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


I have often a suspicion God is still trying to work things out and hasn't finished.

REBECCA WEST

The Paris Review, spring 1981


God--the force, the energy, the design, the experience that some call Divinity--shows itself in your life in the way that is exactly and perfectly suited to the time, place, and situation at hand. You either call that experience "God" or you call it something else--coincidence, synchronicity, "random event," whatever. Yet what you call it does not change what it is--it merely indicates your belief system.

NEALE DONALD WALSCH

Tomorrow's God

Tags: Neale Donald Walsch


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


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


God writes a lot of comedy ... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny.

GARRISON KEILLOR

Happy to be Here


The God whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals.

WILLIAM JAMES

Lecture XX, "Conclusions," The Varieties of Religious Experience


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


Everyone who believes in God carries around a basic assumption of how God acts in relation with us. The French novelist Flaubert said that a great writer should stand in his novel like God in his creation: nowhere to be seen, nowhere to be heard. God is everywhere and yet invisible, silent, seemingly absent and indifferent. A few intellectuals may enjoy worshiping such an absentee God, but most Christians prefer Jesus' image of a God as a loving father. We need more than a watchmaker who winds up the universe and lets it tick. We need love and mercy and forgiveness and grace -- qualities only a personal God can offer.

PHILIP YANCEY

Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find?


Who knoweth God the sum of science owns.
The heavens record His handiwork; the earth
Worships His footsteps; life His breath repeats;
The soul His image; everlasting space,
The harmonies of His nature echoing, round
Reflects His vast extension; the great whole,
His boundless being, and His infinite mind.

PHILIP JAMES BAILEY

Universal Hymn


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


I love God's shadow better than man's light.

MADAME SWETCHINE

"Thoughts," The Writings of Madame Swetchine


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


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 has no religion.

HENRY WHITNEY BELLOWS

Re-statements of Christian Doctrine

Tags: Henry Whitney Bellows


Our notions of God are tinged by our own characters and ignorance.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought


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

Tags: William Penn


Men may tire themselves in a labyrinth of search, and talk of God: But if we would know him indeed, it must be from the impressions we receive of him; and the softer our hearts are, the deeper and livelier those will be upon us.

WILLIAM PENN

Some Fruits of Solitude


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


The gods of men are sillier than their kings and queens, and emptier and more powerless.

MAXWELL ANDERSON

Elizabeth the Queen