quotations about God
God's whole nature moves toward the man who wants to be free from sin, as broadly and irresistibly as the summer moves from the south toward the north.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
I have, I think, somewhat of an odd version of God. I do not have an intervening Go I appreciate other people's prayers for that [a cure for her cancer], but I believe that we are given a set of guidelines, and that we are obligated to live our lives with a view to those guidelines. And I don't believe that we should live our lives that way for some promise of eternal life, but because that's what's right. We should do those things because that's what's right.
ELIZABETH EDWARDS
attributed, Politics Daily, Dec. 8, 2010
In affirming God to be supreme in all things, the classical theist describes him in a number of ways. He is perfect, loving, good, infinite, omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, timeless, transcendent, personal, immutable and immanent. But how can this be? Is it really possible to be both eternal and timeless? Immutable and immanent? Personal and at the same time transcendent?
ALEXANDER WAUGH
God
O thou mighty mind! whose powerful word
Said, thus let all things be, and thus they were!
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
"A Summer Evening's Meditation"
You cannot know God until you've stopped telling yourself that you already know God. You cannot hear God until you stop thinking you've already heard God.
NEALE DONALD WALSCH
Conversations with God
Ignorance of nature's ways led people in ancient times to invent gods to lord it over every aspect of human life. There were gods of love and war; of the sun, earth, and sky; of the oceans and rivers; of rain and thunderstorms; even of earthquakes and volcanoes. When the gods were pleased, mankind was treated to good weather, peace, and freedom from natural disaster and disease. When they were displeased, there came draught, war, pestilence, and epidemics. Since the connection of cause and effect in nature was invisible to their eyes, these gods appeared inscrutable, and people at their mercy.
STEPHEN HAWKING & LEONARD MLODINOW
The Grand Design
I've never understood how God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion by faith -- it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
Stranger in a Strange Land
I don't believe in God, but I miss him.
JULIAN BARNES
Conversations with Julian Barnes
Giving yourself up o love is melting into God. It is falling into the hands of the living God with complete abandon. This is the deep, interior prayer for which we have been striving. Here we must let go of our dependency on thoughts, words, and images. We go into the beautiful darkness. We stop struggling. We let the angels carry us. Surrender is the only word we know.
MACRINA WIEDERKEHR
A Tree Full of Angels
Before we deny or believe the existence of anything, it is necessary that we should have a tolerably clear idea of what it is. The word "God," a vague word, has been, and will continue to be, the source of numberless errors, until it is erased from the nomenclature of philosophy. Does it imply "the soul of the universe, the intelligent and necessarily beneficent, actuating principle?" This it is impossible not to believe in; I may not be able to adduce proofs, but I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on which we trample, are, in themselves, arguments more conclusive than any which can be advanced, that some vast intellect animates infinity.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
letter to Thomas Jefferson Hogg, Jan. 3, 1811
A mighty fortress is our God,
A bulwark never failing.
Our helper He amid the flood
Of mortal ills prevailing.
MARTIN LUTHER
Psalm. Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott
So, loath to suffer mute.
We, peopling the void air,
Make Gods to whom to impute
The ills we ought to bear.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Empedocles on Etna
God does not accept me conditionally, on the basis of my performance, but bestows his love and forgiveness freely, despite my innumerable failures.
PHILIP YANCEY
Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find?
As long as God does not intervene in the contemporary universe in such a way as to violate physical laws, science has no way of knowing whether God exists or not. The belief or disbelief in such a Being is therefore a matter of faith.
ALAN LIGHTMAN
"Does God exist?", Salon, October 2, 2011
There exists no separation between gods and men; one blends softly casual into the other.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune Messiah
God, that checkroom of our dreams.
JEAN ROSTAND
The Substance of Man
As God contains all good things, He must also contain a sense of playfulness -- a gift he has shared with Creatures other than ourselves, as witness the tricks Crows play, and the sportiveness of Squirrels, and the frolicking of Kittens.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Year of the Flood
They say that God is a comedian playing to an audience that's just afraid to laugh.
KYLE
8 Simple Rules...for Dating My Teenage Daughter
The Christian's God is a God of metamorphoses. You cast grief into his bosom: you draw thence, peace. You cast in despair: 'tis hope that rises to the surface. It is a sinner whose heart he moves. It is a saint who returns him thanks.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Thoughts," The Writings of Madame Swetchine
If there's a God, I want to see Him. It's pointless to believe in something without proof, and Krishna consciousness and meditation are methods where you can actually obtain God perception. In that way you can see, hear and play with God. Perhaps this may sound weird, but God is really there next to you.
GEORGE HARRISON
introduction, Krsna