GOD QUOTES XX

quotations about God

The brave-speaking Plato pronounceth that God formed the world after his own image; but this smells rank of the old dotages, old comic writers would say; for how did God, casting his eye upon himself, frame this universe? Or how can God be spherical, and be inferior to man?

PLUTARCH

"What is God?", Essays & Miscellanies

Tags: Plutarch


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 highest praise of God consists in the denial of him by the athiest who finds creation so perfect that it can dispense with a creator.

MARCEL PROUST

The Guermantes Way


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


I think, Some shrewd man first, a man in judgment wise,
Found for mortals the fear of gods,
Thereby to frighten the wicked should they
Even act or speak or scheme in secret.

EURIPIDES

Sisyphus (fragment)


It is beyond my power to induce in you a belief in God. There are certain things which are self proved and certain which are not proved at all. The existence of God is like a geometrical axiom. It may be beyond our heart grasp. I shall not talk of an intellectual grasp. Intellectual attempts are more or less failures, as a rational explanation cannot give you the faith in a living God. For it is a thing beyond the grasp of reason. It transcends reason. There are numerous phenomena from which you can reason out the existence of God, but I shall not insult your intelligence by offering you a rational explanation of that type. I would have you brush aside all rational explanations and begin with a simple childlike faith in God. If I exist, God exists. With me it is a necessity of my being.

MAHATMA GANDHI

Young India, Sep. 24, 1931


Life is everything. Life is God. Everything changes and moves and that movement is God. And while there is life there is joy in consciousness of the divine. To love life is to love God.

LEO TOLSTOY

War and Peace

Tags: Leo Tolstoy


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


The universe is just as great and amazing inside of me as outside. Immanuel Kant marveled when he looked into his own heart, as when he looked up at the sky. So the stars over me are no less sublime than my soul which mirrors them; thunder and lightning among the clouds are matched by storms of passion within me as terrible as they; my memory is a greater thing than the British Museum, for it is a living museum; my will is greater than gravitation or electricity or gunpowder, for it can use them, and they cannot budge; my imagination is more wondrous than the Vatican gallery, for its pictures come and go with instant swiftness, and my conscience is as mysterious and as majestic as the substance of God Himself.

FRANK CRANE

"The Part of Me That Doubts", Four Minute Essays

Tags: Frank Crane


To recognize God where and as he reveals himself is the only true bliss on earth.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe


God is the only being who need not even exist in order to reign.

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

Fusées

Tags: Charles Baudelaire


If there is a God what the hell is He for?

WILLIAM FAULKNER

As I Lay Dying

Tags: William Faulkner


Many deeds are enacted in God's name which fill the Devil's heart with envy.

ABRAHAM MILLER

Unmoral Maxims


There are many aspects of the universe that still cannot be explained satisfactorily by science; but ignorance only implies ignorance that may someday be conquered. To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.

ISAAC ASIMOV

"The Threat of Creationism", New York Times Magazine, Jun. 14, 1981

Tags: Isaac Asimov


Curiously, neither God nor the devil may wear modern dress, but must retain Grecian vestments.

SINCLAIR LEWIS

Nobel Lecture, December 12, 1930


I don't want my kids growing up with the image of God that I had -- Plato's white grandfatherly god -- because that god is not a very good father. When it comes down to it, you can't trust him with your kids.

WM. PAUL YOUNG

"The Love Shack", Christianity Today, Mar. 4, 2013


I found it better for my soul to be humble before the mysteries o' God's dealings, and not be making a clatter about what I could never understand.

GEORGE ELIOT

Adam Bede


It's easy being a god. If you have the right equipment.

DAN SIMMONS

Ilium


Gods die when they are forgotten.

NEIL GAIMAN

American Gods


He who looks for the worst in men will not be without belief in a personal devil; he who looks for the best in men will not be without faith in a personal God.

LYMAN ABBOTT

Seeking After God

Tags: Lyman Abbott