quotations about God
I have often a suspicion God is still trying to work things out and hasn't finished.
REBECCA WEST
The Paris Review, spring 1981
I'm never tempted by God but I like his trappings.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Passion
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
The gods, my dear simple fellow, are a mere expression coined by vulgar superstition. We frown upon such coinage here.
ARISTOPHANES
The Clouds
The important thing, I think, is not to be bitter. You know, if it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. I think that the worst you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.
WOODY ALLEN
Love and Death
The God whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals.
WILLIAM JAMES
Lecture XX, "Conclusions," The Varieties of Religious Experience
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
Somewhere in the infinite that He occupies, God advances and withdraws the pawns of the other games He plays, but it is too soon to worry about this one, all He need do for the present is allow things to take their natural course, apart from the occasional adjustment with the tip of His little finger to make sure some stray thought or action does not interfere with the harmony of destinies.
JOSé SARAMAGO
The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
To recognize God where and as he reveals himself is the only true bliss on earth.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Except during my childhood, when I was probably influenced by Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel depiction of God with a flowing white beard, I have never tried to project the Creator in any kind of human likeness. The vociferous debates about whether God is male or female seem ridiculous to me. I think of God as an omnipotent and omniscient presence, a spirit that permeates the universe, the essence of truth, nature, being, and life. To me, these are profound and indescribable concepts that seem to be trivialized when expressed in words.
JIMMY CARTER
Living Faith
As it is impossible to be outside God, the best is consciously to dwell in Him.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
Be careful how you talk about God. He's the only God we have. If you let him go he won't come back. He won't even look back over his shoulder. And then what will you do?
HAROLD PINTER
Ashes to Ashes
The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved -- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal -- God is the Omnipotent Father -- hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates.
GORE VIDAL
The Decline and Fall of the American Empire
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
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
I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
telegram response to New York rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein, Apr. 24, 1929
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
If religion be supposed to produce any effect on the conduct of mankind, every person of common sense must allow, that the character and actions ascribed to the object of worship, must be of the greatest possible importance; for as these are, so will the sincere worshipper be. To please, to resemble, to imitate the object of adoration, must be the supreme aim and ambition of every devotee; whether of Jupiter, Mars, Bacchus, Venus, Moloch, or Mammon; as well as of every spiritual worshipper of Jehovah: and we may, therefore, know what to expect from every man, if we are acquainted with his sentiments concerning the God that he adores, provided we can ascertain the degree in which he is sincere and earnest in his religion. It would be absurd to expect much honesty from him who devotedly worshipped Mercury as the god of thieving; much mercy from a devotee of Moloch; love of peace from the worshipper of Mars; or chastity from the priestess of Venus: and whatever philosophical speculators may imagine, both the scriptures and profane history (ancient and modern) show that the bulk of mankind, in heathen nations, were far more sincere in, and influenced by their absurd idolatries, than professed Christians are by the Bible; because they are far more congenial to corrupt nature. Nay, it is a fact, that immense multitudes of human sacrifices are, at this day, annually offered according to the rules of a dark superstition; and various other flagrant immoralities sanctioned by religion amongst those idolaters, who have been erroneously considered as the most inoffensive of the human race. But these proportional effects on the moral character of mankind are not peculiar to gross idolatry: if men fancy that they worship the true God alone, and yet form a wrong notion of his character and perfections, they only substitute a more refined idolatry in the place of paganism, and worship the creature of their own imagination, though not the work of their own hands: And in what doth such an ideal being, though called Jehovah, differ from that called Jupiter or Baal? The character ascribed to him may indeed come nearer the truth than the other, and the delusion may be more refined; but, if it essentially differ from the scripture character of God, the effect must be the same, in a measure, as to those who earnestly desire to imitate, resemble, and please the object of their adoration.
THOMAS SCOTT
"On the Scripture Character of God", Essays on the Most Important Subjects in Religion
Every attentive and intelligent student of the Bible will perceive, that revelation was vouchsafed to man, in order to deliver or preserve him from idolatry, by instructing him in the character and perfections of the one living and true God, and the way in which he would be worshipped; as well as to teach other duties, and to influence him to perform them. The jealous care of Jehovah, to distinguish betwixt himself and every idol, to secure the glory himself without allowing any of it to be given to another, and the terrible denunciations pronounced against, and severe judgments executed upon idolaters, must attract the notice of all who are conversant with the sacred oracles, and convince every impartial person that idolatry is the greatest of all sins, atheism alone excepted.
THOMAS SCOTT
"On the Scripture Character of God", Essays on the Most Important Subjects in Religion
Delight is the secret. Learn of pure delight and thou shalt learn of God.
SRI AUROBINDO
Thoughts and Glimpses