“If we love God while thinking that he does not exist, he will manifest his existence.”
Simone Weil book Gravity and Grace
Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Detachment (1947), p. 260
Source: Gravity and Grace
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), V : The Rationalist Dissolution
Context: To believe in God is to long for His existence and, further, it is to act as if he existed; it is to live by this longing and to make it the inner spring of our action.
Context: To believe in God is to long for His existence and, further, it is to act as if he existed; it is to live by this longing and to make it the inner spring of our action. This longing or hunger for divinity begets hope, hope begets faith, and faith and hope beget charity. Of this divine longing is born our sense of beauty, of finality, of goodness.
“If we love God while thinking that he does not exist, he will manifest his existence.”
Simone Weil book Gravity and Grace
Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Detachment (1947), p. 260
Source: Gravity and Grace
Miguel de Unamuno book The Tragic Sense of Life
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VIII : From God to God
Lucy Stone (1818–1893) American abolitionist and suffragist
"Disappointment Is the Lot of Women" oration (17 or 18 October 1855) quoted in Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Antony, and Mathilda Gage, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1 (1881)
John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician
Part 2 “Four Subjective Arguments”, Chapter 2 “The Argument from Prophecy (and the Bible Codes)” (p. 63)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher
Source: The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), p. 21
Ruzbihan Baqli (1128–1209) Persian poet, mystic, and Sufi
Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2002), p.112
“The Theophilanthropists believe in the existence of God, and the immortality of the soul.”
Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist
1790s, Discourse to the Theophilanthropists (1798)
John D. Barrow (1952–2020) British scientist
The Book of Universes: Exploring the Limits of the Cosmos (2011)
Context: Aristotle believed that the world did not come into being at some time in the past; it had always existed and it would always exist, unchanged in essence for ever. He placed a high premium on symmetry and believed that the sphere was the most perfect of all shapes. Hence the universe must be spherical.... An important feature of the spherical shape... was the fact that when a sphere rotates it does not cut into empty space where there is no matter and it leaves no empty space behind.... A vacuum was impossible. It could no more exist than an infinite physical quantity.... Circular motion was the most perfect and natural movement of all.<!--ch. 1, pp. 12-13