Top 100 Quotes About The Priesthood
#1. It does happen, of course, that the priesthood has been on bad terms with womankind for some three thousand years. You see, Buddhism teaches that women are evil. Fiends. Messengers of hell. I've spent years immersed in the scriptures, so it's no accident that you and I fight all the time.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#2. Is art really the priesthood that demands the pure in heart who belong to it wholly?
Paul Cezanne
#3. At different points in my life, I had grappled with the idea of going into the priesthood - in high school or law school. Where it ends, I'm not quite sure. Perhaps it ends with death, grappling with one's spirituality.
James McGreevey
#4. Most significantly, the fullness of the priesthood contained in the highest ordinances of the house of the Lord can be received only by a man and woman together.
Sheri L. Dew
#5. These men were religious when the spirit of religion was buried in forms and ceremonies, and when the priesthood had armed itself with the civil powers to put down all opposition, and suppress all freedom, intellectual, civil, and religious.
Ethan A. Hitchcock
#6. Clarke, define resplendent. I think it's shining, sir. Pithy, Clarke, but adequate. McCourt, give us a sentence with pithy. Clarke is pithy but adequate, sir. Adroit, McCourt. You have a mind for the priesthood, my boy, or politics. Think of that.
Frank McCourt
#7. A man may act as his conscience dictates so long as he does not infringe upon the rights of others. That is the spirit of true democracy, and all government by the Priesthood should be actuated by that same high motive.
David O. McKay
#8. When we undertake to cover our sins, ... behold, the heavens withdraw themselves; the Spirit of the Lord is grieved; and when it is withdrawn, Amen to the priesthood or the authority of that man
Dallin H. Oaks
#9. The greatest block today in the way of woman's emancipation is the church, the canon law, the Bible and the priesthood.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
#10. The privilege of holding the priesthood, which is the power and authority to act in God's name, is a great blessing and privilege and one that carries with it equally great obligations and responsibilities.
Ezra Taft Benson
#11. Whenever we show others the goodness of God, whenever we follow our Teacher by imitating His posture of humble and ready service, our actions are sacred and ministerial. To be called into the priesthood, as all of us are, is to be called to a life of presence, of kindness.
Rachel Held Evans
#13. The priesthood is not dying, but the clerical state is dead. It needs to be buried, preferably with a Viking funeral in Boston Harbor so nobody can miss the spectacle of its passing.
Eugene Kennedy
#14. In the '50s and '60s, a family's first child went into the priesthood, the second went into the military, and the third child was an idiot and wound up in advertising.
Jerry Della Femina
#15. I bear witness of the power of the priesthood given to the Church to protect us and guide us. And because we have that, we have no fear of the future. Fear is the opposite of faith. We move forward, certain that the Lord will watch over us, particularly in the family.
Boyd K. Packer
#16. How much filth there is in the church, even among those who, in the priesthood, should belong entirely to Him. How much pride, how much self-sufficiency.
Pope Benedict XVI
#17. Priesthood is not a convenient, historically conditioned form of Church organisation, but is rooted in the Incarnation, in the priesthood and mission of Christ himself.
Arthur Middleton
#18. The principles and doctrines of the priesthood are sublime and supernal. The more we study the doctrine and potential and apply the practical purpose of the priesthood, the more our souls will be expanded and our understanding enlarged, and we will see what the Lord has in store for us.
Dieter F. Uchtdorf
#19. The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state.
James Madison
#20. The priesthood of God is a shield. It is a shield against the evils of the world. That shield needs to be kept clean; otherwise, our vision of our purpose and the dangers around us will be limited.
James E. Faust
#21. It is ourselves alone that make our days lucky or unlucky. Away, then, with a vain prejudice, the invention of the priesthood, which has been transmitted by our ancestors to an ignorant people.
Voltaire
#22. The power of the priesthood heals, protects, and inoculates all of the righteous against the powers of darkness.
Sheri L. Dew
#23. Comedy is still alive, and there are still funny people. Jews are still overrepresented in comedy and psychiatry and underrepresented in the priesthood. That immigrant Jewish humor is still with us.
Robert Klein
#24. One who lays claim to special privilege through the priesthood doesn't understand the nature of his authority.
M. Russell Ballard
#25. I pray that wherever we are and whatever duties we have in the priesthood of God, we will be united in the cause to bring the gospel to all the world.
Henry B. Eyring
#26. Many feel they are called to the priesthood, but what they really hear is an inner voice saying, 'It's indoor work with no heavy lifting, do you want to be a ploughman like your father?'
Terry Pratchett
#27. I have always admired teachers because teaching, like the priesthood, medicine and writing, is a vocation. You don't become a teacher because you want wealth. It is the same with writing.
F. Sionil Jose
#28. The power of the living God is here on the earth. The Priesthood is here.
Heber J. Grant
#29. The devil knows that if the elders of Israel should ever wake up, they could step forth and help preserve freedom and extend the gospel. Therefore the devil has concentrated, and to a large extent successfully, in neutralizing much of the priesthood. He has reduced them to Sleeping Giants.
Ezra Taft Benson
#30. Every member of the priesthood should understand the divine plan designed by the Lord to raise up the first free people in modern times.
Ezra Taft Benson
#31. THE PRIMARY aim of this book is to explain the remarkable rule which regulated the succession to the priesthood of Diana at Aricia.
James George Frazer
#32. The priesthood is not really so much a gift as it is a commission to serve, a privilege to lift, and an opportunity to bless the lives of others.
Thomas S. Monson
#33. When our children obey the Lord and go to the temple to receive their blessings and enter into the marriage covenant, they enter into the same order of the priesthood that God instituted in the very beginning with father Adam.
Ezra Taft Benson
#34. In the priesthood we share the sacred duty to labor for the souls of men. We must do more than learn that this is our duty. It must go down into our hearts so deeply that neither the many demands on our efforts in the bloom of life nor the trials that come with age can turn us from that purpose.
Henry B. Eyring
#35. There was also something false about the atmosphere here. It was solemn and dignified like a church or the court of a president or a museum. They were moneylenders, but they acted as if charging interest were a noble calling, like the priesthood.
Ken Follett
#36. The priesthood is a marriage. People often start by falling in love, and they go on for years without realizing that love must change into some other love which is so unlike it that it can hardly be recognized as love at all.
Iris Murdoch
#37. I am determined not to assume the sacerdotal office, for I have seen many men whom I have regarded as persons of good character and liberal dispositions, degenerate into avarice, sloth, and dissipation, in consequence of their introduction into the priesthood
Poggio Bracciolini
#38. Nothing about the priesthood is self-centered. The priesthood always is used to serve, to bless, and to strengthen other people.
David A. Bednar
#39. Christ's invitation to the priesthood is an invitation to a way of life that is athletic in its intensity and heroic in its form.
Robert Barron
#40. I hope with all my heart and soul that every young man who receives the priesthood will honor that priesthood and be true to the trust which is conveyed when it is conferred. May each of us who holds the priesthood of God know what he believes.
Thomas S. Monson
#41. Missionary work essentially is a priesthood responsibility, and all of us who hold the priesthood are the Lord's authorized servants on the earth and are missionaries at all times and in all places - and we always will be.
David A. Bednar
#42. When we are baptized and confirmed, when brethren are ordained to the priesthood, when we go to the temple and receive our endowment, when we enter into the new and everlasting covenant of eternal marriage - in all these sacred ordinances, we make solemn commitments to keep God's commandments.
Joseph B. Wirthlin
#43. One cannot escape the harsh fact that as a ministerial profession, the priesthood has very serious problems. They are not new. They did not develop yesterday or last year.
Andrew Greeley
#44. The blessings of the priesthood transcend our ability to comprehend.
Dieter F. Uchtdorf
#45. Christianity stamped its character on jurisprudence; for empire has ever a connection with the priesthood.
Baron De Montesquieu
#46. The blessings of the priesthood are available to every righteous man and woman. We may all receive the Holy Ghost, obtain personal revelation, and be endowed in the temple, from which we emerge 'armed' with power.
Sheri L. Dew
#47. Religion united its influence with those of loyalty and love, and the order of knighthood, endowed with all the sanctity and religious awe that attended the priesthood, became an object of ambition to the greatest sovereigns.
Thomas Bulfinch
#48. This is not a time for fear, brethren, but rather a time for faith - a time for each of us who holds the priesthood to be his best self.
Thomas S. Monson
#49. Probably no theologian in English language has ever rivaled Owen stressing the absolute centrality of Christ's penal substitution and therefore his as Priest ... For that reason alone The Priesthood of Christ is worth all the time it takes to read it with humility, care, and reflection.
Sinclair B. Ferguson
#50. M'Lord, I know from history that once upon a time in a much earlier Church, a vocation to the priesthood meant a call from the bishop, not necessarily a call from God. And I heard the Bishop of Rome himself call you to be that which you have now become by ordination and consecration.
Walter M. Miller Jr.
#51. Lifting where we stand is a principle of power. Most of the priesthood bearers I know understand and live by this principle. They are eager to roll up their sleeves and go to work, whatever that work might be.
Dieter F. Uchtdorf
#52. Even if gay marriage were legalized there would still be gay men who didn't want to marry, gay men no other gay men would want to marry, and gay men who didn't want to leave the priesthood in order to marry.
Dan Savage
#53. In Gaul were two orders, the nobility and the priesthood, while the people, says Caesar, were all slaves.
John Lothrop Motley
#54. The priesthood of God has become the eminent power for good in the world. We are no longer a handful of people on the fringes of society. This great power for good has been entrusted to us, and we must not weaken it by failing in our responsibilities.
James E. Faust
#55. Ordinary men are given the authority of the priesthood. Worthiness and willingness - not experience, expertise, or education - are the qualifications for priesthood ordination.
David A. Bednar
#56. The Lord knew I would someday be charged with the priesthood responsibility for hundreds and even thousands of Heavenly Father's children who were in desperate temporal need.
Henry B. Eyring
#57. China is, in fact, the only country in the world to be ruled for hundreds of years, not by the nobility, nor by soldiers, nor even by the priesthood, but by scholars.
E.H. Gombrich
#58. Today is my anniversary of ordination to the priesthood. Please pray for me and all priests.
Pope Francis
#59. I think in my own country, at the way we've seen through the ordination of women to the priesthood, which I'm delighted about, and that will move on to another level before very long.
George Carey
#60. The priesthood hath in all nations, and all religions, been held highly venerable.
Francis Atterbury
#61. Any deep-rooted prejudice against others, such as homophobia or misogyny, would be grounds for rejecting a candidate for the priesthood, but not their sexual orientation.
Timothy Radcliffe
#62. The priesthood in many ways is the ultimate closet in Western civilization, where gay people particularly have hidden for the past two thousand years.
John Shelby Spong
#63. Sunny - If you can explain yourself before someone kicks your ass, count your blessings and give some thought to going back to the priesthood.
Nick - I would, but now-a-days that vow of chastity might be a problem.
J.A. Dennam
#64. As I say, it never ceases to amaze me how gullible some of our Church members are ... "
Admonitions for the Priesthood of God", Ensign, Jan 1973
Harold B. Lee
#65. Moke Kupihea has the strength of conviction necessary to impart to the world a more sensitive account of Hawaiian kahuna heritage, which comes down to him from the priesthood line from which he descends.
Rubellite Kawena Johnson
#66. The ravening wolves are amongst us, from our own membership, and they, more than any others, are clothed in sheep's clothing, because they wear the habiliments of the priesthood ... We should be careful of them.
J. Reuben Clark
#67. The inhabitants of Canada appeared to be suffering between two fires,
the soldiery and the priesthood.
Henry David Thoreau
#68. If you honestly couldn't tell that she was interested in you, you might want to admit the possibility that you are impossibly thick when it comes to women. You may want to consider the priesthood.
Patrick Rothfuss
#69. There are two great gifts which God, in his love for man, has granted from on high: the priesthood and the imperial dignity,
Justinian I
#70. Shepherds don't look after sheep because they love them - although I do think some shepherds like their sheep too much. They look after their sheep so they can, first, fleece them and second, turn them into meat. That's much more like the priesthood as I know it.
Christopher Hitchens
#71. There is thus a very great deal in common between the enthusiasm with which Mohammed's teaching attacked the priesthood, the Mass and the sacraments, and the enthusiasm with which Calvinism, the central motive force of the Reformation, did the same.
Hilaire Belloc
#72. As men of the priesthood, we have an essential role to play in society, at home, and in the Church. But we must be men that women can trust, that children can trust, and that God can trust.
D. Todd Christofferson
#73. I wanted to be a missionary and work abroad, but girls started to become a bigger part of my life around the time I lost interest in the priesthood.
James McAvoy
#74. ANOINT, v.t.: To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery. As sovereigns are anointed by the priesthood, So pigs to lead the populace are greased good.
Liu Shaoqi
#75. It's common knowledge that the "church" is nothing more than an invention of the priesthood designed to swindle the ordinary people of the empire out of just about everything they own.
David Eddings
#76. Is it like gay men go into the priesthood because they figure, Well, this'll solve my problem. I can't be a homosexual in the priesthood; it'll just go away. Maybe I'll try it with the Republican Party.
Bill Maher
#77. You young men of the priesthood, resolve to live the way you should. Don't be caught up in some of the silly things that are going on in the world, but bear in mind what has been given to you.
David B. Haight
#78. We're not at a point in time to be taking chances with children and young people in the church. The Holy Father himself said ... there is no room in the priesthood or religious life for someone who has abused a child. I think he's right.
Roger Mahony
#79. We cannot enjoy power in the priesthood until we learn to act by faith.
Robert L. Millet
#80. No person having the least particle of Negro blood can hold the Priesthood
Brigham Young
#81. Studying the daily news can appear more interesting than the priesthood lesson manual. Sitting down to rest can be more attractive than making appointments to visit those who need our priesthood service.
Henry B. Eyring
#82. The question of whether women should be made bishops once they had been ordained is absolutely pivotal. It seems to me absolute nonsense for women to be ordained to the priesthood but not to the episcopacy because the two are inextricably linked.
David Hope, Baron Hope Of Thornes
#83. The mathematical fraternity is a little like a self-perpetuating priesthood. The mathematicians of today teach the mathematicians of tomorrow and, in effect, decide whom to admit to the priesthood.
Paul Halmos
#84. In the beginning, God placed a woman in a companion role with the priesthood.
Ezra Taft Benson
#85. The priesthood of all believers did not make everyone into church workers; rather, it turned every kind of work into a sacred calling.
Gene Edward Veith Jr.
#86. My parents and grandparents have always been engaged in teaching or the medical profession or the priesthood, so I've sort of grown up with a sense of complicity in the lives of other people, so there's no virtue in that; it's the way one is raised.
Colin Firth
#87. So the Negro race has continued, and today is the day of the Negro as far as the world is concerned. They have influenced the generations of time; they have mixed their blood with many peoples, until there are many peoples not able to hold the priesthood.
Warren Jeffs
#88. Academics and scientists too easily enjoy the role of secular priesthood given them in the nineteenth century by T. H. Huxley in particular.
Simon James
#89. The Ottoman Empire was in decline, held back from modernization by a conservative Muslim priesthood.
Ken Follett
#90. We call upon priesthood bearers to store sufficient so that you and your family can weather the vicissitudes of life. Please see to it that those entrusted to your watchcare receive these two pamphlets entitled All Is Safely Gathered In. Exhort them to prepare now for rainy days ahead.
Keith B. McMullin
#91. Jesus ... said - long before his followers had established churches and a priesthood - 'I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.' This Way is the life of the Spirit. To follow it entails no necessity for places (all places are holy ground), no priesthood, since every man becomes a priest unto God ...
Esme Wynne-Tyson
#92. The transcendent gift of the Holy Ghost, along with membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is bestowed by confirmation, by the laying on of hands by those having priesthood authority.
James E. Faust
#93. A Catholic understanding of priesthood is so strongly rooted in the historic actions of Jesus and in all their antecedents in the place of sacrifice in life. And those things ... they are rooted to the role of the man.
Vincent Nichols
#94. All faithful members of the Lord's Church are equally blessed by priesthood ordinances.
Julie B. Beck
#95. Baptism is the critical priesthood ordinance which opens the door to eternal life for each one of us. It is the benchmark from which we count our many blessings because this is when our accountability to follow Jesus Christ and live his Gospel begins.
Elaine L. Jack
#96. It [slavery] has exercised absolute mastery over the American Church ... With the Bible in their hands, her priesthood have attempted to prove that slavery came down from God out of heaven. They have become slaveholders and dealers in human flesh.
William Lloyd Garrison
#97. If you are a single parent, make friends with others in similar situations and develop friendships with married couples. Counsel with your priesthood leaders. Let them know of your needs and wants. Single parenthood is understood by the Lord.
Ezra Taft Benson
#98. It is a shortsighted priesthood leader who doesn't see the value in calling upon the sisters to share the understanding and inspiration they possess.
M. Russell Ballard
#99. Priesthood ordinances are the pathway to the power of godliness.
David A. Bednar
#100. The proud cannot accept the authority of God giving direction to their lives. (See Helaman 12:6.) They pit their perceptions of truth against God's great knowledge, their abilities versus God's priesthood power, and their accomplishments against His mighty works.
Ezra Taft Benson
