quotations about God
Man from his own existence knows the existence of a Creator; from his own attributes, he knows the attributes of his maker; from the control which he has over his own kingdom, he knows the control that God exercises over all the world.
MUHAMMAD AL-GHAZALI
The Alchemy of Happiness
Gods die when they are forgotten.
NEIL GAIMAN
American Gods
The brave-speaking Plato pronounceth that God formed the world after his own image; but this smells rank of the old dotages, old comic writers would say; for how did God, casting his eye upon himself, frame this universe? Or how can God be spherical, and be inferior to man?
PLUTARCH
"What is God?", Essays & Miscellanies
If there is a God what the hell is He for?
WILLIAM FAULKNER
As I Lay Dying
Man creates both his god and his devil in his own image. His god is himself at his best, and his devil himself at his worst.
ELBERT HUBBARD
The American Bible
I ask no truer image of my Heavenly Father than I find reflected in my own heart -- all loving, all forgiving.
HOSEA BALLOU
Treasury of Thought
The belief in a God All Powerful wise and good, is so essential to the moral order of the world and to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources nor adapted with too much solicitude to the different characters and capacities to be impressed with it.
JAMES MADISON
letter to Frederick Beasley, Nov. 20, 1825
He who looks for the worst in men will not be without belief in a personal devil; he who looks for the best in men will not be without faith in a personal God.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
Many people choose to believe that God communicates in special ways and only with special people. This removes the mass of the people from responsibility for hearing My message, much less receiving it (which is another matter), and allows them to take someone else's word for everything. You don't have to listen to Me, for you've already decided that others have heard from Me on every subject, and you have them to listen to.
NEALE DONALD WALSCH
Conversations with God
To seek God within ourselves avails us far more than to look for Him amongst creatures.
TERESA OF AVILA
The Interior Castle
I don't want my kids growing up with the image of God that I had -- Plato's white grandfatherly god -- because that god is not a very good father. When it comes down to it, you can't trust him with your kids.
WM. PAUL YOUNG
"The Love Shack", Christianity Today, Mar. 4, 2013
The Divinity is so great, and of such a character, that He both sees and hears all things, is omnipotent, and attends to all things at once.
XENOPHON
attributed, Day's Collacon
The life of God -- the life which the mind apprehends and enjoys as it rises to the absolute unity of all things -- may be described as a play of love with itself; but this idea sinks to an edifying truism, or even to a platitude, when it does not embrace in it the earnestness, the pain, the patience, and labor, involved in the negative aspect of things.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL
The Phenomenology of Spirit
God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in his arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; He will set them above their betters.
H. L. MENCKEN
Minority Report
It makes a great deal of difference what sort of God men believe in.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
These are thy glorious works Parent of Good,
Almighty, thine this universal Frame,
Thus wondrous fair; thy self how wondrous then!
Unspeakable, who sitst above these Heavens
To us invisible or dimly seen
In these thy lowest works, yet these declare
Thy goodness beyond thought, and Power Divine:
Speak ye who best can tell, ye Sons of light,
Angels, for ye behold him, and with songs
And choral symphonies, Day without Night,
Circle his Throne rejoicing, ye in Heav'n,
On Earth join all ye Creatures to extoll
Him first, him last, him midst, and without end.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
Within you lies embedded in the marble of your human life the Spirit that is God, hidden beneath the flesh, hidden beneath the bodies, the emotions and the mind, so that it is not visible to the outer eyes. You have not to create that image. It is there. You have not to manufacture it; you have only to set it free.
ANNIE BESANT
There Is No Death
The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.
G. K. CHESTERTON
"The Book of Job: An Introduction"
It is hardly to be believed how spiritual reflections when mixed with a little physics can hold people's attention and give them a livelier idea of God than do the often ill-applied examples of his wrath.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook A", Aphorisms
I found it better for my soul to be humble before the mysteries o' God's dealings, and not be making a clatter about what I could never understand.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede