quotations about God
There are many men, and a large number, who, though they do not wish to be rid of God, do not very much care to have him.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
Most sermons sound to me like commercials -- but I can't make out whether God is the Sponsor or the Product.
MIGNON MCLAUGHLIN
The Neurotic's Notebook
The rash assertion that 'God made man in His own image' is ticking like a time bomb at the foundation of many faiths, and as the hierarchy of the universe is disclosed to us, we may have to recognize this chilling truth: if there are any gods whose chief concern is man, they cannot be very important gods.
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
"Space and the Spirit of Man"
No man or woman can truly choose to serve God unless they are equally free to refuse to serve Him, and God desires for His people to come to Him clear-eyed and joyously, not cringing in terror of the Inquisition and the damnation of Hell.
DAVID WEBER
By Schism Rent Asunder
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
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
God is found in this Life ... to wait for another is folly.
DAN SIMMONS
Lovedeath
As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
Man
I do not mind if I lose my soul for all eternity. If the kind of God exists Who would damn me for not working out a deal with Him, then that is unfortunate. I should not care to spend eternity in the company of such a person.
MARY MCCARTHY
Memories of a Catholic Girlhood
God gives as the wheat gives: we sow one grain, and reap a hundred.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
'Twas only fear first in the world made gods.
BEN JONSON
Sejanus
He that lives in love lives in God.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
Gods must be seen to be omnipotent, or the sky will fall.
K. J. PARKER
Devices and Desires
An honest God's the noblest work of man.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Further Extracts from the Note Books
I am circling around God, around the ancient tower, and I have been circling for a thousand years, and I still don't know if I am a falcon, or a storm, or a great song.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
The Book of Hours
They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse.
EMILY DICKINSON
letter to Mrs. J. G. Holland, spring 1878
There exists an infinite, eternal Being, subsisting of himself, who is one without being alone; for he finds in his own essence relations whence, with the necessary movement of his life, results the absolute plenitude of his perfection and his happiness. A Being unique and complete, God suffices to himself.
HENRI-DOMINIQUE LACORDAIRE
God and Man: Conferences Delivered at Notre Dame in Paris by the Rev. Père Lacordaire
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
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