Lionel Blue quotes
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“In speaking of Jesus, I must speak about Christianity because I do not think it possible or profitable to divide the two.”
-- Lionel Blue -
“Jews are just like everyone else, only more so.”
-- Lionel Blue -
“I am pleased now that I have lived in a gay as well as a religious ghetto, though it hasn't been very comfortable. Taken together, their limitations cancel each other out and I have seen the world more kindly and more honestly.”
-- Lionel Blue -
“Early on I saw the repression and idolatry of Stalinism, and when it cracked, I was open to religion again.”
-- Lionel Blue -
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“For a devotee or lover, the being, worshipped or loved, will always be the only one for her or him.”
-- Lionel Blue -
“Discrimination against Jews can be read in Thomas Aquinas, and insults against Jews in Martin Luther.”
-- Lionel Blue -
“What would I have done if I'd been put to the test? Would I have risked my own life for people I hardly knew? Probably, I would have looked the other way at best or become another apologist for evil at worst.”
-- Lionel Blue -
“An aged rabbi, crazed with liberalism, once said to me, We Jews are just ordinary human beings. Only a bit more so!”
-- Lionel Blue -
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“I feel that the Christian experience and the Jewish one have much to give each other. If this open society continues and there is no return to political anti-Semitism, then this encounter, deeper than any theology, may happen.”
-- Lionel Blue -
“At religious instruction classes, I encountered The Pilgrims Progress by John Bunyan, and the sincerity of the traveller in that book was overwhelming.”
-- Lionel Blue -
“On the way to work good-hearted young girls sometimes offer me their seats, which I accept and bless them in return, a transaction satisfying to all concerned.”
-- Lionel Blue -
“Praying privately in churches, I began to discover that heaven was my true home and also that it was here and now, woven into this life.”
-- Lionel Blue -
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“I once asked God what I could give him. "Your problems," he said. "I've got everything else.”
-- Lionel Blue -
“I was not comfortable worshipping another Jew.”
-- Lionel Blue -
“I didn't want to be on the losing side. I was fed up with Jewish weakness, timidity and fear. I didn't want any more Jewish sentimentality and Jewish suffering. I was sickened by our sad songs.”
-- Lionel Blue -
“I found that when I did something for the sake of heaven, heaven happened. These things changed my life. I owe them to my encounter with Christianity.”
-- Lionel Blue -
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“I began to see that my problems, seen spiritually, were really my soul's plusses.”
-- Lionel Blue -
“If a dish doesn't turn out right, change the name and don't bat an eyelid. A fallen souffle is only a risen omelette. It depends on the self-confidence with which you present it.”
-- Lionel Blue -
“I have ended as a Reform Rabbi, grateful to Christianity for so many good things.”
-- Lionel Blue -
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“I recovered my infant Judaism, but in a reformist version.”
-- Lionel Blue -
“I was certainly open for something being on the edge of a nervous breakdown, perplexed by my own sexuality. I was gay.”
-- Lionel Blue -
“It was admitted by the early rabbis that the sectarians could be as full of good works as eggs were full of meat.”
-- Lionel Blue -
“I literally fell among Quakers when I went up to Oxford.”
-- Lionel Blue -
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“For some years I deserted religion in favour of Marxism. The republic of goodness seemed more attainable than the Kingdom of God.”
-- Lionel Blue -
“During the Second World War, evacuated to non-Jewish households, I encountered Christianity at home and in school.”
-- Lionel Blue -
“I learnt pity, sympathy, and what it was like to be at the other end of the stick. Such lessons can't be learnt in lecture halls.”
-- Lionel Blue -
“Old friends die on you, and they're irreplaceable. You become dependent.”
-- Lionel Blue -
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“To my surprise, my 70s are nicer than my 60s and my 60s than my 50s, and I wouldn't wish my teens and 20s on my enemies.”
-- Lionel Blue -
“My mother enjoyed old age, and because of her I've begun to enjoy parts of it too. So far I've had it good and am crumbling nicely.”
-- Lionel Blue -
“Pious XII was too neutral to mention the gas chambers; decent people like my own family were turned into devils by crude Christianity.”
-- Lionel Blue -
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“Because of my Marxism, I was not into myths or miracles, whether it was the virgin birth, the physical resurrection or casting out demons from an epileptic.”
-- Lionel Blue -
“I was not allowed a physical lover. Falling in love with Love was the best I could get.”
-- Lionel Blue -
“My mother was a modern woman with a limited interest in religion. When the sun set and the fast of the Day of Atonement ended, she shot from the synagogue like a rocket to dance the Charleston.”
-- Lionel Blue -
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“The Christian use of religion as a personal love affair both shocked me, and attracted me.”
-- Lionel Blue -
“I thought of such Christian inventions as the ghetto and the Jewish badge of shame. The Nazis didn't have to go very far to pick up their know-how.”
-- Lionel Blue -
“I still go to a Christian priory for retreats.”
-- Lionel Blue -
“For a Christian, Jesus is the unique and only way that God has fully revealed himself. For a Jew this cannot be.”
-- Lionel Blue -
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“When you do a good turn you feel rich, even if you are broke.”
-- Lionel Blue -
“The real evidence for Jesus and Christianity is in how Jesus and the Christianity based on him manifest themselves in the lives of practicing Christians.”
-- Lionel Blue
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