quotations about God
God's voice was not in the earthquake,
Not in the fire, nor the storm, but it was in the whispering breezes.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"The Children of the Lord's Supper"
I wouldn't wanna do anything to hurt God. He's got enough trouble with the Russians and all.
THEODORE "BEAVER" CLEAVER
Leave it to Beaver
The word "God" is used in most cases as by no means a term of science or exact knowledge, but a term of poetry and eloquence, a term thrown out, so to speak, as a not fully grasped object of the speaker's consciousness -- a literary term, in short; and mankind mean different things by it as their consciousness differs.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Literature and Dogma
The rule of God is not tyranny, for it does not partake of a political or governmental character -- it is not a rule of authority. God is not a governor of the universe, for a governor rules over those of a like nature with himself, and exercises a political and judicial power, while God exercises a creative, a preserving, and a determinative power of an altogether different kind. If I am a servant of God, I am under no tyranny; for God does not govern, but supports, sustains, and directs me.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
Remarks on the Science of History
I have often a suspicion God is still trying to work things out and hasn't finished.
REBECCA WEST
The Paris Review, spring 1981
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
The longer I live and the more I see
Of the struggle of souls toward the heights above,
The stronger this truth comes home to me:
That the Universe rests on the shoulders of love;
A love so limitless, deep, and broad,
That men have renamed it and called it--God.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"Deathless"
The God idea is growing more impersonal and nebulous in proportion as the human mind is learning to understand natural phenomena and in the degree that science progressively correlates human and social events.
EMMA GOLDMAN
"The Philosophy of Atheism," Mother Jones, Feb. 1916
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
It's easy being a god. If you have the right equipment.
DAN SIMMONS
Ilium
Our notions of God are tinged by our own characters and ignorance.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Except during my childhood, when I was probably influenced by Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel depiction of God with a flowing white beard, I have never tried to project the Creator in any kind of human likeness. The vociferous debates about whether God is male or female seem ridiculous to me. I think of God as an omnipotent and omniscient presence, a spirit that permeates the universe, the essence of truth, nature, being, and life. To me, these are profound and indescribable concepts that seem to be trivialized when expressed in words.
JIMMY CARTER
Living Faith
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
Mistrusts sometimes come over one's mind of the justice of God. But let a real misery come again, and to whom do we fly? To whom do we instinctively and immediately look up?
B. R. HAYDON
Table Talk
The name of God should no longer come from the mouth of man. This word that has so long been degraded by usage no longer means anything.... To use the word God is more than sloth, it is a refusal to think, a king of short cut, a hideous shorthand.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
The Confession
God is love. I don't say the heart doesn't feel a taste of it, but what a taste. The smallest glass of love mixed with a pint pot of ditch-water. We wouldn't recognize that love. It might even look like hate. It would be enough to scare us - God's love. It set fire to a bush in the desert, didn't it, and smashed open graves and set the dead walking in the dark. Oh, a man like me would run a mile to get away if he felt that love around.
GRAHAM GREENE
The Power and the Glory
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
I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.
WILLIAM JAMES
Lecture III, "Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered," Pragmatism
All human love is a faint type of God's;
An echoing note from a harmonious whole;
A feeble spark from an undying flame;
A single drop from an unfathomed sea:
But God's is infinite; it fills the earth
And heaven, and the broad, trackless realms of space.
ALBERT LAIGHTON
"The Love of God"
I love God's shadow better than man's light.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Thoughts," The Writings of Madame Swetchine