GOD QUOTES III
quotations about God
Mankind, transmitting from generation to generation the legacy of accumulated vengeances, and pursuing with the feelings of duty the misery of their fellow-beings, have not failed to attribute to the Universal Cause a character analogous with their own. The image of this invisible, mysterious Being is more or less excellent and perfect -- resembles more or less its original -- in proportion to the perfection of the mind on which it is impressed.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"Essay on Christianity"
God is here below the most popular of all beings.... In the open fields, resting upon his implement of toil, the laborer lifts up his eyes towards heaven, and he names God to his children by an impulse as simple as his own soul. The poor call upon him, the dying invoke his name, the wicked fear him, the good bless him, kings give him their crowns to wear, armies place him at the head of their battalions, victory renders thanksgiving to him, defeat seeks help from him, nations arm themselves with him against their tyrants; there is neither place, nor time, nor circumstance, nor sentiment, in which God does not appear and is not named. Even love itself, so sure of its own charm, so confident in its own immortality, dares not to ignore him, and comes before his altars to beg from him the confirmation of the promises to which it has so often sworn.
HENRI-DOMINIQUE LACORDAIRE
God: Conferences Delivered at Notre Dame in Paris
Without the desire for God, our planet would be a sorry wasteland of ugliness.
LUIS BARRAGÁN
acceptance speech for Pritzker Architecture Prize, 1980
It should not be so hard to believe in God, for man himself is scarcely less wonderful.
FRANK CRANE
"The Part of Me That Doubts," Four Minute Essays
Each person is entitled to some version of God that seems real, yet many versions contradict one another. The God of any religion is only a fragment of God. This has to be true, because a being who is unbounded has no image, no role to play, no location either inside or outside the cosmos, whereas religions offer many images--father, mother, lawgiver, judge, ruler of the universe.
DEEPAK CHOPRA
How to Know God
All powers, all laws, are but the fair
Embodied thoughts of God.
JOHN STUART BLACKIE
All things are full of God
Gods are great ... but the heart is greater. For it is from our hearts they come, and to our hearts they shall return.
NEIL GAIMAN
American Gods
If God exists, there's nobody else in God's class. God is unutterably "other." We can't use the words person or know or love--or even exist--about God in anything remotely like the way we are persons who know, love, and exist. This limitation of language gives rise to the problem of anthropomorphism, applying to God the meanings of words as they apply to us--the only beings of whom we have firsthand knowledge. This is trying to understand God as if God were patterned on us rather than the other way around.
WILLIAM J. O'MALLEY
God: The Oldest Question
God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention.
MARK TWAIN
letter to Orion Clemens, Mar. 23, 1878
If God is the greatest possible being, a maximally perfect source of existence, then he is not just one more item in the inventory of reality. He is the hub of the wheel, the center and focus, the ultimate support, of all.
THOMAS V. MORRIS
Our Idea of God
If you want the fire of God, you must become the fuel of God.
TOMMY TENNEY
The God Chasers
God helps them that helps themselves.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanac
When gods war with gods, they use weapons we do not know.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
By the Waters of Babylon
God is alpha and omega in the great world: endeavor to make him so in the little world; make him thy evening epilogue and thy morning prologue; practice to make him thy last thought at night when thou sleepest, and thy first thought in the morning when thou awakest; so shall thy fancy be sanctified in the night, and thy understanding rectified in the day; so shall thy rest be peaceful, thy labors prosperous, thy life pious, and thy death glorious.
FRANCIS QUARLES
Enchiridion
I don't understand worshipping a god who denigrates women and whose 'true believers' feel it's their right to look down on anyone who doesn't think exactly as they do.
P.C. CAST & KRISTIN CAST
Chosen
I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own--a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Living Philosophies
Maybe there isn't a God after all, maybe there's only a universe rotating by itself like a millstone.
GAO XINGJIAN
The Other Shore
Are we to believe that God peculiarly dwells in temples made with hands--he who is a spirit, and occupies all space; that he needs articulated prayers--he who knows our thoughts before they are framed with words; that sprinklings and washings, that bread and wine, that mediation of trained priests--in short, that religion as a ritual, something in itself and for itself, with its own times, seasons, customs, and feelings, is acceptable to him or necessary to us? Away with such husks of form, such superstitions of the world's childhood! Let religion henceforth be a life; and life a religion. Let the heart, the conscience, the intellect, worship God and serve man, and the bondage of rites and times and symbols and external sanctities wholly disappear.
HENRY WHITNEY BELLOWS
Re-statements of Christian Doctrine
Our God is a household God, as well as a heavenly one. He has an altar in every man's dwelling; let him look to it when they rend it lightly, and pour out its ashes.
JOHN RUSKIN
The Seven Lamps of Architecture
If, it was natural to reason, God punishes men with eternal torment, it is surely lawful for men to use doses of it in a good cause.
JOSEPH MCCABE
A History of Torture