c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I know how much you grieve over those who are under your care: those you try to help and fail, those you cannot help. Have faith in God and remember that He will is His own way and in His own time complete what we so poorly attempt. Often we do not achieve for others the good that we intend but achieve something, something that goes on from our effort. Good is an overflow. Where we generously and sincerely intend it, we are engaged in a work of creation which may be mysterious even to ourselves - and because it is mysterious we may be afraid of it. But this should not make us draw back. God can always show us, if we will, a higher and a better way; and we can only learn to love by loving. Remember that all our failures are ultimately failures in love. Imperfect love must not be condemned and rejected but made perfect. The way is always forward, never back.
— Iris Murdoch, The Bell
Are we biology or God or something higher? I know my heart beats and I listen to it. The beat is biology, but what is the song? 
— James Frey
In the year 2006, a person can have sufficient intellectual and material resources to build a nuclear bomb and still believe that he will get seventy-two virgins in Paradise.
— Sam Harris
Did I hear God call me an idiot? 
— William Paul Young, The Shack
Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the God idea, not God Himself.
— Miguel de Unamuno
I found my God in music and the arts, with writers like Hermann Hesse, and musicians like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and Little Walter. In some way, in some form, my God was always there, but now I have learned to talk to him.
— Eric Clapton
We never know how God will answer our prayers, but we can expect that He will get us involved in His plan for the answer. If we are true intercessors, we must be ready to take part in God’s work on behalf of the people for whom we pray.
— Corrie ten Boom
God does not require that we be successful only that we be faithful.
— Mother Teresa
God is not an employer looking for employees. He is an Eagle looking for people who will take refuge under his wings. He is looking for people who will leave father and mother and homeland or anything else that may hold them back from a life of love under the wings of Jesus.
— John Piper, A Sweet and Bitter Providence: Sex, Race, and the Sovereignty of God
And then I stand in front of God's Throne squinting up at His blazing glory and He says, 'You had your opportunities, boy. But did you listen? No. You went on heedlesly reading that garbagey magazine with pictures of naked girls in it. How juvenile! I gave geese more sense than that.'Please, God. I'm only fourteen years old. A teenager. Have mercy. Be loving.I was,' says God. 'For eons. And look at what it got me. You.'God turns in disgust, just the way Daddy does. 'Sorry, but I'm the Creator. I take it personally. There are slugs and bugs and night-crawlers I feel better about having created - I mean, there are sparrows - I've got my eye on one right now. Is that sparrow consumed with lust? No. He mates in the spring and that's the end of it. Consider the lilies. Do they think about lily tits all the time? No. They look not and they lust not, and yet I say unto you that you will never be half as attractive as they. Therefore, I say unto you, think not about peckers and boobs and all that nonsense and your Heavenly Father will see that you meet a good woman and marry her, just as I do for the sparrow and walleye - yea verily, even the night-crawler and the eelpout. But I've told you this over and over for nineteen centuries. And now, verily, it's too late. Time's up, buster. Lights out! Game's over!
— Garrison Keillor
God does not give us more than we can handle," I am told but I wonder if God doesn't overestimate me just a little. Or perhaps, and this is likely, I underestimate God.
— Julia Cameron, Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance
God doesn't like lesbians," Grandma Huberman hised, throwing the magazine in the trash.Jennifer knew what lesbian meant, and she knew she probably was one. But she couldn't understand why God would hold that against her or against Monica Mathers, who'd never started a war or killed anybody, and whose deadeye three-pointers were straight-up amazing. After all, hadn't God made both of them? But people were like that, she'd noticed. They'd invoke Godly privilege at the weirdest of times and for the most stupid reasons.
— Libba Bray, Beauty Queens
God, who am I?
— Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Be a man!... What good is religion if it collapses under calamity? Think of what earthquakes and floods, wars and volcanoes, have done before to men! Did you think that God had exempted [us]? He is not an insurance agent.
— H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds
The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God.
— Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale
I have never understood why people who can swallow the enormous improbability of a personal God boggle at a personal Devil.
— Graham Greene
The scriptures present a God who delights in genocide, rape, slavery, and the execution of nonconformists, and for millennia those writings were used to rationalize the massacre of infidels, the ownership of women, the beating of children, dominion over animals, and the persecution of heretics and homosexuals. Humanitarian reforms such as the elimination of cruel punishment, the dissemination of empathy-inducing novels, and the abolition of slavery were met with fierce opposition in their time by ecclesiastical authorities and their apologists. The elevation of parochial values to the realm of the sacred is a license to dismiss other people’s interests, and an imperative to reject the possibility of compromise.
— Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
God's creatures who cried themselves to sleep stirred to cry again.
— Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs
I have come to see clearly that life is more than self. It is more than doing what I want, striving for what will benefit me, dreaming of all I can be. Life is all about my relationship with God. There is no higher calling, no loftier dream, and no greater goal than to live, breathe, and be poured out for Jesus Christ."--Jamie in Brother Andrew's "The Calling
— Brother Andrew, The Narrow Road: Stories of Those Who Walk This Road Together
How strange, Royce thought, that, after emerging victorious from more than a hundred real battles, the greatest moment of triumph he had ever known had come to him on a mock battlefield where he'd stood alone, unhorsed, and defeated. This morning, his life had seemed as bleak as death. Tonight, he held joy in his arms. Someone or something—fate or fortune or Jenny's God—had looked down upon him this morning and seen his anguish. And, for some reason, Jenny had been given back to him.Closing his eyes, Royce brushed a kiss against her smooth forehead. Thank you, he thought.And in his heart, he could have sworn he heard a voice answer, You're welcome.
— Judith McNaught, A Kingdom of Dreams
I have no duty to be anyone's Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.
— C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
‎"Do you know that nothing you do in this life will ever matter, unless it is about loving God and loving the people he has made?
— Francis Chan, Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God
My feeling is, quite simply, that if there is a God, He has done such a bad jobthat he isn't worth discussing.
— Isaac Asimov
But for me the sweetest contact with God has no form. I close my eyes, look within, and enter a deep soft silence. The infinity of God's creation embraces me.
— Michael  Jackson, Dancing the Dream
The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie.It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite forheaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is notthe X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality wedrink in every night.
— John Piper, A Hunger for God
God isn't the son of Memory; He's the son of Immediate Experience. You can't worship a spirit in spirit, unless you do it now. Wallowing in the past may be good literature. As wisdom, it's hopeless. Time Regained is Paradise Lost, and Time Lost is Paradise Regained. Let the dead bury their dead. If you want to live at every moment as it presents itself, you've got to die to every other moment.
— Aldous Huxley, The Genius And The Goddess
We might be wise to follow the insight of the enraptured heart rather than the more cautious reasoning of the theological mind.
— A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy
Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
Don’t be disheartened by the forces of evil. Nothing can happen that God hasn’t allowed. Even resistance is all part of grand orchestration. The devil always has you right were God wants you.
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
Why do humans exist? A major part of the answer: because Pikaia Gracilens survived the Burgess decimation.
— Christopher Hitchens, god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
The more you go with the flow of life and surrender the outcome to God, and the less you seek constant clarity, the more you will find that fabulous things start to show up in your life.
— Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass
God’s word is not just to be heard and repeated, it is to be breathed, lived, and emulated with each action.
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
Nor does God whisper through the trees. His voice is not to be mistaken. When men hear it they fall to their knees and their souls are riven and they cry out to Him and there is no fear but only wildness of heart that springs from such longing...
— Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing
One of the most amazing and perplexing features of mainstream Christianity is that seminarians who learn the historical-critical method in their Bible classes appear to forget all about it when it comes time for them to be pastors. They are taught critical approaches to Scripture, they learn about the discrepancies and contradictions, they discover all sorts of historical errors and mistakes, they come to realize that it is difficult to know whether Moses existed or what Jesus actually said and did, they find that there are other books that were at one time considered canonical but that ultimately did not become part of Scripture (for example, other Gospels and Apocalypses), they come to recognize that a good number of the books of the Bible are pseudonymous (for example, written in the name of an apostle by someone else), that in fact we don't have the original copies of any of the biblical books but only copies made centuries later, all of which have been altered. They learn all of this, and yet when they enter church ministry they appear to put it back on the shelf. For reasons I will explore in the conclusion, pastors are, as a rule, reluctant to teach what they learned about the Bible in seminary.
— Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible & Why We Don't Know About Them
They call him Aslan in That Place," said Eustace."What a curious name!""Not half so curious as himself," said Eustace solemnly.
— C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia
Man is not defiled by his impurities. It is the other man pointing out his impurities to him, whom he is defiled by. Is there anything anyone can do, to become righteous, anyway? God made us impure. If he had a problem with that, He would have made us gods, instead.
— C. JoyBell C.
God's grace is not defined as God being forgiving to us even though we sin. Grace is when God is a source of wholeness, which makes up for my failings. My failings hurt me and others and even the planet, and God's grace to me is that my brokenness is not the final word ... it's that God makes beautiful things out of even my own shit. Grace isn't about God creating humans and flawed beings and then acting all hurt when we inevitably fail and then stepping in like the hero to grant us grace - like saying, "Oh, it's OK, I'll be the good guy and forgive you." It's God saying, "I love the world too much to let your sin define you and be the final word. I am a God who makes all things new.
— Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint
Yet a part of you still believes you can fight and survive no matter what your mind knows. It's not so strange. Where there's still life, there's still hope. What happens is up to God.
— Louis Zamperini, Devil at My Heels
If God sends us on strong paths, we are provided strong shoes.
— Corrie ten Boom
Oh, he did look like a deity – the perfect balance of danger and charm, he was at the same time fascinating and inaccessible, distant because of his demonstrated flawlessness, and possessing such strength of character that he was dismaying and at the same time utterly attractive in an enticing and forbidden way.
— Simona Panova, Nightmarish Sacrifice
Since that day there is nothing anyone could ever say to convince me that one person cannot change a nation. One person can do unbelievable things. All it takes is that one person who's willing to risk everything to make it happen.
— Sam Childers, Another Man's War: The True Story of One Man's Battle to Save Children in the Sudan
My God, if I had a heart, I would write my hate on ice, and wait for the sun to show.
— Gabriel García Márquez
When man is with God in awe and love, then he is praying.
— Karl Rahner, The Need and the Blessing of Prayer
It is far more comforting to think God listened and said no, than to think that nobody’s out there.
— Mitch Albom
Nobody wants to worship you if you have the same problems, the same bad breath and messy hair and hangnails, as a regular person. You have to be everything regular people aren’t. Where they fail, you have to go all the way. Be what people are too afraid to be. Become whom they admire. People shopping for a messiah want quality. Nobody is going to follow a loser. When it comes to choosing a savior, they won't settle for just a human being.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor
Don’t tell me about your god with your words. Show me about your god with your actions.
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
God will judge us, Mr. Harris, by--by what we did to relieve the suffering of our fellow human beings. I don't think God cares what doctrine we embrace.
— Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone
Prayer will make a man cease from sin, or sin will entice a man to cease from prayer.
— John Bunyan
Think of the patience God has had for you and let it resonate to others. If you want a more patient world, let patience be your motto
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Even when God seemed to have abandoned me, he was watching. Even when he seemed indifferent to my suffering, he was watching. And when I was beyond all hope of saving, he gave me rest. Then he gave me a sign to continue my journey.
— Yann Martel, Life of Pi
Failure is just part of the process, and it's not just okay; it's better than okay. God doesn't want failure to shut us down. God didn't make it a three-strikes-and-you're-out sort of thing. It's more about how God helps us dust ourselves off so we can swing for the fences again. And all of this without keeping a meticulous record of our screw-ups.
— Bob Goff, Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World
To have faith is to be sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see.
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
Look, if you say that science will eventually prove there is no God, on that I must differ. No matter how small they take it back, to a tadpole, to an atom, there is always something they can’t explain, something that created it all at the end of the search.“And no matter how far they try to go the other way – to extend life, play around with the genes, clone this, clone that, live to one hundred and fifty – at some point, life is over. And then what happens? When the life comes to an end?”I shrugged.“You see?”He leaned back. He smiled.“When you come to the end, that’s where God begins.
— Mitch Albom, Have a Little Faith: a True Story
My faith is big enough to accept all of God's wonders.
— Kirsten Miller, The Eternal Ones
The gifts of the Master are these: freedom, life, hope, new direction, transformation, and intimacy with God. If the cross was the end of the story, we would have no hope. But the cross isn't the end. Jesus didn't escape from death; he conquered it and opened the way to heaven for all who will dare to believe. The truth of this moment, if we let it sweep over us, is stunning. It means Jesus really is who he claimed to be, we are really as lost as he said we are, and he really is the only way for us to intimately and spiritually connect with God again.
— Steven James, Story
Once you have surrendered yourself, you make yourself receptive. In receiving from God, you are perfected and completed.
— Fulton J. Sheen, Seven Words of Jesus and Mary: Lessons from Cana and Calvary
The same sun that rises over castles and welcomes the daySpills over buildings into the streets where orphans playAnd only You can see the good in broken thingsYou took my heart of stone, and You made it homeAnd set this prisoner free
— Bethany Dillon
Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.
— Alexander Pope
Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Communicating with God is the most extraordinary experience imaginable, yet at the same time it's the most natural one of all, because God is present in us at all times. Omniscient, omnipotent, personal-and loving us without conditions. We are connected as One through our divine link with God.
— Eben Alexander, Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife
(You do not have to be shamed in my closeness. Family are the people who must never make you feel ashamed.)(You are wrong. Family are the people who must make you feel ashamed when you are deserving of shame.)(And you are deserving of shame?)(I am. I am trying to tell you.) 'We were stupid,' he said, 'because we believed in things.''Why is this stupid?''Because there are not things to believe in.'(Love?)(There is no love. Only the end of love.)(Goodness?)(Do not be a fool.)(God?)(If God exists, He is not to be believed in.)
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated
God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly
— Paul Valéry
God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain.
— C.S. Lewis
What we are is God's gift to us. What we become is our gift to God.
— Eleanor Powell
Don't be more serious than God. God invented dog farts. God designed your body's plumbing system. God designed an ostrich. If He didn't do it, He permitted a drunken angel to do it. Empirical facts can add significantly to the meaning of "being godlike".
— Peter Kreeft, Before I Go: Letters to Our Children about What Really Matters
Family, friends and relationships are the blessings of the God. They are the best way to access God.
— Amit Ray, Nonviolence: The Transforming Power
If I stopped loving Him, I would cease to believe in His love. If I loved God, then I would believe in His love for me. It's not enough to need it. We have to love first, and I don't know how. But I need it, how I need it. 
— Graham Greene
God is the most beautiful, and beauty is the expression of God. If you can't appreciate beauty in the world how can you understand God?
— Amit Ray, Meditation: Insights and Inspirations
Will we turn our backs on science because it is perceived as a threat to God, abandoning all the promise of advancing our understanding of nature and applying that to the alleviation of suffering and the betterment of humankind? Alternatively, will we turn our backs on faith, concluding that science has rendered the spiritual life no longer necessary, and that traditional religious symbols can now be replaced by engravings of the double helix on our alters?Both of these choices are profoundly dangerous. Both deny truth. Both will diminish the nobility of humankind. Both will be devastating to our future. And both are unnecessary. The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. He can be worshipped in the cathedral or in the laboratory. His creation is majestic, awesome, intricate and beautiful - and it cannot be at war with itself. Only we imperfect humans can start such battles. And only we can end them.
— Francis S. Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief
Our vision is so limited we can hardly imagine a love that does not show itself in protection from suffering. The love of God is of a different nature altogether. It does not hate tragedy. It never denies reality. It stands in the very teeth of suffering.
— Elisabeth Elliot, Passion and Purity: Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under Christ's Control
God wanted to make heaven and the earth is that heaven. Nowhere in the universe there is so much love, life, beauty and peace. Enjoy your stay with the fellow beings.
— Amit Ray, Nonviolence: The Transforming Power
There is only one all pervading God. It has only one message - Love all, encompass all and transcend the limits of the selfish gene.
— Amit Ray
Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.
— Barry M. Goldwater
The poor man shuddered, overflowed with an angelic joy; he declared in his transport that this would last through life; he said to himself that he really had not suffered enough to deserve such radiant happiness, and he thanked God, in the depths of his soul, for having permitted that he, a miserable man, should be so loved by this innocent being.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
There is no justice in love, no proportion in it, and there need not be, because in any specific instance it is only a glimpse or parable of an embracing, incomprehensible reality. It makes no sense at all because it is the eternal breaking in on the temporal. So how could it subordinate itself to cause or consequence?
— Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
We can never know who or what we are till we know at least something of what God is.
— A.W. Tozer
We regard God as an airman regards his parachute
—  it's there for emergencies but he hopes he'll never have to use it.
All that is not God is death.
— George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons: Series I, II, III
The common man prays, 'I want a cookie right now!' And God responds, 'If you'd listen to what I say, tomorrow it will bring you 100 cookies.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
We are not on this planet to ask forgiveness of our deities
— Scott Cunningham, Living Wicca: A Further Guide for the Solitary Practitioner
And isn't the whole world yours? For how often you set it on fire with your love and saw it blaze and burn up and secretly replaced it with another world while everyone slept. You felt in such complete harmony with God, when every morning you asked him for a new earth, so that all the ones he had made could have their turn. You thought it would be shabby to save them and repair them; you used them up and held out your hands, again and again, for more world. For your love was equal to everything.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist.
— John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman
God has, in fact, written two books, not just one. Of course, we are all familiar with the first book he wrote, namely Scripture. But he has written a second book called creation.
— Francis Bacon
The way of Jesus cannot be imposed or mapped — it requires an active participation in following Jesus as he leads us through sometimes strange and unfamiliar territory, in circumstances that become clear only in the hesitations and questionings, in the pauses and reflections where we engage in prayerful conversation with one another and with him.
— Eugene H. Peterson, The Jesus Way: A Conversation on the Ways That Jesus Is the Way
The gods too are fond of a joke.
— Aristotle
Science adjusts its views based on what's observedFaith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved.
— Tim Minchin
Do Something!I was sitting on a plane after a long, tiring business trip. I was a bit grouchy and irritable because the rigorous schedule I had made for myself left me exhausted. Looking to not talk to the person next to me and simply endure the flight, I decided to open my newspaper and read about what was happening in the world. As I continued to read, it seemed that everywhere I looked there were stories of injustice, pain, suffering, and people losing hope. Finally, fueled by my tired, irritable state, I became overcome with compassion and frustration for the way things were. I got up and went to the bathroom and broke down.With tears streaming down my face, I helplessly looked to the sky and yelled to God. “God, look at this mess. Look at all this pain and suffering. Look at all this killing and hate. God, how could you let this happen? Why don’t you do something?”Just then, a quiet stillness pacified my heart. A feeling of peace I won’t ever forget engulfed my body. And, as I looked into my own eyes in the mirror, the answer to my own question came back to me… “Steve, stop asking God to do something. God already did something, he gave you life. Now YOU do something!
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
God…” I choked on the word. “I know we haven’t talked much in the past few years. Hell, I told you I hated you when Tye took his own life.” I cursed again and pinched the bridge of my nose. “I don’t even care about myself anymore, just promise me she’ll be okay. If I don’t make it… if you take me, just let Kiersten be okay. She can’t go down that road — I don’t care if you have to punish me, God. If she’s going to suffer, give me her pain instead. If her heart’s going to break, break mine for hers. Please, God… please.
— Rachel Van Dyken, Ruin
Man is a spiritual being, a soul, and at some period of his life everyone is possessed with an irresistible desire to know his relationship to the Infinite. . . . There is something within him which urges him to rise above himself, to control his environment, to master the body and all things physical and live in a higher and more beautiful world.
— David O. McKay
It is He Who sent down to thee, in truth, the Book (Quran), confirming what went before it; and He sent down the Law (of Moses) and the Gospel (of Jesus) before this, as a guide to mankind, and He sent down the criterion (Quran) (of judgment between right and wrong). - Holy Quran 3:3
— Anonymous, The Qur'an / القرآن الكريم
God favors men and women who delight in being made worthy of happiness before the happiness itself.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.
— John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany
Keep a clear eye toward life's end. Do not forget your purpose and destiny as God's creature. What you are in his sight is what you are and nothing more. Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take nothing that you have received...but only what you have given; a full heart enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice, and courage.
— Francis of Assisi
God abandons only those who abandon themselves, and whoever has the courage to shut up his sorrow within his own heart is stronger to fight against it than he who complains.
— George Sand, La Petite Fadette
For years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?
— Anne Graham
…God is a giant quiltmaker. With an infinite variety of designs. And the quilt is grown so big and confusing, the pattern is impossible to see, the squares and diamonds and triangles don’t fit well together anymore, it’s all become meaningless. So He has abandoned it.
— Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance
God makes each one of us for the time into which we are born. He creates us for a purpose. Our job is to know Him well, discover what He created us to do, and then do it for all we're worth for the rest of our lives. Ask God to show you your purpose. He will answer.
— Robin Lee Hatcher, Fit to Be Tied
The greatest act of faith some days is to simply get up and face another day.
— Amy Gatliff
I think the reason we sometimes have the false sense that God is so far away is because that is where we have put him. We have kept him at a distance, and then when we are in need and call on him in prayer, we wonder where he is. He is exactly where we left him.
— Ravi Zacharias, Has Christianity Failed You?
Restlessness and impatience change nothing except our peace and joy. Peace does not dwell in outward things, but in the heart prepared to wait trustfully and quietly on Him who has all things safely in His hands.
— Elisabeth Elliot
Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" Priest: "No, not if you did not know." Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?
— Annie Dillard
I always wondered why God was supposed to be a father," she whispers. Fathers always want you to measure up to something. Mothers are the ones who love you unconditionally, don't you think?
— Jodi Picoult
No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance.
— Henry Miller
We owe a huge debt to Galileo for emancipating us all from the stupid belief in an Earth-centered or man-centered (let alone God-centered) system. He quite literally taught us our place and allowed us to go on to make extraordinary advances in knowledge.
— Christopher Hitchens
The soul hardly ever realizes it, but whether he is a believer or not, his loneliness is really a homesickness for God.
— Hubert Van Zeller
Low self-esteem causes me to believe that I have so little worth that my response does not matter. With repentance, however, I understand that being worth so much to God is why my response is so important. Repentance is remedial work to mend our minds and hearts, which get bent by sin.
— John Ortberg Jr., The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God's Best Version of You
The Anatomy of Conflict:If there is no communication then there is no respect. If there is no respect then there is no caring. If there is no caring then there is no understanding. If there is no understanding then there is no compassion. If there is no compassion then there is no empathy. If there is no empathy then there is no forgiveness. If there is no forgiveness then there is no kindness. If there is no kindness then there is no honesty. If there is no honesty then there is no love. If there is no love then God doesn't reside there. If God doesn't reside there then there is no peace. If there is no peace then there is no happiness. If there is no happiness ----then there IS CONFLICT BECAUSE THERE IS NO COMMUNICATION!
— Shannon L. Alder
Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
You’re like a lighthouse shining beside the sea of humanity, motionless: all you can see is your own reflection in the water. You’re alone, so you think it’s a vast, magnificent panorama. You haven’t sounded the depths. You simply believe in the beauty of God’s creation. But I have spent all this time in the water, diving deep into the howling ocean of life, deeper than anyone. While you were admiring the surface, I saw the shipwrecks, the drowned bodies, the monsters of the deep
— Alfred de Musset, Lorenzaccio
Our heaven is their hell, said God. I like a balanced universe.
— Margaret Atwood, The Tent
God is the same, even though He has a thousand names; it is up to us to select a name for Him.
— Paulo Coelho, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
I want to have faith in strangers. I want to have faith in what we're all going to do next. But I'm worried. I see things shifting from United We Stand to God Bless America. I don't believe in God Bless America. I don't believe a higher power is standing beside us and guiding us. I don't believe we're being singled out. I believe much more in United We Stand. I have my doubts, but I want it to be true. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we really came together, if we really found a common humanity? The hitch is that you can't find a common humanity just because you have a common enemy. You have to find a common humanity because you believe that's true. 
— David Levithan, Love Is the Higher Law
If you place [your bet] with God, you lose nothing, even if it turns out that God does not exist. But if you place it against God, and you are wrong and God does exist, you lose everything.
— Peter Kreeft, Pocket Handbook of Christian Apologetics
I may not be where I want to be but I'm thankful for not being where I used to be.
— Habeeb Akande
The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; My God, my strength, in whom I will trust; My shield, and the horn of my salvation; my stronghold.
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
Never say, "O Lord, I am a miserable sinner." Who will help you? You are the help of the universe. What in this universe can help you? What can prevail over you? You are the God of the universe; where can you seek for help? Never help came from anywhere but from yourself. In your ignorance, every prayer that you made and that was answered, you thought was answered by some Being, but you answered the prayer yourself unknowingly. The help came from yourself, and you fondly imagined that someone was sending help to you. There is no help for you outside of yourself; you are the creator of the universe. Like the silkworm, you have built a cocoon around yourself. Who will save you? Burst your own cocoon and come out as a beautiful butterfly, as the free soul. Then alone you will see Truth.
— Swami Vivekananda, The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda: v. 3
Jesus Christ came not to condemn you but to save you, knowing your name, knowing all about you, knowing your weight right now, knowing your age, knowing what you do, knowing where you live, knowing what you ate for supper and what you will eat for breakfast, where you will sleep tonight, how much your clothing cost, who your parents were. He knows you individually as though there were not another person in the entire world. He died for you as certainly as if you had been the only lost one. He knows the worst about you and is the One who loves you the most.  If you are out of the fold and away from God, put your name in the words of John 3:16 and say, “Lord, it is I. I’m the cause and reason why Thou didst on earth come to die.” That kind of positive, personal faith and a personal Redeemer is what saves you. If you will just rush in there, you do not have to know all the theology and all the right words. You can say, “I am the one He came to die for.” Write it down in your heart and say, “Jesus, this is me—Thee and me,” as though there were no others. Have that kind of personalized belief in a personal Lord and Savior.
— A.W. Tozer, And He Dwelt Among Us: Teachings from the Gospel of John
God dances with the outcast.
— Steven James, How to Smell Like God: True Stories Burning with the Scent of Heaven
The wizard [of Oz] says look inside yourself and find self. God says look inside yourself and find [the Holy Spirit]. The first will get you to Kansas. The latter will get you to heaven.Take your pick.
— Max Lucado, Experiencing the Heart of Jesus: Knowing His Heart, Feeling His Love
I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: The New King James Version
Do what you do only for God's sake, start for God's sake, work for God's sake, and act within the sphere of God's good approval.
— Bediüzzaman Said Nursî
If faith never encounters doubt, if truth never struggles with error, if good never battles evil, how can faith know its own power? In my own pilgrimage, if I had to choose between a faith that has stared doubt in the eye and made it blink, or a naive faith that has never known the firing line of doubt, I will choose the former every time.
— Gary Parker
Never allow your ego to diminish your ability to listen.
— Gary   Hopkins
Where I will find peace other than in oblivion?
— Sorin Cerin, Wisdom Collection: The Book of Wisdom
A baby is God's opinion that life should go on. A book that does nothing to you is dead. A baby, whether it does anything to you, represents life. If a bad fire should break out in this house and I had my choice of saving the library or the babies, I would save what is alive. Never will a time come when the most marvelous recent invention is as marvelous as a newborn baby. The finest of our precision watches, the most super-colossal of our supercargo plants, don't compare with a newborn baby in the number and ingenuity of coils and springs, in the flow and change of chemical solutions, in timing devices and interrelated parts that are irreplaceable. A baby is very modern. Yet it is also the oldest of the ancients. A baby doesn't know he is a hoary and venerable antique — but he is. Before man learned how to make an alphabet, how to make a wheel, how to make a fire, he knew how to make a baby — with the great help of woman, and his God and Maker.
— Carl Sandburg
It is the Holy Spirit's job to convict, God's job to judge and my job to love.
— Billy Graham
If money’s the god people worship, I’d rather go worship the devil instead.
— Jess C. Scott, Rockstar
Where does your security lie? Is God your refuge, your hiding place, your stronghold, your shepherd, your counselor, your friend, your redeemer, your saviour, your guide? If He is, you don't need to search any further for security.
— Elisabeth Elliot
God depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.
— André Gide
The irony is that while God doesn't need us but still wants us, we desperately need God but don't really want Him most of the time. He treasures us and anticipates our departure from this earth to be with Him-and we wonder, indifferently, how much we have to do for Him to get by.
— Francis Chan, Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God
The humble sinner will sometimes be interpreted as one of the filthiest in the eyes of man yet immersed in the eyes of God, and this is due to the volition of honesty regarding his own corruption.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind, and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.]
— James Madison, Letters and Other Writings of James Madison Volume 3
Look, I know you meant well creating the world and all, but how could you let it get away from you like this? How come you couldn't stick with your original idea of paradise? People's lives were a mess.
— Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees
If there was a god, I'd still have both nuts.
— Lance Armstrong
A sacrament--like marriage--means living a life better than your natural instincts, so that you're modeling God. And God never gives up.
— Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care
Before you came into my life, I believed that God had abandoned me. Now I know that He has blessed me beyond measure. ~Sir Bannor
— Teresa Medeiros, Charming the Prince
Have patience. All things are difficult before they become easy.
— Saadi
Women are delicate creatures. Fragile. Gentle. Made by God to be sheltered from the harshness of this world..Morgan MacDonnell
— Teresa Medeiros, A Whisper of Roses
Dreams are tawdry when compared with the leading of God, and not worthy of the aura of wonder we usually surround them with. God only doeth wonders. He does nothing else. His hand can work nothing less.
— Jim Elliot
It is said that God is always on the side of the big battalions.
— Voltaire
For all works and things, which are either commanded or forbidden by God and thus have been instituted by the supreme Majesty, are 'musts.' Nevertheless, no one should be dragged to them or away from them by the hair, for I can drive no man to heaven or beat him into it with a club.
— Martin Luther
Nancy waded out to her own rocks and searched her own pools and let that couple look after themselves. She crouched low down and touched the smooth rubber-like sea anemones, who were stuck like lumps of jelly to the side of the rock. Brooding, she changed the pool into the sea, and made the minnows into sharks and whales, and cast vast clouds over this tiny world by holding her hand against the sun, and so brought darkness and desolation, like God himself, to millions of ignorant and innocent creatures, and then took her hand away suddenly and let the sun stream down. Out on the pale criss-crossed sand, high-stepping, fringed, gauntleted, stalked some fantastic leviathan (she was still enlarging the pool), and slipped into the vast fissures of the mountain side. And then, letting her eyes slide imperceptibly above the pool and rest on that wavering line of sea and sky, on the tree trunks which the smoke of steamers made waver on the horizon, she became with all that power sweeping savagely in and inevitably withdrawing, hypnotised, and the two senses of that vastness and this tininess (the pool had diminished again) flowering within it made her feel that she was bound hand and foot and unable to move by the intensity of feelings which reduced her own body, her own life, and the lives of all the people in the world, for ever, to nothingness. So listening to the waves, crouching over the pool, she brooded.
— Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
The true story of every person in this world is not the story you see, the external story. The true story of each person is the journey of his or her heart.
— John Eldredge, The Sacred Romance Drawing Closer To The Heart Of God
Obedience, fasting, and prayer are laughed at, yet only through them lies the way to real true freedom. I cut off my superfluous and unnecessary desires, I subdue my proud and wanton will and chastise it with obedience, and with God's help I attain freedom of spirit and with it spiritual joy.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Fortunately, God made all varieties of people with a wide variety of interests and abilities. He has called people of every race and color who have been hurt by life in every manner imaginable. Even the scars of past abuse and injury can be the means of bringing healing to another. What wonderful opportunities to make disciples!
— Charles R. Swindoll
Regardless of your chosen faith, at the end of your life's journey, your heart will be measured in two ways. One, the weight of your conscience must far outweigh the weight of a feather. Two, any impurities in your heart must weigh no more than one feather. The purer your heart, the lighter your spirit will be. The lighter your spirit, the closer to light it will float. The closer to light it is permitted to go, the higher it will float. The higher it floats, the closer to God you will be. Heaven has seven layers. The vibrations of your good deeds, which will be reflected by the weight of your conscience and the purity of your heart, will determine the layer in which your soul will reside. Your goal is to make your heart as light as a feather. The heavier the heart, the more chained to this hell it will remain.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
The Christian life is not about pleasing God the finger-shaker and judge. It is not about believing now or being good now for the sake of heaven later. It is about entering a relationship in the present that begins to change everything now. Spirituality is about this process: the opening of the heart to the God who is already here.
— Marcus J. Borg, The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogmatic Religion to a More Authentic Contemporary Faith
Every day He humbles Himself just as He did when from from His heavenly throne into the Virgin's womb; every day He comes to us and lets us see Him in lowliness, when He descends from the bosom of the Father into the hands of the priest at the altar.
— Francis of Assisi
Hidup hanya menunda kekalahan.
— Chairil Anwar, Derai-derai Cemara
The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you.
— Frederick Buechner
Choices will continually be necessary and -- let us not forget -- possible. Obedience to God is always possible. It is a deadly error to fall into the notion that when feelings are extremely strong we can do nothing but act on them.
— Elisabeth Elliot, Discipline: The Glad Surrender
Man approaches God most nearly when he is in one sense least like God. For what can be more unlike than fullness and need, sovereignty and humility, righteousness and penitence, limitless power and a cry for help?
— C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
I didn't need to understand the hypostatic unity of the Trinity
—  I just needed to turn my life over to whoever came up with redwood trees.
She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he sees what God is Doing, [writes Bokonon].
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Cat's Cradle
To love you as I should, I must worship God as Creator. When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. In so far as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest t all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.
— C.S. Lewis, Letters of C. S. Lewis
Do not fight the thing in detail: turn from it. Look ONLY at your Lord. Sing. Read. Work.
— Amy Carmichael, Gold by Moonlight
I stared up at the sky and raised my middle finger, just in case God was watching. I don't like being spied on.
— Annabel Pitcher, My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece
The fact of God is necessary for the fact of man. Think God away and man has no ground of existence.
— A.W. Tozer
Sometimes the strongest thing you will ever do will be to let go of someone. It will be painful, you will suffer guilt, and you will second-guess yourself, but for your own sanity and quality of life, there will come a time where you hand them to God, with your love, and trust Him to be who and what He is. May our Lord comfort you.
— Lee  Goff
We tend to be preoccupied by our problems when we have a heightened sense of vulnerability and a diminished sense of power. Today, see each problem as an invitation to prayer.
— John Ortberg Jr., The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God's Best Version of You
...God created the world in six days. On the seventh day, he rested. On the eighth day, he started getting complaints. And it hasn't stopped since.
— James Scott Bell, Sins of the Fathers
Sometimes what I wouldn't give to have us sitting in a bar again at 9:00 a.m. telling lies to one another, far from God.
— Denis Johnson, Jesus' Son