quotations about God

What art Thou then, my God? what, but the Lord God? For who is Lord but the Lord? or who is God save our God? Most highest, most good, most potent, most omnipotent; most merciful, yet most just; most hidden, yet most present; most beautiful, yet most strong; stable, yet incomprehensible; unchangeable, yet all-changing; never new, never old; all-renewing, and bringing age upon the proud, and they know it not; ever working, ever at rest; still gathering, yet nothing lacking; supporting, filling, and overspreading; creating, nourishing, and maturing; seeking, yet having all things.
ST. AUGUSTINE
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Confessions
God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention.
MARK TWAIN
letter to Orion Clemens, Mar. 23, 1878
All powers, all laws, are but the fair
Embodied thoughts of God.
JOHN STUART BLACKIE
All things are full of God
God helps them that helps themselves.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanac
When gods war with gods, they use weapons we do not know.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
By the Waters of Babylon
It should not be so hard to believe in God, for man himself is scarcely less wonderful.
FRANK CRANE
"The Part of Me That Doubts," Four Minute Essays
Mankind, transmitting from generation to generation the legacy of accumulated vengeances, and pursuing with the feelings of duty the misery of their fellow-beings, have not failed to attribute to the Universal Cause a character analogous with their own. The image of this invisible, mysterious Being is more or less excellent and perfect -- resembles more or less its original -- in proportion to the perfection of the mind on which it is impressed.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"Essay on Christianity"
In history the name of God is the terrible club with which all divinely inspired men, the great "virtuous geniuses," have beaten down the liberty, dignity, reason, and prosperity of man.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
God and the State
Our God is a household God, as well as a heavenly one. He has an altar in every man's dwelling; let him look to it when they rend it lightly, and pour out its ashes.
JOHN RUSKIN
The Seven Lamps of Architecture
I have found God, but he is insufficient.
HENRY MILLER
Tropic of Cancer
Each person is entitled to some version of God that seems real, yet many versions contradict one another. The God of any religion is only a fragment of God. This has to be true, because a being who is unbounded has no image, no role to play, no location either inside or outside the cosmos, whereas religions offer many images--father, mother, lawgiver, judge, ruler of the universe.
DEEPAK CHOPRA
How to Know God
If the consciousness of God is possible to all healthful souls, why are so many men and women without this consciousness? There are men and women, not a few, who do not want God. They would be very glad to have God if he were always on their side; glad to have God if he would always do what they want him to do. But a supreme will ... a masterful will, a will to which they must conform, they do not want.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
God is alpha and omega in the great world: endeavor to make him so in the little world; make him thy evening epilogue and thy morning prologue; practice to make him thy last thought at night when thou sleepest, and thy first thought in the morning when thou awakest; so shall thy fancy be sanctified in the night, and thy understanding rectified in the day; so shall thy rest be peaceful, thy labors prosperous, thy life pious, and thy death glorious.
FRANCIS QUARLES
Enchiridion
If God exists, there's nobody else in God's class. God is unutterably "other." We can't use the words person or know or love--or even exist--about God in anything remotely like the way we are persons who know, love, and exist. This limitation of language gives rise to the problem of anthropomorphism, applying to God the meanings of words as they apply to us--the only beings of whom we have firsthand knowledge. This is trying to understand God as if God were patterned on us rather than the other way around.
WILLIAM J. O'MALLEY
God: The Oldest Question
God is constantly better than his promise. He does not limit Himself by our expectations.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
God speaks to souls through words uttered by pious people, by sermons or good books, and in many other such ways. Sometimes he calls souls by means of sickness or troubles, or by some truth He teaches them during prayer, for tepid as they may be in seeking Him, yet God holds them very dear.
TERESA OF AVILA
The Interior Castle
Without the desire for God, our planet would be a sorry wasteland of ugliness.
LUIS BARRAGÁN
acceptance speech for Pritzker Architecture Prize, 1980
If, it was natural to reason, God punishes men with eternal torment, it is surely lawful for men to use doses of it in a good cause.
JOSEPH MCCABE
A History of Torture
I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own--a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Living Philosophies
At the entrance of the modern time stands the 'God-man'. At its exit will only the God in the God-man evaporate? And can the God-man really die if only the God in him dies? They did not think of this question, and thought they were finished when in our days they brought to a victorious end the work of the Enlightenment, the vanquishing of God: they did not notice that man has killed God in order to become now -- 'sole God on high'. The other world outside us is indeed brushed away, and the great undertaking of the men of the Enlightenment completed; but the other world in us has become a new heaven and calls us forth to renewed heaven-storming: God has had to give place, yet not to us, but to -- man. How can you believe that the God-man is dead before the man in him, besides the God, is dead?
MAX STIRNER
The Ego and Its Own