quotations about God
The example of God, teacheth the lesson truly.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Goodness and Goodness Of Nature", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
'Twas only fear first in the world made gods.
BEN JONSON
Sejanus
We need not fear shipwreck when God is the pilot.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
People ... have tried to evoke God or devil to justify them in what their glands insisted upon.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Absalom
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 is not the author of all things, but of good only.
PLATO
The Republic
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"
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
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 way to God is by our selves.
PHINEAS FLETCHER
The Purple Island
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
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
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
Remember the perfections of that God whom you worship, that he is a Spirit, and therefore to be worshipped in spirit and truth; and that he is most great and terrible, and therefore to be worshipped with seriousness and reverence, and not to be dallied with, or served with toys or lifeless lip-service; and that he is most holy, pure, and jealous, and therefore to be purely worshipped; and that he is still present with you, and all things are naked and open to him with whom we have to do. The knowledge of God, and the remembrance of his all-seeing presence, are the most powerful means against hypocrisy.
RICHARD BAXTER
Christian Ethics
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
Where there is most of God, there is least of self.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
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 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"
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