quotations about God
I love God's shadow better than man's light.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Thoughts," The Writings of Madame Swetchine
God, so to speak, is myriad-minded. We cannot look, therefore, to put ourselves in accord with his plans any more than any one man can run a line for a railroad which it requires a small army to survey.
SAMUEL WILLOUGHBY DUFFIELD
Fragments
If you and I have not seen God, we cannot bear witness to God.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
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
The name of God should no longer come from the mouth of man. This word that has so long been degraded by usage no longer means anything.... To use the word God is more than sloth, it is a refusal to think, a king of short cut, a hideous shorthand.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
The Confession
The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved -- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal -- God is the Omnipotent Father -- hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates.
GORE VIDAL
The Decline and Fall of the American Empire
You are as close to God in your own sitting room as in the basilica; but the basilica has worth if it strengthens your faith.
SIMON MAWER
The Gospel of Judas
Men have left GOD not for other gods, they say, but for no God; and this has never happened before.
T. S. ELIOT
The Rock
Only one thing is necessary: to possess God -- All the senses, all the forces of the soul and of the spirit, all the exterior resources are so many open outlets to the Divinity; so many ways of tasting and of adoring God.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
Except during my childhood, when I was probably influenced by Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel depiction of God with a flowing white beard, I have never tried to project the Creator in any kind of human likeness. The vociferous debates about whether God is male or female seem ridiculous to me. I think of God as an omnipotent and omniscient presence, a spirit that permeates the universe, the essence of truth, nature, being, and life. To me, these are profound and indescribable concepts that seem to be trivialized when expressed in words.
JIMMY CARTER
Living Faith
God's beneficence streams out from the morning sun, and his love looks down upon us from the starry eyes of midnight. It is his solicitude that wraps us in the air, and the pressure of his hand, so to speak, that keeps our pulses beating. O! it is a great thing to realize that the Divine Power is always working; that nature, in every valve and every artery, is full of the presence of God.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
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
Nothing more shows the low condition Man is fallen into, than the unsuitable notion we must have of God, by the ways we take to please him.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
The gods, my dear simple fellow, are a mere expression coined by vulgar superstition. We frown upon such coinage here.
ARISTOPHANES
The Clouds
I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.
WILLIAM JAMES
Lecture III, "Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered," Pragmatism
The belief in a God All Powerful wise and good, is so essential to the moral order of the world and to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources nor adapted with too much solicitude to the different characters and capacities to be impressed with it.
JAMES MADISON
letter to Frederick Beasley, Nov. 20, 1825
The Divinity is so great, and of such a character, that He both sees and hears all things, is omnipotent, and attends to all things at once.
XENOPHON
attributed, Day's Collacon
Indeed, when sinful men presume to delineate the character of God for themselves; however learned or sagacious they may be, their reasonings will inevitably be warped by the general depravity of fallen nature, and by their own peculiar prejudices and vices. Partial to themselves, and indulgent to their master passion, (which perhaps they mistake for an excellency), they will naturally ascribe to the Deity what they value in themselves, and suppose him lenient to such things as they indulge and excuse: They will be sure to arrange their plan in such a manner as to conclude themselves the objects of his complacency, and entitled to his favor; or at least not deserving his abhorrence, and exposed to his avenging justice: they will consider their own judgment of what is fit and right, as the measure and rule of his government: their religious worship will accord to such mistaken conclusions; and the effect of their faith upon their conduct will be inconsiderable, or prejudicial. Thus men "think that God is altogether such a one as themselves," (Psalm 1. 21.), and a self-flattering, carnalized religion, is substituted for the humbling, holy, and spiritual gospel of Christ.
THOMAS SCOTT
"On the Scripture Character of God", Essays on the Most Important Subjects in Religion
It's easy being a god. If you have the right equipment.
DAN SIMMONS
Ilium
Each man enters into God so much as God enters into him.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime