Quotes About Creation

Every one of us is, even from his mother's womb, a master craftsman of idols.

For, to my mind, this is a certain principle, that nothing is here treated of but the visible form of the world. He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. (on commenting the text of Genesis 1:6)

Would the Lord have dressed the flowers with a beauty that runs freely to meet our eyes if it were wrong to be moved by such beauty? Would He have endowed them with so sweet a fragrance that flows freely into our nostrils if it were wrong to be moved by the pleasantness of such fragrance?

They who take it amiss that the world was not sooner   created, may as well expostulate with God for not having made   innumerable worlds.

He gave   the tree of life its name, not because it could confer on man that life   with which he had been previously endued, but in order that it might be   a symbol and memorial of the

For unless we pass on to his providence—however we may seem both to comprehend with the mind and to confess with the tongue—we do not yet properly grasp what it means to say: "God is Creator." Carnal sense, once confronted with the power of God in the very Creation, stops there, and at most weighs and contemplates only the wisdom, power, and goodness of the author in accomplishing such handiwork. (These

Man is endowed with a singular excellence, for God formed him in his own image and likeness, in which we see a bright refulgence of God's glory. Furthermore

Can we   conceive that man was so placed in the earth as to be ignorant of his   own origin, and of the origin of those things which he enjoyed?

The true knowledge of God is not only to know him as the maker of the world, but also to be persuaded that the world is directed by him, and further to know the nature of that direction. He

Since men do not create their own life but obtain life precariously from another, it follows that God dwells in them.

the elegant structure of the world serving us as a kind of mirror, in which we may behold God, though otherwise invisible.

For how can some idea of God come into your mind without your immediately thinking (since you are His creation) that by the right of creation you are subject to His rule? That your life ought to be devoted to His service? That all that you plan or say or do should be related to Him? If this is so, it clearly follows that your life is wickedly corrupt unless it is ruled in obedience to His holy will.

And, as Augustine expresses it (in Psalm cxliv.), since we are unable to comprehend Him, and are, as it were, overpowered by his greatness, our proper course is to contemplate his works, and

For, quite clearly, the mighty gifts with which we are endowed are hardly from ourselves; indeed, our very being is nothing but subsistence in the one God.

Faith was a gift of God whose main function was to create in man a certain knowledge of God's goodness toward us. The

We should forever keep in mind that we must not brood on the wickedness of man, but realize that he is God's image bearer.

those who see the nightly splendor of the moon are possessed by perverse ingratitude if they do not recognize the goodness of God.

From the power of God we are naturally led to consider his eternity since that from which all other things derive their origin must necessarily be selfexistent and eternal. Moreover

We see it was the Lord's purpose to deliver nothing in his sacred oracles which we might not learn for edification. Therefore, instead of dwelling on superfluous matters, let it be sufficient for us briefly to hold, with regard to the nature of devils, that at their first creation they were the angels of God, but by revolting they both ruined themselves, and became the instruments of perdition to others.

Consequently, we know the most perfect way of seeking God, and the most suitable order, is not for us to attempt with bold curiosity to penetrate to the investigation of his essence, which we ought more to adore than meticulously to search out, but for us to contemplate him in his works whereby he renders himself near and familiar to us, and in some manner communicates himself.

There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.

Man's nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.

All the arts come from God and are to be respected as divine inventions

For we not only discover God by admiring His incomprehensible essence, a thing which still lies hid in the hope of the promise, but we see Him through the greatness of His creation, and the consideration of His justice, and the aid of His daily providence: