quotations about God
God like Us suffers the ambition to make a destiny more extraordinary than was conceived for Him, yes God is like Me, only more so.
NORMAN MAILER
"Advertisement for Myself on the Way Out," Advertisements for Myself
Given the world that he created, it would be an impiety against God to believe in him.
JOHN BANVILLE
The Sea
Gods die when they are forgotten.
NEIL GAIMAN
American Gods
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
There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided.
CHARLES DE MONTESQUIEU
Lettres Persannes
The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.
G. K. CHESTERTON
"The Book of Job: An Introduction"
Try to comprehend the unity of all; there is one God, and all are one in Him. If we can but bring home to ourselves the unity of that Eternal Love, there will be no more sorrow for us; for we shall realize, not for ourselves alone but for those whom we love, that whether we live or die, we are the Lord's, and that in Him we live and move and have our being, whether it be in this world or in the world to come.
C. W. LEADBEATER
The Science of the Sacraments
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
God is the explanation of all things.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
The great soul that sits on the throne of the universe is not, never was, and never will be, in a hurry.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND
Gold-Foil
What is God after all? An eternal child playing an eternal game in an eternal garden.
SRI AUROBINDO
Thoughts and Glimpses
It wasn't that she had anything against the faith of the New Testament; left alone, it would be a tender and compassionate religion.... No, what Adelia objected to was the Church's interpretation of God as a petty, stupid, moneygrubbing, retrograde, antediluvian tyrant who, having created a stupendously varied world, had forbidden any inquiry into its complexity, leaving His people flailing in ignorance.
ARIANA FRANKLIN
Mistress of the Art of Death
God is the only being who need not even exist in order to reign.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
Fusées
Let every man come to God in his own way.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
With all due respect, then, to the metaphysicians and religious idealists, philosophers, politicians, or poets: The idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty, and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind, both in theory and practice.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
God and the State
While the root of all the absurdities that torment the world, belief in God, remains intact, it will never fail to bring forth new offspring.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
God and the State
The confidence and faith of the heart alone make both God and an idol. If your faith and trust be right, then is your god also true; and, on the other hand, if your trust be false and wrong, then you have not the true God; for these two belong together faith and God. That now, I say, upon which you set your heart and put your trust is properly your god.
MARTIN LUTHER
Large Catechism
I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
letter to Guy H. Raner Jr., Sep. 28, 1949
Those who marry God can become domesticated too--it’s just as hum-drum a marriage as all the others. The word “Love” means a formal touch of the lips as in the ceremony of the Mass, and “Ave Maria” like “dearest” is a phrase to open a letter. This marriage like the world’s marriages was held together by habits and tastes shared in common between God and themselves--it was God’s taste to be worshipped and their taste to worship, but only at stated hours like a suburban embrace on a Saturday night.
GRAHAM GREENE
A Burnt-Out Case
I do not believe in God, but I am afraid of Him.
GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
Love in the Time of Cholera