Quotes & Sayings About Sacrilege

I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish. — Anne Lamott

I know I can be accused of sacrilege in writing about political economy in the style of a novel about love or pirates. But I confess I get a pain from reading valuable works by certain sociologists, political experts, economists and historians who write in code. — Eduardo Galeano

Nature has many tricks wherewith she convinces man of his finity, - the ceaseless flow of the tides, the fury of storm, the shock of the earthquake, the long roll of heavens artillery, - but the most tremendous, the most stupefying of all, is the passive phase of the White Silence. All movement ceases, the sky clears, the heavens are as brass; the slightest whisper seems sacrilege, and man becomes timid, affrighted at the sound of his own voice. Sole speck of life journeying across the ghostly wastes of a dead world, he trembles at his audacity, realizes that his is a maggots life, nothing more. Strange thoughts arise unsummoned, and the mystery of all things strives for utterance. And the fear od death, of God, of the universe, comes over him, - the hope of the Resurrection and the life, the yearning for immortality, the vain striving of the imprisoned essence, - it is then, if ever, man walks alone with God.
- The White Silence — Jack London

The protection of God cannot, without sacrilege, be invoked but in behalf of justice and right. — Lajos Kossuth

If you believe Life is sacred, you must also believe unnecessary killing is sacrilege. — Donald L. Hicks

I think the man who designed this should have committed suicide. A man who can conceive a thing as beautiful as this should never allowed it to be erected. He should not want to exist. But he will let it be built, so that women will hang out diapers on his terraces, so that men will spit on his stairways and draw dirty pictures on his walls. He's given it to them and he's made it part of them, part of everything. He shouldn't have offered it for men like you to look at. For men like you to talk about. He's defiled his own work by the first word you'll utter about it. He's made himself worse than you are. You'll be committing only a mean little indecency, but he's committed a sacrilege. A man who knows what he must have known to produce this should not have been able to remain alive. — Ayn Rand

Sacrilege takes strange forms in the young. — Edward Bond

Yet from whom has not that rude hand rent away some dear connexion; and why should I describe a sorrow which all have felt, and must feel? The time at length arrives, when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity; and the smile that plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not banished. — Mary Shelley

Each instrument has something to say to you. It's got its own character. Each horn has its own character and will say to you certain things. If you violate that, it's almost a sacrilege! — Jerome Richardson

When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance. He becomes a source of blessings rather than wages. Criticism is sacrilege, doubt is heresy. — Ben Hecht

Strange star-like object over Oslo right before Obama arrives. A gift of a golden medal given by a group of wise men ... Nah. — Craig Ferguson

Anyone who dares to lay hands on the highest image of the Lord commits sacrilege against the benevolent creator of this miracle and contributes to the expulsion from paradise. — Adolf Hitler

It is sacrilege to attempt analysis of birth or love or death. Death and birth, the mysteries! Love, the revelation! — Katherine Cecil Thurston

The new always carries with it the sense of violation, of sacrilege. What is dead is sacred; what is new, that is different, is evil, dangerous, or subversive. — Henry Miller

Becoming conscious is of course a sacrilege against nature; it is as though you had robbed the unconscious of something. — Carl Jung

In the heroic effort of the individual to attain universality, in the attempt to transcend the curse of individuation and to become the one world-being, he suffers in his own person the primordial contradiction that is concealed in things, which means that he commits sacrilege and suffers. — Friedrich Nietzsche

No one must use the name of God to commit violence. To kill in the name of God is a grave sacrilege. To discriminate in the name of God is inhuman. — Pope Francis

Dear Habicht, / Such a solemn air of silence has descended between us that I almost feel as if I am committing a sacrilege when I break it now with some inconsequential babble ... / What are you up to, you frozen whale, you smoked, dried, canned piece of soul ... ? — Albert Einstein

To regard Christ as God, and to pray to him, are to my mind the greatest possible sacrilege. — Leo Tolstoy

There is a kind of pleasure which comes from sacrilege or the profanation of the objects offered us for worship. — Marquis De Sade

To dissect a poem as if it were a system is a crime, even a sacrilege. — Emil M. Cioran

Whatever your mission, stick by it as if it were a law and you would be committing sacrilege to betray it. Pay no attention to whatever people might say; this no longer should influence you. — Epictetus

There is nothing more serious than the sacrilege of schism because there is no just cause for severing the unity of the Church. — Saint Augustine

Sacrilege is often defined as taking something that belongs to God and using it profanely. But there is a bigger sacrilege we commit all the time. That is to take something and give it to God when it means absolutely nothing to us. — Ravi Zacharias

Hit ain't sacrilege. Miss Effie Belle says when she cain't think what to have for dinner, she asts God and right off He gives her an idea. To my thinkin', thet's sacrilege."
Miss Love really laughed. "There's not a woman in the world who hasn't prayed what to cook for dinner, Rucker! — Olive Ann Burns

The historian's first duties are sacrilege and the mocking of false gods. They are his indispensable instruments for establishing the truth. — Jules Michelet

One can't love man without hating most of the creatures who pretend to bear his name. It's one or the other. One doesn't love God and sacrilege impartially. Except when one doesn't know that sacrilege has been committed. Because one doesn't know God. — Ayn Rand

It's something of a sacrilege nowadays to speak of insanity as anything but the chemical brain disease that on one level it is. But there were moments with my daughter when I had the distressed sense of being in the presence of a rare force of nature, such as a great blizzard or flood: destructive, but in its way astounding too. (4) — Michael Greenberg

Some people thought I was using my popularity as a singer to sell my first novel. For others, it was almost a sacrilege: a practitioner of a minor art daring to enter the field of high art. — Chico Buarque

Speak, Madame; speak, queen," said Buckingham. "The softness of your voice covers the hardness of your words. You speak of sacrilege, but the sacrilege is in the separation of hearts that God has formed for each other! — Alexandre Dumas

Martin was alphabetizing my bookshelves. They used to kill men for sacrilege like that. — Jim Butcher

If I do not procure the edification of those who hear me, I am a sacrilege, profaning God's Word." Edification is central to proper preaching: "For God will have his people edified ... When we come together in the name of God, it is not to hear merry songs and to be fed with wind, that is vain and unprofitable curiosity, but to receive spiritual nourishment. — Michael S. Horton

But carbon 13 [the carbon from corn] doesn't lie, and researchers who have compared the isotopes in the flesh or hair of Americans to those in the same tissues of Mexicans report that it is now we in the North who are the true people of corn ... Compared to us, Mexicans today consume a far more varied carbon diet: the animals they eat still eat grass (until recently, Mexicans regarded feeding corn to livestock as a sacrilege); much of their protein comes from legumes; and they still sweeten their beverages with cane sugar.
So that's us: processed corn, walking. — Michael Pollan

I was ... attacked for being a pasticheur, chided for composing "simple" music, blamed for deserting "modernism," accused of renouncing my "true Russian heritage." People who had never heard of, or cared about, the originals cried "sacrilege": "The classics are ours. Leave the classics alone." To them all my answer was and is the same: You "respect," but I love. — Igor Stravinsky

How prone we are to come to the consideration of every question with heads and hearts pre-occupied! How prone to shrink from any opinion, however reasonable, if it be opposed to any, however unreasonable, of our own! How disposed are we to judge, in anger, those who call upon us to think, and encourage us to enquire! To question our prejudices seems nothing less than sacrilege; to break the chains of our ignorance, nothing short of impiety! — Frances Wright

In the most rigorous [Roman] laws, a wife was condemned to support a gamester, a drunkard, or a libertine, unless he were guilty of homicide, poison, or sacrilege, in which cases the marriage, as it should seem, might have been dissolved by the hand of the executioner. — Edward Gibbon

In that most burdensome moment of all human history, with blood appearing at every pore and an anguished cry upon His lips, Christ sought Him whom He had always sought - His Father. "Abba," He cried, "Papa," or from the lips of a younger child, "Daddy."
This is such a personal moment it almost seems a sacrilege to cite it. A Son in unrelieved pain, a Father His only true source of strength, both of them staying the course, making it through the night - together. — Jeffrey R. Holland

Then I find I'm not ashamed after all. I enjoy the power; power of a dog bone, passive but there. I hope they get hard at the sight of us and have to rub themselves against the painted barriers, surreptitiously. They will suffer, later, at night, in their regimented beds. They have no outlets now except themselves, and that's a sacrilege. — Margaret Atwood

Sacrilege is acceptable only as a game. — Julien Torma

Nat Parson says it's the devil's mark."
"Nat Parson's a gobshite."
Maddy was torn between a natural feeling of sacrilege and a deep admiration of anyone who dared call a parson 'gobshite. — Joanne Harris

ROM2.21 Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal? ROM2.22 Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege? ROM2.23 Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonourest thou God? — Anonymous

People learn to shop for churches; there is no loyalty to the church. They're consumers being attracted to one product or another. I think it's sacrilege, to tell you the truth, it really is. — Eugene H. Peterson

We poison the wine as He decants it into us; murder a melody He would play with us as the instrument ... Hence all sin, whatever else it is, is sacrilege. — C.S. Lewis

When a man's life is destroyed or damaged by some wound or privation of soul or body, which is due to other men's actions or negligence, it is not only his sensibility that suffers but also his aspiration toward the good. Therefore there has been sacrilege towards that which is sacred in him. — Simone Weil

Murdering anything is just plain criminal, but a Southerner murdering a magnolia? Well, that's an unforgivable sacrilege against nautre and the South. — Beth Hoffman

For me, it is the worst kind of sacrilege if you are given some of special talent and you don't take advantage of this gift. — Jaromir Jagr

he'd say. Sacrilege. But Joseph never did — Mary Kubica

Eight hundred people, possibly, are murdered every year in Burma, they matter nothing; but the murder of a white man is a monstrosity, a sacrilege. — George Orwell

Without a word, we start to walk together down the long hall. I'm so pent up and irritated with this place; I want to kick down the closed doors and break up a prayer circle, maybe juggle the athame with a couple of candles just to see the horrified looks on their faces and hear their screams of "Sacrilege! — Kendare Blake

It was Machiavelli, not Moses or Mohammed, who said it is better to be feared than to be loved: the creed of the terrorist and the suicide bomber. It was Nietzsche, the man who first wrote the words 'God is dead', whose ethic was the will to power. To invoke God to justify violence against the innocent is not an act of sanctity but of sacrilege. It is a kind of blasphemy. It is to take God's name in vain. — Jonathan Sacks

She's coming here? I knew she was on her way to New Orleans, but I thought we'd have the service at a funeral home. Betts slung the dishrag over her shoulder. This was why her mother hadn't wanted help planning the service - Gigi's final farewell was to be the ultimate fuck-you. It was wrong. It was a sacrilege. — Katie Graykowski

We have legalized confiscation, consecrated sacrilege, and condoned high treason. — Benjamin Disraeli

In their pursuit of "making disciples of every nation" and baptizing all those within the empire, they stumbled into baptizing the empire itself, thus turning sacrament into sacrilege[ ... ] — Shane Claiborne

Then, what is sacrelige [sic]? If it is nothing more than a rebellion against dogma, it is eventually as meaningless as the dogma it defies, and they are both become hounds ranting in the high grass, never see the boar in the thicket. Only a religious person can perpetrate sacrelige: and if its blasphemy reaches the heart of the question; if it investigates deeply enough to unfold, not the pattern, but the materials of the pattern, and the necessity of a pattern; if it questions so deeply that the doubt it arouses is frightening and cannot be dismissed; then it has done its true sacreligious [sic] work, in the service of its adversary: the only service that nihilism can ever perform.
(unused 1949 prefatory note to The Recognitions) — William Gaddis

I grew up in an atmosphere tinged with militarism, and afterwards I spent five boring years within the sound of bugles. To this day it gives me a faint feeling of sacrilege not to stand to attention during 'God save the King'. That is childish, of course, but I would sooner have had that kind of upbringing than be like the left-wing intellectuals who are so 'enlightened' that they cannot understand the most ordinary emotions. — George Orwell

The rice bowl is to me the most valid reason in the world for doing anything. A piece of one's soul to the multitudes in return for rice and wine does not seem to me a sacrilege. — Han Suyin

For many potential Bible readers, this expectation that the Bible is univocal is paralyzing. You notice what seem to be contradictions or tensions between different voices in the text. You can't find an obvious way to reconcile them. You figure that it must be your problem. You don't know how to read it correctly, or you're missing something. You're not holy enough to read the Holy Bible. It might even be sacrilege for you to try. If the Bible is God's perfect infallible Word, then any misunderstanding or ambiguity must be the result of our own depravity. That is, our sinful nature as fallen creatures is what separates us from God, and therefore from God's Word. So you either give up or let someone holier than thou tell you "what it really says." I think that's tragic. You're letting someone else impoverish it for you, when in fact you have just brushed up against the rich polyvocality of biblical literature. — Timothy Beal

Well, that's a very interesting question," he said - to which he had no interesting or even sane answer. He simply conceded that if the Messiah came back and reconvened the Sanhedrin, well, then, yes - though mere mortals like ourselves might not see the wisdom of it - homosexuals, adulteresses, witches, and Sabbath breakers would be killed, and every other barbaric prescription found in the Old Testament would apply. As I was contemplating where on his person I should aim my vomit, he managed this final defense of his religion: "You just don't understand what an obscenity - what a sacrilege - these things would represent in the presence of the Messiah — Sam Harris

We did not speak of what we had seen. At the time, to speak of it seemed worse than sacrilege: We had witnessed a thing so terrible that it acquired a dreadful holiness. It was a miracle of evil. It was not possible to say with words what we had witnessed, and so we kept it safely guarded until the time we could bring it out, and show it to others, and say, 'Behold. This is the worst thing man can do'. — Irene Gut Opdyke

I pay a bit more than lip-service to health: I don't eat chips or pre-prepared food, and it might be a comedy sacrilege to admit I do like vegetables, fruit and salad and stuff. — Jo Brand

He's probably seen that horrible Johnny Depp version of the movie. That you kids like it and not the original Gene Wilder version is sacrilege." "Mom, — Paul Tremblay

Any philosophy is a sacrilege against creation. It just gives people the kinds of explanations that they want to hear. — Sadghuru

At times on quiet waters one does not speak aloud but only in whispers, for then all noise is sacrilege. — Sigurd F. Olson

-believed in carnal love. To us, a book's words were holy, but the paper, cloth, cardboard, glue, thread, and ink that contained them were a mere vessel, and it was no sacrilege to treat them as wantonly as desire and pragmatism dictated. Hard use was a sign not of disrespect but of intimacy. — Anne Fadiman