c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
We could say that the human race is a great coauthorship in which we are collaborating with God and nature in the making of ourselves and one another. From this there is no escape. We may collaborate either well or poorly or we may refuse to collaborate, but even to refuse to collaborate is to exert an influence and to affect the quality of the product. This is only a way of saying that by ourselves we have no meaning and no dignity; by ourselves we are outside the human definition, outside our identity.
— Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
Perhaps the Creator of this strange place knows us better than we know ourselves. Perhaps humanity was meant to eternally ponder the purpose and importance of our own existence. If we were assured of either, we’d be intolerable creatures.
— Tiffany Madison
If God didn't want you to be a dreamer, He wouldn't go around handing out dreams! That's a clue! 
— Mark Gorman
Anyone who doesn't fear God, has no idea at all about Him.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
I believe that God—if he exists at all—is what we want him to be. The true God is unknowable, and so we dress him up in costumes that make him visible to us. Then we come up with a lot of very silly rules that we attribute to him and tell everyone if they don't follow those rules, they can't be part of the gang.
— Michael Thomas Ford, Looking For It
Others can't always define your true identity. They see what they 'want' to see but beyond your mess, God sees the beauty He created and still thinks it's good!
— Chinonye J. Chidolue
I've gone to prepare a place for youBut I will come back again.
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
We do not work for unity; we work to end and erase disunity. Unity is of God; disunity is of man. In matters of doctrine and practice of conscience, our guide should be this traditional saying: "In essentials, unity. In nonessentials, liberty. But in all things, love.
— Mike Timmis, Between Two Worlds: The Spiritual Journey of an Evangelical Catholic
Then was ashamed of myself. I should be happy for what I'd been given. I hoped God hadn't noticed my lapse in appreciation.
— Charlaine Harris, Dead and Gone
It doesn't sound logical to say that a man is an atheist just because he's probably someonewho knows his own God...personally.
— Toba Beta, Betelgeuse Incident: Insiden Bait Al-Jauza
O Heavenly Children, do not forget that God is here, there and everywhere. The birds are his eyes and the air is his ears. And as you sleep, your heart and soul rest naked before him. He can drink from the rivers of your thoughts, and even feel the wetness of your tears.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
There were only the great diamonds and sapphires and emerald mists and velvet inks of space, with God's voice mingling among the crystal fires.
— Ray Bradbury, The Illustrated Man
Human desire is the criterion of all truth and all good. Truth does not lie beyond humanity, but is one of the products of the human mind and feeling. There is really nothing to fear. The motive of fear in religion is base...
— D.H. Lawrence
Without God, life has no purpose, and without purpose, life has no meaning. Without meaning, life has no significance or hope.
— Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?
We all ought to understand we're on our own. Believing in Santa Claus doesn't do kids any harm for a few years but it isn't smart for them to continue waiting all their lives for him to come down the chimney with something wonderful. Santa Claus and God are cousins.
— Andy Rooney, Sincerely, Andy Rooney
Michael had once read to her how God had cast a man and woman out of paradise. Yet, for all their human faults and failures. God had shown them the way back in.
— Francine Rivers, Redeeming Love
Only God can take our failures and turn them into victories.
— Evinda Lepins
You are not on a journey to God
—  you are on a journey WITH God.
Every single human being should be the fulfilment of a prophecy: for every human being should be the realisation of some ideal, either in the mind of God or in the mind of man.
— Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
So they trust in the deity of the Old Testament, an incontinent dotard who soiled Himself and the universe with his corruption, a low-budget divinity passing itself off as the genuine article. (Ask the Gnostics.) They trust in Jesus Christ, a historical cipher stitched together like Frankenstein's monster out of parts robbed from the graves of messiahs dead and buried - a savior on a stick. They trust in the virgin-pimping Allah and his Drum Major Mohammed, a prophet-come-lately who pioneered a new genus of humbuggery for an emerging market of believers that was not being adequately served by existing religious products. They trust in anything that authenticates their importance as persons, tribes, societies, and particularly as a species that will endure in this world and perhaps in an afterworld that may be uncertain in its reality and unclear in its layout, but which states their craving for values "not of this earth" - that depressing, meaningless place their consciousness must sidestep every day.
— Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race
Christ delves far beyond the means of superficiality, not simply because of his immaculate love, but also because he considers the distinct cases of each individual rather than withholding a broadened perception by use of stereotypes.
— Criss Jami, Salomé: In Every Inch In Every Mile
But in the desert, in the pure clean atmosphere, in the silence – there you can find yourself. And unless you begin to know yourself, how can you even begin to search for God?
— Father Dioscuros
When we find that God's ways always coincide with our own ways, it's time to question who we're really worshipping, God or ourselves. The latter moves the nature of godliness from the King to our servant to a slave, a deduction into the realm of selfhood and then the lower, slavehood. It's a spiritual mathematics in that men who need God in his godhood are humble yet strong and spiritually ambitious while men who need a slave in their selfhood are ultimately paralyzed and will remain paralyzed.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
When you mature in your relationship with God you realize how suffering and patience are like eating your spiritual vegetables.
— Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality
I mean, think about [the phrase 'love the sinner, hate the sin.'] Isn't it like saying, 'I love left-handed people but hate that they're left-handed.' Is that really love? Or is that saying, 'I'm willing to love you as I'd like you to be, not as you are'? Either God's love is unconditional or it's not.
— Alex   Sanchez, The God Box
Statistics, likelihoods, and probabilities mean everything to men, nothing to God.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway
I bet you've seen the fundamentalist bumper sticker that says, "God said it! I believe it! That settles it!" It must be a typo because what the driver really means is, "I said it! God believes it! That settles it!
— Robert M. Price
God really performs the miracle of multiplying our time, but only if we give it to him first.
— Peter Kreeft, Prayer for Beginners
They ought to make it a binding clause that if you find God you get to keep Him.
— Philip K. Dick, VALIS
Nothing but prayer can make saints because nothing but God can make saints, and we meet God in prayer. Prayer is the hospital for souls where we meet Doctor God.
— Peter Kreeft, Prayer for Beginners
Oh my God ... YOU are real.Oh my God ... You ARE real.OH MY GOD ... You are REAL!Oh my God ... You're really real!
— Pattie Mallette, Nowhere But Up: The Story of Justin Bieber's Mom
Zeena's first published sermon at 7 years old. From “The Cloven Hoof” periodical, 1970, San Francisco, CA, USA.:“The question, 'What is the difference between God and Satan?,' was put to Zeena LaVey, seven-year-old daughter of the High Priest. Her answer was...'SATAN MADE THE ROSE AND GOD MADE THE THORNS.
— Zeena Schreck, Demons of the Flesh: The Complete Guide to Left Hand Path Sex Magic
In all human love it must be realized that every man promises a woman, and every woman promises a man that which only God alone can give, namely, perfect happiness. One of the reasons why so many marriages are shipwrecked is because as the young couple leave the altar, they fail to realize that human feelings tire and the enthusiasm of the honeymoon is not the same as the more solid happiness of enduring human love. One of the greatest trials of marriage is the absence of solitude. In the first moments of human love, one does not see the little hidden deformities which later on appear.
— Fulton J. Sheen, Three to Get Married
The only way God can strengthen his presence in our will is to weaken his presence in our feelings. Otherwise we would become spiritual cripples, unable to walk without emotional crutches. This is why he gives us dryness, sufferings, and failures.
— Peter Kreeft, Prayer for Beginners
Were you there?”She shook her head. “No. I was here in Nain having achild.”“Then why do you weep as though you had part in hiscrucifixion? You had no part in it.”“I’d like nothing better than to think I would haveremained faithful. But if those closest to him—hisdisciples, his own brothers—turned away, who am I tothink I’m better than they and would have donedifferently? No, Marcus. We all wanted what wewanted, and when the Lord fulfilled his purpose ratherthan ours, we struck out against him. Like you. In anger.Like you. In disappointment. Yet, it is God’s will thatprevails.”He looked away. “I don’t understand any of this.”“I know you don’t. I see it in your face, Marcus. Youdon’t want to see. You’ve hardened your heart againsthim.” She started to walk again.“As should all who value their lives,” he said, thinking ofHadassah’s death.“It is God who has driven you here.”He gave a derisive laugh. “I came here of my ownaccord and for my own purposes.”“Did you?” Marcus’ face became stony.Deborah pressed on. “We were all created incompleteand will find no rest until we satisfy the deepest hungerand thirst within us. You’ve tried to satisfy it in your ownway. I see that in your eyes, too, as I’ve seen it in somany others. And yet, though you deny it with your lastbreath, your soul yearns for God, Marcus LucianusValerian.”Her words angered him. “Gods aside, Rome showsthe world that life is what man makes of it.”“If that’s so, what are you making of yours?”“I own a fleet of ships, as well as emporiums andhouses. I have wealth.” Yet, even as he told her, heknew it all meant nothing. His father had come to thatrealization just before he died. Vanity. It was all vanity.Meaningless. Empty.Old Deborah paused on the pathway. “Rome points theway to wealth and pleasure, power and knowledge. ButRome remains hungry. Just as you are hungry now.Search all you will for retribution or meaning to your life,but until you find God, you live in vain.
— Francine Rivers, An Echo in the Darkness
There would be no more offerings. Not this day. Not any day. Humankind had suffered enough for its love of gods, its long search for God. He thought of the many centuries in which his people, the Jews, had negotiated with God, complaining, bickering, decrying the unfairness of things but always - always - returning to obedience at whatever the cost. Generations dying in the ovens of hatred. Future generations scarred by the cold fires of radiation and renewed hatred.
— Dan Simmons, The Fall of Hyperion
The unconditional love of God leads to a life of freedom and transforms each day into a potentially wild adventure. 
— Randy Elrod, Sex, Lies & Religion
Sometimes the Lord allows us to go through tough times so we learn to rely upon Him.
— Shirley Corder, Strength Renewed: Meditations for Your Journey through Breast Cancer
It was too perfect to last,' so I am tempted to say of our marriage. But it can be meant in two ways. It may be grimly pessimistic - as if God no sooner saw two of His creatures happy than He stopped it ('None of that here!'). As if He were like the Hostess at the sherry-party who separates two guests the moment they show signs of having got into a real conversation. But it could also mean 'This had reached its proper perfection. This had become what it had in it to be. Therefore of course it would not be prolonged.' As if God said, 'Good; you have mastered that exercise. I am very pleased with it. And now you are ready to go on to the next.
— C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
I believe that a godly home is a foretaste of heaven. Our homes, imperfect as they are, must be a haven from the chaos outside. They should be a reflection of our eternal home, where troubled souls find peace, weary hearts find rest, hungry bodies find refreshment, lonely pilgrims find communion, and wounded spirits find compassion.
— Jani Ortlund
When we struggle for human rights, for freedom, for dignity, when we feel that it is a ministry of the church to concern itself for those who are hungry, for those who have no schools, for those who are deprived, we are not departing from God’s promise. He comes to free us from sin, and the church knows that sin’s consequences are all such injustices and abuses. The church knows it is saving the world when it undertakes to speak also of such things.
— Oscar A. Romero, The Violence of Love
I don't think God wants to be worshiped. I think the only pure worship of God is by loving one another, and I think all other forms of worship became a substitute for the love that we should show one another.
— Charles M. Schulz, Charles M. Schulz: Conversations
One of my greatest difficulties in consenting to think of religion was that I thought I should have to give up my beautiful thoughts and my love for the things God has made. But I find that the happiness springing from all things not in themselves sinful is much increased by religion. God is the God of the Beautiful—Religion is the love of the Beautiful, and Heaven is the Home of the Beautiful—-Nature is tenfold brighter in the Sun of Righteousness, and my love of Nature is more intense since I became a Christian—-if indeed I am one. God has not given me such thoughts and forbidden me to enjoy them.
— George MacDonald
I often wonder if God recognizes His own son the way we've dressed him up, or is it dressed him down?
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
For the church, the many abuses of human life, liberty, and dignity are a heartfelt suffering. The church, entrusted with the earth’s glory, believes that in each person is the Creator’s image and that everyone who tramples it offends God. As holy defender of God’s rights and of his images, the church must cry out. It takes as spittle in its face, as lashes on its back, as the cross in its passion, all that human beings suffer, even though they be unbelievers. They suffer as God’s images. There is no dichotomy between man and God’s image. Whoever tortures a human being, whoever abuses a human being, whoever outrages a human being abuses God’s image, and the church takes as its own that cross, that martyrdom.
— Oscar A. Romero, The Violence of Love
Change is not always a good thing. What I need is not change from one thing to another but transformation from who I am into who I was meant to become. Only when God's transforming power touches me can I begin to live the simpler, freer, fresher, more creative, more patient, more passionate, more sacrificial, riskier, rawer, more real, more love-driven life God intended for me all along. That transformation is what awaits all who dare to enter the story of God. As Paul wrote, 'Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think' (Romans 12:2)
— Steven James, Story
He is always doing something--the very best thing, the thing we ourselves would certainly choose if we knew the end from the beginning. He is at work to bring us to our full glory.
— Elisabeth Elliot
Never say you are five feet nine whenyou are five feet eight and a half" was the first one I encountered.Another was, "Always say some prayers at night because it might turnout that there is a God.
— John Knowles, A Separate Peace
I am a hunter of beauty and I move slow and I keep the eyes wide, every fiber of every muscle sensing all wonder and this is the thrill of the hunt and I could be an expert on the life full, the beauty meat that lurks in every moment.I hunger to taste life.God.
— Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
We must go out into a desert of some kind (your backyard will do) and come into a personal experience of the awesome love of God.
— Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Admire and adore the Author of the telescopic universe, love and esteem the work, do all in your power to lessen ill, and increase good, but never assume to comprehend.
— John  Adams
I knew then that this is how God loves us all and receives us all, and that there is no such thing in this universe as hell, except maybe in our own terrified minds. Because if even one broken and limited human being could experience even one such episode of absolute forgiveness and acceptance of her own self, then imagine—just imagine!—what God, in all His eternal compassion, can forgive and accept.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
I am the child of a lunatic. Not a child of God.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
So tonight to shush you how about if I say I have administrative bones to pick with God, Boo. I'll say God seems to have a kind of laid-back management style I'm not crazy about. I'm pretty much anti-death. God looks by all accounts to be pro-death. I'm not seeing how we can get together on this issue, he and I, Boo.
— David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
I don't believe in angels and I have trouble with the whole God thing. I don't want to say I don't believe in God but I don't think I do. But I believe in people who do.
— Billy Connolly
These black times go as they come and we do not know how they come or why they go. But we know that God controls them, as he controls the whole vast cobweb of the mystery of things.
— Elizabeth Goudge, The White Witch
Yevgeny Yevtushenko: 'You atheist?'"Kingsley Amis: 'Well, yes, but it's more that I hate him.
— Kingsley Amis
From today onwards, I am going to strive for the greatest purity of soul, that the rays of God's grace may be reflected in all their brilliance.
— St. Faustina Kowalska
You can't just know about God. You have to KNOW God!
— Carman Licciardello
Inasmuch as I am a spiritual man, I do believe in God - I think that He created anorder for the world; I believe that, in constantly bombarding Him with requests for miracles,we're also asking that He unravel the fabric of the world. A world of continuous miracleswould be a cartoon, not a world.
— Douglas Coupland, Hey Nostradamus!
People keep looking for the perfect one, but perfection is an attribute of God alone.
— Farahad Zama, The Marriage Bureau for Rich People
God is A.W.E.S.O.M.E! HE is Always Working Extraordinary Supernatural On-time Miracles Everyday
— Sommer Ellison
It's God that's worrying me. That's the only thing that's worrying me. What if He doesn't exist? What if Rakitin's right -that it's an idea made up by men? Then, if He doesn't exist, man is the king of the earth, of the universe. Magnificent! Only how is he going to be good without God? That's the question. I always come back to that. Who is man going to love then? To whom will he be thankful? To whom will he sing the hymn? Rakitin laughs. Rakitin says that one can love humanity instead of God. Well, only an idiot can maintain that. I can't understand it. Life's easy for Rakitin. 'You'd better think about the extension of civic rights, or of keeping down the price of meat. You will show your love for humanity more simply and directly by that, than by philosophy.' I answered him: 'Well, but you, without a God, are more likely to raise the price of meat if it suits you, and make a rouble on every penny.' He lost his temper. But after all, what is goodness? Answer that, Alyosha. Goodness is one thing with me and another with a Chinaman, so it's relative. Or isn't it? Is it not relative? A treacherous question! You won't laugh if I tell you it's kept me awake for two nights. I only wonder now how people can live and think nothing about it. Vanity!
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
It is of great significance if there is a person who truly prays in a family. Prayer attracts God's Grace and all the members of the family feel it, even those whose hearts have grown cold. Pray always.
— Thaddeus of Vitovnica, Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives:  The Life and Teachings of Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica
The genius of a composer is found in the notes of his music; but analyzing the notes will not reveal his genius. The poet's greatness is contained in his words; yet the study of his words will not disclose his inspiration. God reveals himself in creation; but scrutinize creation as minutely as you wish, you will not find God, any more than you will find the soul through careful examination of your body.
— Anthony de Mello, Awakening: Conversations with the Masters
The way you make love is the way God will be with you.
— Jalaluddin Rumi
I don't think it is enough appreciated how much an outdoor book the Bible is. It is a "hypaethral book," such as Thoreau talked about - a book open to the sky. It is best read and understood outdoors, and the farther outdoors the better. Or that has been my experience of it. Passages that within walls seem improbable or incredible, outdoors seem merely natural. This is because outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread.
— Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man,When Duty whispers low, 'Thou must,' The youth whispers, 'I can.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson: Poems
The highest prize we can receive for creative work is the joy of being creative. Creative effort spent for any other reason than the joy of being in that light filled space, love, god, whatever we want to call it, is lacking in integrity. . .
— Marianne Williamson
The Church does not dispense the sacrament of baptism in order to acquire for herself an increase in membership but in order to consecrate a human being to God and to communicate to that person the divine gift of birth from God.
— Hans Urs von Balthasar, Unless You Become Like This Child
We do know that no person can be saved except through Christ. We do not know that only those who know Him can be saved by Him.
— C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
However hard he tried, he could never manage to make himself visible to human eyes and not because he can't, since for him nothing is impossible, it's simply that he wouldn't know what face to wear when introducing himself to the beings he supposedly created and who probably wouldn't recognize him anyway. There are those who say we're very fortunate that god chooses not to appear before us, because compared with the shock we would get were such a thing to happen, our fear of death would be mere child's play. Besides, all the many things that have been said about god and about death are nothing but stories, and this is just another one.
— José Saramago, Death with Interruptions
Ragamuffins are simple, direct and honest. Their speech is unaffected. They are slow to claim, "God told me..." As they make their way through the world, they bear wordless, prophetic witness.
— Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
There never was a moment in my life, when I felt so in the Presence, as I do now. I feel as if the Almighty were so real, and so near, that I could reach out and touch Him, as I could this wonderful work of His, if I dared. I feel like saying to Him: 'To the extent of my brain power I realize Your presence, and all it is in me to comprehend of Your power. Help me to learn, even this late, the lessons of Your wonderful creations. Help me to unshackle and expand my soul to the fullest realization of Your wonders. Almighty God, make me bigger, make me broader!
— Gene Stratton-Porter, A Girl of the Limberlost
It appeared to the Elders that the people here would believe anything about themselves, no matter how preposterous, as long as it was flattering. To make sure of this, they performed an experiment. They put the idea into Earthlings' heads that the whole Universe had been created by one big animal who looked just like them. He sat on a throne with a lot of less fancy thrones all around him. When people died they got to sit on those other thrones forever because they were such close relatives of the Creator.The people down here just ate that up!
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Hocus Pocus
How good is it to remember one's insignificance: that of a man among billions of men, of an animal amid billions of animals; and one's abode, the earth, a little grain of sand in comparison with Sirius and others, and one's life span in comparison with billions on billions of ages. There is only one significance, you are a worker. The assignment is inscribed in your reason and heart and expressed clearly and comprehensibly by the best among the beings similar to you. The reward for doing the assignment is immediately within you. But what the significance of the assignment is or of its completion, that you are not given to know, nor do you need to know it. It is good enough as it is. What else could you desire?
— Leo Tolstoy
Self-will and prayer are both ways of getting things done. At the center of self-will is me, carving a world in my image, but at the center of prayer is God, carving me in his Son's image.
— Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World
Never hide your fear because it will become your own God, hidden inside you.
— Sorin Cerin, Wisdom Collection: The Book of Wisdom
How could anyone love Him? What did you just tell me yourself about the world? Don't you see, everybody hates God now. It's not that God is dead in the twentieth century. It's that everybody hates Him! At least I think so.
— Anne Rice, Memnoch the Devil
Let us keep in mind that we do not have to go to the scriptures inorder to approach God. We do not have to find the right scripture inorder to talk to God".
— Thurman L. Faison, To The Spiritually Inclined
The greatest joy is joy in God. This is plain from Psalm 16:11: "You [God] will make known to me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; in Your right hand there are pleasures forever." Fullness of joy and eternal joy cannot be improved. Nothing is fuller than full, and nothing is longer than eternal. And this joy is owing to the presence of God, not the accomplishments of man. Therefore, if God wants to love us infinitely and delight us fully and eternally, he must preserve for us the one thing that will satisfy us totally and eternally; namely, the presence and worth of his own glory. He alone is the source of full and lasting pleasure. Therefore, his commitment to uphold and display his glory is not vain, but virtuous. God is the one being for whom self-exaltation is an infinitely loving act. If he revealed himself to the proud and self-sufficient and not to the humble and dependent, he would belittle the very glory whose worth is the foundation of our joy. Therefore, God's pleasure in hiding this from "the wise and intelligent" and revealing it to "infants" is the pleasure of God in both his glory and our joy.
— John Piper, The Pleasures of God: Meditations on God's Delight in Being God
Wealth is a gift from God, and pride is bequeathed to us from the devil.
— Douglas Wilson
There's somethin I learned when I was homeless: Our limitation is God's opportunity. When you get all the way to the end of your rope and there ain't nothin you can do, that's when God takes over. I remember one time I was hunkered down in the hobo jungle with some folks. We was talkin 'bout life, and this fella was talkin, said, 'People think they're in control, but they ain't. The truth is, that which must befall thee must befall thee. And that which must pass the by must pass thee by.
— Ron Hall, Same Kind of Different as Me
God is a book I can no longer read.
— Floriano Martins
I have a hundred times heard him say, that all ages and nations have represented their gods as wicked, in a constantly increasing progression; that mankind have gone on adding trait after trait till they reached the most perfect conception of wickedness which the human mind could devise, and have called this God, and prostrated themselves before it.
— John Stuart Mill, Autobiography
You can choose to say, "Good Morning God" or "Good God, morning!
— Timothy Parker
I fled Him down the nights and down the daysI fled Him down the arches of the yearsI fled Him down the labyrinthine waysOf my own mind, and in the midst of tearsI hid from him, and under running laughter.
— Francis G. Thompson, The Hound of Heaven
I wish all those who've found God, would tell the rest of us where he's been hiding.
— Quentin R. Bufogle
And why are we supposed to be serious about God? Did God show up and crack the whip? “You there, Annie in Ohio, I see you laughing a lot and frankly it really pisses Me off . . . “ (50)
— Julia Cameron, God is No Laughing Matter
...the truth of the matter is that we've all got cracks in our spirits, and we have to remember they're only there because we need them.... Otherwise, how could God's grace filter in deep enough to give us the joy and peace we're all searching for in this world. It couldn't, plain and simple.
— Delia Parr, Hearts Awakening
You are all alike, you people. You never learn the truth--that God knows nothing.
— Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory
Why did you come in to-night with your heads in the air? 'Make way, we are coming! Give us every right and don't you dare breathe a word before us. Pay us every sort of respect, such as no one's ever heard of, and we shall treat you worse than the lowest lackey!' They strive for justice, they stand on their rights, and yet they've slandered him like infidels in their article. We demand, we don't ask, and you will get no gratitude from us, because you are acting for the satisfaction of your own conscience! Queer sort of reasoning!... He has not borrowed money from you, he doesn't owe you anything, so what are you reckoning on, if not his gratitude? So how can you repudiate it? Lunatics! They regard society as savage and inhuman, because it cries shame on the seduced girl; but if you think society inhuman, you must think that the girl suffers from the censure of society, and if she does, how is it you expose her to society in the newspapers and expect her not to suffer? Lunatics! Vain creatures! They don't believe in God, they don't believe in Christ! Why, you are so eaten up with pride and vanity that you'll end by eating up one another, that's what I prophesy. Isn't that topsy-turvydom, isn't it infamy?
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot
Were God to show grace to all of Adam's descendants, men would at once conclude that He was righteously compelled to take them to heaven as meet compensation for allowing the human race to fall into sin. But the great God in under no obligation to any of his creatures, least of all to those who are rebels against him.
— Arthur W. Pink, The Attributes of God
God created every man to be free. The ability to choose whether to live free or enslaved, right or wrong, happy or in fear is something called freewill. Every man was born with freewill. Some people use it, and some people use any excuse not to. Nobody can turn you into a slave unless you allow them. Nobody can make you afraid of anything, unless you allow them. Nobody can tell you to do something wrong, unless you allow them. God never created you to be a slave, man did. God never created division or set up any borders between brothers, man did. God never told you hurt or kill another, man did. And in the end, when God asks you: "Who told you to kill one of my children?"And you tell him, "My leader."He will then ask you, "And are THEY your GOD?
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Encouragement is like water to the soul, it makes everything grow.
— Chris Burkmenn
God is only a word dreamed up to explain the world
— Gustave Flaubert
If the gods have determined about me and about the things which must happen to me, they have determined well, for it is not easy even to imagine a deity without forethought; and as to doing me harm, why should they have any desire towards that? For what advantage would result to them from this or to the whole, which is the special object of their providence? But if they have not determined about me individually, they have certainly determined about the whole at least, and the things which happen by way of sequence in this general arrangement I ought to accept with pleasure and to be content with them.
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholars. I will not forget thy word. Amen.
— Blaise Pascal
God's love for his people is so great that it turns God against himself, his love against his justice.
— Pope Benedict XVI, God Is Love: Deus Caritas Est
Birds were created to record everything. They were not designed just to be beautiful jewels in the sky, but to serve as the eyes of heaven.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Even so, I’m somebody.I’m the Discoverer of Nature.I’m the Argonaut of true sensations.I bring a new Universe to the UniverseBecause I bring the Universe to itself.
— Alberto Caeiro, The Keeper of Sheep
Many people seek fellowship because they are afraid to be alone...let him who cannot be alone beware of community. He will do harm to himself and to the community. Alone you stood before God when he called you; alone you had to answer that call; alone you had to struggle and pray; and alone you will die and give an account to God. You cannot escape yourself, for God has singled you out.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Of all the major religions, or lack thereof, the atheist's is one of the best pretenders: his foundation for all existences, as well as moral behaviors for the permanent good of mankind, begins at science but ends at himself, the Napoleon complex of both intelligence and imagination. On the other hand the anti-theist wouldn't survive without a deity beyond himself to hunt. He doesn't pretend, he simply nullifies his own position.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
The typical atheist rebels against God as a teenager rebels against his parents. When his own desires or standards are not fulfilled in the way that he sees fit, he, in revolt, storms out of the house in denial of the Word of God and in scrutiny of a great deal of those who stand by the Word of God. The epithet 'Heavenly Father' is a grand reflection, a relation to that of human nature.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
Could a being create the fifty billion galaxieseach with two hundred billion starsthen rejoice in the smell of burning goat flesh?
— Ron Patterson
A pineapple is a compilation of berries that grow and fuse together. When joined, they create a single fruit. And within each eyelet, contains a location where a flower may grow. I see the Creator of all existence as the crown on a pineapple, and all religions of the world as the spiky eyelets, where each eyelet symbolizes a different religion or race under the same crown. Each garden of faith may have different perspectives of God, yet every garden belongs to the same God.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
If God had not permitted the people of Jerusalem to be torn asunder and driven them from the land, but had let them keep it after before, no one could convince them that they are not God`s chosen people.
— Martin Luther, The Jews and Their Lies
The Weight of One Feather"Given.Many fear deathBecause they alreadyFeel ridden with sin,But no man on this earthIs filled with only white lightWithin.Have more faithIn our Maker,For our souls and mindsWere created by Him.Just remember that,When your deedsAre measuredBy the scale – The good sideMust outweighThe bad,And your heartMust be as lightAs a featherTo win.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
The parent is protector and trainer, but never the ultimate teacher. Every parent is responsible for teaching their kid basic moral conduct, manners, the difference between love and hate, and right from wrong. However, after maturity, the child must set off to seek knowledge on their own. Religion is never to be forced. And you cannot threaten your child with hell and tell them your religion is the only right way. There is no one right way. The many ways to the Creator are as varied as the colors of a rainbow.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
...Our Lord Jesus Christ added nothing to God in his essential being and glory, either by what He did or suffered. True, blessedly and gloriously true. He manifested the glory of God to us, but he added nought to God... Christ's goodness and rightousness reached unto His saints in the earth but God was high above and beyond it all....
— Arthur W. Pink, The Attributes of God
Humility is a virtue of the heavenly, not arrogance. Are we the most superior beast on earth? No, not in strength and not in intelligence. It is very arrogant to assume that we are the most intelligent species when we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. Both rats and monkeys have been shown to learn from error, yet we have not. More people have died in the name of religion than any other cause on earth. Is massacring God’s creations really serving God – or the devil? And what father would want to see his children constantly divided and fighting? What God would allow a single human life to be sacrificed for monetary gain? Again, the Creator or the devil?
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
It's a mean story, Helen fumed. An absentee father who demands that his children put him at the center of their lives and beg for his return. Sister Priscilla didn't think it was mean, apparently. She was so in love with God that she had married him, even though she would not see his face, hear his voice, or feel his embrace for as long as she lived. One of us, Helen, thought is flying blind.
— Mark Salzman, Lying Awake
Please understand something. God didn’t create evil in the world, but He did create free will, which allowed for the possibility of evil. Science isn’t like that. What you explore and find, God did create. It already exists. When you find it, you are discovering something God made. And everything God created is good. God said so in Genesis. He looked around at everything He had made and said, ‘It is very good.’”“How men use science can be evil, I’m with you a hundred percent on that,” Bishop added. “People can misuse items God created. But that has everything to do with man’s free will and tendency to evil, not science. What God created is good. So do what you were created to do. Break new scientific ground. Help us understand the dynamics of what God created.“You can’t protect the world from itself, Gina. You can only give good men the tools necessary to do their jobs. We need to know what is possible.
— Dee Henderson, Undetected
He who exercises wisdom, exercises the knowledge which is about God.
— Epictetus, Enchiridion and Selections from the Discourses
The perfect orchestration of the symphony of life is one of the Creator's greatest and most beautiful miracles.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
I believe if there's any kind of God it wouldn't be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between. If there's any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something. I know, it's almost impossible to succeed but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt.
— Julie Delpy, Before Sunrise & Before Sunset: Two Screenplays
Pray, hope, and don't worry. Worry is useless. God is merciful and will hear your prayer.
— Padre Pio
The world is perishing for lack of the knowledge of God and the Church is famishing for want of His Presence.
— A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God
What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?''I don't know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose--a god who simply is.
— Stanisław Lem, Solaris
This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature. Look at our parents--were they the stuff of Literature? At best, they might aspire to the condition of onlookers and bystanders, part of a social backdrop against which real, true, important things could happen. Like what? The things Literature was about: Love, sex, morality, friendship, happiness, suffering, betrayal, adultery, good and evil, heroes and villains, guilt and innocence, ambition, power, justice, revolution, war, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, the individual against society, success and failure, murder, suicide, death, God.
— Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
I mean talk. Never forget that God is your friend. And like all friends, He longs to hear what's been happening in your life. Good or bad, whether it's been full of sorrow or anger, and even when you're questioning why terrible things have to happen. So I talk withhim.
— Nicholas Sparks, The Last Song
Nowhere in the Bible, however, do we find God distinguishing between levels of sin. God doesn't share our rating system. To him, all sin is equally evil, and all sinners are equally lovable.
— Judah Smith, Jesus Is: Find a New Way to Be Human
There is no one who takes care of us as lovingly as our mother does. She is our living God.
— Mohtasham Usmani
I'm frequently asked, "Do you believe there's extraterrestrial intelligence?" I give the standard arguments- there are a lot of places out there, the molecules of life are everywhere, I use the word billions, and so on. Then I say it would be astonishing to me if there weren't extraterrestrial intelligence, but of course there is as yet no compelling evidence for it.Often, I'm asked next, "What do you really think?"I say, "I just told you what I really think.""Yes, but what's your gut feeling?"But I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble. Really, it's okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in.
— Carl Sagan
The more a nation gets into darkness, the more it's going to hate the light. The more it's going to run from the light. And we have a generation of people who have given themselves to darkness, and they've embraced atheism, because it gets them away from moral responsibility to God.
— Ray Comfort
If there is a Creator-God, it has used methods of creation that are indistinguishable from nature, it has declined to make itself known for all of recorded history, it doesn't intervene in affairs on earth, and has made itself impossible to observe. Even if you believe in that God... why would you think it would want to be worshiped?
— David G. McAfee, Mom, Dad, I'm an Atheist: The Guide to Coming Out as a Non-Believer
There's a big difference on being wise and being crafty. The former is the attribute of God, and the latter is that of Satan.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
God is Change.Earthseed: The Books of the LivingLauren Oya Olamina
— Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower
Your Mercy is my social status.
— Guru Nanak, Sri Guru Granth Sahib
What the new mate, sports car, or unexpected check could never do, Christ says, "I Can." You'll love how he achieves it. He reconnects your soul with God.
— Max Lucado
I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least, Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.
— Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
We seek God so earnestly, Eliav reflected, not to find Him but to discover ourselves.
— James A. Michener, The Source
Life is really very simple. In each moment, we have the opportunity to choose between saying “yes” or “no”, to listen to our intuition, to listen to our true inner voice, the Existential voice within ourselves. When we say “yes”, we have contact with Existence and we receive nourishment, love, joy, support and inspiration. When we say “no”, we create a separation from life and begin to create dreams and expectations of how it should be. We begin to live in the memories of the past and in the fantasies of the future – as if any other time than here and now really could make us happy and satisfied.
— Swami Dhyan Giten, Presence - Working from Within. The Psychology of Being
God is the composer
—  you are the song.
God spoke to you by so many voices but you would not hear.
— James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
On the subject of who is to blame for our disunity - “The easy conclusion- thatthe devil is at work trying to destroy the church- is true, but itʼs not the whole story. Ofcourse the enemy is at work doing that. But closer examination shows that much ofthe blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the church itself-on believers in god-andhow our own devilish deeds have alienated other followers of God. Sadly, weʼve donethe devilʼs work for him.
— Ed Galisewski
We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.
— Richard Dawkins
The more I know about God, I am convinced He likes to read books and authors are His librarians. Every soul is a story waiting to be read.
— Shannon L. Alder
Enlightenment is at the source of everything. From it, flows our Intuition and our creative energy. It is the delta of the human spirit ~ what we innately seek to return to, as we find ourselves lost in this world.
— Kim Chestney, The Psychic Workshop: A Complete Program for Fulfilling Your Spiritual Potential
My spiritual high naturally dissipated. At some point you've got to come out of the clouds and live real life. Again, it's just like falling in love. The feeling of euphoria is only temporary.
— Pattie Mallette, Nowhere But Up: The Story of Justin Bieber's Mom
That God is in truth the sort of bloodthirsty paranoid Who would rend to bits forty-two children for the crime of sassing one of his priests. Don't ask me about the Front Office's policies
—  I just work here.
If we rely on anything else besides faith to maintain the practice of the presence of God, we will certainly fail, whether this is our feelings, or experiences, or sincerity, or good intentions, or reasonings, or plans. The reason these things will fail while faith will not fail is that all these things depend on us, while faith depends on God. It is a gift of God.
— Peter Kreeft, Prayer for Beginners
Man in his spiritual pride has exchanged God’s method of self-denial for Satan’s plan of self–improvement.
— Daniel W. Blair
He uses our past to positively affect our present and secure our future.
— Evinda Lepins
I think the greatest weakness in the church today is that almost no one believes that God invests His power in the Bible. Everyone is looking for power in a program, in a methodology, in a technique, in anything and everything but that in which God has placed it—His Word. He alone has the power to change lives for eternity, and that power is focused on the Scriptures.
— R.C. Sproul, The Prayer of the Lord
For when we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything.
— G.K. Chesterton
Prayer does change things, all kinds of things. But the most important thing it changes is us. As we engage in this communion with God more deeply and come to know the One with whom we are speaking more intimately, that growing knowledge of God reveals to us all the more brilliantly who we are and our need to change in conformity to Him. Prayer changes us profoundly.
— R.C. Sproul, The Prayer of the Lord
People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.
— Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings