Quotes about God
page 77

“His power to adore is responsible for all his crimes: a man who loves a god unduly forces other men to love his god, eager to exterminate them if they refuse.”

Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay

A Short History of Decay (1949)

Love, Men

“All praise to thee, my God, this night,
For all the blessings of the light;
Keep me, O keep me, King of Kings,
Beneath thy own almighty wings.”

Thomas Ken (1637–1711) Bishop of Bath and Wells

Evening Hymn

Light, Night

“Panini was a Sanskrit grammarian who gave a comprehensive and scientific theory of phonetics, phonology, and morphology. Sanskrit was the classical literary language of the Indian Hindus and Panini is considered the founder of the language and literature. It is interesting to note that the word "Sanskrit" means "complete" or "perfect" and it was thought of as the divine language, or language of the gods.”

Pāṇini ancient Sanskrit grammarian

An Analytical Study of 'Sanskrit' and 'Panini' as Foundation of Speech Communication in India and the World

Literature, Perfection

“The fact is nearly everyone forces God to fit into his own perception. Even Christians serve a God they perceive rather than the God who truly is. They limit Him according to those special needs of their own psyche. It's actually hard not to do that, but every time we do, it has consequences. Seeing God for who He truly is takes effort and always has one inevitable result that many people cannot accept: our understanding will always fall short.”

Sean Sellers (1969–1999) American murderer

Open Letter To Satanists

People, Understanding, Effort, Time

“Every wish
Is like a prayer—with God.”

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

Book II. <br class="br"> Aurora Leigh http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/barrett/aurora/aurora.html (1857)

“How can this cosmic religious experience be communicated from man to man, if it cannot lead to a definite conception of God or to a theology? It seems to me that the most important function of art and of science is to arouse and keep alive this feeling in those who are receptive.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Wording in Ideas and Opinions: How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.
1930s, Religion and Science (1930)

Art, Feeling, Communication, Science

“But it was amazing to see this man crying, and grateful to God for this, and to love this animal as if it was his child. Well, events took a turn for the bittersweet when he let me know last night that he's moving, out of town, even, and he's taking Has Wounds with him (and yes, he called her that.) And he wanted to thank me again. And my only reply was "what else could I have done, but more?" So — I should not ever see her again, I think — but had I not gotten the Grace to happen to come across this man, thanks to God, at my door, I would have assumed that she had died. So I'm very grateful that I got to see him, and we got to pray together and embrace each other, and know what really was going on, all this time we were afraid. Well, she was right next door for either one of us. And it was very funny too, that this man's name was Francisco, because it's very much a St. Francis story, with an animal, you know?”

Ysabella Brave (1979) American singer

Has wounds but still lives (2010)

Love, Thinking, Time, Animals

“Belief in God is a matter of personal conviction and faith.”

Morarji Desai (1896–1995) Former Indian Finance Minister, Freedom Fighters, Former prime minister

Morarji Desai speaks about life and celibacy

Faith, Personality

“Oh unsurpassed generosity of God the Father, Oh wondrous and unsurpassable felicity of man, to whom it is granted to have what he chooses, to be what he wills to be! The brutes, from the moment of their birth, bring with them, as Lucilius says, “from their mother’s womb” all that they will ever possess. The highest spiritual beings were, from the very moment of creation, or soon thereafter, fixed in the mode of being which would be theirs through measureless eternities. But upon man, at the moment of his creation, God bestowed seeds pregnant with all possibilities, the germs of every form of life. Whichever of these a man shall cultivate, the same will mature and bear fruit in him. If vegetative, he will become a plant; if sensual, he will become brutish; if rational, he will reveal himself a heavenly being; if intellectual, he will be an angel and the son of God. And if, dissatisfied with the lot of all creatures, he should recollect himself into the center of his own unity, he will there become one spirit with God, in the solitary darkness of the Father, Who is set above all things, himself transcend all creatures.”
O summam Dei patris liberalitatem, summam et admirandam hominis foelicitatem! Cui datum id habere quod optat, id esse quod velit. Bruta simul atque nascuntur id secum afferunt (ut ait Lucilius) e bulga matris quod possessura sunt. Supremi spiritus aut ab initio aut paulo mox id fuerunt, quod sunt futuri in perpetuas aeternitates. Nascenti homini omnifaria semina et omnigenae vitae germina indidit Pater. Quae quisque excoluerit illa adolescent, et fructus suos ferent in illo. Si vegetalia planta fiet, si sensualia obrutescet, si rationalia caeleste evadet animal, si intellectualia angelus erit et Dei filius. Et si nulla creaturarum sorte contentus in unitatis centrum suae se receperit, unus cum Deo spiritus factus, in solitaria Patris caligine qui est super omnia constitutus omnibus antestabit.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola book Oration on the Dignity of Man

6. 24-31; translation by A. Robert Caponigri
Alternate translation of 6. 28-29 (Nascenti homini omnifaria semina et omnigenae vitae germina indidit Pater. Quae quisque excoluerit illa adolescent, et fructus suos ferent in illo.):
The Father infused in man, at birth, every sort of seed and sprouts of every kind of life. These seeds will grow and bear their fruit in each man who will cultivate them.
Oration on the Dignity of Man (1496)

Life, Angels, Birth

“Sure, everybody wants to play God, but for me it's a full-time job.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 20

Time

“It would be the greatest disaster which could befall our House if any untoward accident befall you, which may God avert! Do not hesitate to open letters addressed to me. Your love for me and the absolute confidence between us make me feel that I cannot have any secrets from you.”

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

William talking to his brother John, as quoted in William the Silent (1897) by Frederic Harrison p. 54

Love, Secret, Feeling, Confidence

“!-- What you have to do first is separate yourself from the world, most new-born babies don’t see any difference between them, their playpen and their Dad. It’s all them. Only after a little while do they start to realise that it’s not all me, just this bit is me. So by the invention of something similar to the word or concept ‘I’ we separate ourselves from the universe. Then we start to separate up the universe. We will divide sky from ground, the organic from inorganic. Looked at like this, doesn’t it provide a literal interpretation of the Biblical Creation story. -->If you take the idea of God in the Bible as a metaphor for any nascent, formative just-created intelligence, is that not how we all create the universe. We divide the firmament up from the waters of the abyss, and the key to how to do this is in the first line: in the beginning, there was the word. By giving sky one word, the ground into another, we break the universe down into manageable things that we can interact with through language.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

De Abaitua interview (1998)

World, Intelligence, Idea, Universe

“The most destructive criticism has not been able to dethrone Christ as the incarnation of perfect holiness. The waves of a tossing and restless sea of unbelief break at His feet, and He stands still the supreme model, the inspiration of great souls, the rest of the weary, the fragrance of all Christendom, the one divine flower in the garden of God.”

Herrick Johnson (1832–1913) American clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 57.

Soul, Flowers, Christ, Perfection

“The Oresteia, King Lear, Dostoevsky's The Devils no less than the art of Giotto or the Passions of Bach, inquire into, dramatize, the relations of man and woman to the existence of the gods or of God.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Source: Real Presences (1989), III: Presences, Ch. 6 (p. 225).

Art, Passion

“God's servant is something; God's slave is greater.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Bhakti

“Slaves, though held by the laws of men, are free by the laws of God.”

John Jay (1745–1829) American politician and a founding father of the United States

As quoted in "The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question" https://books.google.com/books?id=y3RaAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA69&dq=%22We+intend+this+Constitution+to+be+the+great+charter+of+human+liberty+to+the+unborn+%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAGoVChMI2ai6jcCsxwIVRRs-Ch38_wz2#v=onepage&q=%22We%20intend%20this%20Constitution%20to%20be%20the%20great%20charter%20of%20human%20liberty%20to%20the%20unborn%20%22&f=false (18 October 1859), by George William Curtis, Orations and Addresses of George William Curtis.

Men, Law

“I was told you either stand or you fall, as long as you know when you walk you holding' hands with a god. That alone can turn the dark to a walk in the park.”

Blu (1983) American rapper and music producer

The World Is (Below the Heavens)
Below the Heavens (2007)

“Our high Father, God Almighty, which is Being, He knew and loved us from afore any time: of which knowing, in His marvellous deep charity and the foreseeing counsel of all the blessed Trinity, He willed that the Second Person should become our Mother. Our Father, our Mother worketh, our good Lord the Holy Ghost confirmeth: and therefore it belongeth to us to love our God in whom we have our being: Him reverently thanking and praising for our making, mightily praying to our Mother for mercy and pity, and to our Lord the Holy Ghost for help and grace.
For in these three is all our life: Nature, Mercy, Grace: whereof we have meekness and mildness; patience and pity; and hating of sin and of wickedness, — for it belongeth properly to virtue to hate sin and wickedness. And thus is Jesus our Very Mother in Nature of our first making; and He is our Very Mother in Grace, by taking our nature made. All the fair working, and all the sweet natural office of dearworthy Motherhood is impropriated to the Second Person: for in Him we have this Godly Will whole and safe without end, both in Nature and in Grace, of His own proper Goodness.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

Summations, Chapter 59

Love, Life, Hate, Nature

“Commentators — even, and especially, Christian ones — frequently lapse into a kind of moral parochialism when it comes to discussions about animals, as if God only cared for one of the millions of species in the created world. This, in turn, has led to a practical form of idolatry. By "idolatry" I mean here the deification of the human species by regarding human beings as the sole, main, or even exclusive concern of God the Creator.”

Andrew Linzey (1952) British theologian and divine

Source: Animal Gospel: Christian Faith as if Animals Mattered (1998), p. 115

World, Animals

“No church is a fit temple of God where a man, because of his color, is excluded or made to occupy a corner. Religion teaches that we cannot be pleasing to God unless we look upon mankind as children of our Father in heaven. And they who order and compel a man because he is colored to betake himself to a corner marked off for his race, practically contradict the principles of justice and of equal rights established by the God of Mercy, who lives on the altar.”

John Ireland (bishop) (1838–1918) Catholic bishop

Sermon at St. Augustine Catholic Church (1890)

Children, Religion, Justice, Color

“My brother and I have, after many years, achieved our importance to each other as a difference. Because it is sometimes difficult for my brother to climb the steps to my apartment, he will often come by and we will sit in his car and talk. We quite enjoy one another’s company. My brother is no less a good man for not believing in God; and I am no better a man because I believe. It is simply that religion gives me a sense—no, not a sense, a reason, no, not exactly a reason, an understanding—that everyone matters.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (2013)

Religion, Cars, Understanding, Sense

“The real installation of God has to be done within one’s heart.”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

About God (25 Apr '15)

Heart

“If there is anything so precious that without it history and the world will be destroyed, where will you keep it? You will naturally want to keep it in the deepest part of your mind. If you desire to place it in the depths of your mind, it needs to be invisible. It is for this very reason that God exists as an invisible being. It is fortunate that He is invisible, for if He were visible how could a great contest to gain Him be avoided? It would be difficult for God to endure the pain of seeing it.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

The Way of God's Will Chapter 1-1. The Will of God http://www.unification.net/wogw/wogw1-01.html Translated 1980.

Pain, World, History, Nature

“The Fascist State has never tried to create its own God, as at one moment Robespierre and the wildest extremists of the Convention tried to do; nor does it vainly seek to obliterate religion from the hearts of men as does Bolshevism: Fascism respects the God of the ascetics, of the saints, of the heroes, and also God as seen and prayed to by the simple and primitive heart of the people.”

Benito Mussolini book The Doctrine of Fascism

The Doctrine of Fascism, June 1932. Quoted in Charles Floyd Delzell, Mediterranean Fascism, 1919-45 Springer, 1971
1930s

Men, People, Religion, Heart

“Feuerbach … recognizes … "even love, in itself the truest, most inward sentiment, becomes an obscure, illusory one through religiousness, since religious love loves man only for God’s sake, therefore loves man only apparently, but in truth God only.” Is this different with moral love? Does it love the man, this man for this man’s sake, or for morality’s sake, for Man’s sake, and so—for homo homini Deus—for God’s sake?”

Max Stirner book The Ego and Its Own

Cambridge 1995, p. 56
The Ego and Its Own (1845)

Love, Truth

“Each human reality is at the same time a direct project to metamorphose its own For-itself into an In-itself-For-itself, a project of the appropriation of the world as a totality of being-in-itself, in the form of a fundamental quality. Every human reality is a passion in that it projects losing itself so as to found being and by the same stroke to constitute the In-itself which escapes contingency by being its own foundation, the Ens causa sui, which religions call God. Thus the passion of man is the reverse of that of Christ, for man loses himself as man in order that God may be born. But the idea of God is contradictory and we lose ourselves in vain. Man is a useless passion.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Being and Nothingness

Part 4, Chapter 2, III
Being and Nothingness (1943)

World, Religion, Idea, Reality

“Therefore, Sir, let it be your Majesty's continuall study (as called and charged thereunto by God) to reforme the universall enormities of your country, and first (taking example of the princely prophet David) to begin at your Majesty's owne house, familie and court, and purge the same of all suspicion of Papists and Atheists and Newtrals, whereof this Revelation foretelleth that the number shall greatly increase in these latter daies. For shall any Prince be able to be one of the destroyers of that great seate, and a purger of the world from Antichristianisme, who purgeth not his owne countrie? Shall he purge his whole countrie who purgeth not his owne house? Or shall he purge his house, who is not purged himself by private meditations with his God?”

John Napier (1550–1617) Scottish mathematician

A Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation of St. John (1593) as quoted by Cargill Gilston Knott, Napier Tercentenary Memorial Volume (1915)

World, Family, Study, Housing

“Heil Hitler! (when asked to state his name) You know my name well. Julius Streicher! The Bolsheviks will hang you one day! (to the hangman) Purim festival, 1946! I am now by God my father! Adele, my dear wife.”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

Last words, 10/16/46, quoted in "The Quest for the Nazi Personality" - Page 157 by Eric A. Zillmer - History - 1995

“Before Christianity suicide was not in any way troubling. Our lives were our own, and when we tired of them we were at liberty to end them. One might think that as Christianity has declined, this freedom would be reclaimed. Instead secular creeds have sprung up, in which each person’s life belongs to everyone else. To hand back the gift of life because it does not please is still condemned as a kind of blasphemy, though the offended deity is now humanity instead of God.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

Sweet Morality (p. 231-2)
The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death (2011)

Life, Way, Thinking, Suicide

“I am at peace with God; my conflict is with man.”

Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British comic actor and filmmaker

Monsieur Verdoux (1947). Chaplin's answer as a Verdoux that is to be guillotined and receives a visit from a priest who tell him 'I've come to ask you to make your peace with God'. "Comedy Quotes from the Movies" (2001), Larry Langman, Paul Gold, Ed. McFarland, p. 274

Peace

“Every time a good child dies, an angel of God comes down to earth. He takes the child in his arms, spreads out his great white wings, and flies with it all over the places the child loved on earth. The angel plucks a large handful of flowers, and they carry it with them up to God, where the flowers bloom more brightly than they ever did on earth.”

Hans Christian Andersen book The Angel

The Angel
Fairy Tales (1835)

Love, Angels, Flowers, Time

“If indeed there be a god in heaven.”

Andrew Lang (1844–1912) Scots poet, novelist and literary critic

Andrew Lang (1879), with S. H. Butcher, prose translation of Homer's Odyssey, Book XVII, line 484.

“Praise Him whose limit cannot be found.
They who practise truth and perform service shall obtain their reward.
He who knoweth divine knowledge is the learned pandit.
He who knoweth the one God in all creatures would never say 'I exist by myself '.
When the hair groweth white, it shineth without soap.
King Death's hunters follow him who is bound by the chain of mammon.
The Creator, Lord of the world, giveth sustenance to His slaves.
All the world is bound in His bonds; no other authority prevaileth.
He who hath renounced the singing of God's word, is arrogant in his language.
He who fashioned vessels made kilns in which He put them and burnt them.
The servant who performeth the Guru's work, who remaineth obedient to His commands,
Who deemeth bad and good as the same, shall in this way be absorbed in Him.
He who made the four Veds, the four mines, and the four ages
Hath been in every age a Jogi, a worldly man, or a learned pandit.”

Nanak (1469–1539) Founder of Sikhism

Life Of Guru Nanak: Chapter I

Death, Truth, Age, World

“To the question, What is the right relation between reason and religion, you will now understand me to answer, It is that reason should be the source of which religion is the issue; that reason, when most itself, will unquestionably be religious, but that religion must for just that cause be entirely rational; that reason is the final authority from which religion must derive its warrant, and with which its contents must comply; that all religious doctrines and instrumentalities, all religious practices, all religious institutions, and all records of religion, whether in tradition or in scripture, must alike submit their claims at the bar of general human reason, and that only those approved in that tribunal can be regarded as of weight or of obligation; in short, that the only real basis of religion is our human reason, the only seat of its authority our genuine human nature, the only sufficient witness of God the human soul. Reason, I shall endeavour to show, is not confined to the mastery of the sense-world and the goods of this world only, but does cover all the range of being, and found and rule the world eternal; it is not merely natural, it is also spiritual; it is itself, when come to itself, the true divine revelation.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Right Relation of Reason to Religion, p.224-5

World, Religion, Soul, Understanding

“But no sympathy reached His convulsed spirit. He was alone; alone, enduring the curse for us; alone, "bearing our sins in His own body on the tree," and exhausting the fierceness of eternal justice; alone, without succor from man; alone, without one strengthening whisper from angel; above all, alone, without one ray from His Father's countenance. And that expiring cry, "My God! My God! why hast Thou forsaken me?" was the bitter, dreary, dismal, piercing wail of a soul utterly deserted — wrapped, shrouded in essential unmitigated desolation.”

Richard Fuller (minister) (1804–1876) United States Baptist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 73.

Justice, Angels, Soul, Tree

“It is impossible for the mind which is not totally destitute of piety, to behold the sublime, the awful, the amazing works of creation and providence — the heavens with their luminaries, the mountains, the ocean, the storm, the earthquake, the volcano, the circuit of the seasons, and the revolutions of empires — without marking in them all the mighty hand of God, and feeling strong emotions of reverence toward the Author of these stupendous works.”

Timothy Dwight IV (1752–1817) American historian

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 273.

Feeling, Mountain, Strong, Season

“If one has lived long enough, there is danger of succumbing to the word “God” merely because it was always there.”

Elias Canetti (1905–1994) Bulgarian-born Swiss and British jewish modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and non-fiction writer

J. Agee, trans. (1989), p. 108
Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock] (1987)

“God in Christ is a different kind of lord who is not in solidarity with the powerful but in solidarity with the lowly. … This position—at the heart of the new world proclaimed by Paul—directly contradicts the logic of the Roman Empire.”

Joerg Rieger (1963) divinity school scholar

Source: Christ and Empire (2007), p. 52

World, Heart, Christ

“Where is your God?'
That's what my friends ask me,
And I say it's taken him so long
'Cause we've got so far to come.”

Stevie Wonder (1950) American musician

Heaven Is 10 Zillion Light Years Away
Song lyrics, Fulfillingness' First Finale (1974)

“Beware of the man whose god is in the skies.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

#83
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

“I would not feel a lot of trust or hope in God if He was simply in touch with me without any impetus, power, or force to accomplish things. You may not always know the end game, but He is working for you.”

John Townsend (1952) Canadian clinical psychologist and author

Where Is God (2009, Thomas Nelson publishers)

Hope, Feeling, Game

“Any talk about God that fails to make God's liberation of the oppressed its starting point is not Christian.”

James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian

Source: Speaking the Truth: Ecumenism, Liberation, and Black Theology (1986), p. 4

“Have we not all one Father?
Has not one God created us?
Why do we deal treacherously with one another
By profaning the covenant of the fathers?”

Malachi Biblical prophet

Source: Book of Malachi, Chapter 2, Verse 10, Lines 1-4, (NKJV)

“God infinite, omniscient and omnipotent, woke me up and I was amazed! I have read some clues through His created things, in all of which, is His will; even in the smallest things, and the most minute! How much wisdom! What an inscrutable perfection!”

Carl Linnaeus book Systema Naturae

Imperium Naturæ, 12th edition.
Deum sempiternum, immensum, omniscium, omnipotentem expergefactus a tergo transeuntem vidi et obstupui! legi aliquot Ejus vestigia per creata rerum, in quibus omnibus, etiam in minimis, ut fere nullis, quæ Vis! quanta Sapientia! quam inextricabilis Perfectio!
Systema Naturae

Wisdom, Reading, Perfection

“Women are indebted today for their emancipation from a position of hopeless degradation, not to their religion nor to Jehovah, but to the justice and honor of the men who have defied his commands. That she does not crouch today where St. Paul tried to bind her, she owes to the men who are grand and brave enough to ignore St. Paul, and rise superior to his God.”

Helen H. Gardener (1853–1925) American writer and academic

Helen Gardner : ‘Men, Women and Gods’, p. 30, as quoted in K. M. Talreja, Holy Vedas and Holy Bible: A Comparative Study https://books.google.com/books?id=9qkoAAAAYAAJ, New Delhi: Rashtriya Chetana Sangathan, 2000

Women, Men, Religion, Justice

“When you keep your thoughts fixed on God, the things of God will naturally permeate your life, and thus your goals will be in line with his will and his kingdom.”

Tommy Newberry American writer

The 4:8 Principle.
The 4:8 Principle (2007)

Life, Nature

“26. And [the Messiah] said unto them, "If a man told God that he wanted most of all to help the suffering world, no matter the price to himself, and God answered and told him what he must do, should the man do as he is told?"27. "Of course, Master!" cried the many. "It should be pleasure for him to suffer the tortures of hell itself, should God ask it!"28. "No matter what those tortures, no matter how difficult the task?"29. "Honor to be hanged, glory to be nailed to a tree and burned, if so be that God has asked," said they.30. "And what would you do," the Master said unto the multitude, "if God spoke directly to your face and said, 'I COMMAND THAT YOU BE HAPPY IN THE WORLD, AS LONG AS YOU LIVE.' What would you do then?"31. And the multitude was silent, not a voice, not a sound was heard upon the hillsides, across the valleys where they stood.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)

Happiness, Pleasure, World, Hell

“…since God has appointed one remedy for all the evils in the world and that is a contented spirit.”

Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667) English clergyman

"Holy Living" (1650) ch. 2, section 6. "Of Contentedness in all Estates".

World, Evil

“There is a lot of talk amongst Bush's opponents that we should turn this war over to the United Nations. Why should the other countries of this world, countries who tried to talk us out of this folly, now have to clean up our mess? I oppose the U. N. or anyone else risking the lives of their citizens to extract us from our debacle. I'm sorry, but the majority of Americans supported this war once it began and, sadly, that majority must now sacrifice their children until enough blood has been let that maybe — just maybe — God and the Iraqi people will forgive us in the end.”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

[Heads Up... from Michael Moore, MichaelMoore.com, 14 April 2004, http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mikes-letter/heads-up-from-michael-moore]
2004

War, Children, People, World

“There are two flavors of God people: those whose God is natural and those whose God is supernatural. Certainly there are a lot of people within religious naturalism who have no problem with God language — God as love, God as evolution, God as process. People see God as part of nature and give God-attributes to the part of nature that they find most sacred. I encounter people like that all the time.”

Ursula Goodenough (1943) American biologist

Science and Spirit interview (2004)

Love, People, Nature, Problem

“I know there is a hope in religion; I know there is faith and I know there is prayer about religion and necessary to it, but God is most glorified when there is peace on earth and good will towards men”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

As quoted in The Cambridge Companion to Frederick Douglass (2009), by Maurice S. Lee, Cambridge University Press, p. 70

Men, Peace, Faith, Religion

“The Gospel of Efficiency. Every era, as Carl Becker has reminded us in his Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers, has a few words that epitomize its world-view and that are fixed points by which all else can be measured. In the Middle Ages they were such words as faith, grace, and God; in the eighteenth century they were such words as reason, nature, and rights; during the past fifty years in America they have been such words as cause, reaction, scientific, expert, progress and efficient. Efficiency is a natural ideal for a relatively immature and extrovert culture, but presumably its high development and wide acceptance are due to the fact that ours has been, par excellence, a machine civilization. At any event, efficiency grew to be a national catchword in the Progressive era as mechanization became the rule in American life, and it frequently appears in the literature of the period entangled in mechanical metaphor.”

Dwight Waldo (1913–2000) American political scientist

Source: The Administrative State, 1948, p. 19

Life, Age, World, Faith

“What then is the content of the concept of God common to all monotheistic religions? What remains, it seems, is only the emotional content: the highest enthusiasm and respect, humility and submissiveness”

Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (1890–1963) Philosopher, logician

Source: Problems and theories of philosophy, 1949, p. 152, as cited in Łukasiewicz, 2016.

Religion

“The Church of God becomes concrete and visible only in a community of people who have experienced the presence of God and responded to his saving activity.”

Kurien Kunnumpuram (1931–2018) Indian theologian

Kunnumpuram, Kurien, 2011 “Theological Exploration,” Jnanadeepa: Pune Journal of Religious Studies 14/2 (July-Dec 2011)
On the Church

People, Communication

“We set the treatment of bodies so high above the treatment of souls, that the physician occupies a higher place in society than the school-master. The governess is to have every one of God's gifts; she is to do that which the mother herself is incapable of doing; but our son must not degrade himself by marrying the governess, nor our daughter the tutor, though she might marry the medical man.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Cassandra (1860)

School, Soul, Daughters

“One of the reasons why I believe in God is there is no other explanation for Apple's continuous survival than the existence of God.”

Guy Kawasaki (1954) American businessman and author

Speech at Stanford University 2 March 2011 http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2669

““Can’t you understand what an important task we’ve been entrusted with?”
“By whom, or what? God? This whole experience has made me agree even more with Camus: if there is a God, I despise Him.””

Ken Grimwood book Replay

Source: Replay (1986), Chapter 11 (p. 149)

Understanding

“The creationist is a sham religious person who, curiously, has no true sense of religion. In the language of religion, it is the facts we observe in the world around us that must be seen to constitute the words of God. Documents, whether the Bible, Qur'an or those writings that held such force for Velikovsky, are only the words of men. To prefer the words of men to those of God is what one can mean by blasphemy. This, we think, is the instinctive point of view of most scientists who, curiously again, have a deeper understanding of the real nature of religion than have the many who delude themselves into a frenzied belief in the words, often the meaningless words, of men. Indeed, the lesser the meaning, the greater the frenzy, in something like inverse proportion.”

Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) British astronomer

Our Place in the Cosmos (1993), p. 14

Men, World, Religion, Understanding

“Nothing radically changes when instead of human satisfaction, we think of the satisfaction of some heavenly being! God’s person displaces the problem and does not abolish it.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: On Nietzsche (1945), p. xx

Problem, Thinking, Change, Personality

“To have it, we have to care about those who are far from God.”

Craig Groeschel (1967) American priest

It – How Churches and Leaders Can Get It and Keep It (2008, Zondervan)

“He found oddly little regret in his heart for his own lost life. He'd seen more of the world than most men ever did, and he'd had his chances, though the gods knew he'd made little enough of them. Marshaling his thoughts, as he sheltered under his covers, he realized with some wonder that his greatest dismay was for the work he'd be forced to leave undone.”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

Source: World of the Five Gods series, The Curse of Chalion (2000), p. 233

Life, Men, World, Chance

“Wednesday (as Pocahontas): You have taken the land which is rightfully ours. Years from now, my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations; your people will wear cardigans and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the roadside; you will play golf and enjoy hot hors d'oeuvres. My people will have pain and degradation; your people will have stick-shifts. The gods of my tribe have spoken. They have said, "Do not trust the Pilgrims, especially Sarah Miller."
Becky (as Sarah Miller): Gary, she's changing the words!
Wednesday (as Pocahontas): And for all these reasons, I have decided to scalp you and burn your village to the ground.”

Paul Rudnick (1957) American playwright and screenwiter

See also
Addams Family Values (1993)

Pain, People, Home, Drink

“Amazingly, the religion of Buddhism denies that God even exists. It teaches that life and death are sort of an illusion. That’s like standing at the door of the plane and saying, “I’m not really here, and there’s no such thing as the law of gravity, and no ground that I’m going to hit.” That may temporarily help you deal with your fears, but it doesn’t square with reality. And it doesn’t deal with your real problem of having sinned against God and the reality of hell.”

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

The Origin of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition (2009)

Life, Death, Fear, Religion

“Achilles Peleus Son's destructive Rage,
Great Goddess, sing, which did the Greeks engage
In many Woes, and mighty Hero's Ghosts
Sent down untimely to the Stygian Coasts:
Devouring Vultures on their Bodies prey'd,
And greedy Dogs, (so was Jove's Will obey'd;)
Because Great Agamemnon fell at odds
With stern Achilles, Off-spring of the Gods.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

Book I, opening lines
Homer His Iliads Translated (1660)

Dogs, Spring, Rage, Singing

“During the tribulation there will be a national turning of Israel to the Lord; they will walk in righteousness. … God established an everlasting covenant with Israel and it will be of everlasting duration.”

Paul P. Enns (1937) American theologian

Source: Heaven Revealed (Moody, 2011), p. 90

“He lived year after year. He attended only to himself and to God and this picture-but he did not understand himself.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: 1840s, Two Ethical-Religious Minor Essays (1849), p. 57

Understanding

“As the writer of the lyric of the song ‘God’s Country’, I am outraged by the suggestion that somehow I am connected with, believe in, or am sympathetic with Communist or totalitarian philosophy.”

Yip Harburg (1896–1981) American song lyricist

Letter to the House Un-American Activities Committee (1950), as quoted in "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", by Scott Jacobs, in The Week Behind (23 September 2009) http://www.theweekbehind.com/2009/09/23/somewhere-over-the-rainbow/

Country

“On whistling stormcloud; on Zephyrus wing,
The Spirit-choir loud the world-anthems sing;
Hark! List to their voice: "We have passed through death's door,
There's no Death; rejoice! life lives evermore."

We are, have always been, will ever be.
We are a portion of Eternity,
Older than Creation, a part of One Great Whole,
Is each Individual and immortal Soul.

On Time's whirring loom our garments we've wrought,
Eternally weave we on network of Thought,
Our kin and our country, by Mind brought to birth,
Were patterned in heaven ere molded on earth.

We have shone in the jewel and danced on the wave,
We have sparkled in fire, defying the grave;
Through shapes ever-changing, in size, kind and name
Our individual essence still is the same.

And when we have reached to the highest of all,
The gradations of growth our minds shall recall,
So that link by link we may join them together
And trace step by step the way we reached thither.

Thus in time we shall know, if only we do
What lifts, ennobles, is right and true.
With kindness to all, with malice to none,
That in and through us God's will may be done.”

Max Heindel (1865–1919) American asrologer and occultist

We Are Eternal (1911) <br class="br">Source: http://www.rosicrucian.com/rms/rmseng01.htm http://www.rosicrucian.com/rms/rmseng01.htm

Life, Death, World, Way

“Religious beliefs are counterfactual insofar as they are anomalous (e. g., God is gendered but sexless; Saturn devours his own children; lambs lie with lions), implausible (e. g., Athena bursts forth from Zeus's head; the Zai:rean Nkundo hero Lianja springs fully armed from the leg of his mother; Lao-Tse either emerges with his white beard from the left side of his mother, who bore him for eighty years, or is born immaculately of a shooting star), and, most significantly, counterintuitive (e. g., the Judea-Christian God is a sentient and emotional being with no body; Greek, Hindu, Maya, and Egyptian deities are half-human half-beast; the Chinese monkey god can travel thousands of kilometers at one somersault).”

Scott Atran (1952) Anthropologist

Introduction: an evolutionary riddle, p. 4
In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (2002)

Children, Lie, Travel, Star

“"God is just and punishes us; that is all we need to know; as far as we are concerned the rest is merely curiosity." Such was the conclusion of Lamennais (Essai, etc., partie, chap. vii.), an opinion shared by many others. Calvin also held the same view. But is there anyone content with this? Pure curiosity! — to call this load that well nigh crushes our heart pure curiosity!”

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

Heart

“Do I believe in God? Do I believe in me?
Some people wanna die so they can be free
(I said) Life is just a game, we're all just the same…do you wanna play?”

Prince (1958–2016) American pop, songwriter, musician and actor

Controversy
Song lyrics, Controversy (1981)

Life, People, Game

“Was Rome dispensing "God's divine Justice" when it forbade Peter and Paul from preaching in public? Were Peter and Paul "justly reprimanded for their sins" by being imprisoned and executed? Was Jesus being justly punished for his sin when the Sanhedrin sent him to be executed by Pilate? Was Germany dispensing divine wrath to Israel, Poland, etc., when they plotted to take over the world and exterminate all non-Aryans? … I am trying to say that the State does not have a license to do anything it wants … and when we are ordered by the State to violate God's law, we must not bow to Baal. Civil disobedience is just as mandatory as civil subservience. It all must past through the filter of conscience, not to mention Christ's mandate that we recognize that the Kingdom has already come. We are now its citizens. … we are under no obligation to abdicate conscience on behalf of the State.”

Joshua Casteel (1979–2012) US Army soldier, lecturer, and writer

Source: Letters from Abu Ghraib (2008), pp. 64-65.

World, Justice, Law, Past

“I know many people who like watching commercials because they're so funny. They provide relaxation and diversion. People come home after a day's work, from which they derive little satisfaction, and feel the need for diversion and amusement. The word diversion itself is already very significant. When Pascal uses the word diversion he means that people who follow the path of God deviate from the path which leads them to God as a result of diversion and amusement. Instead of thinking of God, they amuse themselves. So, instead of thinking about the problems which have been created by technology and our work we want to amuse ourselves.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

The Betrayal by Technology (1993 film)

People, Feeling, Home, Problem

“Behold, now, another providence of God. A ship comes into the harbor.”

William Bradford (1590–1657) English Separatist leader in Leiden, Holland and in Plymouth Colony (1590-1657)

Ch. 6.

“Toscanini was hailing a great artist, but that voice was more than a magnificent personal talent. It was the religious voice of a whole religious people — probably the most God-obsessed (and man-despised) people since the ancient Hebrews.”

Whittaker Chambers (1901–1961) Defected Communist spy

"In Egypt Land," December 30, 1946
TIME magazine (1939-1948)

People, Personality

“Damn everyone to Hell. And damn the bloody forest. And God, too, for that matter.
He looked up fearfully from his chill handful of water, but his silent blasphemy went unpunished.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 16, “The White Arrow” (p. 238).

Hell, Water

“I would rather see Rome ruled by a man who once had to ask his accountant tricky questions before his steward could pay the butcher’s bill than by some mad limb like Nero, who was brought up believing himself the son and the grandson of gods, and who thought wearing the purple gave him free rein to indulge his personal vanities, execute real talent, bankrupt the Treasury, burn half of Rome – and bore the living daylights out of paying customers in theatres!”

Lindsey Davis book Shadows in Bronze

Shadows in Bronze

Question, Personality, Madness

“VII. Let me call your attention to the recent tragedy in New Orleans, whereof the facts are obtained entirely through Pro-Slavery channels. A considerable body of resolute, able-bodied men, held in Slavery by two Rebel sugar-planters in defiance of the Confiscation Act which you have approved, left plantations thirty miles distant and made their way to the great mart of the South-West, which they knew to be the indisputed possession of the Union forces. They made their way safely and quietly through thirty miles of Rebel territory, expecting to find freedom under the protection of our flag. Whether they had or had not heard of the passage of the Confiscation Act, they reasoned logically that we could not kill them for deserting the service of their lifelong oppressors, who had through treason become our implacable enemies. They came to us for liberty and protection, for which they were willing render their best service: they met with hostility, captivity, and murder. The barking of the base curs of Slavery in this quarter deceives no one--not even themselves. They say, indeed, that the negroes had no right to appear in New Orleans armed (with their implements of daily labor in the cane-field); but no one doubts that they would gladly have laid these down if assured that they should be free. They were set upon and maimed, captured and killed, because they sought the benefit of that act of Congress which they may not specifically have heard of, but which was none the less the law of the land which they had a clear right to the benefit of--which it was somebody's duty to publish far and wide, in order that so many as possible should be impelled to desist from serving Rebels and the Rebellion and come over to the side of the Union, They sought their liberty in strict accordance with the law of the land--they were butchered or re-enslaved for so doing by the help of Union soldiers enlisted to fight against slaveholding Treason. It was somebody's fault that they were so murdered--if others shall hereafter stuffer in like manner, in default of explicit and public directions to your generals that they are to recognize and obey the Confiscation Act, the world will lay the blame on you. Whether you will choose to hear it through future History and 'at the bar of God, I will not judge. I can only hope.”

Horace Greeley (1811–1872) American politician and publisher

1860s, The Prayer of the Twenty Millions (1862)

Men, Hostility, World, Law

“Suddenly I saw the red blood trickle down from under the Garland hot and freshly and right plenteously, as it were in the time of His Passion when the Garland of thorns was pressed on His blessed head who was both God and Man, the same that suffered thus for me. I conceived truly and mightily that it was Himself shewed it me, without any mean.
And in the same Shewing suddenly the Trinity fulfilled my heart most of joy. And so I understood it shall be in heaven without end to all that shall come there. For the Trinity is God: God is the Trinity; the Trinity is our Maker and Keeper, the Trinity is our everlasting love and everlasting joy and bliss, by our Lord Jesus Christ. And this was shewed in the First and in all: for where Jesus appeareth, the blessed Trinity is understood, as to my sight.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The First Revelation, Chapter 4

Love, Suffering, Passion, Time

“Fear made the gods; audacity has made kings.”

Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon (1707–1777) French writer

La crainte fit les dieux; l'audace a fait les rois.
During the French Revolution; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 46.

Fear

“Thanks to God's direct intervention, I had risen phoenixlike from the ashes of self-pity and despair, and though my wounds were still raw, I trusted that in time they, too, would heal.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Page 282
2000s, (2008)

Time, Despair

“There is no burden of the spirit but is lightened by kneeling under it. Little by little, the bitterest feelings are sweetened by the mention of them in prayer. And agony itself stops swelling, if we can only cry sincerely, " My God, my God!"”

William Mountford (1816–1885) English Unitarian preacher and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 466.

Feeling, Cry, Sincerity

“I am sorry… to have occasion to admonish Mr. Gibbon, that he should have distinguished better than he has done between christianity itself, and the corruptions of it. …He should not have taken it for granted, that the doctrine of three persons in one God, or the doctrine of atonement for the sins of all mankind, by the death of one man, were any parts of the christian system; when, if he had read the New Testament for himself, he must have seen the doctrine of the proper unity of God, and also that of his free mercy to the penitent, in almost every page of it.”

Joseph Priestley book An History of the Corruptions of Christianity

General Conclusions, Part I : Containing Considerations addressed to Unbelievers and especially to Mr. Gibbon
An History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782)

Death, Reading, Parting, Personality

“Jesus is the true manifestation of God, and He is manifested to be the regenerating power of a divine life.”

Horace Bushnell (1802–1876) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 85.

Life

“At this moment, God is watching your life and at some point in this trial, He will say enough. You don’t need to falter.”

James MacDonald (1960) American pastor

Source: Always True (Moody, 2011), p. 109

Life

“A Muslim is he who carries the fear of God in his heart and tries, by following the ways of Islam, to rise in spiritual stature: and not merely he who happens to have been born in a Muslim house and bears a Muslim name.”

Muhammad Asad (1900–1992) Austro-Hungarian writer and academic

Source: This Law of Ours and Other Essays (1987), Chapter: Calling All Muslims, Radio Broadcast # 7, p 117

Fear, Way, Heart, Housing

“I intend to make this day forward the first day of the rest of my life. We can change our lives. You say, 'Well, what's wrong with your life, Michael?' Well, it's not that there's anything wrong with my life, but it's not what I want it to be. I don't feel that I'm inspiring people in the way I want to inspire them. You see, you can inspire through hate; you can inspire through love, hope, humor – the positives. I look at the history of the world, and I look at the world today, and I realize that if we don't inspire each other through positive attributes – love, hope and humor – we're gonna descend into the barbarism of the Left and the barbarism of ISIS. You like me to be hard, you like me to be tough, you like me to give you the breaking news, you like me to be cynical, you like me to analytical, you like me to give you stuff that you don't hear anywhere else – I get that. But there's a limit to that. There's a lot of area beyond all that.I think of Christmas. Christianity is the religion of peace. Christianity is the true religion of peace. 'Turn the other cheek.' 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' These are messages that come from Christianity. What can you do in an age of deceit and lies and terror? You can go to church again. However un-needing you think you really are, you know in your heart that there's something missing in you. You know that you crave something greater. Because the human being is not a dog. We are unique creatures. And we need something different than the bear, the dog, the snake and the eagle. What is that thing that we need? It's that 'thing' called God.The media has promulgated the idea, and promoted the idea, that we only need food and fornication. And so when people are empty that's what they seek. And when they are really empty, what happens? They become drug addicts. They start with marijuana, they end up with heroin, crack, you name it. As God has been driven out of America, drugs have entered America. What does an empty soul look to do? An empty soul looks to fill itself. Just as an empty vessel needs to be filled with a liquid to be complete, an empty human being needs to fill itself to be complete. And how does it fill itself? I know, again, many of you will laugh because you're cynical; it's through those things I'm talking about – inspiration. Do you think a musician can play one day without inspiration from somewhere? The greatest artists in the history of the world were not drug-addicts. They were usually God-addicts. Look at the greatest art in history, you'll find most of them were super religious people, who literally saw God in their living room, and they took the power of God and that was transmitted through the paintbrush, or through that piece of marble. How could a man like Rodin take a piece of inert stone, and inside that stone see the essence of the human form, and sculpt from that block of inert stone, a marble, the portrait of a human being that looks so real – a hundred years later I go and look at them in the museum, and literally inside that carved eye I can see the person; how is that possible? How? It's a different show than I've ever done in my 21 years, because each day to me – I must tell you – I see as my last day, my last day on Earth.”

Michael Savage (1942) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, and Author

The Savage Nation (1995- ), 2015

Love, Life, Hate, People

“To suggest that God specifically created a worm to torture small African children is blasphemy as far as I can see.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

Interview in Metro 29 Jan 2013

Children

“God has given to all things their course and decided how high and how far they may go, not higher, not lower.”

Paracelsus (1493–1541) Swiss physician and alchemist

Paracelsus - Doctor of our Time (1992)

“If we are to be morally and ethically responsible, there can be no turning back once we find, as we have found, that some of the most basic presuppositions of these values are mistaken. Playing God is indeed playing with fire. But that is what we mortals have done since Prometheus, the patron saint of dangerous discoveries. We play with fire and take the consequences, because the alternative is cowardice in the face of the unknown.”

Ronald Dworkin (1931–2013) American legal philosopher

Sovereign Virtue (2000), p. 446

“I discovered then that religion had to become real to me and I had to know God for myself. And I bowed down over that cup of coffee — I never will forget it. And oh yes, I prayed a prayer and I prayed out loud that night. I said, "Lord, I'm down here trying to do what's right. I think I'm right; I think the cause that we represent is right. But Lord, I must confess that I'm weak now; I'm faltering; I'm losing my courage. And I can't let the people see me like this because if they see me weak and losing my courage, they will begin to get weak." I wanted tomorrow morning to be able to go before the executive board with a smile on my face. And it seemed at that moment that I could hear an inner voice saying to me, "Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness, stand up for justice, stand up for truth. And lo I will be with you, even until the end of the world." And I'll tell you, I've seen the lightning flash. I've heard the thunder roll. I felt sin-breakers dashing, trying to conquer my soul. But I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. No, never alone. No, never alone. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Why Jesus Called A Man A Fool (1967)

People, Truth, World, Religion

“Thus today in the presence of all awakened Ones
I invite every living being to this festival
Giving both immediate and lasting joy.
May the gods and all others rejoice.”

Šantidéva (685–763) 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk and scholar

Bodhicaryavatara

Joy

“Thus did the Holy Harlots unhinge the brains of man,
and when they met and clashed with the pure Mountain Maidens,
they raised their white arms high, their armpits smelled of musk,
and, as the rites decreed, both fought their verbal war:
"God swoops from mountain peeks to eat and play on earth;
we are his food and drink and even his sacred toys —
and learn, O sterile maids, we are his soft, sweet mates.
Let her now leave who fears to merge with her dread God!"
The scornful savage mouth of Krino flashed reply:
"We will not leave! We guard the innocent soul of man!
God is a spirit with pure white wings, a soul that sails,
light, disembodied, deep in our thoughts, without embrace.
It's we who keep the world in bloom with virgin souls!"”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

From the Bull Ritual, Book VI, line 197
The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel (1938)

War, World, Fear, Food

“Now if thou be a bondslave vile become,
No wrong is that, but God's most righteous doom.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Or se tu se' vil serva, e il tuo servaggio
(Non ti lagnar) giustizia, e non oltraggio.
Canto I, stanza 51 (tr. Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

“Comrades and friends! for ours is strength
Has brooked the test of woes;
O worse-scarred hearts! these wounds at length
The Gods will heal, like those.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book I, p. 12

Heart

“Religion is essentially universal. If God is our common Father, His truth is our common property. But the religious world may be likened to a vast market, where every religious sect sells only a portion of truth. Religion is many-sided; but each individual, each nation, oftentimes adopts and represents only one side of religion. In different times and in different countries, therefore, we see not the entire religious life of humanity, but only partial religious life.”

Keshub Chunder Sen (1838–1884) Indian academic

Speech delivered at Freemasons’ Hall, Great Queen Street, London, in a meeting held to constitute a Theistic Association in London on 20th July 1870. See Universal Religion for full speech.

Life, Truth, World, Religion

“It is the only one in existence that might conceivably have been composed by God.”

Neville Cardus (1888–1975) English writer

Of Mozart's "The Magic Flute"; Manchester Guardian (1961)