GOD QUOTES III
quotations about God
In history the name of God is the terrible club with which all divinely inspired men, the great "virtuous geniuses," have beaten down the liberty, dignity, reason, and prosperity of man.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
God and the State
God helps them that helps themselves.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanac
If the consciousness of God is possible to all healthful souls, why are so many men and women without this consciousness? There are men and women, not a few, who do not want God. They would be very glad to have God if he were always on their side; glad to have God if he would always do what they want him to do. But a supreme will ... a masterful will, a will to which they must conform, they do not want.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
God is here below the most popular of all beings.... In the open fields, resting upon his implement of toil, the laborer lifts up his eyes towards heaven, and he names God to his children by an impulse as simple as his own soul. The poor call upon him, the dying invoke his name, the wicked fear him, the good bless him, kings give him their crowns to wear, armies place him at the head of their battalions, victory renders thanksgiving to him, defeat seeks help from him, nations arm themselves with him against their tyrants; there is neither place, nor time, nor circumstance, nor sentiment, in which God does not appear and is not named. Even love itself, so sure of its own charm, so confident in its own immortality, dares not to ignore him, and comes before his altars to beg from him the confirmation of the promises to which it has so often sworn.
HENRI-DOMINIQUE LACORDAIRE
God: Conferences Delivered at Notre Dame in Paris
If you want the fire of God, you must become the fuel of God.
TOMMY TENNEY
The God Chasers
At the entrance of the modern time stands the 'God-man'. At its exit will only the God in the God-man evaporate? And can the God-man really die if only the God in him dies? They did not think of this question, and thought they were finished when in our days they brought to a victorious end the work of the Enlightenment, the vanquishing of God: they did not notice that man has killed God in order to become now -- 'sole God on high'. The other world outside us is indeed brushed away, and the great undertaking of the men of the Enlightenment completed; but the other world in us has become a new heaven and calls us forth to renewed heaven-storming: God has had to give place, yet not to us, but to -- man. How can you believe that the God-man is dead before the man in him, besides the God, is dead?
MAX STIRNER
The Ego and Its Own
It should not be so hard to believe in God, for man himself is scarcely less wonderful.
FRANK CRANE
"The Part of Me That Doubts," Four Minute Essays
I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own--a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Living Philosophies
Love is the rule of rules, the key to all mysteries. Our conception of God being derived from ourselves and the objects affecting us, we can form no idea except one made up of materials furnished by our experience and reflection. Therefore we select whatever powers and qualities we find amongst ourselves, and consider to be most commendable; we separate them from everything gross, material and imperfect, and heighten them to the utmost imaginable pitch; the aggregate of all these makes up our first rational conception of God.
SABINE-BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
The different ideas which men form of God (whilst the scripture character of him is overlooked), result from the various dispositions and propensities which they derive from constitution, education, and habit. The voluptuary will imagine with a certain dissolute monarch (Charles II), that God will not damn a man for taking "a little pleasure in an irregular manner;" nor can the ambitious warrior or covetous oppressor be convinced that the supreme Being will demand a strict account of all the blood shed, or the injustice committed, in their respective pursuits: a speculating philosopher may imagine a deity too dignified to notice the conduct, or too clement to punish the crimes, of puny mortals; at least he will deem him very favorable to the self-wise, and such as are superior to vulgar prejudices, whatever he may do in respect to debauchees and sanguinary tyrants. Thus men's ideas of God are framed according to their own prevailing propensities; and then those ideas of him reciprocally tend to form their characters, and influence their conduct, both in respect of religious duties and in the common concerns of life.
THOMAS SCOTT
"On the Scripture Character of God", Essays on the Most Important Subjects in Religion
Without the desire for God, our planet would be a sorry wasteland of ugliness.
LUIS BARRAGÁN
acceptance speech for Pritzker Architecture Prize, 1980
Gods are great ... but the heart is greater. For it is from our hearts they come, and to our hearts they shall return.
NEIL GAIMAN
American Gods
When gods war with gods, they use weapons we do not know.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
By the Waters of Babylon
God is himself a vast medicine for man. It is the heart of God that carries restoration, inspiration, aspiration, and final victory.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention.
MARK TWAIN
letter to Orion Clemens, Mar. 23, 1878
God is the Absolute Idea, a circle that returns upon itself, not a straight line projected indefinitely.
JOSEPH ALEXANDER LEIGHTON
Typical Modern Conceptions of God
Lead us, Heavenly Father, lead us
O'er the world's tempestuous sea;
Guard us, guide us, keep us, feed us,
For we have no help but Thee.
JAMES EDMESTON
Lead Us
Maybe there isn't a God after all, maybe there's only a universe rotating by itself like a millstone.
GAO XINGJIAN
The Other Shore
Men tend to have the beliefs that suit their passions. Cruel men believe in a cruel God, and use their belief to excuse their cruelty. Only kindly men believe in a kindly God, and they would be kindly in any case.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
London Calling, 1947
Our God is a household God, as well as a heavenly one. He has an altar in every man's dwelling; let him look to it when they rend it lightly, and pour out its ashes.
JOHN RUSKIN
The Seven Lamps of Architecture