GOD QUOTES VII

quotations about God

All things in the natural world symbolize God, yet none of them speak of him but in broken and imperfect words. High above all he sits, sublimer than mountains, grander than storms, sweeter than blossoms and tender fruits, nobler than lords, truer than parents, more loving than lovers. His feet tread the lowest places of the earth; but his head is above all glory, and everywhere he is supreme.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Although I did not think much about the existence of a personal God until a considerably later period of my life, I will here give the vague conclusions to which I have been driven. The old argument from design in Nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.

CHARLES DARWIN

The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin


God Himself has no right to be a tyrant.

WILLIAM GODWIN

Sketches of History

Tags: William Godwin


God is a thought which makes crooked all that is straight.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Thus Spake Zarathustra


The true God is not a form idealized; he/she/it is real and therefore, by definition, imperfect; only an abstraction can be free of flaws. And since God is imperfect, there will be suffering.... There is no perfect God. And your suffering requires no more explanation than that unavoidable imperfection.

ROBERT J. SAWYER

Calculating God


Whatever we cannot easily understand we call God; this saves much wear and tear on the brain tissues.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)

Tags: Edward Abbey


Who would imagine that the Deity conducts his providence similar to the detestable despots of this world? Oh horrible? most horrible impeachment of Divine Goodness!

ETHAN ALLEN

Reason: The Only Oracle of Man

Tags: Ethan Allen


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


God has set his intentions in the flowers, in the dawn, in the spring--it is his will that we should love.

VICTOR HUGO

Toilers of the Sea


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

Tags: Robert A. Heinlein


If, then, God is always in that good state in which we sometimes are, this compels our wonder; and if in a better this compels it yet more. And God is in a better state. And life also belongs to God; for the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality; and God's self-dependent actuality is life most good and eternal.

ARISTOTLE

Metaphysics


Socrates and Plato agree that God is that which is one, hath its original from its own self, is of a singular subsistence, is one only being perfectly good; all these various names signifying goodness do all centre in mind; hence God is to be understood as that mind and intellect, which is a separate idea, that is to say, pure and unmixed of all matter, and not mingled with anything subject to passions.

PLUTARCH

"What is God?", Essays & Miscellanies

Tags: Plutarch


The best notion we can conceive of God, may be, that he is to the creation what the soul is to the body.

WILLIAM SHENSTONE

Essays on Men and Manners


The existence of the world without God seems to me less absurd than the presence of a God, existing in all his perfection, creating an imperfect man in order to make him run the risk of Hell.

ARMAND SALACROU

attributed, Certitudes et Incertitudes


The most radical thing about a conversion to God is the determination to love, to really love in His name.

ANNE RICE

The Wolves of Midwinter

Tags: Anne Rice


The nearer the Church the further from God.

LANCELOT ANDREWES

Sermon on the Nativity before James I

Tags: Lancelot Andrewes


What were a God who only gave the world a push from without, or let it spin around His finger? I look for a God who moves the world from within, who fosters nature in Himself, Himself in nature; so that naught of all that lives and moves and has its being in Him ever forgets His force or His spirit.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

"Phoœmion"

Tags: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


When we say that God is infinite, we do not mean that He is of immeasurable size and duration, but that He is beyond all space and time. He is neither in space nor in time; for this reason He is eternal and infinite, and therefore He is also incomprehensible.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: Sabine Baring-Gould


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


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