quotations about God
The name of God should no longer come from the mouth of man. This word that has so long been degraded by usage no longer means anything.... To use the word God is more than sloth, it is a refusal to think, a king of short cut, a hideous shorthand.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
The Confession
To recognize God where and as he reveals himself is the only true bliss on earth.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
God is revealing Himself to humanity. He is a Word, always speaking. He speaks through His works; all nature interprets Him to us. He speaks through His prophets; all men who have felt the inspiration of His presence interpret Him to us.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.
WILLIAM JAMES
Lecture III, "Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered," Pragmatism
Give God the margin of eternity to justify himself in, and the more we live and know of our own souls and of spiritual experiences generally, the more we shall be convinced that we have to do with one who is good and just.
HUGH R. HAWEIS
Speech in Season
To say that the Great Companion is dead, is not to say that there is no God. The dead also live; but between them and ourselves all communion and companionship seem to most of us impossible. So to many in our own time, to many without the Church, to some within it, living companionship with a living God is an experience unknown. They believe in what Carlyle calls a "hypothetical God," but he is to them only a hypothesis. They look back through the ages for some evidence of a God who revealed himself centuries ago; they look forward with anticipation to a God who will reveal himself in some future ephiphany; but of a God here and now, a God who is a perpetual presence, a God whom they can see as Abraham saw him, with whom they can talk as Moses talked with him, who will inspire them with courage as he inspired Gideon, with hope as he inspired Isaiah, and with praise as he inspired David, they do not know.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Great Companion
God is Alpha and Omega in the great world, let us endeavour to make him so in the little world; let us practice to make him our last thought at night when we sleep; and our first in the morning when we awake; so shall our fancy be sanctified in the night, and our understanding rectified in the day; so shall our rest be peaceful, and our labours prosperous; our life pious, and our death glorious.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
God is a witness that cannot be sworn.
SAMUEL BECKETT
Watt
The universe is just as great and amazing inside of me as outside. Immanuel Kant marveled when he looked into his own heart, as when he looked up at the sky. So the stars over me are no less sublime than my soul which mirrors them; thunder and lightning among the clouds are matched by storms of passion within me as terrible as they; my memory is a greater thing than the British Museum, for it is a living museum; my will is greater than gravitation or electricity or gunpowder, for it can use them, and they cannot budge; my imagination is more wondrous than the Vatican gallery, for its pictures come and go with instant swiftness, and my conscience is as mysterious and as majestic as the substance of God Himself.
FRANK CRANE
"The Part of Me That Doubts", Four Minute Essays
If you and I have not seen God, we cannot bear witness to God.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.
JAMES BALDWIN
The Fire Next Time
Many deeds are enacted in God's name which fill the Devil's heart with envy.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
Curiously, neither God nor the devil may wear modern dress, but must retain Grecian vestments.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
Nobel Lecture, December 12, 1930
For the existence of any religion there must be a belief that there is, somewhere in the universe, an intelligence of a higher order than man's, and that this intelligence possesses a power superior to what we call the ordinary powers of nature. And religion is simply the condition or adjustment of the relations between each individual human soul and that higher intelligence, call it by what name you will.
ROSSITER JOHNSON
"The Whispering Gallery"
Life is everything. Life is God. Everything changes and moves and that movement is God. And while there is life there is joy in consciousness of the divine. To love life is to love God.
LEO TOLSTOY
War and Peace
If there is a God what the hell is He for?
WILLIAM FAULKNER
As I Lay Dying
In reality, each thought we have carries with it a little spiritual power, a tug toward or away from God. No thought is purely neutral.
JOHN ORTBERG
God Is Closer Than You Think
He who looks for the worst in men will not be without belief in a personal devil; he who looks for the best in men will not be without faith in a personal God.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
RICHARD DAWKINS
The God Delusion
Gods die when they are forgotten.
NEIL GAIMAN
American Gods