quotations about God
God's image is in every man, high or low--a road puddle holds the moon as well as the sea.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
When men make gods, there is no God!
EUGENE O'NEILL
Lazarus Laughed
We can no more exist without a surrounding God, than a tree can exist without a surrounding atmosphere.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful
You cannot know God until you've stopped telling yourself that you already know God. You cannot hear God until you stop thinking you've already heard God.
NEALE DONALD WALSCH
Conversations with God
There exists no separation between gods and men; one blends softly casual into the other.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune Messiah
A mighty fortress is our God,
A bulwark never failing.
Our helper He amid the flood
Of mortal ills prevailing.
MARTIN LUTHER
Psalm. Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott
God Himself has no right to be a tyrant.
WILLIAM GODWIN
Sketches of History
If our god's work is to be done in our time, we must do it ourselves.
DAN SIMMONS
The Rise of Endymion
Before we deny or believe the existence of anything, it is necessary that we should have a tolerably clear idea of what it is. The word "God," a vague word, has been, and will continue to be, the source of numberless errors, until it is erased from the nomenclature of philosophy. Does it imply "the soul of the universe, the intelligent and necessarily beneficent, actuating principle?" This it is impossible not to believe in; I may not be able to adduce proofs, but I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on which we trample, are, in themselves, arguments more conclusive than any which can be advanced, that some vast intellect animates infinity.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
letter to Thomas Jefferson Hogg, Jan. 3, 1811
Ignorance of nature's ways led people in ancient times to invent gods to lord it over every aspect of human life. There were gods of love and war; of the sun, earth, and sky; of the oceans and rivers; of rain and thunderstorms; even of earthquakes and volcanoes. When the gods were pleased, mankind was treated to good weather, peace, and freedom from natural disaster and disease. When they were displeased, there came draught, war, pestilence, and epidemics. Since the connection of cause and effect in nature was invisible to their eyes, these gods appeared inscrutable, and people at their mercy.
STEPHEN HAWKING & LEONARD MLODINOW
The Grand Design
So, loath to suffer mute.
We, peopling the void air,
Make Gods to whom to impute
The ills we ought to bear.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Empedocles on Etna
They say that God is a comedian playing to an audience that's just afraid to laugh.
KYLE
8 Simple Rules...for Dating My Teenage Daughter
God does not accept me conditionally, on the basis of my performance, but bestows his love and forgiveness freely, despite my innumerable failures.
PHILIP YANCEY
Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find?
O thou mighty mind! whose powerful word
Said, thus let all things be, and thus they were!
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
"A Summer Evening's Meditation"
As long as God does not intervene in the contemporary universe in such a way as to violate physical laws, science has no way of knowing whether God exists or not. The belief or disbelief in such a Being is therefore a matter of faith.
ALAN LIGHTMAN
"Does God exist?", Salon, October 2, 2011
As God contains all good things, He must also contain a sense of playfulness -- a gift he has shared with Creatures other than ourselves, as witness the tricks Crows play, and the sportiveness of Squirrels, and the frolicking of Kittens.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Year of the Flood
They that deny a God destroy man's nobility, for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
The Christian's God is a God of metamorphoses. You cast grief into his bosom: you draw thence, peace. You cast in despair: 'tis hope that rises to the surface. It is a sinner whose heart he moves. It is a saint who returns him thanks.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Thoughts," The Writings of Madame Swetchine
If there's a God, I want to see Him. It's pointless to believe in something without proof, and Krishna consciousness and meditation are methods where you can actually obtain God perception. In that way you can see, hear and play with God. Perhaps this may sound weird, but God is really there next to you.
GEORGE HARRISON
introduction, Krsna
God, that checkroom of our dreams.
JEAN ROSTAND
The Substance of Man