Formal Religion Quotes & Sayings

Zen Buddhism is a way and a view of life which does not belong to any of the formal categories of modern Western thought. It is not religion or philosophy; it is not a psychology or a type of science. It is an example of what is known in India and China as a "way of liberation," and is similar in this respect to Taoism, Vedanta, and Yoga. As will soon be obvious, a way of liberation can have no positive definition. It has to be suggested by saying what it is not, somewhat as a sculptor reveals an image by the act of removing pieces of stone from a block. — Alan W. Watts

We can never stop searching for Heaven, since there is always more of it than we can see. There, as in those tales that evolve endlessly into other tales, stories have no end. They are hardly ever the stories you know, the official ones, in which wishes are made formal, then legislated and enforced as matters of life or death. They are more often the stories we didn't hear, or wouldn't believe, told by the person we ignored, the house that was razed, the choir of dry bones. The scholars of Heaven read and study the vast collection of ashes, books from the torched libraries. — Patricia Storace

I think if God came down and gave us all His version of Empathy then all the world's problems would surely become a thing of the past. — Duane Hewitt

Who is telling us about the false self today? Who is even equipped tell us? Many clergy have not figured this out for themselves, since even ministry can be a career decision or an attraction to "religion" more than the result of an encounter with God or themselves. Formal religious status can maintain the false self rather effectively, especially if there are a lot of social payoffs like special respect, titles, salaries, a good self image, or nice costumes. It is no accident that the religious "Pharisees" became the symbolic bad guys in the Jesus story. — Richard Rohr

Do you say that religion is still needed? Then I answer that Work, Study, Health and Love constitute religion ... Most formal religions have pronounced the love of man for woman and woman for man an evil thing ... They have said that sickness was sent from God ... Now we deny it all, and again proclaim that these will bring you all the good there is: Health, Work, Study - Love! — Elbert Hubbard

A civilization is integral and healthy to the extent [that] it is founded on the "invisible" or "underlying" religion, the religio perennis, that is, to the extent [that] its expressions or forms are transparent to the Non-Formal and tend toward the Origin, thus conveying the recollection of a lost Paradise, but also - and with all the more reason - the presentiment of a timeless Beatitude. For the Origin is at once within us and before us; time is but a spiral movement around a motionless Center. — Frithjof Schuon

Many people worked with the inspiration to free the country by throwing the British out. After formal departure of the British this inspiration slackened. In fact there was no need to have this much inspiration. We should remember that in our pledge we have talked of the freedom of the country through defending religion and culture. There is no mention of departure of the British in that. — M. S. Golwalkar

Fear, they had come to realize, not machines, is the most powerful weapon there is. — Laekan Zea Kemp

Democracy is itself, a religious faith. For some it comes close to being the only formal religion they have. — E.B. White

I'd make a terrible practitioner of any religion in any formal setting. — David Knopfler

You're okay," Kat breathed out as she broke free, limping around the side of the table. "I've been so worried." Archer pulled his long legs off the table and rose. A second later, he enveloped Kat in a hug. "I told you to stay where you were. But oh no, you didn't listen." He looked over her head at me. "I totally told her to stay." Luc scowled. "Why didn't I get a hug? — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Those who are used to a clergy take very lightly those who do not have a formal divinity degree: like Paul and Peter and James and John. — Dallin H. Oaks

One night I begged Robin, a scientist by training, to watch Arthur Miller's 'Death of a Salesman' with me on PBS. He lasted about one act, then turned to me in horror: 'This is how you spend your days? Thinking about things like this?' I was ashamed. I could have been learning about string theory or how flowers pollinate themselves.
I think his remark was the beginning of my crisis of faith. Like so many of my generation in graduate school, I had turned to literature as a kind of substitute for formal religion, which no longer fed my soul, or for therapy, which I could not afford ... I became interested in exploring the theory of nonfiction and in writing memoir, a genre that gives us access to that lost Middlemarch of reflection and social commentary. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

Damnation," he groaned, lifting his head. "You're going to kill me."

~Michael — Rosalie Lario

It seems to me that a spiritual sensibility is built into human nature. Formal religion may or may not disappear but art, love and a desire to find beauty will remain. — Frank Schaeffer

That for which Paul lived and died so gloriously; that for which Jesus gave himself to be crucified; the end that animated the thousand martyrs and heroes who have followed his steps, was to redeem us from a formal religion, and teach us to seek our well-being in the formation of the soul. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Government schooling made people dumber, not brighter; made families weaker; ruined formal religion with its hard-sell exclusion of God; set the class structure in stone by dividing children into classes and setting them against one another; and has been midwife to an alarming concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a fraction of the national community. — John Taylor Gatto

What we require is not a formal return to tradition and religion, but a rereading, a reinterpretation, of our history that can illuminate the present and pave the way to a better future. For example, if we delve more deeply into ancient Egyptian and African civilisations we will discover the humanistic elements that were prevalent in many areas of life. Women enjoyed a high status and rights, which they later lost when class patriarchal society became the prevalent social system. — Nawal El Saadawi

And so [my brother] Gilbert and I, brought up without a formal religion, remained throughout our lifetimes just what Father was, freethinkers. And, likewise, doubters and dissenters and perhaps Utopians. Father's rule had been 'Question everything, take nothing for granted,' and I never outlived it, and I would suggest it be made the motto of a world journalists' association. — George Seldes

Maybe every act of faith, as they got older, was meant to make up for an earlier act of faith. — Matthew Salesses

I am an atheist. I was born a Catholic, but after I had traveled to Northern Ireland with some Catholic friends, and we had a horrible experience with the English Protestant police, I lost all taste for formal religion. — Guy Laliberte

All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted by self-respecting persons as final. — Hypatia

What is it that every man seeks? To be secure, to be happy, to do what he pleases without restraint and without compulsion. — Epictetus

What a blessing that there is the one way of pardon! Why should we seek another? Persons of merely formal religion cannot understand how we can rejoice that all our sins are forgiven us for Christ's sake. Their works, and prayers, and ceremonies, give them very poor comfort; and well may they be uneasy, for they are neglecting the one great salvation, and endeavouring to get remission without blood. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

We cannot hope for a society in which formal organized religion dies out. But we can stop behaving as if it was worthy of our collective respect. — A. N. Wilson

The assumption that the problem of love is the problem of an object , not the problem of a faculty . People think that to love is simple, but that to find the right object to love - or to be loved by- is difficult. — Erich Fromm

I really absolutely loved writing my first book. — Jill Davis

Formal religion was organized for slaves: it offered them consolation which earth did not provide. — Elbert Hubbard

I sweat terror, Robyn! I'm scared every single second about every single goddamned thing. I worry obsessively about being buried under an avalanche of fear. Jesus, Robyn, I'm scared like only the truly crazy can be.'
'But that, you dope, is the definition of courage: you go on despite the fear. — Teresa Toten

I'm not particularly into the formal, political side of faith, although I am spiritual and I do have a faith. But 'Strictly Come Dancing' is my religion. — Miranda Hart

Morelli looked dazed. "What good is a gun without bullets?" "It's good for scaring people. Or you can hit people with it. Or you can use it to break windows ... or crack walnuts. — Janet Evanovich

Oh, they loved dearly: their souls kissed, they kissed with their eyes, they were both but one single kiss. — Heinrich Heine

Historically, over the last two or three hundred years, the relationship that we've had with money as a society - having money, talking about money - has been a little bit of a shameful thing. Splashing money about is clearly wrong, but there's nothing wrong about giving it back. — Arpad Busson

A people group made up mostly of the tribe of Judah, but also Benjamin, and the Levites as well as a remnant that fled the idolatry that Jeroboam imposed on the Northern Kingdom.[20] During the time of Christ, the term Jew was a generic term for those who had returned from Babylonian exile, who were worshiping the God of Israel as either ethnic Jews or those by formal halachic (according to Rabbinical, and not Biblical) conversion to the religion of Judaism as evidenced by baptism and circumcision — Tyler Dawn Rosenquist

To create peace, be a soldier of peace with a pen not a soldier of war with a gun. — Debasish Mridha

First Blood Rambo knife by Jimmy Lile. It features a saw, a guard with straight and Philips screwdriver heads, holes in the guard for a wrist lanyard, — David Morrell