Famous Quotes & Sayings

Harry Emerson Fosdick

God is not a cosmic bellboy for whom we can press a button to get things.

Gordon B. Hinckley

God is the designer of the family.

Herman Melville

All things that God would have us do are hard for us to do--remember that--and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavours to persuade.

Herman Melville

Let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God.

Herman Melville

In our own hearts, we mold the whole world's hereafters; and in our own hearts we fashion our own gods.

Herman Melville

I feel that the Godhead is broken up like the bread at the Supper, and that we are the pieces. Hence this infinite fraternity of feeling.

Herman Melville

Where is there such an one who has not a thousand times been struck with a sort of infidel idea, that whatever other worlds God may be Lord of, he is not the Lord of this; for else this world would seem to give the lie to Him; so utterly repugnant seem its ways to the instinctively known ways of Heaven.

Herman Melville

The world is forever babbling of originality; but there never yet was an original man, in the sense intended by the world; the first man himself--who according to the Rabbins was also the first author--not being an original; the only original author being God.

Herman Melville

The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!

Herman Melville

Delight,--top-gallant delight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a patriot to heaven.

Herbert Beerbohm Tree

People are too apt to treat God as if he were a minor royalty.

Herbert Beerbohm Tree

God is a sort of burglar. As a young man you knock him down; as an old man you try to conciliate him, because he may knock you down.

Henry David Thoreau

As I stand over the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor, and endeavoring to conceal itself from my sight, and ask myself why it will cherish those humble thoughts, and hide its head from me who might, perhaps, be its benefactor, and impart to its race some cheering information, I am reminded of the greater Benefactor and Intelligence that stands over me the human insect.

Henry David Thoreau

I am not sure but I should betake myself in extremities to the liberal divinities of Greece, rather than to my country's God. Jehovah, though with us he has acquired new attributes, is more absolute and unapproachable, but hardly more divine, than Jove. He is not so much of a gentleman, not so gracious and catholic, he does not exert so intimate and genial an influence on nature, as many a god of the Greeks.

Henry David Thoreau

The man who takes the liberty to live is superior to all the laws, by virtue of his relation to the lawmaker.

Henry David Thoreau

What are men celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator.

Henry David Thoreau

The gods cannot misunderstand, man cannot explain.

Henry David Thoreau

Bribed with a little sunlight and a few prismatic tints, we bless our Maker, and stave off his wrath with hymns.

Henry David Thoreau

It is remarkable that almost all speakers and writers feel it to be incumbent on them, sooner or later, to prove or acknowledge the personality of God. Some Earl of Bridgewater, thinking it better late than never, has provided for it in his will. It is a sad mistake.

Henry David Thoreau

It is not when I am going to meet him, but when I am just turning away and leaving him alone, that I discover what God is. I say, God. I am not sure that that is the name. You will know what I mean.

Henry David Thoreau

I make my own time. I make my own terms. I cannot see how God or Nature can ever get the start of me.

Henry David Thoreau

Others -- as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders -- serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few -- as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men -- serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part ...

Henry David Thoreau

It's only by forgetting yourself that you draw near to God.

Henry David Thoreau

I respect not his labors, his farm where everything has its price, who would carry the landscape, who would carry his God, to market, if he could get anything for him; who goes to market for his god as it is; on whose farm nothing grows free, whose fields bear no crops, whose meadows no flowers, whose trees no fruits, but dollars.

Henry David Thoreau

It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped in civilized countries is not at all divine, though he bears a divine name, but is the overwhelming authority and respectability of mankind combined. Men reverence one another, not yet God.

H. L. Mencken

Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

If there wasn't a God we would have to invent one to keep people sane.

Jerry Falwell

One reason, of course, as a Christian, I believe the Bible is the word of God. I take the Bible as the standard.

Jerry Falwell

Life is supposed to be lived for God and for others.

Jerry Falwell

I feel most ministers who claim they've heard God's voice are eating too much pizza before they go to bed at night, and it's really an intestinal disorder, not a revelation.

Eugene Ionesco

God is dead. Marx is dead. And I don't feel so well myself.

Eugene H. Peterson

The silence that makes it possible to hear God speak also makes it possible for us to hear the world's words for what they really are - tinny and unconvincing lies.

Esther Hicks

All physical beings have communication from their inner being in the form of emotion, and so, whenever your emotion is positive, you can know that you are in harmony with your inner intention.