Quotes About Gods

the continual clatter and clang of hammers and the black smoke of manufacture rose to the African sky. The malodorous incense of civilisation was offered to the startled gods of Egypt.

We read the letters of the dead like helpless gods, but gods nonetheless, since we know the dates that follow. We know which debts will never be repaid.

I once heard you say that dealing with gods and dealing with men weren't such different things. A prince, you taught me, should honor both gods and men during his days of good fortune, so that both men and gods will remember him in his time of need."   True

I do not see how one who is an enemy of the gods can run fast enough away, nor where he can flee to escape, nor what darkness could cover him, nor how he could find a position strong enough for refuge. For all things in all places are subject to the gods, and the power of the gods extends equally over everything.

I knew very little about the religion. [Christianity] It had a reputation for few gods and great violence. But good schools.

To laugh at cheap jests is as base as to pray to cheap gods.

Historically, the gods of an existing religion become the demons of the conquering religion. That doesn't make one evil and the other good, it just means that one tribe is better at waging war than the other.

History is not a conversation with the past, Instead, in Warburg, memory is carried forward to us, objectively, by the sequence of pathos-formulas. We do not choose our past, it chooses us. This was not an entirely direful story. The pathos-formulas register danger but they also ward it off, apotropaically. Art creates the psychic distance that gives mankind a chance in its struggle with hostile nature or with the gods.

When you love someone it catches the attention of the Gods, who punish you.

Things have crept in from nether space, whose incursion is forbid by the watchful gods of all proper and well-ordered lands; but there are no such gods in Yondo, where live the hoary genii of stars abolished, and decrepit demons left homeless by the destruction of antiquated hells.

One gave oneself time, one lost oneself, one followed the sun, one fell asleep so often on a bed of straw, and now, how fresh is the memory of wind one might say that the rain hissed a long silence and it was as if in the evening gods were born but so small that the birds pecked them like grain.

It is great good health to believe, as the Hindus do, that there are 33 million gods and goddesses in the world. It is great good health to want to understand one's dreams. It is great good health to desire the ambiguous and paradoxical.

A grief-stricken man is driven to defy the gods.

I have no wish to know anything which may deform life and mar its beauty. Never mind whether our gods are true or not; they are beautiful, their rule is pleasant for us, and we live without care.

What are men? Mortal gods. What are gods? Immortal men.

War is father of all, and king of all. He renders some gods, others men; he makes some slaves, others free.

The poet was a fool who wanted no conflict among us, gods or people. Harmony needs low and high, as progeny needs man and woman.

War is the father of all and the king of all; it proves some people gods, and some people men; it makes some people slaves and some people free.

If they are gods, why do you lament them? If you lament them, you must no longer regard them as gods.

What use are these people's wits, who let themselves be led by speechmakers, in crowds, without considering how many fools and thieves they are among, and how few choose the good? The best choose progress toward one thing, a name forever honored by the gods, while others eat their way toward sleep like nameless oxen.

War, as father of all things, and king, names few to serve as gods, and of the rest makes these men slaves, those free.

It is the gods' custom to bring low all things of surpassing greatness.

For great wrongdoing there are great punishments from the gods.

But I like not these great success of yours for I know how jealous are the gods.