“A harmonious being cannot believe in God. Saints, criminals, and paupers have launched him, making him available to all unhappy people.”

“We are all human beings, the best of us a saint, but never a god. We can follow a saint's conduct and imitate his behavior, but it is unnecessary to worship him.”

Cheng Yen (1937) Taiwanese Buddhist nun

“I think people who are unhappy are always proud of being so, and therefore do not like to be told that there is nothing grand about their unhappiness. A man who is melancholy because lack of exercise has upset his liver always believes that it is the loss of God, or the menace of Bolshevism, or some such dignified cause that makes him sad. When you tell people that happiness is a simple matter, they get annoyed with you.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

“Believe it or not, the fact is that God is supreme and pure; people are lying on a bed of ignorance and dreams and doubts. They expect God Himself to come, they pray for it, they ask for it, they announce about it, but when He comes they fail to recognize Him. And not recognizing Him in His physical form, they cannot recognize Him within themselves. People have forgotten their Creator.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

“On that Day whatever cause prompteth the believer to believe in Him, the same will also be available to the unbeliever. But when the latter suffereth himself to be wrapt in veils, the same cause shutteth him out as by a veil. Thus, as is clearly evident today, those who have set their faces toward God, the True One, have believed in Him because of the Bayán, while such as are veiled have been deprived because of it.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

“If you like to be saint of God, then desire not the things of this world or the next. Empty yourself for God. Turn your face to Him so that He may turn to you and make you His saint.”

Ibrahim ibn Adham (718–776) ascetic Sufi saint

“God’s will and desire—His pleasure—is that we love Him. We cannot please God unless we love Him. We cannot love Him unless we know Him, and we cannot know Him unless we have faith in Him.”

Myles Munroe (1954–2014) Bahamian Evangelical Christian minister

“All happy people are grateful. Ungrateful people cannot be happy. We tend to think that being unhappy leads people to complain, but it’s truer to say that complaining leads to people becoming unhappy.”

Dennis Prager (1948) American writer, speaker, radio and TV commentator, theologian

“Simply put, you believer that things or people make you unhappy, but this is not accurate. You make yourself unhappy.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

“The Microbe is so very small
You cannot make him out at all,
But many sanguine people hope
To see him through a microscope.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer