c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Causing any damage or harm to one party in order to help another party is not justice, and likewise, attacking all feminine conduct [in order to warn men away from individual women who are deceitful] is contrary to the truth, just as I will show you with a hypothetical case. Let us suppose they did this intending to draw fools away from foolishness. It would be as if I attacked fire -- a very good and necessary element nevertheless -- because some people burnt themselves, or water because someone drowned. The same can be said of all good things which can be used well or used badly. But one must not attack them if fools abuse them.
— Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies
Turn your head away from the screen, my friend. It will tell you nothing more.
— Jeff Buckley
Bowden Cable is the sort of honest and dependable operative that is the backbone of SpecOps. They never win commendations or medalsand the public has no knowledge of them at all. They are all worth ten of people like me.
— Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair
I was in another universe with different laws and distinct truth.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Physics advances by accepting absurdities. Its history is one of unbelievable ideas proving to be true.
— Rivka Galchen
What but a pestilential vapour can hover over society when its chief director is only instructed in the invention of crimes, or the stupid routine of childish ceremonies?
— Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
When Mr. William Faraday sat down to write his memoirs after fifty-eight years of blameless inactivity he found the work of inscribing the history of his life almost as tedious as living it had been, and so, possessing a natural invention coupled with a gift for locating the easier path, he began to prevaricate a little upon the second page, working his way up to downright lying on the sixth and subsequent folios.
— Margery Allingham, Dancers in Mourning
¿Por qué? ¿Acaso crees que los demonios no podemos sentir afecto? Somos seres racionales y experimentamos emociones complejas. Si los ángeles pueden matar, ¿por qué nosotrso no podemos amar?
— Laura Gallego García, Dos velas para el diablo
You are beholdenTo the truthIt is the wayIt is the pathIt is your destinyTo be trueIs to be
— Karen Hackel, The Whisper of Your Soul
When I was ten years old, one of my friends brought a Shaleenian kangaroo-cat to school one day. I remember the way it hopped around with quick, nervous leaps, peering at everything with its large, almost circular golden eyes. One of the girls asked if it was a boy cat or a girl cat. Our instructor didn't know; neither did the boy who had brought it; but the teacher made the mistake of asking, 'How can we find out?' Someone piped up, 'We can vote on it!' The rest of the class chimed in with instant agreement and before I could voice my objection that some things can't be voted on, the election was held. It was decided that the Shaleenian kangaroo-cat was a boy, and forthwith, it was named Davy Crockett. Three months later, Davy Crockett had kittens. So much for democracy.  It seems to me that if the electoral process can be so wrong about such a simple thing, isn't it possible for it to be very, very wrong on much more complex matters? We have this sacred cow in our society that what the majority of people want is right—but is it? Our populace can't really be informed, not the majority of them—most people vote the way they have been manipulated and by the way they have responded to that manipulation—they are working out their own patterns of wishful thinking on the social environment in which they live.  It is most disturbing to me to realize that though a majority may choose a specific course of action or direction for itself, through the workings of a 'representative government,' they may be as mistaken about the correctness of such a choice as my classmates were about the sex of that Shaleenian kangaroo-cat. I'm not so sure than an electoral government is necessarily the best.
— David Gerrold, Star Hunt
As with our colleges, so with a hundred ‘modern improvements;’ there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them. Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at...
— Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers / Walden / The Maine Woods / Cape Cod
Each man lives in many worlds within different life.Mind can only see world in which it lived and located.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Yığın kadındır. Irzını teslim edecek bir zorba arar. Çobansız rahat edemeyen kaz sürüsü.
— Cemil Meriç
The kind of truth that can be asserted by argument had lost all glamour, all lustre, for him, seeming no more now than another aspect of that ancient urge - much older than the desire for truth - to command attention, dominate one's fellows.
— Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger
There are other beings live in between interval rhythms of our consciousness.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Wanna know the truth about yourself and this universe? Just learn to understand your DNA code then you'll see.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Darkness entered into, darkness realized, is the point of departure for all profound expressions of Christian hope. 'Meaningless darkness' becomes 'revelatory darkness' when it is confronted by the courage of a thoughtfulness and hope that is born of faith's quest for truth.
— Douglas John Hall, Imaging God: Dominion as Stewardship
Now (obviously) a sentence’s truth—even when we hold the sentence’s meaning fixed—depends on which world we are considering. “Brown is Prime Minister” is true in the actual world but, since Brown need not have been Prime Minister, there are countless worlds in which “Brown is Prime Minister” is false: in those worlds, Brown did not succeed Tony Blair, or never went into politics, or never even existed. And in some other worlds, someone else is Prime Minister — David Cameron, P. F. Strawson, me, Madonna, or Daffy Duck. In still others, there is no such office as Prime Minister, or not even a Britain; and so on and so forth. So a given sentence or proposition varies its truth-value from world to world.
— William G. Lycan, Philosophy of Language: A Contemporary Introduction
The Duke would not pay for the works. He says that the Castle can never be taken. That is called hubris, Giacomo, the belief that you are never wrong. Believing you are never wrong is an error that afflicts great men. I have learned that to be right you must first be wrong many times. Without making errors--and learning from them--a man cannot find the truth.
— Christopher Peter Grey, Leonardo's Shadow: Or, My Astonishing Life as Leonardo Da Vinci's Servant
Truth was such a tricky thing when it came to children. When was it good medicine and when was it poison
— Jane Roper, Eden Lake
In order to understand the universal perspective,first you have to know more than a version of truth.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Сè противречи едно на друго, сè протрчува едно крај друго, никаде нема сигурност. Сè може да се толкува вака, и сè може да се толкува обратно. Сета човечка историја може да се протолкува како развој и напредок, а истовремено без да се види нешто повеќе од пропаст и глупост. Зар нема вистина? Зар не постои вистинска и валидна наука?
— Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game
He couldn't understand how he was awarded medals and honors for clubbing and bayoneting people, and be called a barbarian for killing seals.
— Geoff Butler, The Killick: A Newfoundland Story
Once I made weapons carved from stone, I tied the weight to a wooden handle, a club to break the bones of my enemy.Then I became wiser...and sharpened the stone to a point and then fastened it to a stick; my arrow. I bent wood and hitched string to it; my bow. I kill my enemy with skillThen I became wiser...and made weapons forged from steel and took care to sharpen the blade of my sword. I kill my enemy with a stroke.Then I became wiser...and made the rifle that would, by exploding gunpowder, shoot balls of lead faster than the eye could see. I kill my enemy with but the pull of a trigger.Then I became wiser...and I built flying machine that could transport bombs to drop over the homes of my enemy. I kill my enemy from the sky.Then I became wiser...and created the drone, now I can guide a plane by remote control from one country and kill my enemy in another. I am a proficient killerThen I became wiser... and I found a way to split the atom and found the power of God hidden within. I kill the ground, scorch the sky, pollute the wind and kill my enemy with the push of a button.Then I became wiser...And I found that there is nothing more foolish than a "Wise Man of War
— Tonny K. Brown
Truth is important than anything. But you have to know how to handle it well.
— Dee White, Letters To Leonardo
People are so cheap. Everyone wants quality, no one wants to pay for it. Here's the suburban dream-- to hire great workers who are such meek morons that they don't have the guts to ask for a living wage.
— Joan Bauer
I would not have majored in English and gone on to teach literature had I not been able to construct a counterargument about the truthfulness of fiction; still, as writers turn away from the industrious villages of George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, I learn less and less from them that helps me to ponder my life. In time, I found myself agreeing with the course evaluations written by my testier freshman students:'All the literature we read this term was depressing.' How naive. How sane.
— Mary Rose O'Reilley, The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd
Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.
— Czesław Miłosz
Abide not with dualism,Carefully avoid pursuing it;As soon as you have right and wrong,Confusion ensues, and Mind is lost. (172)
— Edward Conze, Buddhist Scriptures
The student of history knows no more refreshing recreation than that of nailing liars, like vermin, to the wall.
— Frederick Rolfe, Chronicles of the House of Borgia
They walked on rather aimlessly. He hoped she wouldn't notice he was touched, because he wouldn't have known how to explain why. Here lay the great discrepancy between aesthetic truth and sleazy reality.
— Patrick White, The Vivisector
No, that's not the case at all. Shishio's logic dictates that the winner of a battle, in other words, the strong, is always correct that it does. If the truth could be discovered through fighting one or two battles, then we'd all be going through life without ever being wrong. A person's life isn't so simple a matter that it isn't. The true answer is something you find out yourself by how you live your life from this day onward that it is."-Kenshin
— Nobuhiro Watsuki
It's the best way of telling the truth; it's a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than any assemblage of facts. Beyond that … [it's] delight in, and play with, language; also, a curiously intimate way of communicating with people whom you will never meet.
— Julian Barnes
He was in that mostly empty-headed state of grace which is sometimes such fertile soil ; it's the ground from which our brightest dreams and biggest ideas (both good and spectacularly bad) suddenly burst forth, often full-blown.
— Stephen King, Under the Dome
Man must learn to know the universe precisely as it is, or he cannot successfully find his place in it. A man should therefore use his reasoning faculty in all matters involving truth, and especially as concerning his religion. He must learn to distinguish between truth and error.
— John A. Widtsoe, Rational Theology
Try not to seek after the trueOnly cease to cherish opinions. (172)
— Edward Conze, Buddhist Scriptures
That which is true must always remain true, though the applications may change greatly from generation to generation. It is the absence of such fundamental certainties, no doubt, that leads men into continual search for a satisfying religion, or that drives them away from their old religion.
— John A. Widtsoe, Rational Theology
But the truth is the highest consideration.
— Dorothea Dix
As science advances, there seems to be less and less for God to do. It's a big universe, of course, so He, She, or It, could be profitably employed in many places. But what has clearly been happening is that evolving before our eyes has been a God of the Gaps; that is, whatever it is we cannot explain lately is attributed to God. And then after a while, we explain it, and so that's no longer God's realm.
— Carl Sagan, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God
The better men know the Lord, the better may the eternal truths we learn be applied in our daily lives.
— John A. Widtsoe, Rational Theology
Science has nothing to do with any dogma. Science ceases to exist when there is a dogma.
— Jean-Marie Lehn
I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain There’s more than one answer to these questions pointing me in a crooked line And the less I seek my source for some definitive The closer I am to fine.
— Emily Saliers
But it is not only the difficulty and labor which men take in finding out of truth, nor again that when it is found it imposeth upon men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; but a natural though corrupt love of the lie itself.
— Francis Bacon, The Essays
Children talk themselves out of their convictions as they grow up and become distracted by their huge selfish selves. All the literature is consistent on this point. Children begin to think they've imagined us.
— Gregory Maguire, What-the-Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy
I would rather be wise and than right and ignorant.
— Chris Page
Afterlife exist in the unidentified substances.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Science blasphemed when tries to eliminate scarcity in economy.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
It's who you is when folks knocks at the door of your heart what counts. Hide the past and it gives them what's jealous of you the power to bring you undone.
— Bryce Courtenay
The imagined memories had to have as much weight as the real, or we had to at least pretend they did to such a degree that they just very well might have. And so I never questioned Angela about that particular story, or about all the troubling things that it pointed to, content to believe that at least in this version things worked for her better than they did in the one I never heard.
— Dinaw Mengestu, How to Read the Air
I knew nothing. Now I've seen what a raw deal lots of other people like Krystal get. And it's not their fault. Not their choice. People don't get to choose what body they're put into. Like, people get born into bodies in the middle of a genocide war in Darfur, and they don't get to worry about how tall they are or whether they'll ever be able to row. They're too busy worrying about how they're going to stay alive for another day.
— Maureen Garvie, Amy by Any Other Name
How many truths pass wrecking through the Illusion of Life, but none of them is an absolute truth therefore the real truth!
— Sorin Cerin, Wisdom Collection: The Book of Wisdom
To say that death opposes life is just the same as you would say you live the absolute truth.
— Sorin Cerin, Wisdom Collection: The Book of Wisdom
I believed in the faith of faith without acknowledging his quality of being an absolute truth.
— Sorin Cerin, Wisdom Collection: The Book of Wisdom
Truth is commodity in political consumption.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Sometimes you have to forsake what you want, to get what you want.
— E'yen A. Gardner
The truth is not in the commercial media because the truth is a dagger pointed at its heart, which is its pocketbook.
— George Seldes, Facts and Fascism
The concept of randomness and coincidence will be obsolete when people can finally define a formulation of patterned interaction between all things within the universe.
— Toba Beta, Betelgeuse Incident: Insiden Bait Al-Jauza
What happens is fact, not truth. Truth is what we think about what happens.
— Robert McKee
Be true, unbeliever.
— Stephen R. Donaldson, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever
Some conjurers say that number three is the magic number, and some say number seven. It's neither my friend, neither. It's number one. (Fagin)
— Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
There were three things sought by invaders who crossed oceans to discover America. Those were gold, gospel, glory. There are four things sought by aliens who crossed heavens to discover planet earth. Those are gold, gospel, glory, gene.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Jack was unexpectedly moved when he swore allegiance to the king and country. He had served both for years, could easily have laid down his life. Yet it was different to pledge his loyalty and best efforts toward governing this nation. Dying was easier than making good laws.
— Mary Jo  Putney, The Marriage Spell
A skeptical man with a credo, 'Seeing is believing'. One day he found something so alien and said, 'I can't believe what I just saw'. Then the other man with different credo, 'Blessed are they who believe without seeing'. One day he found something so alien and said,'This is blasphemy, sinful and evil'.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one's heart; but death is a splendid thing—a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.
— George Bernard Shaw
Regarding alien beings and UFO sightings, They're less about 'where' or 'when' to find, more about 'how' or using 'what' to identify.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Analogy of scientist who try to reach the higher speed: A child ant is tired after the long walk in a body of a jet. It tries to find a method of traveling faster than walking.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
If you want to find wilier race by common sense, then you have just narrowed your searching area.
— Toba Beta
Selfrighteous creates wars more often than other reasons.
— Toba Beta
In the end, the truth will prevail. Good and evil keep at war.Whichever wins, future will believe it as the prevailing truth.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
This world is so full of wars and hostilities. All parties seek for allies to defeat enemies. I support peace effort towards mastermind which has caused men hostile to each other.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Хүчир бөгөөд хүчлэх санваар нь үндсэн хэл бичгийг сахихХүн бөгөөд хүн төрөлхтөний журам нь эцэг эхийг элбэрэхХүн бөгөөд хүндлэн үзэхийн дээд нь шашин суртлыг үл гээхХүйтэн бөгөөд халуун бүхнээ зүтгэх нь олон түмний ач тусДээрэм бөгөөд бэлэг олзыг үл хэрэглэх нь тангарагДээрэнгүй бөгөөд омог бардмыг тэвчих нь санваарДээд бөгөөд дордсыг үл ялгаварлан үзэх нь шударгаДэмий бөгөөд чалчаа худлыг тэвчих нь үнэн
— Бодоо Догсом, Үзэмжит өгүүлэл уянгат шүлэглэл
Sugar candy tasted better than bitter truth.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Perhaps the excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some obvious and useful truth in a few words.We frequently fall into error and folly, not because the true principles of action are not known, but because, for a time, they are not remembered; and he may therefore be justly numbered among the benefactors of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to recur habitually to the mind.
— Samuel Johnson
Whoever won the wars in heavens, He is The God of men today.
— Toba Beta, Betelgeuse Incident: Insiden Bait Al-Jauza
Smartass Disciple: Master, I want to eradicate all corruptions in this world.Master of Stupidity: Let it be a bit! Otherwise you'll make us jobless for good.
— Toba Beta
Science is a trigger of changes of civilization. Religion is the failsafe of science performance.
— Toba Beta, Betelgeuse Incident: Insiden Bait Al-Jauza
Smartass Disciple: Master, what do say about the truth itself ?Master of Stupidity: Like sex, no fun anymore if all is revealed.
— Toba Beta
Smartass Disciple: Master, please show me the way to the enlightenment.Master of Stupidity: Walk with me! [but I won't let you try to surpass me].
— Toba Beta
Immer wieder behauptete Unwahrheiten werden nicht zu Wahrheiten, sondern, was schlimmer ist, zu Gewohnheiten.
— Oliver Hassencamp
Wer lügt, hat die Wahrheit immerhin gedacht.
— Oliver Hassencamp
The limited mind owned by human..requires billions of brains of many generations,before capable enough to understand the truth, the kind of truth which will set us free.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Umgangsformen sind Formen, die zunehmend umgangen werden.
— Oliver Hassencamp
Rather than being liberated by er sexuality, a woman's reliance on sexual attractiveness was just one more way in which she allowed herself to be stereotyped and thus used by men
— Jeffrey L. Geller, Women of the Asylum: Voices from Behind the Walls, 1840-1945
I tell you about a fact and truth. In physical reality of matter, there's no such thing as an imaginary spirit nor spiritual ghost. They are also made of matter, but totally different in size andlaws of physics which rule their life and the way they interact.
— Toba Beta, Betelgeuse Incident: Insiden Bait Al-Jauza
Who would appreciate such candor? No one. None of us really likes honesty. We prefer deception –but only when it is unabashedly flattering or artfully camouflaged. Groups seem to need to believe that they are superior to others and that they have a purpose greater than just passing along their genes to the next generation. Individuals seem to need similar delusions – about who they are and why they do what they do. They need heroes, however fraudulent… Studies show that people are more likely to accept the opinion of a confident con man than the cautious view of someone who actually knows what he is talking about. And professionals who form overconfident opinions on the basis of incorrect readings of the facts are more likely to succeed than their more competent peers who display greater doubt.What’s more, deception works best, according to studies by psychologists, when the person doing the deceiving is fool enough to be deceived, too; that is, when he believes his own lies. That is why incompetent leaders – who are naïve enough to fall for their own guff – are such a danger to civilized life. If they are modern leaders, they must also delude themselves into thinking they know how to make the world a better place. Invariably, the answers they propose to problems are ones that bubble up from their own vanity, the essence of which is to make the rest of the world look just like them!
— William Bonner, Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets: Surviving the Public Spectacle in Finance and Politics
The truth, finally, is who can tell it. 
— Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker
Nanak dukhiya sab sansar.
— Nanak, Japjee: Sikh Morning Prayer
It is important not only to read God's Word but to interpret God's world in the light of the Word.
— Cindy Jacobs, The Reformation Manifesto: Your Part in God's Plan to Change Nations Today
The following twenty years would be the nadir of American Indian history, as the total Indian population between 1890 and 1910 fell to fewer than 250,000. (It was not until 1917 that Indian births exceeded deaths for the first time in fifty years.)
— Kenneth C. Davis, Don't Know Much about History: Everything You Need to Know about American History But Never Learned
If you can't tolerate the truth, never ask me a question.
— Richard Diaz, Illness Defined; The Theorem
In seeking absolute truth we aim at the unattainable and must be content with broken portions. 
— William Osler
Failure is a fuel for excuses.
— Jet Li
The case for the humanities is not hard to make, though it can be difficult--to such an extent have we been marginalized, so long have we acceded to that marginalization--not to sound either defensive or naive. The humanities, done right, are the crucible in which our evolving notions of what it means to be fully human are put to the test; they teach us, incrementally, endlessly, not what to do, but how to be. Their method is confrontational, their domain unlimited, their "product" not truth but the reasoned search for truth, their "success" something very much like Frost's momentary stay against confusion.
— Mark Slouka, Essays from the Nick of Time: Reflections and Refutations
Be not so bigoted to any custom as to worship it at the expense of truth.
— Johann Georg Zimmermann
Morality only is eternal. All the rest is balloon and bubble from the cradle to the grave.
— David McCullough, John Adams
She had always told herself that she did hti job because she wanted to help others; afterall, hadn't Maurice told her once that the most important question any individual could ask was, "How might I serve?" If her response to that question had been pure, surely she would have coninued with the calling to be a nurse.... But that role hadn't been quite enough for her. She would have missed the excitement, the thrill when she embarked on the work of collecting clues to support a case.
— Jacqueline Winspear, Messenger of Truth
If wishes were held on the skin and swiped by raindrops, then emotions were freeloading off the cells that made up their space. The only offering these cells ever entertained was truth, painful and raw.
— Amy Guth, Three Fallen Women
Men are apt to prefer a prosperous error before an afflicted truth
— Jeremy   Taylor
The world was in truth made of jackstraws. The world was very combustible, the human body was partible in ways heretofore unimagined. What held the civilized world together was the thinnest tissue of nothing but human will. Civilization was not in the natural order but was some wort of willed invention held taut like a fabric or a sail against the chaos of the winds. And why we had invented it, or how we knew to invent it, was beyond him.Newmann had seen some truth that was completely out of his power to put into words. But he had come away knowing that even though the world of civilization was made of straw and lantern slides, he must live in it as if it were solid. Even when the heat of the lantern itself burnt away the illusions and a black hole appeared in the middle of the slide.
— Paulette Jiles, Enemy Women
Lore is my favorite kind of story. Because it's not only historical, it's a lie everyone knows is a lie but tells anyway. I love that. Of course every story I tell is true. Completely true. Completely and utterly at least five-eighths of the way to being true, which is truer than any piece of lore and truer than most truths you'll hear.
— Kevin Sampsell editor "Shanghaied" by Gigi Little, Portland Noir
-Хүү минь, чи надад ямар ч өргүй гэж бодож явах эрхийг би чамд олголоо.
— Honoré de Balzac, Gobseck
All you have to do is decide moment by moment which voice you listen to: the Truth of Love or the nightmare of fear.
— Dragos Bratasanu, Ph.D.
The only way to make your dreams a reality is to live your truth. To embrace your truth, and embrace it with love.
— Dragos Bratasanu, Ph.D.
To love is to communicate, and you can communicate only in truth. Speak the truth, and speak it with love.
— Dragos Bratasanu, Ph.D.
Changing the external conditions of your lives - earn more money, be in a better physical shape, have another partner or travel more - will not change how you feel. It never works because the emptiness is not around, is within. The only way to come back to life is to acknowledge that little voice rising from your heart and begging you to return to love, to return to truth.
— Dragos Bratasanu, Ph.D.
Your heart doesn't care about being easy. Your heart only cares about what's true for you.
— Dragos Bratasanu, Ph.D.
If you lie to yourself, you become your worst enemy, attacking from inside. (from The Amazing You movie)
— Dragos Bratasanu, Ph.D.
What is true today may be false tomorrow, and true again the day after tomorrow.
— Marty Rubin
Truth is a bubble and hard to hold on to.
— Marty Rubin
The truth hurts sometimes. If we are going to be taught by God, the fisherman, we first need to be captured by Him. And His hook is going to have a bite. Of course, it's going to hurt. The truth hurts when we are sinners and when we acknowledge we are not surrendering to the truth.
— Donald H. Calloway, No Turning Back: A Witness to Mercy
The hard truths are the ones to hold tight.-The Old Bear, A Game of Thrones
— George R.R. Martin
If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.
— C.S. Lewis
The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.
— C.S. Lewis
To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.
— C.S. Lewis
God has no religion.
— Mahatma Gandhi
We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us
—  we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.
God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas but for scars.
— Elbert Hubbard
A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.
— C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.
— Corrie ten Boom
The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
— Søren Kierkegaard
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. 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, Mere Christianity
The darker the night, the brighter the stars,  The deeper the grief, the closer is God!
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
— C.S. Lewis
I have faith that God will show you the answer. But you have to understand that sometimes it takes a while to be able to recognize what God wants you to do. That's how it often is. God's voice is usually nothing more than a whisper, and you have to listen very carefully to hear it. But other times, in those rarest of moments, the answer is obvious and rings as loud as a church bell.
— Nicholas Sparks, The Last Song
Let the first act of every morning be to make the following resolve for the day:- I shall not fear anyone on Earth. - I shall fear only God. - I shall not bear ill will toward anyone. - I shall not submit to injustice from anyone. - I shall conquer untruth by truth. And in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering.
— Mahatma Gandhi
He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, He would have done no less.
— C.S. Lewis
Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)... There are just some kind of men who - who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong.
— John Lennon
Parents are like God because you wanna know they're out there, and you want them to think well of you, but you really only call when you need something.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters
I talk to God but the sky is empty.
— Sylvia Plath
God save us from people who mean well.
— Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy
When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, 'I used everything you gave me.
— Erma Bombeck
I don't stand for black man's side, I don't stand for white man's side, I stand for God's side.
— Bob Marley
She glared at me like she was about to punch me, but then she did something that surprised me even more. She kissed me."Be careful seaweed brain." She said putting on her invisible cap and disappearing.I probably would have sat there all day, trying to remember my name, but then the sea demons came.
— Rick Riordan
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
There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.
— Mahatma Gandhi
Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.
— Augustine of Hippo, Confessions
I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.
— Alice Walker, The Color Purple
He - and if there is a God, I am convinced he is a he, because no woman could or would ever fuck things up this badly.
— George Carlin
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
— Epicurus
Look for God, suggests my Guru. Look for God like a man with his head on fire looks for water.
— Elizabeth Gilbert
My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?
— C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist.
— Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959
God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh.
— Voltaire
It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us
—  it is the very sign of His presence.
Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Because God is never cruel, there is a reason for all things. We must know the pain of loss; because if we never knew it, we would have no compassion for others, and we would become monsters of self-regard, creatures of unalloyed self-interest. The terrible pain of loss teaches humility to our prideful kind, has the power to soften uncaring hearts, to make a better person of a good one.
— Dean Koontz, The Darkest Evening of the Year
Let us never forget to pray. God lives. He is near. He is real. He is not only aware of us but cares for us. He is our Father. He is accessible to all who will seek Him.
— Gordon B. Hinckley, Standing for Something: 10 Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes
Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist,'" says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.""But," says Man, "The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.""Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic."Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.
— David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
I see in the fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars, advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of the history man, no purpose or place, we have no Great war, no Great depression, our great war is a spiritual war, our great depression is our lives, we've been all raised by television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we won't and we're slowly learning that fact. and we're very very pissed off.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
All that you touchYou Change.All that you ChangeChanges you.The only lasting truthis Change.Godis Change.
— Octavia E. Butler
We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence.
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
God answers all prayers, but sometimes his answer is 'no'.
— Dan Brown, Angels & Demons
Listen to God with a broken heart. He is not only the doctor who mends it, but also the father who wipes away the tears.
— Criss Jami
No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books.
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
— Galileo Galilei, Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina
Whether or not you believe in God, you must believe this: when we as a species abandon our trust in a power greater than us, we abandon our sense of accountability. Faiths… all faiths… are admonitions that there is something we cannot understand, something to which we are accountable. With faith we are accountable to each other, to ourselves, and to a higher truth. Religion is flawed, but only because man is flawed. The church consists of a brotherhood of imperfect, simple souls wanting only to be a voice of compassion in a world spinning out of control.
— Dan Brown, Angels & Demons
Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.
— C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence
— Bertrand Russell
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called a Religion.
— Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.
— Voltaire
We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito.
— C.S. Lewis
The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God.
— Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith
Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.
— C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer
God is a concept by which we measure our pain.
— John Lennon
With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.
— Steven Weinberg
We almost made it to thirty seconds without an insult. I think we set a new record.
— Sherrilyn Kenyon, Acheron
The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.
— Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation
God's Final Message to His Creation:'We apologize for the inconvenience.
— Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
There is but one good
—  that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.
I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.
— Albert Einstein
I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.After that I liked jazz music.Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened.
— Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
— Albert Einstein
How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?” Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.
— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.
— Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
Remember He is the artist and you are only the picture. You can't see it. So quietly submit to be painted---i.e., keep fulfilling all the obvious duties of your station (you really know quite well enough what they are!), asking forgiveness for each failure and then leaving it alone.You are in the right way. Walk---don't keep on looking at it.
— C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy, 1950 - 1963
Men trust God by risking rejection. Women trust God by waiting.
— Carolyn McCulley
Let me put it this way, my father believed in a righteous God. Deus volt, that was his motto- 'because God wills it.' It was the Crusaders' motto, and they went into battle and were slaughtered just like my father. And when I saw him lying dead in a pool of his own blood, I knew then that I hadn't stopped believing in God. I'd just stopped believing God cared. There might be a God, Clary, and there might not, but I don't think it matters. Either way we're on our own.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Bones
You can get a thousand no's from people, and only one "yes" from God.
— Tyler Perry
The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
For you will certainly carry out God's purpose, however you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John.
— C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
If you think God’s there, He is. If you don’t, He isn’t. And if that’s what God’s like, I wouldn’t worry about it.
— Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
Jesus Christ knew he was God. So wake up and find out eventually who you really are. In our culture, of course, they’ll say you’re crazy and you’re blasphemous, and they’ll either put you in jail or in a nut house (which is pretty much the same thing). However if you wake up in India and tell your friends and relations, ‘My goodness, I’ve just discovered that I’m God,’ they’ll laugh and say, ‘Oh, congratulations, at last you found out.
— Alan W. Watts, The Essential Alan Watts
But God doesn't call us to be comfortable. He calls us to trust Him so completely that we are unafraid to put ourselves in situations where we will be in trouble if He doesn't come through.
— Francis Chan, Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God
[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.
— Christopher Hitchens, god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?
— Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?
— Corrie ten Boom
The word 'God' is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change this.
— Albert Einstein
The best things are never arrived at in haste. God is in no hurry
—  His plans are never rushed.
There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.
— Anonymous, The Qur'an / القرآن الكريم
Greed is your god, Kaz."He almost laughed at that. "No, Inej. Greed bows to me. It is my servant and my lever.
— Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows
Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat.My shoulder is against yours.you will not find me in the stupas, not in Indian shrine rooms, nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals:not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs winding around your own neck, nor in eating nothing but vegetables.When you really look for me, you will see me instantly —you will find me in the tiniest house of time.Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God? He is the breath inside the breath.
— Kabir
I can safely say, on the authority of all that is revealed in the Word of God, that any man or woman on this earth who is bored and turned off by worship is not ready for heaven.
— A.W. Tozer
He's not safe, but he's good (referring to Aslan, the Lion, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)
— C.S. Lewis
If a woman sleeps alone it puts a shame on all men. God has a very big heart, but there is one sin He will not forgive. If a woman calls a man to her bed and he will not go.
— Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek