“He who knows what it is to enjoy God will dread His loss; he who has seen His face will fear to see His back.”

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 277.

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Richard Alleine6

English clergyman 1611–1681

James Alison (1959) Christian theologian, priest

Source: Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay (2001), "Jesus' fraternal relocation of God", p. 76.

“God has matured. He is not the impulsive, bowelless being of the Testaments - the vehement glorymonger, with His bag of cheap carny tricks and his booming voice - the fiery huckster with his burning bushes and his wonder wands. Nowadays God knows what He wants and He knows who He wants.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Euchrid Eucrow in Cave's novel And the Ass Saw the Angel (1988)
God and religion

“He who does not reflect his life back to God in gratitude does not know himself.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Source: Reverence for Life: The Words of Albert Schweitzer

“The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome. He knows there is no such thing as a fearless warrior or a dread-free artist.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

“He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

“Just as, in the case of the sunlight, on one who has never from the day of his birth seen it, all efforts at translating it into words are quite thrown away; you cannot make the splendour of the ray shine through his ears; in like manner, to see the beauty of the true and intellectual light, each man has need of eyes of his own; and he who by a gift of Divine inspiration can see it retains his ecstasy unexpressed in the depths of his consciousness; while he who sees it not cannot be made to know even the greatness of his loss. How should he? This good escapes his perception, and it cannot be represented to him; it is unspeakable, and cannot be delineated. We have not learned the peculiar language expressive of this beauty. … What words could be invented to show the greatness of this loss to him who suffers it? Well does the great David seem to me to express the impossibility of doing this. He has been lifted by the power of the Spirit out of himself, and sees in a blessed state of ecstacy the boundless and incomprehensible Beauty; he sees it as fully as a mortal can see who has quitted his fleshly envelopments and entered, by the mere power of thought, upon the contemplation of the spiritual and intellectual world, and in his longing to speak a word worthy of the spectacle he bursts forth with that cry, which all re-echo, "Every man a liar!"”

Gregory of Nyssa (335–395) bishop of Nyssa

I take that to mean that any man who entrusts to language the task of presenting the ineffable Light is really and truly a liar; not because of any hatred on his part of the truth, but because of the feebleness of his instrument for expressing the thing thought of.
On Virginity, Chapter 10

“He felt a trickle of cold fear in the depths of his belly, a dread that he was going to get his wish.”

K. A. Bedford book Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait

Source: Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait (2008), Chapter 13 (p. 159)