Quotes about God
page 97

“An idle man has a constant tendency to torpidity. He has adopted the Indian maxim — that it is better to walk than to run, and better to stand than to walk, and better to sit than to stand, and better to lie than to sit. He hugs himself into the notion, that God calls him to be quiet.”

Richard Cecil (clergyman) (1748–1810) British Evangelical Anglican priest and social reformer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 345.

Lie

“We beseech you in the name of the Prophet to fight a jihad against the infidels of this region. This would entitle you to great rewards before God the Most High and your name would be included in the list of those who fought for jihad for His sake. As far as worldly gains are concerned, incalculable booty would fall into the hands of the Islamic gazis [warriors] and the Muslims would be liberated from their bonds.”

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

Quoted in Bonney, Jihad from Qur’an to bin Laden, 104 Quoted from Spencer, Robert (2018). The history of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS.
From his letters

Fight

“The true love wherewith God loves other spirits is not the outpouring upon them of graces which are the unearned gift of his miraculous power; it is the love, on the contrary, which holds the individuality, the personal initiative, of its object sacred. As the true father desires that the son who, after him, is to be the head of the family shall have a method and policy of his own, by which the honours of the line shall be increased by new contributions, so he who is the Father of Spirits will have his image brought forth in every one of his offspring by the thought and conviction of each soul itself.”

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.257

Love, Family, Soul, Personality

“[W]hen it comes to a question as between the Word of God and the State, the only safe, the only right thing to do is to take our stand with the Word of God…”

Francis J. Grimké (1852–1937) American activist and minister

The Works of Francis J. Grimke (1942), edited by Carter Godwin Woodson, Associated publishers, Incorporated, vol. II, page 252

Question

“I may say this is a deluded generation, veiled with ignorance, that tho popery and slavery be riding in upon them, do not perceive it; tho I am sure there was no man born marked of God above another, for none comes into the world with a saddle on his back, neither any booted and spurred to ride him.”

Richard Rumbold

" Speech on the Scaffold http://www.bartleby.com/268/3/15.html", 1685

World

“If you could meet your grandkids as elderly citizens in the year 2100 … you would view them as being, basically, Greek gods… that's where we're headed.”

Michio Kaku (1947) American theoretical physicist, futurist and author

"Captain Michio and the World of Tomorrow" in The Wall Street Journal (9 March 2012) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203960804577239852155894014.html

“Finnegans Wake is a kind of hypnagogic structure, words reverberating on themselves without pointing to objects…This may be the hallucinatory verbal world within which God speaks.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

1:399
"Quotes", Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2002)

World

“Sometimes it takes a decision, an act of the will, a step of faith, to be joyful—and then God can plant something real and abiding in our hearts.”

Don Soderquist (1934–2016)

Don Soderquist “ Live Learn Lead to Make a Difference https://books.google.com/books?id=s0q7mZf9oDkC&lpg=pg=PP1&dq=Don%20Soderquist&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false, Thomas Nelson, April 2006 p. 63. On Choosing to be Joyful

Faith, Decision, Heart

“I can scarcely bid you good-bye, even in a letter. I always made an awkward bow. God bless you!”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Letter to Charles Armitage Brown (November 30, 1820)
Letters (1817–1820)

“The greatest difficulty in conversion is to win the heart to God and after conversion to keep it with Him.”

John Flavel (1627–1691) English Presbyterian clergyman

A Saint Indeed

Heart

“They saw the end coming, he thought, looking down the file of awful figures. But they were dead wrong about the reasons why. They assumed only gods had the power to wreak such havoc on their world, but people caused the devastation here.
Alex felt compassion for the ancient Pasquans—but a superior sort nevertheless. In blaming gods, they had conveniently diverted censure from the real culprit. The designer of weapons. The feller of trees. The destroyer. Man himself.”

David Brin book Earth

Part VII (p. 366)
Earth (1990)

People, World, Tree, Dead

“What has been called Christianity has been a disturber of the public peace in all countries and at all times. Nothing has so alienated nations, nothing has so destroyed the natural justice of mankind, as what has been known as religion. The idea that all men must worship the same God, believe the same dogmas, has for thousands of years plucked with bloody hands the flower of pity from the human heart.”

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

"To the Indianapolis Clergy." The Iconoclast (Indianapolis, IN) (1883)

Men, Peace, Religion, Justice

“If there is a god, why did he make me an atheist? That was his first mistake. Well, the talking snake was his first mistake.”

Ricky Gervais (1961) English comedian, actor, director, producer, musician, writer, and former radio presenter

"Inside the Actors Studio," 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBBtYcK9Jb8

“My God, I heard this guy's albums for ages and finally to be able to look at him and see how he does it!”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

On Walter Wanderley, circa 1965, as quoted by Claudio Slon in an April 1999 interview http://bjbear71.com/Slon/Interviews.html#Interviews on KUVO-FM

Age, Guy

“The Bible is a treasure. It contains enough to make us rich for time and eternity. It contains the secret of happy living. It contains the key of heaven. It contains the title-deeds of an inheritance incorruptible, and that fadeth not away. It contains the pearl of great price. Nay, in so far as it reveals them as the portion of us sinful worms, it contains the Saviour and the living God Himself.”

James Hamilton (1814–1867) Scottish minister and a prolific author of religious tracts

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 30.

Happiness, Secret, Time

“"Thy sun," says Isaiah to Jerusalem, " shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself; for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended. Thy people also shall be all righteous; they shall inherit the land forever." Such is the type of a free people.
Our northern ancestors worshipped this tri-une Deity; Odin, the Almighty Father; Frea, his wife, emblem of universal matter; and Thor, his son, the mediator. But above all these was the Supreme God, "the author of everything that existeth, the Eternal, the Ancient, the Living and Awful Being, the Searcher into concealed things, the Being that never changeth." In the Temple of Eleusis (a sanctuary lighted only by a window in the roof, and representing the universe), the images of the Sun, Moon, and Mercury, were represented.”

Albert Pike book Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. I : Apprentice, The Twelve-Inch Rule and Common Gavel, p. 1

People, Light, Universe, Sun

“I learned that though we be highly lifted up into contemplation by the special gift of our Lord, yet it is needful to us therewith to have knowing and sight of our sin and our feebleness. For without this knowing we may not have true meekness, and without this we may not be saved.
And afterward, also, I saw that we may not have this knowing from our self; nor from none of all our spiritual enemies: for they will us not so great good. For if it were by their will, we should not see it until our ending day. Then be we greatly beholden to God for that He will Himself, for love, shew it to us in time of mercy and grace.”

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

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 78

Love, Learning, Time

“As I understand it, George Peppard later became a nice guy, a gentleman, but when we worked together back then, he was pretentious, egotistical, a brat, and an asshole—and that’s just for starters! He pretended he was seven years younger than he was; he even claimed to be a bachelor and denied he was married—in front of me (I knew better), he denied their existence. The role of Jonas Cord in The Carpetbaggers really went to his big head. He acquired delusions of grandeur—thought he was God’s gift to women and the movies! His attitude towards me was very bizarre—he acted as though we’d never met! Or that I had a husband!”

Carroll Baker (1931) American actress

On co-star George Peppard, interview http://www.westernclippings.com/interview/carrollbaker_interview.shtml with Mike Fitzgerald, Western Clippings

Women, Guy, Understanding

“God would be unjust if we were not guilty.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Dieu serait injuste si nous n'étions pas coupables. Blaise Pascal, Pensées: It is necessary that we were born guilty, or God would be unjust [Il faut que nous naissions coupables, ou Dieu serait injuste]. This is Pensée 431 in the Édition Gallimard, 1962. It is found in the section entitled "The Signs of True Religion" [Les Marques de la Vraie Religion] English text, #489 http://www.ccel.org/ccel/pascal/pensees.viii.html; French text, #205 http://www.ac-nice.fr/philo/textes/Pascal-PenseesManu.htm Misattributed

“He showed no fear. It seemed that, at the commencement, his race had known gods and no other. Gods had bound and ill treated and slaughtered and played with them. Gods were a fact, as were the sun and the shaking of the earth. Just another terrible reality.”

Tanith Lee book Vazkor, Son of Vazkor

Book Two, Part III “The Island”, Chapter 3 (p. 219)
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (1978)

Fear, Reality, Sun

“The worst of all human miseries is not to know God, not to feel Him, not to desire Him, not to taste Him.”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From, Light on Carmel: An Anthology from the Works of Brother John of Saint Samson, O.Carm.

Feeling

“This man has home and child and wife
And battle set for every day.
This man has God and love and life;
These stand, all else shall pass away.”

Joyce Kilmer Trees and Other Poems

Trees and Other Poems (1914), Delicatessen

Love, Life, Home

“He who obeys God needs no other authority.”

Petr Chelčický book The Net of Faith

The Net of Faith (c. 1443)

“I'm trying to figure out, let's see, I'm in my room, in New York city, and I want to put a little spray, so I can, you know [mimes spraying] right, right, but I hear they don't want me to use the hairspray, they want me to use the pump, because the other one, which I really like better than going [mimes pumping] bang, bang, bang, and then it comes out in big globs, right, and it's stuck in your hair and you say, "Oh my god I've got to take a shower again, my hair's all screwed up", right, I want to use hairspray, but they say "Don't use hairspray, it's bad for the ozone", so I'm sitting in this concealed [sic] apartment, this concealed unit (you know I do live in a very apartment, right) but it's sealed (it's beautiful) I don't think anything gets out, and I'm not supposed to be using hairspray!”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Speaking at a rally in Hilton Head, SC https://www.c-span.org/video/?402610-1/donald-trump-campaign-rally-hilton-head-south-carolina (30 December 2015) 2010s, 2015

Beauty, Thinking

“Interviewer says "Yeah, and I watched that but I actually was kind of like, terrified by the intensity of your fans and I was wondering if the intensity of your fans ever kind of scares you? I hear that they have a bunch of rules for what dances to do during certain songs…I was like ‘Oh God’."”

Jack Terricloth (1970)

Interviews

Dance

“The homosexual culture as we have said is at war with God, and there are no negotiations possible in this world. That modernists and atheists would be in the enemy camp should not surprise us. But we know how far gone it is when periodical like Christianity Today carry articles stating that ‘the individual homosexual would appear to be more sinned against than sinning. because his condition is either genetic or environmental in nature, and therefore not his fault.’ Thus we should not be surprised at what is happening today.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Homosexuality (n. d.)

War, World, Nature, Appearance

“My sight began to fail, and it was all dark about me in the chamber, as if it had been night, save in the Image of the Cross whereon I beheld a common light; and I wist not how. All that was away from the Cross was of horror to me, as if it had been greatly occupied by the fiends
After this the upper part of my body began to die, so far forth that scarcely I had any feeling; — with shortness of breath. And then I weened in sooth to have passed.
And in this suddenly all my pain was taken from me, and I was as whole (and specially in the upper part of my body) as ever I was afore.
I marvelled at this sudden change; for methought it was a privy working of God, and not of nature. And yet by the feeling of this ease I trusted never the more to live; nor was the feeling of this ease any full ease unto me: for methought I had liefer have been delivered from this world.”

Julian of Norwich book Revelations of Divine Love

Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Chapter 3

Pain, World, Feeling, Nature

“But the public display of religion is not God. We do not put God in our nation's life by placing the Ten Commandments in courthouses, nor do we evict God by removing the Ten Commandments from public property. God is not portable. Bland prayers, offered as noncontroversial formalities after the National Anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance do little to honor God.”

John Danforth (1936) American politician

Page 66
Faith and Politics (2006)

Life, Religion

“When you say, I don’t know exactly what God is doing, but I know he’s in control—that’s evidence you’re trusting Him.”

James MacDonald (1960) American pastor

Source: Always True (Moody, 2011), p. 55

“They did not deny the existence of authority. They recognized it and undertook to abide by it, and through obedience to it secure their freedom. They made their appeal and rested their cause not merely upon earthly authority, but in the very first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence asserted that they proposed 'to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them.' And as they closed that noble document in which they submitted their claims to the opinions of mankind they again revealed what they believed to be the ultimate source of authority by stating that they were also 'appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of' their 'intentions.'.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)

World, Law, Nature, Freedom

“There is not a flower that opens, not a seed that falls into the ground, and not an ear of wheat that nods on the end of its stalk in the wind that does not preach and proclaim the greatness and the mercy of God to the whole world. There is not an act of kindness or generosity, not an act of sacrifice done, or a word of peace and gentleness spoken, not a child's prayer uttered, that does not sing hymns to God before his throne, and in the eyes of men, and before their faces.”

Thomas Merton book The Seven Storey Mountain

The Seven Storey Mountain (1948)

Men, World, Peace, Flowers

“Reason in man is rather like God in the world.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Opuscule II, De Regno

World

“I tell god that he has been responsible enough. Without him it wouldn't have been possible. Thanks to him I could achieve these heights.”

S. H. Raza (1922–2016) Indian artist

Indian contemporary artists have not reached my standard: SH Raza

“I don't think it's possible to be too aggressive in defending freedom of speech, which is … much, much more sacred than any god, or prophet, or scripture, could or will ever be, from now until the end of time, or for eternity: whichever lasts longer.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Aggressive Atheism" (28 November 2009) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjO4duhMRZk 2009

Thinking, Freedom, Time

“People, I am the son of the people. I pledge before God that I will sacrifice myself for your sake. I shall offer my life in defence of the Iraqi people.”

Abd al-Karim Qasim (1914–1963) Prime Minister of Iraq

August 5, 1958, as quoted in Dr Lorenzo Kimball (1972) The Changing of Political Power in Iraq, 1958 to 1971.

Life, People

““They (i. e., the Olympian gods) operate on moral principles. You have to break a promise to them, or break a rule, for them to get power over you.”
Victor commented darkly, “That explains why religions have rules no one can follow. If everyone is a sinner, by definition, everyone is under their power.””

John C. Wright (1961) American novelist and technical writer

Source: Fugitives of Chaos (2006), Chapter 9, “Wings” (p. 142)

Religion

“Who God doth late and early pray,
More of his grace than gifts to send,
And entertains the harmless day
With a well-chosen book or friend.”

Henry Wotton (1568–1639) English ambassador

The Character of a Happy Life (1614), stanza 5.

Books

“Brighton, 25 June 1965: “All at once came the thought – If you are simply obeying the LORD, all the responsibility will rest on Him, not on you! What a relief!! Well, I cried to God – You shall be responsible for them, and for me too!””

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

(A.J. Broomhall. Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century, Book Three: If I Had a Thousand Lives. London: Hodder and Stoughton and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1982, 454).

“Creating everlasting works is possible only being ducked in Verity; and gaining verity is possible only from the god. The one who given the ability for creation to, it is given the ability for immortality to. This ability is the substance not only of the human beings, but it can be seen in animals; birds and insects.”

Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka (1853–1919) painter from Hungary

The Authority

Bird, Animals

“Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and switfly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a fallen rock.”

Jonathan Edwards book Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (1741)

Hell

“Strepsiades: But come, by the Earth, is not Zeus, the Olympian, a god?
Socrates: What Zeus? Do not trifle. There is no Zeus.”

Aristophanés The Clouds

tr. Hickie 1853, vol. 1, Perseus http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Aristoph.+Cl.+366 Clouds, line 366-367 (our emphasis on 367) The Greek-mythology equivalent of "There is no God." Clouds (423 BC)

“For years they have known they are in the presence of something stronger than they—a mystery that renders them powerless. Already constellated is a "god consciousness"—awesome and holy—that has nothing to do with the church or with groups. They know they have to engage in a different arena of reality. That arena is the psyche. By virtue of their temperament, training, consciousness, these women are blessed (or cursed) with an introspective nature, an exploring mind, an invincible curiosity about themselves which connects them to their own inner microscope. For better or for worse, they are convinced that the solution to their lives is in submission not to an externally imposed authority which they cannot understand, but to a truth that abides in themselves.”

Marion Woodman (1928–2018) Canadian writer

Source: The Pregnant Virgin (1985), p. 99

Women, Truth, Understanding, Nature

“O, let us understand that the power of Christianity lies not in a hazy indefiniteness, not in shadowy forms, not so much even in definite truths and doctrines, but in the truth and the doctrine. There is but one Christ crucified. All the gathered might of the infinite God is in that word.”

Herrick Johnson (1832–1913) American clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 72.

Truth, Understanding, Christ

“And don't tell me this isn't your war. You swore an oath to serve the King of Spain, and the king of Spain is a prisoner in France and you were supposed to be his guard. By God, this is your war far more than it's my war. I never swore an oath to protect Spain, I never had a woman raped by a Frenchman or a child murdered by a dragoon or a harvest stolen and a house burned by a Crapaud forage party. Your country has suffered all those things, and your country is Spain, and if you'd rather fight for Ireland than for Spain, then why in the name of Almighty God did you take the Spanish oath?”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Captain Richard Sharpe, p. 110
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Battle (1995)

War, Suffering, Fight, Housing

“Indeed, Judaism as a way of life, seeks to inculcate in us a consciousness of the Divine Presence in the World and respect for life accordingly. The more we care for life, the closer we are in fact to God. Accordingly, an ethical vegetarian way of life expresses the most noble and sublime values and aspirations of Judaism itself, bringing us closer to its vision for society as a whole.”

David Rosen (1951) irish rabbi

Source: Vegetarianism: An Orthodox Jewish Perspective, p. 55

Life, World, Way

“Had the God of the Quran been the Lord of all creatures, and been Merciful and kind to all, he would never have commanded the Mohammedans to slaughter men of other faiths, and animals, etc. If he is Merciful, will he show mercy even to the sinners? If the answer be given in the affirmative, it cannot be true, because further on it is said in the Quran "Put infidels to sword," in other words, he that does not believe in the Quran and the Prophet Mohammad is an infidel (he should, therefore, be put to death). (Since the Quran sanctions such cruelty to non-Mohammedans and innocent creatures such as cows) it can never be the Word of God.”

Dayanand Saraswati (1824–1883) founder of the Arya Samaj, a Hindu reform movement

"Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research, Volume 19, Issue 1", p. 73

Death, Men, Faith, Animals

“God will see to it that war always recurs as a drastic medicine for the human race.”

Heinrich von Treitschke (1834–1896) Historian, political writer

Politics, Volume I, p. 76.

War

“To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is. […] I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/jefferson_jadms.html to John Adams (15 August 1820) 1820s

Age, Angels, Soul, Support

“Allah, who is the only true God and has no other emanation, endowed the king of Islam with the strength to destroy this ancient shrine on the eastern sea-coast and to plunge it into the sea, and after its destruction, he ordered the nose of the image of Jagannath to be perforated and disgraced it by casting it down on the ground. They dug out other idols, which were worshipped by the polytheists in the kingdom of Jajnagar, and overthrew them as they did the image of Jagannath, for being laid in front of the mosques along the path of the Sunnis and way of the musallis (the multitude who offer prayers) and stretched them in front of the portals of every mosque, so that the body and sides of the images may be trampled at the time of ascent and descent, entrance and exit, by the shoes on the feet of the Muslims.”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Puri (Orissa). Sirat-Firuz Shahi, quoted in R.C. Majumdar (ed.), Vol. VI, The Delhi Sultanate, Bombay, Majumdar, R.C. (ed.), The History and Culture of the Indian People: Volume VI: The Delhi Sultanate, Bombay, 1960.

Shoe, Way, Time, Sea

“The new man, wishing to enjoy his independence, needed a God with limited powers, a God whose authority was regulated by fundamental laws, so that the sinner, when summoned before the throne of the last judgment, might plead his cause, documents in hand.”

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

Source: The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927), p. 90

Law

“Snatch them baldheaded, slap their teeth out. Little starved faces four feet from the screen, you’d speak to them in a loud, commanding voice, get not even a twitch. Use of the preemptive splint, not everyone knows about it. The world reminds us of its power, again and again and again. Going along minding your own business, and suddenly an act of God, right there in front of you. Great falls of snow and bursting birds. Getting guilty, letting it all slide. Sown here and there like little…petunias, one planted in Old Lyme, one in Fairbanks, one in Tempe. Alleged that he slept with her while she was asleep, I can see it, under certain circumstances. You may wink, but not at another person. You may wink only at pigeons. You may pound in your tent pegs, pitch your tent, gather wood for the fire, form the hush puppies. They seek to return? Back to the nest? The warm arms? The ineffable smells? Not on your tintype. Well, I think that’s a little harsh. Think that’s a little harsh do you? Yes, harsh. Harsh. Well that’s a sketch, that is, that’s a tin-plated sketch— They write and telephone. Short of cash? Give us a call, all inquiries handled with the utmost confidentiality. They call constantly, they’re calling still, saying williwaw, williwaw”

Donald Barthelme book Sixty Stories

“Aria”.
Sixty Stories (1981)

World, Business, Bird, Thinking

“People are scared in this country, to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful — very powerful. Well, so what? For goodness sake, this is God's world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

Speech in Boston (2002)

People, World, Universe, Country

“For we must not build temples according to the same rules to all gods alike, since the performance of the sacred rites varies with the various gods.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book IV, Chapter VIII, Sec. 6

“One of the things that was introduced to me at an early stage in life was to try to make stuff happen. But nothing ever worked that way for me. What I learned on my own was that to try and play God with your life will wreck your brain and your nervous system, and mess up your natural direction in the course that's already there…But look, I just don't want to read about me being made into a basket case because of my work. It's self-pity that I hate. I mean, it comes with the territory. An actor with any conviction goes the extra mile.”

River Phoenix (1970–1993) American actor, musician, and activist

Movieline (1991)

Life, Hate, Way, Nature

“I think it is not a coincidence that people who are atheists or evolutionists frequently have a wicked lifestyle or at least a lifestyle against the plain teachings of the Bible. Therefore, evolution is an easy way for them to justify their lifestyle. The problem is one of philosophy, not one of science. They don’t want there to be a God because of their wicked lifestyle. That is their real problem.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Dissertation for doctor of philosophy in christian education (May 25, 1991)

People, Way, Problem, Thinking

“I assume we can defeat Hussein without great cost to our side (God forgive me if that is hubris). The problem is what happens after we win. The country is 20 percent Kurd, 20 percent Sunni and 60 percent Shiite. Can you say, 'Horrible three-way civil war?”

Molly Ivins (1944–2007) American journalist

Appalling silence http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/1/2003/20, January 16, 2003. Retrieved February 1, 2007.

War, Way, Forgiveness, Problem

“God has taken away the greatest man of his generation, for Dr. Livingstone stood alone.”

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

Quoted in Modern Heroes of the Mission Field (1882) by William Pakenham Walsh p. 281

“So God stepped over to the edge of the world
And He spat out the seven seas;
He batted His eyes, and the lightnings flashed;
He clapped His hands, and the thunders rolled;
And the waters above the earth came down,
The cooling waters came down.”

James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) writer and activist

The Creation, st. 6.
God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927)

World, Water, Sea

“According to the Bible, the apostles were ordered to go into all the world and preach the gospel—yet not one of them, nor one of their converts at any time, nor one of the vicars of God, for fifteen hundred years afterward, knew of the existence of the Western Hemisphere.”

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

Rome, or Reason? A Reply to Cardinal Manning. Part I. The North American Review (1888)

World, Time

“Since the age of three I have refused God nothing.”

Thérèse of Lisieux (1873–1897) French Discalced Carmelite nun

Conseils et Souvenirs, 266 speaking on her deathbed.

Age

“I think the reason why we're so disconnected and depressing is that…we don't talk to God anymore - or rather, he doesn't talk to us. Remember back in the day? He used to just come out of nowhere. 'Abraham?! Guess who?!…that's right, it's God, you're a genius…' He would then tell them to do something and then BAM! it would get done. Who's he talking to now?!…I don't know! I think he's talking to those homeless guys that talk to themselves. You know, the ones that walk down the street arguing with themselves going 'I can't!…I can't!!!!!' …what if at the other end of that conversation was 'You're the new leader!' 'I can't!…I can't!!!!!' They're not crazy homeless people…they're reluctant prophets!…better tip them an extra buck the next time you see 'em.”

Marc Maron (1963) Comedian

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/a313mc/shorties-watchin--shorties-talking-to-god
Miscellaneous

People, Guy, Thinking, Time

“All the diamonds in this world
That mean anything to me
Are conjured up
by wind and sunlight sparkling on the sea
I ran aground in a harbor town
Lost the taste for being free
Thank God he sent some gull chased ship
To carry me to sea…”

Bruce Cockburn (1945) Canadian folk/rock guitarist and singer-songwriter

All the Diamonds in the World, Track 1
Salt, Sun and Time (1974)

World, Sea

“There towers to the sky a monument of four million pairs of human fetters taken from the arms of slaves, and I read on its little headstone this, 'Sacred to the memory of Human Slavery'. For forty years of its infamous life the Democratic Party taught that it was divine; God's institution. They defended it, they stood around it, they followed it to its grave as a mourner. But here it lies, dead by the hand of Abraham Lincoln; dead by the power of the Republican Party, dead by the justice of Almighty God. Don't camp there, young man. That is no place in which to put your young life. Come out, and come over into this camp of liberty, of order, of law, of justice, of freedom, of all that is glorious under these night stars.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1870s, An Appeal to Young Men (1879)

Life, Justice, Law, Star

“(…) Of what use is your arguing for or against God, when you just do not know who is God, and what are you talking about. (…).”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

God
Source: I am That, P.152.

“I sat on my bed and I said to God: You've taken her, but you haven't got me yet. I know Your cunning. It's You who take us up to a high place and offer us the whole universe. You're a devil, God, tempting us to leap. But I don't want Your peace and I don't want Your love. I wanted something very simple and very easy: I wanted Sarah for a lifetime and You took her away. With Your great schemes You ruin our happiness like a harvester ruins a mouse's nest: I hate You, God, I hate You as though You existed.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

The End of the Affair (1951)

Love, Hate, Happiness, Peace

“Millions of people profess knowledge of the reality of God, claiming miracles witnessed or voices heard. If what really causes them to believe that they know of God’s existence (and that they have had these experiences) is an unconscious, infantile wish for the protection of an all-powerful father-figure, then we have reason to wonder about the epistemic status of their belief.”

Brian Leiter (1963) American philosopher and legal scholar

"The Hermeneutics of Suspicion: Recovering Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud"

People, Knowledge, Reality

“At one point the driver said, "For God's sakes, you're rocking the boat back there." Actually we were; the car was swaying as Dean and I both swayed to the rhythm and the IT of our final excited joy in talking and living to the blank tranced end of all innumerable riotous angelic particulars that had been lurking in our souls all our lives.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Part Three, Ch. 5
On the Road (1957)

Angels, Cars, Soul, Joy

“Sleep, universal king of gods and men.”

Homér Iliad

Iliad (c. 750 BC)

Men, Sleep, Universe

“There is a grand fearlessness in faith. He who in his heart of hearts reverences the good, the true, the holy — that is, reverences God — does not tremble at the apparent success of attacks upon the outworks of faith. They may shake those who rest on those outworks — they do not move him whose soul reposes on the truth itself. He needs no prop or crutches to support his faith. Founded on a Rock, Faith can afford to gaze undismayed at the approaches of Infidelity.”

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

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 221.

Truth, Faith, Soul, Support

“I wanted to be a movie star. But movie stars are not what they used to be. When I was a kid, I thought movie stars were women and men who were in these great films that we still look at now… And people my age don't even know who those people are. I can't even have a conversation with most people of my generation about that, because they'd be like, "Okay, she's a freak…" And the worst part is, in terms of what people see of me, I have become this girl who just loves to be photographed, doesn't know how to focus, doesn't know how to work on set, just loves the attention, knows how to go out at night, knows how to party. And you know what? I was 20 years old. I never went to college. And I lived maybe six months out of my life like that, doing something wrong, and then I stopped. God forbid I should have ever learned my lesson. But at this point it's so hard for people to even believe that there was a lesson to be learned at all, because they just think I'm wrong. All these people think I'm never going to be right, because it's more interesting to fabricate this other girl. Who wants to read a tabloid story about a girl who is doing well?”

Lindsay Lohan (1986) American actress and pop singer

Interview interview (2009)

Love, Life, Women, Men

“You've gut to git up airly
Ef you want to take in God.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

No. 1, st. 2
The Biglow Papers (1848–1866), Series I (1848)

“I'm not sure what ministry really is, and that whatever it is, God seems to be kind enough to wrap it into our efforts and sometimes wise enough to bestow it in spite of them.”

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

Life in the Industry: A Musician's Diary

Effort

“The religious instruction I received of the Lutheran pastor Bode, preparatory to my confirmation, produced no effect upon my mind in favour of the truth of our divine religion, having studied all the works written against it with so much energy. I often insinuated to pastor Bode my doubts on religious matters, but either he did not or would not understand me; I was wavering between deism and atheism, so much so, that had it not been for the love towards my revered father, and the persuasions of Ferry, I should have avoided being present at the imposing and sacred ceremony of confirmation, which produced such an effect upon my young mind, that I prayed sincerely to God to give me faith, and had I not continued to read with Ferry and one Belzing so many blasphemous works, I should have returned to my former religious principles much sooner, as I did at a later period of my life.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Love, Life, Truth, Faith

“You have been born in this world as a human being to worship God; therefore try to acquire love for His Lotus Feet. Why do you trouble yourself to know a hundred other things? What will you gain by discussing philosophy? Look here, one ounce of liquor is enough to intoxicate you. What is the use of your trying to find out how many gallons of liquor there are in the tavern?”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 901

Love, World

“As we find ourselves in jobless economies, societies in which small minorities consume while the masses starve, we find ourselves forced to rethink the rationale of our current globalization and to ponder the Gandhian alternative.
At a time when Freud was liberating sex, Gandhi was reining it in; when Marx was pitting worker against capitalist, Gandhi was reconciling them; when the dominant European thought had dropped God and soul out of the social reckoning, he was centralizing society in God and soul; at a time when the colonized had ceased to think and control, he dared to think and control; and when the ideologies of the colonized had virtually disappeared, he revived them and empowered them with a potency that liberated and redeemed.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

2000s, The Sacred Warrior (2000)

Sex, Soul, Thinking, Time

“When we feel how God was in our sorrows, we shall trust the more blessedly that He will be in our deaths.”

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

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 556.

Death, Feeling

“Let no one among you say that God hath withheld the outpouring of His bounty unto you, for assuredly God’s mercy unto those to whom the Bayán is given hath been fulfilled and completed until the Day of Resurrection. Would that ye might believe in the signs of God.”

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

XVI, 13
The Kitáb-I-Asmá

“They are kings and priests unto God. They wear crowns that flash in the everlasting light. They wear robes that are spotlessly white. They wave victorious palms. They sing anthems of such exceeding sweetness as no earthly choirs ever approach. They stand before the throne. They fly on ministries of love. They muse on the top of Mount Zion. They meditate on the banks of the river of life. They are rapturous with ecstasies of love. God wipes away all tears from their eyes.”

Randolph Sinks Foster (1820–1903) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 306.

Love, Life, Tear, Light

“Resolved, never to count that a prayer, nor to let that pass as a prayer, nor that as a petition of a prayer, which is so made, that I cannot hope that God will answer it; nor that as a confession, which I cannot hope God will accept.”

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

No. 29.
Seventy Resolutions (1722-1723)

Hope

“Now it was all behind him — but by God, he did not, he would not regret it. He had taken the only way, and if it had pleased Fate to sport cruelly with him, that was no fault of his. He had sacrificed one loyalty to a more urgent, and with the thought bitterness went out of his soul. […] Tragedy had ensued, but the endeavour had been honest. He saw the ironic pattern of life spread out beneath him, as a man views a campaign from a mountain, and he came near to laughter — laughter with an undertone of tears.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

Source: Midwinter (1923), Ch. XVIII

Life, Fate, Way, Soul

“The fundamental importance of the inner self frees us from the conception of evolution as a purely natural process. The Spirit is not something, which evolves before our eyes, flowing as if it were a river. This is a naturalistic conception of the Spirit, which ignores the inner self as that centre through which everything passes, in whose moral conscience all reality is idealised.
If reality evolved by itself there would be no place to speak of duty and conscience. But God does not consist in being, but in choosing. We cannot define God because we can experience him only in the present and in the act which comes from our inner self.”

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

Hymn

Nature, Reality

“Oh God! I'm going to miss him. I can’t yet imagine life without him. But I guess with God’s help… I'll learn. I keep looking at the photo he gave me of himself, which says, 'To my true love Elizabeth, I love you forever.”

Elizabeth Taylor (1932–2011) British-American actress

And, I will love HIM forever.
As quoted in "Michael Jackson: Elizabeth Taylor Honors her good friend" by Dave Karger, Entertainment Weekly (26 June 2009)

Love, Life, Imagination, Photo

“It is a fascinating story to those who care for their Bible. It is the life-history of the greatest of books, diversified by interesting episodes which appeal to our human sympathies; and we venture to think that the result is reassuring. It may be disturbing to some to part with the conception of a Bible handed down through the ages without alteration and in unchallenged authority; but it is a higher ideal to face the facts, to apply the best powers with which God has endowed us to the solutions of the problems which they present to us; and it reassuring at the end to find that the general result of all these discoveries and all this study is to strengthen the proof of the authenticity of the Scripture, and our conviction that we have in our hands, in substantial integrity, the veritable Word of God.”

Frederic G. Kenyon (1863–1952) British palaeographer and biblical and classical scholar

Source: The Story Of The Bible, Chapter X, The Position Today, p. 144

Life, Books, Age, History

“The recognition of God is easier through the nature. Find the presence of God by apprehending the nature, and comprehend the Divine allusions through the nature”

Elia M. Ramollah (1973) founder and leader of the El Yasin Community

Amen (vol.1)

Nature

“I do request you to thank Mr. W___ for me, and tell him he has the prayers- not of a raving mad whig, nor fawning deceitful tory- but of a coal-black, jolly African, who wishes health and peace to every religion and country throughout the ample range of God's creation!”

Ignatius Sancho (1729–1780) British composer, writer and grocer

(from vol 2, letter 62: 17 Jan 1780, to Mr S___ ).

Health, Peace, Religion, Madness

“And yet I will venture to believe that in no time, since the beginnings of Society, was the lot of those same dumb millions of toilers so entirely unbearable as it is even in the days now passing over us. It is not to die, or even to die of hunger, that makes a man wretched; many men have died; all men must die,—the last exit of us all is in a Fire-Chariot of Pain. But it is to live miserable we know not why; to work sore and yet gain nothing; to be heart-worn, weary, yet isolated, unrelated, girt in with a cold universal Laissez-faire: it is to die slowly all our life long, imprisoned in a deaf, dead, Infinite Injustice, as in the accursed iron belly of a Phalaris' Bull! This is and remains forever intolerable to all men whom God has made. Do we wonder at French Revolutions, Chartisms, Revolts of Three Days? The times, if we will consider them, are really unexampled.”

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

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Life, Men, Hunger, Pain

“The End of History was never linked to a specifically American model of social or political organisation. Following Alexandre Kojève, the Russian-French philosopher who inspired my original argument, I believe that the European Union more accurately reflects what the world will look like at the end of history than the contemporary United States. The EU's attempt to transcend sovereignty and traditional power politics by establishing a transnational rule of law is much more in line with a "post-historical" world than the Americans' continuing belief in God, national sovereignty, and their military.”

Francis Fukuyama (1952) American political scientist, political economist, and author

In "The history at the end of history" http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/apr/03/thehistoryattheendofhist, The Guardian, 3 April 2007. 2000s

World, Law, History

“For one thing, God didn't invent the circumcision, I did.”

Chris Pontius (1974) American actor

Satan vs. God- Jackass Episodes]

“How, save through obscure
Terrors, imagine more implacable still
And as a suppliant the god who some day will
Receive the gift of your grace! and for whom,
Devoured by anguish, do you keep the unknown
Splendor and mystery of your being?”

Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) French Symbolist poet

Nurse.
Hérodiade (1898)

Imagination

“God can make good use of all that happens, but the loss is real.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Perelandra

Perelandra (1943)

Loss

“Kromitzki is dead! The catastrophe has come upon us like a thunderbolt. God keep Aniela from any harm in her present state.”

Henryk Sienkiewicz book Without Dogma

12 November
Without Dogma (1891)

Dead

“I've got a lot of experience with eating and with fasting. Part of the reason people fast, especially in a spiritual and religious context, is to understand that you don't need food as much as you think you do. … The main source of energy is the sun. … the energy we get from food is energy plants have metabolized through photosynthesis and then some animal eats it and it goes into the animal's tissue and then we eat their tissue. There are other ways to access energy. … The religions are many, but God is one. I believe based on what I've studied, all religions say the same thing but in different ways.”

Ricky Williams (1977) All-American college football players, professional football players, running back

"Ricky Williams on fasting, energy, religion" by Tim Graham, ESPN.com (17 September 2010) http://www.espn.com/blog/afceast/post/_/id/18355/ricky-williams-on-fasting-and-religion.

People, Religion, Food, Way

“It is a wasted concept [by] a studio that evidently does not have the talent necessary to create something of this complexity, and my god did they screw it up! This is this year's Revelations 2012! And more to the point—it's even got a Revelations 2012 armgun! It's—[beat]—god…! It is…just…horrendously bad!”

TotalBiscuit (1984–2018) British game commentator

WTF Is…? series, Day One: Garry's Incident (October 1, 2013)

“If the American global strategy is dependent on the ability of nuclear ships to come to New Zealand, then God defend the world.”

David Lange (1942–2005) New Zealand politician and 32nd Prime Minister of New Zealand

Referring to American nuclear policy, alluding to New Zealand's national anthem, God Defend New Zealand.
Source: Heinemann Dictionary of New Zealand Quotations (1988), p. 397.

World, Dependency