Preachers Quotes

“The preachers and lecturers deal with men of straw, as they are men of straw themselves. Why, a free-spoken man, of sound lungs, cannot draw a long breath without causing your rotten institutions to come toppling down by the vacuum he makes. Your church is a baby-house made of blocks, and so of the state.

...The church, the state, the school, the magazine, think they are liberal and free! It is the freedom of a prison-yard.”
― Henry David Thoreau, I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau

“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.”
― Barry Goldwater

“Half of the people lie with their lips; the other half with their tears”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“If you were born with the ability to change someone’s perspective or emotions, never waste that gift. It is one of the most powerful gifts God can give—the ability to influence.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“The preachers tell us that pride is a great sin, but the preachers are wrong. Pride makes a man, it drives him, it is the shield wall around his reputation... Men die, they said, but reputation does not die.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Last Kingdom

“Holiness appeared to me to be of a sweet, pleasant, charming, serene, calm nature; which brought an inexpressible purity, brightness, peacefulness and ravishment to the soul.”
― Jonathan Edwards, The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards: A Reader

“Let me first state forthright that contrary to what we've often read in books and heard from preachers, when you are a woman, you don't feel like the Devil. ”
― Orhan Pamuk, My Name Is Red

“I think this is irresponsible preaching and very dangerous, and especially when it is slanted toward children, I think it's totally irresponsible, because I see nothing biblical that points up to our being in the last days, and I just think it's an outrageous thing to do, and a lot of people are making a living—they've been making a living for 2,000 years—preaching that we're in the last days.”
― Charles M. Schulz, Charles M. Schulz: Conversations

“That's the trouble with you preachers," he said. "You've all got too good to believe in anything," and he drove off with a look of disgust and righteousness.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood

“The preacher who casts a vote for conscience' sake, runs the risk of starving.”
― Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume 1, Reader's Edition

“His faith wavered, but not his speech: it is the lot of every man who has to speak for the satisfaction of the crowd, that he must often speak in virtue of yesterday's faith, hoping it will come back to-morrow.”
― George Eliot, Romola

“Who can we claim to know God, and deny him by our actions.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“Good preachers...are effective teachers, good thinkers, with rhetorical skills, a good voice, a good memory, and the ability to recognize when to stop. They are diligent in their preparation, throwing heart and soul into their sermons, and they must be ready to take criticism. They should remember that they must patiently bear such criticism and dissatisfaction with their preaching. But above all, preachers must know that the Word of God has taken them captive and that God has called them to serve Him by proclaiming that Word.”
― Robert Kolb, Luther and the Stories of God: Biblical Narratives as a Foundation for Christian Living

“He was a curious boy. He wanted to be a dentist, a pragmatic choice. Teacher, doctor, preacher, undertaker. What a colored boy can aspire to in a world like this. Colored people always got bad teeth, always got a soul needed tending. Always dying.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Intuitionist

“Killing a bunch of Jihadis may be morally justified, to save humanity from their wrath, but it won't terminate Jihad for long. Jihad or Holy war would keep festering one way or another, until religious fundamentalism is eradicated from the human society. Until the whole humanity learns to scrutinize its most revered scriptures with the sharp tool of reasoning, Jihad will keep on striking over the world. If one does not have the basic conscientious capacity to refute the primitive textual verses of the scriptures that demand one to kill or torture another being for holding a different belief system than one's own, then that entity is no being of the civilized human society, it is merely a pest from the stone-age. No Quran, no Bible, no Gita, no Cow, is greater than the human self. There shall be hope for harmony and peace in the world, only when fundamentalism is destroyed forever. Harmony is not a luxury, it is an existential necessity of the species. And to achieve it, if a hundred Bibles have to be sacrificed, then be it. But for no Bible, Quran or Gita, can harmony be compromised.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“To be a servant of the Saviour is the sacred service.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“Sacred service is sacrifice.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“If the saints fails to declare the truth, the Holy Spirit shall teach true words of God.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“The priest must teach the people, the fear of God.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“I didn't like to read the Bible, but I did like to hold it. I wondered if, for some men, that was the reason they became preachers.”
― Robert Haller, Another Life

“Those who don't understand the passion and are jealous of people who do are the ones who become moralists and preachers.”
― Nitya Prakash

“If there be any feeding of Christ, any drop of heavenly dew, or any spark of God's good Spirit within you, stir it up; be careful to build and edify, first yourselves, and then your flocks in this most holy faith. I say, first yourselves; for he who will set the hearts of other men on fire with the love of Christ, must himself burn with love. It is want of faith in ourselves, my brethren, which makes us retchless (careless) in building others. We forsake the Lord's inheritance, and feed it not. What is the reason of this? Our own desires are settled where they should not be. We ourselves are like those women who have a longing to eat coals, and lime, and filth: we are fed, some with honour, some with ease, some with wealth: the gospel waxeth loathsome and unpleasant in our taste: how should we then have a care to feed others with that which we cannot fancy ourselves? If faith wax cold and slender in the heart of the prophet, it will soon perish from the ears of the people. (Sermon on part of St Jude's Epistle, p. 552)”
― Richard Hooker

“The relationship between preachers and professionals is that preachers reveal God's mind while professionals execute it but on a different platform.”
― Dr. Lucas D. Shallua

“Contemporary reformers often forget to preach about the cross. Even when they mention the cross, it is done too softly, and their preaching is not based on the cross of the Lord.”
― Brother Pedro

“While Bernice didn't much trust a baby-faced physician, she appreciated young men called to serve as preachers and farmers, the highest of callings in her opinion, cultivators of souls and the land.”
― Talya Tate Boerner, Bernice Runs Away

“Believe the aunties and preachers when they tell you I ran toward every unlocked door like a kid with scissors and clear instructions to put them down”
― Darnell Lamont Walker

“No one preaches a forgiveness sermon better than an AME Zion preacher who is as wrong as mustard is on a banana. Throw the whole connection away.”
― Niedria D. Kenny

“Nothing worse than an AME Zion preacher who use the Sunday morning pulpit only as a platform to defend themselves in all their wrongdoing as they continue to be devilish, attacking people for calling them out; instead, of preaching the gospel and teaching people how to live a godly life and being an example as well.”
― Niedria D. Kenny

“When all souls are saved and all mourners comforted, we may venture to discuss profound theories, but not while graveyards are filling up with those who do not know God.”
― Charles H. Spurgeon, Eccentric Preachers: Spiritual Lessons and Insights from God’s Peculiar People [Updated and Annotated]

“Humor can, and should, be consecrated. We grant that it is a power difficult to manage, but when it is under proper control, it more than repays for all the labor spent on it. Children do sad damage with gunpowder, but what a force it is when a wise man directs its energy.”
― Charles H. Spurgeon, Eccentric Preachers: Spiritual Lessons and Insights from God’s Peculiar People [Updated and Annotated]