Saints Quotes

“I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.”
― Nelson Mandela

“Telling an introvert to go to a party is like telling a saint to go to Hell.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“You know the problem with heroes and saints, Nikolai?” I asked as I closed the book’s cover and headed for the door. “They always end up dead.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Siege and Storm

“Don't fool yourself, my dear. You're much worse than a bitch. You're a saint. Which shows why saints are dangerous and undesirable.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, The Journals of Kierkegaard

“I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.”
― Billy Joel

“Saint Anthony said, in his solitude, he sometimes encountered devils who looked like angels, and other times he found angels who looked like devils. When asked how he could tell the difference, the saint said that you can only tell which is which by the way you feel after the creature has left your company.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“Saints have no moderation, nor do poets, just exuberance.”
― Anne Sexton

“None of us are saints. We can all do better.”
― Marie Lu, The Midnight Star

“Sanctify yourself and you will sanctify society.”
― Francis Of Assisi

“To live in peace as long as the waters run in the rivers and creeks, and as long as the stars and moon endure.”
― Tamanend, The Peace Treaty

“the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

“He made himself refocus on Inej's feet. "Saints," he said.
Inej grimaced. "That bad?"
"No, you just have really ugly feet."
"Ugly feet that got you on this roof.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“...the dead have a way of becoming saints in the eyes of their survivors...”
― Rachel Vincent, My Soul to Take

“Saints and martyrs had never interested Maggie so much as sages and poets.”
― George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally. A higher paradox confounds the emotion as well as reason and there are long periods in the lives of all of us, when the truth as revealed by faith is hideous, emotionally disturbing, downright repulsive. Witness the dark night of the soul in individual saints . . .”
― Flannery O'Connor

“What's that you're doing, Sassenach?"

"Making out little Gizmo's birth certificate--so far as I can," I added.

"Gizmo?" he said doubtfully. "That will be a saint's name?"

"I shouldn't think so, though you never know, what with people named Pantaleon and Onuphrius. Or Ferreolus."

"Ferreolus? I dinna think I ken that one." He leaned back, hands linked over his knee.

"One of my favorites," I told him, carefully filling in the birthdate and time of birth--even that was an estimate, poor thing. There were precisely two bits of unequivocal information on this birth certificate--the date and the name of the doctor who's delivered him.

"Ferreolus," I went on with some new enjoyment, "is the patron saint of sick poultry. Christian martyr. He was a Roman tribune and a secret Christian. Having been found out, he was chained up in the prison cesspool to await trial--I suppose the cells must have been full. Sounds rather daredevil; he slipped his chains and escaped through the sewer. They caught up with him, though, dragged him back and beheaded him."

Jamie looked blank.

"What has that got to do wi' chickens?"

"I haven't the faintest idea. Take it up with the Vatican," I advised him.

"Mmphm. Aye, well, I've always been fond of Saint Guignole, myself." I could see the glint in his eye, but couldn't resist.

"And what's he the patron of?"

"He's involved against impotence." The glint got stronger. "I saw a statue of him in Brest once; they did say it had been there for a thousand years. 'Twas a miraculous statue--it had a cock like a gun muzzle, and--"

"A what?"

"Well, the size wasna the miraculous bit," he said, waving me to silence. "Or not quite. The townsfolk say that for a thousand years, folk have whittled away bits of it as holy relics, and yet the cock is still as big as ever." He grinned at me. "They do say that a man w' a bit of St. Guignole in his pocket can last a night and a day without tiring."

"Not with the same woman, I don't imagine," I said dryly. "It does rather make you wonder what he did to merit sainthood, though, doesn't it?"

He laughed.

"Any man who's had his prayer answered could tell yet that, Sassenach."
(PP. 841-842)”
― Diana Gabaldon, Drums of Autumn

“The peace of the celestial city is the perfectly ordered and harmonious enjoyment of God, and of one another in God. (City of God, Book 19)”
― St. Augustine of Hippo

“Every saint has a bee in his halo.”
― Elbert Hubbard

“The saints, too, had wandering minds. The saints, too, had constantly to recall their constantly wandering mind-child home. They became saints because they continued to go after the little wanderer, like the Good Shepherd.”
― Peter Kreeft, Prayer for Beginners

“It is well known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic Saints over the manuscripts on which the classical works of ancient heathendom had been written.”
― Karl Marx

“Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is possible that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never had much temptation to be human beings.”
― George Orwell

“The pages of history are red with the blood of illuminated "saints" who were murdered by their religions for actually achieving the advertised spiritual rewards.”
― Christopher S. Hyatt, Sex Magic, Tantra & Tarot: The Way of the Secret Lover

“Saints are those who managed to love more than we did.”
― Sorin Cerin, Wisdom Collection: The Book of Wisdom

“Only the poet or the saint can water an asphalt pavement in the confident anticipation that lilies will reward his labour.”
― Somerset maugham, The Moon And Sixpence

“It is no sign of benediction to have been obsessed with the lives of saints, for it is an obsession intertwined with a taste for maladies and hunger for depravities. One only troubles oneself with saints because one has been disappointed by the paradoxes of earthly life; one therefore searches out other paradoxes, more outlandish in guise, redolent of unknown truths, unknown perfumes...”
― Emil Cioran

“We would never call inexplicable little insights 'hunches,' for fear of drawing the universe's attention. But they happened, and you knew you had been in the proximity of one that had come through if you saw a detective kiss his or her fingers and touch his or her chest where a pendant to Warsha, patron saint of inexplicable inspirations, would, theoretically, hang.”
― China Miéville, The City & the City

“We hope someday to be saints, but not martyrs”
― Mario Puzo, The Last Don

“Try your best to be a saint and see how far you'll fall.”
― Sai Marie Johnson

“But we have no [Marian] apparitions cautioning the Church against, say, accepting the delusion of an Earth-centered Universe, or warning it of complicity with Nazi Germany — two matters of considerable moral as well as historical import....

Not a single saint criticized the practice of torturing and burning “witches” and heretics. Why not? Were they unaware of what was going on? Could they not grasp its evil? And why is [the Virgin] Mary always admonishing the poor peasant to inform the authorities? Why doesn’t she admonish the authorities herself? Or the King? Or the Pope?”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark