Greeley Quotes & Sayings

Great grief makes sacred those upon whom its hand is laid. Joy may elevate, ambition glorify, but sorrow alone can consecrate. — Horace Greeley

Talent without tact is only half talent. — Horace Greeley

Ah! if the pulpit would practice what it preaches, then all would be well. — Horace Greeley

It is possible to begin again. It is hard, and we never do it perfectly, but it can be done. — Andrew Greeley

I don't think Jesus was an exclusivist. He said, and we believe, that He is the unique representation of God in the world. But that doesn't mean this is the only way God can work. — Andrew Greeley

The axe is the healthiest implement that man ever handled, and is especially so for habitual writers and other sedentary workers, whose shoulders it throws back, expanding their chests, and opening their lungs. If every youth and man, from fifteen to fifty years old, could wield an axe two hours per day, dyspepsia would vanish from the earth, and rheumatism become decidedly scarce. I am a poor chopper, yet the axe is my doctor and delight. Its used gives the mind just enough occupation to prevents its falling into revery or absorbing trains of thought, while every muscle in the body receives sufficient, yet not exhausting, exercise. — Horace Greeley

I do not regret having braved public opinion, when I knew it was wrong and was sure it would be merciless. — Horace Greeley

The kernel is the belief that God is love and, in Catholicism, God's love is present in the world. It is in the sacraments, in the Eucharist, in our families, in our friends, in our neighborhood, and forgiveness in the touch of a friendly hand, in a rediscovered love God is there. — Andrew Greeley

The only real Jesus is one who is larger tahn life, who escapes our categories, who eludes our attempts to reduce Him to manageable proportions so that we can claim him for our cause. — Andrew M. Greeley

just before Todd leaves for Greeley. These stomach pains also graduate to violent fevers to where he would be freezing and sweltering at the same time. Norma, a family friend, is looking after Colton at her home while Sonja is teaching a class at Imperial — Omar Elbaga

Well, religion has been passed down through the years by stories people tell around the campfire. Stories about God, stories about love. Stories about good spirits and evil spirits. — Andrew Greeley

We should not care much whether those thus united (against slavery) were designated 'Whig,' 'Free Democrat' or something else; though we think some simple name like 'Republican' would more fitly designate those who had united to restore the Union to its true mission of champion and promulgator of Liberty rather than propagandist of slavery. — Horace Greeley

The best style of writing, as well as the most forcible, is the plainest. — Horace Greeley

The Catholic men are more upset about women not being able to be priests than are Catholic women. — Andrew Greeley

Mr. Lincoln is already defeated. He cannot be re-elected. — Horace Greeley

One cannot escape the harsh fact that as a ministerial profession, the priesthood has very serious problems. They are not new. They did not develop yesterday or last year. — Andrew Greeley

People came into the Church in the Roman Empire because the Church was so good-Catholics were so good to one another, and they were so good to pagans, too. High-pressure evangelization strikes me as an attempt to deprive people of their freedom of choice. — Andrew Greeley

A cigar has " ... a fire at one end and a fool at the other." — Horace Greeley

The leadership lost its nerve. Instead of taking the lead in the reform movement ... they pulled the plug on it. They tried and are still trying to return the church to the dry ice of the previous century and a half. — Andrew Greeley

I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers; what I said was all saloonkeepers are Democrats. — Horace Greeley

It's a terrible mistake to let the perfect get in the way of the good. If you wait to publish until you have written a great book, you will never publish anything. Great books happen by chance, not by design. The wise writer writes the best he can and leaves it to posterity to decide about greatness. — Andrew M. Greeley

Practically speaking, your religion is the story you tell about your life. — Andrew Greeley

I want to drink you in with my eyes till I am intoxicated forever. — Andrew M. Greeley

It should be no surprise that when rich men take control of the government, they pass laws that are favorable to themselves. The surprise is that those who are not rich vote for such people, even though they should know from bitter experience that the rich will continue to rip off the rest of us. — Andrew Greeley

There is good news in the data the strongest support for priests is to be found among the younger generation. — Andrew Greeley

Yet, if the most frequent sex and apparently the best sex is that between married partners who are faithful to one another, is there not a hint that affection might be an important aspect of sex? Even love? — Andrew Greeley

There is no doctrine of Christianity but what has been anticipated by the Vedas. — Horace Greeley

In God, the characteristics of men and women that we admire in men and women are combined. That's been a traditional Catholic teaching that God is the combination of opposites. — Andrew Greeley

If any young man is about to commence the world, we say to him, publicly and privately, Go to the West — Horace Greeley

The illusion that times that were are better than those that are, has probably pervaded all ages. — Horace Greeley

For a time, Greeley seemed to be following the historic advice he had once given young Josiah Grinnell: "Go West, young man, go West. — Harold Holzer

You're a Catholic in Italy when you're born, it's unthinkable to stop being Catholic. You just take the rules a lot more seriously, because it pervades your culture. — Andrew Greeley

Common sense is very uncommon. — Horace Greeley

So you would kill Old Ireland?" Anna Livia said. "You would kill yourself, for without Old Ireland, you wouldn't be. — Andrew M. Greeley

God draws straight with crooked lines. — Andrew Greeley

My songs will pass and be forgotten. What counts, however, is that I sang them. — Andrew Greeley

I have terrible handwriting. I now say it's a learning disability ... but a nun who was a very troubled woman hit me over the fingers with a ruler because my writing was so bad. — Andrew Greeley

Would it not be much better to have a president who deliberately lied to the people because he thought a war was essential than to have one who was so dumb as to be taken in by intelligence agencies, especially those who told him what he wanted to hear? — Andrew Greeley

Horace Greeley pursues temperance to extravagance." Lord Acton — Harold Holzer

I have not done enough for effect." Horace Greeley — Harold Holzer

We are not one people. We are two peoples. We are a people for Freedom and a people for Slavery. Between the two, conflict is inevitable. — Horace Greeley

Always rise from the table with an appetite, and you will never sit down without one. — Horace Greeley

Everyone takes surveys. Whoever makes a statement about human behavior has engaged in a survey of some sort. — Andrew Greeley

Stupidity has no friends, and wants none. — Horace Greeley

Bigotry is chronic dogmatism. — Horace Greeley

We need to know not only what is done but what is purposed and said by those who shape the destines of states and realms." Horace Greeley — Harold Holzer

An adolescent is somebody who is in between things. A teenager is somebody who's kind of permanently there. And so living with them through the various teenage hopes and sorrows and joys was curiously enough a maturing experience for me. — Andrew Greeley

I think the real problem for American religion are those minority of fundamentalists who try to identify political policies with religion. — Andrew Greeley

The way we do things is to begin. — Horace Greeley

A widow of doubtful age will marry almost any sort of a white man. — Horace Greeley

We are born with two incurable diseases, life, from which we die, and hope, which says maybe death isn't the end. — Andrew M. Greeley

Priest organizations around the country, both local and national, should realize that their membership has a serious image problem and undertake programs to improve it. — Andrew Greeley

There is no bigotry like that of 'free thought' run to seed. — Horace Greeley

If you have no family or friends to aid you ... turn your face to the Great West and there build up your home and fortune. — Horace Greeley

Note the three most important Cabinet positions. Rice said that it was better to find the weapons of mass destruction than to see a mushroom cloud. — Andrew Greeley

Because you don't walk away from someone when things get tough, you find a way to stick it out and figure out what's gone wrong. - Zac Greeley, The Boyfriend Thief — Shana Norris

Well now, look at this, they keep winter in a box. That's clever, she congratulated me. Then she shut the fridge door ... — Andrew M. Greeley

If there is not laughter in intimacy, it becomes heavy, burdensome, and dull. At my best moments, the love dialogue I try to carry on with You each day is comic-what could be more comic than a human addressing the Ground of Being as an intimate? It's a kind of blasphemy that I dare because you have called for it, and that is pretty humorous, too. — Andrew Greeley

Printer's ink is the great apostle of progress, whose pulpit is the press. — Horace Greeley

Washington is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting and the morals are deplorable. Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country. — Horace Greeley

Duty and to-day are ours; results and futurity belong to God. — Horace Greeley

Morality and religion are but words to him who fishes in gutters for the means of sustaining life, and crouches behind barrels in the street for shelter from the cutting blasts of a winter night. — Horace Greeley

While the Right of Suffrage is conceded to thousands notoriously ignorant, vicious, and drunken, ... a Constitutional denial to Black men, as such, of Political Rights freely secured to White men, is monstrously unjust and irrational. — Horace Greeley

His heart was now beating rapidly. He wanted to embrace her, cover her with kisses, caress her hair, touch her breast, stroke her thighs: he wanted to sing songs for her, dance dances for her, write poems for her. — Andrew M. Greeley

Apathy is a sort of living oblivion. — Horace Greeley

Greeley knew no language but his, but of that, he possessed a most extraordinary mastery. An employee — Harold Holzer

Is the patience of the American people that long suffering? Is there no outrage left in the country? — Andrew Greeley

We're given second chances every day of our life. We don't usually take them, but they're there for the taking. — Andrew Greeley

Two studies from the year 2000, however, indicate that Catholics give lower ratings to their clergy's ministerial activities across the board than do Protestants. — Andrew Greeley

The word "rest" is not in my vocabulary. — Horace Greeley

It was generally believed that Catholics were not interested in arts and science graduate schools. They weren't going to be intellectuals. And so I put the theses to the test. And they all collapsed. — Andrew Greeley

I stepped back, wrenching my hands from his. I was a boyfriend thief, I reminded myself. A boyfriend thief couldn't get personally attached to her work. It was a business agreement and nothing more. I wasn't thaf girl who fell for a guy that was absolutely, completely wrong for her and who had come along at exactly the absolute wrong time. I couldn't afford distractions at this point in my life. And Zac Greeley had distraction written all over him. — Shana Norris

An impish gleam flickered across the lakes of her eyes.
"Do I cause pleasure in the eyes of my master?" She asked sarcastically, twirling the red leine before him. — Andrew M. Greeley

If, on a full and final review, my life and practice shall be found unworthy of my principles, let due infamy be heaped on my memory; but let none be led thereby to distrust the principles to which I proved recreant, nor yet the ability of some to adorn them by a suitable life and conversation. To unerring time be all this committed. — Horace Greeley

Money is more trouble than it is worth. — Horace Greeley

You may be witty, but not satirical. — Horace Greeley

Journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you're at it. — Horace Greeley

The darkest hour in any man's life is when he sits down to plan how to get money without earning it. — Horace Greeley

I wouldn't say the world is my parish, but my readers are my parish. And especially the readers that write to me. They're my parish. And it's a responsibility that I enjoy. — Andrew Greeley

Since the end of the World War II, the United States has fought three "small" wars ... we lost all three of them and for the same reason-hubris. — Andrew Greeley

Do not lounge in the cities! There is room & health in the country, away from the crowds of idlers & imbeciles. Go west, before you are fitted for no life but that of the factory. — Horace Greeley

Lincoln on a desire to hear Horace Greeley speak: "In print, every one of his words seems to weigh about a ton. — Harold Holzer

It is impossible to enslave, mentally or socially, a bible-reading people. The principles of the bible are the groundwork of human freedom. — Horace Greeley

Ease up, the play is over. — Horace Greeley

The men who were running the church in the late '60s and '70s panicked when they saw the chaos, which developed after the council. The relatively modest changes of those years thawed the ice in which Catholicism had been frozen since the French Revolution. — Andrew Greeley

Relaxation is a physical and moral necessity. Animals, even to the simplest and dullest, have their games, their sports, their diversions. The toil-worn artisan, stooping and straining over his daily task, which taxes eye and brain and limb, ought to have opportunity and means for an hour or two of relaxation after that task is concluded. — Horace Greeley

Horace Greeley's conversation inevitably becomes a speech. — Harold Holzer

Angels represent God's personal care for each one of us. — Andrew Greeley

I write easily, let's put it that way. And in a novel particularly, the characters take over. And they tell me what to say and they tell me what they're doing. And I'm a third of the way into a novel and then I just let the characters finish it for me. — Andrew Greeley

I am too sick to be out of bed, too crazy to sleep, and am surrounded by horrors. — Horace Greeley

Men who have great riches and little culture rush into business, because they are weary of themselves. — Horace Greeley

Answering a letter from a church asking what else they should try after having failed to raise enough money on bake sales, bazaars, suppers, etc. Why not try religion? — Horace Greeley

One writer may speak of something more lasting than Horace Greeley when he writes of that editor that his secular philanthropy drifted into autocratic ambition. — Harold Holzer

Search for the perfect church if you will; when you find it, join it, and realize that on that day it becomes something less than perfect. — Andrew Greeley

The darkest day in a man's career is that wherein he fancies there is some easier way of getting a dollar than by squarely earning it. — Horace Greeley

It is also asserted that the election settled the matters of the war and the torture of prisoners. These are dead issues that no longer need be addressed. — Andrew Greeley

We hope never to live in a Republic where one section is pinned to the other section by bayonets. — Horace Greeley

Angels are wonderful and exciting, and they have the appeal of beings who will take care of us and manifest God's personal concern. — Andrew Greeley

Our country right or wrong is an evil motto - what if your country be in the wrong? It will only compound her injury. I wish to serve the republic with an honest and fearless criticism. — Horace Greeley

No amount of preaching, exhortation, sympathy, benevolence, will render the condition of our working women what it should be, so long as the kitchen and needle are substantially their only resources. — Horace Greeley