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The gods have fled, I know. My sense is the gods have always been essentially absent. I do not believe human beings have played games or sports from the beginning merely to summon or to please or to appease the gods. If anthropologists and historians believe that, it is because they believe whatever they have been able to recover about what humankind told the gods humankind was doing. I believe we have played games, and watched games, to imitate the gods, to become godlike in our worship of eachother and, through those moments of transmutation, to know for an instant what the gods know.
A. Bartlett GiamattiAn irreligious man is not one who denies the gods of the majority, but one who applies to the gods the opinions of the majority. For what most men say about the gods are not ideas derived from sensation, but false opinions, according to which the greatest evils come to the wicked, and the greatest blessings come to the good from the gods.
EpicurusEthiopians imagine their gods as black and snub-nosed; Thracians blue-eyed and red-haired. But if horses or lions had hands, or could draw and fashion works as men do, horses would draw the gods shaped like horses and lions like lions, making the gods resemble themselves.
XenophanesWe know all their gods; they ignore ours. What they call our sins are our gods, and what they call their gods, we name otherwise.
Natalie Clifford BarneyJust as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who have heard deeply the rhythms and hymns of the gods, can recite those hymns in such a way that the gods will be attracted.
Joseph CampbellThe idea that we are the gods now, and we are doing things that our ancestors think are god-like is not a rhetorical question. You know what I mean? We really are as gods.
Jason SilvaDo you honestly think Lenin is any different from J.P. Morgan? That you, if you were given absolute power, would behave any differently? Do you know the primary difference between men and gods?...Gods don't think they can become men.
Dennis LehaneNow departure from the world of men is nothing to fear, if gods exist: because they would not involve you in any harm. If they do not exist, or if they have no care for humankind, then what is life to me in a world devoid of gods, or devoid of providence? But they do exist, and they do care for humankind: and they have put it absolutely in man's power to avoid falling into the true kinds of harm.
Marcus AureliusBoileau said that Kings, Gods and Heroes only were fit subjects for literature. The writer can only write about what he admires. Present-day kings aren't very inspiring, the gods are on a vacation and about the only heroes left are the scientists and the poor.
John SteinbeckTragic heroes always moan when the gods take an interest in them, but it's the people the gods ignore who get the really tough deals
Terry PratchettLo! ye believers in gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient gods oblivious of suffering man; and man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude.
Herman MelvilleThere may or may not be a God or gods; the Siblings do not concern themselves with proving or disproving such a thing. By definition, gods are more powerful than men, and thus quite able to fend for themselves without help.
Steve PerryFairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being poor; Most choice, forsaken; and most loved, despised! Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon: Be it lawful I take up what's cast away. Gods, gods! 'tis strange that from their cold'st neglect My love should kindle to inflamed respect. Thy dowerless daughter, king, thrown to my chance, Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France: Not all the dukes of waterish Burgundy Can buy this unprized precious maid of me. Bid them farewell, Cordelia, though unkind: Thou losest here, a better where to find.
William ShakespeareIt is expedient that there should be gods, and, since it is expedient, let us believe that gods exist.
OvidFaith, faith, faith in ourselves, faith, faith in God, this is the secret of greatness.If you have faith in all the three hundred and thirty millions of your mythological Gods, and in all the Gods which foreigners have now and again introduced into your midst, and still have no faith in yourselves, there is no salvation for you.
Swami VivekanandaI don't expect that the scientific community now embraces and kisses me 'Oh wonderful, great you did!' we have to live with critics, this is normal. Chariots of the Gods was full of speculation, I had 238 question marks. Nobody read the question mark. They always said: Mr. Von Daniken is saying... I did not say, I asked the questions, would that be a posibility? In Chariots of the Gods, I made clear difference between a speculations and facts.
Erich von DรคnikenGod intends us to be like gods, he intends us to be like the Son of God. ... God has conceived in His heart of a plan to make a race of men that would live like gods on the Earth. He has conceived in His heart to have Sons that would live like His Son, the Lord Jesus lived... That we were to be on earth the extension and manifestation of God's life in heaven.
Mike BickleAre you mad? (Artemis) Yes, I am. Mad at this world where we are nothing to the gods. Mad at the Fates who put us here for no purpose except to toy with us for their petty amusement. I wish all of the gods were dead and gone. (Acheron)
Sherrilyn KenyonPoor humanity, to saddle the gods with such a responsibility and throw in a vindictive temper. What griefs they hatch for themselves, what festering sores for us, what tears for our prosperity! This is not piety, this oft-repeated show of bowing a veiled head before a graven image; this bustling to every altar; this kow-towing and prostration on the ground with palms outspread before the shrines of the gods; this deluging of vow on vow. True piety lies rather in the power to contemplate the universe with a quiet mind.
LucretiusThe burden of all song and praise "unto the Highest" has been that God stands for justice and mercy. Yet injustice among men is ever on the increase; the outrages committed against the masses in this country alone would seem enough to overflow the very heavens. But where are the gods to make an end to all these horrors, these wrongs, this inhumanity to man? No, not the gods, but MAN must rise in his mighty wrath. He, deceived by all the deities, betrayed by their emissaries, he, himself, must undertake to usher in justice upon the earth.
Emma GoldmanWhen men are unhappy, they do not imagine they can ever cease to be so; and when some calamity has fallen on them, they do not see how they can get rid of it. Nevertheless, both arrive; and the gods have ordered it so, in the end men seek it from the gods
EpictetusTwo thousand years ago, we lived in a world of Gods and Goddesses. Today, we live in a world solely of Gods. Women in most cultures have been stripped of their spiritual power.
Dan BrownCan you stand? (Aimee) Iโm not helpless. (Fang) Oh, look! Mr. Macho is back in all his glory. Hello, Mr. Macho, itโs so not good to see you again. But you know, Mr. Macho, that youโve been bedridden to the point that your legs arenโt used to carrying your weight and youโre not really human. So if you want to get up and fall, gods forbid I do anything to stop it. After all, I live for Americaโs Funniest Home Videos. Should I fetch a camcorder now? (Aimee)
Sherrilyn KenyonThe gods where like the weather; sometimes good, sometimes bad, and either way, always beyond her.
Michelle SagaraChildren... are our legacy. Our responsibility. They are our destiny and we are theirs. The extent to which we fail as parents, we fail as Gods children.
Dirk BenedictThe place whereon the priest formerly raveled out the small intestine of the sacrificial victim for purposes of divination and cooked its flesh for the gods. The word is now seldom used, except with reference to the sacrifice of their liberty and peace by a male and a female fool.
Ambrose BierceWhen gods die, they die hard. It's not like they fade away, or grow old, or fall asleep. They die in fire and pain, and when they come out of you, they leave your guts burned. It hurts more than anything you can talk about. And maybe worst of all is, you're not sure if there will ever be another god to fill their place. Or if you'd ever want another god to fill their place. You don't want the fire to go out inside you twice.
Gary D. SchmidtIf there are gods, why is the world so full of pain and injustice?' 'Because of men like you.
George R. R. MartinWind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.
George R. R. MartinOne act of pure love in saving life is greater than spending the whole of one's time in religious offerings to the gods . . .
Gautama BuddhaI've begun worshipping the sun for a number of reasons. First of all, unlike some other gods I could mention, I can see the sun. It's there for me every day. And the things it brings me are quite apparent all the time: heat, light, food, and a lovely day. There's no mystery, no one asks for money, I don't have to dress up, and there's no boring pageantry. And interestingly enough, I have found that the prayers I offer to the sun and the prayers I formerly offered to "God" are all answered at about the same 50% rate.
George CarlinAnnabeth:My fatal flaw. That's what the Sirens showed me. My fatal flaw is hubris. Percy: the brown stuff they spread on veggie sandwiches? Annabeth:No, Seaweed Brain. That's HUMMUS. hubris is worse. Percy: what could be worse than hummus? Annabeth: Hubris means deadly pride, Percy. Thinking you can do things better than anyone else... Even the gods.
Rick RiordanYou're born in pain and pain is what we're in most of the time. And I think that the bigger the pain, the more gods we need.
John LennonHow could poetry and literature have arisen from something as plebian as the cuneiform equivalent of grocery-store bar codes? I prefer the version in which Prometheus brought writing to man from the gods. But then I remind myself that...we should not be too fastidious about where great ideas come from. Ultimately, they all come from a wrinkled organ that at its healthiest has the color and consistency of toothpaste, and in the end only withers and dies.
Alice Weaver FlahertyLife is a jest of the Gods and there is no justice. You must learn to laughโฆ or else you'll weep yourself to death.
Bernard CornwellTo discover the true principles of morality, men have no need of theology, of revelation, or of gods. They need but common sense. They have only to look within themselves, to reflect upon their own nature, to consult their obvious interests, to consider the object of society and of each of the members who compose it, and they will easily understand that virtue is an advantage, and that vice is an injury to beings of the species.
Jean MeslierI began to feel that I lived on a higher plane than the skeptics of the ground; one that was richer because of its very association with the element of danger they dreaded, because it was freer of the earth to which they were bound. In flying, I tasted a wine of the gods of which they could know nothing. Who valued life more highly, the aviators who spent it on the art they loved, or these misers who doled it out like pennies through their antlike days? I decided that if I could fly for ten years before I was killed in a crash, it would be a worthwhile trade for an ordinary life time.
Charles LindberghAnd when it is suggested that the inward feelings of power or inward monitions or losses of judgement are the germs out of which the divine machinery developed, I return that truth is just the reverse, that the presence of voices which had to be obeyed were the absolute prerequisite to the conscious stage of mind in which it is the self that is responsible and can debate within itself, can order and direct, and that the creation of such a self is the product of culture. In a sense, we have become our own gods.
Julian JaynesThe gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.
Albert CamusThe one function that most gods seem to have in common is to give human existence some ultimate purpose - and, while it is not possible to disprove an ultimate purpose, there does not seem to be any evidence for it. This is not to say, of course, that there is no purpose in life at all: we all make our own purposes as we go through life. And life does not lose its value simply because it it not going to last forever.
Barbara SmokerThinking about her again caused his body to harden, to ready... "Uh, I'm happy to sit close to you and everything, but I had no idea you would like it so much," Paris muttered. For the first time in hundreds of years, Maddox felt a blush creep into his cheek, "It's not for you." "Thank the gods," was his friends reply. -Maddox and Paris
Gena Showalter