Being A Priest Quotes & Sayings

Strange things began to happen that made Holmes's claims about being the devil seem almost plausible. Detective Geyer became seriously ill. The warden of Moyamensing prison committed suicide. The jury foreman was electrocuted in a freak accident. The priest who delivered Holmes's last rites was found dead on the grounds of his church of mysterious causes. The father of Emeline Cigrand was grotesquely burned in a boiler explosion. And a fire destroyed the office of District Attorney George Graham, leaving only a photograph of Holmes unscathed. — Erik Larson

And if Bitsy was so all-fired set on everything being perfect, she wouldn't have scheduled the damn thing on a football Saturday. Nobody's going to miss the Alabama game for a wedding, for God's sake. We'll be lucky if the priest shows up." ~Aunt Muddy — Lexi George

Isn't it an odd thing that doubting doctrines and dogmas not fully articulated until the Middle Ages can make you a heretic? Admitting to your pastor or priest that you doubt God, the Church, or the Bible can get you excommunicated. Yet treating your fellow human beings as though they were worthless scum will get you elected to the parish council (or to the U.S. Congress). Being open and honest about your faith - or lack thereof - will gain you ridicule and contempt. But take heart, fellow Christians. If you pretend everything is good, and that you are a faithful believer in all things, you most certainly will gain the respect of everyone in your community. Well, except the most important person of all - the guy who railed against hypocrisy: Jesus of Nazareth. — Charles Shingledecker

To image the being of God towards the world, to be the priest of creation, is to behave towards the world in all its aspects, of work, and of play, in such a way that it may come to be what it was created to be, that which praises its maker by becoming perfect in its own way. In all this, there is room for both usefulness and beauty to take their due place, but differently according to differences of activity and object. — Colin Gunton

It no longer came as a surprise to John Candotti that people found him easy to confess to. He was tolerant of human failings and it was rarely difficult for him to say, "Well, you screwed up. Everybody screws up. It's okay." His greatest satisfaction as a priest was to grant absolution, to help people forgive themselves for not being perfect, make amends, and get on with life. — Mary Doria Russell

Human beings seem to have a perpetual tendency to have somebody else talk to God for them. We are content to have the message second-hand. One of Israel's fatal mistakes was their insistence on having a human king rather than resting on the theocratic rule of God over them. We can detect a note of sadness in the word of the Lord, 'they have rejected me from being king over them' (1 Sam. 8:7). The history of religion is the story of an almost desperate scramble to have a king, a mediator, a priest, a pastor, a go-between. In this way we do not need to go to God ourselves. Such an approach saves us from the need to change, for to be in the presence of God is to change. — Richard J. Foster

Considering he was neither priest nor scholar, the young man gave sensible, thoughtful replies
the more so, perhaps, for being untrained, for he had not learned what he should believe or should not believe. Present a statement to him in flagrant contradiction to all Christian doctrine and he could be persuaded to agree on its good sense, unless he remembered it was the sort of thing of which pyres are made for the incautious. — Iain Pears

What you're saying is this spider, with a brain the size of strawberry seed, hid in your car with its face covered to avoid being gassed by insect spray." He stood in front of me, laughing, peering down into my eyes. "And then, when the fumes dispersed, he set about plotting revenge. Once he'd come up with his plan, he exited your car and, even though he didn't see which direction you went in, he found the front door because he knew you were inside this house." Biting down on his bottom lip, Ric smirked. "Don't you think, if he was as smart as all that, he'd have worn a mask before he ran out from under visor so you couldn't recognise him on your doormat? — Zathyn Priest

I have these secret pangs of shame about being single, like I wasn't good enough to get a husband. Rita reminded me of something I'd told her once, about the five rules of the world as arrived at by this Catholic priest named Tom Weston. The first rule, he says, is that you must not have anything wrong with you or anything different. The second one is that if you do have something wrong with you, you must get over it as soon as possible. The third rule is that if you can't get over it, you must pretend that you have. The fourth rule is that if you can't even pretend that you have, you shouldn't show up. You should stay home, because it's hard for everyone else to have you around. And the fifth rule is that if you are going to insist on showing up, you should at least have the decency to feel ashamed.
So Rita and I decided that the most subversive, revolutionary thing I could do was to show up for my life and not be ashamed. — Anne Lamott

The trouble with being a priest was that you eventually had to take the advice you gave to others. — Walter M. Miller Jr.

The principals are quite simple. We can love people who treat us well. We cannot love people who treat us badly because, treating someone badly is not a virtue and we can only love virtue. I don't think that's controversial. I mean, there is no marriage therapist that I can imagine in the world who would say to a woman being beaten, humiliated, verbally abused, or completely ignored by her husband, "You just need to love him more. You need to work at making him happier." That would be sadistic in the extreme to say to someone.
So, in the same way I say, if anyone, I don't care if they are your priest, god, father, mother, or your Siamese twin cousin coming out of your elbow or ass. I don't care. If someone is treating you badly, that is not good for you. The solution is not you being so great that you both become better. That's not a realistic solution. — Stefan Molyneux

Her beauty is not just - or even primarily - physical. In her face, I see her wisdom, her compassion, her courage, her eternal glory. This other beauty, this spiritual beauty - which is the deepest truth of her - sustains me in times of fear and despair, as other truths might sustain a priest enduring martyrdom at the hands of a tyrant. I see nothing blasphemous in equating her grace with the mercy of God, for the one is a reflection of the other. The selfless love that we give to others to the point of being willing to sacrifice our lives for them, is all the proof I need that human beings are not mere animals of self-interest; we carry within us a divine spark, and if we chose to recognize it, our lives have dignity, meaning, hope. In her it is spark is bright, a light that heals rather than wounds me. — Dean Koontz

PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. (Comm. in Matt. Prolog.) Matthew has arranged his narrative in a regular series of events. First, the birth, secondly, the baptism, thirdly, the temptation, fourthly, the teachings, fifthly, the miracles, sixthly, the passion, seventhly, the resurrection, and lastly, the ascension of Christ; desiring by this not only to set forth the history of Christ, but to teach the order of evangelic life. It is nought that we are born of our parents, if we be not reborn again of God by water and the Spirit. After baptism we must resist the Devil. Then being as it were superior to all temptation, he is made fit to teach, and if he be a priest let him teach, and commend his teaching, as it were, by the miracles of a good life; if he be lay, let him teach faith by his works. In the end we must take our departure from the stage of this world, and there remains that the reward of resurrection and glory follow the victory over temptation. — Thomas Aquinas

My father was - actually was an Episcopal priest as a young man. Became a psychotherapist, a psychologist. My mother is Jewish, so I grew up in a mixed background. But the common denominator was certainly music, and that was sort of emphasized in my household as music being sort of the spiritual force. — Joshua Bell

She wasn't planning on being a saint, right? Why would she? She'd get old and then regret it. What pleasure was there in being a saint? All you'd do is be in a picture on the church wall, or they'd hand you out during the priest's Christmastime visit or sell you at church fairs, or you'd have your name in the calendar. But you have to be a big-time saint for that. You'd have to kick another saint off, because there's already four or five of them for every day. Even the most saintly ones are going to get squeezed out soon. It's not worth the effort. On top of everything else, you never know if it's only down here you're considered a saint, but afterwards you're actually going to go roast in hell. How can we know what happens afterwards? — Wieslaw Mysliwski

Rests at Ephesus; and moreover John, who was both a witness and a teacher, who reclined upon the bosom of the Lord, and being a priest wore the sacerdotal plate. He also sleeps at Ephesus. 4. So much concerning their death. And in the Dialogue of Caius which we mentioned a little above, Proclus, against whom he directed his disputation, in agreement with what has been quoted, speaks thus concerning the death of — Eusebius

It would not have suprised Emilio Sandoz that his sex life was discussed with such candor and affectionate concern by his friends. The single craziest thing about being a priest, he'd found, was that celibacy was simultaneously the most private and most public aspect of his life. — Mary Doria Russell

Any man who is capable of being offended or insulted after the age of forty is either immature or a damned hypocrite." (Senator) — Leonard Holton

The life of a man of virtue and talent, who should die in his thirtieth year, is, with regard to his own feelings, longer than that of a miserable Priest-ridden slave, who dreams out a century of dulness. The one has perpetually cultivated his mental faculties, has rendered himself master of his thoughts, can abstract and generalize amid the lethargy of every-day business;--the other can slumber over the brightest moments of his being, and is unable to remember the happiest hour of his life. Perhaps the perishing ephemeron enjoys a longer life than the tortoise. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Should a priest reject relativity because it contains no authoritative exposition on the doctrine of the Trinity? Once you realize that the Bible does not purport to be a textbook of science, the old controversy between religion and science vanishes ... The doctrine of the Trinity is much more abstruse than anything in relativity or quantum mechanics; but, being necessary for salvation, the doctrine is stated in the Bible. If the theory of relativity had also been necessary for salvation, it would have been revealed to Saint Paul or to Moses. — Georges Lemaitre

Perhaps he found it strange being accompanied by a Chinese-Nigerian arms trafficking pirate, but the Irish priest had just followed me silently on board the covert government transport. — Dayo Ntwari

You're a Catholic priest. Aren't you all drunks?"
"If I wasn't before, being back in your life might drive me to drink. Between you and Eleanor it's a miracle I'm even lucid."
Kingsley pointed at him. "I take that as a compliment."
"You would. — Tiffany Reisz

I have a sense of being at peace. I understand when you give the sign of peace, and when the priest says, 'Peace be with you,' in a way I never did 10 or 15 years ago. I have a deep personal sense of what that means. — Newt Gingrich

The soup-kitchen was behind the cathedral; it remained only to determine which, of the many and beautiful churches of Cracow, was the cathedral. Whom could one ask, and how? A priest walked by; I would ask the priest. Now the priest, young and of benign appearance, understood neither French nor German; as a result, for the first and only time in my post-scholastic career, I reaped the fruits of years of classical studies, carrying on the most extravagant and chaotic of conversations in Latin. After the initial request for information (Pater optime, ubi est menas pauperorum?), we began to speak confusedly of everything, of my being a Jew, of the Lager (castra? better: Lager, only too likely to be understood by everybody), of Italy, of the danger of speaking German in public (which I was to understand soon after, by direct experience), and of innumerable other things, to which the unusual dress of the language gave a curious air of the remotest past. — Primo Levi

How thrilling to discover one had depths, how consoling to find them less polluted than the shallows, how encouraging to identify the enemy not as a fissure in the will but as a dead fetus in the specimen jar of the unconscious. My attention was being paternally led away from the excruciating present to the happy, healthy future that would be enabled by an analysis of the sick past, as though the priest had nothing to do but study old books and make bright forecasts, the present not worthy of notice. — Edmund White

One of the major obstacles impeding any positive future change in our lives is that we are too busy with our current work or activity. Levi quit his tax-work, Peter stopped fishing at lake, Paul ceased being a priest. They all left their jobs because they thought it was necessary. — John Ruskin

Professors of classics - not even a professor of English - professors of classics, they're something sacred; it's almost like being a priest. — Erich Segal

It is better the truth should come little by little. I have learned that, being a priest. Perhaps, in the old days, they ate knowledge too fast. — Stephen Vincent Benet

Then a movement began among the people. They creaked to their feet, shuffled and fumbled up to the front, kneeling on the floor, and she saw little Thomas at the beginning of the row. The priest turned and made the sign of the cross and all signed themselves; then he came forward and moved along the line, placing the Hosts in the mouths of the people.

Cecil had a very strange feeling; she felt that this was at the same time the most natural and the most unnatural thing she had ever seen. They were like little birds being fed by their mother, and yet it was grown people who knelt to receive what looked like a paper penny of bread on their tongues. She knew at once why the Mass provoked such love and such hate. Either what they believe is true, or else it is a dreadful delusion, she thought. — Meriol Trevor

Thank you, baby, for being my rock, my safe place to land, my inspiration, and my heart. No matter what, snaring you as a husband will always remain my greatest achievement. I love you. — Zathyn Priest

It is this experience of seeing something one has written come alive - literally, not metaphorically, a character or scene daemonically entering the world by its own strange power, so that the writer feels not the creator but only the instrument, or conjurer, the priest who stumbled onto the magic spell - it is this experience of tapping some magic source that makes the writer an addict, willing to give up almost anything for his art, and makes him, if he fails, such a miserable human being. — John Gardner

So long as the priest, that professional negator, slanderer and poisoner of life, is regarded as a superior type of human being, there cannot be any answer to the question: What is Truth? — Friedrich Nietzsche

I used to watch a lot of documentaries about Satanic possession - and I don't know if this is racist or not - but in the documentaries, it never happened to Americans! It was always happening in Central America or South America; that's where the priest was always going down to exorcise possessed people. So I didn't have a lot of fear of being possessed by the devil. — Chuck Klosterman

A future priest, I faced her as before an altar: one of her cheeks was the Epistle and the other the Gospel. Her mouth might have been the chalice, her lips the paten. All I needed to do was to say a new mass, according to a Latin that no one learns at school, and is the catholic language of mankind. Don't think me sacrilegious, devout lady reader; the purity of the intention cleanses anything unorthodox in the style. We stood there with heaven within us. Our hands, their nerve ends touching, made two creatures one: a single, seraphic being. Our eyes went on saying infinite things, and the words did not even try to pass our lips: they went back to the heart as silently as they had come ... — Machado De Assis

You will go far in the Church."
"I have no desire to go far. My only ambition is to be a good priest."
"You will be that, of course. Nevertheless, you will go higher. And do you know why?"
"Why?"
"Because," said Orselli, "you are not afraid of worldliness. I do not mean that you are worldly. Far from it. But you have a talent for being all things to all men. — Henry Morton Robinson

Much later that night, as he meditated in forgiveness of the day, he wondered at himself. Had not he laughed at cruelty, had not his smile condoned the degradation of another human being? Where was Sa in that? Guilt washed over him. He forced it aside; a true priest of Sa had little use for guilt. It but obscured; if something made a man feel bad then he must determine what about it troubled him, and eliminate that. Simply to suffer the discomforts of guilt did not indicate a man had improved himself, only that he suspected he harbored a fault. He lay still in the darkness and pondered what had made him smile and why. And for the first time in many years, he wondered if his conscience was not too tender, if it had not become a barrier between him and his fellows. "That which separates is not of Sa," he said softly to himself. But he fell asleep before he could remember the source for the quote, or even it if were from scripture at all.
p. 313 — Robin Hobb

A simpler model, however, was proposed in 1514 by a Polish priest, Nicholas Copernicus. (At first, perhaps for fear of being branded a heretic by his church, Copernicus circulated his model anonymously.) His idea was that the sun was stationary at the center and that the earth and the planets moved in circular orbits around the sun. — Stephen Hawking

Do you think you people will get it on the six or seventh hundredth time? We're being ironically evil." "But he's actually dead!" pressed Tim. "Ugh," the priest waved a hand dismissively. "I wouldn't expect your generation to understand sophisticated humor. Now, if no one has any other business to raise ... — Yahtzee Croshaw

I'm a priest, not a priestess. Priestess implies mumbo jumbo and all sorts of pagan goings-on. Those who oppose us would love to call us priestesses. They can call us all the names in the world
it's better than being invisible. — Carter Heyward

I've got the camera. You got the film?"

Benny shook the baggie until the canisters fell out. "I got the film."

I tossed my head over at Jamie. "What've you got?"

"Passion. Charm. Talent. And an irrepressible desire to charge around a battlefield while I'm being pursued by the dead."

"Okay," I agreed. "If that's all you've got, it'll have to do. — Cherie Priest

As a little boy of 3 or 4, I became lame. Something was wrong with my right leg. There are pictures of me being pulled around in a little wagon. The doctors didn't know what to do. So my nanny took me to the miraculous Madonna at Sacro Monte in Varese, the priest blessed me, and I walked. — Gian Carlo Menotti

An illusion has three stages.
"First there is the setup, in which the nature of what might be attempted at is hinted at, or suggested, or explained. The apparatus is seen. volunteers from the audience sometimes participate in preparation. As the trick is being setup, the magician will make use of every possible use of misdirection.
"The performance is where the magician's lifetime of practice, and his innate skill as a performer, cojoin to produce the magical display.
"The third stage is sometimes called the effect, or the prestige, and this is the product of magic. If a rabbit is pulled from a hat, the rabbit, which apparently did not exist before the trick was performed, can be said to be the prestige of that trick. — Christopher Priest

We are now told, indeed, by the learned doctors of the nullification school, that color operates as a forfeiture of the rights of human nature; that a dark skin turns a man into a chattel; that crispy hair transforms a human being into a four-footed beast. The master-priest informs you, that slavery is consecrated and sanctified by the Holy Scriptures and of the old and new Testament ... My countrymen! These are the tenants of the modern nullification school. Can you wonder that they shrink from the light of free discussion? That they skulk from the grasp of freedom and truth? — John Quincy Adams

Theology does not thrive in the world of action and reaction, change: it grows on calm, like the scum on a stagnant pool. And it flourishes, it prospers, on decline. Only in a world where everything is patently being lost can a priest stir men's hearts as a poet would by maintaining that nothing is in vain. — John Gardner

The priest is not and must not be a civil servant of the Church. Above all the priest is a man who lives for the spirit for God. This being the case the Seminary is the place where he learns 'to be with Him.' — Pope John Paul II

I was very serious about being a priest, twice in my life. Almost joined the Montfort Seminary after I graduated from high school. Almost went back in the seminary during college. — Rudy Giuliani

I decided to give up the idea of being a priest before I decided I wanted to be an actor. I considered it for a couple of weeks, really. I'm a young Catholic, do you know what I mean. You're going to consider it. — James McAvoy

And every stone and every star a tongue,
And every gale of wind a curious song.
The Heavens were an oracle, and spoke
Divinity: the Earth did undertake
The office of a priest; and I being dumb
(Nothing besides was dumb) all things did come
With voices and instructions ... — Thomas Traherne

In the third grade, a nun stuffed me in a garbage can under her desk because she said that's where I belonged. I also had the distinction of being the only altar boy knocked down by a priest during mass. — Bruce Springsteen

Money-making is like a god possessing a priest. He never will leave you, until he has occupied you, wholly changed the order of your being, and seared you through and up and down. Then only would he eventually leave you, but nothing of you except an exhausted wreck, lying prone and wondering who are you. — Ama Ata Aidoo

hereditary and transmitted through the paternal line. Therefore, a person whose father is not a priest cannot be a priest either. * Though without being as insulting as Shammai was. * An infrequently quoted Talmudic passage teaches that Timna, a female character in the book of Genesis, came from a royal non-Israelite household. At an early age, she became interested in the Israelite faith and sought to convert. But when she approached the patriarchs - at one time or another, all three of — Joseph Telushkin

All my life I have been the sort of person in whom people confide. And all my life I have been flattered by this role - grateful for the frisson of importance that comes with receiving important information. In recent years, however, I have noticed that my gratification is becoming diluted by a certain weary indignation. They tell me because they regard me as safe. All of them, they make their disclosures to me in the same spirit that they might tell a castrato or a priest - with a sense that I am so outside the loop, so remote from the doings of the great world, as to be defused of any possible threat. The number of secrets I receive is in inverse proportion to the number of secrets anyone expects me to have of my own. And this is the real source of my dismay. Being told secrets is not - never has been - a sign that I belong or that I matter. It is quite the opposite: confirmation of my irrelevance. — Zoe Heller

So, how bad of an idea is it to go there? On a scale of cooking-whithout-a-shirt to being-an-evil-priest-in-an-Alexandre-Dumas-book? — Michael R. Underwood

I thought that you would bring everything into my life. I thought you are my Jesus. You are my priest, my light. So I always believed you are my only home here. I feel so insecure because I am so scared of losing you. That's why I want to control you. I want you are in my view always and I want cut off your extension to the world and your extension to the others.
I think of those days when I travelled in Europe on my own. I met many people and finally I wasn't so afraid of being alone. Maybe I should let my life open, like a flower; maybe I should fly, like a lonely bird. I shouldn't be blocked by a tree, and I shouldn't be scared about losing one tree, instead of seeing a whole forest. — Xiaolu Guo

Well, a marriage between Friends is ... between the Friends marrying. No clergyman, I mean, and no specific prayer or service. The two Friends marry each other, rather than it being considered a sacrament administered by a priest or the like. But it does need to be done before witnesses - other Friends, you know, — Diana Gabaldon

Interesting enough, we had a reunion of the 12 of us who graduated, right? The only one who wasn't there was the guy who became a priest, and he was literally in prison in Libya, for being a Catholic priest. Isn't that interesting? Everybody else made the reunion but that guy. — Peter Jurasik

Now here is exactly the point, I am afraid, where multitudes of English people fail, and are in imminent danger of being lost for ever. They know that there is no forgiveness of sin excepting in Christ Jesus. They can tell you that there is no Saviour for sinners, no Redeemer, no Mediator, excepting Him who was born of the Virgin Mary, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, dead, and buried. But here they stop, and get no further! They never come to the point of actually laying hold on Christ by faith, and becoming one with Christ and Christ in them. They can say, He is a Saviour, but not 'my Saviour,' - a Redeemer, but not 'my Redeemer,' - a Priest, but not 'my Priest,' - an Advocate, but not 'my Advocate:' and so they live and die unforgiven! No wonder that Martin Luther said, Many are lost because they cannot use possessive pronouns. — J.C. Ryle

It gave her a sudden sense that it was now her turn to grow old, to find the world changing, sliding away from the old ways of being and behaving, so that you were gradually a stranger to the place you lived in. The woman priest with jogging clothes and a BlackBerry gave Mary a glimpse of what life must have been like for her mother as she grew older. — John Lanchester

From what cause the rite of baptism first proceeded is not expressed formally in the scripture, but it may be probably thought to be an imitation of the law of Moses concerning leprosy, wherein the leprous man was commanded to be kept out of the camp of Israel for a certain time, after which time being judged by the priest to be clean, he was admitted into the camp after a solemn washing. And this may therefore be a type of the washing in baptism, wherein such men as are cleansed of the leprosy of Sin by Faith, are received into the church with the solemnity of baptism. — Thomas Hobbes

Actually, acting turned out to be the perfect job for me, because I had a lot of different interests. I thought about being a priest at one point. I thought about being a teacher. I thought about being a lawyer. But I think acting is probably the best job for me. — John C. Reilly

I wasn't ready for the guilt of being a parent. I was raised Catholic, so guilt is a familiar friend. Guilt is as much a part of the Catholic culture as is rooting for Notre Dame. I grew up with a "God is watching you, so you better not make him mad" mentality. I felt guilty for feeling good, for feeling bad, and for feeling nothing. Attending Confession was supposed to alleviate some of the guilt, but I always ended up feeling guilty for not telling the priest everything I felt guilty about, so I stopped going to Confession. Then I felt guilty that I stopped going to Confession. That's a lot of guilt. Just when I thought that nothing could top "Catholic Guilt," I became acquainted with "Parental Guilt," which totally puts "Catholic Guilt" to shame. Sorry, Catholic Guilt. Now I feel guilty for shaming you. — Jim Gaffigan

7In the days of his flesh, u Jesus [1] offered up prayers and supplications, v with loud cries and tears, to him w who was able to save him from death, and x he was heard because of his reverence. 8Although y he was a son, z he learned obedience through what he suffered. 9And a being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, 10being designated by God a high priest b after the order of Melchizedek. — Anonymous

And all men are ready to pass judgement on the priest as if he was not a being clothed with flesh, or one who inherited a human nature. — John Chrysostom

14Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise h partook of the same things, that i through death he might j destroy k the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 15and deliver all those who l through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. 16For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he m helps the offspring of Abraham. 17Therefore he had n to be made like his brothers in every respect, o so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest p in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. 18For because he himself has suffered q when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. — Anonymous

Dogmatic religion has been used to fantastic effect over thousands of years to fuel and exploit emotions like fear and guilt, and the feeling of being 'unworthy'. This has encouraged people to hand over their right to think and feel to a Bible and a priest because they have not had the confidence or self-belief to realize that they have a right, and an infinite gift, to make their own decisions — David Icke

Thither daily, and oftentimes a day, generally after each meal, we saw our father retire, and "shut to the door"; and we children got to understand by a sort of spiritual instinct (for the thing was too sacred to be talked about) that prayers were being poured out there for us, as of old by the High Priest within the veil in the Most Holy Place. We occasionally heard the pathetic echoes of a trembling voice pleading as if for life, and we learned to slip out and in past that door on tiptoe, not to disturb the holy colloquy. — John G. Paton

My god is not a ten-devotee-to-the-average-dozen, got-a-priest-on-every-corner kind of god who is always being badgered by his worshipers. He keeps a very close eye on me, and what may look completely stupid to you is merely a demonstration of my faith. — Megan Whalen Turner

I think the actor has a tribal role as the archetypal story teller. I think there was a time when the storyteller, the priest, the healer, were all one person in one body. That person used to weave stories at night around a small fire to keep the tribe from being terrified that sun had gone down. — Ben Kingsley

I've had such extremes in my life. From being this kind of wild kid, to one year studying to be a Franciscan priest at the seminary ... I was very frustrated. — Tom Cruise

We should do that," he whispered. "Wear flowers in our hair?" I was watching the ceremony and not really paying attention to Luka, despite the warmth of his arm. Tobin's eldest brother, the head of the household since their father's death some years ago, had come forward. Skarpin had surprised us by being as garrulous and emotional as Tobin and Ulfrid were silent and controlled. His red beard was a sharp contrast to his shaved head, and he had six earrings in each ear, a sign that he was a wealthy landowner. He took the loaf of bread from the priest and began the traditional praising of the bride's skills. "No," Luka said. "We should get married." Now I gave him my full attention. "What? — Jessica Day George

But in addition to all the moral evidence against the Bible, I will, in the progress of this work, produce such other evidence as even a priest cannot deny; and show, from that evidence, that the Bible is not entitled to credit, as being the word of God. — Thomas Paine

That's when I have to ask him. "Can you really talk like that? Being holy and all?"
"What? Because I'm a priest?" He finishes the dregs of his coffee. "Sure. God knows what's important. — Markus Zusak

I understand that if you focus on what is wrong in your life, that is all you will see." Marian put her hands on Alditha's shoulders. "But if you open your eyes, you will see all the good gifts God has given you. If you continue to see only the bad, you will become bitter and angry. If you decide to see what is good, you will go back to being the smiling girl I grew up with and loved." Alditha swallowed hard. The words of the priest came to her. "This life, though hard, is a gift. Sometimes even I do not understand all of His ways, but I will tell you this; he loves you, and everything he does or does not do is for your good. You simply have to have faith to see it that way. — Sarah Holman

So long as the priest, that denier, calumniator and poisoner of life by profession, still counts as a higher kind of human being, there can be no answer to the question: what is truth? One has already stood truth on its head when the conscious advocate of denial and nothingness counts as the representative of 'truth — Friedrich Nietzsche

We have to touch such men, not with a bargepole, but with a benediction," he said. "We have to say the word that will save them from hell. We alone are left to deliver them from despair when your human charity deserts them. Go on your own primrose path pardoning all your favourite vices and being generous to your fashionable crimes; and leave us in the darkness, vampires of the night, to console those who really need consolation; who do things really indefensible, things that neither the world nor they themselves can defend; and none but a priest will pardon. Leave us with the men who commit the mean and revolting and real crimes; mean as St. Peter when the cock crew, and yet the dawn came. — G.K. Chesterton

Perfect, that's our plan then. But you'll have to give up being a priest first. I wouldn't want to just sit around whispering and sipping hot chocolate. — Ted Dekker

I am very much looking forward to being a parish priest. — David Hope

The single craziest thing about being a priest, he'd found, was that celibacy was simultaneously the most private and most public aspect of his life. One of his linguistics professors, a man named Samuel Goldstein, had helped him understand the consequences of that simple fact. Sam was Korean by birth, so if you knew his name, you knew he was adopted. "What got me when I was a kid was that people knew something fundamental about me and my family just by looking at us. I felt like I had a big neon sign over my head flashing ADOPTEE," Sam told him. "It's not that I was ashamed of being adopted. I just wished that I had the option of revealing it myself. — Mary Doria Russell

I have to go on being a priest and bishop, that is, to celebrate God and what God has done in Jesus, and to offer in God's name whatever I can discern of God's perspective on the world around - something which involves both challenge and comfort. — Rowan Williams

I suppose what's similar about being on actor and being a priest is a certain perception of time. Eternity is a priest's business. But we all live in time. And what I'm doing is trying to make people aware of how the two coexist. That's what religion is, keeping that sense of eternity while being in time; trying to live accordingly. The Kingdom of God is here, now. That's what that's all about. — Deirdre Madden

I replied with an Avenian accent. "Is the priest of this church still here?"
"No." He squinted at me. "Never seen you before. You from out of town?"
"I've never seen you before either," I said. "So maybe you're the one from out of town."
That amused him. "My name is Fink. Well, that's not really m name, but it's what everyone calls me."
"What's your name, then."
"Dunno. Everyone just calls me Fink."
"Don't you have anywhere else to go?"
"Not really. Why d'you want the priest?"
"A doctrinal question. What punishment does the Book of Faith recommend for a kid who's being too nosy? — Jennifer A. Nielsen

He was a priest now, pagan, half-naked in the night, performing obscure rites of interment. Or he was the lead player in his own novel, or in one of those new arcade games William loved, compelled to repeat some totemic motion until he got it right. Only once did he feel, as he had on New Year's Eve, that someone was standing among the trees, watching. Well, let him watch, damn it. Something was being enacted here, as if it had been this deeper mission calling Mercer home all along. And now that he'd completed it, maybe he would be allowed to advance through to the next level, to a world where no one got shot. — Garth Risk Hallberg