quotations about God
God is like us to this extent, that whatever in us is good is like God.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
He that trusts in the Lord with all his heart, does not indeed expect, that God will do that for him which he has never promised; far less that he will be favorable unto him, in what is contrary to his revealed will. But, first, he sees that his matters are good and right; and then he commits the keeping of his soul unto the faithful creator; who is a buckler to them alone that walked uprightly. If he is called of God to any difficult duty, for which he finds himself unequal, he persuades himself that God will command his strength, and work in him both to will and to do of his good pleasure; and out of weakness he is made strong.
WILLIAM MCEWEN
"On Trusting God", Select Essays Doctrinal & Practical on a Variety of the Most Important and Interesting Subjects in Divinity
Whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another. If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.
THOMAS AQUINAS
Summa Theologica
What deity in the realms of dementia, what rabid god decocted out of the smoking lobes of hydrophobia could have devised a keeping place for souls so poor as is this flesh. This mawky wormbent tabernacle.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Suttree
To say that the Great Companion is dead, is not to say that there is no God. The dead also live; but between them and ourselves all communion and companionship seem to most of us impossible. So to many in our own time, to many without the Church, to some within it, living companionship with a living God is an experience unknown. They believe in what Carlyle calls a "hypothetical God," but he is to them only a hypothesis. They look back through the ages for some evidence of a God who revealed himself centuries ago; they look forward with anticipation to a God who will reveal himself in some future ephiphany; but of a God here and now, a God who is a perpetual presence, a God whom they can see as Abraham saw him, with whom they can talk as Moses talked with him, who will inspire them with courage as he inspired Gideon, with hope as he inspired Isaiah, and with praise as he inspired David, they do not know.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Great Companion
God: a disease we imagine we are cured of because no one dies of it nowadays.
EMIL CIORAN
The Trouble with Being Born
Within you lies embedded in the marble of your human life the Spirit that is God, hidden beneath the flesh, hidden beneath the bodies, the emotions and the mind, so that it is not visible to the outer eyes. You have not to create that image. It is there. You have not to manufacture it; you have only to set it free.
ANNIE BESANT
There Is No Death
It makes a great deal of difference what sort of God men believe in.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
God is infinite and we are finite; and, at the best, we can only know him a very little.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
Given the world that he created, it would be an impiety against God to believe in him.
JOHN BANVILLE
The Sea
The universe shows us the life of God, or rather it is in itself the life of God. We behold in it his permanent action, the scene upon which his power is exercised, and in which all his attributes are reflected. God is not out of the universe any more than the universe is out of God. God is the principle, the universe is the consequence, but a necessary consequence, without which the principle would be inert, unfruitful, impossible to conceive.
HENRI-DOMINIQUE LACORDAIRE
God: Conferences Delivered at Notre Dame in Paris
The great soul that sits on the throne of the universe is not, never was, and never will be, in a hurry.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND
Gold-Foil
What is God after all? An eternal child playing an eternal game in an eternal garden.
SRI AUROBINDO
Thoughts and Glimpses
I do not believe in God, but I am afraid of Him.
GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
Love in the Time of Cholera