixth, it is childishly inconsistent to take pride in the memory of Saint Francis. — Ronald Knox

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A good sermon should be like a woman's skirt: short enough to arouse interest but long enough to cover the essentials. — Ronald Knox

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A rush age cannot be a reflective age. — Ronald Knox

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Protestants sometimes laugh at us because we address ourselves, now to our Lady of Perpetual Succor, no to our Lady of Good Counsel, now to our Lady of Lourdes, and so on, as if they were so many different people. But the case is much worse than that, if they only knew; every individual Catholic has a separate our Lady to pray to, his Mother, the one who seems to care for him individually, has won him so many favours, has stood by him in so many difficulties, as if she had no other thought or business in heaven but to watch over him. — Ronald Knox