“Human understanding is fallible, and we see through a glass, darkly. Any religion is a shadow of God. But the shadows of God are not God.”

— Margaret Atwood , book The Year of the Flood

Source: The Year of the Flood

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Human understanding is fallible, and we see through a glass, darkly. Any religion is a shadow of God. But the shadows o…" by Margaret Atwood?

Margaret Atwood 348

Canadian writer 1939

Related quotes

“In any case life is but a procession of shadows, and God knows why it is that we embrace them so eagerly, and see them depart with such anguish, being shadows.”

Virginia Woolf book Jacob's Room

Source: Jacob's Room

“Woman is the crowning excellence of God's creation, the shadow of the gods. Man the god's creation only. Woman is light, man is shadow.”

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (1838–1894) Bengali writer

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay: From Bankim's novel Krishnakanta's Will. Quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2001). Decolonizing the Hindu mind: Ideological development of Hindu revivalism. New Delhi: Rupa. p. 114-115

“To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Other Inquisitions

"The Meeting in a Dream"
Other Inquisitions (1952)

“The Atheist is God playing at hide and seek with Himself; but is the Theist any other? Well, perhaps; for he has seen the shadow of God and clutched at it.”

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

Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Jnana

“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)

“At times God puts us through the discipline of darkness to teach us to heed Him. Song birds are taught to sing in the dark, and we are put into the shadow of God’s hand until we learn to hear Him.”

Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) British missionary

Source: My Utmost for His Highest: Traditional Updated Edition

“A painting is complete when it has the shadows of a god.”

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) Dutch 17th century painter and etcher

Statement attributed to Rembrandt in early biographies, as quoted in The Rise of the Cult of Rembrandt: Reinventing an Old Master in Nineteenth-Century France (2003) by Alison MacQueen
This quote is not to find in the source, Rise of the Cult of Rembrandt: Reinventing an Old Master in Nineteenth-Century France, 2003,p. 287 https://books.google.nl/books?id=N0dVqAsR5k0C&pg=PA292&lpg=PA292&dq=The+Rise+of+the+Cult+of+Rembrandt:+Reinventing+an+Old+Master+in+Nineteenth-century+France&source=bl&ots=SgL2TN2Xct&sig=ZJuOkH35vmifBkzcu5ASLdLyhTI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjx17OkrpfVAhWKnBoKHQlxA0oQ6AEIVzAJ#v=onepage&q=The%20Rise%20of%20the%20Cult%20of%20Rembrandt%3A%20Reinventing%20an%20Old%20Master%20in%20Nineteenth-century%20France&f=false/The
undated quotes

“God is Infinite and His Shadow is also infinite.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

18 : The Four Journeys, p. 22.
The Everything and the Nothing (1963)
Context: God is Infinite and His Shadow is also infinite. The Shadow of God is the Infinite Space that accommodates the infinite Gross Sphere which, with its occurrences of millions of universes, within and without the ranges of men's knowledge, is the Creation that issued from the Point of Finiteness in the infinite Existence that is God.

“If God is as real as the shadow of the Great War on Armistice Day, need we seek further reason for making a place for God in our thoughts and lives?”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

Science and the Unseen World (1929)
Context: If God is as real as the shadow of the Great War on Armistice Day, need we seek further reason for making a place for God in our thoughts and lives? We shall not be concerned if the scientific explorer reports that he is perfectly satisfied that he has got to the bottom of things without having come across either.<!--VI, p.67

“Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living: All things fall under this name. The Sun itself is but the dark simulacrum, and the light but the shadow of God.”

Thomas Browne book The Garden of Cyrus

Source: The Garden of Cyrus (1658), Ch. 4

“Human understanding is fallible, and we see through a glass, darkly. Any religion is a shadow of God. But the shadows of God are not God.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Margaret Atwood 348

Related quotes

Related topics