Devout Quotes

“Christians talk as though goodness was their idea but good behavior doesn't have any religious origin. Our prisons are filled with the devout.”

“We all colour devotion according to our own likings and dispositions. One man sets great value on fasting, and believes himself to be leading a very devout life, so long as he fasts rigorously, although the while his heart is full of bitterness;–and while he will not moisten his lips with wine, perhaps not even with water, in his great abstinence, he does not scruple to steep them in his neighbour’s blood, through slander and detraction.”

“A devout Christian, desire Jesus Christ.”

“The devout life does not solely entail living as a monk or ascetic, though that is fine. The devout life requires bringing God into all things.”

“Nobody can always have devout feelings: and even if we could, feelings are not what God principally cares about.”

“Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence what so ever.”

“I commit her to memory. When I'm alone, I feel a strange yearning, the hunger of a man fasting not because he believes but because he's ashamed. Not the cleansing hunger of the devout, but the feverish hunger of the hypocrite. I let her go every evening only because there's nothing I can do to stop her.”

“Pray devoutly but hammer stoutly.”

“To be a devout reader was to be an acolyte of solace.”

“I don't fly on account of my religion. I'm a devout coward.”