quotations about God
God speaks silently, he speaks in your heart; if your heart is noisy, chattering, you will not hear.
CARYLL HOUSELANDER
This War is the Passion
God is not the author of all things, but of good only.
PLATO
The Republic
Whatever God there is is slowly eliminating the guts and alimentary system from the human being, to evolve a higher, more spiritual being.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Lady Chatterley's Lover
The God of the Old Testament did not distance Himself from His chosen people; He participated in their struggles and made Israel's enemies His own. Israel's own transgressions grieved Him and incited Him to a terrible wrath. Ours is no aloof Lord--no Buddha beyond it all or Zeus making light of mortal travail. Among the world religions Christianity is unique in presenting a suffering God, a God who took human suffering upon Himself and in His agony gave birth to mankind's salvation.
JOHN UPDIKE
In the Beauty of the Lilies
People ... have tried to evoke God or devil to justify them in what their glands insisted upon.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Absalom
I rarely speak about God. To God yes. I protest against Him. I shout at Him. But open discourse about the qualities of God, about the problems that God imposes, theodicy, no. And yet He is there, in silence, in filigree.
ELIE WIESEL
The Paris Review, spring 1984
There are many men, and a large number, who, though they do not wish to be rid of God, do not very much care to have him.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
We need not fear shipwreck when God is the pilot.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
Man
Now I think I know why gods
Are so partial to heights--to mountain
Tops and spires, to proud iroko trees
And thorn-guarded holy bombax,
Why petty household divinities
Will sooner perch on a rude board
Strung precariously from brittle rafters
Of a thatched roof
than sit squarely
On safe earth.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Collected Poems
You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
ANNE LAMOTT
Bird by Bird
Being God isn't easy. If you do too much, people get dependent on you. And if you do nothing, they lose hope. You have to use a light touch, like a safecracker or a pickpocket.
GOD
Futurama
All ways are byeways but the way of God,
So broad, not thought a road.
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY
Universal Hymn
The example of God, teacheth the lesson truly.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Goodness and Goodness Of Nature", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
The ethical is the universal, and as such it is again the divine. One has therefore a right to say that fundamentally every duty is a duty toward God; but if one cannot say more, then one affirms at the same time that properly I have no duty toward God. Duty becomes duty by being referred to God, but in duty itself I do not come into relation with God. Thus it is a duty to love one's neighbor, but in performing this duty I do not come into relation with God but with the neighbor whom I love. If I say then in this connection that it is my duty to love God, I am really uttering only a tautology, inasmuch as "God" is in this instance used in an entirely abstract sense as the divine, i.e. the universal, i.e. duty. So the whole existence of the human race is rounded off completely like a sphere, and the ethical is at once its limit and its content. God becomes an invisible vanishing point, a powerless thought, His power being only in the ethical which is the content of existence.
SOREN KIERKEGAARD
Fear and Trembling
Gods must be seen to be omnipotent, or the sky will fall.
K. J. PARKER
Devices and Desires
The Earthlings behaved at all times as though there were a big eye in the sky -- as though that big eye were ravenous for entertainment. The big eye was a glutton for great theater. The big eye was indifferent as to whether the Earthling shows were comedy, tragedy, farce, satire, athletics, or vaudeville. Its demand, which Earthlings apparently found as irresistible as gravity, was that the shows be great. The demand was so powerful that Earthlings did almost nothing but perform for it, night and day.... The big eye was the only audience that Earthlings really cared about.
KURT VONNEGUT
The Sirens of Titan
Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
It is highly convenient to believe in the infinite mercy of God when you feel the need of mercy, but remember also his infinite justice.
B. R. HAYDON
Table Talk
God has made it possible for us to come to know Him through the visible and tangible things of our world. Have you ever looked at a sunset and been reminded of who's really in charge in this world? Have you ever gawked at majestic mountain peaks and been jerked back into the reality of how much bigger God is than you and your problems? Have you ever shaken your head at the brilliant lines, patterns and colors on the wings of a butterfly and contemplated the stunningly detailed imagination of the Creator? Then you've seen God's glory and encountered the efforts of a Father longing to be recognized by His children.
CHRIS SEIDMAN
Little Buddy