Quotes about Cathedrals

Western cathedrals and abbeys…through soaring Gothic architecture, [give] us at floor level a sense of belonging within (but unable at the moment to inhabit more than a little of) great spaces of light and beauty, into which, significantly, only our music can penetrate.

The cathedrals were not financed by taxes, on the poor or on the rich. They were financed by gifts, from rich and poor alike. They were not built at the expense of the poor; they were built by the poor, by the peasants who worked on them, and by their gifts. And the cathedrals were also built for the poor, who usually love them more than the rich do. (The rich build banks; the poor build cathedrals. We build what we love.)

I never weary of great churches. It is my favourite kind of mountain scenery. Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral.

All the great works of art, the cathedrals - the Gothic cathedrals and the splendid Baroque churches - are a luminous sign of God, and thus are truly a manifestation, an epiphany of God.

C. S. Lewis rightly understood that the purpose of the church was to draw people to Christ and make them like Christ. He said that the church exists for no other purpose. "If the Church is not doing this, then all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible, are a waste of time.