Quotes about God
page 94

“[On handling stress] When you start projecting on the future—"Oh my God, I gotta do this and I’m not there yet"—well, of course you’re not there yet because you’re here now. That time will come…I try to stay in the moment as much as I can and find whatever joy I can in that moment, no matter what it is. Then it doesn’t feel as stressful.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Interview in First for Women (8 February 2010, p. 46) http://jennifer-beals.com/media/press/first.html.

Feeling, Time, Future, Joy

“[The Community's] crosses and trials give me confidence. But I derive my hope above all, and most especially, from our utter incapacity, for it is always upon nothingness that God is pleased to rear His works. If at any day we accomplish some good here, the glory will certainly be His alone, since He has employed for this end instruments more capable of spoiling everything than of making it succeed.”

Théodore Guérin (1798–1856) Catholic saint and nun from France

Letter to the Very Reverend A. Martin, V.G., Logansport, 1841-10-19.

Hope, Confidence, Communication

“Let us contemplate two epochal events in the long human story. One is the annunciation of the unity of God at Mt. Sinai. That same God was said to have made man, alone among living beings, in His image. Implicit in the unity of God was the corresponding unity of the human race. But it was only after more than three thousand years, that the Declaration of this unity was made in Philadelphia. One need not believe in direct divine intervention to think that it has been the peculiar mission of the American people to testify to the unity on earth of God, and of man. Such testimony could take no more evident form than in the denunciation of chattel slavery in the founding itself. That denunciation is prominent beyond doubt or denial, in the documents of the founding. Men of reason can agree with men of faith, that neither God nor man could have devised a more dramatic event than our founding to demonstrate to the world the meaning inherent in this unity.”

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

2000s, God Bless America (2008), Slavery and the Human Story

Men, People, World, Faith

“The men of God are like fishes in the ocean; they pop up into view on the surface here and there and everywhere, as they please.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

As quoted in "A feather on the breath of God" by Nur Elmessiri in Al-Ahram Weekly Online Issue No. 385 (9 - 15 July 1998) http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/1998/385/cu2.htm

Men, Fish

“That is one dark house your God lives in, man. Alec shook his head. You can keep your Age of Faith. Whyn’t you find somebody to worship who isn’t a shracking psychopath?”

Kage Baker book The Machine's Child

Source: The Machine's Child (2006), Chapter 21, “Santa Catalina Island, 1923 AD” (p. 227)

Age, Faith, Housing

“A terrible thing has happened to me: I believe I am finding God.”

Albert Gleizes (1881–1953) French painter

Quote of Gleizes, 1918; as cited by Daniel Robbins, in Albert Gleizes 1881 – 1953, A Retrospective Exhibition, published by The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1964 - in collaboration with Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris & Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund
remark to his wife Juliette Roche during the winter of 1918 at the Gleizes' rented house in Pelham, New York
1910s

“Sitting in Baghdad, listening to the God-awful propaganda rhetoric of the Iraqis but watching the often promiscuous American and British air attacks, I have a suspicion that what's gone wrong has nothing to do with plans. Indeed, I suspect there is no real overall plan. Because I rather think that this war's foundations were based not on military planning but on ideology.”

Robert Fisk (1946) English writer and journalist

The monster of Baghdad is now the hero of Arabia http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles202.htm, April 1, 2003 2003

War, Thinking

“As a Christian, same-sex marriage is not allowed. Woman was made for man, man was made for woman. For me, it’s common sense. Will you see any animals where male is to male and female is to female? The animals are better. They know how to distinguish, male or female. If we approve male on male, female on female, then man is worse than animal. Right? Even among animals… those of the same sex are not allowed to lie together. But I’m not condemning them. Just the marriage, the committing of sin against God.”

Manny Pacquiao (1978) Filipino boxer, basketball player, singer and politician, dancer.

Pacquiao's stand on Same-Sex marriage As quoted in Manny Pacquiao’s stand on same-sex marriage: ‘Mas masahol pa sa hayop ang tao’ http://www.interaksyon.com/interaktv/manny-pacquiaos-stand-on-same-sex-marriage-mas-masahol-pa-sa-hayop-ang-tao InterAksyon, February 15, 2016

Marriage, Lie, Sex, Sense

“You can't be a rascal for 40 years and then cop a plea the last minute. God keeps better books than that.”

Wilson Mizner (1876–1933) American writer

On his deathbed.
Quoted by Stuart B. McIver, Dreamers, Schemers and Scalawags, Pineapple Press, Sarasota, Florida, 1994. ISBN 1-56164-034-4.
On Death and Dying

Books

“God has given us the necessary faculties to become like him. Love, beauty and all divine qualities exist within us. We should make use of our faculties to express these divine qualities in our lives.”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

The Timeless Path (2009)

Love, Beauty

“The idea of liberty, or the liberty which is a blessing, being an emancipation of the passions from moral restraint had no place in the constitutional doctrine of the novus ordo seclorum. The liberty which is a blessing must be good for the one who possesses it. It must therefore be a good in the sight of God, who is the source of blessings. Such a good must point to felicity, whether in this world or the next, as its consummation. By calling the advantages of liberty "blessings," the Constitution, which in certain respects makes perhaps the most radical break in all human history with all that has gone before it, nonetheless, in its understanding of the connection between happiness and virtue, aligns itself decisively with traditional moral philosophy and moral theology.”

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

2000s, The American Founding as the Best Regime (2002)

Happiness, World, History, Idea

“Story! God bless you! I have none to tell, sir.”

George Canning (1770–1827) British statesman and politician

The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Aaron had learned… from Mr. Fairlow's two-hour sermons on "The Jealousy of an Angry Jehovah Who Hath Weighed Sinners in the Balance and Found Them Wanting",… that God was a torturer who punished small boys for sins they might commit later.”

Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright

The God-Seeker (1949), Ch. 3

Jealousy, Boy, Learning

“The ground of all religion, that which makes it possible, is the relation in which the human soul stands to God.”

John Campbell Shairp (1819–1885) British writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 493.

Religion, Soul

“If God was dead, how could I feel this bad?”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

Feeling, Dead

“This is what the visitor said the Ethicals had learned from the Ancients. The Creator, God, the One Spirit, call it what you will, forms all. It is the universe; the universe is it. But its body is formed of two essences. One is matter, the other, for lack of a better word, is nonmatter.”

Philip José Farmer (1918–2009) American science fiction writer

Source: The Riverworld series, The Magic Labyrinth (1980), Ch. 19

Learning, Universe

“Theism (whether Christian, Jewish, or Muslim) holds that God by wisdom created the world. The origin of the world and its subsequent ordering thus results from the designing activity of an intelligent agent—God. Naturalism, on the other hand, allows no place for intelligent agency except at the end of a blind, purposeless material process. Within naturalism, any intelligence is an evolved intelligence. Moreover, the evolutionary process by which any such intelligence developed is itself blind and purposeless. As a consequence, naturalism makes intelligence not a basic creative force within nature but an evolutionary byproduct. In particular, humans (the natural objects best known to exhibit intelligence) are not the crown of creation, not the carefully designed outcome of a purposeful creator, and certainly not creatures made in the image of a benevolent God. Rather, humans are an accident of natural history.”

William A. Dembski (1960) American intelligent design advocate

[The design revolution: answering the toughest questions about intelligent design, Downers Grove, Ill., InterVarsity Press, 2003, [BS652.D46, 2004], 2003020589, 9780830832163, http://books.google.com/books?id=sKVqpXqE0VwC] p. 8-9
2000s

Wisdom, World, History, Intelligence

“... I have excluded the idea of the Fall of Man... man has made a long climb from the status of the animal until the time when he could recognize right from wrong. That recognition, at first, was based on behavior that paid, that avoided the retribution of the tribe and the gods, and that enabled the primitive society to function. Yet, however lowly in origin—and I am referring to a period centuries before right seemed to be worth following simply because it was right, or because man’s dignity and status were sustained by doing right; centuries before right was conceived as pleasing to God because he was holy and righteous—that earliest recognition of a difference between right and wrong was an immense advance, even though wrong was chosen.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.236-237 [ellipsis added]

Behavior, Idea, Time, Animals

“I subdue matter and force it to become my mind's good medium. I rejoice in plants, in animals, in man and in gods, as though they were my children. I feel all the universe nestling about me and following me as though it were my own body.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)

Children, Feeling, Universe, Animals

“The rites were just the husks left over from deeper things, no pith remaining and no mystery, nothing to lift up the soul or go to the brain like wine. And, as generally happens, the more truth the ritual lost the more they bolstered it with significance. There is a saying among the Moi: The chief is clad in gold and purple, only the god dares to go naked.”

Tanith Lee book Vazkor, Son of Vazkor

Book One, Part I “The Krarl”, Chapter 3 (p. 20)
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (1978)

Truth, Soul, Wine

“I was motivated not so much by belief, as by loyalty to my Pagan ancestors, who were loyal to their Gods, worshiping underground, always resisting, and who punctuate our history.”

Christopher Gérard (1962)

Pagan Power in Modern Europe (1999)

History, Motivation, Loyalty

“It is really a kind of a slap in [God's] face to refuse to use the abilities He gave us just because there is danger involved. Just because adultery exists is no reason to avoid marriage. Just because gluttony exists is no reason to quit eating. We shouldn't be anhedonics under the guise of spirituality. -Appalachian Melody.”

Mark Heard (1951–1992) American musician and record producer

Liner Notes

Marriage

“"General Meade has his son as adjutant." "That's different. Generals can do anything. Nothing quite so much like God on earth as a general on a battlefield."”

Michael Shaara book The Killer Angels

Thomas Chamberlain and Joshua Chamberlain, Part I, CH 2: Chamberlain, p. 29
The Killer Angels (1974)

“None but God can satisfy the longings of an immortal soul; that as the heart was made for Him, so He only can fill it.”

Richard Chenevix Trench (1807–1886) Irish bishop

Notes on the Parables, Prodigal Son; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 321.

Soul, Heart

“How is it possible for both naturalism and religion - atheism and theism, if you prefer it - to be but two sides of one truth, is the same as the problem how God can be both being and non-being, as one of the most ancient religious and mystical insights proclaims he is, or how he can be both the Eternal Yes and the Eternal Nay, as Böhme affirmed.”

Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.

p. VI.

Truth, Religion, Nature, Problem

“"You've got to testify! Tell somebody about it. God is good!" "I pity the fool that don't get it." - Mr. T going for Jury Duty.”

Mr. T (1952) American actor and retired professional wrestler

Attributed

Fools

“The Kantian philosophy is no more than at best a half-secularized version of such a theocratic ethics, with “Reason” in the place of God. This does not amount to much more than a change of names.”

Raymond Geuss (1946) British philosopher

“Liberalism and its Discontents,” p. 20.
Outside Ethics (2005)

Change

“This Great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till He shaped it in His own image.”

James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) writer and activist

The Creation, st. 11.
God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927)

Baby

“He is cunning, he is mighty, he never rests, he is ever plotting the downfall of the child of God; and if the child of God relaxes in prayer the Devil will succeed in ensnaring him.”

R. A. Torrey (1856–1928) American writer

Power and Peace in Prayer (1924)

“Now there was that look of waiting, and submission—not the frenzy of the stadium, but the quiet sleep-trance of belief. Something stirred in me at it, as I realized I had them in my palm. I stood very still in my white and black, holding the copper things in my hands, and then I began to walk between them toward the god. And I laughed at the god as I went toward him. You—what are you? And he had no answer for me, for here it was the priest who was the power, not the god, poor empty stone.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Two, Part I “Across the Ring”, Chapter 3 (p. 155)
The Birthgrave (1975)

Sleep, Waiting

“Reason is a free gift from God and politeness is acquisition. He who undertakes politeness has power over it. He who undertakes reason increases (himself) through that nothing but ignorance.”

Ali al-Rida (770–818) eighth of the Twelve Imams

Muhammad Kulayni, Usūl al-Kāfī, vol.1, p. 23.
Religious Wisdom

“Either God is a Mystery or He is nothing at all.”

Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.

p. 8.

“As long as we dwell in the shadow, we cannot see the sun itself; but Now we see through a glass darkly, says St. Paul. Yet the shadow is so enlightened by the sunshine that we can perceive the distinctions between all the virtues and all the truth which is profitable to our mortal state. But if we would become one with the brightness of the Sun, we must follow love, and go out of ourselves into the Wayless, and then the Sun will draw us with our blinded eyes into Its own brightness, in which we shall possess unity with God.... In his outpouring, He wills to he wholly ours: and then He teaches us to live in the riches of the virtues. In His indrawing touch all our powers forsake us, and then we sit under His shadow, and His fruit is sweet to our taste, for the Fruit of God is the Son of God, Whom the Father brings forth in our spirit. This Fruit is so infinitely sweet to our taste that we can neither swallow It nor assimilate It, but It rather absorbs us into Itself and assimilates us with Itself.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

From Evelyn Underhill, http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/asm/index.htm Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340)

Love, Truth, Sun, Drawing

“However strong or beautiful this body may be, its culmination is in those three pounds of ashes. And still people are so attached to it. Glory be to God.”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

[Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations, 261]
Context: In Hindus, when a person dies he is cremated in fire. Sarada Devi is referring to this as "three pounds of ashes".

People, Beauty, Strong

“The term "cult" is always one of individual judgment. It has been variously applied to groups involved in beliefs and practices just off the beat of traditional religions; to groups making exploratory excursions into non-Western philosophical practices; and to groups involving intense relationships between followers and a powerful idea or leader. The people I have studied, however, come from groups in the last, narrow band of the spectrum: groups such as the Children of God, the Unification Church of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, the Krishna Consciousness movement, the Divine Light Mission, and the Church of Scientology. I have not had occasion to meet with members of the People's Temple founded by the late Reverend Jim Jones, who practiced what he preached about being prepared to commit murder and suicide, if necessary, in defense of the faith.”

Margaret Singer (1921–2003) clinical psychology

Coming Out of the Cults http://www.cultfaq.org/coming-out-of-the-cults.html, Dr. Margaret Singer, Psychology Today, January, 1979 1970s

Children, People, Faith, Religion

“There is no long interval between the sense of thirst and the trickling of the stream over the parched lip; but ever it is flowing, flowing past us, and the desire is but the opening of the lips to receive the limpid, and life-giving waters. No one ever desired the grace of God, really and truly desired it, but just in proportion as he desired it, he got it; just in proportion as he thirsted, he was satisfied.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 390.

Life, Sense, Water, Past

“The philosopher will ask himself … if the criticism we are now suggesting is not the philosophy which presses to the limit that criticism of false gods which Christianity has introduced into our history.”

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) French phenomenological philosopher

Source: In Praise of Philosophy (1963), p. 47

History, Falseness

“The Quaestor turned back the pages until he found himself among the Pensées. “We are not satisfied,” he read, “with the life we have in ourselves and our own being; we want to live an imaginary life in other people’s idea of us. Hence all our efforts are directed to seeming what we are not. We labor incessantly to preserve and embellish this imaginary being, and neglect that which is really ours.” The Quaestor put down the book, … and ruefully reflected that all his own troubles had arisen from this desire to seem what in fact he was not. To seem a man of action, when in fact he was a contemplative; to seem a politician, when nature had made him an introspective psychologist; to seem a wit, which God had intended him for a sage.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

“Variations on a Philosopher” in Themes and Variations (1943), p. 2

Life, People, Books, Idea

“The religious life, and all the agony that goes with it, is just something God sics on people who have the gall to accuse Him of having created an ugly world.”

Jerome David Salinger book Franny and Zooey

Franny and Zooey (1961), Zooey (1957)

Life, People, World

“Many of the most fundamental claims of science are against common sense and seem absurd on their face. Do physicists really expect me to accept without serious qualms that the pungent cheese that I had for lunch is really made up of tiny, tasteless, odorless, colorless packets of energy with nothing but empty space between them? Astronomers tell us without apparent embarrassment that they can see stellar events that occurred millions of years ago, whereas we all know that we see things as they happen. … Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.”

Richard C. Lewontin (1929) American evolutionary biologist

" Billions and Billions of Demons http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1997/jan/09/billions-and-billions-of-demons/" in: The New York Review of Books, 9 January 1997, p. 31 Review of The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan Quote often taken out of context, see Lewontin on materialism http://evolutionwiki.org/wiki/Lewontin_on_materialism on evolutionwiki.org, and for example this example http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/102006325?q=Lewontin&p=par at Watchtower Online Library.

Life, Health, World, Communication

“We can have no deep, ongoing fellowship with God unless we obey him - totally.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

“The Dodgson family worshipped the God of Love, who showed his stern face only in the presence of evil.”

Florence Becker Lennon

Page 30
The Life of Lewis Carroll (1962)

Love, Family, Evil

“Your participation of the holy communion must be regarded as the fresh act of your espousals, as the solemn renewal of your covenant; as your surrender, entire and unhesitating, to the service of the Lord. It is thus that you confess Christ, and witness of Him to the world. If you eat and drink without discerning this great purpose, you eat and drink unworthily; if you repudiate such purpose, either in thought or act, you crucify in your measure the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open shame. By your profane use of the means of grace without the slightest desire for the grace of the means, it is as if you cut and wounded the Saviour in this the house of His friends, and sharpened the daggers of your treachery upon the tables of the violated law.”

William Morley Punshon (1824–1881) English Nonconformist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 374.

World, Law, Drink, Christ

“A truth presented by Satan himself is just as true as a truth stated by God.”

Charles Taze Russell (1852–1916) Founder of the Bible Student Movement

What is Truth? Zion's Watch Tower, (July 7, 1879).

Truth

“How can reason possibly grasp that immensity beyond all being where the precious food of the Eucharist is, in some marvellous way, made one with us, drawing us wholly to itself and changing us into itself? It is a union more intimate than any that the human mind can conceive, totally unlike any other change, a union more compatible than a tiny drop of water losing itself in the wine-vat and becoming one with the wine, or that of the rays of the sun made one with the sun's splendour; or the soul with the body, the two together making one person, one being. In this union the soul is lifted above the infirmity of its natural state, its own insufficiency, and there it is purified, transfigured and raised above its own powers, its human operations, its very self. Both being and activities are penetrated through and through by God, formed and transformed in a divine manner, the soul's new birth is accomplished in truth, and the spirit, losing all its native incompatibility, flows into divine union.”

Johannes Tauler (1300–1361) German theologian

Sermons, From Our Daily Bread

Truth, Food, Way, Soul

“How does the philosophical question differ from the non-philosophical question? To philosophize means, we said, to direct one's view toward the totality of the world. So is that a philosophical question (and that alone) which has for its explicit and formal theme the sum-total of all existing things? No! What is peculiar and distinctive about a philosophical question is that it cannot be posed, considered, or answered (so far at least as an answer is possible) without "God and the world" also coming into consideration, that is, the whole of what exists.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Since "the answers of the special sciences" do not reach "the horizon of total reality", they are given "without having to speak at the same time of 'God and the world.'" (p. 96)
Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, p. 95

World, Question

“Now there was one of these Essens, whose name was Manahem, who had this testimony, that he not only conducted his life after an excellent manner, but had the foreknowledge of future events given him by God also. This man once saw Herod when he was a child, and going to school, and saluted him as king of the Jews; but he, thinking that either he did not know him, or that he was in jest, put him in mind that he was but a private man; but Manahem smiled to himself, and clapped him on his backside with his hand, and said," However that be, thou wilt be king, and wilt begin thy reign happily, for God finds thee worthy of it. And do thou remember the blows that Manahem hath given thee, as being a signal of the change of thy fortune. And truly this will be the best reasoning for thee, that thou love justice [towards men], and piety towards God, and clemency towards thy citizens; yet do I know how thy whole conduct will be, that thou wilt not be such a one, for thou wilt excel all men in happiness, and obtain an everlasting reputation, but wilt forget piety and righteousness; and these crimes will not be concealed from God, at the conclusion of thy life, when thou wilt find that he will be mindful of them, and punish time for them." Now at that time Herod did not at all attend to what Manahem said, as having no hopes of such advancement; but a little afterward, when he was so fortunate as to be advanced to the dignity of king, and was in the height of his dominion, he sent for Manahem, and asked him how long he should reign. Manahem did not tell him the full length of his reign; wherefore, upon that silence of his, he asked him further, whether he should reign ten years or not? He replied, "Yes, twenty, nay, thirty years;" but did not assign the just determinate limit of his reign. Herod was satisfied with these replies, and gave Manahem his hand, and dismissed him; and from that time he continued to honor all the Essens. We have thought it proper to relate these facts to our readers, how strange soever they be, and to declare what hath happened among us, because many of these Essens have, by their excellent virtue, been thought worthy of this knowledge of Divine revelations.”

Josephus on the Essenes

AJ 15.11.4-5
Antiquities of the Jews

Love, Life, Men, Happiness

“Our Lord God, Allmighty Wisdom, All-Love, right as verily as He hath made everything that is, all-so verily He doeth and worketh all-thing that is done.”

Julian of Norwich book Revelations of Divine Love

Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Chapter 1

Love, Wisdom

“I see not the shadow of a reason to conclude that their [the sexes'] virtues should differ in respect to their nature. In fact, how can they, if virtue has only one eternal standard? I must therefore, if I reason consequentially, as strenuously maintain that they must have the same simple direction as that there is a God.”

Mary Wollstonecraft book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

26
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

Sex, Nature

“"You must go home eventually."
"I would throw myself off a precipice first, except that I would land in the arms of the gods, Whom I do not wish to see again."”

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

Source: World of the Five Gods series, Paladin of Souls (2003), p. 61

Home

“There are people who have the ability to wake up a minute or even seconds before their alarm goes off or to know what time they’ve woken up without even looking at a clock. Now, thank God, I don’t have to get up in the mornings but the potential of the body to keep such accurate time is remarkable.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

People, Time

“It is not because Angels are Holier than Men or Devils that makes them Angels but because they do not Expect Holiness from one another but from God only”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

1810s
Source: A Vision of the Last Judgment

Men, Angels

“To reconcile Despotism with Freedom:—well, is that such a mystery? Do you not already know the way? It is to make your Despotism just. Rigorous as Destiny; but just too, as Destiny and its Laws. The Laws of God: all men obey these, and have no 'Freedom' at all but in obeying them. The way is already known, part of the way;—and courage and some qualities are needed for walking on it!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Men, Law, Way, Courage

“…Well! Glad you're being so polite about this. You're very civil—oh my god! I didn't blo[ck]… I didn't mean to look down! Ugh! They're naked! They are sooo naked! Oh my god!”

Markiplier (1989) American YouTuber and Internet personality

Video game commentary, Outlast (September 4~8, 2013) Source: Outlast Part 3, Markiplier, wikipedia:Markiplier, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY1NtCffOGk,

“O Petronius, thou hast seen what endurance and comfort that religion gives in misfortune, how much patience and courage before death; so come and see how much happiness it gives in ordinary, common days of life. People thus far did not know a God whom man could love, hence they did not love one another; and from that came their misfortune, for as light comes from the sun, so does happiness come from love. Neither lawgivers nor philosophers taught this truth, and it did not exist in Greece or Rome; and when I say, not in Rome, that means the whole world. The dry and cold teaching of the Stoics, to which virtuous people rally, tempers the heart as a sword is tempered, but it makes it indifferent rather than better.”

Henryk Sienkiewicz book Quo Vadis

Quo Vadis (1895)

Love, Life, Death, Happiness

“There have been a number of instances in the Bible where the Spirit of God has acted in a birth. For instance, in the story of Abraham and Sarah, Sarah was too old and Abraham was also old. But the Bible says God quickened the womb of Sarah so that she could bear a son. In the same way, the Holy Spirit worked with Mary. It was not done in the sense of producing a child from the union of God with man, but in the sense of God participating in the event. Jesus was born of a father and a mother, just as anyone else is, but in his case the Spirit of God was working also.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

Master Speaks (1967) Part 7: Bible Interpretation http://www.tparents.org/Moon-Books/sm-mast/MSTRSP-7.htm, (transcriptions of Q&A sessions in March-April 1965)

Way, Birth, Sense

“To thee only God granted
A heart ever new:
To all always open;
To all always true.”

Matthew Arnold Switzerland

"Switzerland", IV. "Parting" (1853)

Heart

“Even Kings and emperors with heaps of wealth and vast dominion cannot compare with an ant filled with the love of God.”

Nanak (1469–1539) Founder of Sikhism

Guru Nanak quotes

Love, Wealth

“God's knowledge extends to things not in existence, and includes also the infinite.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.20

Knowledge

“I reject republicanism. At the head of races, above the elite, there is Monarchy. Not all monarchs have been good. Monarchy, however, has always been good. The individual monarch must not be confused with the institution of Monarchy, the conclusions drawn from this would be false. There can be bad priests, but this does not mean that we can draw the conclusion that the Church must be ended and God stoned to death. There are certainly weak or bad monarchs, but we cannot renounce Monarchy. The race has a line of life. A monarch is great and good, when he stays on this line; he is petty and bad, to the extent that he moves away from this racial line of life or he opposes it. There are many lines by which a monarch can be tempted. He must set them all aside and follow the line of the race. Here is the law of Monarchy.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Politics

Life, Death, Law, Drawing

“I have no trouble with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies all right. But my damn friends, my god-damned friends, White, they're the ones who keep me walking the floor nights!”

Warren G. Harding (1865–1923) American politician, 29th president of the United States (in office from 1921 to 1923)

Remark to editor William Alan White, as quoted in Thomas Harry Williams et al. (1959) A History of the United States.
1920s

Night

“We all know the disappointments that come when we base anticipation on what we and other humans can deliver. God will never have a problem delivering!”

James MacDonald (1960) American pastor

Source: Always True (Moody, 2011), p. 89

Disappointment, Problem

“The case of the conscience of Eichmann, which is admittedly complicated but is by no means unique, is scarcely comparable to the case of the German generals, one of whom, when asked at Nuremberg, "How was it possible that all of you honorable generals could continue to serve a murderer with such unquestioning loyalty?," replied that it was "not the task of a soldier to act as judge over his supreme commander. Let history do that or God in Heaven."”

Hannah Arendt book Eichmann in Jerusalem

Source: Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), Ch. VIII.

History, Loyalty

“The gods don't hand out all their gifts at once,
not build and brains and flowing speech to all.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

VIII. 167–168 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

“These Peripatetics accordingly made careful investigations into the nature of all things, so as to determine which I should be avoided as evil, discounted as useless, sought after as good, or preferred as better, and finally which are called "good" or "bad" according to circumstances. There thus developed two branches of philosophy, natural and moral, which are also called ethics and physics. But, through lack of scientific skill in argumentative reasoning, many absurdities were concluded. Thus Epicurus would have the world originate from atoms and a void, and would dispense with God as its author; whereas the Stoics asserted that matter is coeternal with God, and held that all sins are equally grave. p. 76”

John of Salisbury English philosopher and theologian

The Metalogicon of John of Salisbury (1159)

World, Nature, Evil

“Did I suffer from depression? Yes, a little, from time to time. Yes. … I'm not as depressed as I was. I get depressed now and then but not very much anymore. … At the height of it it was just God-awful. It was really bad.”

Brian Wilson (1942) American musician, singer, songwriter and record producer

CNN interview (2004)

Suffering, Time

“The more I ponder God's way, the more I believe He changes a person, or molds a person through enlightenment. He changes a person's mind.”

Donald Miller (1971) American writer

Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance (2000, Harvest House Publishers)

Way, Change, Personality

“Most of your God concepts deal with a static God, and here is one of your main theological difficulties. The awareness and inner experience of this gestalt constantly changes and grows. There is no static God. When you say, "This is God," then God is already something else.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The Seth Material (1970), p. 269

Change

“In particular, unification represents my purpose to bring about God’s ideal world. Unification is not union. Union is when two things come together. Unification is when two become one. “Unification Church” became our commonly known name later, but it was given to us by others. In the beginning, university students referred to us as “the Seoul Church.” I do not like using the word kyo-hoi in its common usage to mean church. But I like its meaning from the original Chinese characters. Kyo means “to teach,” and Hoi means “gathering.” The Korean word means, literally, “gathering for teaching.” The word for religion, jong-kyo, is composed of two Chinese characters meaning “central” and “teaching,” respectively. When the word church means a gathering where spiritual fundamentals are taught, it has a good meaning. But the meaning of the word kyo-hoi does not provide any reason for people to share with each other. People in general do not use the word kyo-hoi with that meaning. I did not want to place ourselves in this separatist type of category. My hope was for the rise of a church without a denomination. True religion tries to save the nation, even if it must sacrifice its own religious body to do so; it tries to save the world, even at the cost of sacrificing its nation; and it tries to save humanity, even if this means sacrificing the world. By this understanding, there can never be a time when the denomination takes precedence. It was necessary to hang out a church sign, but in my heart I was ready to take it down at any time. As soon as a person hangs a sign that says “church,” he is making a distinction between church and not church. Taking something that is one and dividing itinto two is not right. This was not my dream. It is not the path I chose to travel. If I need to take down that sign to save the nation or the world, I am ready to do so at any time.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

2009, As a Peaceloving Global Citizen http://www.euro-tongil.org/swedish/english/TFbiography.pdf, page 56.

People, World, Religion, Dreams

“We all have to go one day, but pray God let it not be over Afghanistan. An unspeakable country filled with unspeakable people, sheepshaggers and smugglers, who have furnished in their leisure hours some of the worst arts and crafts ever to penetrate the occidental world. I yield to none in my sympathy to those prostrate beneath the Russian jackboot, but if ever a country deserved rape it’s Afghanistan. Nothing but mountains filled with barbarous ethnics with views as medieval as their muskets, and unspeakably cruel too.”

Alexander Cockburn (1941–2012) Leftist journalist and writer

"Press Clips", The Village Voice (21 January 1980).

People, World, Art, Mountain

“As Moses sought to lead his people on, he discovered that there were those among them who would occasionally become emotionally and sentimentally attached to a particular spot so that they wanted to stay there and remain stationary at that point. One day when Moses confronted this problem, he wrote in the book of Deuteronomy, the first chapter and the fifth verse: “You have been in this mountain long enough, turn ye and go on your journey, move on to the mountof the Amorite.”~ This was a message of God through Moses. And whenever God speaks he says go forward, saying in substance that you must never become bogged down in mountains and situations that will impede your progress. You must never become complacently adjusted to unobtained goals; you have been in this mountain long enough, “turn ye and take your journey."”

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

"Keep Moving from this Mountain" http://www5.spelman.edu/about_us/news/pdf/70622_messenger.pdf – Founders Day Address at the Sisters Chapel, Spelman College (11 April 1960) 1960s

People, Books, Mountain, Problem

“The one condition for spiritual progress is that we remain sincere and humble. Let us keep our end in view, let us press forward to our goal. Let us not indulge in pride, nor give in to our sinful passions. Let us steadily exert ourselves to reach a higher degree of holiness till we shall finally arrive at a perfection of goodness which we seek and pursue as long as we live, but which we shall attain then only, when, freed from all earthly infirmity, we shall be admitted by God into his full communion.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Page 23.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

Passion, Perfection, Sincerity

“… you should never take medicine to relieve pain. You should never consult a doctor or go to a hospital for treatment, because you would be interfering with the work of God in your life. If Cancer is the chastening tool of God, then doctors who are fighting cancer are fighting against the work of God. If a preacher or a Christian believes the sickness is a means of chastening, then he should never pray for relief from the sickness, but rather pray that the cancer will continue to grow until the chastening is completed.”

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

More Than Just Comfort: An Answer to Cancer (c. 1979)

Life, Pain, Fight

“My chief request is that anyone who is a servant of God be ready and willing, to carry this letter forward; may it never be hidden or stolen by anyone, but rather, may it be read aloud before the whole people — Yes, even when Coroticus himself is present.”

Saint Patrick (385–461) 5th-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland

Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus (c.450?)

People, Reading

“The Soviet Union is dead and gone and replaced by the Russian Federation, which is a country we can be friends with now, thank God — and we want the Russians to prosper, and should help the Russians prosper in every way we can within reason.”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

2000s, Larry King Live (2000)

Way, Help, Dead, Country

“I want to ask this congregation, every man, woman and child, to answer the question in their own heart, what kind of a being God is?... Does any man or woman know? Have any of you seen him, heard him, or communed with him?... God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret. If the veil were rent today, and the great God who holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by his power, was to make Himself visible,—I say, if you were to see Him today, you would see Him like a man in form—like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man; for Adam was created in the very fashion, image and likeness of God, and received instruction from, and walked, talked and conversed with Him, as one man talks and communes with another.... It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the Character of God, and to know that we may converse with him as one man converses with another, and that He was once a man like us; yea, that God Himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did; and I will show it from the Bible.”

Joseph Smith, Jr. book History of the Church

History of the Church, 6:303-04 (7 April 1844)
1840s, King Follett discourse (1844)

Secret, World, Communication, Fashion

“The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny; flattery to treachery; standing armies to arbitrary government; and the glory of God to the temporal interest of the clergy.”

David Hume book Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary

Part I, Essay 8: Of Public Credit (This appears as a footnote in editions H to P. Other editions include it in the body of the text, and some number it Essay 9.)
Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741-2; 1748)

“In God we trust. All others must bring data.”

W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993) American professor, author, and consultant

Earliest attestation 1978; see Statistics. Frequently attributed to Deming; it appears in The Deming Management Method, by Mary Walton, 1986, p. 96 https://books.google.com/books?id=4tPlxq76ssYC&pg=PA96&dq=%22in%20god%20we%20trust.%20all%20others%20must%20use%20data.%22, without any attribution, to Deming or anyone else: Source: “In God we trust. All others must bring data” http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/in_god_we_trust_all_others_must_bring_data, Barry Popik, The Big Apple, October 19, 2015 Source: Misattributed, Chapter 20: Doing It with Data: "In God we trust. All others must bring data." If there is a credo for statisticians, it is that.

“The true Christian experience must always include a genuine encounter with God. Without this, religion is but a shadow, a reflection of reality, a cheap copy of an original once enjoyed by someone else of whom we have heard. It cannot but be a major tragedy in the life of any man to live in a church from childhood to old age and know nothing more real than some synthetic god compounded of theology and logic, but having no eyes to see, no ears to hear, and no heart to love.”

Aiden Wilson Tozer (1897–1963) American missionary

citation needed

Love, Life, Age, Religion

“Take heed to carefully consider the words of every soul, then hold fast to the proofs which attest the truth. If ye fail to discover truth in a person’s words, make them not the object of contention, inasmuch as ye have been forbidden in the Bayán to enter into idle disputation and controversy, that perchance on the Day of Resurrection ye may not engage in argumentation, and dispute with Him Whom God shall make manifest.”

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

XVII, 16
The Kitáb-I-Asmá

Truth, Soul, Personality

“I think God didn't put eyes on my face because he took his time to put eyes in my soul.”

Leandro Díaz (1928–2013) Colombian musician

[Revista Festival de la Leyenda Vallenata, http://www.elvallenato.com/artistas/biografia.php?artista=120&mas=Leandro%20Diaz, Leandro Díaz, Revista Festival de la Leyenda Vallenata, 2001, 2008-03-26, Spanish]

Soul, Thinking, Time

“His tribe were God Almighty's gentlemen.”

John Dryden book The Hind and the Panther

Pt. I, line 645. Compare: Julius Hare, Guesses at Truth: "A Christian is God Almighty’s gentleman"; Edward Young, Night Thoughts, Night iv, line 788, "A Christian is the highest style of man".
The Hind and the Panther (1687)

“In societies based around small communities, where almost everyone is either a friend, a relative, or an enemy of everyone else, the languages spoken tend even to lack words that correspond to "self-interest" or "altruism" but include very subtle vocabularies for describing envy, solidarity, pride, and the like. Their economic dealings with one another likewise tend to be based on much more subtle principles. … The work of destroying such ways of life is still often done by missionaries—representatives of those very world religions that originally sprang up in reaction to the market long ago. Missionaries, of course, are out to save souls; but they rarely interpret this to mean their role is simply to teach people to accept God and be more altruistic. Almost invariably, they end up trying to convince people to be more selfish and more altruistic at the same time. On the one hand, they set out to teach the "natives" proper work discipline, and try to get them involved with buying and selling products on the market, so as to better their material lot. At the same time, they explain to them that ultimately, material things are unimportant.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Army of Altruists (2007)

Life, People, World, Religion

“Man's power is first of all the result of hardening his heart against God: man affirms that he is strong, conquers the world, and builds cities.”

Jacques Ellul book The Meaning of the City

Source: The Meaning of the City (1951), p. 10

World, Strong, Heart

“Snatch him, ye Gods, from mortal eyes!”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book III, p. 101

“Thank you. If there's one thing that actors know, other than that there weren't any WMDs, it's that there is no such thing as best in acting. And That's proven by these great actors that I was nominated with as well as the — as well as the Giamattis, Cages, Downey Jrs., Nicholsons, etc. that were not nominated. We know how great all of you were. My daughter Dylan and son Hopper find it presumptuous and embarrassing to write a speech, and so I'm gonna give it a go without. God, I really thank Clint Eastwood professionally and humanly for coming into my life. The great, great cast that I had to work with, my friends. Where do you go? Dennis Lehane, Brian Helgeland, Ma. Dad. Robin, for being an undying emotional inspiration on this rollercoaster I'm learning to enjoy. Thank you all very much.”

Sean Penn (1960) American actor, screenwriter, and film director

Oscar acceptance speech for Mystic River, 76th Annual Academy Awards - Best Actor in a Leading Role http://www.oscars.org/76academyawards/winners/01_lead_actor.html (2004-02-29)

Life, Learning, Daughters

“In the ancient cultural places of the world there was a temple, a church or a cathedral in its center. From there came the order of life. In every modern big city there is a bank building in its center. In my »Pied Piper« I have tried to depict this as a kind of demon cult, where money is something to be prayed to like something sacred. It's even being expressed there in words that it is »God«. It performs miracles, because the multiplication of money itself is yet a miracle. After all, the dealings there are with a miraculous multiplication of money. It has the character of everlastingness. But if there is anything that is just a purely man-made thing, then it's money.”

Michael Ende (1929–1995) German author

"Ende no yuigon" ["Ende's Last Message"] (May 1999), broadcast of an interview of February 1994, as quoted in "Michael Ende's Last Words to the Japanese" http://www.equilibrismus.de/en/topics/general/rm-michael_ende.htm at Equilibrism (Equilibrismus.de)

Life, Money, World

“It’s not okay to actually take a life out of an individual for whatever reason and then sell those body parts. It’s sick. It’s really sick. And it’s hurtful because those lives were real and just and you’re giving them absolutely no grace in the end of their life,” she continued. “It’s, you know, they’ll have to meet their Maker one day. So as much as we all have our opinions on this matter, I think at the end of the day they’re going to have to meet God one day and they’ll have to answer for themselves on what they chose to do with their time on earth, you know?”

Kaya Jones (1984) American pop singer, glamour model and actress

Singer Slams Hollywood for Pushing Abortion, Planned Parenthood https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/katie-yoder/2017/09/13/singer-slams-hollywood-pushing-abortion-planned-parenthood (September 13, 2017)

Life, Thinking, Time, Parting

“Through [Pennsylvania Station] one entered the city like a god. Perhaps it was really too much. One scuttles in now like a rat.”

Vincent Scully (1920–2017) American architectural historian

On the 1963 destruction of New York's grand and original Pennsylvania Station and its replacement with a charmless subterranean shopping mall. American Architecture and Urbanism (1969) page 143 http://books.google.com/books?id=Y-pPAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Through+it+one+entered+the+city+like+a+god+Perhaps+it+was+really+too+much+One+scuttles+in+now+like+a+rat%22&pg=PA143#v=onepage