quotations about God
The prerogative of God extendeth as well to the reason as to the will of man: so that as we are to obey His law, though we find a reluctation in our will, so we are to believe His word, though we find a reluctation in our reason.
FRANCIS BACON
The Advancement of Learning
I was brought up to believe that the Christian God wasn't a scared and compromising public servant, but the creator of the whole merciless truth, and I reckon that training spoiled me -- I actually took my teachers seriously!
SINCLAIR LEWIS
Elmer Gantry
It is too frequent to begin with God and end with the World. But He is the good man's Beginning and End; his Alpha and Omega.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
People ... have tried to evoke God or devil to justify them in what their glands insisted upon.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Absalom
The example of God, teacheth the lesson truly.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Goodness and Goodness Of Nature", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
Theologians and philosophers, who make God the creator of Nature and the architect of the Universe, reveal Him to us as an illogical and unbalanced Being. They declare He is benevolent because they are afraid of Him, but they are forced to admit the truth that His ways are vicious and beyond understanding. They attribute a malignity to Him seldom to be found in any human being. And that is how they get human beings to worship Him. For our miserable species would never lavish worship on a just and benevolent God from whom they had nothing to fear.
ANATOLE FRANCE
The Gods Will Have Blood
Too much God and you overdose. God needs to be filtered.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Year of the Flood
God, whom the wisest men acknowledge to be a power uneffable, and virtue infinite; a light by abundant clarity invisible; an understanding which itself can only comprehend; an essence eternal and spiritual, of absolute pureness and simplicity; was and is pleased to make himself known by the work of the world: in the wonderful magnitude whereof, (all which he embraceth, filleth, and sustaineth,) we behold the image of that glory which cannot be measured, and withal, that one, and yet universal nature which cannot be defined. In the glorious lights of heaven we perceive a shadow of his divine countenance.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
The First Part of the History of the World: Intreating of the Beginning and First Ages of the Same
I appreciate the idea of allowing people to have their own private walk with God. To me, God is about love, not condemnation.
CLAY AIKEN
Learning to Sing: Hearing the Music in Your Life
God speaks silently, he speaks in your heart; if your heart is noisy, chattering, you will not hear.
CARYLL HOUSELANDER
This War is the Passion
Wherever you have seen God pass, mark that spot, and go and sit in that window again.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
God is only a great imaginative experience.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence
I conceive of God, in fact, as a means of liberation and not a means to control others.
JAMES BALDWIN
address delivered at Kalamazoo College, February 1960
I think everyone who says he knows God's intention is showing a lot of very human ego.
MICHAEL CRICHTON
Next
You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
ANNE LAMOTT
Bird by Bird
The God of the Old Testament did not distance Himself from His chosen people; He participated in their struggles and made Israel's enemies His own. Israel's own transgressions grieved Him and incited Him to a terrible wrath. Ours is no aloof Lord--no Buddha beyond it all or Zeus making light of mortal travail. Among the world religions Christianity is unique in presenting a suffering God, a God who took human suffering upon Himself and in His agony gave birth to mankind's salvation.
JOHN UPDIKE
In the Beauty of the Lilies
He that lives in love lives in God.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
Whatever God there is is slowly eliminating the guts and alimentary system from the human being, to evolve a higher, more spiritual being.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Lady Chatterley's Lover
I have known many gods. He who denies them is blind as he who trusts them too deeply.
ROBERT E. HOWARD
"Queen of the Black Coast," Weird Tales (1933)
We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.
RICHARD DAWKINS
attributed, The Root of All Evil