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Are there no Moravians in the Moon, that not a missionary has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours, to civilize civilization and christianize Christendom?

— Herman Melville White-Jacket (1850)

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Christianity

More quotes by Herman Melville

Instinct and study; love and hate;
Audacity — reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob’s mystic heart,
To wrestle with the angel — Art.

Timoleon (1891)

Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851)

In armies, navies, cities, or families, in nature herself, nothing more relaxes good order than misery.

But I shall follow the endless, winding way, — the flowing river in the cave of man; careless whither I be led, reckless where I land.

Pierre; or, The Ambiguities (1852)

We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people — the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.

White-Jacket (1850)

All Herman Melville quotes →

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Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?

George Bernard Shaw Saint Joan (1923)

The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence, from Jerusalem, of a lunatic asylum.

Havelock Ellis

Christianity offers reasons for not fearing death or the universe, and in so doing it fails to teach adequately the virtue of courage.

Bertrand Russell Education and the Social Order (1932)

Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law [this quote is referring to English Common Law].

Thomas Jefferson Vol. 1 Whether Christianity is Part of the Common Law (1764)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Herman Melville (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.