Quotes About God

This result could have been achieved either by his [God] endowing my intellect with a clear and distinct perception of everything about which I would ever deliberate, or simply by impressing the following rule so firmly upon my memory that I could never forget it: I should never judge anything that I do not clearly and distinctly understand.

It is thus quite certain that the constitution of the true religion, the ordinances of which are derived from God, must be incomparably superior to that of every other.

Finally, if there be still persons who are not sufficiently persuaded of the existence of God and of the soul, by the reasons I have adduced, I am desirous that they should know that all the other propositions, of the truth of which they deem themselves perhaps more assured, as that we have a body, and that there exist stars and an earth, and such like, are less certain;

Certainly no one can deny that we have such an idea of God in ourselves unless they think that there is no knowledge at all of God in human minds.

Thus the perception of the infinite is somehow prior in me to the perception of the finite, that is, my perception of God is prior to my perception of myself. For how would I understand that I doubt and that I desire, that is, that I lack something and that I am not wholly perfect, unless there were some idea in me of a more perfect being, by comparison with which I might recognize my defects?

And it is evident that it is not less repugnant that falsity or imperfection, in so far as it is imperfection, should proceed from God, than that truth or perfection should proceed from nothing.

Moreover, I am aware that most of the irreligious deny the existence of God, and the distinctness of the human soul from the body, for no other reason than because these points, as they allege, have never as yet been demonstrated.

Be that as it may, there is fixed in my mind a certain opinion of long [21] standing, namely that there exists a God who is able to do anything and by whom I, such as I am, have been created. How do I know that he did not bring it about that there is no earth at all, no heavens, no extended thing, no shape, no size, no place, and yet bringing it about that all these things appear to me to exist precisely as they do now?

Porque por naturaleza, considerada en general, no entiendo otra cosa sino Dios mismo, o bien el orden y la disposición que Dios ha establecido en las cosas creadas. Y por mi naturaleza en particular, no entiendo otra cosa sino la complexión o reunión de todo aquello que Dios me ha dado.

This is so much the case that the will is the chief basis for my understanding that I bear a certain image and likeness of God.

Yo soy un ser que piensa, siente, quiere, ama y odia; esta naturaleza que me rodea es bella y luminosa, y la vida nos ha sido dada por un Dios justo y benévolo, para vivirla con entereza y plenitud.»

En realidad, la hipótesis del genio maligno ni es un juego ni un círculo de hierro, sino un movimiento dialéctico, muy importante en el curso del pensamiento cartesiano. Repárese en que la hipótesis del genio maligno, necesita, para ser destruida, la demostración de la existencia de Dios. Sólo cuando sabemos que Dios existe y que Dios es incapaz de engañarnos, sólo entonces queda deshecha la última

What is the basis of imitating Jesus? It cannot be his ways of being or his personal habits: imitation is never about that in the Gospels. Neither does Jesus propose an ascetic rule of life in the sense of Thomas a Kempis and his celebrated Imitation of Christ, as admirable as that work may be. What Jesus invites us to imitate is his own desire, the spirit that directs him toward the goal on which his intention is fixed: to resemble God the Father as much as possible.

If we choose Jesus as our model, we simultaneously choose his own model, God the Father. Having no appropriative desire, Jesus proclaims the possibility of freedom from scandal. But if we choose possessive models we find ourselves in endless scandals, for our real model is Satan. A seductive tempter who suggests to us the desires most likely to generate rivalries, Satan prevents us from reaching whatever he simultaneously incites us to desire.

What Jesus invites us to imitate is his own desire, the spirit that directs him toward the goal on which his intention is fixed: to resemble God the Father as much as possible.

Humankind exhausts, little by little, all illusions, including inferior notions of God swept away by atheism.

we imitate the detached generosity of God, then the trap of mimetic rivalries will never close over us.

Many people believe they are faithful to Jesus, and yet they address superficial reproaches to the Gospels. This shows that they remain subject to mimetic rivalries and their violent one-upmanship. If we don't see that the choice is inevitable between the two supreme models, God and the devil, then we have already chosen the devil and his mimetic violence. Our

The invitation to imitate the desire of Jesus may seem paradoxical, for Jesus does not claim to possess a desire proper, a desire "of his very own." Contrary to what we ourselves claim, he does not claim to "be himself"; he does not flatter himself that he obeys only his own desire. His goal is to become the perfect image of God. There-fore he commits all his powers to imitating his Father. In inviting us to imitate him, he invites us to imitate his own imitation.

Far from being a paradox, this invitation is more reasonable than that of our modern gurus, who ask their disciples to imitate them as the great man or woman who imitates no one. Jesus, by contrast, invites us to do what he himself does, to become like him a perfect imitator of God the Father.

Creation is the work of the Word; it is also, and by this very fact, His manifestation, his outward affirmation; and this is why the world is like a divine language, for those who know how to understand it: Caeli enarrant gloriam Dei (The heavens declare the glory of God, Ps. XIX:2)

le mot « infini », qui s'y trouve trois fois, est impropre et devrait être remplacé par « indéfini » : Dieu seul est infini, l'espace et le temps ne peuvent être qu'indéfinis. "Le Cœur du Monde dans la Kabbale hébraïque

It was the strangest feeling, to be convicted but not condemned. God had torn him down but then had slowly built him back up. He had crushed him and then restored him. The more honest Clay became, the more God revealed to him the condition of his heart—a heart born into darkness, a heart that had trusted in the ways of the world.

But in the darkness of her room he was reminded that helplessness was often a portal to God, because rarely did the fragile, self-serving human pray for things in his complete control.