Clergyman's Quotes

#1. I was brought up in a clergyman's household so I am a first-class liar.

Sybil Thorndike

#2. It has always been my belief that children inherit the suppressed tendencies of their parents. A clergyman's son frequently shows abnormal tastes for the pleasures that his father denied himself ...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

#3. A woman once said to me, 'Any religion that is to be any good to one must be one they make for themselves,' - and it is so. She, curiously, was a clergyman's wife.

Kate Greenaway

#4. The pulpit is a clergyman's parade; the parish is his field of active service.

Robert Southey

#5. I do not envy a clergyman's life as an easy life, nor do I envy the clergyman who makes it an easy life.

Samuel Johnson

#6. I spent, as you know, a year and a half in a clergyman's family and heard almost every Tuesday the very best, most earnest and most impressive preacher it has ever been my fortune to meet with, but it produced no effect whatever on my mind.

Alfred Russel Wallace

#7. The next time a prostitute solicits your business, ask for the clergyman's rate.

George Carlin

#8. No matter whether you are a physician, a teacher, or a clergyman, if you can give increase of life to others and make them sensible of that fact, they will be attracted to you, and you will get rich.

Wallace D. Wattles

#9. Supposed her born to be an heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother, her own person and disposition, were all equally against her. Her father was a clergyman, without being neglected,

Jane Austen

#10. The life of a conscientious clergyman is not easy. I have always considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain. I would rather have chancery suits upon my hands than the cure of souls.

Samuel Johnson

#11. The author relates the progress of inoculation against smallpox in America with the interaction between an African slave named Onisimus whose homeland knew how to treat the malady and and leading clergyman Cotton Mather who was curious and open-minded enough to listen to him.

Robert J. Allison

#12. Never, ever ask a former clergyman to say the blessing over a holiday dinner. Not if you like your dinner warm, anyway.

Mary Kay Andrews

#13. Send for a clergyman, I wish to be baptised. I have been basely murdered.

William Nelson

#14. It is indeed time for the clergyman and the psychotherapist to join forces.

Carl Jung

#15. If Miss Beresford had not been in such a hurry to marry a poor country clergyman, there was no knowing what she might not have become. But Dixon was too loyal to desert her in her affliction and downfall (alias her married life).

Elizabeth Gaskell

#16. The child probably overheard their voices; for, looking up to the window, with a bright, but naughty smile of mirth and intelligence, she threw one of the prickly burrs at the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. The sensitive clergyman shrunk, with nervous dread, from the light missile.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

#17. I am afraid, Torvald, I do not exactly know what religion is ... When I am away from all this, and am alone, I will look into that matter too. I will see if what the clergyman said is true, or at all events if it is true for me.

Henrik Ibsen

#18. The woman pastor would often be, especially for women and children, a better minister than the clergyman; for them also, the woman judge might often surpass the man in penetration and understanding.

Ellen Key

#19. Truth is the silliest thing under the sun. Try to get a living by the Truth and go to the Soup Societies. Heavens! Let any clergyman try to preach the Truth from its very stronghold, the pulpit, and they would ride him out of his church on his own pulpit bannister.

Herman Melville

#20. I liked the thought of being a country clergyman. Accordingly I read with care Pearson on the Creed and a few other books on divinity; and as I did not then in the least doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible, I soon persuaded myself that our Creed must be fully accepted.

Charles Darwin

#21. In today's newspaper there was a story about a married clergyman with three children who is calling for all sex to be declared un-Christian. He says lifelong virginity is the ideal for Christians. I wonder, has he told his wife and children this?

Wendy Buonaventura

#22. What is the function that a clergyman performs in the world? Answer: He gets his living by assuring idiots that he can save them from an imaginary hell.

H.L. Mencken

#23. Humphrey finds everybody charming I never can get him to abuse Casaubon. He will even speak well of the bishop, though I tell him it is unnatural in a beneficed clergyman; what can one do with a husband who attends so little to the decencies? I hide it as well as I can by abusing everybody myself.

George Eliot

#24. My father was a clergyman and always said: 'Hate the sin but love the sinner.'

George McGovern

#25. But if I want to murder somebody, will it really be the best plan to make sure I'm alone with him?'
Lord Pooley's eyes recovered their frosty twinkle as he looked at the little clergyman. He only said: 'If you want to murder somebody, I should advise it.

G.K. Chesterton

#26. There was reference made to a book written in Greek by a former Rabbi who had been converted to Christianity. There was reference to a publication of a high clergyman of Milan. Not even did Jews raise objections to that book.

Julius Streicher

#27. Shall a man have nothing of his own; -- no sorrow in his heart, no care in his family, no thought in his breast so private and special to him, but that, if he happen to be a clergyman, the bishop may touch it with his thumb?'
I am not the bishop's thumb,' said Mr. Thumble

Anthony Trollope

#28. There is not in the universe a more ridiculous, nor a more contemptible animal, than a proud clergyman.

Henry Fielding

#29. I explained we lost the porch to the flood. 'Father hasn't gotten around to rebuilding it, although he's quite a good carpenter. He says if Jesus was a carpenter, it's good enough for a clergyman. But I don't remember that Jesus let his house fall down.

Franny Billingsley

#30. There seems to be a general idea that a clergyman is incapable of behaving like a gentleman. That is not true.

Agatha Christie

#31. JANE AUSTEN was born in 1775 in the village of Steventon, Hampshire, the daughter of an Anglican clergyman. The

Jane Austen

#32. A distinguished clergyman told me that he chose the profession of a clergyman because it afforded the most leisure for literary pursuits. I would recommend to him the profession of a governor.

Henry David Thoreau

#33. Voltaire! A name that excites the admiration of men, the malignity of priests. Pronounce that name in the presence of a clergyman, and you will find that you have made a declaration of war.

Robert Green Ingersoll

#34. Jules Breton has spoken of the history of his life as being at the same time the genesis of his art. This is true of Nikola Tesla's evolution. His bent toward invention we may surely trace to his mother, who, as the wife of an eloquent clergyman in the Greek Church, made

Nikola Tesla

#35. Yes.' Her throat tightened. 'But my father is a clergyman.'

Mrs. Turrill brought her face near, and looked solemnly into her eyes. 'Yes. she agreed. 'But the clergyman is also a father.

Julie Klassen

#36. A man who is good enough to go to heaven is not good enough to be a clergyman.

Samuel Johnson

#37. I suppose my mother could have been a witch if she had chosen to. But she met my father, who was a rather saintly clergyman, and he cancelled her out.

Mary Stewart

#38. Captain Hale, alone, without sympathy or support, save that from above, on the near approach of death asked for a clergyman to attend him. It was refused. He then requested a Bible; that too was refused by his inhuman jailer.

William Hull

#39. To be a clergyman, and all that is compassionate and virtuous, ought to be the same thing.

Samuel Richardson

#40. The worst that one can say of the Christian clergyman today is that he actually believes what he teaches.

Chapman Cohen

#41. Many a thief is a better man than many a clergyman, and miles nearer to the gate of the kingdom.

George MacDonald

#42. Avoid, as you would the plague, a clergyman who is also a man of business.

St. Jerome

#43. A clergyman is one who feels himself called upon to live without working at the expense of the rascals who work to live.

Voltaire

#44. In the 'bullshit department' a businessman can't hold a candle to a clergyman.

George Carlin

#45. Fred dislikes the idea going into the ministry partly because he doesn't like "feeling obligated to look serious", and he centers his doubts on "what people expect of a clergyman".

George Eliot

#46. That clergyman soon becomes an object of contempt who being often asked out to dinner never refuses to go.

St. Jerome

#47. SACERDOTALIST, n. One who holds the belief that a clergyman is a priest. Denial of this momentous doctrine is the hardest challenge that is now flung into the teeth of the Episcopalian church by the Neo-Dictionarians.

Ambrose Bierce

#48. The maladies of the spirit alone, in abstracto, that is, error and sin, can be called diseases of the mind only per analogiam. They come not within the jurisdiction of the physician, but that of the teacher or clergyman, who again are called physicians of the mind only per analogiam.

Ernst Von Feuchtersleben

#49. When a minister or a clergyman takes seriously unfashionable Christian doctrines which condemn sex outside marriage, homosexuality, abortion, and feminism, and injects his views into the political debate, he is immediately denounced as a 'reactionary.'

Benjamin Hart

#50. Anyone who makes a decision at our meetings is seen later and referred to a local clergyman, Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish.

Billy Graham

#51. He had the notion that because I am a clergyman I should believe anything. Many people have little notions of that kind.
- Father Brown

G.K. Chesterton

#52. My father's a clergyman, and he was in the mission field for a certain amount of time in British Honduras, which is now Belize.

John Hurt

#53. A clergyman generally dislikes to be met in argument by any scriptural quotation; he feels as affronted as a doctor does, when recommended by an old woman to take some favourite dose,

Anthony Trollope

#54. I have always considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain.

Samuel Johnson

#55. The clergyman who lives in the city may have piety, but he must have taste.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#56. He knew that if Michelle entered into the walls of the Vatican, she'd corrupt every single clergyman within, causing them to forsake their vows in trade for a few moments with her. With one glance men would happily follow her to the bowels of hell and swim across the lake of fire to get to her.

Travis Luedke

#57. He seems to see good in every one. No one would take him for a clergyman.

E. M. Forster

#58. A civil ruler dabbling in religion is as reprehensible as a clergyman dabbling in politics. Both render themselves odious as well as ridiculous.

James Gibbons

#59. This is why the clergyman is so often called a vicar - he being the person whose vicarious goodness is to stand for that of those entrusted to his charge.

Samuel Butler

#60. Hadst thou sought the whole earth over," said he, looking darkly at the clergyman, "there was no place so secret- no high place nor lowly place, where thou couldst have escaped me,- save on this very scaffold!

Nathaniel Hawthorne

#61. An artist needn't be a clergyman or a churchwarden, but he certainly must have a warm heart for his fellow men.

Vincent Van Gogh

#62. No clergyman however brilliant, no evangelist no matter how eloquent or compelling, can bring about the revival we need. Only the Holy Spirit can do this.

Billy Graham

#63. The first clergyman was the first rascal who met the first fool.

Voltaire

#64. There is a species of person called a 'Modern Churchman' who draws the full salary of a beneficed clergyman and need not commit himself to any religious belief.

Evelyn Waugh

#65. No one but a preaching clergyman has, in these realms, the power of compelling an audience to sit silent and be tormented.

Anthony Trollope

#66. Europeans still read rather than watching TV or listening to their clergyman tell them how to vote. The European magazines are far superior to American magazines in content and readership, but TV is taking a bite out of circulation now even in Europe.

Peter Menzel

#67. Men regarded ability in speaking as a peculiar gift, needed only by the lawyer, clergyman, or statesman. Today we have come to realize that it is the indispensable weapon of those who would forge ahead in the keen competition of business.

Susan Cain

#68. Life itself is an unsolved mystery, said the clergyman gravely.

Agatha Christie

#69. CLERGYMAN, n. A man who undertakes the management of our spiritual affairs as a method of better his temporal ones.

Ambrose Bierce

#70. An inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, music or song, the speech of a political leader, the address of an eminent man of science, or the sermon of an eloquent clergyman, delivered in some other place, however distant.

Nikola Tesla

#71. He learned that love is not all pleasure, but can be agony and heartache, martyrdom and sacrifice. He learned what the clergyman was talking about in the marriage service: for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death do us part.

Upton Sinclair

#72. Clergyman: A ticket speculator outside the gates of Heaven.

H.L. Mencken

#73. These women all lose their heads over a good-looking clergyman. You hear of it over and over again.

Agatha Christie

#74. And the respect which he felt for her high rank, and his veneration for her as his patroness, mingling with a very good opinion of himself, of his authority as a clergyman, and his right as a rector, made him altogether a mixture of pride and obsequiousness, self-importance and humility.

Jane Austen

#75. When every church becomes a school, every cathedral a university, every clergyman a teacher, and all their hearers brave and honest thinkers, then - and not until then - will the dream of poet, patriot, philanthropist and philosopher become a real and blessed truth.

Robert Green Ingersoll