Famous quotes containing the words sir, john and/or parsons:
“When Sir Robert Walpole was dying, he told Ranby his surgeon that he desired his body might be opened. Ranby acting great horror cried, “Good God, my Lord, don’t talk of that!” “Nay,” said Sir Robert, “it will not be till I am dead, and that I shall not feel it—nor you neither.””
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“No such sermons have come to us here out of England, in late years, as those of this preacher,—sermons to kings, and sermons to peasants, and sermons to all intermediate classes. It is in vain that John Bull, or any of his cousins, turns a deaf ear, and pretends not to hear them: nature will not soon be weary of repeating them. There are words less obviously true, more for the ages to hear, perhaps, but none so impossible for this age not to hear.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I will have no Parsons around me but such as drink deep, ride to Hounds and caress the Wives and Daughters of their Parishioners. A Virtuous Parson does nothing to test or exercise the Faith of his Flock.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)