GOD QUOTES XVIII

quotations about God

God's merits are so transcendent that it is not surprising his faults should be in reasonable proportion.

SAMUEL BUTLER

Note-Books


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

Tags: Samuel Duffield


Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man?

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Twilight of the Idols


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 God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

RICHARD DAWKINS

The God Delusion

Tags: Richard Dawkins


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


Each man enters into God so much as God enters into him.

HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL

Journal Intime

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God is a foreman with certain definite views
Who orders life in shifts of work and leisure.

SEAMUS HEANEY

Docker

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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, 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

Tags: Regis Debray


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


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


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


The marvels of God are not brought forth from one's self.
Rather, it is more like a chord, a sound that is played.
The tone does not come out of the chord itself, but rather,
through the touch of the Musician.
I am, of course, the lyre and harp of God's kindness.

HILDEGARD OF BINGEN

attributed, Soul Weavings

Tags: Hildegard of Bingen


There is no servant like God. No other being so humbles himself, and so bows down under weakness, and so lifts up with his strength, as God in the plenary service of Love.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


To see God everywhere is to see Him nowhere.

CORMAC MCCARTHY

The Crossing


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


God deceiveth thee not.

THOMAS À KEMPIS

Imitation of Christ


God is Alpha and Omega in the great world, let us endeavour to make him so in the little world; let us practice to make him our last thought at night when we sleep; and our first in the morning when we awake; so shall our fancy be sanctified in the night, and our understanding rectified in the day; so shall our rest be peaceful, and our labours prosperous; our life pious, and our death glorious.

WELLINS CALCOTT

Thoughts Moral and Divine


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

Tags: E. H. Chapin