quotations about God
I think he is condemned by himself to loneliness. God is One: he was, he is, he will be always One. One is so lonely. Maybe that is why he created human beings--to feel less lonely. But as human beings betray his creation, he may become even lonelier.
ELIE WIESEL
Random House interview
You are as close to God in your own sitting room as in the basilica; but the basilica has worth if it strengthens your faith.
SIMON MAWER
The Gospel of Judas
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
The gods of men are sillier than their kings and queens, and emptier and more powerless.
MAXWELL ANDERSON
Elizabeth the Queen
The gods, my dear simple fellow, are a mere expression coined by vulgar superstition. We frown upon such coinage here.
ARISTOPHANES
The Clouds
God is a foreman with certain definite views
Who orders life in shifts of work and leisure.
SEAMUS HEANEY
Docker
God doesn't do anything to us. He doesn't have to. We're too busy doing it to each other.
CHARLES DE LINT
The Onion Girl
God often visits us, but most of the time we are not at home.
JOSEPH ROUX
Meditations of a Parish Priest
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
If God were not a necessary being of himself, he might almost seem to be made for the use and benefit of men.
JOHN TILLOTSON
Sermons
God is a wider consciousness than we are, a pure intelligence, spiritual life and actuality. He is neither one nor many, neither man nor spirit. Such predicates belong only to finite beings.
JOSEPH ALEXANDER LEIGHTON
"Fichte's Conception of God", The Philosophical Review, vol. 4, 1895
The Divine Being brings comfort and consolation to men. He is a God for men that are weak, and want to be strong; for men that are impure, and want to be pure; for men that are unjust, and want to be just; for men that are unloving, and want to be loving; for men that aspire to all the greatness and glory of which the soul is capable.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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"
God is dead: but considering the state of the species Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Die frohliche Wissenschaft
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
Give God the margin of eternity to justify himself in, and the more we live and know of our own souls and of spiritual experiences generally, the more we shall be convinced that we have to do with one who is good and just.
HUGH R. HAWEIS
Speech in Season
Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
attributed, The Best Liberal Quotes Ever
Sin is absence of God. Nothing more, nothing less.
SIMON MAWER
The Gospel of Judas
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