quotations about God
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?
JOSEPH HELLER
Catch 22
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
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
God -- if he really exist -- is good, alive, self-conscious, and governs all things according to his benevolent and holy providence; but the world shows no indications of such a benevolent and holy Providence. This earth appears to be a hell, or at best a planet condemned -- a sort of purgatory: it is filled with violence, tyranny and injustice, and yet God, if he exist, is absolute sovereign, and has willed that things should be as they are! -- Therefore there is no God.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
Remarks on the Science of History
God appears and god is light
To those poor souls who dwell in night
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.
WILLIAM BLAKE
Auguries of Innocence
God is not the author of all things, but of good only.
PLATO
The Republic
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
People ... have tried to evoke God or devil to justify them in what their glands insisted upon.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Absalom
The thoughts which the word "God" suggests to the human mind are susceptible of as many variations as human minds themselves. The Stoic, the Platonist, and the Epicurean, the Polytheist, the Dualist, and the Trinitarian, differ infinitely in their conceptions of its meaning. They agree only in considering it the most awful and most venerable of names, as a common term devised to express all of mystery, or majesty, or power, which the invisible world contains. And not only has every sect distinct conceptions of the application of this name, but scarcely two individuals of the same sect, who exercise in any degree the freedom of their judgment, or yield themselves with any candour of feeling to the influences of the visible world, find perfect coincidence of opinion to exist between them.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"Essay on Christianity"
God is a lion that comes in the night. God is a hawk gliding among the stars--
If all the stars and the earth, and the living flesh of the night that flows in between them, and whatever is beyond them
Were that one bird. He has a bloody beak and harsh talons, he pounces and tears.
ROBINSON JEFFERS
"The Inhumanist"
God's voice had been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellect.
WM. PAUL YOUNG
The Shack
The way to God is by our selves.
PHINEAS FLETCHER
The Purple Island
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
God's merits are so transcendent that it is not surprising his faults should be in reasonable proportion.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Note-Books
There is no duty in religion more generally agreed on, nor more justly required by God almighty, than a perfect submission to his will in all things: Nor is there any disposition of mind that can either please him more or become us better, than that of being satisfied with all he gives, and contented with all he takes away; none, I am sure, can be of more honour to God, nor more easy to ourselves; for if we consider him as our maker we cannot contend with him; if as our father we ought not to distrust him; so that we may be confident, whatever he does is intended for our good; and whatever happens that we may interpret otherwise, yet we cannot get nothing by repining, nor save anything by resisting.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
Men fail to find God because they curiously reverse the position -- the natural, legitimate, rightful position -- between the soul and God. There is a word common in theology, though not very familiar in ordinary intercourse, -- theodicy, which means justifying the ways of God to man. When a man begins to justify the ways of God to man, he has entered on a very dangerous process. For example, it is said, " If there is a God, he must be omnipotent and omniscient; and an omnipotent and omniscient God could and would make a world without sin and without suffering; but the world is not without sin nor without suffering, therefore there is no God." Such a man frames in his own mind his notion of what a God must be, and then brings God himself to that standard, and measures him by it. Theodicy! Justifying the ways of God to man! Sit, my soul, on the judgment throne, and summon God to stand before thee. "Now, Almighty One, I will see whether thou art righteous. Why didst thou allow famine in India? What right hast thou to allow a deluge in Japan? What right hast thou to allow man to go to war with his fellow-man in Europe? Justify thyself; explain thyself; answer for thyself." No man will ever find his way to the heart of God in that spirit.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
Where there is most of God, there is least of self.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
My God is in the hearts of those that seek Him ... And in my heart I carry an assurance of His love that life cannot disturb. I know His love as the babe knows its mother's love, lying upon her breast. It knows her love though it neither understands her nature nor her ways.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
As it is impossible to be outside God, the best is consciously to dwell in Him.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime