“A revival does two things. First, it returns the Church from her backsliding and second, it causes the conversion of men and women; and it always includes the conviction of sin on the part of the Church. What a spell the devil seems to cast over the Church today!”

I’ve always slightly worried the kids who play football around my house. They know I’m an actor, but felt sorry for me because they’d never seen anything I’ve done.

My family knew I was gay when I was 15, long before I got famous. But it’s a very different thing coming out to your family and coming out to the universe. That’s a big step.

Your reputation is what people say about you. Your character is what God and your wife know about you.

Home is the place we love best and grumble the most.

I get obsessed by little nerdy things in my corner that no one else is interested in.

And if you think that anybody is going to frighten me, you don’t know me yet.

Sinners cannot find God for the same reason that criminals cannot find a policeman: They aren’t looking!

An excuse is a skin of a reason stuffed with a lie.

If you are strangers to prayer you are strangers to power.

The reason you don’t like the Bible, you old sinner, is because it knows all about you.

I pity anyone who can’t laugh. There must be something wrong with their religion or their lives. The devil can’t laugh.

There is nothing in the world of art like the songs mother used to sing.

Whenever a day comes when I can stand and preach God’s Word without an agony of anxiety lest the people will not accept Christ; whenever a day comes when I can see men and women coming down the aisles without joy in my heart, I’ll quit preaching.

I want to preach the gospel so plainly that men can come from the factories and not have to bring along a dictionary.

The fellow that has no money is poor. The fellow that has nothing but money is poorer still.

The saloon is a liar. It promises good cheer and sends sorrow. It promises prosperity and sends adversity. It promises happiness and sends misery…. It is God’s worst enemy and the devil’s best friend.

A basically dishonest man can survive longer in the church or the classroom than he can in the grain exchange or the furniture business.

My religion is life, and my church is the universe.

Acting is broad enough a church that you can pick your races, decide which way you want to go at different times.I think that the story and circumstance tends to dictate the most and then what you do with your own approach after that.

They all attended Hester’s church, which Dellarobia viewed as a complicated pyramid scheme of moral debt and credit resting ultimately on the shoulders of the Lord, but rife with middle managers.

The poets began drifting away from churches as the jurists grew louder and more insistent.

But I really do have a soft spot for the solo shows. Any musician who writes and sings will tell you that’s the center of it, that is it. It’s almost like there’s something church-like about it and you gotta go back there, if you’re a songwriter that sings your material.

That the Jews were unholy was a belief so ingrained by the Church [by the 14th century] that the most devout persons were the harshest in their antipathy, none more so than St. Louis.

The Church [in the 14th century] gave ceremony and dignity to lives that had little of either. It was the source of beauty and art to which all had some access and which many helped to create.