c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Hating skin color is contempt for God's divine creative imagination. Honoring it is appreciation for conscious, beautiful-love-inspired diversity.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
We must be ready to learn from one another, not claiming that we alone possess all truth and that somehow we have a corner on God.
— Desmond Tutu
In silence the three of them looked at the sunset and thought about God.
— Maud Hart Lovelace, Betsy-Tacy and Tib
Why should I wish to see God better than this day?I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass;I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God's name,And I leave them where they are,for I know that others will punctually come forever and ever.
— Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
There are times when we suffer innocently at other people’s hands. When that occurs, we are victims of injustice. But that injustice happens on a horizontal plane. No one ever suffers injustice on the vertical plane. That is, no one ever suffers unjustly in terms of his or her relationship with God. As long as we bear the guilt of sin, we cannot protest that God is unjust in allowing us to suffer.
— R.C. Sproul, Surprised by Suffering
The best remedy for those who are frightened, lovely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere they can be alone, alone with the sky, nature and God. For then and only then can you feel that everything is as it should be and that God wants people to be happy amid nature's beauty and simplicity.
— Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
Funny... I still can't believe in God." "Does that matter now?"..."He believes in you.
— A.J. Cronin
Newspapers are the Bibles of worldlings.How diligently they read them!Here they find their law and profits,their judges and chronicles,their epistles and revelations.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Prayer is an acknowledgment that our need of God's help is not partial but total.
— Alistair Begg, Made For His Pleasure: Ten Benchmarks of a Vital Faith
The position of the Atheist is a clear and reasonable one. I know nothing about ‘God’ and therefore I do not believe in Him or in it; what you tell me about your God is self‐contradictory, and therefore incredible. I do not deny ‘God,’ which is an unknown tongue to me; I do deny your God, who is an impossibility. I am without God.
— Annie Besant, Annie Besant: An Autobiography
Because God is full of life, I imagine each morning Almighty God says to the sun, "Do it again"; and every evening to the moon and the stars, "Do it again"; and every springtime to the daisies, "Do it again"; and every time a child is born into the world asking for curtain call, that the heart of the God might once more ring out in the heart of the babe.
— Fulton J. Sheen, Life Is Worth Living
If we’re lucky, God blesses us with a few folks who are willing to look beyond the flaws and see the person we try so hard to hide. And if we’re blessed, we find someone who’ll love us anyway.
— Lorna Seilstad, Making Waves
Imagine your life is a big canvas. Picture it in your mind and think about the beginnning of your painting of life.You're fourteen yours old, and you are lucky if you have one seventh painted. Now imagine the rest of the canvas is totaly empty. Every day you live, and every month and every year, means another inch that is painted on that canvas. You're going to be painting this empty canvas with your life and when you get to the end of it, what is that painting going to look like?
— Stephen Biro, Hellucination
We may be helpless to stop bad things from happening, but perhaps God leaves us signs and road maps to help us recover and reconnect, provided we know where to look.
— Jennifer Gardner Trulson, Where You Left Me
God is not here to be demanded of, begged from, or criticized. He hands out burdens to those who are strong enough to carry them, and I feel profoundly uncomfortable with the idea of lining up with the other invalids and asking for mine to be alleviated.
— Ann Napolitano, A Good Hard Look
Lincoln grew immeasurably as he came to think of himself as an “instrument of God’s will.
— Joe L. Wheeler, Abraham Lincoln, a Man of Faith and Courage: Stories of Our Most Admired President
The problem of vindicating an omnipotent and omniscient God in the face of evil is insurmountable. Those who claim to have surmounted it, by recourse to notions of free will and other incoherencies, have merely heaped bad philosophy onto bad ethics.
— Sam Harris
The Earth is God's pinball machine and each quake, tidal wave, flash flood and volcanic eruption is the result of a TILT that occurs when God, cheating, tries to win free games.
— Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
If we cannot find our way to a time when most of us are willing to admit that, at the very least, we are not sure whether or not God wrote some of our books, then we need only count the days to Armageddon—because God has given us far many more reasons to kill one another than to turn the other cheek.
— Sam Harris
While humans play God, dogs learn from their masters.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
[Your] dream will challenge, prod and haunt you until you surrender to its call.
— Wayne Cordeiro
Of course the cat will growl and spit at the operator and bite him if she can. But the real question is whether he is a vet or a vivisector.
— C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
If you want to love God, love the less-fortunate one. If you want to see God, look through the eyes of a hungry child.
— M.Padua
If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God.
— G.K. Chesterton
God created me—and you—to live with a single, all-embracing, all-transforming passion—namely, a passion to glorify God by enjoying and displaying his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life.
— John Piper, Don't Waste Your Life
God Hold us to that which drew us first, when the Cross was the attraction, and we wanted nothing else.
— Amy Carmichael, God's Missionary
Glory be to Him who changes others and remains Himself unchanged!
— Anonymous, The Arabian Nights
God has always been about the business of shattering expectations, and in our culture, the standards of leadership are extroverted. It perfectly follows the biblical trend that God would choose the unexpected and the culturally "unfit" - like introverts - to lead his church for the sake of greater glory.
— Adam S. McHugh, Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture
I don’t want to be an anti, against anybody. I simply want to be the builder of a great affirmation: the affirmation of God,who loves us and who wants to save us.
— Oscar A. Romero, The Violence of Love
Good human work honors God's work. Good work uses no thing without respect, both for what it is in itself and for its origin. It uses neither tool nor material that it does not respect and that it does not love. It honors nature as a great mystery and power, as an indispensable teacher, and as the inescapable judge of all work of human hands. It does not dissociate life and work, or pleasure and work, or love and work, or usefulness and beauty. To work without pleasure or affection, to make a product that is not both useful and beautiful, is to dishonor God, nature, the thing that is made, and whomever it is made for. This is blasphemy: to make shoddy work of the work of God. But such blasphemy is not possible when the entire Creation is understood as holy and when the works of God are understood as embodying and thus revealing His spirit. (pg. 312, Christianity and the Survival of Creation)
— Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
Can I tell you that in my eyes not even God would be good enough to command you?
— Kele Moon, Beyond Eden
If I were omnipotent and omnibenevolent I wouldn't be so damn ineffable.
— Jo Walton, Among Others
Charles de Foucauld, the found of the Little Brothers of Jesus, wrote a single sentence that's ahad a profound impact on my life. He said, "The one thing we owe absolutely to God is never to be afraid of anything." Never to be afraid of anything, even death, which, after all, is but that final breakthrough into the open, waiting, outstretched arms of Abba.
— Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Authentic faith leads us to treat others with unconditional seriousness and to a loving reverence for the mystery of the human personality. Authentic Christianity should lead to maturity, personality, and reality. It should fashion whole men and women living lives of love and communion. False, manhandled religion produces the opposite effect. Whenever religion shows contempt or disregards the rights of persons, even under the noblest pretexts, it draws us away from reality and God.
— Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
God and religion before every thing!' Dante cried. 'God and religion before the world.' Mr Casey raised his clenched fist and brought it down on the table with a crash.'Very well then,' he shouted hoarsely, 'if it comes to that, no God for Ireland!''John! John!' cried Mr Dedalus, seizing his guest by the coat sleeve. Dante stared across the table, her cheeks shaking. Mr Casey struggled up from his chair and bent across the table towards her, scraping the air from before his eyes with one hand as though he were tearing aside a cobweb. 'No God for Ireland!' he cried, 'We have had too much God in Ireland. Away with God!
— James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
...I don't believe in Him, and if He does exist, I don't like Him. His type of gods aren't gods who echo how mortals behave. They're gods who are held up as example of perfection to be emulated. They're not gods of the people. They're remote and inaccessible, they demand blind, unthinking obedience from their followers. They're dictators. We Aesir and Vanir, by contrast, are mirrors. Other gods rule. We reflect and magnify. We are you, only more so. We share your flaws and foibles. We are as humanlike as we are divine, and I think we are all the better for that.
— James Lovegrove
There are times...when we are in the midst of life-moments of confrontation with birth or death, or moments of beauty when nature or love is fully revealed, or moments of terrible loneliness-times when a holy and awesome awareness comes upon us. It may come as deep inner stillness or as a rush of overflowing emotion. It may seem to come from beyond us, without any provocation, or from within us, evoked by music or by a sleeping child. If we open our hearts at such moments, creation reveals itself to us in all it's unity and fullness. And when we return from such a moment of awareness, our hearts long to find some way to capture it in words forever, so that we can remain faithful to it's higher truth....When my people search for a name to give to the truth we feel at those moments, we call it God, and when we capture that understanding in timeless poetry, we call it praying.
— Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow
The reasoning is classic in its clarity. If God does not exist, Kirilov is god. If God does not exist, Kirilov must kill himself. Kirilov must therefore kill himself to become god. That logic is absurd, but it is what is needed.
— Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
The soul may ask God for anything, and never fail.
— Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters
He'd gone to church for forty years and was only getting worse. It seemed like this should tell God something.
— Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees
It is impossible to see how good work might be accomplished by people who think that our life in this world either signifies nothing or has only a negative significance.If, on the other hand, we believe that we are living souls, God's dust and God's breath, acting our parts among other creatures all made of the same dust and breath as ourselves; and if we understand that we are free, within the obvious limits of moral human life, to do evil or good to ourselves and to the other creatures - then all our acts have a supreme significance. If it is true that we are living souls and morally free, then all of us are artists. All of us are makers, within mortal terms and limits, of our lives, of one another's lives, of things we need and use...If we think of ourselves as living souls, immortal creatures, living in the midst of a Creation that is mostly mysterious, and if we see that everything we make or do cannot help but have an everlasting significance for ourselves, for others, and for the world, then we see why some religious teachers have understood work as a form of prayer...Work connects us both to Creation and to eternity. (pg. 316, Christianity and the Survival of Creation)
— Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
God is a circle whose center is everywhere, and its circumference nowhere. 
— Empedocles, Empedocles: The Extant Fragments
I saw the spiders marching through the air,Swimming from tree to tree that mildewed dayIn latter August when the hayCame creaking to the barn. But whereThe wind is westerly,Where gnarled November makes the spiders flyInto the apparitions of the sky,They purpose nothing but their ease and dieUrgently beating east to sunrise and the sea;
— Robert Lowell, Collected Poems
God, A Poem 'I didn't exist at Creation, I didn't exist at the Flood, And I won't be around for SalvationTo sort out the sheep from the cud-'Or whatever the phrase is. The fact isIn soteriological termsI'm a crude existential malpracticeAnd you are a diet of worms
— James Fenton
God has chosen to save the world through the cross, through the shameful andpowerless death of the crucified Messiah. If that shocking event is therevelation of the deepest truth about the character of God, then our whole wayof seeing the world is turned upside down… all values are transformed… Godrefuses to play games of power and prestige on human terms.
— Richard B. Hays
God's will has to be done, in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that.
— Sarah Palin
Her faith in a loving and forgiving God is strong, but she worships laughter.
— Miriam Toews, Swing Low
But doesn't that make sense? That the infinite would be, indeed... infinite? That even the most holy amongst us would only be able to see scattered pictures of the eternal picture at any given time? And that maybe if we could collect those pieces and compare them, a story about God would begin to emerge that resembles and includes everyone?
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
I suspect you're thinking of Pascal,' Finkler said, finally.'Only he said the opposite. He said you might as well wager on God because that way, even if He doesn't exist, you've nothing to lose. Whereas if you wager against God and He does exist...' 'You're in the shit.
— Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question
So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?' Mr. Okamoto: 'That's an interesting question?' Mr. Chiba: 'The story with animals.' Mr. Okamoto: 'Yes. The story with animals is the better story.' Pi Patel: 'Thank you. And so it goes with God.
— Yann Martel
I know that what you call 'God' really exists, but not in the form you think; God is primal cosmic energy, the love in your body, your integrity, and your perception of the nature in you and outside of you.
— Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!
Quoting from Thomas MertonDialogues With SilenceThe true contemplative is not one who prepares his mind for a particular message that he wants or expects to hear, but is one who remains empty because he knows that he can never expect to anticipate the words that will transform his darkness into light. He does not even anticipate a special kind of transformation. He does not demand light instead of darkness. He waits on the Word of God in silence, and, when he is answered it is not so much by a word that bursts into his silence. It is by his silence itself, suddenly, inexplicably revealing itself to him as a word of great power, full of the voice of God. (17)
— Stephen Cope, The Wisdom of Yoga: A Seeker's Guide to Extraordinary Living
The Lord works through deeply flawed people, since He made so few of the other kind.
— Timothy B. Tyson, Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story
If God did not exist, He would have to be invented. But all nature cries aloud that he does exist: that there is a supreme intelligence, an immense power, an admirable order, and everything teaches us our own dependence on it.
— Voltaire
Remember that our Heavenly Father knows us perfectly and knows what's best for us . . . . Surely, His knowledge is greater than ours. We just have to have faith in Him. If we don't, well, that doesn't change what happened, it just makes us more miserable because we refuse to trust His will. Our Heavenly Father wants us to have joy. And happiness. But we need to look for those opportunities that give us joy. If we don't, what would be the purpose for existing?
— Jeri Gilchrist, Out of Nowhere
I suddenly saw that all the time it was not I who had been seeking God, but God who had been seeking me. I had made myself the centre of my own existence and had my back turned to God.
— Bede Griffiths
All things therefore are charged with love, are charged with God and if we knew how to touch them give off sparks and take fire, yield drops and flow, ring and tell of him.
— Gerard Manley Hopkins, Letters to Robert Bridges and Correspondence with Richard Watson Dixon
...evolution is not a religious tenet, to which one swears allegiance or belief as a matter of faith.. It is a factual reality of the empirical world. Just as one would not say 'I believe in gravity," one should not proclaim 'I believe in evolution.
— Michael Shermer
If excitement is a mechanism our Creator uses for His own amusement, love is something that belongs to us alone and enables us to flee the Creator. Love is our freedom. Love lies beyond "Es Muss sein!
— Milan Kundera
‎You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
— Anne Lamott
Whether our days trip along like the angels mounting on Jacob's ladder to heaven or grind along like the wagons that Joseph sent for Jacob, they are in each case ordered by God's mercy.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Grace God's Unmerited Favor
God is represented as infinite, eternal, incomprehensible; he is contained under every predicate in non that the logic of ignorance could fabricate.
— Percy Bysshe Shelley
the golden eternity is { }
— Jack Kerouac, The Scripture of the Golden Eternity
Light of star gives light on space.Light of God gives birth to all stars.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
In the midst of her tears came the thought, "When people are in danger, they ask God to save them;" and, slipping down upon her knees, she said her prayer as she had never said it before, for when human help seems gone we turn to Him as naturally as lost children cry to their father, and feel sure that he will hear and answer them.
— Louisa May Alcott, Jack and Jill
destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time, which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which [God] has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them. He would therefore have them continually concerned either with eternity or with the Present--either meditating on their eternal union with, or separation from, Himself, or else obeying the present voice of conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure.
— C.S. Lewis
It is quite natural and inevitable that, if we spend sixteen hours daily of our waking lives in thinking about the affairs of the world and five minutes in thinking about God and our souls, this world will seem two hundred times more real to us than God.
— William Ralph Inge
Music is a mixed mathematical science that concerns the origens, attributes, and distinctions of sound, out of which a cultivated and lovely melody and harmony are made, so that God is honored and praised but mankind is moved to devotion, virtue, joy, and sorrow.
— Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician
If man really is fashioned, more than anything else, in the image of God, then clearly it follows that there is nothing on earth so near to God as a human being. The conclusion is inescapable, that to be in the presence of even the meanest, lowest, most repulsive specimen of humanity of the world is still to be closer to God than when looking up into a starry sky or at a beautiful sunset. Certainly that is why there is nothing in the new testament about beautiful sunsets.- Mike Mason -Author of "The Mystery of Marriage
— Mike Mason
We are here in a wood of little beeches: And the leaves are like black lace Against a sky of nacre. One bough of clear promise Across the moon. It is in this wise that God speaketh unto me. He layeth hands of healing upon my flesh, Stilling it in an eternal peace, Until my soul reaches out myriad and infinite hands Toward him, And is eased of its hunger. And I know that this passes: This implacable fury and torment of men, As a thing insensate and vain: And the stillness hath said unto me, Over the tumult of sounds and shaken flame, Out of the terrible beauty of wrath, I alone am eternal. One bough of clear promise Across the moon
— Frederic Manning
They had not yet attained the stupefying boredom of omnipotence
—  their experiments did not always succeed.
The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defense, not God's, that the self-righteous should rush.
— Yann Martel, Life of Pi
(Speaking of the Cistercian monks) A grim fraternity, passing grim lives in that sweet spot, that God had made so bright! Strange that Nature's voices all around them--the soft singing of the waters, the wisperings of the river grass, the music of the rushing wind--should not have taught them a truer meaning of life than this. They listened there, through the long days, in silence, waiting for a voice from heaven; and all day long and through the solemn night it spoke to them in myriad tones, and they heard it not.
— Jerome K. Jerome
The Lord replied, "The years when you have seen only one set of footprints, my child, is when I carried you.
— Mary Stevenson
... respecto al origen del mundo, si es que lo tuvo, no nos queda más remedio que aceptar que nunca sabremos cómo ocurrió y que Dios es una explicación necia que no explica nada pues es tan difícil imaginar la eternidad suya como la de la materia. Dios es la vuelta del bobo: lo postulamos para entender cuanto no entendemos, pero sin entenderlo a Él.
— Fernando Vallejo, La puta de Babilonia
I invite all brats to throw their cookies at the baker’s head if they’re not sweet, winos to chuck their wine if it’s bad, the dying to shuck their souls when they croak, and men to throw their existence in God’s face when it’s bitter
— Gustave Flaubert
The 'commandment' of love is only possible because it is more than a requirement. Love can be 'commanded' because it has first been given.
— Pope Benedict XVI, God Is Love: Deus Caritas Est
How would this world be if there was not God? The answer is simple: it would become itself God.
— Sorin Cerin
There was one question, however, which Inciarte had asked him and he could not answer. Why was it that he had lived while others had died? What purpose had God in making this selection? What sense could be made out of it? ‘None,’ replied Father Andrés. ‘There are times when the will of God cannot be understood by our human intelligence. There are things which in all humility we must accept as a mystery.
— Piers Paul Read, Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors
Decision decides destiny. What God wants you to become is the positive person you decide to become when led by God's spirit.
— Israelmore Ayivor, The Great Hand Book of Quotes
Never put yourself in a position to be made an example of.
— Gary   Hopkins
If I could take a bite of the whole worldAnd feel it on my palateI’d be more happy for a minute or so...But I don’t always want to be happy.Sometimes you have to beUnhappy to be natural...Not every day is sunny.When there’s been no rain for a while, you pray for it to come.So I take unhappiness with happinessNaturally, like someone who doesn’t find it strangeThat there are mountains and plainsAnd that there are cliffs and grass...What you need is to be natural and calmIn happiness and in unhappiness,To feel like someone seeing,To think like someone walking,And when it’s time to die, remember the day dies,And the sunset is beautiful, and the endless night is beautiful...That’s how it is and that’s how it should be...
— Alberto Caeiro, The Keeper of Sheep
All true believers have good reasons for disbelieving in every god except their own,' said Birbal, 'and so it is they who, between them, give me all the reasons for believing in none.
— Salman Rushdie, The Enchantress of Florence
Tough times don't define you, they refine you. ‪
— Carlos A.  Rodriguez, Designed For Inheritance: A Discovery of Sonship
God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us.
— Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
God loves us, but the devil takes an interest.
— Jennifer Donnelly, Revolution
Children understood at a very young age that doing nothing was an expression of power. Doing nothing was a choice swollen with omnipotence. It was, in fact, godly.And this, she now realized, was the reason why the gods did nothing. Proof of their omniscience. After all, to act was to announce awful limitations, for it revealed that chance acted first, the accidents were just that--events beyond the will of the gods--and all they could do in answer was to attempt to remedy the consequences, to alter natural ends. To act, then, was an admission of fallibility.
— Steven Erikson
Even a God finds it hard to love and be wise at the same time.
— Tina  Smith, Forbidden: Discover the Legend
We need a bigger estimation of God and a smaller estimation of sin.
— Judah Smith, Jesus Is: Find a New Way to Be Human
When the world caves inStill my hope will clingTo Your promiseWhere my courage endsLet my heart find strengthIn Your presence
— Hillsong
I wonder either their God has turned old, sick or died, because even the religious people no more believe in shit.
— M.F. Moonzajer
The Lord likes small things best, especially those done with love.
— Mother Teresa
There are always consequences to wrong choices.
— Jim George
The love of Christ is always there and unchanging, no matter what we do, but it is when we are obedient that we actually begin to feel it.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
No matter what I feel, I hold the assurance that God never leaves me.
— Craig Groeschel, The Christian Atheist: Believing in God but Living As If He Doesn't Exist
I'm always talking to God about whether or not he exists - that's how I know I'm a theist.
— Criss Jami, Healology
Wasting talent is a sin. I’m not big on sin, but I know a sin when I see one staring me in the face. I’m not big on sin, but I know a sin when I see one staring me in the face. It’s just not courteous to not use or wear something that somebody’s given you as a well-meaning gift. It goes against Southern ways, not that God is Southern by any stretch of the imagination, but I do think He expects us to be an example for the rest of the country, as far as manners go.
— Vicki Covington, Bird of Paradise
With adequate planning, passion and perseverance, you can achieve the God-given goals.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of  Wisdom: Great  mind
Rencana Allah selalu indah...
— Rhein Fathia, Jadian 6 Bulan
We're always taught that God wants us to always only say "I can't do this without You God" , "Whatever your will is God, that's my will too" but God says He is a father, and there is no good father who wants his children to have no will and to think that they can't stand on their own two feet. So maybe what you should be saying is "I can do it" and "I have a strong will, I know what I want." When you think God's left you and wants you to be sitting like a duck, maybe He's actually believing in you, teaching you how to fly.
— C. JoyBell C.
Grace has to be the loveliest word in the English language. It embodies almost every attractive quality we hope to find in others. Grace is a gift of the humble to the humiliated. Grace acknowledges the ugliness of sin by choosing to see beyond it. Grace accepts a person as someone worthy of kindness despite whatever grime or hard-shell casing keeps him or her separated from the rest of the world. Grace is a gift of tender mercy when it makes the least sense.
— Charles R. Swindoll
When the Lord makes it clear you're to follow Him in this new direction, focus fully on Him and refuse to be distracted by comparisons with others.
— Charles R. Swindoll
The faithful man perceives nothing less than opportunity in difficulties. Flowing through his spine, faith and courage work together: Such a man does not fear losing his life, thus he will risk losing it at times in order to empower it. By this he actually values his life more than the man who fears losing his life. It is much like leaping from a window in order to avoid a fire yet in that most crucial moment knowing that God will appear to catch you.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
Religion is based on the idea that God is an imbecile.
— Noam Chomsky
Dear God, I am only what you made me and I appreciate everything that you gave me, but like, I don't want to do it any more, sort of lost sight of what I'm doing it for.
— Nicki Minaj
Many of the most powerful things in life are not tangible. All it takes is for you to close your eyes to see.
— Shannon L. Alder
Maybe we shouldn't begin to stop believing in God when He starts to let go of our hand; because at that moment He begins to let go of your hand, that's the moment He's begun to believe in YOU! He says, "I believe in you, I know you can." And that's not the time to stop believing in someone, when He is believing in you. A good father knows when to let go and start believing that you can. We may not understand it at first, but after we look at ourselves and say "Wow, I'm awesome, I did that all by myself." Then we say "Thanks, dad. If you never let go of me, I would have never learned how to fly.
— C. JoyBell C.
The universe, which is not merely the stars and the moon and the planets, flowers, grass and trees, but other people, has evolved no terms for your existence, has made no room for you, and if love will not swing wide the gates, no other power will or can. And if one despairs-- as who has not?-- of human love, God's love alone is left.
— James     Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
Faithfulness imparts God's reason for all circumstances. No matter what the world says, losing is no longer an option.
— Criss Jami, Venus in Arms
If the universe does consist of a battle between the devil and God, the final analysis should conclude that religion would have been the devil’s most brilliant move and science, God’s.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Never compare your love story to those you watch in movies. They're written by scriptwriters, yours is written by God.
— Efren Peñaflorida Jr.
There is but One God, His name is Truth, He is the Creator, He fears none, he is without hate, He never dies, He is beyond the cycle of births and death, He is self illuminated, He is realized by the kindness of the True Guru. He was True in the beginning, He was True when the ages commenced and has ever been True, He is also True now.
— Guru Nanak
Deliver thunder, GodIf you choose not to talk.
— Dejan Stojanovic, Circling: 1978-1987
Don't ever be discouraged with yourself because you have not arrived at success, but instead be pleased that you are pressing toward it.
— Joyce Meyer, Making Good Habits, Breaking Bad Habits: 14 New Behaviors That Will Energize Your Life
Most of the world is either asleep or dead. The religious people are, for the most part, asleep. The irreligious are dead. Those who are asleep are divided into two classes, like the Virgins in the parable, waiting for the Bridegroom's coming. The wise have oil in their lamps. That is to say they are detached from themselves and from the cares of the world, and they are full of charity. They are indeed waiting for the Bridegroom, and they desire nothing else but His coming, even though they may fall asleep while waiting for Him to appear. But the others are not only asleep: they are full of other dreams and other desires. Their lamps are empty because they have burned themselves out in the wisdom of the flesh and in their own vanity. When He comes, it is too late for them to buy oil. They light their lamps only after He has gone. So they fall asleep again, with useless lamps, and when they wake up they trim them to investigate, once again, the matters of a dying world.
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
Ingratitude to God does not rely only on our refusal to give the verbal thanksgiving due to Him, but also recides in our inability to appreciate his gifts and potentials in us by leaving them untapped.
— Israelmore Ayivor
Realize this – your anger with God does not drive a wedge between you and Him. It is your silence that drives the wedge. - Prodigal Life
— Pauline Creeden
Loving someone is waking up a little bit earlier than they do so you can pray for their day.
— Melissa Z
Everyone has their own boat, it's a matter of pulling it out of the sand, and putting it in the water. But further, you can anchor the boat in fear when the storms rage, and go nowhere, let it drift aimlessly on its own or you can let God be the navigator and guide you on a journey in a way that is right for you.
— Anthony Liccione
I imagined I was God for a millisecond And became speechless for a long time.
— Dejan Stojanovic
Caring for the poor, resting on the Sabbath, showing hospitality and keeping the home—these are important things that can lead us to God, but God is not contained in them.
— Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood
We do not need such things to help us to see God,” I countered. “We have His Word, and that isenough.
— Tracy Chevalier
Jesus said, 'Enter into My rest' and let God do what He does best
— R. Alan Woods, The Journey Is The Destination: A Photo Journal
And what we say - that what He willeth is right and what He doth not not will is wrong, is not so to be understood, as if, should God will something inconsistent, it would be right because He willed it. For it does not follow that if God would lie it would be right to lie, but rather that he were not God.
— Anselm of Canterbury, Cur Deus homo: to which is added a selection from his letters
Keep on the watch and pray
— Jehovah, New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures
Peace for Israel,” he said.“Is that possible?” I drew closer.“Yes, if we have peace with God first.
— Rachelle Ayala, Michal's Window
I can only imagine how happy life would be if we could stay so grounded in our faith that we would never waver in our positive attitudes.
— Tracie Miles, Stressed-Less Living: Finding God's Peace in Your Chaotic World
Ukitaka kujua maana halisi ya maisha yako kuwa tayari kufanya vitu vikubwa vitakavyohitaji nguvu ya Mungu kuvikamilisha – na kudumu katika maisha hayo kwa kafara ya maombi.
— Enock Maregesi
It is said that men may not be the dreams of the god, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men.
— Carl Sagan, Cosmos
There's no need to curse God if you're an ugly duckling. He chooses those strong enough to endure it so that they can guide others who've felt the same.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
A great ring of pure & endless lightDazzles the darkness in my heartAnd breaks apart the dusky clouds of night.The end of all is hinted in the start.When we are born we bear the seeds of blight;Around us life & death are torn apart,Yet a great ring of pure and endless lightDazzles the darkness in my heart.It lights the world to my delight.Infinity is present in each part.A loving smile contains all art.The motes of starlight spark & dart.A grain of sand holds power & might.Infinity is present in each part,And a great ring of pure and endless lightDazzles the darkness in my heart.
— Madeleine L'Engle, A Ring of Endless Light
You can see God from anywhere if your mind is set to love and obey Him.
— A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God
The man who counts on the aid of a god deserves the help he doesn't get.
— Glen Cook, Dreams of Steel
I experience religious dread whenever I find myself thinking that I know the limits of God’s grace, since I am utterly certain it exceeds any imagination a human being might have of it. God does, after all, so love the world.
— Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child I Read Books
Don’t misunderstand me. The terrorist actions of Al-Qaeda were and are unmitigatedly evil. But the astonishing naivety which decreed that America as a whole was a pure, innocent victim, so that the world could be neatly divided up into evil people (particularly Arabs) and good people (particularly Americans and Israelis), and that the latter had a responsibility now to punish the former, is a large-scale example of what I’m talking about - just as it is immature and naive to suggest the mirror image of this view, namely that the western world is guilty in all respects and that all protestors and terrorists are therefore completely justified in what they do. In the same way, to suggest that all who possess guns should be locked up, or (the American mirror-image of this view) that everyone should carry guns so that good people can shoot bad ones before they can get up to their tricks, is simply a failure to think into the depths of what’s going on.
— N.T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God
...I believe in a God of scandalous grace. I have pledged allegiance to a King who loved evildoers so much he died for them, teaching us that there is something worth dying for but nothing worth killing for.
— Shane Claiborne
What do we find God 'doing about' this business of sin and evil?...God did not abolish the fact of evil
—  He transformed it. He did not stop the Crucifixion
But it ain't easy, trying to do without God even if you know he ain't there, trying to do without him is a strain
— Alice Walker, The Color Purple
Over the souls of men spread the condor wings of colossal monsters and all manner of evil things prey upon the heart and soul and body of Man. Yet it may be in some far day the shadows shall fade and the Prince of Darkness be chained forever in his hell. And till then mankind can but stand up stoutly to the monsters in his own heart and without, and with the aid of God he may yet triumph.
— Robert E. Howard, The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane
Fuck you, angel. Fuck you and all God's little prison bitches. He slips you some cigarettes and a con job smile and you run off to do his dirty work for him. Go and scare some sinners. No one's listening to you here.
— Richard Kadrey, Sandman Slim
Go ahead, God, you fat, filthy motherfucker, lightning-bolt my ass into oblivion if you're so tough!
— Jeri Smith-Ready, Requiem for the Devil
I have so often been asked the question: "But how did you come to think of The Scarlet Pimpernel?" And my answer has always been: "It was God's will that I should." And to you moderns, who perhaps do not believe as I do, I will say, "In the chain of my life, there were so many links, all of which tended towards bringing me to the fulfillment of my destiny.
— Emmuska Orczy, Links in the Chain of Life
As we grow in the knowledge of God's holiness, even though we are growing in the practice of holiness, it seems the gap between our knowledge and our practice always gets wider. This is the Holy Spirit's way of drawing us to more and more holiness.
— Jerry Bridges, The Practice of Godliness / The Pursuit of Holiness / The Pursuit of Holiness, Bible Study
Men do not turn from God so easily. Not so easily. Deep in each man is the knowledge that something knows of his existence. Something knows, and cannot e fled nor hid from. To imagine otherwise is to imagine the unspeakable. It was never that this man ceased to believe in God. No. It was rather that he came to believe terrible things of him.
— Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing
[God] loves us because He is filled with an infinite measure of holy, pure, and indescribable love. We are important to God not because of our résumé but because we are His children. He loves every one of us, even those who are flawed, rejected, awkward, sorrowful, or broken. God's love is so great that He loves even the proud, the selfish, the arrogant, and the wicked.What this means is that, regardless of our current state, there is hope for us. No matter our distress, no matter our sorrow, no matter our mistakes, our infinitely compassionate Heavenly Father desires that we draw near to Him so that He can draw near to us.
— Dieter F. Uchtdorf
The God that we commonly know may be less sinister than the true God that we don't know for sure.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
It sounds as if you'd like to be God.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
If that type of bad God did exist, then we could go on living in good health. If we could push the responsibility for our misery onto God, then we would have that much more peace of mind, wouldn't we?
— Tatsuhiko Takimoto, Welcome to the N.H.K.
All what we think and know is an illusion. Nothing exists. Everything is an opinion.
— Ash Vaz
There is no point of adventure if you have known about everything.I wonder how God deals with the situation, considering the boredom.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
Acedia is sorrow so complete that the flesh pervails completely over the spirit. You don't just turn your back on the world, you turn your back on God. You don't care, and you don't care that you don't care.
— Mishka Shubaly, The Long Run
I do not know the answers to life's hard questions, but I do know the One who knows them and that's sufficient...for now.
— Toni Sorenson
Sowing seeds of kindness always reaps a crop of heavenly blessings.
— Rebecca Barlow Jordan
The Lord doesn't want anybody in His house who has to be dragged there.
— Frank D. Gilroy, The Subject Was Roses
Who that prohibits two people who have different views about God to love each other?
— cG9sYXJhZGl0aWE=
I was asked by a concerned church-goer: "Is your relationship with God okay?" and I answered "My relationship with God is far better than yours. You have to be in a certain place, with a certain group of people, pray at certain days of the week, read the Bible at certain times of the day; all in order to have a relationship with God. But I am with God from the moment I wake up, to the moment I fall asleep at night, I am with God wherever on this earth that I wander to, and whosoever I may be with! I may be sitting on the subway, and I am with God. I can assure you that I am closer to God than you are.
— C. JoyBell C.
Basic Principles:1. Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure creative energy.2. There is an underlying, in-dwelling creative force infusing all of life -- including ourselves.3. When we open ourselves to our creativity, we open ourselves to the creator's creativity within us and our lives.4. We are, ourselves, creations. And we, in turn, are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves.5. Creativity is God's gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God.6. The refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature.7. When we open ourselves to exploring our creativity, we open ourselves to God: good orderly direction.8. As we open our creative channel to the creator, many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected.9. It is safe to open ourselves up to greater and greater creativity.10. Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we move toward our dreams, we move toward our divinity.
— Julia Cameron
Because I don't think God trusts just anybody with so much heartache. The world has not yet seen what God can do with a man who gives both halves of a broken heart to him. And I don't doubt that a man like that can change the world...or at least a little part of it.
— Chris Fabry, Almost Heaven
If you don’t delight in the fact that your Father is holy, holy, holy, then you are spiritually dead. You may be in a church. You may go to a Christian school. But if there is no delight in your soul for the holiness of God, you don’t know God. You don’t love God. You’re out of touch with God. You’re asleep to his character.
— R.C. Sproul, Choosing My Religion
I thought, He must forebear to reveal His power and glory by presenting Himself as Himself, and must be present only in the ordinary miracle of the existence of His creatures. Those who wish to see Him must see Him in the poor, the hungry, the hurt, the wordless creatures, the groaning and travailing beautiful world.
— Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow
It makes me happier, more secure, to think that I do not have to plan and manage everything for myself, that I am only a sword made sharp to smite the unclean forces, an enchanted sword to cleave and disperse them.Grant, O Lord, that I may not break as I strike! Let me not fall from Thy hand!
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Nobody is worthy to be loved. The fact that God loves man shows us that in the divine order of ideal things it is written that eternal love is to be given to what is eternally unworthy. Or if that phrase seems to be a bitter one to bear, let us say that everybody is worthy of love, except him who thinks he is.
— Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
The mountains are great stone bells; they clang together like nuns. Who shushed the stars? There are a thousand million galaxies easily seen in the Palomar reflector; collisions between and among them do, of course, occur. But these collisions are very long and silent slides. Billions of stars sift amont each other untouched, too distant even to be moved, heedless as always, hushed. The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out. But God knows I have tried.
— Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters
But, God knows best, I concluded.
— Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey
Радость. Долг каждого человека - взращивать свою внутреннюю радость. Но многие религии забыли это правило. Большинство храмов темны и холодны. Литургическая музыка помпезна и грустна. Священники одеваются в черное. Ритуалы прославляют пытки мучеников и соперничают в изображении жестокостей. Как если бы мучения, которые претерпели их пророки, были свидетельствами их истинности.Не является ли радость жизни лучшим способом отблагодарить Бога за его существование, если он существует? А если Бог существует, почему он должен быть мрачным существом?
— Bernard Werber, L'Empire des anges
God loves and cares for creation and has the right to expect this loving care be replicated by humans. Creation exists, not for the glory of humanity, but for the glory of God. God has the right to see that earthly creatures are free to live according to their nature and without unnecessary abuse, exploitation, and pain, so that their lives can glorify their Creator.…[S]ince God values and cares for all creation, creation has a derived right to be valued and cared for by humans for God’s glory.
— Richard A. Young, Is God a Vegetarian?: Christianity, Vegetarianism, and Animal Rights
These infinitesimal distinctions between man and man are too paltry for an Omnipotent Being. How these madmengive themselves away! The real God taketh heed lest a sparrow fall. But the God created from human vanity seesno difference between an eagle and a sparrow.
— Bram Stoker, Dracula
If grace belongs to God, there are those who say that luck belongs to the Devil and that he looks after his own.
— Sarah Dunant, In the Company of the Courtesan
Man’s glory lies not, Lincoln thought, in ‘his goodness,’ for this is often nonexistent. He derives glory, instead, from his being made in the image of the Living God.
— Joe L. Wheeler, Abraham Lincoln, a Man of Faith and Courage: Stories of Our Most Admired President