Popular quotes about God! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
I am not an ape, I am a man. The world has been created by God. Man has been created by God. It is not possible for man to understand God - God understands God. Man is God and therefore understands God. I am God. I am a man. I am good and not a beast. I am an animal with reason. I have flesh, I *am* flesh, I am not descended from flesh. Flesh is created by God. I am God. I am God. I am God.
Vaslav NijinskyWe cannot find God without God. We cannot reach God without God. We cannot satisfy God without God - which is another way of saying that all our seeking will fall short unless God starts and finishes the search. The decisive part of our seeking is not our human ascent to God, but His descent to us. Without God's descent there is no human ascent. The secret of the quest lies not in our brilliance but in His grace.
Os GuinnessThat experience showed me that I-from moment to moment-am the only person in control of my connection to God. It's not that God is deciding to connect with me, depending on whether I had a good day, or did good or bad deeds. It's all up to me. God, the awareness of God, the love of God, the blessings of God-that lively ecstasy-is always there. It's me who separates from God by judging, by indulging in negativity, by criticizing myself, as well as others.
Barbara De AngelisWhen [the saints] perform actions to God, then the soul says: 'Oh! that I could do what pleases God!' When they come to suffer any cross: 'Oh, that what God does might please me!' I labour to do what pleases God, and I labour that what God does shall please me: here is a Christian indeed, who shall endeavour both these. It is but one side of a Christian to endeavour to do what pleases God; you must as well endeavour to be pleased with what God does, and so you will come to be a complete Christian when you can do both, and that is the first thing in the excellence of this grace of contentment.
Jeremiah BurroughsThere is no God separate from you, no God higher than you, the real "you." All the gods are little beings to you, all the ideas of God and Father in heaven are but your own reflection. God Himself is your image. โGod created man after His own image." That is wrong. Man creates God after his own image. That is right. Throughout the universe we are creating gods after our own image. We create the god and fall down at his feet and worship him; and when this dream comes, we love it !
Swami VivekanandaThe gospel is saying that, what man cannot do in order to be accepted with God, this God Himself has done for us in the person of Jesus Christ. To be acceptable to God we must present to God a life of perfect and unceasing obedience to his will. The gospel declares that Jesus has done this for us. For God to be righteous he must deal with our sin. This also he has done for us in Jesus. The holy law of God was lived out perfectly for us by Christ, and its penalty was paid perfectly for us by Christ. The living and dying of Christ for us, and this alone is the basis of our acceptance with God
Graeme Goldsworthythe very minute we think we 'have' God, God will surprise us. As we search in fire and earthquakes, God will be in the still small voice. As we listen in silent meditation, God will be shouting protests in the street. God is warning us that we had best not try to find our security in any well-defined concept or category of what is Godly - for the minute we believe we are into God, God is off again and calling us forth into some unknown place.
Carter HeywardJesus Christ was God - the Personal God become man. He has manifested Himself many times in different forms and these alone are what you can worship. God in His absolute nature is not to be worshipped. Worshipping such God would be nonsense. We have to worship Jesus Christ, the human manifestation, as God. You cannot worship anything higher than the manifestation of God. The sooner you give up the worship of God separate from Christ, the better for you.
Swami VivekanandaTo me there is nothing more sacred than love and laughter, and there is nothing more prayerful than playfulness. When you are in love, all fears disappear, and when you become love yourself, even death becomes irrelevant. Jesus is not very far away from the truth when he says, "God is love." Certainly God is power, the greatest power. I want to improve upon Jesus: I don't say God is love, I say love is God. To me God is only a symbol and love is a reality. God is only a myth - love is the experience of millions of people. God is only a word, but love can become a dance in your heart.
RajneeshWritten in support of abolishing the Corn Laws, it became Elliott's most famous poem. The Peoples Anthem When wilt thou save the people Oh, God of mercy! When? Not kings and lords, but nations! Not thrones and crowns, but men! Flowers of thy heart, of God they are. Let them not pass like weeds, away Their heritage a sunless day! God save the people! When wilt thou save the people? Oh, God of mercy! When? The people Lord the people! Not thrones and crowns, but men! God save the people! Thine they are, Thy children, as thy angels fair, Save them from bondage and despair. God save the people!
Ebenezer ElliottThe belief in God is not therefore based on the perception of design in nature. Belief in design in nature is based upon the belief in God. Things are as they are whether there is a God or not. Logically, to believe in design one must start with God. He, or it, is not a conclusion but a datum. You may begin by assuming a creator, and then say he did this or that; but you cannot logically say that because certain things exist, therefore there is a God who made them. God is an assumption, not a conclusion. And it is an assumption that explains nothing.
Chapman CohenWe want to be God in all the ways that are not the ways of God, in what we hope is indestructible or unmoving. But God is the most fragile, a bare smear of pollen, that scatter of yellow dust from the tree that tumbled over in the storm of my grief and planted itself again. God is the death agony of the frog that cannot find water in the time of the drought we created. God is the scream of the rabbit caught in the fires we set. God is the One whose eyes never close and who hears everything.
Deena MetzgerOn the Cross the Jesus of the Four Gospels, who was God, cried out My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? God cannot forsake himself, Jesus was God himself. Yet God forsook Jesus, and the latter cried out to know why he was forsaken. Any able divine will explain that of course he knew, and that he was not forsaken. The explanation renders it difficult to believe the dying cry, and the passage becomes one of the mysteries of the holy Christian religion, which, unless a man rightly believe, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.
Charles BradlaughWe spoke to God about the children, and we were afraid to ask God for specific things. We thought that it might be too much. So we said to God 'Please give us a healthy child' and left it at that, not knowing that God is a generous God, but also has a sense of humor. And if you leave that much open for God, some wonderful jokes are going to come about.
Bill CosbyWe need to find God, and he cannot be found in noises and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature-trees, flowers, grass-grow in silence. Is not our mission to give God to those we walk with? Not a dead God, but a living, loving God. The more we receive in silent prayer, the more we can give in active life. We need silence to be able to touch souls. The essential thing is not what we say, but what God says to us and through us. Words that don't give the light of Christ increase the darkness.
Mother TeresaEveryone has faith in God though everyone does not know it. For everyone has faith in himself and that multiplied to the nth degree is God. The sum total of all that lives is God. We may not be God, but we are of God, even as a little drop of water is of the ocean.
Mahatma GandhiWhen God does a miracle somehow you have to respond. When God does things for you - maybe we don't deserve them and we can never really repay God but God really wants us to respond to them. He doesn't want us to stay the same. So, for us to respond to what God has done in our lives is probably the same way he would want anyone to do - "Just tell people what I've done for you and what you've seen and heard." That's what we're doing.
Todd Burpo[Star Wars is] designed primarily to make young people think about the mystery. Not to say, 'Here's the answer.' It's to say, 'Think about this for a second. Is there a God? What does God look like? What does God sound like? What does God feel like? How do we relate to God?'
George LucasNow if there is any gift of the gods to men, it is reasonable that happiness should be god-given, and most surely god-given of all human things inasmuch as it is the best. But this question would perhaps be more appropriate to another inquiry; happiness seems, however, even if it is not god-sent but comes as a result of virtue and some process of learning and training, to be among the most god-like things; for that which is the prize and end of virtue seems to be the best thing in the world, and something god-like and blessed.
AristotleEven if evolution were true, it wouldn't disprove God. God has performed more spectacular feats than evolution. It's not even a daunting challenge to a belief in God. If you want something that complicates a belief in God, try coming to terms with Michael Moore being one of God's special creatures.
Ann CoulterMy feelings are not God. God is God. My feelings do not define truth. Godโs word defines truth. My feelings are echoes and responses to what my mind perceives. And sometimes - many times - my feelings are out of sync with the truth. When that happens - and it happens every day in some measure - I try not to bend the truth to justify my imperfect feelings, but rather, I plead with God: Purify my perceptions of your truth and transform my feelings so that they are in sync with the truth.
John PiperIf you want to run the show, God will let you. If you want to pull all the strings, that's up to you. If you want to insist that what you are doing is the way it should be done, even when you are not getting anywhere, go right ahead. God will let you run yourself ragged, if you choose to do so. Unfortunately, you may not always be aware that you are in God's way. . . . God has no need to prove to you what God can do.
Iyanla VanzantIf anyone removes (one of the) anxieties of this world from a believer, God will remove (one of the) anxieties from him on the Day of Resurrection; if one smoothes the way for one who is destitute, God will smooth the way for him in this world and the next; and if anyone conceals the faults of a Muslim, God will conceal his faults in this world and the next. God helps a man as long as he helps his brother. If anyone pursues a path in search of knowledge God will thereby make easy for him a path to paradise.
Elijah MuhammadMy Virgen de Guadalupe is not the mother of God. She is God. She is a face for a god without a face, an indigena for a god without ethnicity, a female deity for a god who is genderless, but I also understand that for her to approach me, for me to finally open the door and accept her, she had to be a woman like me.
Sandra CisnerosI think I can tell you how I experience God. I experience God as the power of life calling me to live, I experience God as the power of love calling me to love. That's the God I see in Jesus of Nazareth, that's the God I see in the fourth gospel.
John Shelby SpongIf God exists, not seeking God must be the gravest error imaginable. If one decides to sincerely seek for God and doesn't find God, the lost effort is negligible in comparison to what is at risk in not seeking God in the first place.
Blaise PascalGod must have been engaged from the beginning, and must now be engaged in progressive development, and infinite as God is, he must have been less powerful in the past than he is today.... We may be certain that, through self-effort, the inherent and innate powers of God have been developed to a God-like degree. Thus he has become God.
John Andreas WidtsoeWe've created a theology in the West of a God who is fundamentally self-centered. The imagery of God as distant, unapproachable, unreachable -- that's not a God who is relational. It is a God that gets to declare or judge when he gets pissed off. But there is no basis for love and relationships if God is a fundamentally self-centered being.
William P. YoungLukewarm people do not live by faith; their lives are structured so they never have to. They don't have to trust God if something unexpected happens- they have their savings account. They don't need God to help them- they have their retirement plan in place. They don't genuinely seek out what life God would have them live- they have life figured and mapped out. They don't depend on God on a daily basis- their refrigerators are full and, for the most part, they are in good health. The truth is, their lives wouldn't look much different if they suddenly stopped believing in God.
Francis ChanFor indeed, grace is the key to it all. It is not our lavish good deeds that procure salvation, but God's lavish love and mercy. That is why the poor are as acceptable before God as the rich. It is the generosity of God, the freeness of his salvation, that lays the foundation for the society of justice for all. Even in the seemingly boring rules and regulations of tabernacle rituals, we see that God cares about the poor, that his laws make provision for the disadvantaged. God's concern for justice permeated every part of Israel's life. It should also permeate our lives.
Timothy KellerTo some, the image of a pale body glimmering on a dark night whispers of defeat. What good is a God who does not control his Son's suffering? But another sound can be heard: the shout of a God crying out to human beings, "I LOVE YOU." Love was compressed for all history in that lonely figure on the cross, who said that he could call down angels at any moment on a rescue mission, but chose not to - because of us. At Calvary, God accepted his own unbreakable terms of justice. Any discussion of how pain and suffering fit into God's scheme ultimately leads back to the cross.
Philip YanceyGrace means that God does something for me; law means that I do something for God. God has certain holy and righteous demands which he places upon me: that is law. Now if law means that God requires something of me for their fulfillment, then deliverance from law means he no longer requires that from me, but himself provides it.
Watchman NeeMissions then is less about the transportation of God from one place to another and more about the identification of a God who is already there [...] You see God where others don't. And then you point him out. So the issue isn't so much taking Jesus to people who don't have him, but going to a place and pointing out to the people the creative, life-giving God who is already present in their midst.
Rob BellGod laughs on two occasions. He laughs when the physician says to the patient's mother, 'Don't be afraid, mother; I shall certainly cure your boy.' God laughs, saying to Himself, 'I am going to take his life, and this man says he will save it!' The physician thinks he is the master, forgetting that God is the Master. God laughs again when two brothers divide their land with a string, saying to each other, 'This side is mine and that side is yours.' He laughs and says to Himself, 'The whole universe belongs to Me, but they say they own this portion or that portion.'
RamakrishnaI will have nothing to do with a God who cares only occasionally. I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights. It is when things go wrong, when good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present. We do not need the sheltering wings when things go smoothly. We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along blindly.
Madeleine L'EngleWhere we go wrong is that we bring along some ready-made idea of God, wherever we may have learned it, and then try to make Jesus Christ fit in with that idea of God. But if we take the idea of a revelation of God in Christ seriously, then we must be willing to have our understanding of God corrected and even revolutionized by what we learn in Jesus Christ.
John MacquarrieHistorical refutation as the definitive refutation.- In former times, one sought to prove that there is no God - today one indicates how the belief that there is a God arose and how this belief acquired its weight and importance: a counter-proof that there is no God thereby becomes superfluous.- When in former times one had refuted the 'proofs of the existence of God' put forward, there always remained the doubt whether better proofs might not be adduced than those just refuted: in those days atheists did not know how to make a clean sweep.
Friedrich NietzscheOne never accomplishes the will of God by breaking the law of God, violating the principles of God, or ignoring the wisdom of God.
Andy StanleyAs the books of Job, Jeremiah, and Habakkuk clearly show, God has a high threshold of tolerance for what appropriate to say in a prayer. God can "handle" my unsuppressed rage. I may well find that my vindictive feelings need God's correction - but only by taking those feelings to God will I have the opportunity for correction and healing.
Philip YanceyWe must embrace our differences, even celebrate our diversity. We must glory in the fact that God created each of us as unique human beings. God created us different, but God did not create us for separation. God created us different that we might recognize our need for one another. We must reverence our uniqueness, reverence everything that makes us what we are: our language, our culture, our religious tradition.
Desmond TutuGrace is the pleasure of God to magnify the worth of God by giving sinners the right and power to delight in God without obscuring the glory of God.
John PiperGod is the one who satisfies the passion for justice, the longing for spirituality, the hunger for relationship, the yearning for beauty. And God, the true God, is the God we see in Jesus of Nazareth, Israel's Messiah, the world's true Lord.
N. T. WrightThere are absolute atheists ... Absolute atheism is in no way a mere absence of belief in God. It is rather a refusal of God, a fight against God, a challenge to God.
Jacques MaritainGod bless every soul that we lost. God bless the families who have to endure that loss, and God guide us to our reunion in heaven, and God bless the United States of America.
Rudy GiulianiYou can be very religious and invoke the name of God and be able to quote lots of verses and be well versed in complicated theological systems and yet not be a person who sees. Itโs one thing to sing about God and recite quotes about God and invoke Godโs name; itโs another be aware of the presence in every taste, touch, sound, and embrace. With Jesus, what we see again and again is that itโs never just a person, or just a meal, or just an event, because thereโs always more going on just below the surface.
Rob BellGod has made us humans in God's own image. So therefore the highest way to talk about God is by some kind of analogy with ourselves. So, naturally, if we who are finite and sinful suffer in multiple ways because of sin and evil and the horrible things that happen in our world, how much more does God, who is infinite, sinless, and knows the totality of all that happens to everybody, suffer pain and heartache at the suffering of his human and non-human creation - and be angry at all that causes it?
Christopher J. H. Wright...it is presumptuous ridicule of God if someone thinks that only the person who desires great wealth chooses mammon. Alas, the person who insists on having a penny without God, wants to have a penny all for himself. He thereby chooses mammon. A penny is enough, the choice is made, he has chosen mammon; that it is little makes not the slightest difference. The love of God is hatred of the world and love of the world hatred of God.
Soren KierkegaardDon't let the bastards get you down. Christians aren't God. Religious people aren't God. God loves you, just where you're at... just the way you are, no matter what you've done. God loves you whether you love him or not and there's nothing you can do about it. As far as the negative and judgmental stuff goes, realize that Jesus has a crappy fan club. Just don't give up
Jay Bakker