Great Cathedrals Quotes & Sayings

All great cathedrals began their building by the placement of a single stone. The building unit of a great society is the individual. — L. Ron Hubbard

I think it's strange - so alike and yet so different! We are capable of working together, of building the Pyramids of Egypt, the Great Wall of China, the cathedrals of Europe and the temples of Peru. We can compose unforgettable music, work in hospitals, create new computer programs.
"But at some moment all this loses its meaning, and we feel alone, as if we were part of another world, different from the one we have helped to build."
"At times, when others need our help, we grow desperate because this prevents us from enjoying life. At other times, when nobody needs us, we feel useless.
"But that's the way we are. We are complex human beings. Why despair? — Anonymous

The Simpsons are going to Delaware! — Homer

The only thing they had in common was Calypso, and every time Leo thought about that he wanted to punch Percy in the face. — Rick Riordan

Or maybe he would turn to religion. Many Americans did so when faced with heartache and hardship. — Amy Tan

The world of business is becoming one of the great cathedrals of spirit. Businesses are becoming places in which meaning can be created, in which mutuality begins to happen. Business is the force in the world that is fulfilling every major value of the great spiritual traditions: intimacy, trust, a shared vision, cooperation, collaboration, friendship, and ultimately love. After all, what is love at its core? It is the movement of evolution to higher and higher levels of mutuality, recognition, union and embrace. — Marc Gafni

Cathedrals are built with pennies of the faithful. A great opera house also is a spiritual center, a temple of sorts, where many gather together for recreation, education, and inspiration - a blessed trinity worthy of public support. — Eleanor Robson Belmont

When your field is architecture, you go visit the great cathedrals of the world. My field was relationships. I got married many times. I was practicing. I didn't date much; I just would get married. I thought, why waste time? — Barbara De Angelis

Masonry is too great an institution to have been made in a day, much less by a few men, but was a slow evolution through long time, unfolding its beauty as it grew. Indeed, it was like one of its own cathedrals which one generation of builders wrought and vanished, and another followed, until, amidst vicissitudes of time and change, of decline and revival, the order itself became a temple of Freedom and Fraternity. — Joseph Fort Newton

We must strive to be like the moon — Ishmael Beah

Western cathedrals and abbeys ... through soaring Gothic architecture, [give] us at floor level a sense of belonging within (but unable at the moment to inhabit more than a little of) great spaces of light and beauty, into which, significantly, only our music can penetrate. — N. T. Wright

All men, and all created nature, have been at work, from the beginning of time to this day, to produce the circumstances which now influence our actions. AS soon as an act has been performed, it becomes independent of the individual performing it, and forthwith gives birth to some other act, which last gives birth to still another, and so they continue, and will continue, until the law of cause and effect shall cease to operate. — William Batchelder Greene

Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which is smaller than a hare's? But if his eyes were broad as the lens of Herschel's great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of hearing? Not at all.-Why then do you try to 'enlarge' your mind? Subtilize it. — Herman Melville

Not even the most secular among us can fail to be uplifted by Christianity's architectural legacy - the great cathedrals. These immense and glorious buildings were erected in an era of constricted horizons, both in time and in space. — Martin Rees

Life isn't about how popular you are What girl or boy you are dating or who you know. Life is about always being true to who you are or what you believe in. Never let anyone convince you that their way is better than your way. In the end all we have is our hearts.. and our minds. This is the reason we sing.. this is the reason we cry this is why we live. — Andy Biersack

Like most people born into a religious tradition, my faith was as familiar to me as my skin, and just as disregardable. — Reza Aslan

Cooking is a craft, I like to think, and a good cook is a craftsman - not an artist. There's nothing wrong with that: the great cathedrals of Europe were built by craftsmen - though not designed by them. Practicing your craft in expert fashion is noble, honorable and satisfying. — Anthony Bourdain

In the early twelfth century century the Virgin had been the supreme protectress of civilisation. She had taught a race of tough and ruthless barbarians the virtues of tenderness and compassion. The great cathedrals of the Middle Ages were her dwelling places upon earth. In the Renaissance, while remaining the Queen of Heaven, she became also the human mother in whom everyone could recognise qualities of warmth and love and approachability ...
The stabilising, comprehensive religions of the world, the religions which penetrate to every part of a man's being
in Egypt, India or China
gave the female principle of creation at least as much importance as the male, and wouldn't have taken seriously a philosophy that failed to include them both ... It's a curious fact that the
all-male religions have produced no religious imagery
in most cases have positively forbidden it. The great religious art of the world is deeply involved with the female principle. — Kenneth Clark

Because we love something else more than this world we love even this world better than those who know no other. — C.S. Lewis

God can accomplish more through one message in the fulness of the Spirit than through hundreds given in the energy of the flesh. — Oswald J. Smith

Yet, when we must put aside our wrath, quench our envy, soften our anger, offer our prayers, and show a disposition which is reasonable, mild, kindly, and loving, how could poverty stand in our way? For we accomplish these things not by spending money but by making the correct choice. — Saint John Chrysostom

Architecture traditionally has been the slowest of art forms. It was not unusual for great cathedrals to take centuries to complete, with stylistic changes from Romanesque to Gothic or Renaissance to Baroque as common as the addition of chapels or spires. But because the function remained the same, the form could be flexible and its growth organic. — Martin Filler

I went and looked at one of these great cathedrals one day, and I was blown away by it. From there I became interested in how cathedrals were built, and from there I became interested in the society that built the medieval cathedral. It occurred to me at some point that the story of the building of a cathedral could be a great popular novel. — Ken Follett

Everybody knows you're going to miss some. It's just the reality and the probability of it. It's the ultimate paradox for a kicker. You go out expecting to make every kick, but you also know it's probably not going to happen. So you have these two conflicting thoughts and realities. The really good kickers are the ones who can process that information. That's what I'm learning to do. — Nate Kaeding

You say kidnap. We say hold in a secure facility until it's safe to turn you over to the proper authorities," Bex replied with a grin. "But to each his own. — Ally Carter

There is a great deal more correctness of thought respecting manhood in bodily things than in moral things. For men's ideas of manhood shape themselves as the tower and spire of cathedrals do, that stand broad at the bottom, but grow tapering as they rise, and end, far up, in the finest lines, and in an evanishing point. Where they touch the ground they are most, and where they reach to the heaven they are least. — Henry Ward Beecher

I was in the show for 21 days once-the 21 greatest days of my life. You know, you never handle your luggage in the show, somebody else carries your bags. It was great. You hit white balls for batting practice, the ballparks are like cathedrals, the hotels all have room service, and the women all have long legs and brains. — Kevin Costner

The secret of great cathedrals is that their proportions conform to cosmic laws, 'shaping' people who spend time in them. — Theodor Schwenk

As regards my own 'philosophy,' I continue to be inspired by the music, liturgy and architectural tradition of the Anglican Church in which I was brought up. No one can fail to be uplifted by great cathedrals - such as that at Ely, near my home in Cambridge. — Martin Rees

Women with women. Men with men. They committed indecent acts with one another. And they received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. They're full of murder, envy, strife, hatred. They are insolent, arrogant God haters. They are heartless. They are faithless. They are senseless. They are ruthless. They invent ways of doing evil. — Phil Robertson

Nothing is more urgent than a serious, dare I say compassionate, debate as to where we are going at home and abroad. Technicians cannot master revolutions; every great achievement was an idea before it became a reality. Cathedrals cannot be built by those who are paralyzed by doubt or consumed by cynicism. If a society loses the capacity for great conception, it can be administered but not governed. — Henry A. Kissinger

I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals; I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object. — Roland Barthes

I feel comfortable singing in the great cathedrals of the world because I spent so much time as a child singing in church. And it isn't very different. Of course, nothing looks quite like Notre Dame de Paris. — Jessye Norman

Perhaps I shall not write my account of the Paleolithic at all, but make a film of it. A silent film at that, in which I shall show you first the great slumbering rocks of the Cambrian period, and move from those to the mountains of Wales ... from Ordovician to Devonian, on the lush glowing Cotswolds, on to the white cliffs of Dover ... An impressionistic, dreaming film, in which the folded rocks arise and flower and grow and become Salisbury Cathedral and York Minster ... — Penelope Lively

That which interests most people leaves me without any interest at all. This includes a list of things such as: social dancing, riding roller coasters, going to zoos, picnics, movies, planetariums, watching tv, baseball games; going to funerals, weddings, parties, basketball games, auto races, poetry readings, museums, rallies, demonstrations, protests, children's plays, adult plays ... I am not interested in beaches, swimming, skiing, Christmas, New Year's, the 4th of July, rock music, world history, space exploration, pet dogs, soccer, cathedrals and great works of Art. How can a man who is interested in almost nothing write about anything? Well, I do. I write and I write about what's left over: a stray dog walking down the street, a wife murdering her husband, the thoughts and feelings of a rapist as he bites into a hamburger sandwich; life in the factory, life in the streets and rooms of the poor and mutilated and the insane, crap like that, I write a lot of crap like that — Charles Bukowski

All around the world, tourist boards advertise trips to Britain with images of the great castles and cathedrals that occupy the commanding heights of our landscape. They seem timeless and typically English. It is rarely mentioned that they are predominately French - proud monuments to the invasion that signals the end of England's 'dark age'. — Robert Winder

We welcome the opposition of the world, because we are determined to see the battle through. Africa's battle-cry is not yet heard. — Marcus Garvey

In many ways, the steamships of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries had become the secular equivalent of medieval cathedrals. They were the source of endless pride to the communities and nations that built them, and were just as much an expression of men's hopes and dreams of technical perfection as the great churches had once been of hopes for spiritual purity. — Daniel Allen Butler

No sovereign, no court, no personal loyalty, no aristocracy, no church, no clergy, no army, no diplomatic service, no country gentlemen, no palaces, no castles, nor manors, nor old country-houses, nor parsonages, nor thatched cottages nor ivied ruins no cathedrals, nor abbeys, nor little Norman churches no great Universities nor public schools
no Oxford, nor Eton, nor Harrow no literature, no novels, no museums, no pictures, no political society, no sporting class
no Epsom nor Ascot Some such list as that might be drawn up of the absent things in American life. — Henry James

The old cathedrals are good, but the great blue dome that hangs over everything is better. — Thomas Carlyle

I don't think anything's underground anymore. And I think that's a good thing. Everything is up for grabs. — Colin Greenwood

The great monuments are raised up like dams, pitting the logic of majesty and authority against all the shady elements: it is in the form of cathedrals and palaces that Church and State speak and impose silence on the multitudes. — Georges Bataille