GOD QUOTES XX

quotations about God

Give God the margin of eternity to justify himself in, and the more we live and know of our own souls and of spiritual experiences generally, the more we shall be convinced that we have to do with one who is good and just.

HUGH R. HAWEIS

Speech in Season

Tags: Hugh R. Haweis


Everyone who believes in God carries around a basic assumption of how God acts in relation with us. The French novelist Flaubert said that a great writer should stand in his novel like God in his creation: nowhere to be seen, nowhere to be heard. God is everywhere and yet invisible, silent, seemingly absent and indifferent. A few intellectuals may enjoy worshiping such an absentee God, but most Christians prefer Jesus' image of a God as a loving father. We need more than a watchmaker who winds up the universe and lets it tick. We need love and mercy and forgiveness and grace -- qualities only a personal God can offer.

PHILIP YANCEY

Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find?


Do for God what you do for your ambitious projects, what you do in consecrating yourself to Art, what you have done when you loved a human creature or sought some secret of human science. Is not God the whole of science, the all of love, the source of poetry? Surely His riches are worthy of being coveted! His treasure is inexhaustible, His poem infinite, His love immutable, His science sure and darkened by no mysteries.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: Honoré de Balzac


The marvels of God are not brought forth from one's self.
Rather, it is more like a chord, a sound that is played.
The tone does not come out of the chord itself, but rather,
through the touch of the Musician.
I am, of course, the lyre and harp of God's kindness.

HILDEGARD OF BINGEN

attributed, Soul Weavings

Tags: Hildegard of Bingen


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


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.

RICHARD DAWKINS

The God Delusion

Tags: Richard Dawkins


Many deeds are enacted in God's name which fill the Devil's heart with envy.

ABRAHAM MILLER

Unmoral Maxims


Curiously, neither God nor the devil may wear modern dress, but must retain Grecian vestments.

SINCLAIR LEWIS

Nobel Lecture, December 12, 1930


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


There are many aspects of the universe that still cannot be explained satisfactorily by science; but ignorance only implies ignorance that may someday be conquered. To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.

ISAAC ASIMOV

"The Threat of Creationism", New York Times Magazine, Jun. 14, 1981

Tags: Isaac Asimov


The brave-speaking Plato pronounceth that God formed the world after his own image; but this smells rank of the old dotages, old comic writers would say; for how did God, casting his eye upon himself, frame this universe? Or how can God be spherical, and be inferior to man?

PLUTARCH

"What is God?", Essays & Miscellanies

Tags: Plutarch


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

Tags: Leo Tolstoy


If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.

JAMES BALDWIN

The Fire Next Time

Tags: James Baldwin


Men have left GOD not for other gods, they say, but for no God; and this has never happened before.

T. S. ELIOT

The Rock


In reality, each thought we have carries with it a little spiritual power, a tug toward or away from God. No thought is purely neutral.

JOHN ORTBERG

God Is Closer Than You Think

Tags: John Ortberg


If there is a God what the hell is He for?

WILLIAM FAULKNER

As I Lay Dying

Tags: William Faulkner


God is a witness that cannot be sworn.

SAMUEL BECKETT

Watt

Tags: Samuel Beckett


To say that the Great Companion is dead, is not to say that there is no God. The dead also live; but between them and ourselves all communion and companionship seem to most of us impossible. So to many in our own time, to many without the Church, to some within it, living companionship with a living God is an experience unknown. They believe in what Carlyle calls a "hypothetical God," but he is to them only a hypothesis. They look back through the ages for some evidence of a God who revealed himself centuries ago; they look forward with anticipation to a God who will reveal himself in some future ephiphany; but of a God here and now, a God who is a perpetual presence, a God whom they can see as Abraham saw him, with whom they can talk as Moses talked with him, who will inspire them with courage as he inspired Gideon, with hope as he inspired Isaiah, and with praise as he inspired David, they do not know.

LYMAN ABBOTT

The Great Companion


Man creates both his god and his devil in his own image. His god is himself at his best, and his devil himself at his worst.

ELBERT HUBBARD

The American Bible


I don't want my kids growing up with the image of God that I had -- Plato's white grandfatherly god -- because that god is not a very good father. When it comes down to it, you can't trust him with your kids.

WM. PAUL YOUNG

"The Love Shack", Christianity Today, Mar. 4, 2013