GOD QUOTES XVII

quotations about God

God doesn't do anything to us. He doesn't have to. We're too busy doing it to each other.

CHARLES DE LINT

The Onion Girl

Tags: Charles de Lint


The God whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals.

WILLIAM JAMES

Lecture XX, "Conclusions," The Varieties of Religious Experience


Whether men will or not, they must be subject always to the Divine Power. By denying the existence or providence of God, men may shake off their ease, but not their yoke.

THOMAS HOBBES

Leviathan


The gods of men are sillier than their kings and queens, and emptier and more powerless.

MAXWELL ANDERSON

Elizabeth the Queen


God often visits us, but most of the time we are not at home.

JOSEPH ROUX

Meditations of a Parish Priest

Tags: Joseph Roux


God's voice was not in the earthquake,
Not in the fire, nor the storm, but it was in the whispering breezes.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

"The Children of the Lord's Supper"


I think he is condemned by himself to loneliness. God is One: he was, he is, he will be always One. One is so lonely. Maybe that is why he created human beings--to feel less lonely. But as human beings betray his creation, he may become even lonelier.

ELIE WIESEL

Random House interview


The wrath of God lies sleeping. It was hid a million years before men were and only men have the power to wake it.

CORMAC MCCARTHY

Blood Meridian

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God, to conceive him, intellect design'd;
At last, her Maker see, 'neath nature's vest!
A voice in silence whispers to the mind--
Who hath not heard that voice within his breast?

ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE

"The Valley", Poetical Meditations


I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

telegram response to New York rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein, Apr. 24, 1929


Men may tire themselves in a labyrinth of search, and talk of God: But if we would know him indeed, it must be from the impressions we receive of him; and the softer our hearts are, the deeper and livelier those will be upon us.

WILLIAM PENN

Some Fruits of Solitude


Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

THOMAS JEFFERSON

attributed, The Best Liberal Quotes Ever

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I have often a suspicion God is still trying to work things out and hasn't finished.

REBECCA WEST

The Paris Review, spring 1981


God can be good and terrible--not in succession--but at the same time. This is why we seek a mediator between us and him; we approach him through the mediating priest and attenuate and enclose him through the sacraments. It is for our own safety: to trap him within confines which render him safe.

PHILIP K. DICK

Valis


The word "God" is used in most cases as by no means a term of science or exact knowledge, but a term of poetry and eloquence, a term thrown out, so to speak, as a not fully grasped object of the speaker's consciousness -- a literary term, in short; and mankind mean different things by it as their consciousness differs.

MATTHEW ARNOLD

Literature and Dogma

Tags: Matthew Arnold


The rule of God is not tyranny, for it does not partake of a political or governmental character -- it is not a rule of authority. God is not a governor of the universe, for a governor rules over those of a like nature with himself, and exercises a political and judicial power, while God exercises a creative, a preserving, and a determinative power of an altogether different kind. If I am a servant of God, I am under no tyranny; for God does not govern, but supports, sustains, and directs me.

WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE

Remarks on the Science of History


Sin is absence of God. Nothing more, nothing less.

SIMON MAWER

The Gospel of Judas


God is dead: but considering the state of the species Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Die frohliche Wissenschaft

Tags: Friedrich Nietzsche


Our notions of God are tinged by our own characters and ignorance.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought


If religion be supposed to produce any effect on the conduct of mankind, every person of common sense must allow, that the character and actions ascribed to the object of worship, must be of the greatest possible importance; for as these are, so will the sincere worshipper be. To please, to resemble, to imitate the object of adoration, must be the supreme aim and ambition of every devotee; whether of Jupiter, Mars, Bacchus, Venus, Moloch, or Mammon; as well as of every spiritual worshipper of Jehovah: and we may, therefore, know what to expect from every man, if we are acquainted with his sentiments concerning the God that he adores, provided we can ascertain the degree in which he is sincere and earnest in his religion. It would be absurd to expect much honesty from him who devotedly worshipped Mercury as the god of thieving; much mercy from a devotee of Moloch; love of peace from the worshipper of Mars; or chastity from the priestess of Venus: and whatever philosophical speculators may imagine, both the scriptures and profane history (ancient and modern) show that the bulk of mankind, in heathen nations, were far more sincere in, and influenced by their absurd idolatries, than professed Christians are by the Bible; because they are far more congenial to corrupt nature. Nay, it is a fact, that immense multitudes of human sacrifices are, at this day, annually offered according to the rules of a dark superstition; and various other flagrant immoralities sanctioned by religion amongst those idolaters, who have been erroneously considered as the most inoffensive of the human race. But these proportional effects on the moral character of mankind are not peculiar to gross idolatry: if men fancy that they worship the true God alone, and yet form a wrong notion of his character and perfections, they only substitute a more refined idolatry in the place of paganism, and worship the creature of their own imagination, though not the work of their own hands: And in what doth such an ideal being, though called Jehovah, differ from that called Jupiter or Baal? The character ascribed to him may indeed come nearer the truth than the other, and the delusion may be more refined; but, if it essentially differ from the scripture character of God, the effect must be the same, in a measure, as to those who earnestly desire to imitate, resemble, and please the object of their adoration.

THOMAS SCOTT

"On the Scripture Character of God", Essays on the Most Important Subjects in Religion