Haven't you learned anything from that guy that gives those sermons in church? Captain What's-his-name. We live in a society of laws, why do you think I took you to see all those Police Academy movies? For fun? Well I didn't hear anybody laughing! Did you
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I graduated pretty quickly. When I was eleven or twelve a close friend of the family got lynched. I guess he was about forty years old, married, and we used to play with his kids. I remember the Saturday night a bunch of white men beat him to death at the Decatur fairgrounds because he sassed back a white woman. They just left him dead on the ground. Everyone in town knew it but never said a word in public. I went down and saw his bloody clothes. They left those clothes on a fence for about a year. Every Negro in town was supposed to get the message from those clothes and I can see those clothes now in my mind's eye.... But nothing was said in public. No sermons in church. No news. No protest. It was as though this man just dissolved except for the bloody clothes.... Just before I went into the Army I began wondering how long I could stand it. I used to watch the Saturday night sport of white men trying to run down a Negro with their car, or white gangs coming through town to beat up a Negro.
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Murders are exciting and lift people into a heart-beating awe as religion is supposed to do, after seeing one in the street young couples will go back to bed and make love, people will cross themselves and thank God for the gift of their stuporous lives, old folks will talk to each other over cups of hot water with lemon because murders are enlivened sermons to be analyzed and considered and relished, they speak to the timid of the dangers of rebellion, murders are perceived as momentary descents of God and so provide joy and hope and righteous satisfaction to parishioners, who will talk about them for years afterward to anyone who will listen.
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We are on the side of religion as opposed to religions, and we are among those who believe in the wretched inadequacy of sermons and the sublimity of prayer.
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Some plague the people with too long sermons; for the faculty of listening is a tender thing, and soon becomes weary and satiated.
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He alone knows everything, unto whom the Lord Himself gives knowledge. One may talk and preach and give sermons but still yearn after Maya.
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Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral.
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Sermons remain one of the last forms of public discourse where it is culturally forbidden to talk back.
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Don't you know, priests, why our sermons do not touch the people's heart? Because we do not preach to the eyes, only to the ears.
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When I married Humphrey I made up my mind to like sermons, and I set out by liking the end very much. That soon spread to the middle and the b...
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There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dulness. I need only suggest what kind of sermons are s...
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Our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.
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And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.
Nature
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When I read great literature, great drama, speeches, or sermons, I feel that the human mind has not achieved anything greater than the ability to share feelings and thoughts through language.
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A song will outlive all sermons in the memory.
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And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.
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