“Part of the inner world of everyone is this sense of emptiness, unease, incompleteness, and I believe that this in itself is a word from God, that this is the sound that God’s voice makes in a world that has explained him away. In such a world, I suspect that maybe God speaks to us most clearly through his silence, his absence, so that we know him best through our missing him.”

“If you like to be saint of God, then desire not the things of this world or the next. Empty yourself for God. Turn your face to Him so that He may turn to you and make you His saint.”

Ibrahim ibn Adham (718–776) ascetic Sufi saint

“If through a broken heart God can bring His purposes to pass in the world, then thank Him for breaking your heart.”

Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) British missionary

“God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.
Costly grace is the sanctuary of God; it has to be protected from the world, and not thrown to the dogs. It is therefore the living word, the Word of God, which he speaks as it pleases him. Grace is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: "My yoke is easy and my burden is light."”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

“On the whole, ought I not to rejoice that God was pleased to give me such a father; that from earliest years I had the example of a real man of God's own making continually before me? Let me learn of him. Let me write my books as he built his houses, and walk as blamelessly through this shadow world; if God so will, to rejoin him at last. Amen.”

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

“Many are to believe on Christ through the communication of truth by His servants. As they see the beauty of the Word of God, and as they see Jesus revealed in the lives of His children, they will praise Him with heart and soul and voice.”

Ellen G. White (1827–1915) American author and founder/leader of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

“To look away from the world, or to stare at it, does not help a man to reach God; but he who sees the world in Him stands in His presence.”

Martin Buber book I and Thou

“We believe in the Bayan, by God, and that which has been revealed in it from its Lord; for it testifies to Him as the angels and the posessors of knowledge testify to God, bearing witness by this that no other God is there besides Him and all are to Him, prostrated. For what other God is there besides God and His Names and His Attributes? To Him is the Creation and the Command, and all are returning to Him.”

Subh-i-Azal (1831–1912) Persian religious leader

“For we must consider that we shall be a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world.”

John Winthrop (1588–1649) Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, author of "City upon a Hill"

“I don't believe in God, but I miss him.”

Julian Barnes (1946) English writer