Quotes about God
page 58

“Now there were screams. then dust. Then crumbling and roaring. I turned round and round in a circle. I had done this…You did it, Arturo. This is the wrath of God…Great clouds of dust…Up in that room on that bed you did it.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

“As man lives, and moves, and has his Being in the Divine Nature, and is supported by it, whether his Nature be good or bad; so the Wrath of Man, which was awakened in the dark Fire of his fallen Nature, may, in a certain Sense, be called the Wrath of God, as Hell itself may be said to be in God, because nothing can be out of his Immensity; yet this Hell, is not God, but the dark Habitation of the Devil. And this Wrath which may be called the Wrath of God, is not God, but the fiery Wrath of the fallen Soul.
And it was solely to quench this Wrath, awakened in the human Soul, that the Blood of the Son of God was necessary, because nothing but a Life and a Birth, derived from him into the human Soul, could change this darkened Root of a self-tormenting Fire, into an amiable Image of the holy Trinity, as it was at first created.
This was the Wrath, Vengeance, and vindictive Justice that wanted to be satisfied, in order to our Salvation; it was the Wrath and Fire of Nature and Creature kindled only in itself, by its departing from true Resignation, and Obedience to God.”

William Law (1686–1761) English cleric, nonjuror and theological writer

Christian Regeneration.
The Grounds and Reasons of Christian Regeneration (1739)

Life, Justice, Soul, Birth

“I say thank God for government waste. If government is doing bad things, it's only the waste that prevents the harm from being greater.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

Interview with Richard Heffner on The Open Mind (7 December 1975)

“Lest anyone try to convince you that God should be separated from the state, our founding fathers, they were believers. And George Washington, he saw faith in God as basic to life.”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

to Women of Joy in Louisville, quoted in * 2010-04-21
Sarah Palin throws the God punch — again
Cathy Lynn
Grossman
Faith & Reason
USA Today
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/religion/post/2010/04/sarah-palin-christian-nation-god-founding-fathers/1
on separation of church and state
2014

Life, Faith

“But let’s say it’s true; let’s say God gave us these rights. Why would he give us a certain number of rights? The Bill of Rights of this country has ten stipulations, okay? Ten rights. And apparently God was doing sloppy work that week because we've had to amend the Bill of Rights an additional 17 times. So God forgot a couple of things. Like…SLAVERY! Just fuckin' slipped his mind.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

"You Have No Rights"
It's Bad for Ya (2008)

Time, Country

“In my days of youth, I remembered my God,
And he hath not forgotten my age.”

Robert Southey (1774–1843) British poet

The Old Man's Comforts and How He Gained Them, st. 6.

Youth, Age

“It is the virtue of God, the Parmatma, the creator to do justice and we as judges merely act as his agents. I always seek guidance from the creator so that we do not make a wrong judgment. We act without favour or fear, ill will or affection. For me it makes no difference.”

Rana Bhagwandas (1942–2015) Pakistani judge

Response when asked about feelings as first Pakistani acting-Chief Justice from a minority community, by Onkar Singh in Indian Rediff News interview (14 February 2006).

Fear, Justice

“Theo, your brother has preached for the first time last Sunday in God's dwelling.... it is a delightful thought that in the future wherever I shall come I shall preach the gospel; to do that well, one must have the gospel in one's heart, may the Lord give it to me.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

In a letter to Theo, from Isleworth England, Autumn 1876, (letter 79); as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, p. 18 1870s

Time, Future, Heart

“I prefer Buddhism because it gives three principles in combination, which no other religion does. Buddhism teaches prajna (understanding as against superstition and supernaturalism), karuna (love), and samara (equality). This is what man wants for a good and happy life. Neither god nor soul can save society.”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

In an ""Why I like Buddhism and how it is useful to the world in its present circumstances" BBC (May 1956) http://www.ambedkar.org/Babasaheb/Why.htm

Love, Life, Happiness, Religion

“People ask, ‚"Do you say that you are God?‚" I say, ‚"No, I am not God....... I don't want to be God.‚" But what I do want to be is a humble servant of God so that I can teach people this Knowledge, so that I can give people this gospel of peace, love and Truth. That' all I want to do. So all these lectures, all these speeches that I am giving are just for this purpose.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Johannesburg, South Africa, 2 May, 1972
1970s

Love, People, Truth, Peace

“I think faith in each other is much harder than faith in God or faith in crystals. I very rarely have faith in God; I occasionally have little spasms of it, but they go away, if I think hard enough about it. I am incandescent with rage at the idea of horoscopes and of crystals and of the nonsense of 'New Age', or indeed even more pseudo-scientific things: self-help, and the whole culture of 'searching for answers', when for me, as someone brought up in the unashamed Western tradition of music and poetry and philosophy, all the answers are there in the work that has been done by humanity before us, in literature, in art, in science, in all the marvels that have created this moment now, instead of people looking away. The image to me... is gold does exist, and for 'gold' say 'truth', say 'the answer', say 'love', say 'justice', say anything: it does exist. But the only way in this world you can achieve gold is to be incredibly intelligent about geology, to learn what mankind has learnt, to learn where it might lie, and then break your fingers and blister your skin in digging for it, and then sweat and sweat in a forge, and smelt it. And you will have gold, but you will never have it by closing your eyes and wishing for it. No angel will lean out of the bar of heaven and drop down sheets of gold for you. And we live in a society in which people believe they will. But the real answer, that there is gold, and that all you have to do is try and understand the world enough to get down into the muck of it, and you will have it, you will have truth, you will have justice, you will have understanding, but not by wishing for it.”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

From Radio 4's Bookclub http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00f8l3b 2000s

Love, People, Truth, Lie

“If from infancy you treat children as gods they are liable in adulthood to act as devils.”

P. D. James book The Children of Men

Source: The Children of Men (1992), Chapter 1.

Children, Adulthood

“This evolution theory is the foundation philosophy for humanism. Humanism is the idea that man is God. After all, there is no God out there, so we must be God. The Bible says, "They did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind." Do humanists believe in a supreme being? Emphatically, yes, that supreme being is man. Humanists have no knowledge of any being more supreme. The turning point in history will be the moment that man becomes aware that the only God of man is man himself.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The dangers of evolution

History, Idea, Knowledge

“The ancient usual retreat
Takes down the steps the scattering horde;
Adam again has met defeat,
Has missed connections with the Lord. But where the altar-candles die
Waits God, and in a corner prays
The last of heroes who will try
The Gate again in seven days.”

Josephine Jacobsen (1908–2003) American-Canadian poet

"Non Sum Dignus" st. 4–5, In the Crevice of Time: New and Collected Poems, 1995, Johns Hopkins University Press, ISBN 0801851165

Waiting

“A victim of God may,
Through learning adaption,
Become a partner of God,
A victim of God may,
Through forethought and planning,
Become a shaper of God.
Or a victim of God may,
Through shortsightedness and fear,
Remain God’s victim,
God’s plaything,
God’s prey.”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Sower

Source: Parable of the Sower (1993), Chapter 4 (p. 31)

Fear, Learning

“God is merciful to those whom He sees struggling heart and soul for realization. But remain idle, without any struggle, and you will see that His grace will never come.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom
Variant: God is merciful to those whom He sees struggling heart and soul for realization. But remain idle, without any struggle, and you will see that His grace will never come.

Soul, Heart

“The world is chaos. Nothingness is the yet-to-be-born god of the world.”

Georg Büchner Danton's Death

Act IV
Dantons Tod (Danton's Death) (1835)

World

“In Judaism faith means wrestling with God as Jacob once wrestled with an angel…”

Jonathan Sacks (1948) British rabbi

The Case for God, first broadcast on BBC1, 6 September 2010

Faith, Angels

“All those writers who write about their own childhood! Gentle God, if I wrote about mine you wouldn't sit in the same room with me.”

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

Interview in The Paris Review, Issue #13 http://books.google.com/books?id=iZt6sBaHemQC&q=&quot;all+those+writers+who+write+about+their+childhood+gentle+god+if+i+wrote+about+mine+you+wouldn't+sit+in+the+same+room+with+me&quot;&pg=PA8#v=onepage (Summer 1956)

Childhood

“The voice of racism preaching the Gospel is devilish. A fake church called the prophet Muhammad a terrorist, for "getting God" is not religion, but a spiritual bond and Jesus is the most-quoted prophet in the Qur'an.”

Immortal Technique (1978) American rapper and activist

The 4th Branch
Albums, Revolutionary Vol. 2 (2003)

Religion, Quotes

“The Church must preach to the bourgeois on his duties, must reveal to him values that were more especially his own, must set the seal of divine approval on his efforts, on his work; and, satisfied with himself, he would be no less so with God and with his Church. … The Church must not present him with far-ranging concepts or try to raise him out of his own sphere but, rather, talk to him of the daily round, of the minute concerns of life, and tell him that God required no more of him. That was what the Jesuits realized very clearly.”

Bernard Groethuysen (1880–1946) French literary historian, translator and writer

Source: The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927), pp. 160-162

Life, Effort

“No one should question the faith of others, for no human can judge the ways of God.”

Haile Selassie (1892–1975) Emperor of Ethiopia

Not reliably sourced, as this has thus far been found only in a Rastafarian publication http://www.himchurch.org/index.html on the internet which conflates several different statements by Haile Selassie made between 1948 and 1966 with some made by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan which were merely quoted by Selassie in 1965. Disputed

Faith, Way, Question

“Some of my friends have urged me to tell people the basic story, but "for God’s sake don’t mention the reptiles."”

David Icke (1952) English writer and public speaker

The Biggest Secret, ch. 1

People

“The holy spirit means the invisible power of Jehovah, holy because he is holy. This power of Jehovah operated upon the minds of honest men who loved and who were devoted to righteousness, directing them in the writing of the Bible. The spirit of God, i. e., his invisible power, moved upon the waters and thereby he created.”

Joseph Franklin Rutherford (1869–1942) American judge

The Harp of God (1921)

Love, Men, Water

“Men think it right to eat animals, because they are led to believe that God sanctions it. This is untrue. No matter in what books it may be written that it is not sinful to slay animals and to eat them, it is more clearly written in the heart of man than in any books that animals are to be pitied and should not be slain any more than human beings. We all know this if we do not choke the voice of our conscience.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

The Pathway of Life: Teaching Love and Wisdom (posthumous), Part I, International Book Publishing Company, New York, 1919, p. 68

Men, Books, Thinking, Heart

“The God idea is growing more impersonal and nebulous in proportion as the human mind is learning to understand natural phenomena and in the degree that science progressively correlates human and social events.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

The Philosophy of Atheism (1916)

Idea, Understanding, Nature, Learning

“The king dead is a living god.”

Julian Jaynes book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book I, Chapter 6, p. 143 ( See also: Rene Girard, and James George Frazer)
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

Dead

“There are three basic theories about this coming Final Empire, or The New World Order.
1. It will be a revival of the Roman Empire, where ten European countries try to band together, maybe like the European Common Market.
2. It will be an attempted union of ten world regions, like a North American Region, Asia-Pacific Region, etc.
3. It will be an alliance of 10 Muslim countries that surround (and hate) Israel and have for 4,000-years!
My study has led me to believe this final 10 nation empire will be 10 Muslim nations since they all hate each other and fight all the time just as God said they would in Genesis 16:12. They will never really “bond,” just as iron and clay will not bond with each other. Since this kingdom will have areas where enforcement of their rules and policies (like maybe taking a mark to buy and sell (Revelation 13-14)?) will be “weak” or “broken,” I have long prayed for God to put me some place where it is broken!”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 92-93

Hate, World, Study, Time

“When the claims of God are revealed to the mind, it must necessarily yield to them, or strengthen itself in sin. It must, as it were, gird itself up, and struggle to resist the claims of duty. This strengthening self in sin under light is the particular form of sin which we call impenitence.”

Charles Grandison Finney (1792–1875) American writer

"Repentance and Impenitence" p. 369
Lectures on Systematic Theology (1878)

Light

“O Christians! are you willing to walk the streets of heaven, and have no one greet you there? Would you be willing to go yourselves inside the gates and never have a soul to greet you and say, " I thank God for the kind words of sympathy and love you spoke on earth?"”

Joseph Cummings

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 561.

Love, Soul

“We were about to board the planes for the flight back to the United States. Jim Jones didn't want us to leave, at least not alive. A tractor trailer loaded with men armed with shotguns and rifles pulled up and opened fire on us at that airstrip. Congressman Ryan was gunned down, having been shot 40 times. The first and only congressman in the history of this country to be assassinated during the line of duty. I was shot five times and left to bleed on that airstrip for 22 hours. Back at Jonestown, over 900 people lost their lives in a mass murder and suicide that night. This is what I awoke to on that long day. I was 28 years old, and I was waiting to die. I laid awake all night fearing some of the gunmen would come back and finish us off. Time passed, and local Guyanese people offered me rum to try and get me through the night. I had a lot of time to think. I promised God that if I lived, I would make every day count. I promised that I would make something out of my life if I was allowed to keep my life. Well, here I am. I have chosen a career as a public servant. One, I hope many of you will contemplate as you move forward in your lives.”

Jackie Speier (1950) American politician

Jackie Speier, Commencement Speaker http://www.sfsu.edu/~news/2006/spring/comm06.htm, San Francisco State University, 2006

Life, Men, People, Fear

“Now reigneth pride in prize
and covetousness is held wise,
and lechery without shame
and gluttony without blame.
Envy reigneth with treason
and sloth is taken in great season.
God do boot, for now is time. Amen.”

John Ball (priest) (1338–1381) English rebel and priest

Letter to the people, quoted in Annals, or a General Chronicle of England by John Stow. "Boot" here means "amends," as in the ancient Anglo-Saxon laws

Time, Envy, Season

“As to the origin of life, any life, I thought, we remain ignorant. Our science theorizes about the beginning of the cosmos or the birth of life. Our religions postulate endless versions of a man-God, hardly more rational than we are, as the Creator. In the past I have sometimes thought that maybe life is meaningless after all. Then I'd think that maybe the Seth material is a kind of cosmic poppycock -- the chemical composition of my mind somehow intelligent enough to understand the irony of its own meaninglessness, then spinning desperate yarns, as many psychologists would say; futile fantasies leading nowhere. But then I'd think that a brain that could conceive or order somehow had to emerge from a greater order. Besides that, earlier I hadn't realized (I thought, feeling better) that science and religion had spun some pretty weird yarns themselves, and if poppycock was being measured on a scale of one to ten, in my book anyhow they'd each get a twelve and a gold star.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto (1981), p. 51

Life, Books, Religion, Feeling

“If it's sad / you know it's true / God is glad on bluer moons / When your room is all you do / it comes to you”

Blake Schwarzenbach (1967) American singer

"Psalm"
Perfecting Loneliness (2002)

Sadness

“My grandmother—God bless her soul—a Yaqui Indian from northern Mexico, was the greatest teacher I’d ever had! And do you know what she taught me, she taught me that each and every day is un milagro given to us by God, and that work, that planting corn and squash with our two hands is holy. She taught me all this with kindness and invitation. Not with ridicule and looking down her nose at me and making me feel like less than human when I didn’t get it at first.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

Feeling, Soul, Teachers

“And since my malady
Will not be
Cured at all
Without you, sweet enemy.
Who are glad
At my torment.
With folded hands I pray
To your heart, since it forgets me.
That it should kill me quickly.
For I languish too long.
Sweet pretty lady.
For God's sake do not think
That any one has authority
Over me but you alone.”

Guillaume de Machaut (1300–1377) French poet and composer

Et quant ma maladie Garie Ne sera nullement Sans vous, douce anemie, Qui lie Estes de mon tourment, A jointes mains deprie Vo cuer, puis qu'il m'oublie, Que temprement m'ocie, Car trop langui longuement. Douce dame jolie, Pour dieu ne penses mie Que nulle ait signourie Seur moy fors vous seulement. "Douce dame jolie", line 33; translation by Jennifer Garnham. http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/MMDB/composer/H0033004.HTM

Thinking, Heart, Forgetting

“God said this is our land, land in which we flourish as people… we want our cattle to get fat on our land so that our children grow up in prosperity; and we do not want the fat removed to feed others.”

Jomo Kenyatta (1893–1978) First prime minister and first president of Kenya

From a speech given in Nyeri, Kenya, 26 July 1952.

Children, People

“The king is not responsible for the fate of each man's soul. Every man is responsible to God, but not the king, for this. Shakespeare, while displaying unflinchingly the defects of kingly rule, does not in the English histories have on his horizon any alternative to divine right monarchy. The American Founding's Lockean republican political theory provides an answer to the defects of Christian divine right monarchy, the answer that Lincoln inherited. This supplied as well the theoretical foundation for Lincoln's assault on slavery.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, Aristotle and Locke in the American Founding (2001)

Fate, Soul, History

“Oh! God! Please let me die beneath her fists!”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, Prayers on Fire (1981), Zoo-Music Girl

“It was no problem for me to say I came from another world and could go back and forth in time in my emphysemic old Tardis which was bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. Problem? For me who believed in Guardian Angels and was convinced that pigs were possessed by devils after their New Testament encounter with God's son? It was easy and I loved it.”

Tom Baker (1934) English actor

Love, World, Angels, Problem

“As regards Ramakrishna’s “practice of Islam and Christianity” of which the Mission makes so much, it finds no mention in the Gospel, the earliest and most authentic account of Ramakrishna’s thoughts and experiences in his own words. In this work we find that though Ramakrishna reminisces often about his experiences and God-filled states, there is hardly a word about his so-called practice of Islam and Christianity…. It also seems that the practice of Islam and Christianity made a less than deep impression on Ramakrishna, for subsequently he does not mention on his own initiative either Muhammad or the Koran, neither Jesus nor the Bible. Not even once! Nor did he draw from” his practice such excessive and indiscriminate conclusions as Mission monks now do.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Ramakrishna Mission. (1986). Ramakrishna Mission: In search of a new identity.

Drawing

“Those who betray or subvert the Constitution are guilty of sedition and/or treason, are domestic enemies and should and will be punished accordingly. It also stands to reason that anyone who sympathizes with the enemy or gives aid or comfort to said enemy is likewise guilty. I have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic and I will. And I will because not only did I swear to, but I believe in what it stands for in every bit of my heart, soul and being. I know in my heart that I am right in my struggle, Steve. I have come to peace with myself, my God and my cause. Blood will flow in the streets, Steve. Good vs. Evil. Free Men vs. Socialist Wannabe Slaves. Pray it is not your blood, my friend.”

Timothy McVeigh (1968–2001) American army soldier, security guard, terrorist

Letter to Steve Hodge.
1990s

Men, Peace, Soul, Evil

“God gave us these things to use. After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.”

James G. Watt (1938) United States Secretary of the Interior

Attributed in Setting the Captives Free (1990) by Austin Miles, and widely repeated after appearing in "The Godly Must Be Crazy", by Glenn Scherer in Grist magazine (28 October 2004) http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2004/10/27/scherer-christian/index.html. Grist afterwards retracted and apologized for Scherer's comment, noting that the quotation appears nowhere in Watt's Congressional testimony or any other source it could find. Watt has responded: : I never said it. Never believed it. Never even thought it. I know no Christian who believes or preaches such error. The Bible commands conservation — that we as Christians be careful stewards of the land and resources entrusted to us by the Creator. Misattributed

Tree, Christ

“That no human ruler can claim the same degree of allegiance that God claims; that God's kingship or suzerainty relativizes all human regimes; that all human political arrangements, even the most just and humane, fall short of the kingdom of God: these are ideas that have reverberated over the centuries and into our own time.”

Jon D. Levenson (1949) American biblical scholar

The Love of God (2016), pp. 9-10

Idea, Time

“BE IT KNOWN unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people, unto whom this work shall come: That we, through the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, have seen the plates which contain this record, which is a record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanites, their brethren, and also of the people of Jared, who came from the tower of which hath been spoken. And we also know that they have been translated by the gift and power of God, for his voice hath declared it unto us; wherefore we know of a surety that the work is true. And we also testify that we have seen the engravings which are upon the plates; and they have been shown unto us by the power of God, and not of man. And we declare with words of soberness, that an angel of God came down from heaven, and he brought and laid before our eyes, that we beheld and saw the plates, and the engravings thereon; and we know that it is by the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, that we beheld and bear record that these things are true. And it is marvelous in our eyes. Nevertheless, the voice of the Lord commanded us that we should bear record of it; wherefore, to be obedient unto the commandments of God, we bear testimony of these things. And we know that if we are faithful in Christ, we shall rid our garments of the blood of all men, and be found spotless before the judgment-seat of Christ, and shall dwell with him eternally in the heavens. And the honor be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, which is one God. Amen. OLIVER COWDERY DAVID WHITMER MARTIN HARRIS”

David Whitmer (1805–1888) Book of Mormon witness

Book of Mormon, 1830 Edition, p. 585 (1830)

Men, People, Faith, Angels

“God is a cloud from which rain fell.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

“A Cloud," p. 26
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “Skywalking”

“We expect salvation from him—not because he stands aloof from us, but because ingrafting us into his body he not only makes us partakers of all his benefits, but also of himself. … Since Christ has been communicated to you with all his benefits, so that all which is his is made yours, you become a member of him, and hence one with him. His righteousness covers your sins—his salvation extinguishes your condemnation; he interposes with his worthiness, and so prevents your unworthiness from coming into the view of God. Thus it truly is. It will never do to separate Christ from us, nor us from him; but we must, with both hands, keep firm hold of that alliance by which he has riveted us to himself.”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Book 3, Chapter 2, Section 24, p. 477
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

Communication, Christ

“We sometimes imagine, under the influence of Spenglerian philosophy or some other kind of "historical morphology," that we live in a similar age [to the Romans], the last witnesses of a condemned civilization. But condemned by whom? Not by God, but by some supposed "historical laws." For although we do not know any historical laws, we are in fact able of inventing them quite freely, and such laws, once invented, can then be realized in the form of self-fulfilling prophecies.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

"Looking for the Barbarians"

Age, Law, Imagination

“Three things only do slaves require, food, work, and their gods, and of the three their gods must never be touched, else they grow troublesome.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Sixth Column

Source: Sixth Column (1949; originally serialized in 1941), Chapter 5 (p. 57)

Food

“The average person, when they see a black man, they would say "Man, he got soul cos' his color." But I disagree with that. I think that God would be a very selfish God if He gave all the soul to one race. He lets his rain fall on the red flowers, the green flowers, the blue flowers; the good, the bad, no races, so He lets His blessings fall on all races. So I think that there are types of souls, like there are different types of cars. But they're all cars. You know, I think that, when a white guy sing[s], if he have soul, that don't mean that he had to copy no negro to get it. I believe if he feels, when one sings from the heart and it reaches another heart, that's soul.”

Little Richard (1932) American pianist, singer and songwriter

Remarks on the question: can a white man sing soul music?. Pop Chronicles: Show 15 - The Soul Reformation I: A symposium on soul http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19764/m1/, interview recorded 1.2.1968 http://web.archive.org/web/20110615153027/http://www.library.unt.edu/music/special-collections/john-gilliland/o-s.

Cars, Color, Guy, Feeling

“Put your trust in God, but keep your powder dry.”

William Blacker

Popularized by Blacker in the poem "Oliver's Advice", http://books.google.com/books?id=JmEaAQAAIAAJ&dq=%22Oliver%27s+Advice%22+Cromwell&q=%22Oliver%27s+Advice%22+Cromwell#v=snippet&q=%22Oliver's%20Advice%22%20Cromwell&f=false published under the pseudonym Fitz Stewart in The Dublin University Magazine, December 1834, p. 700; where the quote is attributed to Oliver Cromwell (hence the poem's title). The repeated line in the poem is "Put your trust in God, my boys, but keep your powder dry." Misattributed

“The bond of our common humanity is stronger than the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices. God gives us the capacity for choice. We can choose to alleviate suffering. We can choose to work together for peace. We can make these changes — and we must.”

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

Post-Presidency, Nobel lecture (2002)

Fear, Peace, Suffering, Change

“It is because of God's love that I care about the fate of atheists. When an atheist says he sees no evidence that God exists, I take the time to reason with him about creation not being an accident, even though it is intellectually demeaning to have to do so (atheism is the epitome of stupidity). It's an intellectual embarassment. But I have done so thousands of times, and will do so until my last breath… thanks alone to the love of God that dwells in me.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)

Love, Fate, Stupidity, Time

“In our modern world we have seen inaugurated the reign of a dull bourgeois rationalism, which finds some inadequate reason for all things in heaven and earth and makes a god of its own infallibility.”

John Buchan book A Lodge in the Wilderness

Source: A Lodge in the Wilderness (1906), Ch. III, p. 69

World

“I, too, believe there are natural rights that predate any written political or legal documents; we have these rights merely because we're children of God.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Page 178
2000s, Promises to Keep (2008)

Children, Nature

“Earth all one tomb lies round me,
Domed with an iron sky:
And God Himself in His power,
God cannot save me! I cry.”

Francis Turner Palgrave (1824–1897) English poet and critic

Past and Present

Cry

“He [the painter J. A. Kruseman in Amsterdam] is very amicable with his students without exposing his mastery to disdain. I sometimes see him painting from time to time. And I almost visit daily his studio. You must know that his students don't work in the same room where the big man is staying... Sometimes one or two days pass that he doesn't see our work, he let follow the students their own way most of the time... Thanks God he tells me I have feeling and talent.”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

translation from original Dutch text: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat uit de brief van Jozef Israëls, in het Nederlands): Hij [de schilder J.A. Kruseman te Amsterdam] gaat zeer amical met zijn discipelen om zonder zijn meesterschap aan minachting bloot te stellen. Ik zie hem nu en dan wel eens schilderen. En kom in zijn atelier bijna dagelijksch. Gij moet namenlijk weten dat zijn leerlingen niet in dezelfde kamer zitten te werken waar de groote man zit.. .Soms gaan er wel een of 2 dage voorbij dat hij het werk niet komt zien, hij laat de leerlingen meest hun eigen manier volgen.. .Hij zegt mij Gode zij dank gevoel en dispositie toe..
In a letter of Jozef Israels from Amsterdam, 16 July 1843, to his friend, pharmacist Essingh in Groningen; from R.K.D. Archive, A.S. Kok, The Hague
Quotes of Jozef Israels, 1840 - 1870

Way, Feeling, Time, Painting

“We do not want to harm any human being, not even our worst enemy. Our walk of life is to live in truth and righteousness of God, in peace and unity. … If all the world were like us there would be no war and no injustice.”

Jacob Hutter (1500–1536) Tyrolean Anabaptist leader and founder of the Hutterites

Letter to Governer Kuna von Kunstadt, as reported in William Roscoe Estep, The Anabaptist Story (1996), p. 133

Life, War, Truth, World

“In the spirit of enthusiasm or vanity, the prophet [Muhammad] rests the truth of his mission on the merit of his book; audaciously challenges both men and angels to imitate the beauties of a single page; and presumes to assert that God alone could dictate this incomparable performance. This argument is most powerfully addressed to a devout Arabian, whose mind is attuned to faith and rapture; whose ear is delighted by the music of sounds; and whose ignorance is incapable of comparing the productions of human genius… If the composition of the Koran exceed the faculties of a man to what superior intelligence should we ascribe the Iliad of Homer, or the Philippics of Demosthenes?”

Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) English historian and Member of Parliament

EGPaIV" Edward Gibbon, [1788], Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/gibbon/05/daf05010.htm, Vol. 5, Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants. Part IV. The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire: Volume 1 (1776)

Men, Truth, Books, Faith

“I am alone. There is no God where I am.”

Aleister Crowley book The Book of the Law

II:23.
The Book of the Law (1904)

“Not till we come to a simple reliance on the blood and mediation of the Saviour, shall we know what it is either to have trust in God, or know what it is to walk before Him without fear, in righteousness and true holiness.”

Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847) Scottish mathematician and a leader of the Free Church of Scotland

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 602.

Fear

“I couldn't get that same feeling during the day, with my hands in dirty dish water and the hard sun showing up the dirtiness on the roof tops. And after a time, even at night, the feeling of God didn't last. I began to wonder what the minister meant when he said, "God, the father, sees even the smallest sparrow fall. He watches over all his children." That jumbled it all up for me. But I was sure of one thing. If God were a father, with children, that cleanliness I had been feeling wasn't God. So at night, when I went to bed, I would think, "I am clean. I am sleepy." And then I went to sleep. It didn't keep me from enjoying the cleaness any less. I just knew that God wasn't there. He was a man on a throne in Heaven, so he was easy to forget.”

Frances Farmer (1913–1970) American actress

God Dies (1931)

Children, Feeling, Thinking, Sleep

“Pray all the time, read all the scriptures in the world, and worship all the gods there are …but unless you realize the Truth, there is no freedom.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom
Variant: Pray all the time, read all the scriptures in the world, and worship all the gods there are... but unless you realize the Truth, there is no freedom.

World, Freedom, Time, Reading

“This shows the kindness of God to His creatures, even to us weak beings. His righteousness and justice as regards all animals are well known; for in the transient world there is among the various kinds of animals no individual being distinguished from the rest of the same species… all physical, psychical, and vital forces and organs that are possessed by one individual are found also in the other individuals. If any one is somehow different it is by accident, in consequence of some exception, and not by a natural property; it is also a rare occurrence.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.12

World, Justice, Nature, Animals

“Now see what a Christian is, drawn by the hand of Christ. He is a man on whose clear and open brow God has set the stamp of truth; one whose very eye beams bright with honor; in whose very look and bearing you may see freedom, manliness, veracity; a brave man — a noble man — frank, generous, true, with, it may be, many faults; whose freedom may take the form of impetuosity or rashness, but the form of meanness never.”

Frederick William Robertson (1816–1853) British writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 104.

Truth, Freedom, Christ

“Revelation as a consciousness of God's Presence is available to all.”

Roger Haight (1936) American theologian

Source: Dynamics Of Theology, Chapter Three, The Structure of Revelation, p. 60

“All the virtues which appeared in Christ shone brightest in the close of His life, under the trials He then met. Eminent virtue always shows brightest in the fire. Pure gold shows its purity chiefly in the furnace. It was chiefly under those trials which Christ endured in the close of His life, that His love to God, His honor of God's majesty, His regard to the honor of His law, His spirit of obedience, His humility, contempt of the world, His patience, meekness, and spirit of forgiveness towards men, appeared. Indeed, every thing that Christ did to work out redemption for us appears mainly in the close of His life. Here mainly is His satisfaction for sin, and here chiefly is His merit of eternal life for sinners, and here chiefly appears the brightness of His example which He has set us for imitation.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 67.

Love, Life, Men, World

“Thus God is not to be lived in contemplation but in acts, in actual practice. In giving of our best, in the intrinsic value of every act, God descends as person and strengthens us.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Hymn

Personality

“God has created the human frame for the express purpose of giving man the opportunity of realizing the Divinity.”

Hans Ji Maharaj (1900–1966) Indian guru

“He was born a pauper to a pawn on a Christmas day
When the New York Times said God is dead
And the war's begun.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

Levon
Song lyrics, Madman Across the Water (1971)

War, Time, Christmas, Dead

“Yes, well I noticed that in your last issues' interviews with those Eastern teachers ["From light to Light," Jan. 1995], emptiness was mentioned a lot. I find that a wrong word. Because in God realisation and being one with God the Most High, the unspeakable one, there's no sense whatsoever of ever having done anything yourself. It is all done for you. It's by grace. And so it's not being empty, it's being emptied. There's a different emphasis or a different connotation to that.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

Response to the question "You write, "Enlightenment is to be emptied (not empty) of feelings and thus at one with the purest sensation of divine being." What's the distinction here between being "emptied" and being "empty" of feelings?"
Love is not a feeling ~ The Interview (1995)

Sense, Light, Teachers

“I speak of God, I mean something other than an Identity wherein all differences vanish, or a Unity which includes but does not transcend the differences which it somehow holds in solution. I mean a God whom men can love, a God to whom men can pray, who takes sides, who has purposes and preferences, whose attributes, howsoever conceived, leave unimpaired the possibility of a personal relation between Himself and those whom He has created.”

Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) British Conservative politician and statesman

Theism and humanism

Love, Men, Personality

“Body and spirit I surrendered whole
To harsh instructors—and received a soul…
If mortal man could change me through and through
From all I was—What may the God not do?”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

The Wonder
Epitaphs of the War (1914-1918) (1918)

Soul, Change

“I have studied at Barcelona, at Salamanca, at Alcala, at Paris; what have I learned? The language of doubt; but in me there was no harbor for doubt. Jesus came, and my trust in God has grown by the doubts of men.”

Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) Catholic Saint, founder of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits)

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 599.

Men, Study, Learning

“It is simply not true that capitalism as a historical system has represented progress over the various previous historical systems that it destroyed or transformed. Even as I write this, I feel the tremour that accompanies the sense of blasphemy. I fear the wrath of the gods, for I have been moulded in the same ideological forge as all my compeers and have worshipped at the same shrines.”

Immanuel Wallerstein (1930–2019) economic historian

Wallerstein (1995) Historical Capitalism, with Capitalist Civilization. London: Verso. p. 98.

Fear, Feeling, Sense

“After a gaudy sunset that land became an immense, limitless darkness. Too large, Guilford thought, too empty, and too plain a token of the indifferent machinery of God.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Darwinia

Source: Darwinia (1998), Chapter 8 (p. 80)

Indifference

“Playing God was a sweetly addictive game.”

Robert Lynn Asprin (1946–2008) American science fiction and fantasy author

Source: Ripping Time (2000), Chapter 14 (p. 431)

Game

“Science brings men nearer to God.”

Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) French chemist and microbiologist

As quoted in Letter to an Atheist (2007) by Michael Patrick Leahy, p. 61
Original: Le premier regard de l'homme jeté sur l'univers n'y découvre que variété, diversité, multiplicité des phénomènes. Que ce regard soit illuminé par la science, — par la science qui rapproche l'homme de Dieu, — et la simplicité et l'unité brillent de toutes parts.

Men, Science

“On its pass through finitude, the being-for-itself of the counter-image expresses itself most potently as “”I-ness”, as self-identical individuality. Just as a planet in its orbit no sooner reaches its farthest distance from the center than it returns to its closest proximity, so the point of the farthest distance from God, the I-ness, is also the moment of its return to the Absolute, of the re-absorption into the ideal. P. 30”

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) German philosopher (idealism)

Philosophy and Religion 1804)

“What has the church done? It made the wife a slave—the property of the husband, and it placed the husband as much above the wife as Christ was above the husband. It taught that a nun is purer, nobler than a mother. It induced millions of pure and conscientious girls to renounce the joys of life—to take the veil woven of night and death, to wear the habiliments of the dead—made them believe that they were the brides of Christ. For my part, I would as soon be a widow as the bride of a man who had been dead for eighteen hundred years. The poor deluded girls imagined that they, in some mysterious way, were in spiritual wedlock united with God. All worldly desires were driven from their hearts. They filled their lives with fastings—with prayers—with self-accusings. They forgot fathers and mothers and gave their love to the invisible. They were the victims, the convicts of superstition—prisoners in the penitentiaries of God. Conscientious, good, sincere—insane. These loving women gave their hearts to a phantom, their lives to a dream.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

A Thanksgiving Sermon (1897)

Love, Life, Death, Women

“And truly, as for other things, they do nothing but according to the injunctions of their curators; only these two things are done among them at everyone's own free-will, which are to assist those that want it, and to show mercy; for they are permitted of their own accord to afford succor to such as deserve it, when they stand in need of it, and to bestow food on those that are in distress; but they cannot give any thing to their kindred without the curators. They dispense their anger after a just manner, and restrain their passion. They are eminent for fidelity, and are the ministers of peace; whatsoever they say also is firmer than an oath; but swearing is avoided by them, and they esteem it worse than perjury for they say that he who cannot be believed without [swearing by] God is already condemned. They also take great pains in studying the writings of the ancients, and choose out of them what is most for the advantage of their soul and body; and they inquire after such roots and medicinal stones as may cure their distempers.”

Josephus on the Essenes

Jewish War

Pain, Peace, Food, Soul

“Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous.”

Tom Shadyac (1958) American film director

Director's commentary for Dragonfly.

Way

“Seek, therefore, thyself! But in finding oneself, does not one find one's own nothingness?… Carlyle answers (Past and Present, book iii, chap. xi.). "The latest Gospel in the world is, Know thy work and do it. Know thyself: long enough has that poor self of thine tormented thee; thou wilt never get to know it, I believe! Think it thy business, this of knowing thyself; thou art an unknowable individual: know what thou canst work at; and work at it, like Hercules. That will be thine better plan." …and what is my work? — without thinking about myself, is to love God…. And on the other hand, in loving God in myself, am I not loving myself more than God, am I not loving myself in God?”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), X : Religion, the Mythology of the Beyond and the Apocatastasis

Love, Books, World, Art

“Posh does not equal style. Really, God, that's just ridiculous. Posh equals tradition. Anyone can achieve style. It doesn't matter who you are or where you're from.”

Susannah Constantine (1962) British fashion designer and journalist

As quoted in "Mammary mia!" by Vicky Allan in The Sunday Herald http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4156/is_20020908/ai_n12578387/pg_1 (8 September 2002)

“The second proposition admits and encourages the very practice we censure so justly, for which the saint [ Augustine of Hippo ] was so famous, and by which he contributed so much to promote contentions in his own days, and to perpetuate them to ours. The practice of deducing doctrines from the scriptures that are not evidently contained in them… Who does not see that the direct tendency of this practice is exactly the same as the event has proved it to be? It composes and propagates a religion, seemingly under the authority of God, but really under that of man. The principles of revelation are lost in theology, or disfigured by it: and whilst some men are impudent enough to pretend, others are silly enough to believe, that they adhere to the gospel, and maintain the cause of God against infidels and heretics, when they do nothing better, nor more, than espouse the conceits of men, whom enthusiasm, or the ambition of forming sects, or of making a great figure in them, has inspired. If you ask now what the practice of the christian fathers, and of other divines, should have been, in order to preserve the purity of faith, and to promote peace and charity, the answer is obvious… They should have adhered to the word of God: they should have paid no regard to heathen philosophy, jewish cabala, the sallies of enthusiasm, or the refinements of human ingenuity: they should have embraced, and held fast the articles of faith and doctrine, that were delivered in plain terms, or in unequivocal figures: they should not have been dogmatical where the sense was doubtful, nor have presumed even to guess where the Holy Ghost left the veil of mystery undrawn.”

Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (1678–1751) English politician and Viscount

Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophical Works http://books.google.com/books?id=E6ATAAAAQAAJ (1754) Vol.III, Essay IV, Sect XVI

Men, Peace, Faith, Religion

“God's truth is too sacred to be expounded to superficial worldliness in its transient fit of earnestness.”

Frederick William Robertson (1816–1853) British writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 285.

Truth

“I will say no more, than that I will act as I shall answer hereafter to God and to man.”

William the Silent (1533–1584) stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht, leader of the Dutch Revolt

After his wedding ceremony, on marrying his second wife, who was a Lutheran, as quoted in William the Silent (1897) by Frederic Harrison, p. 32

“Every act involves a discovery of finite beings and seeing them as such, one understands ever better the reality of God’s presence, since finiteness by itself would be insufficient. God is the continuous miracle. It may be said that if it is continuous it is no longer a miracle. But miracle there is, although it does not consist in any outstanding or exceptional event. The miracle is that without God all finite things and their mutual relationships fade away into abstractions – whereas with God, they live in our spirit, in a conscious relationship. The essential construction of reality lies in this and not in the activism of the materialists who have little awareness of the intimate religious relationship.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Hymn

Understanding, Reality

“You that trust in your own righteousness, arrogate to yourselves the honor of the greatest thing that even God Himself ever did. You seem not only sufficient to perform Divine works, but such is your pride and vanity, that you are not content without taking upon you to do the very greatest work that ever God Himself wrought. God's works of providence are greater than those of creation. To take on yourself to work out redemption, is a greater thing than if you had taken it upon you to create a world.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 542.

World

“How is it, I wonder, that all religious officials, from God the Father to the parish beadle, should be so arbitrary and exacting.”

Samuel Butler book The Way of All Flesh

Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 23; this is one of the passages excised from <cite>The Way of All Flesh</cite> when it was first published in 1903, after Butler's death, by his literary executor, R. Streatfeild. This first edition of <cite>The Way of All Flesh</cite> is widely available in plain text on the internet, but readers of facsimiles of the first edition should be aware that Streatfeild significantly altered and edited Butler's text, "regularizing" the punctuation and removing most of Butler's most trenchant criticism of Victorian society and conventional pieties. Butler's full manuscript, entitled <cite>Ernest Pontifex, or The Way of All Flesh</cite>, was edited and issued by Daniel F. Howard in 1965. It is from this edition that this quote is derived; it was excised by Streatfeild in the first edition.