Quotes About Gods

If there's any justice in the Gods' injustice, then may they let us keep our dreams, even when they're impossible, and may our dreams be happy, even when they're trivial.

I'm talking metaphysics? But all of life is a metaphysics in the darkness, with a vague murmur of the gods and only one way to follow, which is our ignorance of the right way.

My life: a tragedy booed off the stage by the gods after only the first act.

Let the Gods change my dreams, but not my gift for dreaming. — Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Classics, 2002)

Siempre he sentido una repugnancia casi física por las cosas secretas, las intrigas, la diplomacia, las sociedades secretas, el ocultismo. Sobre todo siempre me han molestado estas dos últimas cosas: la pretensión que tienen ciertos hombres de saber, mediante un entendimiento con dioses o maestros o Demiurgos –entre ellos, excluidos todos nosotros–, los grandes secretos que son los fundamentos del mundo.

And so, in this universal river Where I'm not a wave, but waves, I languidly flow, with no requests And no gods to hear them.

Let us intoxicate ourselves with ink , since we lack the nectar of the gods

Who apart from the gods is without pain for his whole lifetime's length?

It was the wont of the immortal gods sometimes to grant prosperity and long impunity to men whose crimes they were minded to punish in order that a complete reverse of fortune might make them suffer more bitterly.

The latest page I've been working is about the organization of the pantheon of the gods. Who's indebted to whom, how they are related, who screwed whose uncle or grandmother, all of that.

I always found the appeal to the market gods a bit odd. Why would the market fix mistakes instead of aggravating them?

I think it's the tendency to want to create gods and monotheistic absolutes and absolute certainties that is the continual temptation in human thought - that's the great danger. Every time we create a god, we diminish humanity.

There is a tendency for the New Gods to work best as guest stars.

The Romans knew only war that was 'just and in keeping with piety' (bellum justum piumque), made legitimate by the preliminary steps taken by the fetiales. If not, it would be a sacrilege, nefas. Civil war was a bellum nefandum, as was any offensive in foreign territory without a declaration of intent (indictio belli) and statutory complaint, as in a lawsuit. A war could not be engaged in without the gods' approval:

Nevertheless, family gods in general held their ground, as did rural gods, right up to the period when government became Christian. In the early fifth century, in his commentaries on Isaiah (57), St Jerome bears witness to what he saw in Rome several years before. Like Tertullian in his De idololatria, he deplores the fact that nowhere escaped paganism. No sooner had one crossed the threshold of a house than one saw the idols of the domestic Lares, 'as they say!

As for the horde of minor gods who respectively watched over every stage of life and work, 'we believe that the angels carry out their duties,' said Tertullian (An., 37, 1).

Seneca (see Aug., CG, 6, 10) deplored this blood-soaked obscenity: One amputates his manhood, another slashes his arms. Can one fear the gods when one seeks their favour in this manner?

But the enthusiasm of the urban plebs for the gods of the Delta caused some disturbances. In 59 BC, when the Senate ordered the destruction of the altars of Serapis, Harpocrates and Anubis, they were very soon reinstated 'owing to the violence of the people's intervention

Significantly, too, the triumvirs Octavian, Antony and Lepidus, promised to build a temple to Isis and Serapis to win favour with the populace (DC, 47, 15, 4). But the promise was not kept, and the war setting Octavian against Cleopatra's lover would become a war of the gods, between Apollo and 'barking Anubis

A fine example of peace with the gods through peace among men . . . Goddesses were offered 'sellisternia', where they were seated, while the gods remained reclining (Val. Max., 2, 1, 2), in keeping with early Roman custom at family meals.

the augurs' task was to consult the gods by observing the sky, birds, their flight and their cries, but also lightning and thunder.

The Romans certainly asked their gods to look favourably upon them, but above all to reassure them in their plans and back them in their actions.

A life in which the gods are not invited is not worth living. It will be quieter, but there won't be any stories.

Then the gods realized they must create substitutes for themselves: men. But how? For them to be truly alive, a god must die.