Quotes About Pagan

Sometimes at pagan shrines they vowed offerings to idols, swore oaths that the killer of souls might come to their aid and save the people. That was their way, their heathenish hope; deep in their hearts they remembered hell.

I understand, and not knowing how to express myself without pagan words, I'd rather remain silent

Lack of love for the vegetative, subtle, cthonic, pagan, and sexy aspect of the world means death.

the purpose of Genesis was to refute pagan beliefs involving worship of the sun, other luminaries, or pagan deities. In other words, Genesis is allegedly teaching us not to worship the sun but our true God who made the sun. (As

Michelangelo proposed to the pope that he make a large copy of the Pantheon dome on top of the new St. Peter's. The horrified pontiff replied that Hadrian's dome was pagan—the Vatican cathedral had to have a Christian-looking dome, like the one built in Florence a century before by Brunelleschi.

What is important, perhaps, is that the moment was a culmination of all we had ever dreamt: not just Grey Goose, not just the good life—the tuneful life without the pressure of time—but also the green tree of the pagan love flourishing within the Shining Barrier.

One can't even find the concept of the "immortal soul" in the Bible. It was grafted onto Christian teachings from the pagan Greeks long after the Bible was written.2

The problem is that most ancient people—whether Christian, Jewish, or pagan—did not have this paradigm. For them, the human realm was not an absolute category separated from the divine realm by an enormous and unbridgeable crevasse. On the contrary, the human and divine were two continuums that could, and did, overlap.

This motivation was at work in both Christian and non-Christian circles. We know this because ancient authors actually tell us so. For example, a commentator on the writings of Aristotle, a pagan scholar named David, indicated: "If someone is uninfluential and unknown, yet wants his writing to be read, he writes in the name of someone who came before him and was influential, so that through his influence he can get his work accepted.

But the reality is that most of these symbols would have been quite simple for anyone at the time to discern, whether a devoted Christian or a Roman pagan.

I have been referring to a man named Apollonius, who came from the town of Tyana. He was a pagan—that is, a polytheistic worshiper of the many Roman gods—and a renowned philosopher of his day. His followers thought he was immortal. We have a book written about him by his later devotee Philostratus.

Conversion was not a widely known phenomenon in antiquity. Pagan religions had almost nothing like it. They were polytheistic, and anyone who decided, as a pagan, to worship a new or different god was never required to relinquish any former gods or their previous patterns of worship. Pagan religions were additive, not restrictive.

In no first-century Greek or Roman (pagan) source is Jesus mentioned. Scholars

Sometimes the pagan spirit of Roman poetry arouses qualms. Guibert of Nogent confesses in his autobiography that early in his monastic life he took up verse making and even fell into "certain obscene words and composed brief writings, worthless and immodest, in fact bereft of all decency," before abandoning this shocking practice in favor of commentaries on the Scriptures.

Many people think that the church simply took over a pagan holiday, but that is not so. As Sextus Julius Africanus had shown, there were good reasons for celebrating the feast of Christ's birth on December 25, and sun and light symbolism played a very great role in Christian worship.

In their religious quest men and women-- especially those who live in modern Western Christianized societies-- are still in the power of those early traditions that strive within them for supremacy. It is a conflict of pagan or Christian beliefs, or, one might say, of rebirth or resurrection.

In case of necessity, not only a priest or a deacon, but a lay man or woman, nay even a pagan and a heretic, can [validly] baptize, provided only that he observes the form prescribed by the Church and has the intention of doing what the Church does.

Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. G. K. CHESTERTON

In Germany, a new sect shall be born which shall renew ancient pagan times.

Free of all responsibility or restraint, in the sheer obliviousness of dreams, he had lived like a happy pagan; and now he must go back to the drear existence of a mediaeval monk, beneath the prompting of an obscure sense of duty.

He's a pagan! I'm an artist! We're naturally sympathetic!

I had discovered that love might be a pastime as well as a tragedy, and I gave myself to it with pagan innocence.

Me! I'm your pagan, lord,' I said, 'what do I care about sin?' 'Then care for my children,' he said. 'I will, lord King,' I promised.

I want to believe him, my lady!" Leofstan said earnestly. "I want to believe that this is a miracle to accompany my enthronement! That on Easter day we will have the joy of bringing a pagan horde into the service of Jesus Christ!" "This is Christ's doing!" Father Ceolberht said through his toothless gums.