Quotes About Gods

The Moon and its phases gave man his first calendar. Trying to match that calendar with the seasons helped give him mathematics. The usefulness of the calendar helped give rise to the thought of beneficent gods. And with all that the Moon is beautiful, too.

...for the gods too love a joke...

It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods.

Light comes to us unexpectedly and obliquely. Perhaps it amuses the gods to try us. They want to see whether we are asleep.

Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions to the rulings of the bench of gods. This fighting, no doubt, makes for human progress, for it favors the strong and the brave. It also makes for beauty, for lesser men try to escape from a hopeless and intolerable world by creating a more lovely one of their own.

If I am mad, it is mercy! May the gods pity the man who in his callousness can remain sane to the hideous end!

So they watch over us like gods of old. Our patron sinners.

Dreams aren't real? I say they walk among us, whispering in our ears all their sweet promises and threats, carried in our heads, mind-words, maggots eating at our dead souls. Dreams, memes, gods and monsters, creatures of the id. If they aren't real then what the hell am I?

All gods have their houses but all houses fall eventually and when they do the gods are left with only history as their home, living in the dreams of archaeologists, in the margins of a culture's memory, in the Vellum.

He is encompassed himself, in the steering clasp of hand on shoulder and scrubber-fluffed noggin bobbing in prayer to the gods of cock, filled with grace from the sacred font of the phallus.

quote Euripides: "Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.")

My mind was on a silent hillside, in a land far away, and gods who should be left to sleep. *

Some things unfortunately yielded to no man's orders. Maybe that was why foolish people imagined gods into being: to have someone whose orders were sure to be obeyed.

Beware of absolutes. There are many gods.

si los mortales estaban sufriendo «más de lo necesario» no era por culpa de los dioses, sino por culpa de «la ceguera de sus propios corazones».

Is it the gods who set this fire in our hearts, or do we each make our fierce desire into a god?

I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.

Today one might be tempted to say that patriotism is the last refuge of the tribal religion dedicated to the worship of German, French, English and Russian Gods of Battles. Surely such a religion has nothing in common with the religion which counsels for the disciple non-resistance, unstinted forgiveness, and the elimination of all rancor?

Quos vilt perdere dementat' Whome the gods wish to destroy, they first drive mad (Latin).

Hinduism, the predominant religion (in India), believes in the existence of multiple gods, many of whom are androgynous (having both female and male characteristics). Many Hindu sects are devoted to the worship of specific deities, such as Rama, Vishnu, and Shiva.

Ace sat down and inflated his cheeks like the wind gods in Italian paintings.

The chief business of the gods is to give protection and assistance to such of their people as require it; but...they cannot give any help until it is demanded, the free-will of mankind being the most jealously guarded and holy principle in life; therefore, the interference of the loving gods comes only on an equally loving summons.

In a word, in place of dromena, things done, we get gods worshipped; in place of sacraments, holy bulls killed and eaten in common, we get sacrifices in the modern sense, holy bulls offered to yet holier gods.

Adding and Dividing Work Ancient people seem to have understood perfectly well that economic life is a matter of adding new goods and services. But instead of seeing the logic and order by which this happens, they saw magic. Important activities had been given to men or taught to men in remote times by gods; they had been stolen from gods; they had been brought along, like a trousseau, by demigod progenitors of people.