When Is Easter Quotes & Sayings

I think Easter is most profoundly about meaning, not mechanism. — Katharine Jefferts Schori

I just feel kind of out of place on Easter. I feel kind of useless because everybody else has kids and I don't and I'm just standing there with nothing to do. — Holly Madison

When you ran out the tunnel at the old Easter Road for a derby game, you'd get a spittal right on the back of your head. They were spitting on you as you ran out, which actually helped get you going. It was some place. — Drew Busby

Shadow walked the meadow, making his own slow circles around the trunk of the tree, gradually widening his circle. Sometimes he would stop and pick something up: a flower, or a leaf, or a pebble, or a twig, or a blade of grass. He would examine it minutely, as if concentrating entirely on the twigness of the twig, the leafness of the leaf, as if he were seeing it for the first time. Easter found herself reminded of the gaze of a baby, at the point where it learns to focus. — Neil Gaiman

Love always involves responsibility, and love always involves sacrifice. And we do not really love Christ unless we are prepared to face His task and to take up His Cross. — William Barclay

A few years ago, long after it had been closed, Eli said he saw a girl swimming in it, coming out of the water in a bikini, laughing at her frigthtened boyfriend, seaweed snaking around her. He said she looked like a mermaid.
Deenie always pictured it like in one of those books of mythology she used to love, a girl rising from the foam gritted with pearls, mussels, the glitter of the sea.
"It looks beautiful", her mother had said once when they were driving by at night, its waters opaline. "It is beautiful. But it makes people sick."
To Deenie, it was one of many interesting things that adults said would kill you: Easter lilles, jellyfish, copperhead snakes with their diamond heads, tails bright as sulfur. Don't touch, don't taste, don't get too close.
And then, last week. — Megan Abbott

Easter may seem boring to children, and it is blessedly unencumbered by the silly fun that plagues Christmas. Yet it contains the one thing needful for every human life: the good news of Resurrection. — Frederica Mathewes-Green

Easter is a time when God turned the inevitability of death into the invincibility of life. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Whatever are Snorks?"
"Don't you really know what a Snork is?" said Snufkin in amazement. "They must be the same family as you, I should think, because they look the same, except that they aren't often white. They can be any color in the world (like an Easter egg), and they change color when they get upset."
Moomintroll looked quite angry. "Well!" he said. "I've never heard of that branch of the family. A real Moomintroll is always white. Changing color indeed! What an idea! — Tove Jansson

Reverend Easter waved her hand dismissively. "It doesn't matter to God what we call ourselves, or even what we call Him. We're the only ones who care about that. But as an Episcopalian and not an evangelical," she said, with a knowing look at Hannah, "I'll answer your question with another question, or rather, with a bunch of them, which is how we tend to do things. How else do you explain the miracle of your beating heart, the compassion of strangers, the existence of Mozart and Rilke and Michelangelo? How do you account for redwoods and hummingbirds, for orchids and nebulas? How can such beauty possibly exist without God? And how can we see it and know it's beautiful and be moved by it, without God?" Hannah — Hillary Jordan

More people died as a result of the tiny abortive Easter Uprising against British rule in Ireland (1916) than died as a result of political violence in Germany during the entire National Socialist revolution. — Adolf Hitler

A happy and a glorious Easter will this one be to all of us who get a new vision of the risen Christ, and prostrate ourselves in humble adoration at His feet, and cry out: "Rabboni! Rabboni!" Then shall we set our hearts, lifted into a new atmosphere, on things above, and reach an actual higher life. We shall know more of what it is to live by Christ, in Christ, for Christ, and with Christ, till we reach the marvelous light around the throne in glory. — Theodore L. Cuyler

Although I rail against it, death is the dark demarcation beyond which I am at the mercy of my own end. To the contrary, an empty tomb says that my end is at the mercy of God's beginning. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

When I observe Gram, I see how fragile the notion of tradition can be. If I take my eyes off the way she kneads her Easter bread, or if I fail to study the way she sews a seam in suede, or if I lose the mental image I have of her when she negotiates a better deal with a button salesman, somehow, the very essence of her will be lost. When she goes, the responsibility for carrying on will fall to me. My mother says I'm the keeper of the flame, because I work here, and because I choose to live here. A flame is a very fragile thing, too, and there are times when I wonder if I'm the on who can keep it going. — Adriana Trigiani

Had Christ not risen we could not believe Him to be what He declared Himself when He "made Himself equal with God." But He has risen in the confirmation of all His claims. By it alone, but by it thoroughly, is He manifested as the very Son of God, who has come into the world to reconcile the world to Himself. It is the fundamental fact in the Christian's unwavering confidence in "all the words of this life. — B. B. Warfield

Perfect majesty that deliberately chose to be born into abject poverty, walk a road of perpetual poverty, and be unjustly executed in the raw nakedness of poverty is utterly ludicrous unless I realize that this is the single and sole way that God can reach me in the suffocating poverty that I myself have created. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

On Easter or Christmas Day, my mother might drag me to church, just as she dragged me to the Buddhist temple, the Chinese New Year celebration, the Shinto shrine, and ancient Hawaiian burial sites. — Barack Obama

Passover and Easter are the only Jewish and Christian holidays that move in sync, like the ice skating pairs we saw during the winter Olympics. — Marvin Olasky

Those have a short Lent who owe money to be paid at Easter. — Benjamin Franklin

The death, and the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus happened over three days. Friday was the day of suffering and pain and agony. Saturday was the day of doubt and confusion and misery. But Easter, that Sunday, was the day of hope and joy and victory.
You will face these three days over and over and over in your lifetime. And when you do, you'll find yourself asking, as I did, three fundamental questions: Number one, what do I do in my days of pain? Two, how do I get through my days of doubt and confusion? Three, how do I get to the days of joy and victory?
The answer is Easter. — Rick Warren

Ready-to-Halt, Poor Fearing, and thou, Mrs. Despondency, and Much-afraid, go often there [the empty tomb]; let it be your favorite haunt. There build a tabernacle, there abide. And often say to your heart, when you are in distress and sorrow, Come, see the place where the Lord lay. — Charles Spurgeon

When one of the down Easters boasted of not having any gray hair, but who was bald, Dad told the story of how St. Peter had given his choice of getting bald or getting gray and he chose the latter. Have never smoked, chewed nor used tea coffee or liquor except for medicinal purposes. The want of it is more than the worth of it. — Hal Turner

My sin murdered Him. And out of this self-loathing shame borne of the understanding that I could perpetrate such a heinous act, I am barely able to raise my head sufficiently to ask what crazed insanity would prompt Jesus to walk out of an empty tomb for the single purpose of pursuing a decaying soul that murdered Him? And I would be wise to consider that the question itself is asked only because I have yet to touch the barest periphery of God's love despite the fact that because of an empty tomb it stands right in front of me. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

I got the sneaking suspicion that the vampire was a couple of Peeps short of an Easter basket. — Jim Butcher

Party Manners IT WAS the Easter holiday. Barney and Lou were doing some painting in the dining-room — Clive King

New doesn't always look perfect. Like the Easter story itself, new is often messy. New looks like recovering alcoholics. New looks like reconciliation between family members who don't actually deserve it. New looks like every time I manage to admit I was wrong and every time I manage to not mention when I'm right. New looks like every fresh start and every act of forgiveness and every moment of letting go of what we thought we couldn't live without and then somehow living without it anyway. New is the thing we never saw coming - never even hoped for - but ends up being what we needed all along. It — Nadia Bolz-Weber

There is a fragrance in the air, a certain passage of a song, an old photograph falling out from the pages of a book, the sound of somebody's voice in the hall that makes your heart leap and fills your eyes with tears. Who can say when or how it will be that something easters up out of the dimness to remind us of a time before we were born and after we will die? — Frederick Buechner

It takes great faith in Easter, particularly faith in the gift of the Holy Spirit, to be honest with our people that we have not a clue to the meaning of some biblical passage, or that we have no sense of a satisfying ending for a sermon, or that we are unsure of precisely what the congregation ought to do after hearing a given text. The most ethically dangerous time within a sermon is toward the end of the sermon, when we move from proclamation to application and act as if we know more than God. 133 — William H. Willimon

There are times when I hear my name, turn, and recognize Jesus. There are times when faith feels like a friendship with God. But there are many other times when it feels more adversarial or even vacant. Yet none of that matters in the end. How we feel about Jesus or how close we feel to God is meaningless next to how God acts upon us. How God indeed enters into our messy lives and loves us through them, whether we want God's help or not. And how, even after we've experienced some sort of resurrection, it's never perfect or impressive like an Easter bonnet, because, like Jesus, resurrected bodies are always in rough shape. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

Principal Brill, those costumes were made by my mother. My mother, who has stage four small-cell lung cancer. My mother, who will never watch her little boy celebrate another Halloween again. My mother, who will more than likely experience a year of 'lasts'. Last Christmas. Last birthday. Last Easter. And if God is willing, her last Mother's Day. My mother, who when asked by her nine-year-old son if he could be her cancer for Halloween, had no choice but to make him the best cancerous tumor-riden lung costume she could. So if you think it's so offensive, I suggest you drive them home yourself and tell my mother to her face. Do you need my address? — Colleen Hoover

When we preach Christ crucified, we have no reason to stammer, or stutter, or hesitate, or apologize; there is nothing in the gospel of which we have any cause to be ashamed. — Charles Spurgeon

We live, therefore, between Easter and the consummation, following Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit and commissioned to be for the world what he was for Israel, bringing God's redemptive reshaping to our world.

Christians have always found it difficult to understand and articulate this, and have regularly distorted the picture in one direction or the other.

[ ... ]

When God does what God intends to do, this will be an act of fresh grace, of radical newness. At one level it will be quite unexpected, like a surprise party with guests we never thought we would meet and delicious food we never thought we would taste. But at the same time there will be a rightness about it, a rich continuity with what has gone before so that in the midst of our surprise and delight we will say, 'Of course! This is how it had to be, even though we'd never imagined it. — N. T. Wright

The president, the secretary of state, the businessman, the preacher, the vendor, the spies, the clients and managers - all walking around Wall Street like chickens with their heads cut off - rushing to escape bankruptcy - plotting to melt down the Statue of Liberty - to press more copper pennies - to breed more headless chickens - to put more feathers in their caps - medals, diplomas, stock certificates, honorary doctorates - eggs and eggs of headless chickens - multitaskers - system hackers - who never know where they're heading
northward, backward, eastward, forward, and never homeward - (where is home) - home is in the head - (but the head is cut off) - and the nest is full of banking forms and Easter eggs with coins inside. Beheaded chickens, how do you breed chickens with their heads cut off? By teaching them how to bankrupt creativity. — Giannina Braschi

Yes, that resurrection does indeed give us a sure and certain hope. If that's not the case, we are of all people, as Paul says, most to be pitied.3 But when the New Testament strikes the great Easter bell, the main resonances it sets up are not simply about ourselves and about whatever future world God is ultimately going to make, when heaven and earth are joined together and renewed at last from top to bottom. Precisely because the resurrection has happened as an event within our own world, its implications and effects are to be felt within our own world, here and now. This — N. T. Wright

I look out again at the sun-my first full gaze. It is blood-red and men are walking about on rooftops. Everything above the horizon is clear to me. It is like Easter Sunday. Death is behind me and birth too. I am going to live now among the life maladies. I am going to live the spiritual life of the pygmy, the secret life of the little man in the wilderness of the bush. Inner and outer have changed places. Equilibrium is no longer the goal-the scales must be destroyed. Let me hear you promise again all those sunny things you carry inside you. Let me try to believe for one day, while I rest in the open, that the sun brings good tidings. Let me rot in splendor while the sun bursts in your womb. I believe all your lies implicitly. I take you as the personification of evil, as the destroyer of the soul, as the maharanee of the night. Tack your womb up on my wall, so that I may remember you. We must get going. Tomorrow, tomorrow ... — Henry Miller

Easter is not complete without loving the one who made it possible-Judas. Forgiveness becomes possible when we transcend appearances and realize that those people who represent the Judases in our lives and those qualities within ourselves that seem to have betrayed us have been the divine process growing us into Christs. It's all Love. — Walter Starcke

One Easter, when she heard the priest say He is risen, she found herself standing up from the pew and walking out the cathedral door. She left the order, dyed her hair pink, and hiked the Appalachian Trail. It was somewhere on the Presidential Range that Jesus appeared to her in a vision, and told her there were many souls to feed. — Jodi Picoult

Easter occurs on different dates each year because, like the Jewish Passover, it is based upon the vernal equinox, that dramatic moment when the hours of the day-light and the hours of darkness at last draw parallel and then the light finally and triumphantly wins out. Thus Easter is always fixed as the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox. It's a cosmic, solar, and lunar event as deeply rooted in religious traditions originating from sun-god worship as one could conceivably imagine. — Tom Harpur

You'll wake up on Easter morning, And you'll know that he was there, When you find those choc'late bunnies, That he's hiding ev'rywhere. — Gene Autry

Easter is ...
Joining in a birdsong,
Eying an early sunrise,
Smelling yellow daffodils,
Unbolting windows and doors,
Skipping through meadows,
Cuddling newborns,
Hoping, believing,
Reviving spent life,
Inhaling fresh air,
Sprinkling seeds along furrows,
Tracking in the mud.
Easter is the soul's first taste of spring. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Hollywood is the only place on earth that has more vampires, more undead, more resurrections than a month of Easter Sundays. — Roseanne Barr

People respond when you tell them there is a great future in front of you, you can leave your past behind. — Joel Osteen

Despite a thousand Easter hymns and a million Easter sermons, the resurrection narratives in the gospels never, ever say anything like, "Jesus is raised, therefore there is a life after death," let alone, "Jesus is raised, therefore we shall go to heaven when we die." Nor even, in a more authentic first-century Christian way, do they say, "Jesus is raised, therefore we shall be raised from the dead after the sleep of death." No. Insofar as the event is interpreted, Easter has a very this-worldly, present-age meaning: Jesus is raised, so he is the Messiah, and therefore he is the world's true Lord; Jesus is raised, so God's new creation has begun - and we, his followers, have a job to do! Jesus is raised, so we must act as his heralds, announcing his lordship to the entire world, making his kingdom come on earth as in heaven! To be sure, as early as Paul the resurrection of Jesus is firmly linked to the final resurrection of all God's people. — N. T. Wright

I am convinced that when we bring our griefs and sorrows within the story of God's own grief and sorrow, and allow them to be held there, God is able to bring healing to us ans new possibilities to our lives. That is, of course, what Good Friday and Easter are all about — N. T. Wright

Fenway Park, in Boston, is a lyric little bandbox of a ballpark. Everything is painted green and seems in curiously sharp focus, like the inside of an old-fashioned peeping-type Easter egg. — John Updike

In every grave on earth's green sward is a tiny seed of the resurrection life of Jesus Christ, and that seed cannot perish. It will germinate when the warm south wind of Christ's return brings back the spring-tide to this cold sin-cursed earth of ours; and then they that are in their graves, and we who shall lie down in ours, will feel in our mortal bodies the power of His resurrection, and will come forth to life immortal. — David McMurtrie Gregg

She had long accepted the fact that happiness is like swallows in Spring. It may come and nest under your eaves or it may not. You cannot command it. When you expect to be happy you are not, when you don't expect to be happy there's suddenly Easter in your soul, though it be midwinter. — Elizabeth Goudge

There,' said Wednesday, 'is one who "does not have the faith and will not have the fun". Chesterton. Pagan indeed. So. Shall we go out onto the street, Easter my dear, and repeat the exercise? Find out how many passers-by know that their Easter festival takes its name from Eostre of the Dawn? Let's see - I have it. We shall ask a hundred people. For every one that knows the truth, you may cut off one of my fingers, and when I run out of them, toes; for every twenty who don't know you spend a night making love to me. And the odds are certainly in your favour here - this is San Francisco, after all. There are heathens and pagans and Wiccans aplenty on these precipitous streets. — Neil Gaiman

A guy comes down to earth, takes your sins, dies, and comes back three days later. You believe in him and go to heaven forever. How do you get from that to Hide-The-Eggs? Did Jesus have a problem with eggs? Did he go, "When I come back, if I see any eggs, the whole salvation thing is off." — Jon Stewart

Easter is the final solution to the finality of death. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Tomb, thou shalt not hold Him longer; Death is strong, but Life is stronger; Stronger than the dark, the light; Stronger than the wrong, the right; Faith and Hope triumphant say Christ will rise on Easter Day. — Phillips Brooks

God was never about making me spiffy; God was about making me new.
New doesn't always look perfect. Like the Easter story itself, new is often messy. New looks like recovering alcoholics. New looks like reconciliation between family members who don't actually deserve it. New looks like every time I manage to admit I was wrong and every time I manage to not mention when I'm right. New looks like every fresh start and every act of forgiveness and every moment of letting go of what we thought we couldn't live without and then somehow living without it anyway. New is the thing we never saw coming- never even hoped for- but ends up being what we needed all along. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

In Christ's resurrection, therefore, the Christian man sees the earnest and pledge of his own resurrection; and by it he is enheartened as he lays away the bodies of those dear to him, not sorrowing "as the rest that have no hope," but with hearts swelling with glad anticipations of the day when they shall rise to meet their Lord. "For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also that are fallen asleep in Jesus will He bring with Him. — B. B. Warfield

Am I really gonna deny someone the opportunity of a lifetime just because they met me 5 easters early? — Zach Braff

You do know what happens at Easter!" Ceolnoth demanded sternly.
"Of course I know," I said, "we make babies."
"That is the most ridiculous ... " Ceolberht began to protest, then went silent when his brother glared at him.
"It's my favourite feast," I continued happily. "Easter is baby-making day! — Bernard Cornwell

"You ought to be ashamed," a woman in an Easter bonnet told Stein. "Your race gave us our religion ... " "From ancient polytheism, the belief in lots of gods," the woman continued a little more eruditely, "the Hebrew nation led us on to the idea that there is only one." "Which is just a step from the truth," said Stein. — Peter De Vries

Easter is not limited to the passion and death of Christ; it also includes the dismal tragedy of life unlived by the many, and all the loss of passion and truth that goes with it. — Michael Leunig

Whether an island such as Easter Island can be considered remote is simply a matter of perspective. Those who live there, the Rapa Nui, call their homeland Te Pito Te Henua, 'the navel of the world'. Any point on the infinite globe of the Earth can become a centre. — Judith Schalansky

We must not forget that it wasn't the Jews that put him on the cross, and it wasn't the Romans. It was my sins, it was your sins, the sins of this world. — Franklin Graham

But oh, she dances in such a way!
No sun upon an Easter-day
Is half so fine a sight. — John Suckling

Ex-convicts prepared the eggs for the White House's Easter Egg Roll. It's nice to see the White House reaching out to former members of Congress. — Jay Leno

Suppose that you didn't make your Easter duty and it's Pentecost Sunday, the last day, and you're on a ship at sea. And the chaplain goes into a coma! But you wanted to receive. And then it's Monday, too late ... But then you cross the International Date Line! Would that then be a sin then, Father? — George Carlin

To the casual observer, the Dropbox demo video looked like a normal product demonstration, but we put in about a dozen Easter eggs that were tailored for the Digg audience. References to Tay Zonday and 'Chocolate Rain' and allusions to 'Office Space' and 'XKCD.' It was a tongue-in-cheek nod to that crowd, and it kicked off a chain reaction. — Drew Houston

With Jason I thought I'd finally played my cards right, and now I'm just one more of those
broken, sad people out there, figuring out a year in advance where they can have Easter and
Christmas dinner without feeling like a burden or duty to others, cursing the quality of modern
movies because it's so hard to fill weeknights with movies when they're all crap, and waiting, just
waiting, for those three drinks a night to turn into four - and then, well, then I'll be applying my
makeup in the morning, combing my hair, washing my clothes, but it's not really for anyone. I'm
alive, but so what. — Douglas Coupland

Stop hiding condoms in my stuff. It's like some twisted Easter egg hunt in there. — Alyxandra Harvey

Despite the fact that life has repeatedly reinforced my conviction that the tomb was empty, some of my most profound errors have occurred when I was straining under the weight of a death that was in reality the liberation of a transition. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

He takes men out of time and makes them feel eternity. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

fired up my e-reader to get lost in Easter Lust. It's a story about a bunny rabbit shifter who meets a chicken shifter. They come together, fall in love, and then, tragically, discover they're both submissive bottoms. — Nick Pageant

Reasonably speaking, we can see the cross as entirely possible. But in considering Easter, we see an empty tomb as entirely impossible. And is it possible that God had to do the impossible to finally get our attention? — Craig D. Lounsbrough

In our time we have less severe standards. We tell children about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy for reasons we think emotionally sound, but then disabuse them of these myths before they're grown. Why retract? Because their well-being as adults depends on them knowing the world as it really is. We worry, and for good reason, about adults who still believe in Santa Claus. — Carl Sagan

I would argue that the truth of Easter does not depend on whether there was an empty tomb, or whether anything happened to the body of Jesus ... I do not see the Christian tradition as exclusively true, or the Bible as the unique and infallible revelation of God ... It makes no historical sense to say, 'Jesus was killed for the sins of the world.' ... I am one of those Christians who does not believe in the virgin birth, nor in the star of Bethlehem, nor in the journeys of the wisemen, nor in the shepherds coming to the manger, as facts of history. — Marcus Borg

Each and all of us must summon to mind the words of Him whom we honor this Easter time: 'When a strong man, armed, keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace'. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

I'll not forget that day nor the message of the Christian church that we celebrate each death as an Easter, each dying as a living, each soul, no matter how poor or sinful, as the child of royalty. At its best, the church treats people as beings of eternal worth, no less at their dying than at their birth, no less in their sins than in their virtue, no less for one than for another. — Carl Scovel

What is the real purpose behind the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus? They seem like greater steps toward faith and imagination, each with a payoff. Like cognitive training exercises. — Chuck Palahniuk

The children were overwhelmingly morbid. Not a single adult asked me where butterflies go when they die, but this question was more popular than pixie sticks with the under-four-foot set. I cursed parents for not preparing their children. When I was five, my mother and sister sat me up on the kitchen counter and explained the facts of life: the Easter Bunny didn't exist, Elijah was God's invisible friend, with any luck Nana would die soon, and if I ever saw a unicorn, I should kill it or catch it for cash. I turned out okay. — Sloane Crosley

Blessed are thoseto whom Easter is not a hunt ...
but a find;
not a greeting ...
but a proclamation;
not an outward fashion ...
but inward grace;
not a day ...
but an eternity. — Anderson Luis De Abreu Oliveira

Imagine," she said, her face turning serious for a moment, "imagine if something happened to one of us and there was no Easter egg hunt next year, imagine if everything stopped being perfect - you would wish so hard that you'd taken part today . . . — Lisa Jewell

Christ is the Son of God. He died to atone for men's sin, and after three days rose again. This is the most important fact in the universe. I die believing in Christ. — Watchman Nee

How deep the Father's love for us,
How vast beyond all measure
That He should give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure. — Stuart Townsend

Easter is meant to be a symbol of hope, renewal, and new life. — Janine Di Giovanni

Easter says that every ending ever experienced by man is exquisitely crafted to find its own ending at the feet of a fresh beginning. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

I cooked at the White House for Easter, last year, with Michelle Obama. But it more had to do with cooking from the organic garden, and her message. I took my daughter and granddaughter there, and they were really charming, it was great. — Jacques Pepin

I use to believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and Tom Cruise too. — Barbara Bretton

We need to know that our limits do not define our limitations. And an empty tomb does exactly that. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act. — Mahatma Gandhi

I Remember how we put in a security system to keep intruders out of the house, and how we only used it when we went on vacations. It didn't matter: OUr intruder had a place at our table, kew where we hid the Easter eggs and where we'd buried the pet guinea pigs, was so familiar that when I saw him in the bedroom doorway that last time I thought he was my own son, come to kill me. — Anna Quindlen