Popular quotes about Gods! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 38
Well, I think the Yoruba gods are truthful. Truthful in the sense that i consider religion and the construct of deities simply an extension of human qualities taken, if you like, to the nth degree. i mistrust gods who become so separated from humanity that enormous crimes can be committed in their names. i prefer gods who can be brought down to earth and judged, if you like.
Wole SoyinkaI see murky visions of other gods and rival magic." That REALLY didn't sound good. "What do you mean?" I asked. "what OTHER GODS?" "I don't know, Sadie. But Egypt has always faced challenges from outside โโ magicians from elsewhere, even gods from elsewhere. Just be vigilant." ~Ruby & Sadie Kane about...? Possibly Greeks?
Rick RiordanWe may give our human loves the unconditional allegiance which we owe only to God. They they become gods: then they become demons. Then they will destroy us, and also destroy themselves. For natural loves that are allowed to become gods do not remain loves. They are still called so, but can become in fact complicated forms of hatred.
C. S. LewisThe apparent multiplication of gods is bewildering at the first glance, but you soon discover that they are the same GOD. There is always one uttermost God who defies personification. This makes Hinduism the most tolerant religion in the world, because its one transcendent God includes all possible gods. In fact Hinduism is so elastic and so subtle that the most profound Methodist, and crudest idolater, are equally at home with it.
George Bernard ShawThe chief difficulty is that God demands of us that we live by faith: faith in God, God's sovereignty over the future, God's sufficiency for the present; while, on the other hand, the various other gods whom we can serve appeal to us in terms of the things which we can see and the forces which we can calculate. The choice between the life of faith and the life of sight is a choice between a God whom only faith can apprehend and gods whom one has only to see to understand.
Daniel Thambyrajah NilesThe reality is today most of our political leaders want to be treated as gods and semi-gods, from the security details to the fuss around them and so on.
Kumi NaidooThere is no shame in loving. If your septons say there is, your seven gods must be demons. In the isles we know better. Our gods gave us legs to run with, noses to smell with, hands to touch and feel. What mad cruel god would give a man eyes and tell him he must forever keep them shut, and never look at all the beauty in the world? Only a monster god, a demon of the darkness.
George R. R. MartinLo! 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 MelvilleTo them that ask: Where hast thou seen the Gods, or how knowest thou certainly that there be Gods, that thou art so devout in their worship? I answer: Neither have I seen my own soul, and yet I respect and honor it.
Marcus AureliusThe gods we make in our own image are tribal gods. They tell you how very, very little you should tolerate outsiders, who are less favoured of the Lord. Amazingly, there are no recorded cases of the holy man going up the mountain and finding that it's the others who are right. It always turns out that God wants unbelievers to suffer, and what could be more noble than to help him a little? When religion rules, toleration disappears, for you cannot cherish the verdict of death to the infidels, yet also tolerate those who disagree - for those are the very same infidels.
Simon BlackburnIt is said that our indigenous ancestors, Mayas and Aztecs, made human sacrifices to their gods. It occurs to me to ask: How many humans have been sacrificed to the gods of Capital in the last five hundred years?
Rigoberta MenchuDuring the youthful period of mankind's spiritual evolution human fantasy created gods in man's own image, who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine, or at any rate to influence, the phenomenal world. Man sought to alter the disposition of these gods in his own favour by means of magic and prayer.
Albert EinsteinThe Indian gods are imposing, the Greek gods are not. Indeed they are not brave, not self-controlled, they have no manners, they are not gentlemen and ladies.
Gerard Manley HopkinsThe 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 BierceThose who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob. It is through the voice of one crying in the wilderness that the ways of the gods must be prepared.
Oscar WildeJust listen,โ she said. โYou canโt kill him in cold blood.โ โWhyever not?โ Ye gods grant me patience. โBecause heโll be dead,โ she said as patiently as she could, โand Lady Claraโs reputation will be stained forever. Do not, I pray you, do anything, Lord Longmore. Leave this to us.โ โUs.โ โMy sisters and me.โ โWhat do you propose? Dressing him to death? Tying him up and making him listen to fashion descriptions?
Loretta ChaseSee, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse- the blessing if you obey the commands of the LORD your God that I am giving you today; the curse if you disobey the commands of the LORD your God and turn from the way that I command you today by following other gods, which you have not known.
MosesThe change which the writing wrought in me (and of which I did not write) was only a beginning; only to prepare me for the gods' surgery. They used my own pen to probe my wound.
C. S. LewisI figure the world is basically a machine. I don't know who made it, if it was the Fates, or the gods, or the capital-G god or whatever. But it chugs along the way it's supposed to most of the time. Sure, little pieces break off and stuff goes haywire once in a while, but mostly... things happen for a reason.
Rick RiordanYou said your mom is the goddess of balance," I reminded him. "The minor gods deserve better, Ethan, but total destruction isn't balance. Kronos doesn't build. He only destroys.
Rick RiordanLet us consider the actual, worldly Jew - not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew. ... What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man - and turns them into commodities. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange. The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general.
Karl MarxNow, as far as I knew, he (Luke) was still sailing around on his demon-infested cruise ship while the chopped-up Lord Kronos re-formed, bit by bit, in a golden sarcophagus, biding his time until he had enough power to challenge the Olympian gods. In demigod-speak, we call this a โproblem.โ - Percy, 'The Battle of the Labyrinth
Rick RiordanO sweet spontaneous earth how often have the doting fingers of prurient philosophers pinched and poked thee ,has the naughty thumb of science prodded thy beauty .how often have religions taken thee upon their scraggy knees squeezing and buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive gods (but true to the incomparable couch of death thy rhythmic lover thou answerest them only with spring)
e. e. cummingsWhen it turned out that he could, Karou dropped to her knees to genuflect. "Gods of math and physics," she intoned, "I accept your gift of this clever fair-haired boy
Laini TaylorLet him submit to me! Only the god of death is so relentless, Death submits to no oneโso mortals hate him most of all the gods. Let him bow down to me! I am the greater king, I am the elder-born, I claimโthe greater man.
HomerThere cannot be two almighty beings in this world. [Imagine having] two or three Gods; one will create the world, another says, "I will destroy the world." It [can] never happen. There must be one God. The soul attains to perfection; [it becomes] almost omnipotent [and] omniscient. This is the worshipper. Who is the worshipped? He, the Lord God Himself, the Omnipresent, the Omniscient, and so on. And above all, He is Love. How is [the soul] to attain this perfection? By worship.
Swami VivekanandaIt was not to save a nation that Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac, nor to appease angry gods... Then why does Abraham do it? For God's sake... He does it for the sake of God because God demands proof of his faith... He was not justified by being virtuous, but by being an individual submitted to God in faith.
Soren KierkegaardYou must pay for conformity. All goes well as long as you run with conformists. But you, who are honest men in other particulars, know that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, you sink into the class of counterfeits.
Ralph Waldo EmersonSex and beauty are inseparable, like life and consciousness. And the intelligence which goes with sex and beauty, and arises out of sex and beauty, is intuition." "And they rock, and they rock, through the sensual ageless ages on the depths of the seven seas, and through the salt they reel with drunken delight and in the tropics tremble they with love and roll with massive, strong desire, like gods.
D. H. LawrenceWeariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds.
Friedrich NietzscheIf you ever leave me again,โ she said, her eyes stinging, โI swear to all the gods-โ Percy had the nerve to laugh. Suddenly the lump of heated emotions melted inside Annabeth. โConsider me warned,โ Percy said. โI missed you, too.
Rick RiordanThe artist must raise the cup of his vision aloft to the gods in the high hope that they will pour into it the sweet mellow wine of inspiration.
Paul BruntonThe pursuit of eternity is no longer the prerogative of the gods - it is the business of us all, here and now.
Bob BrownIf there are some who talk the same language as myself, then why should I neglect their interests for the sake of some other group of people who are alien and remote? They have their own 'gods and idols' and we have nothing in common. ... If you try to please audiences, uncritically accepting their tastes, it can only mean that you have no respect for them: that you simply want to collect their money.
Andrei TarkovskyIn technological development, in production of material goods and creature comforts, we've challenged the very gods, but psychologically, emotionally, we're scarcely more than chimpanzees with bulldozers, baboons with big bombs.
Tom RobbinsThree of the four elements are shared by all creatures, but fire was a gift to humans alone. Smoking cigarettes is as intimate as we can become with fire without immediate excruciation. Every smoker is an embodiment of Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods and bringing it on back home. We smoke to capture the power of the sun, to pacify Hell, to identify with the primordial spark, to feed on the marrow of the volcano. Itโs not the tobacco weโre after but the fire. When we smoke, we are performing a version of the fire dance, a ritual as ancient as lightning.
Tom Robbins