quotations about God
Somewhere in the infinite that He occupies, God advances and withdraws the pawns of the other games He plays, but it is too soon to worry about this one, all He need do for the present is allow things to take their natural course, apart from the occasional adjustment with the tip of His little finger to make sure some stray thought or action does not interfere with the harmony of destinies.
JOSé SARAMAGO
The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
The ethical is the universal, and as such it is again the divine. One has therefore a right to say that fundamentally every duty is a duty toward God; but if one cannot say more, then one affirms at the same time that properly I have no duty toward God. Duty becomes duty by being referred to God, but in duty itself I do not come into relation with God. Thus it is a duty to love one's neighbor, but in performing this duty I do not come into relation with God but with the neighbor whom I love. If I say then in this connection that it is my duty to love God, I am really uttering only a tautology, inasmuch as "God" is in this instance used in an entirely abstract sense as the divine, i.e. the universal, i.e. duty. So the whole existence of the human race is rounded off completely like a sphere, and the ethical is at once its limit and its content. God becomes an invisible vanishing point, a powerless thought, His power being only in the ethical which is the content of existence.
SOREN KIERKEGAARD
Fear and Trembling
They are always saying God loves us. If that's love I'd rather have a bit of kindness.
GRAHAM GREENE
The Captain and the Enemy
An honest God's the noblest work of man.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Further Extracts from the Note Books
If you're sincerely seeking God, God will make His existence evident to you.
WILLIAM LANE CRAIG
God?: A Debate Between a Christian and an Atheist
God, a born extremist, is the diplomat's worst enemy. Quite apart from the fact that His decrees are irrevocable, the Absolute will not allow anyone to relativize matters.
RéGIS DEBRAY
God: An Itinerary
God is only a word dreamed up to explain the world.
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
"Le Tombeau d'une mère", Harmonies
There is not the slightest question but that the God of the Old Testament is a jealous, vengeful God, inflicting not only on the sinful pagans but even on his Chosen People fire, lighting, hideous plagues and diseases, brimstone, and other curses.
STEVE ALLEN
Steve Allen on the Bible
God is subtle, but he is not malicious.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
God is still in the business of coming down to earth: to this cubicle, this email, this room, this house, this job, this hospital room, this car, this bed, this vacation. Any place can become Bethel, the house of God. Cleveland, maybe. Or the chair you're sitting in as you read these words.
JOHN ORTBERG
God Is Closer Than You Think
On all things created remaineth the half-effaced signature of God,
Somewhat of fair and good, though blotted by the finger of corruption.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
Man
It isn't so much that God is the unified state of consciousness that each of us came from and will return to, but more so that God is the creative energy flowing between all states of consciousness. God is in the land beyond the mountains, but God is also in the mountains and in the valley of illusions cradled within the mountains. God is not one thing or another, rather God flows between and through all things.
ELIZABETH LESSER
The Seeker's Guide: Making Your Life a Spiritual Adventure
Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad'st it pregnant: What is in me dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That to the heighth of this great Argument
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
The true guide of our conduct is no outward authority, but the voice of God, who comes down to dwell in our souls, who knows all our thoughts, to whom are owing all the truth we know, and all the good we do; for vice is voluntary, and virtue comes from the grace of the heavenly spirit within.
LORD ACTON
The History of Freedom in Antiquity
Everything was God, holy; as God is total, so the driftwood branch was holy. This must be the stuff religion is made of.
GEORGE LEONARD
The Silent Pulse
It needed no divine revelation to assure us that God loves. The language of nature and the experience of our own hearts are an adequate witness to this truth, so simple as to be almost self-evident. That which gives to the Bible revelation of God's character its peculiar significance is the fact that it reveals him one who affords the highest exemplification of Christ's precept," Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you." The revelation of God's love, suffering for the sake of those that despise it, though so simple, is yet so august, so sublime, that our selfish hearts can not comprehend it, and our shallow philosophy obscures or denies it. Christ crucified is to-day as much as ever "unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness;" as much as ever the power and wisdom of God to those that comprehend it.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
Converse with men makes sharp the glittering wit,
But God to man doth speak in solitude.
JOHN STUART BLACKIE
Highland Solitude
To believe there is a God is to believe the existence of all possible Good and Perfection in the Universe: And it is to be resolved upon this--that things either are, or finally shall be, as they should be.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
God depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.
ANDRE GIDE
Autumn Leaves