“Great talents are not, before God, a substitute for love for Himself; the possession of a profound intellect does not free any man from the obligations resting on the heart for purity and holiness; a reputation for attainments in science does not settle the question whether he is righteous before his Maker; refined manners are not, in the sight of God, a substitute for the graces of the Spirit; God does not justify man on the ground of human learning; attainments in chemistry, anatomy, geology, botany, astronomy, or skill in sculpture and painting, — these do not prepare a man to die.”

— Albert Barnes

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 114.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Albert Barnes 22

American theologian 1798–1870

Edward McKendree Bounds (1835–1913) clergyman of the Methodist Episcopal Church South

Power Through Prayer.

“In order to attain perfect union, we must divest ourselves of God…The common belief about God, that He is a great Taskmaster, whose function is to reward or punish, is cast out by perfect love; and in this sense the spiritual man does divest himself of God as conceived of by most people.”

Henry Suso (1295–1366) Dominican friar and mystic

The Exemplar, The Life of the Servant

“If a man does not work passionately - even furiously - at being the best in the world at what he does, he fails his talent, his destiny, and his God.”

George Lois (1931) American art director, designer and author

“The man is making preparations for a year, and does not know that he will die before evening. And I remembered God's second saying, "Learn what is not given to man."”

Leo Tolstoy book What Men Live By

'What dwells in man" I already knew. Now I learnt what is not given him. It is not given to man to know his own needs.
Source: What Men Live By (1881), Ch. XI

“Man is by nature unable to want God to be God. Indeed, he himself wants to be God, and does not want God to be God.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Thesis 17
Disputation against Scholastic Theology (1517)

“Cain has built a city. For God's Eden he substitutes his own, for the goal given to his life by God, he substitutes a goal chosen by himself.”

Jacques Ellul book The Meaning of the City

Source: The Meaning of the City (1951), p. 5

“Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Attributed in emails in 1999, as debunked at "Malice of Absence" at Snopes.com http://www.snopes.com/religion/einstein.asp#MX2FyfdMLHissI4T.99
This statement has been attributed to others before Einstein; its first attribution to Einstein appears to have been in an email story that began circulating in 2004. See the Urban Legends Reference Pages http://www.snopes.com/religion/einstein.asp for more discussion.
Misattributed
Variant: Evil is the absence of God.

“Anybody who thinks he is something great, even before God, is rightly abandoned by God, as one who thinks that he does not need His help.”

Gregory Palamas (1296–1359) Monk and archbishop

Source: The Parables of Jesus: Sermons by Saint Gregory Palamas

“He is born in vain, who having attained the human birth, so difficult to get, does not attempt to realise God in this very life”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960), p. 2

“St. Paul says, that God commendeth his love to us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us: and that when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son. St. Paul was in a peculiar manner a child of grace: with gratitude, therefore, he honours and extols its efficacy in all his epistles; and particularly in his epistle to the Romans throughout he defends his doctrines with great precision and copiousness. 'Every mouth,' says he, 'must be stopped, and all the world become guilty before God. By the deeds of the law no flesh can be justified. Man must be justified freely by his grace. By grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.”

Thomas Bradwardine (1300–1349) Theologian; Archbishop of Canterbury

De causa Dei contra Pelagium

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Albert Barnes 22

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