quotations about piety
Piety is a silver chain hanged up aloft, which ties heaven and earth, spiritual and temporal, God and man together.
N. CAUSSIN
attributed, Day's Collacon
A constant attention to the work which God entrusts us with is a mark of solid piety.
JOHN WESLEY
"A Plain Account of Christian Perfection", The Works of the Reverend John Wesley
I consider piety to be openness to the unmanipulated mystery of life.
TOMÁS HALÍK
Night of the Confessor: Christian Faith in an Age of Uncertainty
Earth has nothing more tender than a woman's heart when it is the abode of piety.
MARTIN LUTHER
attributed, History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century
Piety is not a thinking about coming but a real approach. It is not identical with the performance of rites and ceremonies, but is rather the care and affection put into their performance, the personal touch therein, the offering of life.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL
Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion
The forces of piety have always and everywhere been the sworn enemy of the open mind and the open book.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
Letters to a Young Contrarian
True piety hath in it nothing weak, nothing sad, nothing constrained. It enlarges the heart; it is simple, free, and attractive.
FRANCOIS FENELON
attributed, The Christian Pioneer
As the absence of piety imperils all moralities, and tends to their utter undoing, so true piety protects them all, and tends to their ultimate perfection.
HUBBARD WINSLOW
Elements of Moral Philosophy
Piety does not mean that a man should make a sour face about things, and refuse to enjoy in moderation what his Maker has given.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Critical and Miscellaneous Essays
Piety desires not merely to learn faith's truth, but to agree with it.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL
Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion
Where piety and policy go hand in hand, there war shall be just, and peace honorable.
FRANCIS QUARLES
Enchiridion Institutions
The pious man is alive to what is solemn in the simple, to what is sublime in the sensuous; but he is not aiming to penetrate into the sacred. Rather he is striving to be himself penetrated and actuated by the sacred, eager to yield to its force, to identify himself with every trend in the world which is toward the divine.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL
Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion
There is no piety in the world which is not the result of cultivation, and which cannot be increased by the degree of care and attention bestowed upon it.
ALBERT BARNES
attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
The piety that keeps the Sabbath with a great zeal of devotion, yet fails to keep its possessor honest on Monday, is not the kind that is stamped in the mint of heaven.
HERRICK JOHNSON
attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
Is it not thy piety itself which no longer letteth thee believe in a God?
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Thus Spake Zarathustra
In theory, piety is reverence and love for God; and in practice, it is the exercise of all our powers in obedience to the Divine will. Combining the theory and practice, we have the richest treasure known on earth -- love for God shown in obedience to God.
D. W. GATES
attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
Piety, then, needs a counterpoise, something to prevent it from being exercised in an excessively rigid way; and this it has, in most intellectual temperaments, in the quality I would call playfulness. We speak of the play of the mind; and certainly the intellectual relishes the play of the mind for its own sake, and finds in it one of the major values in life. What one thinks of here is the element of sheer delight in intellectual activity. Seen in this guise, intellect may be taken as the healthy animal spirits of the mind, which come into exercise when the surplus of mental energies is released from the tasks required for utility and mere survival. "Man is perfectly human," said Schiller, "only when he plays." And it is this awareness of an available surplus beyond the requirements of mere existence that his maxim conveys to us. Veblen spoke often of the intellectual faculty as "idle curiosity"--but this is a misnomer in so far as the curiosity of the playful mind is inordinately restless and active. This very restlessness and activity gives a distinctive cast to its view of truth and its discontent with dogmas.
RICHARD HOFSTADTER
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
It is easier to profess piety than practice it.
MARSILIUS FICINUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Mindfulness ... is not concerned with anything transcendent or divine. It serves as an antidote to theism, a cure for sentimental piety, a scalpel for excising the tumor of metaphysical belief.
STEPHEN BATCHELOR
Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist
We are plated with piety, not alloyed with it.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought