Quotes about God
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“The great enemy of the life of faith in God is not sin, but the good which is not good enough. The good is always the enemy of the best.”

Oswald Chambers book My Utmost for His Highest

Source: My Utmost for His Highest

Life, Faith

“A visiting pastor at our church in Plains once told a story about a priest from New Orleans. Father Flanagan’s parish lay in the central part of the city, close to many taverns. One night he was walking down the street and saw a drunk thrown out of a pub. The man landed in the gutter, and Father Flanagan quickly recognized him as one of his parishioners, a fellow named Mike. Father Flanagan shook the dazed man and said, “Mike!” Mike opened his eyes and Father Flanagan said, “You’re in trouble. If there is anything I can do for you, please tell me what it is.ℍ “Well, Father,” Mike replied, “I hope you’ll pray for me.” “Yes,” the priest answered, “I’ll pray for you right now.” He knelt down in the gutter and prayed, “Father, please have mercy on this drunken man.ℍ At this, a startled Mike woke up fully and said, “Father, please don’t tell God I’m drunk.ℍ Sometimes we don’t feel much of a personal relationship between God and ourselves, as though we have a secret life full of failures and sins that God knows nothing about. We want to involve God only when we plan to give thanks or when we’re in trouble and need help. But the rest of our lives, we’d rather keep to ourselves.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Source: Through the Year with Jimmy Carter: 366 Daily Meditations from the 39th President

Life, Secret, Hope, Feeling

“Gods don't like people not doing much work. People who aren't busy all the time might start to think.”

Terry Pratchett book Small Gods

Source: Small Gods

People, Business, Thinking, Time

“Worship is a posture of life that takes as its primary purpose the understanding of what it really means to love and revere God.”

Ravi Zacharias (1946) Indian philosopher

Source: Jesus Among Other Gods: The Absolute Claims of the Christian Message

Love, Life, Understanding

“Those who believe they believe in God, but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, and not in God himself.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Idea, Passion, Time, Heart

“God hath given you one face, and you make yourself another.”

William Shakespeare Hamlet

Source: Hamlet

“What in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support,
That to the height of this great argument
I may assert eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men. 1
Paradise Lost. Book i. Line 22.”

John Milton book Paradise Lost

i.17-26
Paradise Lost (1667)
Context: And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad'st it pregnant: What in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That to the highth of this great Argument
I may assert th' Eternal Providence,
And justifie the wayes of God to men.

Men, Books, Way, Support

“I have found God, but he is insufficient.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer

“When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, "Why God? Why me?" and the thundering voice of God answered, "There's just something about you that pisses me off".”

Stephen King Storm of the Century

Storm of the Century (1999)
Source: Storm of the Century: An Original Screenplay

Life, Family

“Dancers are the messengers of the gods.”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

“O God, help me to win, but in thy wisdom if thou willest me not to win, then O God, make me a good loser.”

Robert Baden-Powell (1857–1941) lieutenant-general in the British Army, writer, founder and Chief Scout of the Scout Movement

Wisdom, Help

“In his early twenties, a man started collecting paintings, many of which later became famous: Picasso, Van Gogh, and others. Over the decades he amassed a wonderful collection. Eventually, the man’s beloved son was drafted into the military and sent to Vietnam, where he died while trying to save his friend. About a month after the war ended, a young man knocked on the devastated father’s door. “Sir,” he said, “I know that you like great art, and I have brought you something not very great.” Inside the package, the father found a portrait of his son. With tears running down his cheeks, the father said, “I want to pay you for this.ℍ “No,” the young man replied, “he saved my life. You don’t owe me anything.ℍ The father cherished the painting and put it in the center of his collection. Whenever people came to visit, he made them look at it. When the man died, his art collection went up for sale. A large crowd of enthusiastic collectors gathered. First up for sale was the amateur portrait. A wave of displeasure rippled through the crowd. “Let’s forget about that painting!” one said. “We want to bid on the valuable ones,” said another. Despite many loud complaints, the auctioneer insisted on starting with the portrait. Finally, the deceased man’s gardener said, “I’ll bid ten dollars.ℍ Hearing no further bids, the auctioneer called out, “Sold for ten dollars!” Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. But then the auctioneer said, “And that concludes the auction.” Furious gasps shook the room. The auctioneer explained, “Let me read the stipulation in the will: “Sell the portrait of my son first, and whoever buys it gets the entire art collection. Whoever takes my son gets everything.ℍ It’s the same way with God Almighty. Whoever takes his Son gets everything.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Source: Through the Year with Jimmy Carter: 366 Daily Meditations from the 39th President

Life, War, People, Art

“If God is dead, somebody is going to have to take his place. It will be megalomania or erotomania, the drive for power or the drive for pleasure, the clenched fist or the phallus, Hitler or Hugh Hefner.”

Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist

Pleasure, Dead

“But when a woman decides to sleep with a man, there is no wall she will not scale, no fortress she will not destroy, no moral consideration she will not ignore at its very root: there is no God worth worrying about.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Love in the Time of Cholera

Source: Love in the Time of Cholera

Sleep

“Fate can be one mean god at times.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: The Color of Magic

Fate, Time

“The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Soul, Light, Depressing

“And when love speaks, the voice of all the gods makes Heaven drowsy with the harmony.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Love

“God save us from gloomy saints!”

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint

“The true basis of religion is not belief, but intuitive experience. Intuition is the soul’s power of knowing God. To know what religion is really all about, one must know God.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

Religion, Soul

“And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence”

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

Bertrand Russell's Best: Silhouettes in Satire (1958), "On Religion".
1950s
Context: I observe that a very large portion of the human race does not believe in God and suffers no visible punishment in consequence. And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that he would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt his existence.

Thinking

“Somebody said once or wrote, once: 'We're all of us children in a vast kindergarten trying to spell God's name with the wrong alphabet blocks!”

Tennessee Williams Suddenly Last Summer

Source: Suddenly Last Summer

Children

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist (1988), p. 130

Fear, Dreams, Search, Suffering

“You have to live with the people to know their needs, and you have to live with God to know how to solve them.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

People

“He says gods like to see an atheist around. Gives them something to aim at.”

Terry Pratchett book Small Gods

Source: Small Gods

“The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

Soul, Heart, Sea

“Dear God, help me. Do not forget me on this tiny cinder lost in a galaxy that is lost–a heart no bigger than a speck of dust beating, beating against death, against meaninglessness, against guilt, against sorrow.”

Anne Rice The Wolf Gift

Source: The Wolf Gift

Death, Help, Heart, Forgetting

“May today there be peace within.

May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.

May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.

May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.

May you be content knowing you are a child of God.

Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love.

It is there for each and every one of us.”

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint

Love, Peace, Faith, Soul

“One of the most poisonous of all Satan’s whispers is simply, “Things will never change.” That lie kills expectation, trapping our heart forever in the present. To keep desire alive and flourishing, we must renew our vision for what lies ahead. Things will not always be like this. Jesus has promised to “make all things new.” Eye has not seen, ear has not heard all that God has in store for his lovers, which does not mean “we have no clue so don’t even try to imagine,” but rather, you cannot outdream God. Desire is kept alive by imagination, the antidote to resignation. We will need imagination, which is to say, we will need hope.”

John Eldredge

Source: The Sacred Romance Drawing Closer To The Heart Of God

Lie, Hope, Imagination, Lovers

“On the Disc, the Gods aren't so much worshipped, as they are blamed.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: The Color of Magic

“My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

“Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Religion, Law, Freedom

“God created dinosaurs. God destroyed dinosaurs. God created Man. Man destroyed God. Man created dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs eat man… Woman inherits the earth.”

Michael Crichton book Jurassic Park

Source: Jurassic Park

“Even the birds above the lake
Are singing of my love,
And even the flowers along the shore
Are growing for her sake.

All the vines are ripening
And the trees come into bud,
For my love's footsteps passing by
Are summoning the spring.

Rian's stars in the night
Shine more brightly over her,
The god's moon and the goddess's
Guard her with their light.

Even the birds above the lake
Are singing of my love,
And even the flowers along the shore
Are growing for her sake”

Guy Gavriel Kay (1954) Canadian author of fantasy fiction

Source: A Song for Arbonne

Love, Star, Spring, Flowers

“My desire to live is as intense as ever, and though my heart is broken, hearts are made to be broken: that is why God sends sorrow into the world.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde

World, Heart

“If you’ll dare to take your mind off your troubles, get your mind off your own needs and, instead, seek to be a blessing to other people, God will do more for you than you could even ask or think.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

People, Thinking

“When obedience to God contradicts what I think will give me pleasure, let me ask myself if I love Him.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Love, Pleasure, Thinking

“But man proposes, God disposes.”

Sigrid Undset Kristin Lavransdatter

Kristin Lavransdatter

“The more humble and obedient to God a man is, the more wise and at peace he will be in all that he does.”

Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471) German canon regular

Source: The Inner Life

Peace

“To see evil and call it good, mocks God. Worse, it makes goodness meaningless. A word without meaning is an abomination, for when the word passes beyond understanding the very thing the word stands for passes out of the world and cannot be recalled.”

Stephen R. Lawhead book Arthur

Source: Arthur

World, Understanding, Evil

“God loves you even on your blackest days, and He will always, be there to guide you home. All you have to do is look for the light of His love.”

Lauren Myracle book Shine

Source: Shine

Love, Home, Light

“Our times are in his hand
Who saith, "A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!"”

Robert Browning Rabbi ben Ezra

Source: Dramatis Personae (1864), Rabbi Ben Ezra, Line 1.
Context: Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in his hand
Who saith, "A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!"

Youth, Time

“I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

“Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Life, Peace, Courage, Sleep

“Can you do it? When the time comes? When the time comes there will be no time. Now is the time. Curse God and die.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Source: The Road

Time

“There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist.”

John Fowles book The French Lieutenant's Woman

Source: The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969), Ch. 13, p. 99

Freedom

“Is man one of God’s blunders, or is God one of man’s blunders?”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“No pit is so deep that God is not deeper still”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

Variant: There is no pit so deep, that God's love is not deeper still.
Source: The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom

“… we will stand amazed to see the topside of the tapestry and how God beautifully embroidered each circumstance into a pattern for our good and His glory.”

Joni Eareckson Tada (1949) American artist

“When man is with God in awe and love, then he is praying.”

Karl Rahner (1904–1984) German Catholic theologian

Source: The Need and the Blessing of Prayer

Love

“Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“The greatest miracle that God can do today is to take an unholy man out of an unholy world and make him holy, then put him back into that unholy world and keep him holy in it.”

Leonard Ravenhill (1907–1994) British writer

World

“Oh, God, the lovebirds,” Magnus said, pulling the pillow off his face. “I hate happy couples.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Hate, Happiness

“There is no law that gods must be fair, Achilles,” Chiron said. “And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. Do you think?”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

Law, Thinking

“As iron cast into fire loses its rust and becomes glowing white, so he who turns completely to God is stripped of his sluggishness and changed into a new man.”

Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471) German canon regular

Change

“If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Man and the Gospel (1865) by Thomas Guthrie "and you may know how little God thinks of money by observing on what bad and contemptible characters he often bestows it."
“We may see the small Value God has for Riches, by the People he gives them to.” -- Alexander Pope (1727).
Misattributed
Variant: If you want to know what the Lord God thinks of money, just look at those to whom he gives it.

Money, People, Thinking

“When faced with a decision, many people say they are waiting for God. But I understand, in most cases, God is waiting for me.”

Andy Andrews (1959) author and corporate speaker

People, Understanding, Decision, Waiting

“You only have to have two loves in your life: for God, and for the person in front of you at any particular time.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Love, Life, Time, Personality

“It is God to whom and with whom we travel, and while He is the end of our journey, He is also at every stopping place.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Travel

“The figures looked more or less human. And they were engaged in religion. You could tell by the knives (it's not murder if you do it for a god).”

Terry Pratchett book Small Gods

Source: Small Gods

Religion

“I believe in God, only I spell it "Nature."”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

As quoted in Quote magazine (14 August 1966)
Source: Truth Against the World: Frank Lloyd Wright Speaks for an Organic Architecture

Nature, Beauty, Peaceful

“What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. Sure he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and god-like reason to fust in us unused.”

William Shakespeare Hamlet

Source: Hamlet

Sleep, Time

“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods.
They kill us for their sport.”

William Shakespeare King Lear

Source: King Lear

Boy, Sport

“God knew my needs and took care accordingly.”

Louis Zamperini (1917–2014) Italian-American middle distance runner

Source: Devil at My Heels

“Yet, no matter how deeply I go down into myself, my God is dark, and like a webbing made of a hundred roots that drink in silence.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Source: The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

Drink, Silence

“God doesn't care nearly as much about where you have been as He does about where you are and, with His help, where you are willing to go.”

Jeffrey R. Holland (1940) Mormon leader

Source: Created for Greater Things

Help

“A noble and God-like character is not a thing of favor or chance, but is the natural result of continued effort in right thinking, the effect of long-cherished association with God-like thoughts.”

James Allen book As a Man Thinketh

Source: As a Man Thinketh

Nature, Thinking, Effort, Chance

“I’m an atheist and I thank God for it.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

“When our mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters are considered both different and inferior in the eyes of the God we worship, this belief tends to permeate society and everyone suffers.”

Jimmy Carter book A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power

Source: A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power

Sister, Suffering, Daughters

“There are spaces of sorrow only God can touch.”

Helen Prejean (1939) advocate for the abolition of the death penalty

Source: Dead Man Walking: The Eyewitness Account Of The Death Penalty That Sparked a National Debate

“I hate you, God. I hate you as though you actually exist.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Source: The End of the Affair

Hate

“I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Recollection by Gilbert J. Greene, quoted in The Speaking Oak (1902) by Ferdinand C. Iglehart and Latest Light on Abraham Lincoln (1917) by Ervin S. Chapman
Posthumous attributions

“It would not be practical for her to hate herself. Luckily, God sends a substitute, a husband.”

Saul Bellow book Herzog

Source: Herzog

Hate

“Man - a figment of God's imagination.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Imagination

“No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

Books

“Belief, he says. Belief shifts. People start out believing in the god and end up believing in the structure.”

Terry Pratchett book Small Gods

Source: Small Gods

People

“Without the fear of God, men do not even observe justice and charity among themselves.”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Source: Institutes of the Christian Religion

Men, Fear, Justice

“The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God, that hand! The window! The window!”

H.P. Lovecraft book Dagon

Fiction
Source: "Dagon" - Written Jul 1917; First published in The Vagrant, No. 11 (November 1919)

“I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! —and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning book Sonnets from the Portuguese

No. LXIII
Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850)
Context: How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! —and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.