quotations about God
Being God isn't easy. If you do too much, people get dependent on you. And if you do nothing, they lose hope. You have to use a light touch, like a safecracker or a pickpocket.
GOD
Futurama
An honest God's the noblest work of man.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Further Extracts from the Note Books
No man or woman can truly choose to serve God unless they are equally free to refuse to serve Him, and God desires for His people to come to Him clear-eyed and joyously, not cringing in terror of the Inquisition and the damnation of Hell.
DAVID WEBER
By Schism Rent Asunder
God appears and god is light
To those poor souls who dwell in night
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.
WILLIAM BLAKE
Auguries of Innocence
They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse.
EMILY DICKINSON
letter to Mrs. J. G. Holland, spring 1878
'Twas only fear first in the world made gods.
BEN JONSON
Sejanus
Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad'st it pregnant: What is in me dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That to the heighth of this great Argument
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
I do not mind if I lose my soul for all eternity. If the kind of God exists Who would damn me for not working out a deal with Him, then that is unfortunate. I should not care to spend eternity in the company of such a person.
MARY MCCARTHY
Memories of a Catholic Girlhood
God is found in this Life ... to wait for another is folly.
DAN SIMMONS
Lovedeath
God is still in the business of coming down to earth: to this cubicle, this email, this room, this house, this job, this hospital room, this car, this bed, this vacation. Any place can become Bethel, the house of God. Cleveland, maybe. Or the chair you're sitting in as you read these words.
JOHN ORTBERG
God Is Closer Than You Think
The rash assertion that 'God made man in His own image' is ticking like a time bomb at the foundation of many faiths, and as the hierarchy of the universe is disclosed to us, we may have to recognize this chilling truth: if there are any gods whose chief concern is man, they cannot be very important gods.
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
"Space and the Spirit of Man"
God is not the author of all things, but of good only.
PLATO
The Republic
The true guide of our conduct is no outward authority, but the voice of God, who comes down to dwell in our souls, who knows all our thoughts, to whom are owing all the truth we know, and all the good we do; for vice is voluntary, and virtue comes from the grace of the heavenly spirit within.
LORD ACTON
The History of Freedom in Antiquity
There are many men, and a large number, who, though they do not wish to be rid of God, do not very much care to have him.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
The ethical is the universal, and as such it is again the divine. One has therefore a right to say that fundamentally every duty is a duty toward God; but if one cannot say more, then one affirms at the same time that properly I have no duty toward God. Duty becomes duty by being referred to God, but in duty itself I do not come into relation with God. Thus it is a duty to love one's neighbor, but in performing this duty I do not come into relation with God but with the neighbor whom I love. If I say then in this connection that it is my duty to love God, I am really uttering only a tautology, inasmuch as "God" is in this instance used in an entirely abstract sense as the divine, i.e. the universal, i.e. duty. So the whole existence of the human race is rounded off completely like a sphere, and the ethical is at once its limit and its content. God becomes an invisible vanishing point, a powerless thought, His power being only in the ethical which is the content of existence.
SOREN KIERKEGAARD
Fear and Trembling
He that lives in love lives in God.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
Men fail to find God because they curiously reverse the position -- the natural, legitimate, rightful position -- between the soul and God. There is a word common in theology, though not very familiar in ordinary intercourse, -- theodicy, which means justifying the ways of God to man. When a man begins to justify the ways of God to man, he has entered on a very dangerous process. For example, it is said, " If there is a God, he must be omnipotent and omniscient; and an omnipotent and omniscient God could and would make a world without sin and without suffering; but the world is not without sin nor without suffering, therefore there is no God." Such a man frames in his own mind his notion of what a God must be, and then brings God himself to that standard, and measures him by it. Theodicy! Justifying the ways of God to man! Sit, my soul, on the judgment throne, and summon God to stand before thee. "Now, Almighty One, I will see whether thou art righteous. Why didst thou allow famine in India? What right hast thou to allow a deluge in Japan? What right hast thou to allow man to go to war with his fellow-man in Europe? Justify thyself; explain thyself; answer for thyself." No man will ever find his way to the heart of God in that spirit.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
God gives as the wheat gives: we sow one grain, and reap a hundred.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
On all things created remaineth the half-effaced signature of God,
Somewhat of fair and good, though blotted by the finger of corruption.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
Man