God

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One boy would not get it through his head that for all adults God is not an old man in a white beard sitting on a cloud... ~ Madeleine L'Engle

God is a term used in referring to various notions of a supreme being, often described to be the ruler or creator of the universe, or immanent within it.

Contents

[edit] A - Z

[edit] A

In the Beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. ~ Douglas Adams
Quotations listed alphabetically by author or work.
I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. ~ Susan B. Anthony
God, the supreme being, is neither circumscribed by space, nor touched by time; he cannot be found in a particular direction, and his essence cannot change. ~ Avicenna
  • When we say God is a spirit, we know what we mean, as well as we do when we say that the pyramids of Egypt are matter. Let us be content, therefore, to believe him to be a spirit, that is, an essence that we know nothing of, in which originally and necessarily reside all energy, all power, all capacity, all activity, all wisdom, all goodness.
  • Nearer, my God, to Thee—
    Nearer to Thee—
    E'en though it be a cross
    That raiseth me;
    Still all my song shall be
    Nearer, my God, to Thee,
    Nearer to Thee!
    • Sarah Flower Adams, Nearer, my God, to Thee! (c. 1841). An article in Notes and Queries states that the words were written by her sister, Mrs. Byrdes Flower Adams, and the music only by Sarah Flower Adams.
  • Never place a period where God has placed a comma.
    • Gracie Allen, in her last letter to George Burns, as quoted in Two Minutes for God : Quick Fixes for the Spirit (2007) by Peter B. Panagore, p. 73; this was later used in a slogan for the United Church of Christ: Never place a period where God has placed a comma. God Is Still Speaking.
  • Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends.
  • If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name in a Swiss bank.
  • The important thing, I think, is not to be bitter... if it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he is evil. I think that the worst thing you could say is that he is, basically, an under-achiever. If God exists, I hope he has a good excuse.
    • Woody Allen, in Love and Death (1975); also quoted in What Do Jews Believe? : The Customs and Culture of Modern Judaism (2007) by Edward Kessler, p. 66.
  • How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?
    • Woody Allen, as quoted in Love, Sex, Death & The Meaning of Life : The Films of Woody Allen (2001) by Foster Hirsch, p. 50.
  • I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
    • Susan B. Anthony, in an address to the National American Woman Suffrage Association (1896).
  • Ordina l'uomo, e dio dispone.
    • Man proposes, and God disposes.
    • Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso (1516), Chapter XLVI. 35.
  • Deus scitur melius nesciendo.
  • A God who cannot smile could not have created this humorous universe.
  • God, the supreme being, is neither circumscribed by space, nor touched by time; he cannot be found in a particular direction, and his essence cannot change. The secret conversation is thus entirely spiritual; it is a direct encounter between God and the soul, abstracted from all material constraints.
    • Avicenna, as quoted in 366 Readings From Islam (2000), edited by Robert Van der Weyer

[edit] B

  • I reverse the phrase of Voltaire, and say that if God would have existed, it would be necessary to abolish Him.
  • The glory of God is not contingent on man's good will, but all existence subserves his purposes. The system of the universe is as a celestial poem, whose beauty is from all eternity, and must not be marred by human interpolations. Things proceed as they were ordered, in their nice, and well-adjusted, and perfect harmony; so that as the hand of the skilful artist gathers music from the harp-strings, history calls it forth from the well-tuned chords of time. Not that this harmony can be heard during the tumult of action. Philosophy comes after events, and gives the reason of them, and describes the nature of their results. The great mind of collective man may, one day, so improve in self-consciousness as to interpret the present and foretell the future; but as yet, the end of what is now happening, though we ourselves partake in it, seems to fall out by chance. All is nevertheless one whole; individuals, families, peoples, the race, march in accord with the Divine will; and when any part of the destiny of humanity is fulfilled, we see the ways of Providence vindicated. The antagonisms of imperfect matter and the perfect idea, of liberty and necessary law, become reconciled. What seemed irrational confusion, appears as the web woven by light, liberty and love. But this is not perceived till a great act in the drama of life is finished. The prayer of the patriarch, when he desired to behold the Divinity face to face, was denied; but he was able to catch a glimpse of Jehovah, after He had passed by; and so it fares with our search for Him in the wrestlings of the world. It is when the hour of conflict is over, that history comes to a right understanding of the strife, and is ready to exclaim: "Lo! God is here, and we knew it not."
  • If by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot.
    • Samuel Beckett, on the title of one of his most famous plays, Waiting for Godot, as quoted in The Essential Samuel Beckett : An Illustrated Biography, by Enoch Brater (revised edition, 2003), p.75.
  • How many questions arise in this place! Constantly the question comes up: Where was God in those days? Why was he silent? How could he permit this endless slaughter, this triumph of evil? . . . We must continue to cry out humbly yet insistently to God: Rouse yourself! Do not forget mankind, your creature!
    • Pope Benedict XVI, who visited the former concentration camp at Auschwitz, Poland, on May 28, 2006. Quoted in The Watchtower magazine, in the article: “Why, Lord, Did You Remain Silent?”, May 15, 2007.
  • Zeus, n. The chief of Grecian gods, adored by the Romans as Jupiter and by the modern Americans as God, Gold, Mob and Dog. Some explorers who have touched upon the shores of America, and one who professes to have penetrated a considerable distance to the interior, have thought that these four names stand for as many distinct deities, but in his monumental work on Surviving Faiths, Frumpp insists that the natives are monotheists, each having no other god than himself, whom he worships under many sacred names.
  • Only what is fated to die is capable of living. Only what dies lives. Why do you think Christ was killed? They killed him to prove that he wasn’t a god. But in killing him, they immortalized the perishable and transformed man into a god.
  • That we devote ourselves to God is seen
    In living just as though no God there were.
  • God is the perfect poet,
    Who in his person acts his own creations.
  • All service is the same with God,
    With God, whose puppets, best and worst,
    Are we: there is no last nor first.
  • All names of God remain hallowed because they have been used not only to speak of God but also to speak to him.
  • Some would deny any legitimate use of the word God because it has been misused so much. Certainly it is the most burdened of all human words. Precisely for that reason it is the most imperishable and unavoidable. And how much weight has all erroneous talk about God's nature and works (although there never has been nor can be any such talk that is not erroneous) compared with the one truth that all men who have addressed God really meant him? For whoever pronounces the word God and really means Thou, addresses, no matter what his delusion, the true Thou of his life that cannot be restricted by any other and to whom he stands in a relationship that includes all others.
  • God's merits are so transcendent that it is not surprising his faults should be in reasonable proportion.
  • There is no god but God! — to prayer — lo!
    God is great!

[edit] C

  • 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.
  • God: a disease we imagine we are cured of because no one dies of it nowadays.
  • God never meant that man should scale the Heavens
    By strides of human wisdom. In his works,
    Though wondrous, he commands us in his word
    To seek him rather where his mercy shines.
  • But who with filial confidence inspired,
    Can lift to Heaven an unpresumptuous eye,
    And smiling say, My Father made them all.
    • William Cowper, The Task (1785), Book V. The Winter Morning Walk, line 745.
  • Acquaint thyself with God, if thou would'st taste
    His works. Admitted once to his embrace,
    Thou shalt perceive that thou wast blind before:
    Thine eye shall be instructed; and thine heart
    Made pure shall relish with divine delight
    Till then unfelt, what hands divine have wrought.

[edit] D

  • A man who recognizes no God is probably placing an inordinate value on himself.
  • 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.
It is solemn to remember that Vastness —
Is but the Shadow of the Brain which casts it — ~ Emily Dickinson
  • They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse.
  • It is solemn to remember that Vastness —
    Is but the Shadow of the Brain which casts it —
    All things swept sole away
    This — is immensity —
  • If there is a supreme being, he's crazy.
  • God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world.
    • Paul Dirac, as quoted in The Cosmic Code : Quantum Physics As The Language Of Nature (1982) by Heinz R. Pagels, p. 295; also in Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac : Reminiscences about a Great Physicist (1990) edited by Behram N. Kursunoglu and Eugene Paul Wigner, p. xv.

[edit] E

God created men to enjoy, not destroy, the fruits of the earth and of their own toil. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower
  • If we pray to God as a corporeal person, this will prevent us from relinquishing the human doubts and fears which attend such a belief, and so we cannot grasp the wonders wrought by infinite, incorporeal Love, to whom all things are possible.
  • I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him.
  • It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious, then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
    • Albert Einstein from a letter to an atheist, written in English (24 March 1954). It is included in Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman
  • My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment.
  • These proposals spring, without ulterior purpose or political passion, from our calm conviction that the hunger for peace is in the hearts of all peoples--those of Russia and of China no less than of our own country. They conform to our firm faith that God created men to enjoy, not destroy, the fruits of the earth and of their own toil.
  • God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.
    • Exodus 3:14 (King James Version)
    • Variant: God said to Moses, 'I will be what I will be'

[edit] F

  • If you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.

[edit] G

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. ~ Mahatma Gandhi
I cannot think we are useless or Usen would not have created us. He created all tribes of men and certainly had a righteous purpose in creating each. ~ Geronimo
  • I looked and looked but I didn't see God.
    • Attributed to Yuri Gagarin after becoming the first person to orbit the Earth, as quoted in To Rise from Earth (1996) by Wayne Lee; the authenticity of this remark is disputed; Colonel Valentin Petrov stated in 2006 that the cosmonaut never said such words, and that the quote originated from Nikita Khrushchev's speech at the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU about the state's anti-religion campaign, saying "Gagarin flew into space, but didn't see any god there."
    • Sometimes misquoted as "I see no God up here" as if he said this in space, but there are no transcripts or recordings indicating that he ever did.
  • I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.
    • Galileo Galilei. in his Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615), an essay published in 1615, in response to enquiries of Christina of Tuscany, as quoted in Aspects of Western Civilization : Problems and Sources in History (1988) by Perry McAdow Rogers, p. 53
    • Variant translation: I do not think it is necessary to believe that the same God who has given us our senses, reason, and intelligence wished us to abandon their use, giving us by some other means the information that we could gain through them.
  • Mathematics is the language in which God wrote the universe.
    • Attributed to Galileo Galilei in Statistics: Concepts and Applications (1994) by Harry Frank and Steven C. Althoen, p. xxi.
  • 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 as it is with millions. They may not be able to talk about it, but from their life you can see that it is a part of their life. I am only asking you to restore the belief that has been undermined. In order to do so, you have to unlearn a lot of literature that dazzles your intelligence and throws you off your feet. Start with the faith which is also a token of humility and an admission that we know nothing, that we are less than atoms in this universe. We are less than atoms, I say, because the atom obeys the law of its being, whereas we in the insolence of our ignorance deny the law of nature. But I have no argument to address to those who have no faith.
  • People are even more reluctant to admit that man explains nothing, than they were to admit that God explains nothing.
  • I cannot think we are useless or Usen would not have created us. He created all tribes of men and certainly had a righteous purpose in creating each.
    • Geronimo, as quoted in Geronimo's Story of His Life (1907) as told to S.M. Barrett in 1905 and 1906, "Usen" is the Apache word for God.
  • Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious beliefs.
    • Stephen Jay Gould, in "Impeaching a Self-Appointed Judge" in Scientific American (July 1992).

[edit] H

  • Give according to your means, or God will make your means according to your giving.
    • Reverend John Hall, reported in Tryon Edwards, A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908), p. 194.
  • I've never understood how God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion by faith — it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe.
  • How much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in his divine system of creation?
  • Restore to God His due in tithe and time;
    A tithe purloin'd cankers the whole estate.
  • Consciousness is Gods' gift to mankind.
  • God only speaks to those who understand the language

[edit] I

  • Would God give a bird wings and make it a crime to fly? Would he give me brains and make it a crime to think? Any God that would damn one of his children for the expression of his honest thought wouldn't make a decent thief. When I read a book and don't believe it, I ought to say so. I will do so and take the consequences like a man.
  • God is dead. Marx is dead. And I don’t feel so well myself.
    • Eugène Ionesco, as quoted in Jewish American Literature : A Norton Anthology (2000) by Jules Chametzky, "Jewish Humor", p. 318.
  • I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me: That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create calamity: I the LORD do all these things.
    • Isaiah 45:5-7 (King James Version)
    • Variant: I am the Lord and there is no other. Who forms light and creates darkness, Who makes peace and creates calamity; I am the Lord, who makes all these.

[edit] J

  • The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.
  • It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
  • Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.
  • Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.
    • Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to his nephew Peter Carr from Paris, France, (10 August 1787).
  • No historical fact is better established, than that the doctrine of one God, pure and uncompounded, was that of the early ages of Christianity … Nor was the unity of the Supreme Being ousted from the Christian creed by the force of reason, but by the sword of civil government, wielded at the will of the fanatic Athanasius.
  • The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man.
1. That there is one only God, and he all perfect.
2. That there is a future state of rewards and punishments.
3. That to love God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself, is the sum of religion.
  • You cannot serve both God and Mammon.
    • Jesus, in Matthew 6:24.
  • Some foolish men declare that creator made the world. The doctrine that the world was created is ill advised and should be rejected. If God created the world, where was he before the creation? If you say he was transcendent then and needed no support, where is he now? How could God have made this world without any raw material? If you say that he made this first, and then the world, you are faced with an endless regression. If you declare that this raw material arose naturally you fall into another fallacy, For the whole universe might thus have been its own creator, and have arisen quite naturally. If God created the world by an act of his own will, without any raw material, then it is just his will and nothing else — and who will believe this silly nonsense? If he is ever perfect and complete, how could the will to create have arisen in him? If, on the other hand, he is not perfect, he could no more create the universe than a potter could. If he is form-less, action-less and all-embracing, how could he have created the world? Such a soul, devoid of all morality, would have no desire to create anything. If he is perfect, he does not strive for the three aims of man, so what advantage would he gain by creating the universe? If you say that he created to no purpose because it was his nature to do so, then God is pointless. If he created in some kind of sport, it was the sport of a foolish child, leading to trouble. If he created because of the karma of embodied beings [acquired in a previous creation] He is not the Almighty Lord, but subordinate to something else. If out of love for living beings and need of them he made the world, why did he not take creation wholly blissful free from misfortune? If he were transcendent he would not create, for he would be free: Nor if involved in transmigration, for then he would not be almighty. Thus the doctrine that the world was created by God makes no sense at all, And God commits great sin in slaying the children whom he himself created. If you say that he slays only to destroy evil beings, why did he create such beings in the first place? Good men should combat the believer in divine creation, maddened by an evil doctrine. Know that the world is uncreated, as time itself is, without beginning or end, and is based on the principles, life and rest. Uncreated and indestructible, it endures under the compulsion of its own nature.
    • Jinasena (9th Century) in the Mahāpurāna, as translated in Primal Myths (1979) by Barbara Sproul
  • The very pure spirit does not bother about the regard of others or human respect, but communes inwardly with God, alone and in solitude as to all forms, and with delightful tranquility, for the knowledge of God is received in divine silence.
    • John of the Cross in The Sayings of Light and Love as translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (1991).
  • For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life
    • John 3:16.

[edit] K

  • The Christian God is spirit and Christianity is spirit, and there is discord between the flesh and the spirit but the flesh is not the sensuous-it is the selfish. In this sense, even the spiritual can become sensuous-for example, if a person took his spiritual gifts in vain, he would then be carnal. And of course I know that it is not necessary for the Christian that Christ must have been physically beautiful; and it would be grievous-for a reason different from the one you give-because if beauty were some essential, how the believer would long to see him; but from all this it by no means follows that the sensuous is annihilated in Christianity.
  • If everything is assumed to be in order with regard to the Holy Scriptures-what then? Has the person who did not believe come a single step closer to faith? No, not a single step. Faith does not result from straightforward scholarly deliberation, nor does it come directly; on the contrary, in this objectivity one loses that infinite, personal, impassioned interestedness, which is the condition of faith, the everywhere and nowhere in which faith can come into existence. Has the person who did believe gained anything with regard to the power and strength of faith? No, not in the least; in this prolix knowledge, in this certainty that lurks at faith’s door and craves for it, he is rather in such a precarious position that much effort, much fear and trembling will be needed lest he fall into temptation and confuse knowledge with faith. Whereas up to now faith has been a beneficial taskmaster in uncertainty, but it would be its worst enemy in this certainty. If passion is taken away, faith no longer exists, and certainty and passion do not hitch up as a team.
    • Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, Hong, p. 29 (1846).
  • God is cruel, sometimes he makes you live.
  • God said take what you want...and pay for it.

[edit] L

The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive them in advance. ~ Abraham Lincoln
  • It isn't always the middle-aged who refuse to listen, who will not even try to understand another point of view. One boy would not get it through his head that for all adults God is not an old man in a white beard sitting on a cloud. As far as this boy was concerned, this old gentleman was the adult's god, and therefore he did not believe in God.
  • God is only a great imaginative experience.
    • D.H. Lawrence, Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence (1936) pt. 4, edited by E. McDonald
  • God is a concept by which we measure our pain.
  • Is it not better to place a question mark upon a problem while seeking an answer than to put the label "God" there and consider the matter solved? Does not the word "God" only confuse and make more difficult the solution by assuming a conclusion that is utterly groundless and palpably absurd?
  • I am much indebted to the good christian people of the country for their constant prayers and consolations; and to no one of them, more than to yourself. The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive them in advance. We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war long before this; but God knows best, and has ruled otherwise. We shall yet acknowledge His wisdom and our own error therein. Meanwhile we must work earnestly in the best light He gives us, trusting that so working still conduces to the great ends He ordains. Surely He intends some great good to follow this mighty convulsion, which no mortal could make, and no mortal could stay.
    • Abraham Lincoln's Letter to Eliza Gurney (4 September 1864); quoted in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 7 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 535.
  • An' you've gut to git up airly
    Ef you want to take in God.

[edit] M

To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that Love is the reason for my existence, for God is love.
Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name. ~ Thomas Merton
  • What in me is dark,
    Illumine; what is low, raise and support;
    That to the height of this great argument
    I may assert eternal Providence,
    And justify the ways of God to men.
  • Bright and clear mind — that we call God.
  • God is living in people's hearts, and in God there is no distinction or rank. Therefore God lives in everyone. That's why traditionally it is said that all deities are the same. They say God comes to a person who is very humble and honest.
  • If, it was natural to reason, God punishes men with eternal torment, it is surely lawful for men to use doses of it in a good cause.
  • Creator — A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.
  • God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in his arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; He will set them above their betters.
  • To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that Love is the reason for my existence, for God is love.
    Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.
  • Persons are not known by intellect alone, not by principles alone, but only by love. It is when we love the other, the enemy, that we obtain from God the key to an understanding of who he is, and who we are. It is only this realization that can open to us the real nature of our duty, and of right action.
  • O God, we are one with You. You have made us one with You. You have taught us that if we are open to one another, You dwell in us. Help us to preserve this openness and to fight for it with all our hearts. Help us to realize that there can be no understanding where there is mutual rejection. O God, in accepting one another wholeheartedly, fully, completely, we accept You, and we thank You, and we adore You, and we love You with our whole being, because our being is Your being, our spirit is rooted in Your spirit. Fill us then with love, and let us be bound together with love as we go our diverse ways, united in this one spirit which makes You present in the world, and which makes You witness to the ultimate reality that is love. Love has overcome. Love is victorious. Amen.
    • Thomas Merton, in his closing prayer to an informal address delivered in Calcutta, India (October 1968), from The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (1975); quoted in Thomas Merton, Spiritual Master : The Essential Writings (1992), p. 237.
  • There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided.
  • If there is anything so precious that without it history and the world will be destroyed, where will you keep it? You will naturally want to keep it in the deepest part of your mind. If you desire to place it in the depths of your mind, it needs to be invisible. It is for this very reason that God exists as an invisible being. It is fortunate that He is invisible, for if He were visible how could a great contest to gain Him be avoided? It would be difficult for God to endure the pain of seeing it.

[edit] N

From blind physical necessity, which is always and everywhere the same, no variety adhering to time and place could evolve, and all variety of created objects which represent order and life in the universe could happen only by the willful reasoning of its original Creator, Whom I call the Lord God. ~ Isaac Newton
God is dead: but considering the state Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
  • The Ultimate Truth is called God. This one can realize in the state of Nirvikalpa Samadhi. A circle can have only one centre but it can have numerous radii. The centre can be compared to God and the radii to religions. So, no one sect, no one religion or book can make an absolute claim of It. He who works for It gets It.
  • This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all, and on account of His dominion He is wont to be called Lord God, Universal Ruler.
  • All these things being considered, it seems probable to me, that God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, moveable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportion to space, as most conduced to the end for which he formed them; and that these primitive particles, being solids, are incomparably harder than any porous bodies compounded of them; even so very hard, as never to wear or break in pieces; no ordinary power being able to divide what God himself made one in the first creation.
  • A Heavenly Master governs all the world as Sovereign of the universe. We are astonished at Him by reason of His perfection, we honor Him and fall down before Him because of His unlimited power. From blind physical necessity, which is always and everywhere the same, no variety adhering to time and place could evolve, and all variety of created objects which represent order and life in the universe could happen only by the willful reasoning of its original Creator, Whom I call the Lord God.
    • Isaac Newton, as quoted in Our Humanist Heritage (2010) by George Frater, p. 75.
  • God is a thought which makes crooked all that is straight.
  • God is dead: but considering the state Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown.
    • Friedrich Nietzsche, in The Gay Science (1882), section 125
    • The reduction of Nietzsche's thought to … the first-liner of a graffito sometimes found in certain modern tiled cells and catacombs:
God is dead — Nietzsche
Nietzsche is dead — God
This reduction could appear to be the creative interpretation of masterful will to power — if Nietzsche's thought and style are as uncontrolled as the critics suggest. … Nietzsche himself anticipates the strife of revengeful graffiti at the conclusion of his text: "Wherever there are walls I shall inscribe this eternal accusation against Christianity upon them — I can write in letters which make even the blind see." …Nietzsche says in his preface that his readers must have a "predestination for the labyrinth" and "new ears for new music" if they are to understand this difficult writing.
  • Gary Shapiro in Nietzschean Narratives (1989), p. 126.
  • I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.
  • God is a mean kid sitting on an anthill with a magnifying glass, and I'm the ant. He could fix my life in five minutes if He wanted to, but he'd rather tear off my feelers and watch me squirm.

[edit] O

[edit] P

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived. ~ George S. Patton, Jr.
I don't think I've found God, but I may have seen where gods come from. ~ Terry Pratchett
  • Posterity will one day laugh at the foolishness of modern materialistic philosophers. The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. I pray while I am engaged at my work in the laboratory.
    • Louis Pasteur, as quoted in The Literary Digest (18 October 1902).
  • Science brings men nearer to God.
    • Louis Pasteur, as quoted in Letter to an Atheist (2007) by Michael Patrick Leahy, p. 61.
  • It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
    • General George S. Patton, Jr., in a speech at the Copley Plaza Hotel, Boston Massachusetts (7 June 1945), quoted in Patton : Ordeal and Triumph (1970) by Ladislas Farago
  • For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse.
  • What if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged.
    But if our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance? (I speak as a man) God forbid: for then how shall God judge the world? For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner? And not rather, (as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say,) Let us do evil, that good may come? whose damnation is just.
  • We conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. Is he the God of the Jews only? is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also: Seeing it is one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith.
    Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.
  • All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.
    • Max Planck, as he accepted the Nobel Prize (1919).
  • Laugh where we must, be candid where we can,
    But vindicate the ways of God to man.
  • Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind
    Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.
  • To Him no high, no low, no great, no small;
    He fills, He bounds, connects and equals all!
  • He mounts the storm, and walks upon the wind.
  • Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,
    But looks through Nature up to Nature's God.
  • I don't think I've found God, but I may have seen where gods come from.
    • Terry Pratchett, in "I create gods all the time - now I think one might exist, says fantasy author Terry Pratchett" in The Daily Mail (21 June 2008).
  • God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.
  • There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early.
    The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted.
    The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.
  • Come, behold the works of the LORD, what desolations he hath made in the earth. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire. Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.
  • The fool says in his heart "There is no God".
  • Indeed the inscrutable One is out of the reach of every rational process. Nor can any words come up to the inexpressible Good, this One, this Source of all unity, this super-existent Being. Mind beyond mind, word beyond speech, it is gathered up by no discourse, by no intuition, by no name. It is and it is as no other being is.
    • Pseudo-Dionysius, The Divine Names, 1, 1.

[edit] Q

  • God! There is no god but He, — the Living, the Self-subsisting, Eternal. No slumber can seize Him nor sleep. His are all things in the heavens and on earth. Who is there that can intercede in His presence except as He permitteth? he knoweth what before or after or behind them. Nor shall they compass aught of His knowledge except as He willeth. His Throne doth extend over the heavens and the earth, and He feeleth no fatigue in guarding and preserving them for He is the Most High, the Supreme.

[edit] R

The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation. ~ John Ray
God is an iron. ~ Spider Robinson
In the presence of infinite might and infinite wisdom, the strength of the strongest man is but weakness, and the keenest of mortal eyes see but dimly. ~ Theodore Roosevelt
  • The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation.
  • God is an iron.
    • Spider Robinson, in "God is an Iron" (1977). The title is a pun based on the proposition that if a person who commits a felony is a felon, then a person who creates irony is an iron.
  • In the presence of infinite might and infinite wisdom, the strength of the strongest man is but weakness, and the keenest of mortal eyes see but dimly.
    • Theodore Roosevelt's Christian Citizenship Address before the Young Men's Christian Association, Carnegie Hall, New York, 30 December 1900.
  • Kill one man and you are a murderer. Kill millions and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone and you are a God.
  • If I were granted omnipotence, and millions of years to experiment in, I should not think Man much to boast of as the final result of all my efforts.

[edit] S

Individual things are nothing but modifications of the attributes of God, or modes by which the attributes of God are expressed in a fixed and definite manner. ~ Baruch Spinoza
  • I think that if there were a God, there would be less evil on this earth. I believe that if evil exists here below, then either it was willed by God or it was beyond His powers to prevent it. Now I cannot bring myself to fear a God who is either spiteful or weak. I defy Him without fear and care not a fig for his thunderbolts.
    • Marquis de Sade, Justine or The Misfortunes of Virtue (1787) [This quote is strikingly similar to Epicurus' above.]
  • The existence of the world without God seems to me less absurd than the presence of a God, existing in all his perfection,creating an imperfect man in order to make him run the risk of Hell.
  • Respectable society believed in God in order to avoid having to speak about him.
  • And to add greater honours to his age
    Than man could give him, he died fearing God.
  • If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him?
    If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future?
    If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers?
    If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him?
    If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses?
  • By God, I mean a being absolutely infinite — that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality.
    Explanation — I say absolutely infinite, not infinite after its kind: for, of a thing infinite only after its kind, infinite attributes may be denied; but that which is absolutely infinite, contains in its essence whatever expresses reality, and involves no negation.
  • Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.
    • Baruch Spinoza, in Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (1677), Prop. 15.
  • God and all attributes of God are eternal.
    • Baruch Spinoza, in Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (1677), Prop. 19.
    • Individual things are nothing but modifications of the attributes of God, or modes by which the attributes of God are expressed in a fixed and definite manner.
    • Baruch Spinoza, in Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (1677), Prop. 25.
  • God is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things.
  • Things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained.

[edit] T

The meaning of our self is not to be found in its separateness from God and others, but in the ceaseless realisation of yoga, of union. ~ Rabindranath Tagore
God is that infinite All of which man knows himself to be a finite part.
God alone exists truly. Man manifests Him in time, space and matter. ~ Leo Tolstoy
God, from a beautiful necessity, is Love in all he doeth,
Love, a brilliant fire, to gladden or consume... ~ Martin Farquhar Tupper
  • Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.
    • Rabindranath Tagore, in Stray Birds (1916); paraphrased variant: Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of humanity.
  • What, but God?
    Inspiring God! who boundless Spirit all,
    And unremitting Energy, pervades,
    Adjusts, sustains, and agitates the whole.
  • Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.
  • The Kingdom of God is within you... and all beings.
  • God is that infinite All of which man knows himself to be a finite part.
    God alone exists truly. Man manifests Him in time, space and matter.     The more God's manifestation in man (life) unites with the manifestations (lives) of other beings, the more man exists. This union with the lives of other beings is accomplished through love.
    God is not love, but the more there is of love, the more man manifests God, and the more he truly exists...
    We acknowledge God only when we are conscious of His manifestation in us.
  • I am what you call "The World". Or perhaps "The Universe". Or perhaps "God". Or perhaps "Truth". Or perhaps "Everything". Or perhaps "One". And, I am "You".
    • Truth Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood
  • God, from a beautiful necessity, is Love in all he doeth,
    Love, a brilliant fire, to gladden or consume    :
    The wicked work their woe by looking upon love, and hating it:
    The righteous find their joys in yearning on its loveliness for ever.

[edit] U

[edit] V

  • I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.
    • Voltaire, in a letter to Étienne Noël Damilaville (16 May 1767).
  • If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.
    • Voltaire in Épître à l'Auteur du Livre des Trois Imposteurs (10 November 1770).
  • "If God did not exist, He would have to be invented." But all nature cries aloud that he does exist: that there is a supreme intelligence, an immense power, an admirable order, and everything teaches us our own dependence on it.
  • I cannot imagine how the clockwork of the universe can exist without a clockmaker.
    • Voltaire, as quoted in More Random Walks in Science : An Anthology (1982) by Robert L. Weber, p. 65.

[edit] W

To believe that the desire for good is always fulfilled — that is faith, and whoever has it is not an atheist. ~ Simone Weil
"Elohim," the name for the creative power in Genesis, is a female plural, a fact that generations of learned rabbis and Christian theologians have all explained as merely grammatical convention. The King James and most other Bibles translate it as "God," but if you take the grammar literally, it seems to mean "goddesses." Al Shaddai, god of battles, appears later, and YHWH, mispronounced Jehovah, later still. ~ Robert Anton Wilson
I prefer to say that nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see. If we wish to know the truth concerning anything, we'll find it in the nature of that thing. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright
  • God's greatness and goodness are measured by the fact that he gives us choices. He doesn't require us to thank him for our food. (In case you hadn't noticed.) God is not a Modernist. He doesn't view us as nails. God expects us to behave like carpenters. Indeed, he gave us a carpenter as an example.
    So I think God is postmodern. He has his own ideas of what rules, and what sucks, and he doesn't expect everyone else to agree with him.
  • One of the most exquisite pleasures of human love — to serve the loved one without his knowing it — is only possible, as regards the love of God, through atheism.
  • In order to obey God, one must receive his commands. How did it happen that I received them in adolescence, while I was professing atheism? To believe that the desire for good is always fulfilled — that is faith, and whoever has it is not an atheist.
  • No human being escapes the necessity of conceiving some good outside himself towards which his thought turns in a movement of desire, supplication, and hope. consequently, the only choice is between worshipping the true God or an idol. Every atheist is an idolater — unless he is worshipping the true God in his impersonal aspect. The majority of the pious are idolaters.
  • There are two atheisms of which one is a purification of the notion of God.
    • Simone Weil, as quoted in The New Christianity (1967) edited by William Robert Miller
  • No man — prince, peasant, pope, — has all the light, who says else is a mountebank. I claim no private lien on truth, only a liberty to seek it, prove it in debate, and to be wrong a thousand times to reach a single rightness. It is that liberty they fear. They want us to be driven to God like sheep, not running to him like lovers, shouting joy!"
  • Ever since the Greeks, we have been drunk with language! We have made a cage with words and shoved our God inside!
  • If God be God and man a creature made in image of the divine intelligence, his noblest function is the search for truth.
  • Once you accept the existence of God — however you define him, however you explain your relationship to him — then you are caught forever with his presence in the center of all things. You are also caught with the fact that man is a creature who walks in two worlds and traces upon the walls of his cave the wonders and the nightmare experiences of his spiritual pilgrimage.
  • No reason can be given for the nature of God, because that nature is the ground of rationality.
  • All your Western theologies, the whole mythology of them, are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent.
  • "Elohim," the name for the creative power in Genesis, is a female plural, a fact that generations of learned rabbis and Christian theologians have all explained as merely grammatical convention. The King James and most other Bibles translate it as "God," but if you take the grammar literally, it seems to mean "goddesses." Al Shaddai, god of battles, appears later, and YHWH, mispronounced Jehovah, later still.
    • Robert Anton Wilson, in Everything Is Under Control : Conspiracies, Cults, and Cover-Ups (1998), p. 197.
  • God is the great mysterious motivator of what we call nature and it has been said often by philosophers, that nature is the will of God. And, I prefer to say that nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see. If we wish to know the truth concerning anything, we'll find it in the nature of that thing.
    • Frank Lloyd Wright, quoted in Truth Against the World : Frank Lloyd Wright speaks for an organic architecture (1987) edited by Patrick J. Meehan

[edit] X

[edit] Y

  • A God all mercy is a God unjust.
    • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night IV, line 234.
  • By night an atheist half believes in God.
    • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night V, line 177.
  • A Deity believed, is joy begun;
    A Deity adored, is joy advanced;
    A Deity beloved, is joy matured.
    Each branch of piety delight inspires.
    • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night VIII, line 720.
  • A God alone can comprehend a God.
    • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night LX, line 835.
  • Thou, my all!
    My theme! my inspiration! and my crown!
    My strength in age—my rise in low estate!
    My souls ambition, pleasure, wealth!—my world!
    My light in darkness! and my life in death!
    My boast through time! bliss through eternity!
    Eternity, too short to speak thy praise!
    Or fathom thy profound of love to man!
    • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night IV, line 586.

[edit] Z

  • Arthur Frayn: "And you, poor creatures, who conjured you out of the clay? Is God in show business, too?"

[edit] Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 315-21.
  • Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.
    • Acts, XVII. 23.
  • Homo cogitat, Deus indicat.
    • Man thinks, God directs.
    • Alcuin, Epistles.
  • At Athens, wise men propose, and fools dispose.
  • Man says—"So, so."
    Heaven says—"No, no."
    • Chinese Aphorism.
  • God's Wisdom and God's Goodness!—Ah, but fools
    Mis-define thee, till God knows them no more.
    Wisdom and goodness they are God!—what schools
    Have yet so much as heard this simpler lore.
    This no Saint preaches, and this no Church rules:
    'Tis in the desert, now and heretofore.
  • 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.
  • From thee all human actions take their springs,
    The rise of empires, and the fall of kings.
  • O Rock of Israel, Rock of Salvation, Rock struck and cleft for me, let those two streams of blood and water which once gushed out of thy side … bring down with them salvation and holiness into my soul.
    • Brevint, Works (Ed. 1679), p. 17.
  • He made little, too little of sacraments and priests, because God was so intensely real to him. What should he do with lenses who stood thus full in the torrent of the sunshine.
  • It never frightened a Puritan when you bade him stand still and listen to the speech of God. His closet and his church were full of the reverberations of the awful, gracious, beautiful voice for which he listened.
  • Of what I call God,
    And fools call Nature.
  • A picket frozen on duty—
    A mother starved for her brood—
    Socrates drinking the hemlock,
    And Jesus on the rood;
    And millions who, humble and nameless,
    The straight, hard pathway trod—
    Some call it Consecration,
    And others call it God.
  • Nihil est quod deus efficere non possit.
    • There is nothing which God cannot do.
    • Cicero, De Divinatione, II. 41.
  • God! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice!
    Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
    And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,
    And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!
  • God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty.
    • I Corinthians. I. 27.
  • I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.
    • I Corinthians, III. 6.
  • God moves in a mysterious way
    His wonders to perform;
    He plants his footsteps in the sea
    And rides upon the storm.
  • There is a God! the sky his presence shares,
    His hand upheaves the billows in their mirth,
    Destroys the mighty, yet the humble spares
    And with contentment crowns the thought of worth.
  • My God, my Father, and my Friend,
    Do not forsake me in the end.
  • 'Twas much, that man was made like God before:
    But, that God should be made like man, much more.
  • By tracing Heaven his footsteps may be found:
    Behold! how awfully he walks the round!
    God is abroad, and wondrous in his ways
    The rise of empires, and their fall surveys.
  • Too wise to err, too good to be unkind,—
    Are all the movements of the Eternal Mind.
  • God is divine Principle, supreme incorporeal Being, Mind, Spirit, Soul, Life, Truth, Love.
  • There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind, and its infinite manifestation, for God is All in All. Spirit is immortal Truth; Matter is mortal error.
  • When the Master of the universe has points to carry in his government he impresses his will in the structure of minds.
  • He was a wise man who originated the idea of God.
  • Henceforth the Majesty of God revere;
    Fear him and you have nothing else to fear.
    • Fordyce, Answer to a Gentleman who Apologized to the Author for Swearing.
  • Wie einer ist, so ist sein Gott,
    Darum ward Gott so oft zu Spott.
  • I know
    My God commands, whose power no power resists.
  • Some men treat the God of their fathers as they treat their father's friend. They do not deny him; by no means: they only deny themselves to him, when he is good enough to call upon them.
    • J. C. and A. W. Hare, Guesses at Truth.
  • I askt the seas and all the deeps below
    My God to know,
    I askt the reptiles, and whatever is
    In the abyss;
    Even from the shrimps to the leviathan
    Enquiry ran;
    But in those deserts that no line can sound
    The God I sought for was not to be found.
  • Forgetful youth! but know, the Power above
    With ease can save each object of his love;
    Wide as his will, extends his boundless grace.
    • Homer, The Odyssey, Book III, line 285. Pope's translation.
  • O thou, whose certain eye foresees
    The fix'd event of fate's remote decrees.
    • Homer, The Odyssey, Book IV, line 627. Pope's translation.
  • Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade far into the doings of the Most High; whom although to know be life, and joy to make mention of his name, yet our soundest knowledge is to know that we know him not as indeed he is, neither can know him; and our safest eloquence concerning him is our silence, when we confess without confession that his glory is inexplicable, his greatness above our capacity and reach.
    • Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, Book I, Chapter II. 3.
  • Could we with ink the ocean fill,
    And were the heavens of parchment made,
    Were every stalk on earth a quill,
    And every man a scribe by trade;
    To write the love of God above,
    Would drain the ocean dry;
    Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
    Though stretch'd from sky to sky.
    • Rabbi Mayir ben Isaac. Translation of Chaldee Ode, sung in Jewish Synagogues during the service of the first day of the Feast of the Pentecost. Given in the original Chaldee in Notes and Queries, Dec. 31, 1853, p. 648. In Grose's Olio, p. 292, and in Book of Jewish Thoughts, p. 155. Same idea in Chaucer—Balade Warnynge Men to Beware of Deceitful Women. Also in Remedie of Love. See Modern Universal History, p. 430. Note. Miss C. Sinclair—Hill and Valley, p. 35. (Same idea.) Smart given as English translator by one authority. See also Des Knaben Wunderhorn.
  • But if the sky were paper and a scribe each star above,
    And every scribe had seven hands, they could not write all my love.
    • Dürsli und Bäbeli; old public house ditty of the Canton de Soleure or Solothurn. Original in Swiss dialect. Given in Notes and Queries (Feb. 10, 1872), p. 114.
  • From thee, great God, we spring, to thee we tend,—
    Path, motive, guide, original, and end.
  • The sun and every vassal star,
    All space, beyond the soar of angel's wings,
    Wait on His word: and yet He stays His car
    For every sigh a contrite suppliant brings.
  • Nam homo proponit, sed Deus disponit.
    • Man proposes, but God disposes.
    • Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ, Book I, Chapter XIX. Thomas Dibdin's translation.
  • O God, I am thinking Thy thoughts after Thee.
  • All but God is changing day by day.
  • God! there is no God but he, the living, the self-subsisting.
    • Koran, Chapter II, Part III.
  • There is no god but God.
    • Koran, Chapter III.
  • L'impossibilité où je suis de prouver que Dieu n'est pas, me decouvre son existence.
    • The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discloses to me His existence.
    • Jean de La Bruyère, Les Caractères, XVI.
  • Sire, je n'avais besoin de cet hypothèse.
    • Sire, I had no need for that hypothesis.
    • La Place to Napoleon, who asked why God was not mentioned in Traite de la Méchanique Céleste.
  • Denn Gott lohnt Gutes, hier gethan, auch hier noch.
  • "We trust, Sir, that God is on our side." "It is more important to know that we are on God's side."
  • God had sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat for this planting.
  • Estne dei sedes nisi terra et pontus et aër
    Et cœlum et virtus? Superos quid quærimus ultra?
    Jupiter est quodcumque vides, quodcumque moveris.
    • Is there any other seat of the Divinity than the earth, sea, air, the heavens, and virtuous minds? why do we seek God elsewhere? He is whatever you see; he is wherever you move.
    • Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, Pharsalia, IX. 578.
  • Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott
    Ein gute Wehr und Waffen,
    Er hilft uns frei aus aller Not,
    Die uns jetzt hat betroffen.
    • A mighty fortress is our God,
      A bulwark never failing,
      Our helper he amid the flood
      Of mortal ills prevailing.
    • Martin Luther, Ein feste Burg. Translation by F. H. Hedge.
  • I fear no foe with Thee at hand to bless;
    Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
  • A voice in the wind I do not know;
    A meaning on the face of the high hills
    Whose utterance I cannot comprehend.
    A something is behind them: that is God.
  • Exemplumque dei quisque est in imagine parva.
    • Every one is in a small way the image of God.
    • Marcus Manilius, Astronomica, IV. 895.
  • Quis cœlum possit nisi cœli munera nosse?
    Et reperire deum nisi qui pars ipse deorum est?
    • Who can know heaven except by its gifts? and who can find out God, unless the man who is himself an emanation from God?
    • Marcus Manilius, Astronomica, II. 115.
  • The Lord who gave us Earth and Heaven
    Takes that as thanks for all He's given.
    The book he lent is given back
    All blotted red and smutted black.
  • One sole God;
    One sole ruler,—his Law;
    One sole interpreter of that law—Humanity.
  • Too wise to be mistaken still
    Too good to be unkind.
  • Who best
    Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best: his state
    Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed,
    And post o'er land and ocean without rest.
  • Gott-trunkener Mensch.
    • A God-intoxicated man.
    • Novalis (of Spinoza).
  • Trumpeter, sound for the splendour of God!
    . . . . . .
    Trumpeter, rally us, up to the heights of it!
    Sound for the City of God.
  • Est deus in nobis; et sunt commercia cœli.
    • There is a God within us and intercourse with heaven.
    • Ovid, Ars Amatoria, Book III. 549. (Milton's "Looks commercing with the skies" said to be inspired by this phrase).
  • Est deus in nobis: agitante calescimus illo.
    • There is a God within us, and we glow when he stirs us.
    • Ovid, Fasti, Book VI. 6.
  • Sed tamen ut fuso taurorum sanguine centum,
    Sic capitur minimo thuris honore deux.
    • As God is propitiated by the blood of a hundred bulls, so also is he by the smallest offering of incense.
    • Ovid, Tristium, II. 75.
  • Nihil ita sublime est, supraque pericula tendit
    Non sit ut inferius suppositumque deo.
    • Nothing is so high and above all danger that is not below and in the power of God.
    • Ovid, Tristium, IV. 8. 47.
  • Fear God. Honour the King.
    • I Peter, II. 17.
  • One on God's side is a majority.
  • God is truth and light his shadow.
  • God is a geometrician.
    • Attributed to Plato, but not found in his works.
  • Est profecto deus, qui, quæ nos gerimus, auditque et videt.
    • There is indeed a God that hears and sees whate'er we do.
    • Plautus, Captivi, II. 2. 63.
  • He from thick films shall purge the visual ray,
    And on the sightless eyeball pour the day.
  • Thou Great First Cause, least understood.
  • The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork.
    • Psalms, XIX. 1.
  • He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
    • Psalms, XXIII. 2.
  • God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
    • Psalms. XLVI. 1.
  • Je crains Dieu, cher Abner, et n'ai point d'autre crainte.
    • I fear God, dear Abner, and I have no other fear.
    • Jean Racine, Athalie, Act I, scene 1.
  • There is no respect of persons with God.
    • Romans, II. 11. Acts X. 34.
  • Fear of God before their eyes.
    • Romans, III. 18.
  • If God be for us, who can be against us?
    • Romans, VIII. 31.
  • Give us a God—a living God,
    One to wake the sleeping soul,
    One to cleanse the tainted blood
    Whose pulses in our bosoms roll.
  • We may scavenge the dross of the nation, we may shudder past bloody sod,
    But we thrill to the new revelation that we are parts of God.
  • Es lebt ein Gott zu strafen und zu rächen.
  • Nihil ab illo [i.e. a Deo] vacat; opus suum ipse implet.
    • Nothing is void of God; He Himself fills His work.
    • Seneca, De Beneficiis, IV. 8.
  • Deum non immolationibus et sanguine multo colendum: quæ enim ex trucidatione immerentium voluptas est? sed mente pura, bono honestoque proposito. Non templa illi, congestis in altitudinem saxis, struenda sunt; in suo cuique consecrandus est pectore.
    • God is not to be worshipped with sacrifices and blood; for what pleasure can He have in the slaughter of the innocent? but with a pure mind, a good and honest purpose. Temples are not to be built for Him with stones piled on high; God is to be consecrated in the breast of each.
    • Seneca, Fragment, V. 204.
  • God helps those who help themselves.
  • From Piety, whose soul sincere
    Fears God, and knows no other fear.
    • W. Smyth, Ode for the Installation of the Duke of Gloucester as Chancellor of Cambridge.
  • Ad majorem Dei gloriam.
    • For the greater glory of God.
    • Motto of the Society of Jesus.
  • The divine essence itself is love and wisdom.
  • God, the Great Giver, can open the whole universe to our gaze in the narrow space of a single lane.
  • Ha sotto i piedi il Fato e la Natura.
    Ministri umili; e'l moto e chi'l misura.
    • Under whose feet (subjected to His grace),
      Sit nature, fortune, motion, time, and place.
    • Torquato Tasso, Gerusalemme, IX, 66.
  • At last I heard a voice upon the slope
    Cry to the summit, "Is there any hope?"
    To which an answer pealed from that high land,
    But in a tongue no man could understand;
    And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn,
    God made himself an awful rose of dawn.
  • I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
    I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
    I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
    Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears
    I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
  • But I lose
    Myself in Him, in Light ineffable!
    Come then, expressive Silence, muse His praise.
    These, as they change, Almighty Father, these
    Are but the varied God. The rolling Year
    Is full of Thee.
  • The being of God is so comfortable, so convenient, so necessary to the felicity of Mankind, that, (as Tully admirably says) Dii immortales ad usum hominum fabricati pene videantur, if God were not a necessary being of himself, he might almost seem to be made on purpose for the use and benefit of men.
    • Archbishop Tillotson, Works, Sermon 93, Volume I, p. 696. (Ed. 1712). Probable origin of Voltaire's phrase.
  • Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
    Let me hide myself in thee.
    • Augustus Toplady, Living and Dying Prayer. "Rock of Ages" is translation. from the Hebrew of "everlasting strength." Isaiah, XXVI. 4.
  • None but God can satisfy the longings of an immortal soul; that as the heart was made for Him, so He only can fill it.
  • I believe that there is no God, but that matter is God and God is matter; and that it is no matter whether there is any God or no.
    • "The Unbeliever's Creed", Connoisseur No. IX (March 28, 1754).
  • Si genus humanum et mortalia temnitis arma,
    At sperate deos memores fandi atque nefandi.
    • If ye despise the human race, and mortal arms, yet remember that there is a God who is mindful of right and wrong.
    • Virgil, Æneid (29-19 BC), I. 542.
  • Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer.
    • If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him.
    • Voltaire, Epitre à l'Auteur du Livre des Trois Imposteurs, CXI. See Œuvres Complètes de Voltaire, Volume I, p. 1076. Ed. Didot, 1827. Also in letter to Frederick, Prince Royal of Prussia.
  • Je voudrais que vous écrasassiez l'infâme.
    • I wish that you would crush this infamy.
    • Voltaire to D'Alembert June 23, 1760. Attributed to Voltaire by Abbé Barruch—Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism. Generally quoted "Écrasez l'infâme." A. De Morgan contends that the popular idea that it refers to God is incorrect. It refers probably to the Roman Catholic Church, or the traditions in the church.
  • God on His throne is eldest of poets:
    Unto His measures moveth the Whole.
  • The God I know of, I shall ne'er
    Know, though he dwells exceeding nigh.
    Raise thou the stone and find me there,
    Cleave thou the wood and there am I.
    Yea, in my flesh his spirit doth flow,
    Too near, too far, for me to know.
    • William Watson, The Unknown God. Third and fourth lines are from "newly discovered sayings of Jesus." Probably an ancient Oriental proverb.
  • The Somewhat which we name but cannot know.
    Ev'n as we name a star and only see
    Its quenchless flashings forth, which ever show
    And ever hide him, and which are not he.
  • I know not where His islands lift
    Their fronded palms in air;
    I only know I cannot drift
    Beyond His love and care.
  • Though man sits still, and takes his ease,
    God is at work on man;
    No means, no moment unemploy'd,
    To bless him, if he can.

[edit] Anonymous

Proverbs or widely known statements by unknown authors.
  • The more science I come to understand, The more logic, reason and math I learn, The more I believe in God, for the complexity and depth of nature and cosmos, on its small and grand scales, I find it quite impossible by the same reasons, logic, and equations, for it to have come about merely on its own without any divine intervention.
  • Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
    • English proverb
  • God does not love those who have not suffered.
    • Croatian Proverb
  • God is like a barber: don't expect him to give you a haircut, you must first get at his barbershop.
  • God is beatiful. He loves beauty.
    • Muslim proverb
  • Trust in God but tie your camel.
    • Muslim proverb (possibly attributed in the Masnavi of Rumi).
  • If God lived on earth, people would break his windows.
    • Yiddish proverb
  • To make God laugh at you, tell him your plans.
    • Yiddish proverb
  • Black holes are where God is dividing by zero.
  • God is real, unless you declare him an integer.
  • Well you may throw your rock and hide your hand
    Workin' in the dark against your fellow man
    But as sure as God made black and white
    What's down in the dark will be brought to the light.
  • Go tell that long tongue liar
    Go and tell that midnight rider
    Tell the rambler, the gambler, the back biter
    Tell 'em that God's gonna cut 'em down.
    • Anonymous "God's Gonna Cut You Down", traditional folk song

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