Mother Teresa Quotes

It amazes me that the most Christian funerals are the most barbaric funeral rites of passage that are celebrated anywhere in the world.

The universal practice of closing the eyes of the dead may be thought to have originated in the desire that he might be prevented from seeing his way.

I am just going. Have me decently buried; and do not let my body be put into the Vault in less than three days after I am dead.... Tis well.

My premise is that the popular aphorism that 'all religions are fundamentally the same and only superficially different' simply is not true. It is more correct to say that all religions are, at best, superficially similar but fundamentally different.

In order to know a community, one must observe the styles of its funerals and know what manner of men they bury with most ceremony.

People's clothes ought to be buried with them.

Shoulda sent a thank you note, you little hoe Now Imma wrap your coffin wit a bow

The church's or Christian group's methods are as important as its message.

It is by far the most elegant worship, hardly excepting the Greek mythology. What with incense, pictures, statues, altars, shrines, relics, and the real presence, confession, absolution, - there is something sensible to grasp at. Besides, it leaves no possibility of doubt; for those who swallow their Deity, really and truly, in transubstantiation, can hardly find any thing else otherwise than easy of digestion.

Death is the least civilized rite of passage.

I don't know what you all believe, and I don't really care ... but you have to admit that beliefs are odd. Lots of Christians wear crosses around their necks ... you really think when Jesus comes back, he ever wants to see a fucking cross?

When graves are covered with stones, the dead can no longer get out. But the dead can't go out anyway! What difference does it make whether they're covered with soil or stones?

Hinduism is not a codified religion.

"Peggotty!" repeated Miss Betsey, with some indignation. "Do you mean to say, child, that any human being has gone into a Christian church, and got herself named Peggotty?"

From the 9th to the 15th centuries, the area which is now modern Spain was home to the greatest peaceful agglomeration of cultures ever known in the post-literate worldEven more remarkable than the flowering of art itself was the confluence of cultures that produced it: under the rule of Islam, Muslims, Jews and Christians lived and worked together in relative harmony.

The nails from a suicide's coffin, and the skull of the parricide, were of course no trouble; for Vesquit never traveled without these household requisites.

[To] me organized religion, the formalities and routines, [is] like being marched in formation to look at a sunset.

I went to church every Sunday...I understood Christmas and what Easter was about. I understood the persecution of Christ, the crucifixion of Christ, the Resurrection of Christ. I understood all that but I have to say that beyond that...for me, my knowledge after that was quite vague.

Boy, when you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead?

I'm spiritual. I'm religious. I'm a strong Christian and I'm a Catholic but I go to a Presbyterian Church. Occasionally I go to the Catholic church too. I take communion. I haven't transferred my membership or anything.

I am unable to distinguish clearly between your religious ceremonies and apparently identical behavior at the sporting and cultural functions you have transmitted to me.

Im a Tibetan monk, not a vegetarian.

Those are values that help guide not just my family's Christian faith, but that of Jewish Americans, and Muslim Americans; nonbelievers and Americans of all backgrounds. And no one better embodies that spirit of service than the men and women who wear our country's uniform and their families.

See Christians, Jews, one heavy sabbath keep, And all the western world believe and sleep.