142 Quotes by Robert Farrar Capon

However grand our sacramental downsittings and updressings may be, they remain only and precisely sacraments: real presences, under particular signs, of the happier order that faith can discover under any and all signs. They’re a bit like the church. As long as we see them as an earnest of the kingdom, they’re all right; when we put on airs and act as if they were the kingdom itself, they look just silly.

People always assume that the church’s primary business is to teach morality. But it isn’t; it’s to proclaim grace, forgiveness, and the free party for all. It’s to announce the reconciling relationship of God to everybody and to invite them simply to believe it and celebrate it.

What saves us is Jesus, and the way we lay hold of that salvation is by faith. And faith is something that, throughout this book, I shall resolutely refuse to let mean anything other than trusting Jesus. It is simply saying yes to him rather than no. It is, at its root, a mere “uh-huh” to him personally.

An eye for an eye” won’t work because all it does is double the number of eyeless people.

Against all the propaganda for fancy eating and plain cooking, I hope to persuade you to cook fancy and just plain eat. It is better for your soul.

Jesus didn’t shy away from sinners, so why should the church? And don’t tell me the church welcomes sinners. I know better. It welcomes only sinners who repent and then never seriously need forgiveness again.

The world has taken a five-thousand-year bath in wisdom and is just as grimy as ever.

God does not punish people for being nonpacifists; war alone is punishment enough.

A silent lover is one who doesn’t know his job.