c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Life had stepped into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself out in his mind.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
If God created shadows it was to better emphasise the light.
— Pope John XXIII
The Promised Land was a tangible representation of God's ultimate desire for His people, but they failed to comprehend His gift for at least three reasons: It was unconditionally promised, it was outrageously generous, and it was absolutely free. None of those make sense in the world as we know it...
— Charles R. Swindoll
It's not enough merely to believe there is a God. You must believe in the God who is there.
— Charles R. Swindoll
Submitting seemed to me a lot like giving up. If God gave us the strength to bail- the gumption to try and save ourselves- isn't that what he wanted us to do?
— Jeannette Walls, Half Broke Horses
(Thinking while being interrogated by the Germans) You big shots think you can decide on my life, but I have news for you: you can't touch a hair on my head without the will of God my Father, because He is on my side.
— Diet Eman, Things We Couldn't Say
I would stand there at times and remember how beautiful God created this world, and then I would be reassured that he would certainly take care of me and all of my loved ones.
— Diet Eman, Things We Couldn't Say
At least one indication of unbelief is the tendency to measure life's challenges against our own adequacy instead of God's promises. To enter our Sabbath rest, we must put an end to self-reliance - trusting in our own abilities to overcome difficulties, rise above challenges, escape tragedies, or achieve personal greatness.
— Charles R. Swindoll
Yes, our Father has a plan, Ciminae,” he said. “But he leaves it up to his children to accept his will. It is their agency. He cannot force his will upon them. If he did, he would cease to be God. They . . . we must choose for ourselves to accept his will with unbreakable faith in our Father. That is when the Father moves us to do his will.” (The Spirit. From Book 2, "Worlds Without End: Aftermath," coming September 1, 2012)
— Shaun Messick
Elizabeth's barreness and advanced age--a double symbol of hopelessness--became the means by which God would announce to the world that nothing is impossible for Him.
— Charles R. Swindoll
Old religious dogma attempts to convince you that you are on a journey to God, then makes you pay tolls along that roadway.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Though the ancient poet in Plutarch tells us we must not trouble the gods with our affairs because they take no heed of our angers and disputes, we can never enough decry the disorderly sallies of our minds.
— Michel de Montaigne
For though, I walk through the valley of shadows of Death, I will never fear. For You are in Me and I know You will never let me Go. 
— Jestoni Revealed
‎"Well, It's just painful to see them without nothing to eat and at the same time no God. So let's share our food and our God.
— Jestoni Revealed
Everything in life had a purpose, and unless it achieved that purpose, it was just taking up space on the planet and wasting everybody's time.
— Jeannette Walls, Half Broke Horses
To realize that we are just a breath away from eternity takes a lot of guts and brain power. So, spend your breath wisely.
— Jestoni Revealed
Dumnezeu este doar unul şi acelaşi pretutindeni.
— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
Holiness consists simply in doing God's will, and being just what God wants us to be.
— Thérèse de Lisieux
Those who fight against God's people are fighting against God, and fighters against God will not prevail.
— Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society
Do you not see the Madonna always beside the tabernacle?
— Padre Pio
It is unfortunate that in most cases when the sins of the father fall on the son it is because unlike God, people refuse to forgive and forget and heap past wrongs upon innocent generations.
— E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
Saying that you are moral because you believe in a god is like saying you are an economist because you play monopoly.
— Robert W. Cox
You only get one body; it is the temple of your soul. Even God is willing to dwell there. If you truly treat your body like a temple, it will serve you well for decades. If you abuse it you must be prepared for poor health and a lack of energy.
— Oli Hille, Creating the Perfect Lifestyle
We can scarcely indeed look into any part of the sacred volume without meeting abundant proofs, that it is the religion of the Affections which God particularly requires. Love, Zeal, Gratitude, Joy, Hope, Trust, are each of them specified; and are not allowed to us as weaknesses, but enjoined on us as our bounden duty, and commended to us as our acceptable worship.
— William Wilberforce, Real Christianity
In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea God. This in my time is the danger. There is great tension in the world, tension toward a breaking point, and men are unhappy and confused. At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?
— John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
For I know that we laughers have a gross cousinship with the most high, and it is this contrast and perpetual quarrel which feeds a spring of merriment in the soul of a sane man.
— Hilaire Belloc, The Path to Rome
The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, as it pleases him, for he can do all things.
— Homer
Of course, in the process, you must never do harm to others in any serious way, or you'll cease to amuse Him. Then payment comes due for promises you didn't keep.
— Dean Koontz, Odd Thomas
God is the ultimate recycler. We have a good planet here. It has its troubles, yes. We have overpopulation, we have pollution, we have global warming, we have the Thursday night television lineup,” more laughter, “and, of course, we have the infected. We have a lot of problems on Earth, and it might seem like a great idea to hold the Rapture now—why wait? Let’s move on to Heaven, and leave the trials and tribulations of our earthly existence behind us. Let’s get while the getting’s good, and beat the rush.“It might seem like a great idea, but I don’t think it is, for the same reason I don’t think it’s a great idea for a first grader to stand up and say that he’s learned enough, he’s done with school, thanks a lot but he’s got it from here. Compared to God, we’re barely out of kindergarten, and like any good teacher, I don’t believe He intends to let us out of class just because we’re finding the lessons a little difficult. I don’t know whether I believe in the Rapture or not. I believe that if God wants to do it, He will… but I don’t believe that it’s coming in our lifetime. We have too much work left to do right here.
— Mira Grant, Feed
What I do not like about our definitions of genius is that there is in them nothing of the day of judgment, nothing of resounding through eternity and nothing of the footsteps of the Almighty.
— Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
The whole function of the life of prayer is, then, to enlighten and strengthen our conscience so that it not only knows and perceives the outward, written precepts of the moral and divine laws, but above all lives God's law in concrete reality by perfect and continual union with His will.
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
Independence is counterfeit freedom. We think if we can make all our own choices and do our own thing, we will be free. But the opposite is true. By trying to be independent, we are attempting to take God’s place as the ruler of our lives. We can never succeed at creating happiness because we are the created, not the Creator.
— Pauline Creeden, The Prodigal Life: Coming all the way home to God
Gift better than Himself God doth not know,Gift better than God no man can see;This gift doth here the giver given bestowGift to this gift let each receiver be;God is my gift, Himself He freely gave me,God's gift am I, and none but God shall have me.
— Robert Southwell, Collected Poems: Robert Southwell SJ
And you know what? If there is a God, and it's that same God who's so eager to have temples built in honor of his greatness, and wars fought over him, and people dropping to their knees telling him what a wonderful, magnificent being he is? If this all-powerful, all-knowing creature for some reason just can't get by without my worship? Then let him give me some proof. Or at least get over himself if I decide to go out and get some.
— Robin Wasserman, The Book of Blood and Shadow
That wish - that prayer - both men and women would have scorned me for - "But, Father, Thou wilt not despise!" I said, and felt that it was true.
— Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey
There are still many souls to be won for Christ,” she answered with quiet dignity, eyes downcast—but not, he figured, in humility. “Even here. Perhaps, especially here. Where better to spread his love, than a country just recently ravaged by war?” “Where better to be kidnapped and sold into slavery, than a country just recently ravaged by war?” with a discernible sneer.
— V.S. Carnes
By the end of the war, I could pick out Jewish people almost as if I had a sixth sense about it, even if they had blue eyes and blond hair. I would have been a very valuable Gestapo person.
— Diet Eman, Things We Couldn't Say
The realm of God is dangerous. You must enter into it and not just seek information about it
— Archbishop Anthony Bloom
Yesterday the paper had a "short" summary of the places where Jews are not allowed! I can better mention where they are still aloud: "in their houses and in the streets!" God, punish those who are persecuting the people you chose and to whom Jesus also belonged. -From the diary of Diet Eman
— Diet Eman, Things We Couldn't Say
Life will be a whole lot better if we understand what our salvation in Christ means.
— Jaachynma N.E. Agu, The Prince and the Pauper
God Only Knows the Issue.
— Deborah Heiligman
Do we always do the things that God would take pleasure, or that we do things we think God would take pleasure.
— Jestoni Revealed
If it's not for Him, I guess I'd be dead few years ago.
— Jestoni Revealed
Therefore, she hummed the provincial lullaby she had learned from the officers’ children in the English Quarter of Jerusalem, and watched in fascination while the savage radical’s eyes misted over with tears. For an instant, the prison bars melted away, and she felt God’s presence—for the first time since their imprisonment. She was not a captive, and this man was not her captor. Indeed, they were both merely God’s children.
— V.S. Carnes
After the prayer they executed an armed robbery. That sounds very strange this many years later: prayer and then armed robbery.
— Diet Eman, Things We Couldn't Say
Yes, he had made a good choice after all when he had chosen the God of the green pasture and the still waters! He was very powerful, and the fact that He expected you to think for yourself and do something in return for His help did not matter, as long as you could work things out.
— Anne Holm
Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it. God's saving love in Christ, however, is marked by both radical truthfulness about who we are and yet also radical, unconditional commitment to us. The merciful commitment strengthens us to see the truth about ourselves and repent. The conviction and repentance moves us to cling to and rest in God's mercy and grace.
— Timothy J. Keller, The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God
Be strong, live happy and love, but first of allHim whom to love is to obey, and keepHis great command!
— John Milton, Paradise Lost
Your mind was made to know and love God.
— John Piper, Don't Waste Your Life
Love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love's kind, must be destroyed. And our God is a consuming fire.
— George MacDonald
Lord, I believe; help my unbelief' is the best any of us can do really, but thank God it is enough.
— Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat
...Singles, too, must see the penultimate status of marriage. If single Christians don't develop a deeply fulfilling love relationship with Jesus, they will put too much pressure on their DREAM of marriage, and that will create pathology in their lives as well.
— Timothy J. Keller, The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God
If we are to believe he is really alive with all that that implies, then we have to believe without proof. And of course that is the only way it could be. If it could be somehow proved, then we would have no choice but to believe. We would lose our freedom not to believe. And in the very moment that we lost that freedom, we would cease to be human beings. Our love of God would have been forced upon us, and love that is forced is of course not love at all. Love must be freely given. Love must live in the freedom not to love; it must take risks. Love must be prepared to suffer even as Jesus on the Cross suffered, and part of that suffering is doubt.
— Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat
you won’t ever get ahead if you keep feeling sorry for yourself. You must stop all the negative talk and start thinking positive. You have a lot of potential but your life won’t change until you change how you think”.
— Michele Woolley, God's Favor - Breath Of Heaven
God arranges everything for us, so that we need have no more fear or trouble and may be quite sure that all things will come right in the end.
— Johanna Spyri, Heidi
Beauty, then, is not mere decoration, but rather an essential element of the liturgical action, since it is an attribute of God himself and his revelation. These considerations should make us realize the care which is needed, if the liturgical action is to reflect its innate splendour.
— Pope Benedict XVI
I am a man, and men are animals who tell stories. This is a gift from God, who spoke our species into being, but left the end of our story untold. That mystery is troubling to us. How could it be otherwise? Without the final part, we think, how are we to make sense of all that went before: which is to say, our lives?So we make stories of our own, in fevered and envious imitation of our Maker, hoping that we'll tell, by chance, what God left untold. And finishing our tale, come to understand why we were born.
— Clive Barker, Sacrament
You must make your choice: either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
— C.S. Lewis
The evil and suffering in this world are greater than any of us can comprehend. But evil and suffering are not ultimate. God is. Satan, the great lover of evil and suffering, is not sovereign. God is.
— John Piper, Suffering and the Sovereignty of God
Like Adam, we have all lost Paradise; and yet we carry Paradise around inside of us in the form of a longing for, almost a memory of, a blessedness that is no more, or the dream of a blessedness that may someday be again.
— Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat
The organist was almost at the end of the anthem’s long introduction, and as the crescendo increases the cathedral began to glitter before my eyes until I felt as if every stone in the building was vibrating in anticipation of the sweeping sword of sound from the Choir.The note exploded in our midst, and at that moment I knew our creator had touched not only me but all of us, just as Harriet had touched that sculpture with a loving hand long ago, and in that touch I sensed the indestructible fidelity, the indescribable devotion and the inexhaustible energy of the creator as he shaped his creation, bringing life out of dead matter, wresting form continually from chaos. Nothing was ever lost, Harriet had said, and nothing was ever wasted because always, when the work was finally completed, every article of the created process, seen or unseen, kept or discarded, broken or mended – EVERYTHING was justified, glorified and redeemed.
— Susan Howatch
The place that the shepherds found was not an academy or an abstract republic, it was not a place of myths allegorised or dissected or explained or explained away. It was a place of dreams come true.
— G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
If we require some kind of sign, or "proof," for our belief in God, then we believe, or place our tust, not in God but in the sign or proof.
— Robert L. Short, The Gospel According to Peanuts
The portraits, of more historical than artistic interest, had gone; and tapestry, full of the blue and bronze of peacocks, fell over the doors, and shut out all history and activity untouched with beauty and peace; and now when I looked at my Crevelli and pondered on the rose in the hand of the Virgin, wherein the form was so delicate and precise that it seemed more like a thought than a flower, or at the grey dawn and rapturous faces of my Francesca, I knew all a Christian's ecstasy without his slavery to rule and custom; when I pondered over the antique bronze gods and goddesses, which I had mortgaged my house to buy, I had all a pagan's delight in various beauty and without his terror at sleepless destiny and his labour with many sacrifices; and I had only to go to my bookshelf, where every book was bound in leather, stamped with intricate ornament, and of a carefully chosen colour: Shakespeare in the orange of the glory of the world, Dante in the dull red of his anger, Milton in the blue grey of his formal calm; and I could experience what I would of human passions without their bitterness and without satiety. I had gathered about me all gods because I believed in none, and experienced every pleasure because I gave myself to none, but held myself apart, individual, indissoluble, a mirror of polished steel: I looked in the triumph of this imagination at the birds of Hera, glowing in the firelight as though they were wrought of jewels; and to my mind, for which symbolism was a necessity, they seemed the doorkeepers of my world, shutting out all that was not of as affluent a beauty as their own; and for a moment I thought as I had thought in so many other moments, that it was possible to rob life of every bitterness except the bitterness of death; and then a thought which had followed this thought, time after time, filled me with a passionate sorrow.
— W.B. Yeats, Rosa Alchemica
The love of Christ for me will get last say. He is merciful to me for his name’s sake, for the sake of his own goodness, for the sake of his steadfast love and compassion (Psalm 25). When he thinks about me, he remembers what he is like, and that is my exceeding joy. My indestructible hope is that he has turned his face towards me, and he will never turn away.
— David A. Powlison
I'm through with you. Yes, I am going to put you down. From now on, I am my own God. I am going to live by the rules I se for myself. I'll discard everything I was once taught about you. Then I'll be you. I'll be my own God, living my life as I see fit. Not as Mr. Charlie says I should live it, or Mama or anybody else. I shall do as I want in this society that apparently wasn't meant for me and my kind. If you are getting angry because I am talking to you like this, then just kill me, leave me here in this graveyard dead. Maybe thats where all of us belong anyway. Maybe then we wouldn't have to suffer so much. At the rate we are being killed now, we'll all be soon dead anyway.
— Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi: The Classic Autobiography of a Young Black Girl in the Rural South
It is not objective proof of God's existence that we want but, whether we use religious language for it or not, the experience of God's presence.
— Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat
I prayed to a mystery.Sometimes I was simply aware of the mystery. I saw a flash of it during a trip to New York that David and I took before we were married. We were walking on a busy sidewalk in Manhattan. I don't remember if it was day or night. A man with a wound on his forehead came toward us. His damp, ragged hair might have been clotted with blood, or maybe it was only dirt. He wore deeply dirty clothes. His red, swollen hands, cupped in half-fists, swung loosely at his sides. His eyes were focused somewhere past my right shoulder. He staggered while he walked. The sidewalk traffic flowed around him and with him. He was strange and frightening, and at the same time he belonged on the Manhattan sidewalk as much as any of us. It was that paradox -- that he could be both alien and resident, both brutalized and human, that he could stand out in the moving mass of people like a sea monster in a school of tuna and at the same time be as much at home as any of us -- that stayed with me. I never saw him again, but I remember him often, and when I do, I am aware of the mystery.Years later, I was out on our property on the Olympic Peninsula, cutting a path through the woods. This was before our house was built. After chopping through dense salal and hacking off ironwood bushes for an hour or so, I stopped, exhausted. I found myself standing motionless, intensely aware of all of the life around me, the breathing moss, the chattering birds, the living earth. I was as much a part of the woods as any millipede or cedar tree. At that moment, too, I was aware of the mystery.Sometimes I wanted to speak to this mystery directly. Out of habit, I began with "Dear God" and ended with "Amen". But I thought to myself, I'm not praying to that old man in the sky. Rather, I'm praying to this thing I can't define. It was sort of like talking into a foggy valley.Praying into a bank of fog requires alot of effort. I wanted an image to focus on when I prayed. I wanted something to pray *to*. but I couldn't go back to that old man. He was too closely associated with all I'd left behind.
— Margaret D. McGee
Every Sunday I nudge Sam in her direction, and he walks to where she is sitting and hugs her. She smells him behind the ears, where he most smells like sweet unwashed new potatoes. This is in fact what I think God may smell like, a young child's slightly dirty neck.
— Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
Woods are grim places. Farmers shoot squirrels, crows, magpies, and hang them up on trees to warn Mother Nature to get it together or else. Much notice she takes, being in league with God. They're a right pair, more carnage than the rest of us put together.
— Jonathan Gash, The Rich and the Profane
God the EaterThere is a god in whom I do not believeYet to this god my love stretches,This god whom I do not believe in isMy whole life, my life and I am his.Everything that I have of pleasure and pain(Of pain, of bitter pain and men's contempt)I give this god for him to feed uponAs he is my whole life and I am his.When I am dead I hope that he will eatEverything I have been and have not beenAnd crunch and feed upon it and grow fatEating my life all up as it is his.
— Stevie Smith, Collected Poems
Once, I remember, Father Abbot said that our purpose is justice, and with God lies the privilege of mercy. But even God, when he intends mercy, needs tools to his hand.
— Ellis Peters, Dead Man's Ransom
The Servant who really studies his Master gradually becomes like his master
—  gradually learns that he himself is the one who in the end does all the work and has all the power.
Inherent rights are from God, and the tragedies of the world originate in their attempted denial.
— Warren G. Harding
I prayed to what all things hold in common. I prayed to what makes life. I thought about the elements of the universe, the rocks, the stars, the air, other living things. I tried to get the perspective of what's behind all that. I prayed to the force that brings things into existence. I thought this force encompassed all it created. My God was transcendent, and my God was also immanent. God ran in my veins. God lived and died and lived again in every atom of the universe.
— Margaret D. McGee
I believe that at the center of the universe there dwells a loving spirit who longs for all that’s best in all of creation, a spirit who knows the great potential of each planet as well as each person, and little by little will love us into being more than we ever dreamed possible. That loving spirit would rather die than give up on any one of us.
— Fred Rogers, Life's Journeys According to Mister Rogers: Things to Remember Along the Way
There is a greater Christian faith than one which settles for the temporal happiness, and that is the augmentation of faith. The more faithful you become, the harder the obstacles get; but the harder the obstacles get, the tougher your spine grows; and the tougher your spine grows, the less dependent you are on man's approval. I came to know this about Christianity when valuing faith before comfort.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
Man of an hard heart! Hear me, Proud, Stern, and Cruel! You could have saved me; you could have restored me to happiness and virtue, but would not! You are the destroyer of my Soul; You are my Murderer, and on you fall the curse of my death and my unborn Infant’s! Insolent in your yet-unshaken virtue, you disdained the prayers of a Penitent; But God will show mercy, though you show none. And where is the merit of your boasted virtue? What temptations have you vanquished? Coward! you have fled from it, not opposed seduction. But the day of Trial will arrive! Oh! then when you yield to impetuous passions! when you feel that Man is weak, and born to err; When shuddering you look back upon your crimes, and solicit with terror the mercy of your God, Oh! in that fearful moment think upon me! Think upon your Cruelty! Think upon Agnes, and despair of pardon!
— Matthew      Lewis, The Monk
My friend Adele describes fundamentalism as holding so tightly to your beliefs that your fingernails leave imprints on the palm of your hand... I think she's right. I was a fundamentalist not because of the beliefs I held but because of how I held them: with a death grip. It would take God himself to finally pry them out of my hands. (p.17-18)
— Rachel Held Evans, Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions
Learned arguments do not make a man holy and righteous, whereas a good life makes him dear to God.
— Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
When we live in the love of God, we begin to pay attention to people the way God pays attention to us.
— John Ortberg, Love Beyond Reason: Moving God's Love from Your Head to Your Heart
Le hasard, c'est peut-être le pseudonyme de Dieu quand il ne veut pas signer.
— Théophile Gautier, The Cross of Berny or Irene's Lovers
But deep this truth impress'd my mind: Thro' all His works abroad,The heart benevolent and kindThe most resembles God.
— Robert Burns, Collected Poems of Robert Burns
Every day you and I walk through God's shop. Every day we brush up against objects of incalculable worth to Him. People. Every one of them carries a price tag, if only we could see it.
— John Ortberg, Love Beyond Reason: Moving God's Love from Your Head to Your Heart
If we are serious about loving God, we must begin with people, all people. And especially we must learn to love those that the world generally discards.
— John Ortberg, Love Beyond Reason: Moving God's Love from Your Head to Your Heart
Suffering often draws us closer to God. Instead of being a sign of God's punishment or distance, suffering can purify us, lead us into the heart of God, and transform our souls.
— Allen R. Hunt, Confessions of a Mega Church Pastor: How I Discovered the Hidden Treasures of the Catholic Church
The cautious faith that never saws off a limb on which it is sitting, never learns that unattached limbs may find strange unaccountable ways of not falling.
— Dallas Willard
Spiritual yearning is the homesickness of the soul.
— Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati, The 11 Karmic Spaces: Choosing Freedom from the Patterns That Bind You
If there is a God who made us and we did wrong before His eyes—as George says—at least we did wrong only because we were as God made us, and I do not think that He should set traps. Oh, you should know better than George! Let us not bring all that back into the world again—the angry God, the mean God—the one who does not tell us the rules of the game, and then strikes us when we break them. Let us not bring Him back.
— George R. Stewart, Earth Abides
And of the sixth day yet remainedThere wanted yet the master work, the endOf all yet done: a creature who not prone And brute as other creatures but enduedWith sanctity of reason might erect His stature and, upright with front serene,Govern the rest, self-knowing, and from thenceMagnanimous to correspond with Heaven, But grateful to acknowledge whence his good Descends, thither with heart and voice and eyesDirected in devotion to adore And worship God supreme who made him chiefOf all His works.
— John Milton, Paradise Lost
He does not call those who are worthy, but those whom He will.
— "Therese of Lisieux
If you're male, and you're Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God. And sometimes you find your father in your career.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
If one would praise the Almighty, one must then revel in His works, and take them whole, adore their very grossness, savor the oozing quiddity of that slime of which He seems to be inordinately fond. Love is not nice. God's love assuredly is not; and human love, its copy, must not presume to be so.
— Eric Frank Russell, The Great Explosion
When hiding ourselves behind religiosity becomes the order of the day, grace is left by the wayside; without being honest about our own sin, we will never show compassion toward others. If we are to adorn ourselves with anything, it should be with compassion and honesty—the foundations of connecting to our community.
— Matt Litton, The Mockingbird Parables: Transforming Lives through the Power of Story
In the name of God, they stole her time and her freedom, putting shackles on her heart. They preached about God's kindness, but preached twice as much about his wrath and intolerance.
— Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
What mortal claims, by searching to the utmost limit, to have found out the nature of God, or of his opposite, or of that which comes between, seeing as he doth this world of man tossed to and fro by waves of contradiction and strange vicissitudes?
— Euripides, Helen
Why do you believe in God?" the woman asked me in the busy corridor. I don't remember the answer I gave. It was probably too long and rattled in her ears. I wish I could go back and answer her again. "Because HE believes in me," I would say. Isn't that enough?
— Donna VanLiere
The sight of her made him understand why he'd lost his faith in God.
— Sarah Langan, The Keeper
If any human concious able to define the God then he exactly don't know about the God. If willing to describe then he is beliver of the God. Because The God is unable to describe, if described then not about God. Because God is unable to describe, thats why there is God. The supreme power.
— Kunal Jajal
Adam and Eve had first-hand empirical evidence of God’s existence. He walked in the Garden with them. Their problem was that God told them they could not eat of a certain tree. – p. 113
— Ray A., Practice These Principles: Living the Spiritual Disciplines and Virtues in 12-Step Recovery to Achieve Spiritual Growth, Character Development, and Emotional Sobriety
She was satisfied with the answer God had given Moses from the burning bush when Moses had seen fit to question. Who are you? Mose asks, and God comes back from that bush just as pert as you like: I Am, Who I AM. In other words, Mose, stop beatin around this here bush and get your old ass in gear.
— Stephen King, The Stand
God is love, I said, but art's the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity.
— Ralph Ellison, Juneteenth
Discourse is not life; its time is not your time; in it, you will not be reconciled to death; you may have killed God beneath the weight of all that you have said; but don't imagine that, with all that you are saying you will make a man that will live longer than he.
— Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language
What is less often noticed is that it is precisely the kind of moral instruction that parents are constantly trying to give their children — concrete, imaginative, teaching general principles from particular instances, and seeking all the time to bring the children to appreciate and share the parent's own attitudes and view of life… The all-embracing principles of conduct
— J.I. Packer, Knowing God
Only when it is seen that what decides each individual's destiny is whether or not God decides to save him from his sins, and that this is a decision that God need not make in any individual case, can one begin to grasp the biblical view of grace.
— J.I. Packer, Knowing God
Children, like God, see only our actions.
— Marty Rubin
Yes, she believed God loved her. But if this whole fiasco was His idea of love . . .
— Lauraine Snelling, Valley of Dreams
Knowledge and book learning are not wisdom," said the captain."Is this book wisdom?" asked Lucy, putting the manuscript back on the table."It has some elements of wisdom in it, me dear," replied the captain. "I did not lead a very wise life myself but it was a full one and a grown-up one. You come to age very often through shipwreck and disaster, and at the heart of the whirlpool some men find God.
— R.A. Dick, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of judgment. Not the children, for they inherit eternal life. So who is wronged? Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalising effect on these Israeli soldiers is disturbing.
— William Lane Craig
Marty, my mother used to say "Never get greedy with God." I think what she meant was "Don't dare ask for more if you already have what you need." 
— James Patterson, The Christmas Wedding
Whatever thought grips the mind at the time of death is the one which will propel it and decide for it the nature of its future birth. Thus if one wants to attain god after death, one has to think of him steadfastly... This is not as simple as it sounds, for at the time of death the mind automatically flies to the thought of an object (i.e. money, love) which has possessed it during its sojourn in the world. Thus one must think of god constantly.
— Stephen Mitchell
If you dont love somebody, it gets annoying if they tell you what to do or what to feel. When you love them, you get pleasure from their pleasure nad it makes it easy to serve. I didnt love God because i didnt know God. universe is not effected by time. Light exists outside of time.. It is still a mystery to physicists.
— Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality
The brain, which operates on electromagnetic impulses, is as much an activity of the universe as are the electromagnetic storms in the atmosphere or on a distant star. Therefore science is one form of electromagnetism that spends it time studying another form…science is god explaining god through a human nervous system…isn’t spirituality the same thing?
— Deepak Chopra
God goes with thoughtless people.
— Robert Walser, Jakob von Gunten
Dominance is only for GOD.
— Syed Islam
Before God does anything, before he makes anything for us to be sustained by, God says, "More than food, more than water, more than shelter, more than other people, they are going to need me.
— Wesley Miller
You were born into this life equipped to succeed. You are a part of God’s perfect plan. Yes, you. The plan would not be perfect if you were missing. Think about that. You matter more than you know.
— Toni Sorenson
God is as real as a station wagon.
— Peggy Payne
There is a beauty in paradox when it comes to talking about things of ultimate concern. Paradox works against our tendency to stay superficial in our faith, or to rest on easy answers or categorical thinking. It breaks apart our categories by showing the inadequacy of them and by pointing to a reality larger than us, the reality of gloria, of light, of beyond-the-beyond. I like to call it paradoxology—the glory of paradox, paradox-doxology—which takes us somewhere we wouldn’t be capable of going if we thought we had everything all wrapped up, if we thought we had attained full comprehension. The commitment to embracing the paradox and resisting the impulse to categorize people (ourselves included) is one of the ways we follow Jesus into that larger mysterious reality of light and love.
— Nanette Sawyer
Don't creationists ever wonder about the fact that the paleontologists found ape-like skulls with the 'human leg and foot bones,' rather than the other way around, i.e., human skulls with 'ape leg and foot bones?' . . . Come on, creationists, think about it! Did God hide the human skulls, only leaving behind leg and foot bones belonging to human midgets with misshapen feet, and mix such bones only with the skulls of ape-like creatures with larger cranial capacities than living apes? What a 'kidder' the creationists' God must be.
— Edward T. Babinski
God is merciful cant we all be on the right track of faith but just using different roads?
— Ali Al-Ahmed
No mi kršćani upućeni smo po središtu našega Creda - 'mučen pod Poncijem Pilatom' - u povijest u kojoj je bilo razapinjanja i mučenja, u kojoj se plakalo i tako rijetko ljubilo. I nikakav od povijesti udaljeni mit, nikakav Platonovi idejni Bog, nikakva gnostička soteriologija i nikakav apstraktni govor o povijesnosti naše egzistencije ne mogu nam vratiti onu nedužnost koju smo u toj povijesti izgubili.
— Johann Baptist Metz, Memoria passionis: Ein provozierendes Gedächtnis in pluralistischer Gesellschaft
We are in God’s hands. We can’t come up with a surprise big enough or a sin vile enough to thwart His plan. If we allow Him to refine us we will inevitably end up free from the impurities that separate us from Him.
— Toni Sorenson
If a man cannot serve two masters, neither can Christianity, or several thousand of them as the case may be.
— E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
‎If we do not know the King that comes to your bedroom for the sole purpose of taking out your trash, then you have yet to know Jesus as the Servant of All.
— Stuart Greaves
We take a cavalier approach to Scripture at our own peril. If the scientific and historical accounts are true, then the commandments, promises and penalties are much more so. The Bible is not just a guideline. It is the authoritative Word of God. Disobeying it has consequences. Obeying it has rewards. Yet we fudge. We compromise. We rationalize. We trade away our spiritual integrity for man’s approval and as we do, we gradually erode our ability to distinguish right from wrong, to see our own failings, and to turn back in repentance to God. We simply have no idea how this cavalier attitude towards God’s Word taints our witness and hinders the kingdom of God.
— Craig Olson
Tko npr. formulira govor o Bogu Abrahamovu, Izakovu i Jakovljevu tako da se u njemu više ne čuje Jobov uzdisaj i tužaljka 'Ta dokle još?', taj se ne bavi teologijom nego mitologijom.
— Johann Baptist Metz, Memoria passionis: Ein provozierendes Gedächtnis in pluralistischer Gesellschaft
Disasters work like alarm clocks to the world, hence God allows them. They are shouting, 'Wake up! Love! Pray!
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
One of the greatest gifts from God is the eternal perspective. It is a level of fearlessness, a level of understanding where one can experience even emotional harmony with God.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
God's relationship with man does not work in a way in which man stumbles and then God has to drop what he is doing in order to lift him up; rather, man stumbles so that God can lift him up. Hence it is utterly impossible to truly diminish his glory.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
There’s faith that knows itself as faith, Proyas, and there’s faith that confuses itself for knowledge. The first embraces uncertainty, acknowledges the mysteriousness of the God. It begets compassion and tolerance. Who can entirely condemn when they’re not entirely certain they’re in the right? But the second, Proyas, the second embraces certainty and only pays lip service to the God’s mystery. It begets intolerance, hatred, violence.
— R. Scott Bakker, The Darkness That Comes Before
Everyone claims to be okay with freedom of religion, but the moment you mention God there is a strange tension that fills the air. If there was a 6th sense, that would be it.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
At best we are but clay, animated dust; but viewed as sinners, we are monsters indeed. Let it be published in heaven as a miracle that the Lord Jesus should set His heart's love upon people like us.
— Alistair Begg
Mystical experiences do not necessarily supply new ideas to the mind, rather, they transform what one believes into what one knows, converting abstract concepts, such as divine love, into vivid, personal, realities.
— R.M. Jones
Man was designed in a way in which he must eat in order to give him a solid reason to go to work everyday. This helps to keep him out of trouble. God is wise.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
Faith, in its most correct form, never removes responsibility; it removes fear of responsibility. The results are complete opposites with the greater saying, 'God's will is my delight.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
In recent times, more and more human thinking has come to assume that the idea of a universal natural law and the idea of 'God' are pointing to one and the same reality.
— Wilhelm Reich, Ether, God and devil : cosmic superimposition
Keep it simple and keep it real. The more basic we see our connection to God and Spirit, the easier it is to feel like you're a part of it.
— Jim Fargiano
The glory of God is as destructive of evil as it is creative of good.
— John G. Lake
If you can't illustrate 'it', 'it' doens't belong in Physics as a noun! You can't put an article in front. You can't put a verb after!
— Bill Gaede, Why God Doesn't Exist
It is ignorance or at least lack of consideration of heavenly things that make the temporal things of this world, whether good or evil, greater than they really are.
— Tom Patton
This universe is shot through with mystery. The very fact of its being, and of our own, is a mystery absolute, and the only miracle worthy of the name. The consciousness that animates us is itself central to this mystery and the ground for any experience we might wish to call 'spiritual.' No myths need be embraced for us to commune with the profundity of our circumstance. No personal God need be worshiped for us to live in awe at the beauty and immensity of creation. No tribal fictions need be rehearsed for us to realize, one fine day, that we do, in fact, love our neighbors, that our happiness is inextricable from their own, and that our interdependence demands that people everywhere be given the opportunity to flourish.
— Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
God's holiness is not an unloving holiness, and God's love is not an unholy love. It is only by keeping these two primary moral qualities of the divine being closely related that we may rightly behold the character of God. (p. 98)
— Thomas C. Oden, The Living God: Systemic Theology: Volume One
A mathematician is an individual who believes that prophesying that his dog will die if he deprives it of food constitutes a prediction.
— Bill Gaede
But, as I understand it, your God is a universal God; He is God on all suns and all planets. Surely, then, He must have universal form? Would it not be a staggering vanity to imagine that He can manifest Himself only in the form that is appropriate to this particular, not very important planet?
— John Wyndham, The Midwich Cuckoos
The suffering of the Christian or anyone else in this world is never ultimately an accident. All suffering is within the pale of divine sovereignty. All suffering comes within the broader context of the sovereignty of God.
— R.C. Sproul, Reason to Believe: A Response to Common Objections to Christianity
All the different religions are really like different paths leading to the same goal. So there is no question of prescribing any rigid set of principles or practices. Everyone has got the right to follow his own path and approach God in his own way.
— Kedar Nath Tiwari, Comparative Religion
No human mind can fully grasp the gift of Christ’s atonement, the vastness and inclusiveness of the act—but in the end, it comes down to just you and Jesus. You’ve come, and He’s met you with open arms—and now it’s just between the two of you.
— Toni Sorenson
when god creat the world,first he must think abour architects
— Ashok Sharma
Suppose the hellfire of the orthodox really existed! We have no assurance that it does not! It seems incredible, but many incredible things are true. We do not know that God is not as cruel as a Spanish inquisitor. Suppose, then, He is! If, after Death, we wicked ones were shovelled into a furnace of fire- we should have to burn. There would be no redress. It would simply be the Divine Order of things. It is outrageous that we should be so helpless and so dependent on any one- even God.
— W.N.P. Barbellion, The Journal of a Disappointed Man
I love God, Jesus Christ, my three children, mother, father, brother, sisters, family in general, my pets, my students, and true friends.
— Ana Monnar
We must imagine our lives well. We must engage our conscience. Conscience is the voice of God in the nature and heart of man.
— Laura Kasischke, The Life Before Her Eyes
Your heart of devotion and obedience is not in vain. Who knows but God how many people have come near to you and were forever changed simply by the fragrance of his love in you? Who knows but God if he will put you before kings and leaders to speak the truth, redirecting the future of nations? Who knows when that small crack in the dam of our enemy’s plans will give way and God’s glory will truly cover the earth as the sea? Do not become distracted or discouraged by the death around you. Death must always give way when the life of Christ enters the picture.
— Amy Layne Litzelman, This Beloved Road: A Journey of Revelation and Worship
The real crisis of worship today is not that the preaching is paltry or that it’s too drafty in church. It is that people have no sense of the presence of God, and if they have no sense of His presence, how can they be moved to express the deepest feelings of their souls to honor, revere, worship, and glorify God?
— R.C. Sproul, A Taste of Heaven: Worship in the Light of Eternity
Atheism is the opium of the mathematicians. Atheism is the religion of Mathematics.
— Bill Gaede
Why did I, like thousands of others, have to carry a cross I hadn't chosen, a cross which was not made for my shoulders and which didn't concern me? Who decided to come rummaging around in my obscure existence, invade my gray anonymity, my meager tranquility, and bowl me like a little ball in a great game of skittles? God? Well, in that case, if He exists, if He really exists, let Him hide His face. Let Him put His two hands on His head, and let Him bow down. It may be, as Peiper used to teach us, that many men are unworthy of Him, but now I know that He, too, is unworthy of most of us, and that if the creature is capable of producing horror, it's solely because his Creator has slipped him the recipe for it.
— Philippe Claudel, Brodeck