Quotes About God

They went to school, apparently, to learn to say over and over again, regardless of where they were, what had already been said too often. They learned to have a very high opinion of God and a very low opinion of His works—although they could tell you that this world had been made by God Himself.

XII Do not live for death, pay it no fear or wonder. This is the firmest law of the truest faith. Death is the dew that wets the grass in the early morning dark. It is God's entirely. Withdraw your fatal homage, and live.

They learned to have a very high opinion of God and a very low opinion of His works—although they could tell you that this world had been made by God Himself.

The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.

In a darkened world no longer illuminated by the light of this center [God], technical advances are scarcely more than despairing attempts to make Hell a more agreeable place to live in. This must be particularly emphasized against those who think that by spreading the civilization of science and technology even to the uttermost ends of the earth, they can furnish all the essential preconditions for a golden age. One cannot escape the Devil so easily as that.

the shimmering movement of God's hand across time, drawing life toward the knowledge of him. I

For the heaven and the earth; the sun and the moon and the stars; the whole opening universe of our day; the Scriptures of truth, with all that they contain; the Church of Christ, with all her services and all her saints—all are set before us to teach us and to compel us indeed to "think magnificently of God.

I have never loved a woman, and by God's grace, I never will.

Nature's voice and Nature's beauty---God's soothing and purifying angels of the soul---speak to me most tenderly and most happily, at such times as these.

He who leaves his home in search of knowledge walks in the path of God … and the ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyr";

In short, Aristotle destroys the soul in order to give it immortality; the immortal soul is pure thought, undefiled with reality, just as Aristotle's God is pure activity, undefiled with action. Let him who can, be comforted with this theology. One wonders sometimes whether this metaphysical eating of one's cake and keeping it is not Aristotle's subtle Way of saving himself from anti-Macedonian hemlock?

Belief in God, said Diderot, is bound up with submission to autocracy; the two rise and fall together; and "men will never be free till the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

Centuries of barbarism, insecurity and war had to intervene before man could defile his God with attributes of undying vengeance and inexhaustible cruelty.

He was so ill now that a priest came to shrive him. "From whom do you come, M. l'Abbé?" asked Voltaire. "From God Himself," was the answer. "Well, well, sir," said Voltaire; "your credentials?"121 The priest went away without his prey.

The idea of hell disappeared from educated thought, even from pulpit homilies. Presbyterians became ashamed of the Westminster Confession, which had pledged them to belief in a God who had created billions of men and women despite his foreknowledge that, regardless of their virtues and crimes, they were predestined to everlasting hell.

It is only charlatans who are certain. We know nothing of first principles. It is truly extravagant to define God, angels, and minds, and to know precisely why God formed the world, when we do not know why we move our arms at will. Doubt is not a very agreeable state, but certainty is a ridiculous one.

In some way the god had to be appeased and satisfied; for his worshipers had made him in the image and dream of themselves, and he had no great regard for human life, or womanly tears.

The truest vision ever had of God came, perhaps, here.

Alexander himself, in the hour of his triumph, was conquered by the soul of the East; he married (among several ladies) the daughter of Darius; he adopted the Persian diadem and robe of state; he introduced into Europe the Oriental notion of the divine right of kings; and at last he astonished a sceptic Greece by announcing, in magnificent Eastern style, that he was a god. Greece laughed; and Alexander drank himself to death.

His only occupation is to contemplate the essence of things; and since he himself is the essence of all things, the form of all forms, his sole employment is the contemplation of himself. 40 Poor Aristotelian God!—

The further I go, the more I am confirmed in the idea that systems of metaphysics are for philosophers what novels are for women."59 "It is only charlatans who are certain. We know nothing of first principles. It is truly extravagant to define God, angels, and minds, and to know precisely why God formed the world, when we do not know why we move our arms at will. Doubt is not a very agreeable state, but certainty is a ridiculous one.

Perhaps, for the common people a rewarding and avenging God is necessary. Bayle had asked, If a society of atheists could subsist? Voltaire answers, Yes, if they are also philosophers. But men are seldom philosophers.

So the Jews are still the chosen people? I asked, somewhat doubtfully. If you are a Christian, you must believe it so, because the Bible never contradicts it. A blood covenant is eternal. God never changes. I know it's more congenial to think we [non Jews] are the chosen people, but one can't build a strong biblical case for it.

His very use of parables shows that it was his conviction that the things of this world can lead a man's thoughts direct to God, if he will only see.