Quotes for All
Limbo is the place. In Limbo one has natural happiness without the beatific vision; no harps; no communal order; but wine and conversation and imperfect, various humanity. Limbo for the unbaptized, for the pious heathen, the sincere sceptic. Evelyn Waugh
Doth some one say that there be gods above? There are not; no, there are not. Let no fool, Led by the old false fable, thus deceive you. Look at the facts themselves, yielding my words, No undue credence: for I say that kings kill, rob, break oaths, lay cities waste by fraud, And doing … Read more
Oh! if people were but acquainted with piety, they would not fear it so much, or give it so unattractive a character; ’tis the balm of life, and perhaps in the world it is believed to consist of bitterness, harshness, uncouthness; but, take my word for it, nothing is more gentle, more yielding, more loving … Read more
The Lord help us!’ he soliloquised in an undertone of peevish displeasure, while relieving me of my horse: looking, meantime, in my face so sourly that I charitably conjectured he must have need of divine aid to digest his dinner, and his pious ejaculation had no reference to my unexpected advent. Emily Bronte
It all seemed a hollow sham now – that strict code, that conscientious virtue that condemned her to the sterile joys of pious women! No, no, she’d had enough of that; she wanted to live! Emile Zola
Seven hundred thousand men are said to have perished in the first two expeditions, which had been thus commenced and carried on by the pious zeal of the Christian church, and in the total amount, several million were found numbered with the dead: the awful effects of religious fanaticism presuming upon the aid of heaven. … Read more
Except for those who think in terms of pious platitudes or dogma or narrow prejudice (and those thoughts we aren’t interested in), people don’t speak their beliefs easily, or publicly. Edward R. Murrow
One must search diligently to find laudatory comments on education (other than those pious platitudes which are fodder for commencement speeches). It appears that most persons who have achieved fame and success in the world of ideas are cynical about formal education. These people are a select few, who often achieved success in spite of … Read more
In their censures of luxury the fathers are extremely minute and circumstantial; and among the various articles which excite their pious indignation, we may enumerate false hair, garments of any colour except white, instruments of music, vases of gold or silver, downy pillows, white bread, foreign wines, public salutations, the use of warm baths, and … Read more
A thing can only live through a pious illusion. Friedrich Nietzsche