quotations about God
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
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
Delight is the secret. Learn of pure delight and thou shalt learn of God.
SRI AUROBINDO
Thoughts and Glimpses
God can be good and terrible--not in succession--but at the same time. This is why we seek a mediator between us and him; we approach him through the mediating priest and attenuate and enclose him through the sacraments. It is for our own safety: to trap him within confines which render him safe.
PHILIP K. DICK
Valis
We seem to think that God speaks by seconding the ideas we've already adopted, but God nearly always catches us by surprise. If it's God's Spirit blowing, someone ends up having feathers ruffled in an unforeseen way. God tends to confound, astonish, and flabbergast.
SUE MONK KIDD
When the Heart Waits
I love God's shadow better than man's light.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Thoughts," The Writings of Madame Swetchine
I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
telegram response to New York rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein, Apr. 24, 1929
The gods of men are sillier than their kings and queens, and emptier and more powerless.
MAXWELL ANDERSON
Elizabeth the Queen
God is able to do more than man can understand.
THOMAS À KEMPIS
Imitation of Christ
Only one thing is necessary: to possess God -- All the senses, all the forces of the soul and of the spirit, all the exterior resources are so many open outlets to the Divinity; so many ways of tasting and of adoring God.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
God's merits are so transcendent that it is not surprising his faults should be in reasonable proportion.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Note-Books
Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
attributed, The Best Liberal Quotes Ever
You are as close to God in your own sitting room as in the basilica; but the basilica has worth if it strengthens your faith.
SIMON MAWER
The Gospel of Judas
God: a disease we imagine we are cured of because no one dies of it nowadays.
EMIL CIORAN
The Trouble with Being Born
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
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
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
I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.
WILLIAM JAMES
Lecture III, "Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered," Pragmatism
We have usurped many of the powers we once ascribed to God.
Fearful and unprepared, we have assumed lordship over the life or death of the whole world -- of all living things.
The danger and the glory and the choice rest finally in man. The test of his perfectibility is at hand.
Having taken Godlike power, we must seek in ourselves for the responsibility and the wisdom we once prayed some deity might have.
JOHN STEINBECK
Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Dec. 10, 1962
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