The South Bend Tribune. Wed, Apr 30, 1913 ·Page 14
FEW HOME RUNS BY BILLY
“You always get what you’re looking for in this world.”
“Gossips have tongues so long that they can sit in the parlor and lick skillets in the kitchen.”
“Lots of people join church for the same motive that a man blows a safe, for what they can get out of it.”
“If I should start with a wagon load of Bibles to-day and offer one to every person I met, who would quote for me 10 verses of scripture and tell me where they were in the Bible I would have a big bunch of the books left when I got to New York.”
“The ordinances of the church don’t save anybody.”
“I don’t believe that half the people in the churches of South Bend have been converted.”
“I thank God for the mutts in this world that hate me.”
“I have more good, true, loyal friends and more loyal enemies than any man that ever came to South Bend.”
“Some of you people go to church on Sunday morning; go to a ball game in the afternoon; and keep a case of beer in your cellar that the booze man slips in while your neighbors are away.”
“Some ministers say that I am too sensational. Well, I would be anything to save souls.”
“Every denomination today has a clique that bosses the minister.”
“Some people carry all their piety in their collar, plug hat and their cane.”
“If there is any one in the world that I pity it is the pastor of the average church.”
“You ring the church bell on Sunday morning, put a duffer up to a little stunt and all the time the old world is going straight to hell so fast that it is breaking the speed limit.”
“You back the church of God in on a siding, lock the switch, and let hell come rushing down the main line.”
“The man who seduces a girl should be shot and if I was on the jury in his trial he would never get away unless the ants should carry him through the keyhole.”
“I have as much respect for the man who knocks revivals as I would have if he should spit in the face of Jesus Christ.”
“One reason why the world doesn’t join the church is because the church has joined the world.”
“I have as much respect for the man who knocks revivals as I would have if he should spit in the face of Jesus Christ.”
“You come up here and prove the things that are said about me and I will go to the penitentiary. But if you come up here and can’t prove them you go to the penitentiary.”
“If you want to elevate people then have got to live better than they do. Away with this 20th century doctrine of living as they do.”
“The difference between a grave and a rut is that a grave is a little deeper. There are two gangs in every church, the ruts and the anti-ruts.”
“I despise men who trim their sails to catch the passing breeze of popularity.”
“A boy can throw stones and break a window, but it takes a skilled mechanic to make one. Any fool can sneer at a revival—and you’re a fool if you do.”
“You might as well expect a mummy to bear children, and the children of hell to sing hymns, as to expect an awakening that doesn’t begin in the church.”
“The measure of preparedness determines your success.”
“Half the members of almost any church could die and the church not lose any of its spiritual force.”
“We are going daffy over culture clubs. The world doesn’t need informing, but reforming.”
“The less brains a man has the greater trouble he exercises to show what he has got.”
“You can not scald a hog in ice water.”
The South Bend Tribune. Wed, Apr 30, 1913 ·Page 14
Evangelist Billy Sunday (1862-1935) 