quotations about God
I now conceive of God as in his universe. I conceive of creation as a growth. I conceive of him as making the universe somewhat as our spirit makes our body, shaping and changing and developing it by processes from within. The figures from the finite to the infinite are imperfect and misleading, but this is the figure which best represents to me my own thought of God's relation to the universe: Not that of an engineer who said one morning, " Go to, I will make a world," and in six days, or six thousand years, or six million thousand years, made one by forming it from without, as a potter forms the clay with skilful hand; but that of a Spirit who has been forever manifesting himself in the works of creation and beneficence in all the universe, one little work of whose wisdom and beneficence we are and we see. He who would see God must use the faculty with which God is seen; and if he would do this, he must let men who are rich in the faculty which perceives the invisible, -- which looks not at the things which are seen and are temporal, but at the things which are not seen and are eternal, -- guide, teach, inspire him.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
Nature only shows us the tail of the lion. I am convinced, however, that the lion is attached to it, even though he cannot reveal himself directly because of his enormous size.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein
There is no particular way that God wants you to worship God. Nor, in fact, does God need to be worshipped at all. God's ego is not so fragile that She must require you to bow down to Her in fearful reverence, or grovel before Him in earnest supplication, in order to find you worthy of receiving blessings. What kind of Supreme Being would need to do this? What kind of God would this be?
NEALE DONALD WALSCH
The New Revelations: A Conversation with God
I have too much respect for the idea of God to hold Him responsible for such an absurd world.
GEORGES DUHAMEL
The Pasquier Chronicles
I have been in the Place of the Gods and seen it! Now slay me, if it is the law -- but still I know they were men.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
By the Waters of Babylon
I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY
History of Woman Suffrage
The nearer the Church the further from God.
LANCELOT ANDREWES
Sermon on the Nativity before James I
God Himself has no right to be a tyrant.
WILLIAM GODWIN
Sketches of History
It is said that God notes each sparrow that falls. And so He does. But the proper closest statement of it that can be made in English is that God cannot avoid noting the sparrow because the Sparrow is God. And when a cat stalks a sparrow both of them are God, carrying out God's thoughts.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
Stranger in a Strange Land
However many years life might last, no one could ever wish for a better friend than God.
TERESA OF AVILA
The Interior Castle
God has set his intentions in the flowers, in the dawn, in the spring--it is his will that we should love.
VICTOR HUGO
Toilers of the Sea
What were a God who only gave the world a push from without, or let it spin around His finger? I look for a God who moves the world from within, who fosters nature in Himself, Himself in nature; so that naught of all that lives and moves and has its being in Him ever forgets His force or His spirit.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
"Phoœmion"
Socrates and Plato agree that God is that which is one, hath its original from its own self, is of a singular subsistence, is one only being perfectly good; all these various names signifying goodness do all centre in mind; hence God is to be understood as that mind and intellect, which is a separate idea, that is to say, pure and unmixed of all matter, and not mingled with anything subject to passions.
PLUTARCH
"What is God?", Essays & Miscellanies
When men make gods, there is no God!
EUGENE O'NEILL
Lazarus Laughed
Who would imagine that the Deity conducts his providence similar to the detestable despots of this world? Oh horrible? most horrible impeachment of Divine Goodness!
ETHAN ALLEN
Reason: The Only Oracle of Man
There's something infinitely sad about little girls who grow up understanding (usually unconsciously) that if God is male, it's because male is the most valuable thing to be. This belief resonates in a thousand hidden ways in their lives. It slowly cripples girl children, and it cripples female adults.
SUE MONK KIDD
The Dance of the Dissident Daughter
The difference between the truth of God and revelation is very simple. Truth is where God's been. Revelation is where God is. Truth is God's tracks. It's His trail, His path, but it leads to what? It leads to Him. Perhaps the masses of people are happy to know where God's been, but true God chasers are not content just to study God's trail, His truths; they want to know Him. They want to know where He is and what He's doing right now.
TOMMY TENNEY
The God Chasers
If our god's work is to be done in our time, we must do it ourselves.
DAN SIMMONS
The Rise of Endymion
God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you -- even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers, and triumphs over all opposition.
NEIL GAIMAN
American Gods
God's image is in every man, high or low--a road puddle holds the moon as well as the sea.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought