Unsourced variant or paraphrase: … We might have given it any name we wished: Abyss, Absolute Darkness, Absolute Light, Matter, Spirit, Ultimate Hope, Ultimate Despair, Silence. But never forget, it is we who give it a name.
The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: We have seen the highest circle of spiraling powers. We have named this circle God. We might have given it any other name we wished: Abyss, Mystery, Absolute Darkness, Absolute Light, Matter, Spirit, Ultimate Hope, Ultimate Despair, Silence.
But we have named it God because only this name, for primordial reasons, can stir our hearts profoundly. And this deeply felt emotion is indispensable if we are to touch, body with body, the dread essence beyond logic.
Within this gigantic circle of divinity we are in duty bound to separate and perceive clearly the small, burning arc of our epoch.
“To be a god can ultimately become boring and degrading. There'd be reason enough for the invention of free will! A god might wish to escape into sleep and be alive only in the unconscious projections of his dream-creatures.”
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Frank Herbert 158
American writer 1920–1986Related quotes
“God bless the man who first invented sleep!”
So Sancho Panza said, and so say I.
"Early Rising".
“Those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make bored.”
Source: From Russia with Love (1957), Ch. 11 : The Soft Life
“God's creatures who cried themselves to sleep stirred to cry again.”
Source: The Silence of the Lambs
As quoted in Words of Ecstasy in Sufism (1985) by Carl W. Ernst, p. 45
Variant translation: Allah, Most High, is the very One Who Himself affirms His Unity by the tongue of whomsoever of His creatures He wishes. If He affirms His Unity in my tongue it is He Who does so, and it is His affair. Otherwise, my brother, I myself have nothing to do with affirming Allah's Unity.
As quoted in "Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj" at Sidi Muhammad Press http://www.sufimaster.org/teachings/husayn.htm
Context: God, Most High, is the very one who Himself affirms His unity by the tongue of whatever of His creatures He wishes. If He Himself affirms His unity by my tongue, it is He and His affair. Otherwise, brother, I have nothing to do with affirming God's Unity.
Source: Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay (2001), "Jesus' fraternal relocation of God", p. 73.
Airman, Monk, Priest, Bishop: An interview with Bp. Rene Henry Gracida https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2016/01/11/airman-monk-priest-bishop-an-interview-with-bp-rene-henry-gracida/ (January 11, 2016)