c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I was not sure where I was going, and I could not see what I would do when I got [there]. But you saw further and clearer than I, and you opened the seas before my ship, whose track led me across the waters to a place I had never dreamed of, and which you were even then preparing to be my rescue and my shelter and my home.
— Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain
By Hays' reasoning, penetrating a rectum with a penis is a violation of how God meant humans to function. However, penetrating a human body with a sword, a common way to kill people in biblical times, is acceptable. Apparently human bodies were designed to be penetrated by metal implements, but not by flesh.
— Hector Avalos
While the impostor draws his identity from past achievements and the adulation of others, the true self claims identity in its belovedness. We encounter God in the ordinariness of life: not in the search for spiritual highs and extraordinary, mystical experiences but in our simple presence in life.
— Brennan Manning, Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging
I testify that He is utterly incomparable in what He is, what He knows, what He has accomplished and what He has experienced. Yet, movingly, He calls us His Friends
— Neal A. Maxwell
If God hadn't rested on Sunday, He would have had time to finish the world.
— Gabriel García Márquez
But what of faith? What of fidelity and loyalty? Complete trust? Faith is not granted by tangible proof. It comes from the heart and the soul. If a person needs proof of god's existence, then the very notion of spirituality is diminished into sensuality and we have reduced what is holy into what is logical.-Drizzt Do'urden
— R.A. Salvatore, Siege of Darkness
The fear of God reigning in the heart is the beauty of the soul.
— Matthew Henry
Don't think you can frighten me by telling me that I am alone. France is alone. God is alone. And the loneliness of God is His strength.
— George Bernard Shaw, Saint Joan
God is the reason I’m surviving, but he’s sure used you in my life wonderfully. I love you.
— Esther Earl, This Star Won't Go Out: The Life and Words of Esther Grace Earl
Only the hopeless love God.
— Jennifer Donnelly, Revolution
If you could really see that tree over there," Merlin said, "you would be so astounded that you'd fall over.""Really? But why?" asked Arthur. "It's just a tree.""No," Merlin said, "It's just a tree in your mind. To another mind it is an expression of infinite spirit and beauty. In God's mind it is a dear child, sweeter than anything you can imagine.
— Deepak Chopra, The Way of the Wizard: Twenty Spiritual Lessons for Creating the Life You Want
Happiness is inseparably connected with decent, clean behavior. 
— Boyd K. Packer
Supposing that originally there was nothing but one creator, how could ordinary binary sexual relations come into being?
— Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
those who are afraid of freedom are those who cannot trust us to live in them. Trying to keep the law is actually a declaration of independence, a way of keeping control
— William Paul Young, The Shack
Open your eyes that you might see that all things are possible through you (with God's help)
— Robert A. Schuller
If the people of Europe had known as much of astronomy and geology when the bible was introduced among them, as they do now, there never could have been one believer in the doctrine of inspiration. If the writers of the various parts of the bible had known as much about the sciences as is now known by every intelligent man, the book never could have been written. It was produced by ignorance, and has been believed and defended by its author. It has lost power in the proportion that man has gained knowledge. A few years ago, this book was appealed to in the settlement of all scientific questions; but now, even the clergy confess that in such matters, it has ceased to speak with the voice of authority. For the establishment of facts, the word of man is now considered far better than the word of God. In the world of science, Jehovah was superseded by Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler. All that God told Moses, admitting the entire account to be true, is dust and ashes compared to the discoveries of Descartes, Laplace, and Humboldt. In matters of fact, the bible has ceased to be regarded as a standard. Science has succeeded in breaking the chains of theology. A few years ago, Science endeavored to show that it was not inconsistent with the bible. The tables have been turned, and now, Religion is endeavoring to prove that the bible is not inconsistent with Science. The standard has been changed.
— Robert G. Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses
Could there be any doubt that the Jews would seek to harm the Son of God again, knowing that his body was now readily accessible in the form of defenseless crackers?
— Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
I say to myself: "Who are you to measure infinite power?
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau
God does not patch up the old life,or make certain repairs on the old life;He gives a new life, through the new birth.
— Kathryn Kuhlman
Is anything too hard for the Lord? (Genesis 18:14)
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
When we lift our hands in praise and worship, we break spiritual jars of perfume over Jesus. The fragrance of our praise fills the whole earth and touches the heart of God.
— Dennis Ignatius
Remember, that choosing to stay on the ground is a choice to facilitate a relationship, to honor it. You don't play a game or color a picture with a child to show your superiority. Rather, you choose to limit yourself so as to facilitate and honor that relationship... It is not about winning and losing, but about love and respect.
— William Paul Young, The Shack
I'm only a tool, beloved. Not your Savior
— Francine Rivers, Redeeming Love
Once I was free in the shackles of sin:Free to be tempted, just bound to give in;Free to be captive to any desire;Free to eternally burn in hell’s fire.‘Til Someone bought me and called me His slave:Bound by commands I am free to obey;Captive by beauty I’m free to adore--Sentenced to sit at His feet evermore.
— John F. MacArthur Jr.
We live by revelation, as Christians, as artists, which means we must be careful never to get set into rigid molds. The minute we begin to think we know all the answers, we forget the questions, and we become smug like the Pharisee who listed all his considerable virtues, and thanked God that he was not like other men.Unamuno might be describing the artist as well as the Christian as he writes, "Those who believe they believe in God, but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, and not in God himself.
— Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art
Our identity rests in God's relentless tenderness for us revealed in Jesus Christ.
— Brennan Manning, Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging
How often the priest had heard the same confession--Man was so limited: he hadn't even the ingenuity to invent a new vice: the animals knew as much. It was for this world that Christ had died: the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater the glory lay around the death; it was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or civilization--it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt.
— Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory
For in Paris, whenever God puts a pretty woman there (the streets), the Devil, in reply, immediately puts a fool to keep her.
— Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, Les Diaboliques
Wild dreams torment me as I lie. And though a god lives in my heart, though all my power waken at his word, though he can move my every inmost part - yet nothing in the outer world is stirred. thus by existence tortured and oppressed I crave for death, I long for rest.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part One
Common sense is no match for the voice of God.
— Jon Krakauer, Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
This was not the time to say “I don’t know.” The brothers had begging, hungry looks, like dogs waiting to be fed. They wanted an answer. It would be nice if it was the right answer, but if it couldn’t be, then any answer would do, because then we would stop being worried...and then his mind caught alight.That’s what the gods are! An answer that will do! Because there’s food to be caught and babies to be born and life to be lived and so there is no time for big, complicated, and worrying answers! Please give us a simple answer, so that we don’t have to think, because if we think, we might find answers that don’t fit the way we want the world to be.
— Terry Pratchett, Nation
Your current circumstances are part of your redemption story He is writing.
— Evinda Lepins
One must love God first, and only then can one love one's closest of kin and neighbors. We must not be idols to one another, for such is not the will of God.
— Thaddeus of Vitovnica, Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives:  The Life and Teachings of Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica
As fallible humans, we usually slip too far over one edge or the other - all wrath and judgment or all grace and love.
— Eric Wilson, A Shred of Truth
We live in a world that is beyond our control, and life is in a constant flux of change. So we have a decision to make: keep trying to control a storm that is not going to go away or start learning how to live within the rain.
— Glenn Pemberton, Hurting with God
O child of God, be more careful to keep the way of the Lord, more concentrated in heart in seeking His glory, and you will see the loving-kindness and the tender mercy of the Lord in your life.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Grace God's Unmerited Favor
I see the glass half full and thank God for what I have.
— Ana Monnar
A fish cannot drown in water,A bird does not fall in air.In the fire of creation,God doesn't vanish:The fire brightens.Each creature God mademust live in its own true nature;How could I resist my nature,That lives for oneness with God?
— Mechthild of Magdeburg, Meditations from Mechthild of Magdeburg
Your angel cannot protect you against that which neither god nor the devil had made
— Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
But what if you're wrong?What if there's more?What if there's hope you never dreamed of hoping for?What if you jump?And just close your eyes?What if the arms that catch you, catch you by surprise?What if He's more than enough?What if it's love?
— Nichole Nordeman
Now he haunts me seldom: some fierce umbilical is broken,I live with my own fragile hopes and sudden rising despair.Now I do not weep for my sins; I have learned to love themAnd to know that they are the wounds that make love real.His face illudes me; his voice, with its pity, does not ring in my ear.His maxims memorized in boyhood do not make fruitless and pointless my experience.I walk alone, but not so terrified as when he held my hand.I do not splash in the blood of his sonnor hear the crunch of nails or thorns piercing protesting flesh.I am a boy again--I whose boyhood was turned to manhood in a brutal myth.Now wine is only wine with drops that do not taste of blood.The bread I eat has too much pride for transubstantiation,I, too--and together the bread and I embrace,Each grateful to be what we are, each loving from our own reality.
— James Kavanaugh, There Are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves
Our Father who art in nature, who has given the gift of survival to the coyote, the common brown rat, the English sparrow, the house fly and the moth, must have a great and overwhelming love for no-goods and blots-on-the-town and bums, and Mack and the boys. Virtues and graces and laziness and zest. Our Father who art in nature.
— John Steinbeck, Cannery Row
Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
The will of God is sweet tonight, altogether ‘good and acceptable and perfect.’ The considerate love of the Lord Jesus for us seems such a kind thing now. I know it has always been so, but somehow I didn’t see how wise it was when it didn’t seem kind… Remind me of this when I cannot regard His love as considerate some time.
— Jim Elliot
God is so immense that if he were 'too visible,' people would give forced compliance without expressing their heart. So God made it possible, in enormous love, for us to live as if he were not there.
— John Ortberg Jr., The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God's Best Version of You
The vibrations on the air are the breath of God speaking to man's soul. Music is the language of God. We musicians are as close to God as man can be. We hear his voice, we read his lips, we give birth to the children of God, who sing his praise. That's what musicians are.
— Stephen J. Rivele
Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god's purpose. Any movement of a liberal nature endangers his authority and that of his delegates on earth. One God, one King, one Pope, one master in the factory, one father-leader in the family at home.
— Gore Vidal
When I see God I see Beauty, I see Love, I see Joy, I see Peace and I see You. God loves us let us love one another.
— E'yen A. Gardner
True happiness is not found in any other reward than that of being united with God. If I seek some other reward besides God Himself, I may get my reward but I cannot be happy.
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
He flashed the warmest smile I'd ever seen, and my heart felt comforted. Maybe D.J. saw my insecurities, my fears. Maybe he knew God still had a lot of work to do in my life before I'd be good girlfriend material.Or maybe, just maybe, he saw beyond all that and simply wanted to flirt with the wedding coordinator instead of rehearse for the big night.I did my best to relax...and let him.
— Janice  Thompson, Fools Rush In
When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of 'No answer.' It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, 'Peace, child; you don't understand.
— C.S. Lewis
There's a lot of pride involved in my refusal to believe in god.
— Orhan Pamuk, Snow
And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
It was no accident, no coincidence, that the seasons came round and round year after year. It was the Lord speaking to us all and showing us over and over again the birth, life, death, and resurrection of his only begotten Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ, our Lord. It was like a best-loved story being told day after day with each sunrise and sunset, year after year with the seasons, down through the ages since time began.
— Francine Rivers, The Last Sin Eater
It is interesting that Hindus, when they speak of the creation of the universe do not call it the work of God, they call it the play of God, the Vishnu lila, lila meaning play. And they look upon the whole manifestation of all the universes as a play, as a sport, as a kind of dance — lila perhaps being somewhat related to our word lilt
— Alan W. Watts, Zen and the Beat Way
Optimism hopes for the best without any guarantee of its arriving and is often no more than whistling in the dark. Christian hope, by contrast, is faith looking ahead to the fulfillment of the promises of God, as when the Anglican burial service inters the corpse 'in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ.' Optimism is a wish without warrant; Christian hope is a certainty, guaranteed by God himself. Optimism reflects ignorance as to whether good things will ever actually come. Christian hope expresses knowledge that every day of his life, and every moment beyond it, the believer can say with truth, on the basis of God's own commitment, that the best is yet to come.
— J.I. Packer
My lack of faith in God is not a dilapidated house.It does not need to be razed to the ground or burned down to cinders.I refuse to be the wounded woman on a crossthat you crucify with your disapproval like nails;I will only be the woman who believes in thunderstormsthe same way lightning loves the tops of trees it strikesevery time it gets tired of being pent up in an unforgiving sky,the only difference is that I believe these are natural weather phenomenons,not God’s belly rumbling or synapses firing.When my doorway is filled with groups of peoplewielding religious conversion pamphlets like crossbows,I will be the martyr who steps aside to let the arrowscrack through the plaster in my wall instead of piercing my chest.This is not a eulogy to the believer I could have been.This is a battle cry to the believer I always have been,believer in sunsets like splashes of paint, handholdinglike willow branches brushing one another, new morningsafter old nights spent drowning in despair, believerin love as an entire language instead of a single word.Just because my beliefs align themselves on a different spectrumdoes not mean they are the wrong wavelength or color.And even though I think the universe was created by the Big Banginstead of a God with magic dust shooting from his fingertips,my universe does not contain fewer stars.
— Meggie Royer
But I don't understand God. I don't understand how he could see the way people treat one another, and not chalk up the whole human race as a bad idea.
— Jim Butcher, Grave Peril
God created heaven on earth but man created hell.
— Santosh Kalwar, Quote Me Everyday
On my honor, I will do my bestTo do my duty To God and my country
— Boy Scouts of America
I want to help you to grow as beautiful as God meant you to be when He thought of you first.
— George MacDonald
You view the gods as entities without," Montolio tried to explain. "You see them as physical beings trying to control our actions for their own ends, and thus you, in your stubborn independance, reject them. The gods are within, I say, whether one has named his own or not. You have followed Mielikki all your life, Drizzt. You merely never had a name to put on your heart.
— R.A. Salvatore, Sojourn
Oh,' the priest said, 'that's another thing altogether - God is love. I don't say the heart doesn't feel a taste of it, but what a taste. The smallest glass of love mixed with a pint pot of ditch-water. We wouldn't recognize that love. It might even look like hate. It would be enough to scare us - God's love. It set fire to a bush in the desert, didn't it, and smashed open graves and set the dead walking in the dark. Oh, a man like me would run a mile to get away if he felt that love around.
— Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory
God wants to rescue us, not destroy us. You don't have to be afraid of being happy, thinking that he wants to take that happiness away from you That's not who he is." "How can you be sure?" "Because when you've had a taste of goodness, it helps you recognize the difference between good and evil. I believe that people like Grace and St. Francis and a whole host of other kind, loving people show us what God is like. He isn't waiting to punish you and he doesn't give you blessings just to strip them away.
— Sylvain Reynard, Gabriel's Redemption
God wasn't love, couldn't be love. Because for me, love was a corpse.
— Ellen Hopkins, Burned
If God were not only to hear our prayers, as he does ever and always, but to answer them as we want them answered, he would not be God our Saviour but the ministering genius of our destruction.
— George MacDonald, Weighed and Wanting
All love on this earth involves choice. When, for example, a young man expresses his love to a young woman and asks her to become his wife, he is not just making an affirmation of love; he is also negating his love for anyone else. In that one act by which he chooses her, he rejects all that is not her. There is no other real way in which to prove we love a thing than by choosing it in preference to something else. Word and signs of love may be, and often are, expressions of egotism or passion; but deeds are proofs of love. We can prove we love our Lord only by choosing Him in preference to anything else.
— Fulton J. Sheen
The spirit of bondage works by fear for the slave fears the rod: but love cries, Abba, Father; it disposes us to go to God, and behave ourselves towards God as children; and it gives us clear evidence of our union to God as His children, and so casts out fear. So that it appears that the witness of the Spirit the apostle speaks of, is far from being any whisper, or immediate suggestion or revelation; but that gracious holy effect of the Spirit of God in the hearts of the saints, the disposition and temper of children, appearing in sweet childlike love to God, which casts out fear or a spirit of a slave.
— Jonathan Edwards, The Religious Affections
All was in God's plan, and he had to accept even as he didn't understand.
— Barbara Cameron, A Time to Love
To believe in God or in a guiding force because someone tells you to is the height of stupidity. We are given senses to receive our information within. With our own eyes we see, and with our own skin we feel. With our intelligence, it is intended that we understand. But each person must puzzle it out for himself or herself.
— Sophy Burnham
One by one, these disciples would infect the nations with grace. It wasn't a call to take the sword or the throne and force the world to bow. Rather, they were to live the contagious love of God, to woo the nations into a new future.
— Shane Claiborne, Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals
You thought you had the choice to stay still or move forward, but your didn't. As long as your heart kept pumping an your blood kept blowing and your lungs kept filling, you didn't. The pang she felt for Tibby carried something like envy. You couldn't stand still for anything short of death, and God knew she had tried.
— Ann Brashares, Sisterhood Everlasting
Our assholes will be clean but we must never wash our hands. Our immune systems will be strengthened by our being dirty. Not filthy. Just mildly grimy. Filthy fingernails have always been a favorite fashion accessory of mine. Especially when you place your hands in the prayer positions. Matter of fact, I urge all my followers to forgo nail polish permanently and replace it with expertly applied soot. The nonexistent gods above will ignore our prayers better this way.
— John Waters, Role Models
In moments of prayer, people tend to pose as a critic and point out percieved flaws in God's art.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
All right, God, say that You are really there. You have put me in this fix. You want to test me. Suppose I test You? Suppose I say that You are not there? You've given me a supreme test with my parents and with these boils. I think that I have passed Your test. I am tougher than You. If You will come down here right now, I will spit into Your face, if You have a face. And do You shit? The priest never answered that question. He told us not to doubt. Doubt what? I think that You have been picking on me too much so I am asking You to come down here so I can put You to the test! I waited. Nothing. I waited for God. I waited and waited. I believe I slept.
— Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye
God is an hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof: the onus probandi rests on the theist.
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Necessity of Atheism and Other Essays
I perceived or thought of the Light of God and in it suspended one small mote (or millions of motes to only one of which was my small mind directed), glittering white because of the individual ray from the Light which both held and lit it...And the ray was the Guardian Angel of the mote: not a thing interposed between God and the creature, but God's very attention itself, personalized...This is a finite parallel to the Infinite. As the love of the Father and Son (who are infinite and equal) is a Person, so the love and attention of the Light to the Mote is a person (that is both with us and in Heaven): finite but divine, i.e. angelic.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
was it scripted by God or I am playing with my life.
— Durgesh Satpathy, Equating the Equations of Insanity: A Journey from Grief to Victory
God saves - but not now, and not here. His salvation is on layaway. Like all grifters, He asks you to pay now and take it on faith that you will receive later. Whereas women offer a different sort of salvation, more immediate and fulfilling. They don't put off their love for a distant, ill-defined eternity but make a gift of it in the here and now, frequently to those who deserve it least. So it was in my case. So it is for many. The devil and woman have been allies against God from the beginning...
— Joe Hill, Horns
If I could give you information of my life it would be to show how a woman of very ordinary ability has been led by God in strange and unaccustomed paths to do in His service what He has done in her. And if I could tell you all, you would see how God has done all, and I nothing. I have worked hard, very hard, that is all; and I have never refused God anything.
— Florence Nightingale
Those with less curiosity or ambition just mumble that God works in mysterious ways. I intend to catch him in the act.
— Damien Echols, Life After Death
Let my worship be within the heart that rejoices, for behold, all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals.Therefore, let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you.
— Doreen Valiente, Charge of the Goddess: The Mother of Modern Witchcraft
Live in the wisdom of accepted tenderness. Tenderness awakens within the security of knowing we are thoroughly and sincerely liked by someone...Scripture suggests that the essence of the divine nature is compassion and that the heart of God is defined by tenderness.
— Brennan Manning, Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging
I know there is a God because in Rwanda I shook hands with the devil. I have seen him, I have smelled him and I have touched him. I know the devil exists and therefore I know there is a God.
— Roméo Dallaire, Shake Hands With The Devil
We should fix ourselves firmly in the presence of God by conversing all the time with Him...we should feed our soul with a lofty conception of God and from that derive great joy in being his. We should put life in our faith. We should give ourselves utterly to God in pure abandonment, in temporal and spiritual matters alike, and find contentment in the doing of His will,whether he takes us through sufferings or consolations. 
— Brother Lawrence
This is one reason people need to believe in God—because we want someone to know us, truly, all the way through, even the worst of us.
— Tim Kreider, We Learn Nothing
He realized now he was only just beginning to see the full extent to which it was his destiny to follow, to walk blindly into fates he could never understand. In fate there was reward, in turning over one's heart to God there was a magnificence that lay beyond description. At the moment one is sure that all is lost, look at what is gained!
— Ann Patchett, Bel Canto
In seven days God had created the Earth. In a single day mankind had turned it upside down.
— Kristina McMorris, Bridge of Scarlet Leaves
It don't matter if you believe in God Nick, he believes in you.
— Stephen King, The Stand
Don’t you know what god is? God is everything and God is nothing; for the perfection created by man cannot be anything other than nothing. They decided to give a name to nothingness, and thereby the made it become something. Like you… God, who is nothing, can no longer be nothing since he is God. You could be a god for men. They need to give a body to nothingness so that nothingness can be seen and touched-at least with the imagination.
— Aldo Palazzeschi, Man of Smoke
The choices we’re working with here are a block universe, where past, present and future all coexist simultaneously and everything has already happened; chaos, where anything can happen and nothing can be predicted because we can’t know all the variables; and a Christian universe in which God made everything and it’s all here for a purpose but we have free will anyway.
— Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife
They's a heap more to God's will than death, disapoint-ment, and like thet. Hit's God's will for us to be good and do good, love one another, be forgivin'..." He laughed. "I reckon I ain't very forgivin', son. I can forgive a fool, but I ain't inner-rested in coddlin' hypocrites. Well anyhow, folks who think God's will jest has to do with sufferin' and dyin', they done missed the whole point.
— Olive Ann Burns, Cold Sassy Tree
He is not apprehended by reason, but by life.
— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
One must pray first, but afterwards one must help oneself. God does not care for cowards.--"Wanda
— Ouida
It's tragic that extremists co-opt the notion of God, and that hipsters and artists reject spirituality out of hand. I don't have a fixed idea of God. But I feel that it's us - the messed-up, the half-crazy, the burning, the questing - that need God, a lot more than the goody-two-shoes do.
— Mike Doughty
Christianity was not meant to be a weapon or an argument or a show of force or a political tool. Or an act of aggression or coercion. It was never meant to be a cause or a prop for a cause. Or something to pacify and make thousands go to bed happy and unthinking. It was meant to be a challenge, yes, but that challenge to a second life was meant to be laced with kindness. If someone forces you to choose between God is holy and God is love choose God is love because holiness without love translates into tyranny.
— Murray Pura
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; which means that if the rest of us want to get close to God, we seek them out-not because of what we could possible offer them, as if we're the spiritual first responders on the scene to save the day, but because we recognize how much they have to teach us about who God really is." -Quoted by Sarah Arthur, Author of The One Year Daily Grind.
— Sarah Arthur, The One Year Daily Grind
In the end, what will you fight for-- what got there first, what got there last or what has been there all along?
— Shannon L. Alder
You are a child of mine,Born of my own design,And you bear the hard of life.No matter where you go,Oh, you will always know,That you've been made free in Christ,And you are a child of mine! 
— Mark Schultz
And if there is no god?You act as if there is, and it's the same thing.
— Janet Fitch, White Oleander
In a well-functioning democracy, the state constitution is considered more important than God's holy book, whichever holy book that may be, and God matters only in your private life.
— Ayaan Hirsi Ali, The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam
[When it comes to God] We can't run out of second chances...only time.
— Robin Jones Gunn
Even when you don't see Him working, He's busy working on your behalf. Forever grateful for God's grace!
— Yvonne Pierre, The Day My Soul Cried:  A Memoir
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth . . . Then he said, "Let there be light." Which means he made the entire universe in the dark! How fucking good is that? He's brilliant.
— Ricky Gervais
If you were meant to cure cancer or crack cold fusion and you don't do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children, you hurt me, you hurt the planet. You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite God Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter further along its path back to God.
— Stephen Pressfield
I sit and ponder my existence: how I'm here, what put me here in these thoughts, these feelings, birthed from a timeless sleep, what it felt like, or rather the lack thereof, to not have been and now to 'be', and suddenly, I realize how absurd I am to exist, the fragility in my understanding of existence; I then wonder why the supernatural, the thought of other beings, of God or of gods, must be distinctly absurd - by which I am no longer sure. 'If I exist and I have made myself absurd to me, then why not they exist while merely believed absurd by me?' Perhaps it is true that in a wandering head, one full of wonders, the natural becomes supernatural and the supernatural becomes preternatural (or rational within the sights of discovery and explanation), just as the return home after a life-long journey feels, for a moment, foreign after the many experiences.
— Criss Jami, Healology
Every word, every image used for God is a distortion more than a description.
— Anthony de Mello, One Minute Wisdom
Coincidence is God's way of being anonymous.
— Laura Pedersen, Best Bet
You got a God. Don't make no difference if you don' know what he looks like.
— John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
It is only through us that God lives. When we abandon him, he dies.
— David Eagleman, Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives
Even now, there are still days so beautiful, I almost believe in God.
— Ann Hood, Comfort: A Journey Through Grief
Do not forget, do not ever forget, that you have promised me to use the money to make yourself an honest man.'Valjean, who did not recall having made any promise, was silent. The bishop had spoken the words slowly and deliberately. He concluded with a solemn emphasis:Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to what is evil but to what is good. I have bought your soul to save it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
I believe in God the way I believe in quarks. People whose business it is to know about quantum physics or religion tell me they have good reason to believe that quarks and God exist. And they tell me that if I wanted to devote my life to learning what they've learned, I'd find quarks and God just like they did.
— Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow
If in my life I fail completely to heed others, solely out of a desire to be 'devout' and to perform my 'religious duties', then my relationship with God will also grow arid. It becomes merely 'proper', but loveless.
— Pope Benedict XVI, God Is Love: Deus Caritas Est
May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
Is the god the source, or is the god a human manner of conceiving of the force and energy that supports the world? In our tradition God is a male. This male and female differentiation is made, however, within the field of time and space, the field of duality. If God is beyond duality, you cannot say that God is a "He." You cannot say God is a "She." You cannot say God is an "It." (18)
— Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor
The logic of the Bible says: Act according to God's "will of command," not according to his "will of decree." God's "will of decree" is whatever comes to pass. "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that" (James 4:15). God's "will of decree" ordained that his Son be betrayed (Luke 22:22), ridiculed (Isaiah 53:3), mocked (Luke 18:32), flogged (Matthew 20:19), forsaken (Matthew 26:31), pierced (John 19:37), and killed (Mark 9:31). But the Bible teaches us plainly that we should not betray, ridicule, mock, flog, forsake, pierce, or kill innocent people. That is God's "will of command." We do not look at the death of Jesus, clearly willed by God, and conclude that killing Jesus is good and that we should join the mockers.
— John Piper
God is dead and I am his replacement.
— J.D. Robb, Conspiracy in Death
Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle
— Werner Herzog
But I was always coming here. I though about one of my favorite Sufi poems, which says that God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now. I was never not coming here. This was never not going to happen. 
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
Sometimes doubting is not a lack of faith, but an expression of it. Sometimes to doubt is to merely insist that God be taken seriously not frivolously, to insist that our faith is placed in and upheld by something other than seeming conjuring tricks.
— Mark Buchanan, Your God Is Too Safe
What you cant forget... God cant remember!
— John F. MacArthur Jr.
What is the world? What is it for? It is an art. It is the best of all possible art, a finite picture of the infinite. Assess it like prose, like poetry, like architecture, sculpture, painting, dance, delta blues, opera, tragedy, comedy, romance, epic. Assess it like you would a Faberge egg, like a gunfight, like a musical, like a snowflake, like a death, a birth, a triumph, a love story, a tornado, a smile, a heartbreak, a sweater, a hunger pain, a desire, a fufillment, a desert, a waterfall, a song, a race, a frog, a play, a song, a marriage, a consummation, a thirst quenched. Assess it like that. And when you're done, find an ant and have him assess the cathedrals of Europe.
— N.D. Wilson
We tend to be taken aback by the thought that God could be angry. how can a deity who is perfect and loving ever be angry?...We take pride in our tolerance of the excesses of others. So what is God's problem?... But love detests what destroys the beloved. Real love stands against the deception, the lie, the sin that destroys. Nearly a century ago the theologian E.H. Glifford wrote: 'Human love here offers a true analogy: the more a father loves his son, the more he hates in him the drunkard, the liar, the traitor.'... Anger isn't the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference... How can a good God forgive bad people without compromising himself? Does he just play fast and loose with the facts? 'Oh, never mind...boys will be boys'. Try telling that to a survivor of the Cambodian 'killing fields' or to someone who lost an entire family in the Holocaust. No. To be truly good one has to be outraged by evil and implacably hostile to injustice.
— Rebecca Manley Pippert
And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
— Thomas Jefferson
The day came when she discovered sex, sensuality, and literature; she said, 'I submit! Let my life be henceforth ruled by poetry. Let me reign as the queen of my dreams until I become nothing less than the heroine of God.
— Roman Payne
My belief is that, morally, God and Satan are vaguely on the same page. According to the common understanding of Satan's origins, holiness must be in his blood: but a corrupted formula. The vital difference is that God is willing to offer grace for our sins; he delights in grace. God is the one and only holy and just punisher of sin, yes, but that is partly so because punishment for the sake of punishment is not something he loves. Whereas Satan, as the accuser, and as it is written, actually seeks God's permission to punish; he, being a seasoned legalist, delights in finding wrongs and will defy his own morality just to expose immorality. This is why both the anti-religious soul and the violently religious soul are, whether consciously or unconsciously, and sadly enough, glorifying their biggest hater: Satan is not only a lawless lover of punishing lawlessness, but also the greatest theologian of us all. He loves wickedness, but only because he loves punishing wickedness.
— Criss Jami, Healology
God's Will is what we would choose if we knew what God knows.
— Nancy Leigh DeMoss
With God, all things are possible.
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
Break my heart for what breaks yoursEverything I am for Your Kingdom's causeAs I walk from earth into eternity
— Hillsong United
Cynicism places the cynic at the center seat of judgement with the self appointed authority to criticize and condemn. 
— Jayce O'Neal
Great minds think alike because a greater Mind is thinking through them.
— Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality
The destiny of your soul is not predicated upon acceptance of a specific dogma that happens to be "correct." A loving God does not dole out eternal condemnation because one has selected the wrong doctrine or misinterpreted scripture. On the contrary, your endeavor to understand God and the nature of the universe is a testament to your devotion.
— Mark Ireland
With God, all things are possible. Matthew 19:26
— Anonymous
I receive Thee ransom of my soul. For love of Thee have I studied and kept vigil toiled preached and taught…
— Thomas Aquinas
I feel like, God expects me to be human. I feel like, God likes me just the way I am: broken and empty and bruised. I feel like, God doesn't look at me and wish that I were something else, because He likes me just this way. I feel like, God doesn't want me to close my eyes and pray for Him to make me holy or for Him to make me pure; because He made me human. I feel like, God already knows I'm human...it is I who needs to learn that.
— C. JoyBell C.
The world looks like something God had just imaged for his own pleasure, doesn't it?
— L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
God made a beauteous garden With lovely flowers strown,But one straight, narrow pathway That was not overgrown.And to this beauteous garden He brought mankind to live,And said "To you, my children, These lovely flowers I give.Prune ye my vines and fig trees, With care my flowers tend,But keep the pathway open Your home is at the end."God's Garden
— Robert Frost
...the sorrows God sent us brought comfort and strength with them, while the sorrows we brought on ourselves, through folly or wickedness, were by far the hardest to bear.
— L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island
The mind of God is a mystery and none can understand it.
— Rae Carson, The Girl of Fire and Thorns
For Ragamuffins, God's name is Mercy. We see our darkness as a prized possession because it drives us into the heart of God. Without mercy our darkness would plunge us into despair - for some, self-destruction. Time alone with God reveals the unfathomable depths of the poverty of the spirit. We are so poor that even our poverty is not our own: It belongs to the mysterium tremendum of a loving God.
— Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why's he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He's not good at design, he's not good at execution. He'd be out of business, if there was any competition.
— Carl Sagan, Contact
Such is my relationship with God: on my gigantic canvass of life, I am the one throwing all of the brightly-colored paints, creating genuine splatters, authentic whirlpools of color, beautiful patterns, wonderful streaks and stains and wild accents; God is the one with the paintbrush who stands beside my canvass filling all the intricate and amazing details in between the whirlpools and the streaks! We're happy together!
— C. JoyBell C.
Then Hwin, though shaking all over, gave a strange little neigh and trotted across to the Lion. "Please," she said, "you're so beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I'd sooner be eaten by you than fed by anyone else.
— C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy
God gave us the gift of life
—  it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.
If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does.
— Christopher Hitchens, Mortality
It is hard to see how a great man can be an atheist. Without the sustaining influence of faith in a divine power we could have little faith in ourselves. We need to feel that behind us is intelligence and love. Doubters do not achieve; skeptics do not contribute; cynics do not create. Faith is the great motive power, and no man realizes his full possibilities unless he has the deep conviction that life is eternally important, and that his work, well done, is a part of an unending plan.
— Calvin Coolidge
Prayers are to men as dolls are to children.
— Samuel Butler
I have realized that whatever good comes to me, comes from God, whatever bad comes to me, God has allowed it, and I choose to be thankful for both.
— Jeff Goins, Wrecked: When a Broken World Slams into your Comfortable Life
The vast desire and capacity a woman has for intimate relationships tells us of God's vast desire and capacity for intimate relationships. In fact, this may be The most important thing we ever learn about God--the He yearns for relationship with us. "Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God" (John 17:3). The whole story of the Bible is a love story between God and His people. He yearns for us. He cares. He has a tender heart.
— Stasi Eldredge, Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman's Soul
Easily mistaken, it is not about a love for adversity, it is about knowing a strength and a faith so great that adversity, in all its adverse manifestations, hardly even exists.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
Well, I never been to much school, you understand, but it seems to me that you're assuming something you shouldn't assume... that God sees the world like you do; one thing at a time, from just one spot. Seems to me that he's supposed to be everywhere, know everything. ...Think about that; he knows what you're feeling, how you're hurting. Feels my pain, your pain like it was his own. Hell son, the question isn't how God could care about just one person; question is, how could he not?
— Jim Butcher, Small Favor
Embedded in the larger story of redemption is a principle we must not miss: God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things in the lives of others.
— Paul David Tripp, Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands: People in Need of Change Helping People in Need of Change
Two or three angelsCame near to the earth.They saw a fat church.Little black streams of peopleCame and went in continually.And the angels were puzzledTo know why the people went thus,And why they stayed so long within.
— Stephen Crane, Complete Poems of Stephen Crane
You don't have to stop thinking and asking questions to believe in God, child. If He'd wanted a flock of eight billion sheep, He wouldn't have given us opposable thumbs, much less free will.
— Hillary Jordan, When She Woke
To be a child means to owe one's existence to another, and even in our adult life we never quite reach the point where we no longer have to give thanks for being the person we are.
— Hans Urs von Balthasar, Unless You Become Like This Child
You will be at your best forever, Even now you have good moments. Occasional glimpses of your heavenly self. When you change your baby's diaper, forgive your boss's temper, tolerate your spouse's moodiness, you display traces of saintliness.
— Max Lucado, 3:16: The Numbers of Hope
Remember: He WANTS your fellowship, and He has done everything possible to make it a reality. He has forgiven your sins, at the cost of His own dear Son. He has given you His Word, and the priceless privilege of prayer and worship.
— Billy Graham, Hope for Each Day: Words of Wisdom and Faith
It was becoming clearer and clearer that if I wanted to come to the end of my life and not say, “I’ve wasted it!” then I would need to press all the way in, and all the way up, to the ultimate purpose of God and join him in it. If my life was to have a single, all-satisfying, unifying passion, it would have to be God’s passion.
— John Piper, Don't Waste Your Life
When Lincoln was asked if God was on the Union’s side, Lincoln’s unvarying response was that what was really important was whether they were on God’s side.
— Joe L. Wheeler, Abraham Lincoln, a Man of Faith and Courage: Stories of Our Most Admired President
No one can sum up all God is able to accomplish through one solitary life, wholly yielded, adjusted, and obedient to Him.
— Dwight L. Moody
Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.
— C.S. Lewis