Quotes About God

Whatever is to make us better and happy, God has placed either openly before us or close to us.

My dad doesn't like religion much, but I grew up very close to the Baptist tradition. God isn't this distant thing. God is right here with you all the time. He's your buddy, and you can talk about everything.

The authority of the Church was thrown over by the authority of the state. Twenty years only have passed, and the authority of the state is already thrown over by the authority of conscience. ... I fear for those yet unborn, that they are already betrayed. Robbed of the truth we can inherit, they will know their sins as only misery, and their forgiveness they will not know at all because they do not know God. Then at last men will be free of God. Then they will be slaves indeed.

God forgives us, as—when—we forgive them who injure us—and ourselves. These last weeks I think I have understood what many times in the past I thought I knew—but we never know—we never reach the end of understanding—the understanding of God—the mystery of his love...

Trust the good God, do not be afraid, and soon your troubles will be over and you will be once more in your mother's arms.

Man distinguishes himself from Nature. This distinction of his is his God: the distinguishing of God from Nature is nothing else than the distinguishing of man from Nature. … [S]peculations and controversies concerning the personality or impersonality of God are therefore fruitless, idle, uncritical … ; … they in truth speculate only concerning themselves, only in the interest of their own instinct of self-preservation[.]

Nature is precisely what separates man from God … [R]eligion believes that one day this wall of separation will fall away. One day there will be no Nature, no matter, no body, at least none such as to separate man from God: then there will be only God[.]

He who makes God act humanly, declares human activity to be divine[.]

God does not negative himself in the Incarnation, but he shows himself as that which he is, as a human being.

T]o think God is therefore to affirm what God is, to establish the being of God as an act. That God is thought, cognised, is essential; that this tree is thought, is to the tree accidental, unessential. … [H]ow is it possible that God – if he is to exist for us, to be an object to us – must necessarily be thought … ? … [I]t is not possible.

T]he imagination identifies … the external God with the soul of man. The imagination is … the true place of an existence which is absent, not present to the senses, though nevertheless sensational in its essence. Only the imagination solves the contradiction in an existence which is at once sensational and not sensational[.]

T]he Christians of former days … rejected the real life of the family, the intimate bond of love which is naturally moral as … undivine, unheavenly, … [I]n compensation they had a Father and Son in God, who embraced each other with heartfelt love, with that intense love which natural relationship alone inspires. … [H]ere the satisfaction of those profoundest human wants which, in reality, in life, they denied, became to them an object of contemplation in God.

Love determined God to the renunciation of his divinity.

Faith discriminates thus: This is true, that is false. And it claims truth to itself alone. Faith has for its object a definite, specific truth … One thing alone is truth, … God … ; all other gods are vain idols.

Faith in Providence is faith in one's own worth, … [H]ence also false humility, religious arrogance, which, it is true, does not rely on itself, but only because it commits the care of itself to the blessed God. God … wills that I shall be blest; but that is my will also: … God's love for me [is] nothing else than my own self-love deified.

The notion that the fulfilment of prayer has been determined from eternity, that it was originally included in the plan of creation, is the empty, absurd fiction of a mechanical mode of thought, which is in absolute contradiction with the nature of religion. Whether God decides on the fulfilment of my prayer now, on the immediate occasion of my offering it, or whether he did decide on it long ago, is the same thing.

Faith left to itself … exalts itself above the laws of natural morality. … [B]y so much higher are duties to God than duties towards man[.]

D]oubt, the principle of theoretic freedom, appears to me a crime. … [T]he highest crime is doubt in God, or the doubt that God exists. … [T]hat which I do not trust myself to doubt, … without feeling disturbed in my soul, without incurring guilt; that is no matter of theory, but a matter of conscience[.]

God as God is the sum of all human perfection; God as Christ is the sum of all human misery. … If God … is … abstract philosophy: … Christ … is … pure suffering - … what makes more impression on the heart than suffering? especially the suffering … of the innocent endured purely for the good of others ..?

Of all the attributes which the understanding assigns to God, that which … especially in the Christian religion … has … pre-eminence … is moral perfection. But God as a morally perfect being is nothing else than the realised idea, … the moral nature of man posited as the absolute being; … how could he otherwise tremble before the Divine Being, accuse himself before him, and make him the judge of his inmost thoughts and feelings?

M]an in religion – in his relation to God – is in relation to his own nature[.]

The dogma presents to us two things – God and love. God is love: but what does that mean? ...[I]f I said of an affectionate human being, he is love itself [,] … I must give up the name God, which expressed a special personal being, a subject in distinction from the predicate.

God … has no more significance for religion than a fundamental general principle has for … science[.]

The course of religious development … consists … in … that man abstracts more and more from God, and attributes more and more to himself. … That which to a later age or a cultured people is given by nature or reason, is to an earlier age, or to a yet uncultured people, given by God.