quotations about God
God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
Sonnets from the Portuguese
God was someone I wound up turning over and over in my mind each night.... Was He punishing me with this meal or was He rewarding me? Did He actively watch me or take me for granted like a fish you don't notice until it's floating on the surface of the tank?
DAVID SEDARIS
Naked
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
Those who are crafty, think the wisdom of God warrants him to deceive; those who are revengeful, think the goodness of God permits him to be cruel; those who are arbitrary, think the sovereignty of God is the account of his actions. Everyone attributes to God, what he finds in himself: but that cannot be a perfection in God, which is a dishonesty in Man.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Some would deny any legitimate use of the word God because it has been misused so much. Certainly it is the most burdened of all human words. Precisely for that reason it is the most imperishable and unavoidable. And how much weight has all erroneous talk about God's nature and works (although there never has been nor can be any such talk that is not erroneous) compared with the one truth that all men who have addressed God really meant him? For whoever pronounces the word God and really means Thou, addresses, no matter what his delusion, the true Thou of his life that cannot be restricted by any other and to whom he stands in a relationship that includes all others.
MARTIN BUBER
I and Thou
Nothing is more natural than that the belief in God, the creator, regulator, judge, master, curser, savior, and benefactor of the world, should still prevail among the people, especially in the rural districts, where it is more widespread than among the proletariat of the cities. The people, unfortunately, are still very ignorant, and are kept in ignorance by the systematic efforts of all the governments, who consider this ignorance, not without good reason, as one of the essential conditions of their own power. Weighted down by their daily labor, deprived of leisure, of intellectual intercourse, of reading, in short of all the means and a good portion of the stimulants that develop thought in men, the people generally accept religious traditions without criticism and in a lump. These traditions surround them from infancy in all the situations of life, and artificially sustained in their minds by a multitude of official poisoners of all sorts, priests and laymen, are transformed therein into a sort of mental and moral habit, too often more powerful even than their natural good sense.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
God and the State
If God is, man is a slave; now, man can and must be free; then, God does not exist. I defy anyone whomsoever to avoid this circle; now, therefore, let all choose.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
God and the State
God depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.
ANDRE GIDE
Autumn Leaves
They say that God is watching everyone all the time, so he'd always get to see his jokes play out. If so, he's laughing his butt off, assuming God has a butt, which is unlikely, since butts are also an obvious practical joke.
SCOTT ADAMS
Stick to Drawing Comics
"God is love," says the apostle. We might almost transpose the apothegm, and say "Love is God." That is, it is love which renders him worthy of our worship. It is not the power which made the worlds and allotted them their courses; it is not the wisdom which orders all of life, and suffers not even the minutest detail to escape his notice; it is not even those aesthetic qualities, which have produced in divinely-created forms of beauty the types of all art and all architecture, that render God worthy " to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing." It is that his love is such that nothing seems to him too sacred to be sacrificed to the welfare of others.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
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
We consider the Lord's express declarations concerning himself. There is a majesty in the passages of holy writ, that relate to the natural perfections of God, which vastly exceeds whatever is admired as sublime in Pagan writers. Jehovah speaks of himself, "as the high and lofty One, who inhabiteth eternity;" "heaven is his throne, and the earth his footstool;" "the heaven of heavens cannot contain him;" all "nations before Him are as nothing, they are counted to him as less than nothing and vanity;" "from everlasting to everlasting he is God;" "the almighty, the all-sufficient God:" "His wisdom is infinite;" "there is no searching of his understanding;" "He knoweth all things; he searcheth the hearts of all the children of men;" "yea, knoweth their thoughts afar off;" "there is no fleeing from his presence;" "the light and darkness to him are both alike;" "He dwelleth in light inaccessible; no man hath seen or can see him;" "He doeth what he will in the armies of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth;" "His is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory for ever;" "He is most blessed for evermore;" "for with him is no change or shadow of turning." These, and numberless other declarations, expressly and emphatically ascribe eternity, self-existence omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, immutability, incomprehensible greatness and majesty, and essential felicity and glory, in full perfection, to the Lord our God.
THOMAS SCOTT
"On the Scripture Character of God", Essays on the Most Important Subjects in Religion
Sometimes you get the sense that the Creator is getting to that point of "Yeah, we might have to reboot."
TIM ALLEN
Esquire, Nov. 2011
God may be distinguished, but not divided from the World. World without God were an effect without a cause; but God without World were a cause without an effect.
RICHARD GARNETT
De Flagello Myrtes
God is subtle, but he is not malicious.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
When the gods know that a god hath fallen,
With this kindly feeling
They do encourage him--
Be thou a god again and again.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
Iti-Vuttaka
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
But tho' God has replenished this world with abundance of good things for man's life and comfort, yet they are all but imperfect goods. He only is the perfect good to whom they point. But alas! Men cannot see him for them; tho' they should always see him in them.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
God gives as the wheat gives: we sow one grain, and reap a hundred.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
How things stand, is God.
God is, how things stand.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Notebooks, Aug. 1, 1916