quotations about God
God--the force, the energy, the design, the experience that some call Divinity--shows itself in your life in the way that is exactly and perfectly suited to the time, place, and situation at hand. You either call that experience "God" or you call it something else--coincidence, synchronicity, "random event," whatever. Yet what you call it does not change what it is--it merely indicates your belief system.
NEALE DONALD WALSCH
Tomorrow's God
It is beyond my power to induce in you a belief in God. There are certain things which are self proved and certain which are not proved at all. The existence of God is like a geometrical axiom. It may be beyond our heart grasp. I shall not talk of an intellectual grasp. Intellectual attempts are more or less failures, as a rational explanation cannot give you the faith in a living God. For it is a thing beyond the grasp of reason. It transcends reason. There are numerous phenomena from which you can reason out the existence of God, but I shall not insult your intelligence by offering you a rational explanation of that type. I would have you brush aside all rational explanations and begin with a simple childlike faith in God. If I exist, God exists. With me it is a necessity of my being.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Young India, Sep. 24, 1931
I love God's shadow better than man's light.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Thoughts," The Writings of Madame Swetchine
The gods of men are sillier than their kings and queens, and emptier and more powerless.
MAXWELL ANDERSON
Elizabeth the Queen
In reality, each thought we have carries with it a little spiritual power, a tug toward or away from God. No thought is purely neutral.
JOHN ORTBERG
God Is Closer Than You Think
It's easy being a god. If you have the right equipment.
DAN SIMMONS
Ilium
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
God often visits us, but most of the time we are not at home.
JOSEPH ROUX
Meditations of a Parish Priest
He who looks for the worst in men will not be without belief in a personal devil; he who looks for the best in men will not be without faith in a personal God.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
God is the only lover and He loves in different forms -- parents, husband, wife, friend, children, animals. All are His forms and He, Himself, has no form.
BABA HARI DASS
Silence Speaks: from the chalkboard of Baba Hari Dass
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
Men have left GOD not for other gods, they say, but for no God; and this has never happened before.
T. S. ELIOT
The Rock
Where sanity is
there God is.
D.H. LAWRENCE
"God"
God was not to him the impassive Creator, a Nero from his tower of brass watching the burning of the City to which he himself has set fire. God was fighting. God was suffering. Fighting and suffering with all who fight and for all who suffer. For God was Life, the drop of light fallen into the darkness, spreading out, reaching out, drinking up the night. But the night is limitless, and the Divine struggle will never cease.
ROMAIN ROLLAND
Jean-Christophe
If you and I have not seen God, we cannot bear witness to God.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
The marvels of God are not brought forth from one's self.
Rather, it is more like a chord, a sound that is played.
The tone does not come out of the chord itself, but rather,
through the touch of the Musician.
I am, of course, the lyre and harp of God's kindness.
HILDEGARD OF BINGEN
attributed, Soul Weavings
The gods, my dear simple fellow, are a mere expression coined by vulgar superstition. We frown upon such coinage here.
ARISTOPHANES
The Clouds
I ask no truer image of my Heavenly Father than I find reflected in my own heart -- all loving, all forgiving.
HOSEA BALLOU
Treasury of Thought
The belief in a God All Powerful wise and good, is so essential to the moral order of the world and to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources nor adapted with too much solicitude to the different characters and capacities to be impressed with it.
JAMES MADISON
letter to Frederick Beasley, Nov. 20, 1825
God, wishing His elect to realize their own misery, often temporarily withdraws His favours: no more is needed to prove to us in a very short time what we really are.
TERESA OF AVILA
The Interior Castle