quotations about God
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
Somewhere in the infinite that He occupies, God advances and withdraws the pawns of the other games He plays, but it is too soon to worry about this one, all He need do for the present is allow things to take their natural course, apart from the occasional adjustment with the tip of His little finger to make sure some stray thought or action does not interfere with the harmony of destinies.
JOSé SARAMAGO
The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
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
God is revealing Himself to humanity. He is a Word, always speaking. He speaks through His works; all nature interprets Him to us. He speaks through His prophets; all men who have felt the inspiration of His presence interpret Him to us.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
God is infinite and we are finite; and, at the best, we can only know him a very little.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
The highest praise of God consists in the denial of him by the athiest who finds creation so perfect that it can dispense with a creator.
MARCEL PROUST
The Guermantes Way
The gods of men are sillier than their kings and queens, and emptier and more powerless.
MAXWELL ANDERSON
Elizabeth the Queen
If God is, man is a slave; now, man can and must be free; then, God does not exist. I defy anyone whomsoever to avoid this circle; now, therefore, let all choose.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
God and the State
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
Gods die when they are forgotten.
NEIL GAIMAN
American Gods
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
God's merits are so transcendent that it is not surprising his faults should be in reasonable proportion.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Note-Books
God is a foreman with certain definite views
Who orders life in shifts of work and leisure.
SEAMUS HEANEY
Docker
And I knew not God to be a Spirit, not one who hath parts extended in length and breadth, or whose being was bulk; for every bulk is less in a part than in the whole: and if it be infinite, it must be less in such part as is defined by a certain space, than in its infinitude; and so is not wholly every where, as Spirit, as God. And what that should be in us, by which we were like to God, and might be rightly said to be after the image of God, I was altogether ignorant.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
God deceiveth thee not.
THOMAS À KEMPIS
Imitation of Christ
Sometimes you get the sense that the Creator is getting to that point of "Yeah, we might have to reboot."
TIM ALLEN
Esquire, Nov. 2011
I cannot help thinking that the best way of knowing God is to love many things. Love this friend, this person, this thing, whatever you like, and you will be on the right road to understanding Him better.
VINCENT VAN GOGH
letter to Theo van Gogh, Jul. 1880
The important thing, I think, is not to be bitter. You know, if it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. I think that the worst you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.
WOODY ALLEN
Love and Death
Nor does God whisper through the trees. His voice is not mistaken. When men hear it they fall to their knees and their souls are riven and they cry out to Him and there is no fear in them but only that wildness of heart that springs from such longing and they cry out to stay his presence for they know at once that while godless men may live well enough in their exile those to whom He has spoken can contemplate no life without Him but only darkness and despair. Trees and stones are no part of it.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
The Crossing
Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man?
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Twilight of the Idols