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Meditation

2012-09-22T10:56:11Z

Nobody60: /* External links */

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==[[Meditation]]==

==Sourced==
* Mind without agitation is meditation. Mind in the present moment is meditation. Mind that has no hesitation, no anticipation is meditation. Mind that has come back home, to the source, is meditation. Mind that becomes ''no mind'' is meditation.
** [[Sri Sri Ravi Shankar]], "What is Meditation?"

===''Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations''===
:Quotes reported in ''Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations'' (1922), p. 504.

* Thy thoughts to nobler meditations give, And study how to die, not how to live.
** [[George Granville]] (Lord Lansdowne), ''Meditations on Death'', Stanza 1.

* Happy the heart that keeps its twilight hour, And, in the depths of heavenly peace reclined, Loves to commune with thoughts of tender power,— Thoughts that ascend, like angels beautiful, A shining Jacob's-ladder of the mind!
** [[Paul H. Hayne]], ''Sonnet IX''.

* In maiden meditation, fancy-free.
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''[[A Midsummer Night's Dream]]'' (c. 1595-96), Act II, scene 1, line 164.

* Divinely bent to meditation; And in no worldly suits would he be mov'd, To draw him from his holy exercise.
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''[[Richard III (play)|Richard III]]'' (c. 1591), Act III, scene 7, line 61.

===''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895)===
Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895).

* Meditation is the soul's perspective glass, whereby, in her long remove, she discerneth God, as if He were nearer at hand.
** [[Owen Feltham]], p. 406.

* Profound meditation in solitude and silence frequently exalts the mind above its natural tone, fires the imagination, and produces the most refined and sublime conceptions. The soul then tastes the purest and most refined delight, and almost loses the idea of existence in the intellectual pleasure it receives. The mind on every motion darts through space into eternity; and raised, in its free enjoyment of its powers by its own enthusiasm, strengthens itself in the habitude of contemplating the noblest subjects, and of adopting the most heroic pursuits.
** [[John G. Zimmerman]], p. 406.

* It is not he that reads most, but he that meditates most on Divine truth, that will prove the choicest, wisest, strongest Christian.
** Bishop [[Joseph Hall]], p. 406.

* For with all our pretension to enlightenment, are we not now a talking, desultory, rather than a meditative generation?
** [[John Campbell Shairp]], p. 406.

* It is an excellent sign, that after the cares and labors of the day, you can return to your pious exercises and meditations with undiminished attention.
** [[Hannah More]], p. 406.

* Night by night I will lie down and sleep in the thought of God, and in the thought, too, that my waking may be in the bosom of the Father; and some time it will be, so I trust.
** [[William Mountford]], p. 406.

* Avoid all refined speculations; confine yourself to simple reflections, and recur to them frequently. Those who pass too rapidly from one truth to another feed their curiosity and restlessness; they even distract their intellect with too great a multiplicity of views. Give every truth time to send down deep root into the heart.
** [[François Fénelon]], p. 407.

==Unsourced==
* Meditation is the life of the soul; action is the soul of meditation; honor is the reward of action; so meditate, that thou mayst do; so do, that thou mayst purchase honor; for which purchase, give God the glory.
** [[Francis Quarles]]

* Meditation brings wisdom, lack of meditation creates ignorance. Have awareness of what makes evolution, and of what creates delays.
** [[Gautama Buddha]]

==External links==
{{wikipedia}}
{{wiktionary|meditation}}
{{wikiversity|Meditation}}
{{wikibooks|Yoga/Meditation}}
[[Category:Mind]]

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Family

2012-05-22T20:50:52Z

Nobody60: /* External links */

A [[w:Family|'''family''']] consists of a domestic group of people (or a number of domestic groups), typically affiliated by [[birth]] or [[marriage]], or by analogous or comparable relationships — including domestic partnership, cohabitation, adoption, surname and (in some cases) ownership (as occurred in the Roman Empire). In many societies, family ties are only those recognized as such by law or a similar normative system. The different types of families occur in a wide variety of settings, and their specific functions and meanings depend largely on their relationship to other social institutions.
== Sourced ==
* The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
** Article 16(3) of the [[w:Universal Declaration of Human Rights|Universal Declaration of Human Rights]]

* ''Eine Familie, die keine schwarzen Schafe hat, ist keine charakteristische Familie.''
** A family without a black sheep is not a typical family.
** [[Heinrich Böll]], "Die schwarzen Schafe" (1951); cited from ''1947 bis 1951'' (Köln: F. Middelhauve, 1963) p. 478. Translation: "Black Sheep", in Leila Vennewitz (trans.) ''The Stories of Heinrich Böll'' (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1995) p. 408.

* The Court must never forget, and will never forget, first of all, the rights of family life which are sacred.
** Bowen, L.J., In re Agar-Ellis, Agar-Ellis v. Lascelles, (1883), id., L. R. 24 C. D. 337; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, ''Dictionary of Legal Quotations'' (1904), p. 188.

* God made all the creatures, and gave them our love and our fear, To give sign we and they are his children, one family here.
** [[Robert Browning]], ''Saul'', ''[[w:Dramatic Romances and Lyrics|Dramatic Romances and Lyrics]]'' (1845)

* '''Jason Street''': When success is essential to keeping a family together there is nothing a man won't do. Nothing.
** ''[[Friday Night Lights]]'', ''New York, New York'' Episode 3.07

* '''Don Corleone''': You spend time with your family? '''Johnny Fontane''': Sure I do. '''Don Corleone''': Good. 'Cause a man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man.
** ''[[The Godfather]]'' (1972)

* The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have past at home in the bosom of my family…. public emploiment contributes neither to advantage nor happiness. It is but honorable exile from one’s family and affairs.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], letter to Francis Willis, Jr., April 18, 1790.—''The Papers of Thomas Jefferson'', ed. Julian P. Boyd, vol. 16, p. 353 (1961)

* The family consists of those who live under the same roof with the ''pater familias''; those who form (if I may use the expression) his fire-side.
** Lord Kenyon, C.J., ''R. v. Inhabitants of Darlington'' (1792), 4 T. R. 800; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, ''Dictionary of Legal Quotations'' (1904), p. 92.

* i have often noticed that ancestors never boast of the descendants who boast of ancestors i would rather start a family than finish one blood will tell but often it tells too much
** [[Don Marquis]], "A Roach of the Taverns", ''[[w:Archy and Mehitabel|Archy and Mehitabel]]'', pp. 156–57 (1927)

* A friend loves you for your intelligence, a mistress for your charm, but your family's love is unreasoning; you were born into it and are of its flesh and blood. Nevertheless it can irritate you more than any group of people in the world.
** [[André Maurois]], ''The Art of Family Life'', ''Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living)'' (1939)

* When harmony, mutual consideration and trust pass out of the home, hell enters in.
** [[David O. McKay]], ''Pathways To Happiness'', (1957), p. 296.

* If I knew something useful to me and harmful to my family, I should put it out of my mind. If I knew something useful to my family and not to my country, I should try to forget it. If I knew something useful to my country and harmful to Europe, or useful to Europe and harmful to the human race, I should consider it a crime.
** [[Charles de Montesquieu]], as quoted by Robert John Loy, ''Montesquieu'', chapter 3, p. 122 (1968)

* The thing you can always rely on, your core person, comes from your family's attention and love.
** [[Martin Short]], ''Parade Magazine'' (January 23rd, 2000)

* The family is always the family but during vacations it is an extended family and that is exhausting.
** [[Gertrude_Stein|Stein, Gertrude]]. Paris France. New York: Liveright, 1970. (p. 107)

* All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
** [[Leo Tolstoy]], ''[[w:Anna Karenina|Anna Karenina]]'', Part I, Chap. i. (1875–1877)

* For the son dishonoureth the father, the daughter riseth up against her mother, the daughter in law against her mother in law; a man's enemies are the men of his own house.
**Bible, Micah 7:6

==External links==
{{wikipedia}}
{{wiktionary|family}}
{{wikiversity|Have a Happy Family}}

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[[tr:Aile]]

Ageing

2012-05-22T20:49:30Z

Nobody60: /* External links */

Quotes about '''[[w:ageing|age]]'''.

== Sourced ==
''Organized alphabetically by author''.

* All the best sands of my life are somehow getting into the wrong end of the hourglass. If I could only reverse it! Were it in my power to do so, would I?
** [[Thomas Bailey Aldrich]], ''Leaves From a Notebook'', ''Ponkapog Papers'' (1903).

* I still think of myself as I was 25 years ago. Then I look in a mirror and see an old bastard and I realize it's me.
** [[w:Dave Allen (comedian)|Dave Allen]], ''The Independent'' (1993).

* I recently turned 60. Practically a third of my life is over.
** [[Woody Allen]], ''The Observer Review'' (1996).

* When you're forty, half of you belongs to the past — and when you're seventy, nearly all of you.
** [[Jean Anouilh]], ''Time Remembered''.

* Age is strictly a case of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
** [[Jack Benny]], ''New York Times'' (1974).

* Yet somehow our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is in the way that it cares for its helpless members.
** [[Pearl S. Buck]], ''My Several Worlds'' (1954), p. 337.

* Old age isn’t so bad when you consider the alternative.
** Attributed to [[Maurice-Auguste Chevalier]] in James B. Simpson, ''Contemporary Quotations'' (1964), p. 295, citing ''The New York Times'' (Sunday, October 9, 1960); reported as unverified in ''Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations'' (1989).

* As I give thought to the matter, I find four causes for the apparent misery of old age; first, it withdraws us from active accomplishments; second, it renders the body less powerful; third, it deprives us of almost all forms of enjoyment; fourth, it stands not far from death.
** [[Cicero]], ''De Senectute'' (''Of Old Age''), book 5, section 15; reported in Herbert N. Couch, ''Cicero on the Art of Growing Old'' (1959), p. 21.

* No one is so old that he does not think he could live another year.
** [[Cicero]], ''De Senectute''.

* "I said, Days should speak, and multitude of years should teach wisdom.
: But there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding.
: Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgment."
::* Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite ([[Job]] 32:7-9).

* Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man
** [[Leviticus]] 19:32.

* A man is as old as he's feeling, a woman is as old as she looks.
** [[Mortimer Collins]], ''The Unknown Quantity''.

* As we grow old....the beauty turns inward.
** [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]], ''Journals''.

* If youth only knew; if only age could.
** [[Henri Estienne]], ''Les Prémices'' (1594).

* An old goat is never the more reverend for his beard.
** [[Thomas Fuller]], ''Gnomologia''.

* Old age is not so fiery as youth, but when once provoked cannot be appeased.
** [[Thomas Fuller]], ''Gnomologia''.

* To an old man any place that's warm is homeland.
** [[Maxim Gorky]], ''The Lower Depths''.

* Old age is like an opium-dream. Nothing seems real except what is unreal.
** [[Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.]], ''Over the Teacups''.

* When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age.
** [[Victor Hugo]], ''Les Miserables''.

* Old age deprives the intelligent man only of qualities useless to wisdom.
** [[Joseph Joubert]], ''Pensees''.

* This increase in the life span and in the number of our senior citizens presents this Nation with increased opportunities: the opportunity to draw upon their skill and sagacity—and the opportunity to provide the respect and recognition they have earned. It is not enough for a great nation merely to have added new years to life—our objective must also be to add new life to those years.
** [[John F. Kennedy]], special message to the Congress on the needs of the nation’s senior citizens (February 21, 1963); in ''Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1963'', p. 189.

* ''En vieillissant, on devient plus fou et plus sage''.
*: As one grows older, one becomes wiser and more foolish.
** [[François de La Rochefoucauld]], ''Réflexions ou Sentences et Maximes Morales'' (1655); translation by Edward M. Stack (1956), p. 26; reported in ''Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations'' (1989).

* ''Peu de gens savent être vieux.''
*: Few persons know how to be old.
** [[François de La Rochefoucauld]], ''Maximes'' (1665–1678), 448.

* ''La vieillesse est un tyran qui défend, sur peine de la vie, tous les plaisirs de la jeunesse.''
*: Old age is a tyrant who forbids, upon pain of death, all the pleasures of youth.
** [[François de La Rochefoucauld]], ''Maximes'' (1665–1678), 461.

* Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms inside your head, and having people in them, acting. People you know, yet can't quite name.
** [[Phillip Larkin]], ''The Old Fools'' (1974).

* I've changed my attitudes about what it means to age. Sometimes people decide it's their lot in life to be old, but people like Grandma bring color and excellence to their lives. That's what I've tried to do, too. I'm looking forward to the next stage.
** [[Cloris Leachman]], reported in Bill Adler, ''Funny Ladies: The Best Humor from America's Funniest Women'' (2001), p. 19.

* Old age has its pleasures, which though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.
** [[W. Somerset Maugham]], ''The Summing Up''.

* Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy man has no time to form.
** [[André Maurois]], ''The Art of Living'' (1940), chapter 8, p. 282–83, as translated by James Whitall.

* Age imprints more wrinkles on the mind than it does on the face.
** [[Montaigne]], ''Essays''.

*The real affliction of old age is remorse.
**[[Cesare Pavese]], ''The moon and the bonfire'', chapter VIII, p. 49.

* I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''Richard II''.

* There are so few who can grow old with a good grace.
** [[Richard Steele]], ''The Spectator'' (1712).

* Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.
** [[Leon Trotsky]], ''Diary in Exile'' (1959).

===''Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations''===
:Quotes reported in ''Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations'' (1922), p. 12-17.

* It is always in season for old men to learn.
** [[Æschylus]], ''Age''.

* Weak withering age no rigid law forbids, With frugal nectar, smooth and slow with balm, The sapless habit daily to bedew, And give the hesitating wheels of life Gliblier to play.
** [[John Armstrong]], ''The Art of Preserving Health'' (1744), Book II, line 484.

* What is it to grow old? Is it to lose the glory of the form, The lustre of the eye? Is it for Beauty to forego her wreath? Yes; but not this alone.
** [[Matthew Arnold]], ''Growing Old''.

* On one occasion some one put a very little wine into a wine cooler, and said that it was sixteen years old. "It is very small for its age," said Gnathæna.
** [[Athenæus]], ''Deipnosophists'', XIII. 46.

* Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.
** [[Francis Bacon]], ''Essay XLII'', ''Of Youth and Age''.

* Old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.
** Quoted by [[Francis Bacon]], ''Apothegm 97''.

* Old age comes on apace to ravage all the clime.
** [[James Beattie]], ''The Minstrel'' (1771), Book I, Stanza 25.

* An old man in a house is a good sign in a house.
** Ascribed to Ben Syra (from the Hebrew).

* Old age doth in sharp pains abound; We are belabored by the gout, Our blindness is a dark profound, Our deafness each one laughs about. Then reason's light with falling ray Doth but a trembling flicker cast. Honor to age, ye children pay! Alas! my fifty years are past!
** [[Pierre-Jean de Béranger]], ''Cinquante Ans''. C. L. Betts' translation.

* By candle-light nobody would have taken you for above five-and-twenty.
** [[Isaac Bickerstaf]], ''Maid of the Mill'', Act I, II.

* Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares gray Marathon.
** [[Lord Byron]], ''[[Childe Harold's Pilgrimage]]'', Canto II (1812), Stanza 88.

* What is the worst of woes that wait on age? What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow? To view each loved one blotted from life's page, And be alone on earth as I am now.
** [[Lord Byron]], ''[[Childe Harold's Pilgrimage]]'', Canto II (1812), Stanza 98.

* He has grown aged in this world of woe, In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life. So that no wonder waits him.
** [[Lord Byron]], ''[[Childe Harold's Pilgrimage]]'', Canto III (1816), Stanza 5.

* Years steal Fire from the mind, as vigor from the limb; And life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim.
** [[Lord Byron]], ''[[Childe Harold's Pilgrimage]]'', Canto III (1816), Stanza 8.

* Oh, for one hour of blind old Dandolo, Th' octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe!
** [[Lord Byron]], ''[[Childe Harold's Pilgrimage]]'', Canto IV (1818), Stanza 12.

* Just as old age is creeping on apace, And clouds come o'er the sunset of our day, They kindly leave us, though not quite alone, But in good company—the gout or stone.
** [[Lord Byron]], ''[[Don Juan (Byron)|Don Juan]]'' (1818-24), Canto III, Stanza 59.

* My days are in the yellow leaf; The flowers and fruits of love are gone; The worm, the canker, and the grief Are mine alone!
** [[Lord Byron]], ''On this day I complete my Thirty-sixth Year''.

* For oute of olde feldys, as men sey, Comyth al this newe corn from yere to yere; And out of olde bokis, in good fey, Comyth al this newe science that men lere.
** [[Geoffrey Chaucer]], ''The Parlement of Fowles'', line 21.

* I think every man is a fool or a physician at thirty years of age.
** Dr. Cheyne.

* Mature fieri senem, si diu velis esse senex. 
*: You must become an old man in good time if you wish to be an old man long.
** [[Cicero]], ''De Senectute'', 10 (quoted as an "honoured proverb.").

* The spring, like youth, fresh blossoms doth produce, But autumn makes them ripe and fit for use: So Age a mature mellowness doth set On the green promises of youthful heat.
** [[Sir John Denham]], ''Cato Major'', Part IV, line 47.

* His eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.
** Deuteronomy, XXXIV. 7.

* Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle; Old Age a regret.
** [[Benjamin Disraeli]], ''Coningsby'', Book III, Chapter I.

* The Disappointment of Manhood succeeds to the delusion of Youth; let us hope that the heritage of Old Age is not Despair.
** [[Benjamin Disraeli]], ''Vivian Grey'', Book VIII, Chapter IV.

* No Spring nor Summer Beauty hath such grace As I have seen in one Autumnal face.
** [[John Donne]], ''Ninth Elegy'', ''To Lady Magdalen Herbert''.

* Fate seem'd to wind him up for fourscore years; Yet freshly ran he on ten winters more; Till like a clock worn put with eating time, The wheels of weary life at last stood still.
** [[John Dryden]], ''Œdipus'', Act IV, scene 1.

* His hair just grizzled As in a green old age.
** [[John Dryden]], ''Œdipus'', Act III, scene 1.

* Forsake not an old friend; for the new is not comparable to him: a new friend is as new wine; when it is old, thou shalt drink it with pleasure.
** Ecclesiasticus, IX. 10.

* Nature abhors the old.
** [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]], ''Essays'', Circles.

* We do not count a man's years, until he has nothing else to count.
** [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]], ''Society and Solitude'', ''Old Age''.

* Remote from cities liv'd a Swain, Unvex'd with all the cares of gain; His head was silver'd o'er with age, And long experience made him sage.
** [[John Gay]], ''Fables'' (1727), Part I, ''The Shepherd and the Philosopher''.

* In a good old age.
** Genesis, XV. 15.

* Old and well stricken in age.
** Genesis, XVIII. 11.

* She may very well pass for forty-three, In the dusk with a light behind her.
** [[W. S. Gilbert]], ''Trial by Jury''.

* Das Alter macht nicht kindisch, wie man spricht, Es findet uns nur noch als wahre Kinder.
*: Age childish makes, they say, but 'tis not true; We're only genuine children still in Age's season.
** [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]], ''[[Goethe's Faust|Faust]]'', Vorspiel auf dem Theater, line 180.

* Old age is courteous—no one more: For time after time he knocks at the door, But nobody says, "Walk in, sir, pray!" Yet turns he not from the door away, But lifts the latch, and enters with speed, And then they cry, "A cool one, indeed."
** [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]], ''Old Age''.

* O blest retirement! friend to life's decline— Retreats from care, that never must be mine How blest is he who crowns, in shades like these, A youth of labour with an age of ease!
** [[Oliver Goldsmith]], ''The Deserted Village'' (1770), line 97.

* I love everything that's old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.
** [[Oliver Goldsmith]], ''She Stoops to Conquer'', Act I, scene 1.

* They say women and music should never be dated.
** [[Oliver Goldsmith]], ''She Stoops to Conquer'', Act III.

* Alike all ages: dames of ancient days Have led their children thro' the mirthful maze, And the gay grandsire, skill'd in gestic lore, Has frisk'd beneath the burthen of threescore.
** [[Oliver Goldsmith]], ''The Traveller'' (1764), line 251.

* Slow-consuming age.
** [[Thomas Gray]], ''Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College'' (1742), Stanza 9.

* Struggle and turmoil, revel and brawl— Youth is the sign of them, one and all. A smoldering hearth and a silent stage— These are a type of the world of Age.
** [[William Ernest Henley]], ''Of Youth and Age'', Envoy.

* To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.
** [[Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.]], on the seventieth birthday of Julia Ward Howe, May 27, 1889.

* You hear that boy laughing? You think he's all fun; But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done. The children laugh loud as they troop to his call. And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all!
** [[Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.]], ''The Boys'', Stanza 9.

* A green old age, unconscious of decays, That proves the hero born in better days.
** [[Homer]], ''The Iliad'', Book XXIII, line 925. Pope's translation.

* When he's forsaken, Wither'd and shaken, What can an old man do but die?
** [[Thomas Hood]], ''Ballad''.

* Tempus abire tibi est, ne… Rideat et pulset lasciva decentius ætas.
*: It is time for thee to be gone, lest the age more decent in its wantonness should laugh at thee and drive thee off the stage.
** [[Horace]], ''Epistles'', Book II. 2. 215.

* Boys must not have th' ambitious care of men, Nor men the weak anxieties of age.
** [[Horace]], ''Of the Art of Poetry'', Wentworth Dillon's trans, line 212.

* Seu me tranquilla senectus Exspectat, seu mors atris circumvolat alis.
*: Either a peaceful old age awaits me, or death flies round me with black wings.
** [[Horace]], ''Satires'', Book II. 1. 57.

* Ladies, stock and tend your hive, Trifle not at thirty-five; For, howe'er we boast and strive, Life declines from thirty-five; He that ever hopes to thrive Must begin by thirty-five.
** [[Samuel Johnson]], ''To Mrs. Thrale, when Thirty-five'', line 11.

* Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage, Till pitying Nature signs the last release, And bids afflicted worth retire to peace.
** [[Samuel Johnson]], ''Vanity of Human Wishes'', line 308.

* L'on craint la vieillesse, que l'on n'est pas sûr de pouvoir atteindre.
*: We dread old age, which we are not sure of being able to attain.
** [[Jean de La Bruyère]], ''Les Caractères'', XI.

* ''L'on espère de vieillir, et l'on craint la vieillesse; c'est-à-dire, l'on aime la vie et l'on fuit la mort.''
*: We hope to grow old and we dread old age; that is to say, we love life and we flee from death.
** [[Jean de La Bruyère]], ''Les Caractères'', XI.

* The sunshine fails, the shadows grow more dreary, And I am near to fall, infirm and weary.
** [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]], ''Canzone''.

* How far the gulf-stream of our youth may flow Into the arctic regions of our lives, Where little else than life itself survives.
** [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]], ''Morituri Solutamus'', line 250.

* Whatever poet, orator, or sage May say of it, old age is still old age.
** [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]], ''Morituri Solutamus'', line 264.

* For age is opportunity no less Than youth itself, though in another dress, And as the evening twilight fades away The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
** [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]], ''Morituri Solutamus'', line 281.

* And the bright faces of my young companions Are wrinkled like my own, or are no more.
** [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]], ''The Spanish Student'' (1843), Act III, scene 3.

* The course of my long life hath reached at last, In fragile bark o'er a tempestuous sea, The common harbor, where must rendered be, Account of all the actions of the past.
** [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]], ''Old Age''.

* Age is not all decay; it is the ripening, the swelling, of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husk.
** [[George MacDonald]], ''The Marquis of Lossie'', Chapter XL.

* What find you better or more honorable than age? Take the preeminence of it in everything;—in an old friend, in old wine, in an old pedigree.
** [[Shakerley-Marmion]], ''Antiquary'', Act II, scene 1.

* When you try to conceal your wrinkles, Polla, with paste made from beans, you deceive yourself, not me. Let a defect, which is possibly but small, appear undisguised. A fault concealed is presumed to be great.
** [[Martial]], ''Epigrams'' (c. 80-104 AD), Book III, Epistle 42.

* Set is the sun of my years; And over a few poor ashes, I sit in my darkness and tears.
** [[Gerald Massey]], ''A Wail''.

* Old wood to burn! Old wine to drink! Old friends to trust! Old authors to read!—Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appeared to be best in these four things.
** [[Melchior]], ''Floresta Española de Apothegmas o Sentencias, etc.'', II. 1. 20.

* The ages roll Forward; and forward with them, draw my soul Into time's infinite sea. And to be glad, or sad, I care no more; But to have done, and to have been, before I cease to do and be.
** [[Owen Meredith]] (Lord Lytton), ''The Wanderer'', Book IV, A Confession and Apology, Stanza 9.

* So may'st thou live, till like ripe fruit thou drop Into thy mother's lap, or be with ease Gather'd, not harshly pluck'd, for death mature.
** [[John Milton]], ''[[Paradise Lost]]'' (1667; 1674), Book XI, line 535.

* So Life's year begins and closes; Days, though short'ning, still can shine; What though youth gave love and roses, Age still leaves us friends and wine.
** [[Thomas Moore]], ''Spring and Autumn''.

* We age inevitably: The old joys fade and are gone: And at last comes equanimity and the flame burning clear.
** [[James Oppenheim]], ''New Year's Eve''.

* Thyself no more deceive, thy youth hath fled.
** [[Petrarch]], ''To Laura in Death'', Sonnet LXXXII.

* ''Senex cum extemplo est, jam nec sentit, nec sapit; Ajunt solere eum rursum repuerascere.''
*: When a man reaches the last stage of life,—without senses or mentality—they say that he has grown a child again.
** [[Plautus]], ''Mercator'', II. 2. 24.

* Why will you break the Sabbath of my days? Now sick alike of Envy and of Praise.
** [[Alexander Pope]], ''First Book of Horace'', Epistle I, line 3.

* Learn to live well, or fairly make your will; You've played, and loved, and ate, and drank your fill. Walk sober off, before a sprightlier age Comes tittering on, and shoves you from the stage.
** [[Alexander Pope]], ''Imitations of Horace'', Book II, Epistle 2, line 322.

* Me let the tender office long engage To rock the cradle of reposing age; With lenient arts extend a mother's breath, Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death; Explore the thought, explain the asking eye! And keep awhile one parent from the sky.
** [[Alexander Pope]], ''Prologue to the Satires'', line 408.

* His leaf also shall not wither.
** Psalms I. 3.

* The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
** Psalms XC. 10.

* So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.
** Psalms XC. 12.

* ''Das Alter ist nicht trübe weil darin unsere Freuden, sondern weil unsere Hoffnungen aufhören.''
*: What makes old age so sad is, not that our joys but that our hopes cease.
** [[Jean Paul Richter]], ''Titan'', Zykel 34.

* Age has now Stamped with its signet that ingenuous brow.
** [[Samuel Rogers]], ''Human Life'' (1819).

* O, roses for the flush of youth, And laurel for the perfect prime; But pluck an ivy branch for me, Grown old before my time.
** [[Christina G. Rossetti]], Song, Stanza 1.

* I'm growing fonder of my staff; I'm growing dimmer in the eyes; I'm growing fainter in my laugh; I'm growing deeper in my sighs; I'm growing careless of my dress; I'm growing frugal of my gold; I'm growing wise; I'm growing,—yes,— I'm growing old.
** [[Saxe]], ''I'm Growing Old''.

* On his bold visage middle age Had slightly press'd its signet sage.
** [[Walter Scott]], ''Lady of the Lake'' (1810), Canto I, Part XXI. (1810).

* Thus pleasures fade away; Youth, talents, beauty, thus decay, And leave us dark, forlorn, and gray.
** [[Walter Scott]], ''Marmion'' (1808), introduction to Canto II, Stanza 7.

* Thus aged men, full loth and slow, The vanities of life forego, And count their youthful follies o'er, Till Memory lends her light no more.
** [[Walter Scott]], ''Rokeby'', Canto V, Stanza 1.

* Old friends are best. King James us'd to call for his Old Shoes, they were easiest for his Feet.
** [[Selden]], ''Table Talk'', ''Friends''.

* ''Nihil turpius est, quam grandis natu senex, qui nullum aliud habet argumentum, quo se probet diu vixisse, præter ætatem.''
*: Nothing is more dishonourable than an old man, heavy with years, who has no other evidence of his having lived long except his age.
** [[Seneca]], ''De Tranquillitate'', 3. 7.

* Turpis et ridicula res est elementarius senex: juveni parandum, seni utendum est.
*: ''An old man in his rudiments is a disgraceful object. It is for youth to acquire, and for age to apply.
** [[Seneca]], ''Epistolæ Ad Lucilium'', XXXVI. 4.

* ''Senectus insanabilis morbus est.''
*: Old age is an incurable disease.
** [[Seneca]], ''Epistolæ Ad Lucilium'', CVIII. 29.

* For we are old, and on our quick'st decrees The inaudible and noiseless foot of Time Steals ere we can effect them.
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''[[All's Well That Ends Well]]'' (1600s), Act V, scene 3, line 40.

* Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty; For in my youth I never did apply Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood; Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo The means of weakness and debility; Therefore my age is as a lusty winter, Frosty, but kindly.
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''[[As You Like It]]'' (c.1599-1600), Act II, scene 3, line 47.

* All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms. And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side, His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing.
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''[[As You Like It]]'' (c.1599-1600), Act II, scene 7, line 139. Same idea in Jean de Courcy—Le Chemin de Vaillance. Copy in British Museum, King's MSS. No. 14. E, II. See also Horace—Ars Poetica. 158. (Ages given as four). In the Mishna, the ages are given as 14, by Jehuda, son of Thema. In Plato's (spurious) Dialog. Axiochus, Socrates sums up human life.

* There is an old poor man Oppressed with two weak evils, age and hunger.
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''[[As You Like It]]'' (c.1599-1600), Act II, scene 8, line 129.

* Though now this grained face of mine be hid In sap-consuming winter's drizzled snow, And all the conduits of my blood froze up, Yet hath my night of life some memory.
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''The Comedy of Errors'', Act V, scene 1, line 311.

* What should we speak of When we are old as you? When we shall hear The rain and wind beat dark December.
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''[[Cymbeline]]'' (1611), Act III, scene 3, line 36.

* An old man is twice a child.
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''[[Hamlet]]'' (1600-02), Act II, scene 2, line 404.

* At your age, The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble, And waits upon the judgment.
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''[[Hamlet]]'' (1600-02), Act III, scene 4, line 68.

* Begin to patch up thine old body for heaven.
** [[William Shakespeare]], [[Henry IV, Part 2|''Henry IV'', Part II]] (c. 1597-99), Act II, scene 4, line 193.

* Some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time.
** [[William Shakespeare]], [[Henry IV, Part 2|''Henry IV'', Part II]] (c. 1597-99), Act I, scene 2, line 91.

* You are old; As you are old and reverend, you should be wise.
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''[[King Lear|King Lear]]'' (1608), Act I, scene 4, line 261.

* Nature in you stands on the very verge Of her confine.
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''[[King Lear|King Lear]]'' (1608), Act II, scene 4, line 148.

* Pray, do not mock me: I am a very foolish fond old man, Fourscore and upward; not an hour more nor less, And, to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind.
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''[[King Lear|King Lear]]'' (1608), Act IV, scene 7, line 59.

* My way of life Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf, And that which should accompany old age, As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have; but, in their stead, Curses not loud, but deep, mouth-honor breath, Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''[[Macbeth]]'' (1605), Act V, scene 3, line 22.

* Superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer.
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''[[The Merchant of Venice]]'' (late 1590s), Act I, scene 2, line 8.

* Nor age so eat up my invention.
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''[[Much Ado About Nothing]]'' (1598-99), Act IV, scene 1, line 192.

* Give me a staff of honor for mine age, But not a sceptre to control the world.
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''[[Titus Andronicus]]'' (c. 1584-1590), Act I, scene 1, line 198.

* "You are old, Father William," the young man cried, "The few locks which are left you are gray; You are hale, Father William,—a hearty old man: Now tell me the reason, I pray."
** [[Robert Southey]], ''The Old Man's Comforts, and how he Gained The''m.

* When an old gentleman waggles his head and says: "Ah, so I thought when I was your age," it is not thought an answer at all, if the young man retorts: "My venerable sir, so I shall most probably think when I am yours." And yet the one is as good as the other.
** [[Robert Louis Stevenson]], ''Crabbed Age and Youth''.

* Every man desires to live long; but no man would be old.
** [[Jonathan Swift]], ''Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting''.

* I swear she's no chicken; she's on the wrong side of thirty, if she be a day.
** [[Jonathan Swift]], ''Polite Conversation'' (c. 1738), I.

* ''Vetera extollimus recentium incuriosi.''
*: We extol ancient things, regardless of our own times.
** [[Tacitus]], ''Annales'' (AD 117), II. 88.

* ''Vetera semper in laude, præsentia in fastidio.''
*: Old things are always in good repute, present things in disfavour.
** [[Tacitus]], ''Dialogue de Oratoribus'', 18.

* An old man is twice a child.
** [[John Taylor]], ''The Old, Old, very Old Man'' (Thomas Parr).

* O good gray head which all men knew.
** [[Alfred Tennyson]], ''On the Death of the Duke of Wellington'', Stanza 4.

* Age too shines out: and, garrulous, recounts the feats of youth.
** [[James Thomson (poet)|James Thomson]], ''The Seasons'', ''Autumn'' (1730), line 1231.

* Annus enim octogesimus admonet me, ut sarcinas colligam, antequam proficiscare vita.
*:For my eightieth year warns me to pack up my baggage before I leave life.
** [[Varro]], ''De Re Rustica'', I, 1.

* For Age with stealing steps Hath clawed me with his crutch.
** [[Thomas Vaux]], ''The Aged Lover renounceth Love. (Quoted in Hamlet, Act V, scene 1. Not in quartos).

* ''Omnia fert ætas, animum quoque.''
*: Age carries all things away, even the mind.
** [[Virgil]], ''Eclogues'' (c. 37 BC), IX. 51.

* Venerable men! you have come down to us from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives, that you might behold this joyous day.
** [[Daniel Webster]], ''Address at Laying the Corner-Stone of the Bunker Hill Monument'' (June 17, 1825).

* Is not old wine wholesomest, old pippins toothsomest, old wood burn brightest, old linen wash whitest? Old soldiers, sweetheart, are surest, and old lovers are soundest.
** [[John Webster]], ''Westward Ho'', Act II, scene 1.

* Thus fares it still in our decay, And yet the wiser mind Mourns less for what age takes away Than what it leaves behind.
** [[William Wordsworth]], ''The Fountain'', Stanza 9.

* But an old age serene and bright, And lovely as a Lapland night, Shall lead thee to thy grave.
** [[William Wordsworth]], ''To a Young Lady''.

* The monumental pomp of age Was with this goodly Personage; A stature undepressed in size, Unbent, which rather seemed to rise In open victory o'er the weight Of seventy years, to loftier height.
** [[William Wordsworth]], ''White Doe of Rylstone'', Canto III.

===''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895)===
Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895).

* An aged Christian with the snow of time on his head may remind us that those points of earth are whitest that are nearest heaven.
** [[Edwin Hubbell Chapin]], p. 439.

* Thanks to that regular and temperate course of life I have ever lived, I am still capable of taking an active part in these public scenes of business. In fine, he who fills up every hour of his life in such kind of labors as those I have mentioned, will insensibly slide into old age without perceiving its arrival; and his powers, instead of being suddenly and prematurely extinguished, will gradually decline by the gentle and natural effect of accumulated years.
** [[Cicero]], p. 438.

* The day of life spent in honest and benevolent labor comes in hope to an evening calm and lovely; and though the sun declines, the shadows that he leaves behind are only to curtain the spirit unto rest.
** [[Henry Giles]], p. 438.

* It is not so bad a thing to grow old; it is only getting a little nearer home; a little nearer to immortal youth.
** [[Arthur Henry Kenney]], p. 439.

* Age is not all decay; it is the ripening, the swelling of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husk.
** [[George MacDonald]], p. 439.

* The second childhood of a saint is the early infancy of a happy immortality, as we believe.
** [[William Mountford]], p. 438.

* The years of old age are stalls in the cathedral of life in which for aged men to sit and listen and meditate and be patient till the service is over, and in which they may get themselves ready to say "Amen" at the last, with all their hearts and souls and strength.
** [[William Mountford]], p. 439.

* My God! my time is in Thine hands. Should it please Thee to lengthen my life, and complete, as Thou hast begun, the work of blanching my locks, grant me grace to wear them as a crown of unsullied honor.
** [[Christian Scriver]], p. 439.

== Unsourced ==

* Age has a good mind and sorry shanks.
** [[Pietro Aretino]].

* Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appears to be best in four things, —- old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.
** [[Francis Bacon]].

* I believe the true function of age is memory. I'm recording as fast as I can.
** [[Rita Mae Brown]].

* A man's only as old as the woman he feels.
** [[Groucho Marx]]

* Growing old is no more than a bad habbit which a busy man has no time to form.
** [[André Maurois]], quoted in ''The Aging American''.

* An old man loved is winter with flowers.
** [[German proverbs|German proverb]].

* I think age is a very high price to pay for maturity.
** [[Tom Stoppard]].

* Regrets are the natural property of grey hairs.
** [[Charles Dickens]].

* The whole business of marshaling one's energies becomes more and more important as one grows older.
** [[Hume Cronyn]].

* There are only three ages for women in Hollywood — Babe, District Attorney, and Driving Miss Daisy.
** [[Goldie Hawn]].

* Times go by: reputation increases, ability declines.
** [[Dag Hammarskjold]].

* To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am.
** [[Bernard Baruch]].

* We are always the same age inside.
** [[Gertrude Stein]].

* When a man retires and time is no longer a matter of urgent importance, his colleagues generally present him with a watch.
** [[R. C. Sherriff]].

* When you become senile, you won't know it.
** [[Bill Cosby]]

* When young we are faithful to individuals, when older we grow loyal to situations and to types.
** [[Cyril Connolly]]

* When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it's a sure sign you're getting old.
** [[Mark Twain]].

* You will become a hypocrite, you'll become a liar. You'll try and paper up your own cracks... and that's what being an adult is all about. Then you have babies and... that's it. Sorry!
** [[Thom Yorke]].

* Your life only tips into old age if regrets begin to outnumber dreams.
** Peter Baskerville

* My secret to a long, healthy life is to always keep working. It keeps me busy and happy, and gives me a reason to stay alive.
** [[w:Johannes Heesters|Johannes Heesters]] (Dutch-German actor, singer, entertainer and media-personality, worlds oldest living performer).

===Anonymous===

* Age before beauty.

* Age brings wisdom, but pain brings understanding.

* Age is a bad traveling companion.
** [[English proverbs|English proverb]].

* To be mature is to accept imperfections
** Fortune cookie

* Age is nothing but a number
** Dove Chocolate Promise Message

* There are no charms or medicine against old age.
** [[Anonymous]], quoted in ''The Journal of Negro History, Edited by Carter G. Woodson, Volume 1 Number 1'' (1916).

==External links==
{{wikipedia}}
{{wiktionary|age}}
{{wikiversity|Have a Happy Old Age}}

[[Category:Age]]

[[bg:Младост — Старост]]
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[[cs:Starost]]
[[de:Alter]]
[[eo:Maljuneco]]
[[hr:Starost]]
[[it:Età]]
[[he:זקנה]]
[[lt:Senatvė]]
[[pl:Starość]]
[[pt:Idade]]
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[[uk:Вік]]

Health

2012-05-22T16:22:47Z

Nobody60: /* External links */

[[File:Caducee fr.svg|144px|thumb|right|Day by day, in every way, I'm getting better and better. ~ [[w:Émile Coué|Émile Coué]] ]]
Quotes about '''[[w:Health|Health]]''':

== Sourced ==
[[File:Star of life2.svg|144px|thumb|right|Sickness is the first warning that we have made a wrong judgement. A healthy person is never unhappy. ~ [[George Ohsawa]] ]]
:Alphabetized by author 
[[File:Psi and Caduceus.svg |144px|thumb|right|If a man is in health, he doesn't need to take anybody else's temperature to know where he is going. ~ [[E. B. White]] ]]

* The best six doctors anywhere And no one can deny it Are sunshine, water, rest, and air Exercise and diet. These six will gladly you attend If only you are willing Your mind they'll ease Your will they'll mend And charge you not a shilling. 
** [[Anonymous]] nursery rhyme set to the tune of "Yankee Doodle", quoted in "The Health Club" in ''School Life'', Vol. IV (January - June 1920), p. 17 

* I am pretty sure that, if you will be quite honest, you will admit that a good rousing sneeze, one that tears open your collar and throws your hair into your eyes, is really one of life's sensational pleasures.
** [[Robert Benchley]], in "Hiccoughing Makes Us Fat" in ''No Poems: or Around the World Backwards and Sideways'' (1932)

* I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.
**[[Samuel Butler]], in ''The Way of All Flesh'' (1903)

* Thank Him for health. Consecrate it as His trust to innocent enjoyment, manly effort, social usefulness, and preparation for an honorable and holy career.
** [[William Ellery Channing]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 299.

* ''Cur moriatur homo, cui salvia crescit in horto?''
** Why should (need) a man die who has sage in his garden?
** ''Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum'', line 177. Original and translation. pub. by Sir Alexander Chope (1830).

* Of all the garden herbes none is of greater vertue than sage.
** [[Thomas Cogan]], ''Heaven of Health'' (1596). Quoting from ''Schola Salerni'', p. 32.

* ''Tous les jours, à tous points de vue, je vais de mieux en mieux.''
** Day by day, in every way, I'm getting better and better.
*** [[w:Émile Coué|Émile Coué]], in his auto-suggestive formula for health, as quoted in ''The Practice of Autosuggestion by the Method of Emile Coué'' (1922) by Cyrus Harry Brooks
** Variant translation: Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better.

* If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don't actually live longer; it just seems longer.
**[[w:Clement Freud|Clement Freud]], as quoted in ''The Observer'' (27 December 1964)

* Nor love, nor honour, wealth nor pow'r, Can give the heart a cheerful hour When health is lost. Be timely wise; With health all taste of pleasure flies.
** [[John Gay]], ''Fables'' (1727), Part I. Fable 31.

* If you start to think about your physical or moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.
**[[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]], ''Proverbs in Prose'' (1819)

* A cool mouth, and warm feet, live long.
** [[George Herbert]], ''Jacula Prudentum'' (1651).

* He that goes to bed thirsty rises healthy.
** [[George Herbert]], ''Jacula Prudentum'' (1651).

* Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
** Attributed to [[w:Markus Herz|Markus Herz]] by [[w:Ernst, Baron von Feuchtersleben|Ernst von Feuchtersleben]], ''Zur Diätetik der Seele'' (1841), [http://books.google.com/books?id=FLc6AAAAcAAJ&pg=PA95&dq=%22Lieber+Freund+Sie+werden+noch+einmal+an+einem+Druckfehler+sterben%22 p. 95]. ([[Talk:Mark_Twain#You_may_die_of_a_misprint|more info]])

* Christ's gospel could never have been delivered by one who was diseased.
** [[w:John McClellan Holmes|John McClellan Holmes]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 299.

* There are three wicks you know to the lamp of a man's life: brain, blood, and breath. Press the brain a little, its light goes out, followed by both the others. Stop the heart a minute, and out go all three of the wicks. Choke the air out of the lungs, and presently the fluid ceases to supply the other centres of flame, and all is soon stagnation, cold, and darkness.
** [[Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.]], ''The Professor at the Breakfast Table'' (1859), XI.

* If you wish to keep as well as possible, the less you think about your health the better.
**[[Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.]], ''Over the Teacups'' (1891)

* How sickness enlarges the dimension of a man's self to himself!
**[[Charles Lamb]], in ''Last Essays of Elia'' (1833)

* In minds crammed with thoughts, organs clogged with toxins, and bodies stiffened with neglect, there is just no space for anything else.
**[[w:Alison Rose Levy|Alison Rose Levy]], in "An Ancient Cure for Modern Life" in ''Yoga Journal'' (January - February 2002)

* If the pain wanders, do not waste your time with doctors.
**[[w:Mignon McLaughlin|Mignon McLaughlin]], in ''The Neurotic's Notebook'' (1960)

* Sickness is the first warning that we have made a wrong judgement. A healthy person is never unhappy.
** [[George Ohsawa]], in ''Essential Ohsawa : From Food to Health, Happiness to Freedom : Understanding the Basics of Macrobiotics'' (1994), p. 77

* Health consists with Temperance alone.
** [[Alexander Pope]], ''An Essay on Man'' (1733-34), Epistle IV, line 81.

* Healthy people are invalids who don't know it.
**[[w:Jules Romains|Jules Romains]], in ''Dr. Knock'' (1923)

* May be he is not well: Infirmity doth still neglect all office Whereto our health is bound.
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''[[King Lear|King Lear]]'' (1608), Act II, scene 4, line 107.

* Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.
**[[Susan Sontag]], ''Illness as Metaphor'' (1977).

* As a people, we have become obsessed with Health. There is something fundamentally, radically unhealthy about all this. We do not seem to be seeking more exuberance in living as much as staving off failure, putting off dying. We have lost all confidence in the human body.
**[[w:Lewis Thomas|Lewis Thomas]], in ''The Medusa and the Snail'' (1979).

* Ah! what avail the largest gifts of Heaven, When drooping health and spirits go amiss? How tasteless then whatever can be given! Health is the vital principle of bliss, And exercise of health.
** [[James Thomson (poet)|James Thomson]], ''Castle of Indolence'' (1748), Canto II, Stanza 55.

* Health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of: a blessing that money cannot buy.
** [[Izaak Walton]], ''The Compleat Angler'' (1653-55), Part I, Chapter XXI.

* If a man is in health, he doesn't need to take anybody else's temperature to know where he is going.
** [[E. B. White]], in a letter to the ''New York Herald Tribune'' (29 November 1947)

===''Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations''===
:Quotes reported in ''Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations'' (1922), p. 356-57.

* Health and cheerfulness mutually beget each other.
** [[Joseph Addison]], ''The Spectator'', No. 387.

* When health, affrighted, spreads her rosy wing, And flies with every changing gale of spring.
** [[Lord Byron]], ''Childish Recollections'', line 3.

* ''Homines ad deos nulla re propius accedunt quam salutem hominibus dando.''
** In nothing do men more nearly approach the gods than in giving health to men.
** [[Cicero]], ''Pro Ligario'', XII.

* Health that snuffs the morning air.
** [[James Grainger]], ''Solitude'', ''An Ode'', line 35.

* ''Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano.''
** Our prayers should be for a sound mind in a healthy body.
** [[Juvenal]], ''Satires'', X. 356.

* Preserving the health by too strict a regimen is a wearisome malady.
** [[François de La Rochefoucauld]], ''Maxims'', No. 285.

* ''Pars sanitatis velle sanari fuit.''
** It is part of the cure to wish to be cured.
** [[Seneca]], ''Hippolyus'', CCXLIX.

* ''Qui salubrem locum negligit, mente est captus atque ad agnatos et gentiles deducendus.''
** He who overlooks a healthy spot for the site of his house is mad and ought to be handed over to the care of his relations and friends.
** [[Marcus Terentius Varro]], ''De Re Rustica'', I, 2.

* Gold that buys health can never be ill spent, Nor hours laid out in harmless merriment.
** [[John Webster]], ''Westward Ho'', Act V, scene 3, line 345.

==Attributed==
* ''Tabi ni yande yume wa kareno o kakemeguru.''
** Fallen sick on a journey, In dreams I run wildly Over a withered moor
** [[w:Matsuo Bashō|Matsuo Bashō]], attributed in Kodansha encyclopedia of Japan, Volume 1 page 145 (see [http://books.google.com/books?ei=y7j-TZCnFYGb-gbP_K3eDw&ct=result&id=6q9uAAAAMAAJ&dq=Fallen+sick+on+a+journey%2C+In+dreams+I+run+wildly+Over+a+withered+moor&q=%22withered+moor%22#search_anchor Google Books])

== Unsourced ==
{{theme-cleanup|2006-08-28}}
* A bad cold wouldn't be so annoying if it weren't for the advice of our friends.
**[[w:Kin Hubbard|Kin Hubbard]]

* A cough is a symptom, not a disease. Take it to your doctor and he can give you something serious to worry about.
** [[Robert Morley]]

* A cripple of the worst sort, and consumptive into the bargain.
**[[Alan Bennett]]

* A filling is a dentist's food supplement.
**[[w:Leonard S. Wisdon|Leonard S. Wisdon]]

* A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor's book.
**[[Irish Proverbs|Irish Proverb]]

* I have a headache, my tummy feels hurty, I feel sick, quite frankly it'd be less trouble if I just had cancer.
**[[Alex Mallett]], ex-Black Reverence drummer.

* A healthy body is the guest-chamber of the soul; a sick, its prison.
**[[Francis Bacon]]

* After these two, Dr. Diet and Dr. Quiet, Dr. Merriman is requisite to preserve health.
**[[James Howell]]

* A man's health can be judged by which he takes two at a time ... pills or stairs.
**[[Joan Welsh]]

* An imaginary ailment is worse than a disease.
**[[Yiddish proverbs|Yiddish Proverb]]

* Bacteria keeps us from heaven and puts us there.
**[[w:Martin H. Fischer|Martin H. Fischer]].

* Disease is somatic; the suffering from it, psychic.
**[[w:Martin H. Fischer|Martin H. Fischer]]

* Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and more numerous than those of the body.
**[[Cicero]]

* Eat right, exercise regularly, die anyway.
** Author Unknown

* Every man's disease is his personal property.
**[[w:Alonzo Clark|Alonzo Clark]]

* First need in the reform of hospital management? That's easy! The death of all dietitians, and the resurrection of a French chef.
**[[w:Martin H. Fischer|Martin H. Fischer]]

* Fresh air impoverishes the doctor.
**[[Danish proverbs|Danish Proverb]]

* From the bitterness of disease man learns the sweetness of health.
**[[Catalan proverbs|Catalan Proverb]]

* Half the modern drugs could well be thrown out the window, except that the birds might eat them.
**[[w:Martin H. Fischer|Martin H. Fischer]].

* Happiness lies, first of all, in health.
**[[w:George William Curtis|George William Curtis]], ''Lotus-Eating''

* He who has health has hope; and he who has hope has everything.
**[[Arabic proverbs|Arabic Proverb]].

* He who takes medicine and neglects to diet wastes the skill of his doctors.
**[[Chinese proverbs|Chinese Proverb]]

* Health and cheerfulness naturally beget each other.
**[[Joseph Addison]]

* Health is a large word. It embraces not the body only, but the mind and spirit as well;... and not today's pain or pleasure alone, but the whole being and outlook of a man.
**[[w:James H. West|James H. West]].

* Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
** World Health Organization, (1948)

* Health is like money, we never have a true idea of its value until we lose it.
**[[w:Josh Billings|Josh Billings]].

* Health is merely the slowest way someone can die.
** Author Unknown

* Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.
**[[w:Redd Foxx|Redd Foxx]]

* Health of body and mind is a great blessing, if we can bear it.
**[[w:John Henry Cardinal Newman|John Henry Cardinal Newman]]

* I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol.
** Author Unknown

* I refuse to spend my life worrying about what I eat. There is no pleasure worth forgoing just for an extra three years in the geriatric ward.
**[[John Mortimer]]

* I see rejection in my skin, worry in my cancers, bitterness and hate in my aching joints. I failed to take care of my mind, and so my body now goes to hospital.
**[[w:Astrid Alauda|Astrid Alauda]]

* I think you might dispense with half your doctors if you would only consult Dr. Sun more.
**[[Henry Ward Beecher]]

* If by gaining knowledge we destroy our health, we labour for a thing that will be useless in our hands.
**[[John Locke]]

* If I had my way I'd make health catching instead of disease.
**[[Robert Ingersoll]]

* If I'd known I was going to live so long, I'd have taken better care of myself.
**[[w:Leon Eldred|Leon Eldred]]

* If you do everything you should do, and do not do anything you should not do, you will, according to the best available statistics, live exactly eighteen hours longer than you would otherwise.
**[[w:Logain Clendening|Logain Clendening]]

* If you have health, you probably will be happy, and if you have health and happiness, you have all the wealth you need, even if it is not all you want.
**[[Elbert Hubbard]]

* In a disordered mind, as in a disordered body, soundness of health is impossible.
**[[Cicero]]

* In order to change we must be sick and tired of being sick and tired.
** Author Unknown

* It's bizarre that the produce manager is more important to my children's health than the pediatrician.
**[[w:Meryl Streep|Meryl Streep]]

* It's no longer a question of staying healthy. It's a question of finding a sickness you like.
**[[w:Jackie Mason|Jackie Mason]]

* Joy and Temperance and Repose Slam the door on the doctor's nose. ~ [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]]

* Know, then, whatever cheerful and serene Supports the mind supports the body too. ~ [[w:John Armstrong|John Armstrong]]

* Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon.
**[[w:Doug Larson]]

* Life is not merely to be alive, but to be well.
**[[w:Marcus Valerius Martial|Marcus Valerius Martial]]

* Like everybody else, when I don't know what else to do, I seem to go in for catching colds.
**[[w:George Jean Nathan|George Jean Nathan]]

* Live in rooms full of light Avoid heavy food Be moderate in the drinking of wine Take massage, baths, exercise, and gymnastics Fight insomnia with gentle rocking or the sound of running water Change surroundings and take long journeys Strictly avoid frightening ideas Indulge in cheerful conversation and amusements Listen to music.
** [[w:A. Cornelius Celsus|A. Cornelius Celsus]]

* May you live as long as you are fit to live, but no longer! Or, may you rather die before you cease to be fit to live than after!
**[[w:Philip Dormer Stanhope|Philip Dormer Stanhope]], 1749

* Men make use of their illnesses at least as much as they are made use of by them.
**[[Aldous Huxley]]

* Men that look no further than their outsides, think health an appurtenance unto life, and quarrel with their constitutions for being sick; but I that have examined the parts of man, and know upon what tender filaments that fabric hangs, do wonder that we are not always so; and considering the thousand doors that lead to death, do thank my God that we can die but once.
**[[Thomas Browne]]

* Nature does require Her time of preservation, which perforce I her frail son amongst my brethren mortal Must give my attendance to. ~ [[William Shakespeare]]

* Nothing is more fatal to health than an overcare of it.
**[[Benjamin Franklin]]

* Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.
** Rev. Dr. [[Martin Luther King, Jr.]]

* Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself, it will do more than if you paralyze it by encumbering it with remedies.
**[[Leo Tolstoy]]

* People who are always taking care of their health are like misers who are hoarding a treasure which they have never spirit enough to enjoy.
**[[w:Laurence Sterne|Laurence Sterne]]

* Physical ills are the taxes laid upon this wretched life; some are taxed higher, and some lower, but all pay something.
**[[w:Lord Chesterfield|Lord Chesterfield]]

* Physick, for the most part, is nothing else but the Substitute of Exercise or Temperance.
**[[Joseph Addison]]

* Preserving the health by too strict a regimen is a wearisome malady.
**[[François Duc de La Rochefoucauld]]

* Red meat is not bad for you. Now blue-green meat, that's bad for you!
**[[w:Tommy Smothers|Tommy Smothers]]

* Sickness comes on horseback, but goes away on foot.
**[[w:William C. Hazlitt|William C. Hazlitt]]

* Sickness is poor-spirited, and cannot serve anyone; it must husband its resources to live. But health or fullness answers its own ends, and has to spare, runs over, and inundates the neighborhoods and creeks of other men's necessities.
**[[Ralph Waldo Emerson]]

* Sickness is the vengeance of nature for the violation of her laws.
**[[w:Charles Simmons|Charles Simmons]]

* So many people spend their health gaining wealth, and then have to spend their wealth to regain their health.
**[[w:A.J. Reb Materi|A.J. Reb Materi]], ''Our Family''

* The appearance of a disease is swift as an arrow; its disappearance slow, like a thread.
**[[Chinese proverbs|Chinese Proverb]]

* The longer I live the less confidence I have in drugs and the greater is my confidence in the regulation and administration of diet and regimen.
**[[w:John Redman Coxe|John Redman Coxe]], 1800

* The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd druther not.
**[[Mark Twain]]

* The power of love to change bodies is legendary, built into folklore, common sense, and everyday experience. Love moves the flesh, it pushes matter around.... Throughout history, "tender loving care" has uniformly been recognized as a valuable element in healing.
**[[w:Larry Dossey|Larry Dossey]]

* The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind.
**[[G.K. Chesterton]]

* The... patient should be made to understand that he or she must take charge of his own life. Don't take your body to the doctor as if he were a repair shop.
**[[w:Quentin Regestein|Quentin Regestein]]

* There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry.
**[[Mark Twain]]

* There are two things in life that a sage must preserve at every sacrifice, the coats of his stomach and the enamel of his teeth. Some evils admit of consolations, but there are no comforters for dyspepsia and the toothache.
**[[w:Henry Lytton Bulwer|Henry Lytton Bulwer]]

* There's lots of people in this world who spend so much time watching their health that they haven't the time to enjoy it.
**[[w:Josh Billings|Josh Billings]]

* They claim red meat is bad for you. But I never saw a sick-looking tiger.
**[[w:Chi Chi Rodriguez|Chi Chi Rodriguez]]

* Those obsessed with health are not healthy; the first requisite of good health is a certain calculated carelessness about oneself.
**[[w:Sydney J. Harris|Sydney J. Harris]]

* To avoid sickness eat less; to prolong life worry less.
**[[w:Chu Hui Weng|Chu Hui Weng]]

* To feel keenly the poetry of a morning's roses, one has to have just escaped from the claws of this vulture which we call sickness.
**[[w:Henri Frederic Amiel|Henri Frederic Amiel]]

* Water, air, and cleanliness are the chief articles in my pharmacopoeia.
**[[Napoleon Bonaparte]]

* What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease.
**[[w:George Dennison Prentice|George Dennison Prentice]], ''Prenticeana'', 1860

* "Health is what my friends are always drinking to before they fall down."
**[[w:Phyllis Diller|Phyllis Diller]]

* I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy as long as I can paint.
** [[Frida Kahlo]]

== External links ==
{{wikipedia}}
{{wiktionary|health}}
{{wikiversity|The Five Principles of Health}}

[[Category:Health| ]]

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[[ca:Salut]]
[[cs:Zdraví]]
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[[et:Tervis]]
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[[eo:Sano]]
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Happiness

2012-05-22T12:12:35Z

Nobody60: /* External links */

[[Image:Felicidade A very happy boy.jpg|thumb|right|Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally... ~ [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]] ]]
'''[[w:Happiness|Happiness]]''' is an emotional or affective state that is characterized by feelings of enjoyment and satisfaction. As a state and a subject, it has been pursued and commented on extensively throughout world history.

== Quotes ==

* '''Happiness, whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found with those who are highly cultivated in their minds and in their character, and have only a moderate share of external goods, than among those who possess external goods to a useless extent but are deficient in higher qualities.'''
** [[Aristotle]] in ''[[w:Politics (Aristotle)|Politics]]''

* '''I shall take the heart... for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world.'''
** [[L. Frank Baum]], lines for the Tinman in ''[[w:The Wonderful Wizard of Oz|The Wonderful Wizard of Oz]] (1900)

* In all this world there is nothing so beautiful as a happy child.
** [[L. Frank Baum]], in lines for [[Santa Claus]] in ''The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus'' (1902)

* To have been happy, madame, adds to calamity.
** [[Beaumont and Fletcher]], ''The Fair Maid of the Inn'' (licensed 22 January 1626; 1647), Act I, scene 1, line 250.

* Domestic Happiness, thou only bliss Of Paradise that hast survived the Fall!
** [[William Cowper]], ''The Task'' (1785), Book III, line 41.

* Thus happiness depends, as Nature shows, Less on exterior things than most suppose.
** [[William Cowper]] in ''Table Talk'' (1817) line 246

*Happiness in the ordinary sense is not what one needs in life, though one is right to aim at it. The true satisfaction is to come through and see those whom one loves come through.
**[[E. M. Forster]], ''Selected Letters'': Letter 216, to Florence Barger, 11 February 1922

* '''Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.'''
** [[Mahatma Gandhi]], bas quoted in ''Humor, Play, & Laughter : Stress-proofing Life with Your Kids'' (1998) by Joseph A. Michelli, p. 88

* Happiness is the consequence of personal effort.
**[[w:Elizabeth Gilbert|Elizabeth Gilbert]], ''[[w:Eat, Pray, Love|Eat, Pray, Love]]''.

* Still to ourselves in every place consign'd, Our own felicity to make or find.
** [[Oliver Goldsmith]], ''The Traveller'' (1764), line 431.

* '''Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally.''' Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.
** [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]] in ''The American Notebooks'' (1851)

* We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable; that all men are created equal and independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]] early draft for the [[w:Declaration_of_Independence_%28United_States%29|Declaration of Independence]] (June 1776)

* We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]]'s final draft for the [[w:Declaration_of_Independence_%28United_States%29|Declaration of Independence]] (July 1776)

* '''The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.'''
** [[Thomas Jefferson]] Letter "to the Republican Citizens of Washington County, Maryland" (31 March 1809)

* How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. … All that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart.
** [[Nikos Kazantzakis]], ''[[Zorba the Greek]]'' (1946)

* Most people measure their happiness in terms of physical pleasure and material possession. Could they win some visible goal which they have set on the horizon, how happy they could be! Lacking this gift or that circumstance, they would be miserable. If happiness is to be so measured, I who cannot hear or see have every reason to sit in a corner with folded hands and weep. If I am happy in spite of my deprivations, if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith, so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life, — if, in short, I am an optimist, my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.
** [[Helen Keller]] in ''Optimism'' (1903).

* A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.
** [[Helen Keller]] ''The Simplest Way to be Happy'' (1933)

* '''Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.'''
** [[Helen Keller]] ''The Simplest Way to be Happy'' (1933)

* To be strong Is to be happy!
** [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]], ''Christus'', ''The Golden Legend'' (1872), Part II, line 731.

* The rays of happiness, like those of light, are colorless when unbroken.
** [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]], ''Kavanagh: A Tale'' (1849), Chapter XIII.

* The nicest thing about being happy is that you think you'll never be unhappy again.
** Luis Molina in ''[[Kiss of The Spider Woman]]''

* Oh happiness! our being's end and aim! Good, Pleasure, Ease, Content! whate'er thy name; That something still which prompts th' eternal sigh, For which we bear to live, or dare to die.
** [[Alexander Pope]], ''An Essay on Man'' (1733-34), Epistle IV, line 1.

* Fix'd to no spot is Happiness sincere; 'Tis nowhere to be found, or ev'rywhere; 'Tis never to be bought, but always free.
** [[Alexander Pope]], ''An Essay on Man'' (1733-34), Epistle IV, line 15.

* Heaven to mankind impartial we confess, If all are equal in their happiness; But mutual wants this happiness increase, All nature's difference keeps all nature's peace.
** [[Alexander Pope]], ''An Essay on Man'' (1733-34), Epistle IV, line 53.

* [[Perfection|Perfect]] the Will, the Mind, Feeling, their corporeal organs and their material tools; be [[Utilitarianism|useful]] to yourselves, to your own ones, and to others; and Happiness, insofar as it exists on this earth, will come of itself."
** [[Bolesław Prus]], ''[[Wikisource:The Most General Life Ideals|The Most General Life Ideals]]'', 2nd, revised edition, Warsaw, 1905. (Newspaper serialization, 1897–99; 1st book edition, 1901.)

* Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
** [[George Santayana]] in ''The Life of Reason'' (1905)

* But, O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes!
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''[[As You Like It]]'' (c.1599-1600), Act V, scene 2, line 47.

* Would I were with him, wheresome'er he is, either in heaven or in hell.
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''[[Henry V (play)|Henry V]]'' (c. 1599), Act II, scene 3, line 6.

* Happiness does not depend on the size or content of a goal, but on the strength of the desire to have it.
** [[Simon Soloveychik]], ''Parenting for Everyone'' (1989)

* '''Happiness is possible only in a relationship with a partner.''' Imagine that some fellow who has lived his life as a singer goes to an uninhabited island and sings as loudly as possible. If there is no one there to hear him, he will not be happy. To realize that we exist for the sake of others is the great achievement that changes our lives. When we realize that our life is not ours alone but is meant to be for the sake of the other, we begin to follow a path different from the one we were on. Just as singing to yourself will not make you happy, there is no joy without a partner. Even the smallest and most trivial thing can bring you happiness when you do it for another.
**[[Sun Myung Moon]], 2009, [http://www.euro-tongil.org/TFbiography.pdf ''As a Peace-loving Global Citizen''], Page 139.

* ''O terque quaterque beati.''
** O thrice, four times happy they!
** [[Virgil]], ''[[Aenied|Æneid]]'' (29-19 BC), I. 94.

* '''Happiness is only real when shared.'''
** ''[[Into the Wild (film)]]'', 2007 screenplay by [[Sean Penn]] based on the [[w:Into the Wild|1996 book]] by [[w:Jon Krakauer|Jon Krakauer]] about [[Christopher McCandless]].

* True happiness ne'er entered at an eye; True happiness resides in things unseen.
** [[Edward Young]], ''Night Thoughts'' (1742-1745), Night VIII, line 1,021.

===''Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations''===
:Quotes reported in ''Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations'' (1922), p. 350-52.

* Hold him alone truly fortunate who has ended his life in happy well-being.
** [[Æschylus]], ''Agamemnon'', 928.

* 'Twas a jolly old pedagogue, long ago, Tall and slender, and sallow and dry; His form was bent, and his gait was slow, His long thin hair was white as snow, But a wonderful twinkle shone in his eye. And he sang every night as he went to bed, "Let us be happy down here below; The living should live, though the dead be dead," Said the jolly old pedagogue long ago.
** [[George Arnold]], ''The Jolly Old Pedagogue''.

* Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.
** [[Hosea Ballou]], ''Manuscript'', Sermons.

* ''La massima felicita divisa nel maggior numero.''
** The greatest happiness of the greatest number.
** [[Cesare Beccaria]], ''Trattato dei Delitti e delle Pene'' (''Treatise of Crimes and of Punishment''), Introduction (1764).

* Priestly was the first (unless it was Beccaria) who taught my lips to pronounce this sacred truth—that the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.
** [[Jeremy Bentham]], Volume X, p. 142.

* ''Quid enim est melius quam memoria recte factorum, et libertate contentum negligere humana?''
** What can be happier than for a man, conscious of virtuous acts, and content with liberty, to despise all human affairs?
** [[Brutus]], to [[Cicero]]. Cicero's ''Letters'', I, 16, 9.

* Oh, Mirth and Innocence! Oh, Milk and Water! Ye happy mixtures of more happy days!
** [[Lord Byron]], ''Beppo'' (1818), Stanza 80.

* * * * all who joy would win Must share it,—Happiness was born a twin.
** [[Lord Byron]], ''[[Don Juan (Byron)|Don Juan]]'' (1818-24), Canto II, Stanza 172.

* There comes For ever something between us and what We deem our happiness.
** [[Lord Byron]], ''Sardanapalus'', Act I, scene 2.

* ''Quid datur a divis felici optatius hora?
** What is there given by the gods more desirable than a happy hour?
** [[Catullus]], ''Carmina'', LXII. 30.

* The message from the hedge-leaves, Heed it, whoso thou art; Under lowly eaves Lives the happy heart.
** [[John Vance Cheney]], ''The Hedge-bird's Message''.

* ''In animi securitate vitam beatam ponimus.''
** We think a happy life consists in tranquillity of mind.
** [[Cicero]], ''De Natura Deorum'', I. 20.

* ''Le bonheur semble fait pour être partagé.''
** Happiness seems made to be shared.
** [[Pierre Corneille]], ''Notes par Rochefoucauld''.

* If solid happiness we prize, Within our breast this jewel lies, And they are fools who roam; The world has nothing to bestow, From our own selves our bliss must flow, And that dear hut,—our home.
** [[Nathaniel Cotton]], ''The Fireside''.

* Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, And in their pleasure takes joy, even as though t'were his own.
** [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]], ''Distichs''.

* ''Das beste Glück, des Lebens schönste Kraft Ermattet endlich.''
** The highest happiness, the purest joys of life, wear out at last.
** [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]], ''Iphigenia auf Tauris'', IV. 5. 9.

* Now happiness consists in activity: such is the constitution of our nature: it is a running stream, and not a stagnant pool.
** [[John Mason Good]], ''The Book of Nature'', Series III, Lecture VII.

* The loss of wealth is loss of dirt, As sages in all times assert; The happy man's without a shirt.
** [[John Heywood]], ''Be Merry Friends''.

* And there is ev'n a happiness That makes the heart afraid.
** [[Thomas Hood]], ''Ode to Melancholy''.

* ''Fuge magna, licet sub paupere tecto Reges et regum vita procurrere amicos.''
** Avoid greatness; in a cottage there may be more real happiness than kings or their favorites enjoy.
** [[Horace]], ''Epistles'', I. 10. 32.

* ''Non possidentem multa vocaveris Recte beatum; rectius occupat Nomen beati, qui Deorum Muneribus sapienter uti, Duramque callet pauperiem pati, Pejusque leto flagitium timet.''
** You will not rightly call him a happy man who possesses much; he more rightly earns the name of happy who is skilled in wisely using the gifts of the gods, and in suffering hard poverty, and who fears disgrace as worse than death.
** [[Horace]], ''Carmina'', IX, Book 4. 9. 45.

* That Action is best which procures the greatest Happiness for the greatest Numbers; and that worst, which, in like manner, occasions misery.
** [[Frances Hutcheson]], ''Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue'' (1725). Treatise II, Section 3. An Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil.

* Upon the road to Romany It's stay, friend, stay! There's lots o' love and lots o' time To linger on the way; Poppies for the twilight, Roses for the noon, It's happy goes as lucky goes, To Romany in June.
** [[Wallace Irwin]], ''From Romany to Rome''.

* Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.
** [[Samuel Johnson]], reported in [[James Boswell]], ''Life of Johnson'' (1766).

* ''Ducimus autem Hos quoque felices, qui ferre incommoda vitæ, Nec jactare jugum vita didicere magistra.''
** We deem those happy who, from the experience of life, have learned to bear its ills, without being overcome by them.
** [[Juvenal]], ''Satires'', XII. 20.

* ''On n'est jamais si heureux, ni si malheureux, qu'on se l'imagine.''
** We are never so happy, nor so unhappy, as we suppose ourselves to be.
** [[François de La Rochefoucauld]], ''Maximes''.

* A sound Mind in a sound Body, is a short but full description of a happy State in this World.
** [[John Locke]], ''Thoughts Concerning Education''.

* Happiness, to some elation; Is to others, mere stagnation.
** [[Amy Lowell]], ''Happiness''.

* Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, We are happy now because God wills it.
** [[James Russell Lowell]], ''The Vision of Sir Launfal'', Prelude to Part I, line 61.

* ''Sive ad felices vadam post funera campos, Seu ferar ardentem rapidi Phlegethontis ad undam, Nec sine te felix ero, nec tecum miser unquam.''
** Heaven would not be Heaven were thy soul not with mine, nor would Hell be Hell were our souls together.
** [[Baptista Mantuanus]], ''Eclogue'', III. 108.

*'' Neminem, dum adhuc viveret, beatum dici debere arbitrabatur.''
** He (Solon) considered that no one ought to be called happy as long as he was alive.
** Valerius Maximus, Book VII. 2. Ext. 2. Same in Sophocles—Œdipus Rex. End. Herodotus—Clio. 32. Solon to Cræsus. Repeated by Cræsus to Cyrus when on his funeral pyre, thus obtaining his pardon.

* And feel that I am happier than I know.
** [[John Milton]], ''[[Paradise Lost]]'' (1667; 1674), Book VIII, line 282.

* No eye to watch and no tongue to wound us, All earth forgot, and all heaven around us.
** [[Thomas Moore]], ''Come o'er the Sea''.

* The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; The wise grows it under his feet.
** [[James Oppenheim]], ''The Wise''.

* ''Dicique beatus Ante obitum nemo supremaque funera debet.''
** Before he is dead and buried no one ought to be called happy.
** [[Ovid]], ''Metamorphoses'', Book III. 136.

* Thus we never live, but we hope to live; and always disposing ourselves to be happy, it is inevitable that we never become so.
** [[Blaise Pascal]], ''Thoughts'', Chapter V, Section I.

* Said Scopas of Thessaly, "But we rich men count our felicity and happiness to lie in these superfluities, and not in those necessary things."
** [[Plutarch]], ''Morals'', Volume II. Of the Love of Wealth.

* ''Le bonheur des méchants comme un torrent s'écoule.''
** The happiness of the wicked flows away as a torrent.
** [[Jean Racine]], ''Athalie'', II. 7.

* Happiness lies in the consciousness we have of it, and by no means in the way the future keeps its promises.
** [[George Sand]], ''Handsome Lawrence'', Chapter III.

* ''Des Menschen Wille, das ist sein Glück.''
** The will of a man is his happiness.
** [[Friedrich Schiller]], ''Wallenstein's Lager'', VII. 25.

* O mother, mother, what is bliss? O mother, what is bale? Without my William what were heaven, Or with him what were hell?
** [[Walter Scott]], translation of a ballad of Bürger's.

* ''Non potest quisquam beate degere, qui se tantum intuetur, qui omnia ad utilitates suas convertit; alteri vivas oportet, si vis tibi vivere.''
** No man can live happily who regards himself alone, who turns everything to his own advantage. Thou must live for another, if thou wishest to live for thyself.
** [[Seneca]], ''Epistolæ Ad Lucilium'', XLVIII.

* Ye seek for happiness—alas, the day! Ye find it not in luxury nor in gold, Nor in the fame, nor in the envied sway For which, O willing slaves to Custom old, Severe taskmistress! ye your hearts have sold.
** [[Percy Bysshe Shelley]], ''Revolt of Islam'', Canto XI, Stanza 17.

* Magnificent spectacle of human happiness.
** [[Sydney Smith]], ''America'', ''Edinburgh Review,'' (July, 1824).

* Mankind are always happier for having been happy; so that if you make them happy now, you make them happy twenty years hence by the memory of it.
** [[Sydney Smith]], ''Lecture on Benevolent Affections''.

* Be happy, but be happy through piety.
** [[Anne Louise Germaine de Staël]], ''Corinne'' (1807), Book XX, Chapter III.

* Wealth I ask not, hope nor love, Nor a friend to know me; All I ask, the heavens above, And the road below me.
** [[Robert Louis Stevenson]], ''The Vagabond''.

* For it stirs the blood in an old man's heart; And makes his pulses fly, To catch the thrill of a happy voice, And the light of a pleasant eye.
** [[Nathaniel Parker Willis]], ''Saturday Afternoon'', Stanza 1.

* True happiness is to no spot confined. If you preserve a firm and constant mind, 'Tis here, 'tis everywhere.
** [[John Huddlestone Wynne]], ''History of Ireland''.

* We're charm'd with distant views of happiness, But near approaches make the prospect less.
** [[Thomas Yalden]], ''Against Enjoyment'', line 23.

===''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895)===
:Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895).

* The sacrifices required in the Christian life are necessary to emancipate the soul, and raise it above its servile dependence on condition. They are losses of mere happiness, and for just that reason they are preparations of joy.
** [[Horace Bushnell]], p. 297.

* Happiness is not the end of duty, it is a constituent of it. It is in it and of it; not an equivalent, but an element.
** [[Henry Giles]], p. 297.

* It is a great truth, wonderful as it is undeniable, that all our happiness — temporal, spiritual, and eternal — consists in one thing; namely, in resigning ourselves to God, and in leaving ourselves with Him, to do with us and in us just as He pleases.
** [[Madame Guyon]], p. 297.

* '''There is something better for us in the world than happiness. We will take happiness as the incident of this, gladly and gratefully.''' We will add a thousand fold to the happiness of the present in the fearlessness of the future which it brings; but we will not place happiness first, and thus cloud our heads with doubts, and fill our hearts with discontent. In the blackest soils 'grow the richest flowers, and the loftiest and strongest trees spring heavenward among the rocks.
** [[Josiah Gilbert Holland]], p. 296.

* When we are not too anxious about happiness and unhappiness, but devote ourselves to the strict and unsparing performance of duty, then happiness comes of itself — nay, even springs from the midst of a life of troubles and anxieties and privations.
** [[Wilhelm von Humboldt]], p. 297.

* '''In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle. He who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind do of colors.'''
** [[Horace Mann]], p. 297.

* '''Happiness is neither within us nor without us, it is the union of ourselves with God.'''
** [[Blaise Pascal]], p. 297.

* The soul's calm sunshine.
** [[Alexander Pope]], p. 298.

* '''Happiness is not perfected until it is shared.'''
** [[Jane Porter]], p. 298.

* Brethren, happiness is not our being's end and aim. The Christian's aim is perfection, not happiness; and every one of the sons of God must have something of that spirit which marked his Master.
** [[Frederick William Robertson]], p. 296.

* So long as you do not quarrel with sin, you will never be a truly happy man.
** [[J. C. Ryle]], p. 297.

* '''Beware what earth calls happiness; beware All joys, but joys that never can expire.'''
** [[Edward Young]], p. 298.

==Unsourced==
{{Unsourced|section}}

* There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way.
** [[Buddha]]

* Happiness is not an island, but a hill.
** [[George Catlin]]

* I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy as long as I can paint.
** [[Frida Kahlo]]

* It is only a slight exaggeration to say that happiness is the experience of spending time with people you love and who love you.
** [[w:Daniel Kahneman|Daniel Kahneman]]

==External links==
{{wikipedia}}
{{wikiversity|Happiness}}
* [http://www.happiness.org/ Happiness Foundation]
* [http://worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl/ The World Database of Happiness]
* [http://www.thehappinessshow.com/ The Happiness Show]
*[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pleasure/ The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry "Pleasure"]
* [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2099-1793873_1,00.html The Sunday Times Magazine]

*[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/happiness_formula/default.stm BBC NEWS - Happiness Formula]

[[Category:Emotions]]
[[Category:Virtues]]

[[cs:Štěstí]]
[[de:Glücklichkeit]]
[[el:Ευτυχία]]
[[es:Felicidad]]
[[eo:Feliĉo]]
[[fr:Bonheur]]
[[hr:Sreća]]
[[is:Hamingja]]
[[it:Felicità]]
[[he:שמחה]]
[[lt:Laimė]]
[[hu:Boldogság]]
[[nl:Geluk]]
[[ja:幸福]]
[[no:Lykke]]
[[nn:Lukke]]
[[pl:Szczęście]]
[[pt:Felicidade]]
[[ru:Счастье]]
[[sk:Šťastie]]
[[sl:Radost]]
[[sv:Lycka]]
[[uk:Щастя]]
[[zh:幸福]]

God

2012-05-09T13:01:03Z

Nobody60: /* External links */

[[Image:Blake_ancient_of_days.jpg|300px|thumb|right|One boy would not get it through his head that for all adults God is not an old man in a white beard sitting on a cloud... ~ [[Madeleine L'Engle]] ]]
'''[[w:God|God]]''' is a term used in referring to various notions of a supreme being, often described to be the ruler or creator of the universe, or immanent within it.

= A - Z =
== A ==
[[File:Carina Nebula by ESO.jpg|144px|thumb|right|In the Beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. ~ [[Douglas Adams]] ]]
:Quotations listed alphabetically by author or work.
[[File:TenCommandmentsAustinStateCapitol.jpg|144px|thumb|right|I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. ~ [[Susan B. Anthony]] ]]
[[File:Avicenna dushanbe2.jpg|144px|thumb|right|God, the supreme being, is neither circumscribed by space, nor touched by time; he cannot be found in a particular direction, and his essence cannot change. ~ [[Avicenna]] ]]

* '''In the Beginning, the [[Universe]] was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.'''
** [[Douglas Adams]], in ''[[w:The Restaurant at the End of the Universe|The Restaurant at the End of the Universe]]'' (1980), Chapter 1

* When we say God is a spirit, we know what we mean, as well as we do when we say that the pyramids of Egypt are matter. Let us be content, therefore, to believe him to be a spirit, that is, an essence that we know nothing of, in which originally and necessarily reside all energy, all power, all capacity, all activity, all wisdom, all goodness.
** [[John Adams]], in a letter to [[Thomas Jefferson]] (17 January 1820)

* Nearer, my God, to Thee— Nearer to Thee— E'en though it be a cross That raiseth me; Still all my song shall be Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee!
** [[Sarah Flower Adams]], ''Nearer, my God, to Thee!'' (c. 1841). An article in Notes and Queries states that the words were written by her sister, Mrs. Byrdes Flower Adams, and the music only by Sarah Flower Adams.

* '''Never place a period where God has placed a comma.'''
** [[Gracie Allen]], in her last letter to [[George Burns]], as quoted in ''Two Minutes for God : Quick Fixes for the Spirit'' (2007) by Peter B. Panagore, p. 73; this was later used in a slogan for the United Church of Christ: '''Never place a period where God has placed a comma. God Is Still Speaking.'''

* Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends.
** [[Woody Allen]], in ''Getting Even'' (1971)

* If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name in a Swiss bank.
** [[Woody Allen]], in ''[[w:Without Feathers|Without Feathers]]'' (1975)

* The important thing, I think, is not to be bitter... if it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he is evil. I think that the worst thing you could say is that he is, basically, an under-achiever. If God exists, I hope he has a good excuse.
** [[Woody Allen]], in ''[[w:Love and Death|Love and Death]]'' (1975); also quoted in ''What Do Jews Believe? : The Customs and Culture of Modern Judaism'' (2007) by Edward Kessler, p. 66

* To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.
** [[Woody Allen]], in ''[[w:Stardust Memories|Stardust Memories]]'' (1980)

* How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?
** [[Woody Allen]], as quoted in ''Love, Sex, Death & The Meaning of Life : The Films of Woody Allen'' (2001) by Foster Hirsch, p. 50

* '''I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.'''
** [[Susan B. Anthony]], in an address to the National American Woman Suffrage Association (1896)

* ''Ordina l'uomo, e dio dispone.''
** Man proposes, and God disposes.
** [[Ludovico Ariosto]], ''Orlando Furioso'' (1516), Chapter XLVI. 35.

* '''If you comprehend, it is not God.'''
**[[Augustine of Hippo]], ''Sermon'' 52, 16

* ''Deus scitur melius nesciendo.''
** God is best known in not knowing him.
** [[Augustine of Hippo]], ''De Ordine'', II, 16.

* '''A God who cannot smile could not have created this humorous universe.'''
** [[Sri Aurobindo]], in ''Thoughts and Aphorisms''

* '''God, the supreme being, is neither circumscribed by [[space]], nor touched by [[time]]; he cannot be found in a particular direction, and his essence cannot change.''' The secret conversation is thus entirely spiritual; it is a direct encounter between God and the [[soul]], abstracted from all material constraints.
** [[Avicenna]], as quoted in ''366 Readings From Islam'' (2000), edited by Robert Van der Weyer

== B ==

* I reverse the phrase of [[Voltaire]], and say that if God would have existed, it would be necessary to abolish Him.
** [[Mikhail Bakunin]] in "On God and the State"

* '''God was a clever idea ... The human race came up with a winner there.'''
** [[J. G. Ballard]], as quoted in [http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/sep/06/fiction.jgballard "The benign catastrophist" by Susie Mackenzie in ''The Guardian'' (6 September 2003)]

* '''The glory of God is not contingent on man's good will, but all existence subserves his purposes.''' The system of the universe is as a celestial poem, whose beauty is from all eternity, and must not be marred by human interpolations. '''Things proceed as they were ordered, in their nice, and well-adjusted, and perfect harmony; so that as the hand of the skilful artist gathers music from the harp-strings, history calls it forth from the well-tuned chords of time.''' Not that this harmony can be heard during the tumult of action. Philosophy comes after events, and gives the reason of them, and describes the nature of their results. The great mind of collective man may, one day, so improve in self-consciousness as to interpret the present and foretell the future; but as yet, the end of what is now happening, though we ourselves partake in it, seems to fall out by chance. '''All is nevertheless one whole; individuals, families, peoples, the race, march in accord with the Divine will; and when any part of the destiny of humanity is fulfilled, we see the ways of Providence vindicated. The antagonisms of imperfect matter and the perfect idea, of liberty and necessary law, become reconciled. What seemed irrational confusion, appears as the web woven by light, liberty and love.''' But this is not perceived till a great act in the drama of life is finished. The prayer of the patriarch, when he desired to behold the Divinity face to face, was denied; but he was able to catch a glimpse of Jehovah, after He had passed by; and so it fares with our search for Him in the wrestlings of the world. '''It is when the hour of conflict is over, that history comes to a right understanding of the strife, and is ready to exclaim: "Lo! God is here, and we knew it not." '''
** [[George Bancroft]] ''Literary and Historical Miscellanies'' (1855), p. 491

* If by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot.
** [[Samuel Beckett]], on the title of one of his most famous plays, ''[[w:Waiting for Godot|Waiting for Godot]]'', as quoted in ''The Essential Samuel Beckett : An Illustrated Biography'', by Enoch Brater (revised edition, 2003), p.75

* How many questions arise in this place! Constantly the question comes up: Where was God in those days? Why was he silent? How could he permit this endless slaughter, this triumph of evil? . . . We must continue to cry out humbly yet insistently to God: Rouse yourself! Do not forget mankind, your creature!
** [[Pope Benedict XVI]], who visited the former concentration camp at [[Auschwitz]], Poland, on May 28, 2006. Quoted in ''[[w:The Watchtower|The Watchtower]]'' magazine, in the article: ''“Why, Lord, Did You Remain Silent?”'', May 15, 2007.

* '''[[w:Zeus|Zeus]]''', ''n''. The chief of Grecian gods, adored by the Romans as [[w:Jupiter|Jupiter]] and by the modern Americans as God, Gold, Mob and Dog. Some explorers who have touched upon the shores of America, and one who professes to have penetrated a considerable distance to the interior, have thought that these four names stand for as many distinct deities, but in his monumental work on Surviving Faiths, Frumpp insists that the natives are monotheists, each having no other god than himself, whom he worships under many sacred names.
** [[Ambrose Bierce]], in ''The Cynic's Word Book'' (1906), later retitled ''[[w:The Devil's Dictionary|The Devil's Dictionary]]''

* '''Only what is fated to die is capable of living. Only what dies lives.''' Why do you think [[Jesus|Christ]] was killed? They killed him to prove that he wasn’t a god. But in killing him, they immortalized the perishable and transformed man into a god.
** [[Giannina Braschi]] in "Empire of Dreams"

* That we devote ourselves to God is seen In living just as though no God there were.
** [[Robert Browning]], ''Paracelsus'' (1835), Part I.

* '''God is the perfect [[poet]], Who in his person acts his own creations.'''
** [[Robert Browning]], ''Paracelsus'' (1835), Part II.

* '''God's in His [[Heaven]] — All's right with the world!'''
** [[Robert Browning]], ''Pippa Passes'' (1841), Part I.

* All service is the same with God, With God, whose puppets, best and worst, Are we: there is no last nor first.
** [[Robert Browning]], ''Pippa Passes'' (1841), Part IV.

* '''All names of God remain hallowed because they have been used not only to speak ''of'' God but also to speak ''to'' him.'''
** [[Martin Buber]], in ''[[w:I and Thou|I and Thou]]'' (1923)

* '''Some would deny any legitimate use of the word God because it has been misused so much. Certainly it is the most burdened of all human words. Precisely for that reason it is the most imperishable and unavoidable.''' And how much weight has all erroneous talk about God's nature and works (although there never has been nor can be any such talk that is not erroneous) compared with the one truth that all men who have addressed God really meant him? For '''whoever pronounces the word God and really means Thou, addresses, no matter what his delusion, the true Thou of his life that cannot be restricted by any other and to whom he stands in a relationship that includes all others.'''
** [[Martin Buber]], in ''[[w:I and Thou|I and Thou]]'' (1923)

* God's merits are so transcendent that it is not surprising his faults should be in reasonable proportion.
** [[Samuel Butler]] "Rebelliousness" in ''Note-Books'' (1912)

* '''There is no god but God! — to prayer — lo! God is great!'''
** [[Lord Byron]], ''[[Childe Harold's Pilgrimage]]'', Canto II (1812), Stanza 59, this is a translation of standard Islamic exclamations.

== C ==

* '''Except during my childhood, when I was probably influenced by [[Michelangelo]]'s Sistine Chapel depiction of God with a flowing white beard, I have never tried to project the Creator in any kind of human likeness. The vociferous debates about whether God is male or female seem ridiculous to me.''' I think of God as an omnipotent and omniscient presence, a spirit that permeates the universe, the essence of truth, nature, being, and life. To me, these are profound and indescribable concepts that seem to be trivialized when expressed in words.
** [[Jimmy Carter]] in ''Living Faith'' (2001), p. 222

* God: a disease we imagine we are cured of because no one dies of it nowadays.
** [[Emile Cioran]], ''The Trouble with Being Born''

* God never meant that man should scale the Heavens By strides of human wisdom. In his works, Though wondrous, he commands us in his word To seek him rather where his mercy shines.
** [[William Cowper]], ''The Task'' (1785), Book III, line 217.

* But who with filial confidence inspired, Can lift to Heaven an unpresumptuous eye, And smiling say, My Father made them all.
** [[William Cowper]], ''The Task'' (1785), Book V. The Winter Morning Walk, line 745.

* Acquaint thyself with God, if thou would'st taste His works. Admitted once to his embrace, Thou shalt perceive that thou wast blind before: Thine eye shall be instructed; and thine heart Made pure shall relish with divine delight Till then unfelt, what hands divine have wrought.
** [[William Cowper]], ''The Task'' (1785), Book V, line 782.

== D ==
* A man who recognizes no God is probably placing an inordinate value on himself.
** [[Robertson Davies]] in ''Conversations''

* The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
** [[Richard Dawkins]] in ''The God Delusion''

[[Image:Stellar spire eagle nebula.jpg|144px|thumb|right|It is solemn to remember that Vastness — Is but the Shadow of the Brain which casts it — ~ [[Emily Dickinson]] ]]
* They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse.
** [[Emily Dickinson]] Letter to Mrs. J. G. Holland [L551] (Spring 1878)

* It is solemn to remember that Vastness — Is but the Shadow of the Brain which casts it — All things swept sole away This — is immensity —
** [[Emily Dickinson]] Letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson [L551] (1881)

* If there is a supreme being, he's crazy.
** [[Marlene Dietrich]], as quoted in ''Rave'' magazine (November 1986)

* God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world.
** [[Paul Dirac]], as quoted in ''The Cosmic Code : Quantum Physics As The Language Of Nature'' (1982) by Heinz R. Pagels, p. 295; also in ''Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac : Reminiscences about a Great Physicist'' (1990) edited by Behram N. Kursunoglu and Eugene Paul Wigner, p. xv

== E ==

[[File:The Earth seen from Apollo 17.jpg|144px|thumb|right|God created men to enjoy, not destroy, the fruits of the earth and of their own toil. ~ [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]] ]]

* If we pray to God as a corporeal person, this will prevent us from relinquishing the human doubts and fears which attend such a belief, and so we cannot grasp the wonders wrought by infinite, incorporeal Love, to whom all things are possible.
** [[w:Mary Baker Eddy|Mary Baker Eddy]] in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures"

* I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him.
** [[Albert Einstein]], letter to Edgar Meyer (2 January 1915)

* It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious, then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
** [[Albert Einstein]] from a letter to an atheist, written in English (24 March 1954). It is included in ''Albert Einstein: The Human Side'', edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman

* My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment.
** [[Albert Einstein]], letter to M. Berkowitz (25 October 1950)

* These proposals spring, without ulterior purpose or political passion, from our calm conviction that the hunger for peace is in the hearts of all peoples--those of Russia and of China no less than of our own country. They conform to our firm faith that '''God created men to enjoy, not destroy, the fruits of the earth and of their own toil.'''
** [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]] in his [[s:The Chance for Peace|The Chance for Peace]] speech shortly after taking office and following the death of [[Joseph Stalin]].

* God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.
** ''[[w:Exodus|Exodus]]'' 3:14 (King James Version)
** Variant: God said to Moses, 'I will be what I will be'

== F ==

* If you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
** "God" in ''[[Futurama]]''

== G ==
[[File:Gandhi smiling 1942.jpg |144px|thumb|right|It is beyond my power to induce in you a belief in God. There are certain things which are self proved and certain which are not proved at all. ~ [[Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi|Mahatma Gandhi]] ]]
[[File:Goyathlay-x.jpeg|144px|thumb|right|I cannot think we are useless or Usen would not have created us. He created all tribes of men and certainly had a righteous purpose in creating each. ~ [[Geronimo]] ]]

* I looked and looked but I didn't see God.
** Attributed to [[Yuri Gagarin]] after becoming the first person to orbit the Earth, as quoted in ''To Rise from Earth'' (1996) by Wayne Lee; the authenticity of this remark is disputed; [http://www.interfax-religion.ru/orthodoxy/?act=interview&div=73&domain=1 Colonel Valentin Petrov stated in 2006] that the cosmonaut never said such words, and that the quote originated from [[Nikita Khrushchev]]'s speech at the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU about the state's anti-religion campaign, saying "Gagarin flew into space, but didn't see any god there."
** Sometimes misquoted as "I see no God up here" as if he said this in space, but there are no transcripts or recordings indicating that he ever did.

* '''I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.'''
** [[Galileo Galilei]]. in his [[w:Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina|Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina]] (1615), an [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/galileo-tuscany.html essay published in 1615], in response to enquiries of [[w:Christina of Lorraine|Christina of Tuscany]], as quoted in ''Aspects of Western Civilization : Problems and Sources in History'' (1988) by Perry McAdow Rogers, p. 53
** Variant translation: '''I do not think it is necessary to believe that the same God who has given us our senses, reason, and intelligence wished us to abandon their use, giving us by some other means the information that we could gain through them.'''

* Mathematics is the language in which God wrote the universe.
** Attributed to [[Galileo Galilei]] in ''Statistics: Concepts and Applications'' (1994) by Harry Frank and Steven C. Althoen, p. xxi

* '''It is beyond my power to induce in you a belief in God. There are certain things which are self proved and certain which are not proved at all.''' The existence of God is like a geometrical axiom. It may be beyond our heart grasp. I shall not talk of an intellectual grasp. Intellectual attempts are more or less failures, as a rational explanation cannot give you the faith in a living God. For it is a thing beyond the grasp of reason. It transcends reason. There are numerous phenomena from which you can reason out the existence of God, but I shall not insult your intelligence by offering you a rational explanation of that type. '''I would have you brush aside all rational explanations and begin with a simple childlike faith in God. If I exist, God exists. With me it is a necessity of my being as it is with millions. They may not be able to talk about it, but from their life you can see that it is a part of their life. I am only asking you to restore the belief that has been undermined.''' In order to do so, you have to unlearn a lot of literature that dazzles your intelligence and throws you off your feet. Start with the faith which is also a token of humility and an admission that we know nothing, that we are less than atoms in this universe. '''We are less than atoms, I say, because the atom obeys the law of its being, whereas we in the insolence of our ignorance deny the law of nature. But I have no argument to address to those who have no faith.'''
** [[Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi]] in ''Young India'' (24 September 1931); also in [http://www.archive.org/details/teachingsofmahat029222mbp ''Teachings Of Mahatma Gandhi'' (1945), edited by Jag Parvesh Chander, p. 458]

* People are even more reluctant to admit that man explains nothing, than they were to admit that God explains nothing.
** [[Ernest Gellner]], in ''Legitimation of Belief'' (1974), p. 99

* '''I cannot think we are useless or Usen would not have created us. He created all tribes of men and certainly had a righteous purpose in creating each.'''
** [[Geronimo]], as quoted in ''Geronimo's Story of His Life'' (1907) as told to S.M. Barrett in 1905 and 1906, "Usen" is the Apache word for God.

* Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious beliefs.
** [[Stephen Jay Gould]], in "Impeaching a Self-Appointed Judge" in ''Scientific American'' (July 1992)

== H ==

* Give according to your means, or God will make your means according to your giving.
** Reverend [[John Hall (Presbyterian pastor)|John Hall]], reported in Tryon Edwards, ''A Dictionary of Thoughts'' (1908), p. 194.

* Futurist [[w:Aldo Palazzeschi|Aldo Palazzeschi]]... exhorts us in ''L'antidolore'' (1913) to laugh heartily at the mortality built into the plan of creation not out of spite, as has traditionally been the case, but because suffering and death are nothing but pranks of the prime trickster, God. If anything it is the devil who is the spirit of gravity, and it is in taking him seriously that we plummet from grace.
** [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3806/is_200605/ai_n17220907/print Thomas Harrison, in "Laughter and the Tree Of Knowledge" in the ''Romanic Review'' (May-November 2006)]

* I've never understood how God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion by faith — it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe.
** "Jubal Harshaw", in ''[[Stranger in a Strange Land]]'' by [[Robert A. Heinlein]]''

* How much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in his divine system of creation?
** [[Joseph Heller]], ''Catch 22''

* Restore to God His due in tithe and time; A tithe purloin'd cankers the whole estate.
** [[George Herbert]], ''The Temple'' (1633), ''The Church Porch'', Stanza 65.

* Consciousness is Gods' gift to mankind.
** Dr. [[w:Albert Hofmann|Albert Hofmann]] discoverer of LSD. (15 January 2006)

* God only speaks to those who understand the language
** Dr. [[w:Albert Hofmann|Albert Hofmann]] discoverer of LSD. (15 January 2006)

== I ==
* Would God give a bird wings and make it a crime to fly? Would he give me brains and make it a crime to think? Any God that would damn one of his children for the expression of his honest thought wouldn't make a decent thief. When I read a book and don't believe it, I ought to say so. I will do so and take the consequences like a man.
** [[Robert Ingersoll]] (14 October 1879)

* '''God is dead. [[Karl Marx|Marx]] is dead. And I don’t feel so well myself.'''
** [[Eugène Ionesco]], as quoted in ''Jewish American Literature : A Norton Anthology'' (2000) by Jules Chametzky, "Jewish Humor", p. 318

* I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me: That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create calamity: I the LORD do all these things.
** ''[[Isaiah]]'' 45:5-7 (King James Version)
** Variant: I am the Lord and there is no other. Who forms light and creates darkness, Who makes peace and creates calamity; I am the Lord, who makes all these.

== J ==

* The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)

* It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], Query 17 in ''Notes on the State of Virginia'' (1781-1785)

* Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], Query 18 in ''Notes on the State of Virginia'' (1781-1785)

* Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], in a letter to his nephew Peter Carr from Paris, France, (10 August 1787).

* No historical fact is better established, than that the doctrine of one God, pure and uncompounded, was that of the early ages of Christianity … Nor was the unity of the Supreme Being ousted from the Christian creed by the force of reason, but by the sword of civil government, wielded at the will of the fanatic [[w:Athanasius|Athanasius]].
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], in a letter to James Smith (1822)

* The doctrines of [[Jesus]] are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man.
: 1. That there is one only God, and he all perfect.
: 2. That there is a future state of rewards and punishments.
: 3. That to love God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself, is the sum of religion.
::* [[Thomas Jefferson]], in a letter to Benjamin Waterhouse, (26 June 1822)

* You cannot serve both God and [[w:Mammon|Mammon]].
**[[Jesus]], in ''Matthew'' 6:24

* Some foolish men declare that creator made the world. The doctrine that the world was created is ill advised and should be rejected. If God created the world, where was he before the creation? If you say he was transcendent then and needed no support, where is he now? How could God have made this world without any raw material? If you say that he made this first, and then the world, you are faced with an endless regression. If you declare that this raw material arose naturally you fall into another fallacy, For the whole universe might thus have been its own creator, and have arisen quite naturally. If God created the world by an act of his own will, without any raw material, then it is just his will and nothing else — and who will believe this silly nonsense? If he is ever perfect and complete, how could the will to create have arisen in him? If, on the other hand, he is not perfect, he could no more create the universe than a potter could. If he is form-less, action-less and all-embracing, how could he have created the world? Such a soul, devoid of all morality, would have no desire to create anything. If he is perfect, he does not strive for the three aims of man, so what advantage would he gain by creating the universe? If you say that he created to no purpose because it was his nature to do so, then God is pointless. If he created in some kind of sport, it was the sport of a foolish child, leading to trouble. If he created because of the karma of embodied beings [acquired in a previous creation] He is not the Almighty Lord, but subordinate to something else. If out of love for living beings and need of them he made the world, why did he not take creation wholly blissful free from misfortune? If he were transcendent he would not create, for he would be free: Nor if involved in transmigration, for then he would not be almighty. Thus the doctrine that the world was created by God makes no sense at all, And God commits great sin in slaying the children whom he himself created. If you say that he slays only to destroy evil beings, why did he create such beings in the first place? Good men should combat the believer in divine creation, maddened by an evil doctrine. Know that the world is uncreated, as time itself is, without beginning or end, and is based on the principles, life and rest. Uncreated and indestructible, it endures under the compulsion of its own nature.
** [[w:Jinasena|Jinasena]] (9th Century) in the ''[[w:Mahapurana (Jainism)|Mahāpurāna]]'', as translated in ''Primal Myths'' (1979) by Barbara Sproul

* The very pure spirit does not bother about the regard of others or human respect, but communes inwardly with God, alone and in solitude as to all forms, and with delightful tranquility, for the knowledge of God is received in divine silence.
** [[John of the Cross]] in ''The Sayings of Light and Love'' as translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (1991)

*God is a dark night to man in this life.
** [[St. John of the Cross]], ''The Ascent of Mt. Carmel'', I, 2, 1

* For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life
** John 3:16

== K ==

* The Christian God is spirit and Christianity is spirit, and there is discord between the flesh and the spirit but the flesh is not the sensuous-it is the selfish. In this sense, even the spiritual can become sensuous-for example, if a person took his spiritual gifts in vain, he would then be carnal. And of course I know that it is not necessary for the Christian that Christ must have been physically beautiful; and it would be grievous-for a reason different from the one you give-because if beauty were some essential, how the believer would long to see him; but from all this it by no means follows that the sensuous is annihilated in Christianity.
** [[Soren Kierkegaard]] ''Either/Or Part II'', Hong p. 50 1843

* If everything is assumed to be in order with regard to the Holy Scriptures-what then? Has the person who did not believe come a single step closer to faith? No, not a single step. Faith does not result from straightforward scholarly deliberation, nor does it come directly; on the contrary, in this objectivity one loses that infinite, personal, impassioned interestedness, which is the condition of faith, the everywhere and nowhere in which faith can come into existence. Has the person who did believe gained anything with regard to the power and strength of faith? No, not in the least; in this prolix knowledge, in this certainty that lurks at faith’s door and craves for it, he is rather in such a precarious position that much effort, much fear and trembling will be needed lest he fall into temptation and confuse knowledge with faith. Whereas up to now faith has been a beneficial taskmaster in uncertainty, but it would be its worst enemy in this certainty. If passion is taken away, faith no longer exists, and certainty and passion do not hitch up as a team.
** ''Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments'', Hong, p. 29 (1846)

* God is cruel, sometimes he makes you live.
** ''Desperation'', by [[Stephen King]]

* God said take what you want...and pay for it.
** "Johnny Marinville" in ''Desperation'', by [[Stephen King]]

== L ==
[[File:Halo solaire 21112006 003.jpg|144px|thumb|right|The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive them in advance. ~ [[Abraham Lincoln]]]]

* It isn't always the middle-aged who refuse to listen, who will not even try to understand another point of view. One boy would not get it through his head that for all adults God is not an old man in a white beard sitting on a cloud. As far as this boy was concerned, this old gentleman was the adult's god, and therefore he did not believe in God.
** [[Madeleine L'Engle]] in ''The Crosswicks Journal, Book One : A Circle of Quiet'' (1972)

* ''Homo proponit et Deus disponit.''
** And governeth alle goode virtues.
** [[William Langland]], ''Vision of Piers Ploughman'' (Ed. 1824), Volume II, p. 427, line 13,984. [[John Gerson]] is credited with same. Saying quoted in ''Chronicles of Battel Abbey'' (1066 to 1177). Translation by Lower, 1851, p. 27. [[Homer]], ''Iliad'', XVII. 515. [[Pindar]], ''Olymp'', XIII. 149. [[Demosthenes]], ''De Corona.'', 209. [[Plautus]], ''Bacchid.'' I, 2, 36. [[Ammianus Marcellinus]], ''Hist'', XXV. 3. [[Francois Fenelon]], ''Sermon on the Epiphany'', 1685. [[Montaigne]], ''Essay'', Book II, Chapter XXXVII. [[Seneca]], ''Epistles'', 107. [[Cleanthus]], ''Fragment''. [[Cervantes]], ''Don Quixote'', I. 22. [[Dante]], ''Paradise'', VIII, line 134. [[Friedrich Schiller]], ''Wallenstein's Death'', I, 7. 32. [[Ordericus Vitalis]], ''Ecclesiastica Historia'', Book III (1075).

* God is only a great imaginative experience.
** [[D.H. Lawrence]], ''Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence'' (1936) pt. 4, edited by E. McDonald

* God is a concept by which we measure our pain.
** [[John Lennon]], ''God'' (1970)

* Is it not better to place a question mark upon a problem while seeking an answer than to put the label "God" there and consider the matter solved? Does not the word "God" only confuse and make more difficult the solution by assuming a conclusion that is utterly groundless and palpably absurd?
** [[Joseph Lewis]], ''The Philosophy of Atheism''

* I am much indebted to the good christian people of the country for their constant prayers and consolations; and to no one of them, more than to yourself. '''The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive them in advance.''' We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible [[w:American Civil War|war]] long before this; but God knows best, and has ruled otherwise. We shall yet acknowledge His wisdom and our own error therein. Meanwhile we must work earnestly in the best light He gives us, trusting that so working still conduces to the great ends He ordains. Surely He intends some great good to follow this mighty convulsion, which no mortal could make, and no mortal could stay.
** [[Abraham Lincoln]]'s Letter to Eliza Gurney (4 September 1864); quoted in Roy P. Basler, ed., ''The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 7'' (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 535

* An' you've gut to git up airly Ef you want to take in God.
** [[James Russell Lowell]], ''The Biglow Papers'' (1848), First Series. No. 1, Stanza 5.

== M ==
[[File:Thanksgiving chapel interior.jpg|144px|thumb|right|To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that [[Love]] is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name. ~ [[Thomas Merton]] ]]

* What in me is dark, Illumine; what is low, raise and support; That to the height of this great argument I may assert eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men.
** [[John Milton]], ''[[Paradise Lost]]'' (1667; 1674), Book I, line 22.

* These are thy glorious works, Parent of good.
** [[John Milton]], ''[[Paradise Lost]]'' (1667; 1674), Book V, line 153.

* Bright and clear mind — that we call God.
** [[Namboku Mizuno]], ''Food Governs Your Destiny'', p. 103

* '''God is living in people's hearts, and in God there is no distinction or rank. Therefore God lives in everyone.''' That's why traditionally it is said that all deities are the same. They say God comes to a person who is very humble and honest.
** [[Namboku Mizuno]], ''Food Governs Your Destiny'', p. 105

* If, it was natural to reason, God punishes men with eternal torment, it is surely lawful for men to use doses of it in a good cause.
** [[Joseph McCabe]] in ''A History of Torture''.

* '''Creator — A [[Comedy|comedian]] whose audience is afraid to laugh.'''
** [[H.L. Mencken]], ''A Mencken Chrestomathy,'' ch. 30 (1949)

* God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in his arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; He will set them above their betters.
** [[H. L. Mencken]], ''Minority Report'' (1956)

* '''To say that I am made in the image of [[God]] is to say that [[Love]] is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.'''
** [[Thomas Merton]], in ''Seeds of Contemplation'' (1949)

* '''Persons are not known by intellect alone, not by principles alone, but only by love. It is when we love the other, the enemy, that we obtain from God the key to an understanding of who he is, and who we are.''' It is only this realization that can open to us the real nature of our duty, and of right action.
** [[Thomas Merton]], in a letter to [[Dorothy Day]] (20 December 19

* '''O God, we are one with You. You have made us one with You. You have taught us that if we are open to one another, You dwell in us. Help us to preserve this openness and to fight for it with all our hearts.''' Help us to realize that there can be no understanding where there is mutual rejection. O God, in accepting one another wholeheartedly, fully, completely, we accept You, and we thank You, and we adore You, and we love You with our whole being, because our being is Your being, our spirit is rooted in Your spirit. '''Fill us then with love, and let us be bound together with love as we go our diverse ways, united in this one spirit which makes You present in the world, and which makes You witness to the ultimate reality that is love. Love has overcome. Love is victorious.''' Amen.
** [[Thomas Merton]], in his closing prayer to an informal address delivered in Calcutta, India (October 1968), from ''The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton'' (1975); quoted in ''Thomas Merton, Spiritual Master : The Essential Writings'' (1992), p. 237

* There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided.
** [[Charles de Montesquieu]], ''Lettres persannes.''

* One thing I can't stand, it's people groveling.
** God, in ''[[Monty Python and the Holy Grail]]''

* If there is anything so precious that without it history and the world will be destroyed, where will you keep it? You will naturally want to keep it in the deepest part of your mind. If you desire to place it in the depths of your mind, it needs to be invisible. It is for this very reason that God exists as an invisible being. It is fortunate that He is invisible, for if He were visible how could a great contest to gain Him be avoided? It would be difficult for God to endure the pain of seeing it.
** [[Sun Myung Moon]], [http://www.unification.net/wogw/wogw1-01.html ''The Way of God's Will'' Chapter 1-1. The Will of God] Translated [[1980]].

* '''God is not stupid.'''
** [[Sun Myung Moon]], [http://www.unification.org/ucbooks/WofGW/wogw1-05.htm ''The Way of God's Will'' Chapter 1-5. Tradition, Official Business, and Responsibility] Translated [[1980]].

== N ==
[[File:Light dispersion conceptual.gif|144px|thumb|right|From blind physical necessity, which is always and everywhere the same, no variety adhering to time and place could evolve, and all variety of created objects which represent order and life in the universe could happen only by the willful reasoning of its original Creator, Whom I call the Lord God. ~ [[Isaac Newton]] ]]
[[File:Darwinek-bnw.jpg|144px|thumb|right|God is dead: but considering the state Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown. ~ [[Friedrich Nietzsche]] ]]
[[File:Orvieto Pozzo San Patrizio 5.JPG|144px|thumb|right| I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time. ~ [[Friedrich Nietzsche]] ]]

* '''The Ultimate [[Truth]] is called God.''' This one can realize in the state of Nirvikalpa Samadhi. '''A circle can have only one centre but it can have numerous radii. The centre can be compared to God and the radii to religions.''' So, no one sect, no one [[religion]] or [[book]] can make an absolute claim of It. '''He who works for It gets It.'''
**[[Swami Narayanananda]], ''Selected Articles 1933-86'' (2002), p. 301

* '''This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.''' This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all, and on account of His dominion He is wont to be called Lord God, Universal Ruler.
** [[Isaac Newton]], in ''[[w:Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica|Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica]]'' (1687)

* All these things being considered, it seems probable to me, that God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, moveable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportion to space, as most conduced to the end for which he formed them; and that these primitive particles, being solids, are incomparably harder than any porous bodies compounded of them; even so very hard, as never to wear or break in pieces; no ordinary power being able to divide what God himself made one in the first creation.
** [[Isaac Newton]], in ''[[w:Opticks|Opticks, or A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light]]'', 4th edition (1730)

* A Heavenly Master governs all the world as Sovereign of the universe. We are astonished at Him by reason of His perfection, we honor Him and fall down before Him because of His unlimited power. From blind physical necessity, which is always and everywhere the same, no variety adhering to time and place could evolve, and all variety of created objects which represent order and life in the universe could happen only by the willful reasoning of its original Creator, Whom I call the Lord God.
** [[Isaac Newton]], as quoted in ''Our Humanist Heritage'' (2010) by George Frater, p. 75

* '''God is a thought which makes crooked all that is straight.'''
** [[Friedrich Nietzsche]], "Upon the Blessed Isles", ''Thus Spoke Zarathustra''

* '''God is dead: but considering the state Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown.'''
** [[Friedrich Nietzsche]], in ''The Gay Science'' (1882), section 125
** The reduction of Nietzsche's thought to … the first-liner of a graffito sometimes found in certain modern tiled cells and catacombs:
:: '''God is dead''' — Nietzsche Nietzsche is dead — '''God'''
: This reduction could appear to be the creative interpretation of masterful will to power — if Nietzsche's thought and style are as uncontrolled as the critics suggest. … Nietzsche himself anticipates the strife of revengeful graffiti at the conclusion of his text: "Wherever there are walls I shall inscribe this eternal accusation against Christianity upon them — I can write in letters which make even the blind see." …Nietzsche says in his preface that his readers must have a "predestination for the labyrinth" and "new ears for new music" if they are to understand this difficult writing.
:* Gary Shapiro in ''Nietzschean Narratives'' (1989), p. 126

* '''I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.'''
** [[Friedrich Nietzsche]], as quoted in ''20,000 Quips & Quotes'' (1995) edited by Evan Esar, p. 347

* '''God is a mean kid sitting on an anthill with a magnifying glass, and I'm the ant.''' He could fix my life in five minutes if He wanted to, but he'd rather tear off my feelers and watch me squirm.
** "Bruce [[Giordano Bruno|Nolan]]" in ''[[Bruce Almighty]]'' (2003)

== O ==

== P ==
[[File:General George S. Patton gravesite, Luxembourg.jpg|144px|thumb|right|It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived. ~ [[George S. Patton, Jr.]] ]]
[[File:Terry Pratchett Arms.svg|144px|thumb|right|I don't think I've found God, but I may have seen where gods come from. ~ [[Terry Pratchett]] ]]

* Posterity will one day laugh at the foolishness of modern materialistic philosophers. The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. I pray while I am engaged at my work in the laboratory.
**[[Louis Pasteur]], as quoted in ''The Literary Digest'' (18 October 1902)

* '''Science brings men nearer to God.'''
**[[Louis Pasteur]], as quoted in ''Letter to an Atheist'' (2007) by Michael Patrick Leahy, p. 61

* '''It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.'''
** General [[George S. Patton, Jr.]], in a speech at the Copley Plaza Hotel, Boston Massachusetts (7 June 1945), quoted in ''Patton : Ordeal and Triumph'' (1970) by Ladislas Farago

* For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse.
** [[Paul of Tarsus]] in ''[[w:Epistle to the Romans|Romans]]'' 1:20 (ASV)

* '''What if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar'''; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged. But if our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance? (I speak as a man) God forbid: for then how shall God judge the world? For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner? And not rather, (as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say,) Let us do evil, that good may come? whose damnation is just.
** [[Paul of Tarsus]] in {{Bibleverse||Romans|3}}:3-8

* '''We conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.''' ''Is he'' the God of the Jews only? ''is he'' not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also: Seeing ''it is'' one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith. '''Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.'''
** [[Paul of Tarsus]], in ''Romans'' 3:19-31

* '''God is [[light]]; in him there is no darkness at all.'''
** [[w:John the Apostle|John the Apostle]] in 1 John 1:5

* '''God is [[love]]. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.'''
** [[w:John the Apostle|John the Apostle]] in 1 John 4:16

* All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. '''This [[mind]] is the matrix of all matter.'''
** [[Max Planck]], as he accepted the Nobel Prize (1919)

* Laugh where we must, be candid where we can, But vindicate the ways of God to man.
** [[Alexander Pope]], ''An Essay on Man'' (1733-34), Epistle I, line 15.

* Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.
** [[Alexander Pope]], ''An Essay on Man'' (1733-34), Epistle I, line 99.

* To Him no high, no low, no great, no small; He fills, He bounds, connects and equals all!
** [[Alexander Pope]], ''An Essay on Man'' (1733-34), Epistle I, line 277.

* He mounts the storm, and walks upon the wind.
** [[Alexander Pope]], ''An Essay on Man'' (1733-34), Epistle II, line 110.

* Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, But looks through Nature up to Nature's God.
** [[Alexander Pope]], ''An Essay on Man'' (1733-34), Epistle IV, line 331.

* '''I don't have much truck with the "[[religion]] is the cause of most of our wars" school of thought because that is manifestly done by mad, manipulative and power-hungry men who cloak their ambition in God.''' I number believers of all sorts among my friends. Some of them are praying for me. I'm happy they wish to do this, I really am, but I think science may be a better bet.
** [[Terry Pratchett]], in [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1028222/I-create-gods-time--I-think-exist.html "I create gods all the time - now I think one might exist, says fantasy author Terry Pratchett" in ''The Daily Mail'' (21 June 2008)]

* '''I don't think I've found God, but I may have seen where gods come from.'''
** [[Terry Pratchett]], in "I create gods all the time - now I think one might exist, says fantasy author Terry Pratchett" in ''The Daily Mail'' (21 June 2008)

* '''God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. '''Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.
** ''[[Psalms]]'' 46:1 - 3

* There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early. The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.
** ''[[Psalms]]'' 46:4 - 7

* Come, behold the works of the LORD, what desolations he hath made in the earth. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire. '''Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.'''
** ''[[Psalms]]'' 46:8 - 10

* The fool says in his heart "There is no God".
** ''[[Psalms]]'' 53:1

*Indeed the inscrutable One is out of the reach of every rational process. Nor can any words come up to the inexpressible Good, this One, this Source of all unity, this super-existent Being. Mind beyond mind, word beyond speech, it is gathered up by no discourse, by no intuition, by no name. It is and it is as no other being is.
** Pseudo-Dionysius, ''The Divine Names'', 1, 1

== Q ==

* God! There is no god but He, — the Living, the Self-subsisting, Eternal. No slumber can seize Him nor sleep. His are all things in the heavens and on earth. Who is there that can intercede in His presence except as He permitteth? he knoweth what before or after or behind them. Nor shall they compass aught of His knowledge except as He willeth. His Throne doth extend over the heavens and the earth, and He feeleth no fatigue in guarding and preserving them for He is the Most High, the Supreme.
** ''[[Qur'an]]''

== R ==
[[File:Ngc1999.jpg|144px|thumb|right|The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation. ~ [[John Ray]] ]]
[[File:Electric iron stand.jpg|144px|thumb|right|God is an iron. ~ [[Spider Robinson]] ]]
[[File:AnttlersNewM45.jpg|144px|thumb|right|In the presence of infinite might and infinite wisdom, the strength of the strongest man is but weakness, and the keenest of mortal eyes see but dimly. ~ [[Theodore Roosevelt]]]]

* '''The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation.'''
** [[John Ray]], title of a book (1691)

* '''God is an iron.'''
** [[Spider Robinson]], in "God is an Iron" (1977). The title is a pun based on the proposition that if a person who commits a felony is a felon, then a person who creates irony is an iron.

* '''In the presence of infinite might and infinite wisdom, the strength of the strongest man is but weakness, and the keenest of mortal eyes see but dimly.'''
** [[Theodore Roosevelt]]'s Christian Citizenship Address before the Young Men's Christian Association, Carnegie Hall, New York, 30 December 1900

* Kill one man and you are a murderer. Kill millions and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone and you are a God.
** [[Jean Rostand]], ''Thoughts of a Biologist'' (1939)

* '''If I were granted omnipotence, and millions of years to experiment in, I should not think Man much to boast of as the final result of all my efforts.'''
** [[Bertrand Russell]], ''Religion and Science''

== S ==
[[File:Tree of Life 2009 large.png |144px|thumb|right|Individual things are nothing but modifications of the attributes of God, or modes by which the attributes of God are expressed in a fixed and definite manner. ~ [[Baruch Spinoza]] ]]

* I think that if there were a God, there would be less evil on this earth. I believe that if evil exists here below, then either it was willed by God or it was beyond His powers to prevent it. Now I cannot bring myself to fear a God who is either spiteful or weak. I defy Him without fear and care not a fig for his thunderbolts.
** [[Marquis de Sade]], ''Justine or The Misfortunes of Virtue'' (1787) [This quote is strikingly similar to Epicurus' above.]

* The existence of the world without God seems to me less absurd than the presence of a God, existing in all his perfection,creating an imperfect man in order to make him run the risk of Hell.
** [[w:Armand Salacrou|Armand Salacrou]] in ''Ceritudes et incertitudes'' (1943)

* Respectable society believed in God in order to avoid having to speak about him.
** [[Jean-Paul Sartre]], ''The Words'' (1964)

* '''We are all writing God's poem.'''
** [[Anne Sexton]], as quoted by [[Erica Jong]], in [http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2000/oct/26/features11.g2 "Into the lion's den" in ''The Guardian'' (26 October 2000)]

* God is our fortress, in whose conquering name Let us resolve to scale their flinty bulwarks.
** [[William Shakespeare]], [[Henry VI, Part 2|''Henry VI'', Part II]] (c. 1590-91), Act II, scene 1, line 26.

* God shall be my hope, My stay, my guide and lantern to my feet.
** [[William Shakespeare]], [[Henry VI, Part 2|''Henry VI'', Part II]] (c. 1590-91), Act II, scene 3, line 24.

* And to add greater honours to his age Than man could give him, he died fearing God.
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''[[Henry VIII (play)|Henry VIII]]'' (1613), Act IV, scene 2, line 67.

* If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses?
** [[Percy Bysshe Shelley]], in ''The Necessity of Atheism'' (1811)

* '''Nothing remains, under God, but those passions which have often proved''' the best ministers of His vengeance, and '''the surest protectors of the world.'''
** [http://www.archive.org/stream/elementarysketc03smitgoog#page/n440/mode/2up Lecture XXVIL: On Habit - Part II, in “Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy”, delivered at The Royal Institution in the years 1804, 1805, and 1806 by the late Rev. Sydney Smith, M.A. (Spottiswoodes and Shaw (London: 1849))], p. 424
*** Another Variant: '''When the usual hopes and the common aids of man are all gone, nothing remains under God but those passions which have often proved the best ministers of His purpose and the surest protectors of the world.'''
*** Quoted by [[w:Theodore Roosevelt|Theodore Roosevelt]] in his "[http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/images/research/txtspeeches/668.pdf Brotherhood and the Heroic Virtues]" Address at the Veterans' Reunion, Burlington, Vermont, September 5, 1901 and published in Theodore Roosevelt's "The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses" by Dover Publications (April 23, 2009) in its Dover Thrift Editions (ISBN: 978-0486472294), p. 127.

* '''By ''God'', I mean a being absolutely infinite — that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality.''' Explanation — I say absolutely infinite, not infinite after its kind: for, of a thing infinite only after its kind, infinite attributes may be denied; but '''that which is absolutely infinite, contains in its essence whatever expresses reality, and involves no negation.'''
** [[Baruch Spinoza]], in [[s:Ethics (Spinoza)|''Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata'' [''Ethics Geometrically Demonstrtated''] (1677)]], Definition 6

* '''Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.'''
** [[Baruch Spinoza]], in ''Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata'' (1677), Prop. 15

* '''God and all attributes of God are eternal.'''
** [[Baruch Spinoza]], in ''Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata'' (1677), Prop. 19

** '''Individual things are nothing but modifications of the attributes of God, or modes by which the attributes of God are expressed in a fixed and definite manner.'''
** [[Baruch Spinoza]], in ''Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata'' (1677), Prop. 25

* '''God is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things.'''
** [[Baruch Spinoza]], in ''Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata'' (1677)

* '''Things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained.'''
** [[Baruch Spinoza]], in ''Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata'' (1677)

== T ==
[[File:Arco iris circular.JPG|144px|thumb|right|The meaning of our self is not to be found in its separateness from God and others, but in the ceaseless realisation of yoga, of union. ~ [[Rabindranath Tagore]] ]]
[[File:Brocken-tanzawa2.JPG|144px|thumb|right|God is that infinite All of which man knows himself to be a finite part. God alone exists truly. Man manifests Him in time, space and matter. ~ [[Leo Tolstoy]] ]]
[[File:Herz aus Feuer.jpg|144px|thumb|right|God, from a beautiful [[necessity]], is [[Love]] in all he doeth, Love, a brilliant fire, to gladden or consume... ~ [[Martin Farquhar Tupper]] ]]

* '''Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.'''
** [[Rabindranath Tagore]], in ''Stray Birds'' (1916); paraphrased variant: Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of humanity.

* What, but God? Inspiring God! who boundless Spirit all, And unremitting Energy, pervades, Adjusts, sustains, and agitates the whole.
** [[James Thomson (poet)|James Thomson]], ''The Seasons'', ''Spring'' (1728), line 849.

* '''Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.''' Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.
** [[Leo Tolstoy]] in ''[[w:War and Peace|War and Peace]]'' Bk XIII, Chapter 16

* '''The Kingdom of God is within you... and all beings.'''
** [[Leo Tolstoy]]

* The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the [[w:Kingdom of God|kingdom of God]]; and this can be done only by means of the acknowledgment and profession of the truth by each one of us.
** [[Leo Tolstoy]] in ''[[w:The Kingdom of God is Within You|The Kingdom of God is Within You]]'' (1894) Ch. 12

* '''God is that infinite All of which man knows himself to be a finite part. God alone exists truly. Man manifests Him in time, space and matter.''' The more God's manifestation in man (life) unites with the manifestations (lives) of other beings, the more man exists. This union with the lives of other beings is accomplished through love. God is not love, but the more there is of love, the more man manifests God, and the more he truly exists... '''We acknowledge God only when we are conscious of His manifestation in us.'''
** [[Leo Tolstoy]] in his diary (1 November 1910)

* I am what you call "The World". Or perhaps "The Universe". Or perhaps "God". Or perhaps "Truth". Or perhaps "Everything". Or perhaps "One". And, '''I am "You".'''
** [[Truth]] Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood

* '''God, from a beautiful [[necessity]], is [[Love]] in all he doeth, Love, a brilliant fire, to gladden or consume''': The wicked work their woe by looking upon love, and hating it: '''The righteous find their joys in yearning on its loveliness for ever.'''
** [[Martin Farquhar Tupper]], in "Of Immortality" in ''Proverbial Philosophy'' (1849)

== U ==

== V ==

* '''I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.'''
** [[Voltaire]], in a letter to Étienne Noël Damilaville (16 May 1767)

* '''If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.'''
** [[Voltaire]] in ''Épître à l'Auteur du Livre des Trois Imposteurs'' (10 November 1770)

* "If God did not exist, He would have to be invented." But all nature cries aloud that he does exist: that there is a supreme intelligence, an immense power, an admirable order, and everything teaches us our own dependence on it.
** Voltaire quoting himself in a letter to Prince Frederick William of Prussia (28 November 1770), as quoted in ''Voltaire in His Letters'' (1919) by [[Evelyn Beatrice Hall|S. G. Tallentyre (Evelyn Beatrice Hall)]]

* I cannot imagine how the clockwork of the universe can exist without a clockmaker.
** [[Voltaire]], as quoted in ''More Random Walks in Science : An Anthology'' (1982) by Robert L. Weber, p. 65

* '''Take Care of the People, and God Almighty Will Take Care of Himself.'''
** [[Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.]] in ''[[w:The Sirens of Titan|The Sirens of Titan]]'' (1959)

== W ==
[[File:Rosace.jpg|144px|thumb|right|To believe that the desire for good is always fulfilled — that is faith, and whoever has it is not an atheist. ~ [[Simone Weil]] ]]
[[File:The Storm Spirits.jpg|144px|thumb|right|"[[w:Elohim|Elohim]]," the name for the creative power in ''[[w:Book of Genesis|Genesis]]'', is a female plural, a fact that generations of learned rabbis and Christian theologians have all explained as merely grammatical convention. The King James and most other Bibles translate it as "God," but if you take the grammar literally, it seems to mean "goddesses." [[w:El Shaddai|Al Shaddai]], god of battles, appears later, and [[w:Tetragrammaton|YHWH]], mispronounced [[Jehovah]], later still. ~ [[Robert Anton Wilson]] ]]
[[File:US Navy 060608-N-6501M-005 The U.S. Military Sealift Command (MSC) Hospital ship USNS Mercy (T-AH 19), anchored off of the coast of Jolo City.jpg|144px|thumb|right|I prefer to say that nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see. If we wish to know the truth concerning anything, we'll find it in the nature of that thing. ~ [[Frank Lloyd Wright]] ]]

* Don't you know there ain't no devil? There's only God when He's drunk.
**[[Tom Waits]], in "[[w:Heartattack and Vine (song)|Heartattack and Vine]]" on ''[[w:Heartattack and Vine|Heartattack and Vine]]'' (1980)

* '''God's greatness and goodness are measured by the fact that he gives us choices.''' He doesn't require us to thank him for our food. (In case you hadn't noticed.) God is not a Modernist. He doesn't view us as nails. God expects us to behave like carpenters. Indeed, he gave us a carpenter as an example. So I think God is postmodern. '''He has his own ideas of what rules, and what sucks, and he doesn't expect everyone else to agree with him.'''
** [[Larry Wall]] in [http://www.perl.com/pub/a/1999/03/pm.html "Perl, the first postmodern computer language" (9 March 1999)]

* '''One of the most exquisite pleasures of human love — to serve the loved one without his knowing it — is only possible, as regards the love of God, through atheism.'''
** [[Simone Weil]], in ''Last Notebook'' (1942)

* In order to obey God, one must receive his commands. How did it happen that I received them in adolescence, while I was professing atheism? '''To believe that the desire for good is always fulfilled — that is faith, and whoever has it is not an atheist.'''
** [[Simone Weil]], in ''Last Notebook'' (1942)

* '''No human being escapes the necessity of conceiving some good outside himself towards which his thought turns in a movement of desire, supplication, and hope. consequently, the only choice is between worshipping the true God or an idol.''' Every atheist is an idolater — unless he is worshipping the true God in his impersonal aspect. '''The majority of the pious are idolaters.'''
** [[Simone Weil]], in ''Last Notebook'' (1942)

* '''There are two atheisms of which one is a purification of the notion of God.'''
** [[Simone Weil]], as quoted in ''The New Christianity'' (1967) edited by William Robert Miller

* '''No man — prince, peasant, pope, — has all the light, who says else is a mountebank. I claim no private lien on truth, only a liberty to seek it, prove it in debate, and to be wrong a thousand times to reach a single rightness.''' It is that liberty they fear. They want us to be driven to God like sheep, not running to him like lovers, shouting joy!"
** [[Morris West]], in his play about [[Giordano Bruno]], ''''The Heretic'' (1968)

* Ever since the Greeks, we have been drunk with language! '''We have made a cage with words and shoved our God inside!'''
** [[Morris West]], in ''The Heretic'' (1968)

* '''If God be God and man a creature made in image of the divine intelligence, his noblest function is the search for truth.'''
** [[Morris West]], in ''The Heretic'' (1968)

* '''Once you accept the existence of God — however you define him, however you explain your relationship to him — then you are caught forever with his presence in the center of all things.''' You are also caught with the fact that man is a creature who walks in two worlds and traces upon the walls of his cave the wonders and the nightmare experiences of his spiritual pilgrimage.
** [[Morris West]], in ''The Clowns of God'' (1981)

* No reason can be given for the nature of God, because that nature is the ground of rationality.
** [[Alfred North Whitehead]], in ''Science and the Modern World'' (1925)

* '''All your Western theologies, the whole mythology of them, are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent.'''
** [[Tennessee Williams]], in ''The Night of the Iguana'' (1963)

*''' "[[w:Elohim|Elohim]]," the name for the creative power in ''[[w:Book of Genesis|Genesis]]'', is a female plural, a fact that generations of learned rabbis and Christian theologians have all explained as merely grammatical convention.''' The King James and most other Bibles translate it as "God," but if you take the grammar literally, it seems to mean "goddesses." [[w:El Shaddai|Al Shaddai]], god of battles, appears later, and [[w:Tetragrammaton|YHWH]], mispronounced [[Jehovah]], later still.
** [[Robert Anton Wilson]], in ''Everything Is Under Control : Conspiracies, Cults, and Cover-Ups'' (1998), p. 197

* I believe in God, only I spell it "[[Nature]]".
** [[Frank Lloyd Wright]], in ''Quote'' magazine (14 August 1966)

* '''God is the great mysterious motivator of what we call nature and it has been said often by philosophers, that nature is the will of God.''' And, I prefer to say that nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see. '''If we wish to know the truth concerning anything, we'll find it in the nature of that thing.'''
** [[Frank Lloyd Wright]], quoted in ''Truth Against the World : Frank Lloyd Wright speaks for an organic architecture'' (1987) edited by Patrick J. Meehan

== X ==

== Y ==
* A God all mercy is a God unjust.
** [[Edward Young]], ''Night Thoughts'' (1742-1745), Night IV, line 234.

* By night an atheist half believes in God.
** [[Edward Young]], ''Night Thoughts'' (1742-1745), Night V, line 177.

* A Deity believed, is joy begun; A Deity adored, is joy advanced; A Deity beloved, is joy matured. Each branch of piety delight inspires.
** [[Edward Young]], ''Night Thoughts'' (1742-1745), Night VIII, line 720.

* A God alone can comprehend a God.
** [[Edward Young]], ''Night Thoughts'' (1742-1745), Night LX, line 835.

* Thou, my all! My theme! my inspiration! and my crown! My strength in age—my rise in low estate! My souls ambition, pleasure, wealth!—my world! My light in darkness! and my life in death! My boast through time! bliss through eternity! Eternity, too short to speak thy praise! Or fathom thy profound of love to man!
** [[Edward Young]], ''Night Thoughts'' (1742-1745), Night IV, line 586.

== Z ==
* '''Arthur Frayn:''' "And you, poor creatures, who conjured you out of the clay? Is God in show business, too?"
** [[Zardoz]] (1974)

==''Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations''==
:Quotes reported in ''Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations'' (1922), p. 315-21.

* Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.
** Acts, XVII. 23.

* ''Homo cogitat, Deus indicat.''
** Man thinks, God directs.
** [[Alcuin]], ''Epistles''.

* At Athens, wise men propose, and fools dispose.
** [[Anacharsis]].

* Man says—"So, so." Heaven says—"No, no."
** Chinese Aphorism.

* God's Wisdom and God's Goodness!—Ah, but fools Mis-define thee, till God knows them no more. Wisdom and goodness they are God!—what schools Have yet so much as heard this simpler lore. This no Saint preaches, and this no Church rules: 'Tis in the desert, now and heretofore.
** [[Matthew Arnold]], ''The Divinity'', Stanza 3.

* They that deny a God destroy man's nobility; for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and, if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature.
** [[Francis Bacon]], ''Essays'', ''Of Atheism.

* From thee all human actions take their springs, The rise of empires, and the fall of kings.
** [[Samuel Boyse]], ''The Deity''.

* O Rock of Israel, Rock of Salvation, Rock struck and cleft for me, let those two streams of blood and water which once gushed out of thy side … bring down with them salvation and holiness into my soul.
** [[Brevint]], ''Works'' (Ed. 1679), p. 17.

* He made little, too little of sacraments and priests, because God was so intensely real to him. What should he do with lenses who stood thus full in the torrent of the sunshine.
** [[Phillips Brooks]], ''Sermons'', ''The Seriousness of Life''.

* It never frightened a Puritan when you bade him stand still and listen to the speech of God. His closet and his church were full of the reverberations of the awful, gracious, beautiful voice for which he listened.
** [[Phillips Brooks]], ''Sermons'', ''The Seriousness of Life''.

* Of what I call God, And fools call Nature.
** [[Robert Browning]], ''The Ring and the Book'', ''The Pope'', line 1,073.

* A picket frozen on duty— A mother starved for her brood— Socrates drinking the hemlock, And Jesus on the rood; And millions who, humble and nameless, The straight, hard pathway trod— Some call it Consecration, And others call it God.
** [[W. H. Carruth]], ''Evolution''.

* ''Nihil est quod deus efficere non possit.''
** There is nothing which God cannot do.
** [[Cicero]], ''De Divinatione'', II. 41.

* God! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice! Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds! And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow, And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!
** [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]], ''Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni''.

* God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty.
** I Corinthians. I. 27.

* I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.
** I Corinthians, III. 6.

* God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; He plants his footsteps in the sea And rides upon the storm.
** [[William Cowper]], ''Hymn'', ''Light Shining out of Darkness''.

* There is a God! the sky his presence shares, His hand upheaves the billows in their mirth, Destroys the mighty, yet the humble spares And with contentment crowns the thought of worth.
** [[Charlotte Cushman]], ''There is a God''.

* My God, my Father, and my Friend, Do not forsake me in the end.
** [[Wentworth Dillon]], translation of ''Dies Iræ''.

* 'Twas much, that man was made like God before: But, that God should be made like man, much more.
** [[John Donne]], ''Holy Sonnets'', Sonnet XXII.

* By tracing Heaven his footsteps may be found: Behold! how awfully he walks the round! God is abroad, and wondrous in his ways The rise of empires, and their fall surveys.
** [[John Dryden]], ''Britannia Rediviva'', line 75.

* Too wise to err, too good to be unkind,— Are all the movements of the Eternal Mind.
** Rev. [[John East]], ''Songs of My Pilgrimage''.

* God is divine Principle, supreme incorporeal Being, Mind, Spirit, Soul, Life, Truth, Love.
** [[Mary Baker Eddy]], ''Science and Health'', Chapter XIV. Ed. 1906, p. 465.

* There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind, and its infinite manifestation, for God is All in All. Spirit is immortal Truth; Matter is mortal error.
** [[Mary Baker Eddy]], ''Science and Health'', Chapter XIV. Ed. 1906, p. 468.

* When the Master of the universe has points to carry in his government he impresses his will in the structure of minds.
** [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]], ''Letters and Social Aims'' (1876), ''Immortality''.

* He was a wise man who originated the idea of God.
** [[Euripides]], ''Sisyphus''.

* Henceforth the Majesty of God revere; Fear him and you have nothing else to fear.
** [[Fordyce]], ''Answer to a Gentleman who Apologized to the Author for Swearing''.

* ''Wie einer ist, so ist sein Gott, Darum ward Gott so oft zu Spott.''
** As a man is, so is his God; therefore God was so often an object of mockery.
** [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]], ''Gedichte''.

* I know My God commands, whose power no power resists.
** [[Robert Greene]], ''Looking-Glass for London and England''.

* Some men treat the God of their fathers as they treat their father's friend. They do not deny him; by no means: they only deny themselves to him, when he is good enough to call upon them.
** J. C. and A. W. Hare, ''Guesses at Truth''.

* I askt the seas and all the deeps below My God to know, I askt the reptiles, and whatever is In the abyss; Even from the shrimps to the leviathan Enquiry ran; But in those deserts that no line can sound The God I sought for was not to be found.
** [[Thomas Heywood]], ''Searching after God''.

* Forgetful youth! but know, the Power above With ease can save each object of his love; Wide as his will, extends his boundless grace.
** [[Homer]], ''The Odyssey'', Book III, line 285. Pope's translation.

* O thou, whose certain eye foresees The fix'd event of fate's remote decrees.
** [[Homer]], ''The Odyssey'', Book IV, line 627. Pope's translation.

* Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade far into the doings of the Most High; whom although to know be life, and joy to make mention of his name, yet our soundest knowledge is to know that we know him not as indeed he is, neither can know him; and our safest eloquence concerning him is our silence, when we confess without confession that his glory is inexplicable, his greatness above our capacity and reach.
** [[Hooker]], ''Ecclesiastical Polity'', Book I, Chapter II. 3.

* Could we with ink the ocean fill, And were the heavens of parchment made, Were every stalk on earth a quill, And every man a scribe by trade; To write the love of God above, Would drain the ocean dry; Nor could the scroll contain the whole, Though stretch'd from sky to sky.
** Rabbi [[Mayir ben Isaac]]. Translation of Chaldee Ode, sung in Jewish Synagogues during the service of the first day of the Feast of the Pentecost. Given in the original Chaldee in Notes and Queries, Dec. 31, 1853, p. 648. In Grose's Olio, p. 292, and in Book of Jewish Thoughts, p. 155. Same idea in Chaucer—Balade Warnynge Men to Beware of Deceitful Women. Also in Remedie of Love. See Modern Universal History, p. 430. Note. Miss C. Sinclair—Hill and Valley, p. 35. (Same idea.) Smart given as English translator by one authority. See also Des Knaben Wunderhorn.

* But if the sky were paper and a scribe each star above, And every scribe had seven hands, they could not write all my love.
** ''Dürsli und Bäbeli''; old public house ditty of the Canton de Soleure or Solothurn. Original in Swiss dialect. Given in ''Notes and Queries'' (Feb. 10, 1872), p. 114.

* From thee, great God, we spring, to thee we tend,— Path, motive, guide, original, and end.
** [[Samuel Johnson]], ''Motto to The Rambler'', No. 7.

* The sun and every vassal star, All space, beyond the soar of angel's wings, Wait on His word: and yet He stays His car For every sigh a contrite suppliant brings.
** [[John Keble]], ''The Christian Year'', ''Ascension Day''.

* ''Nam homo proponit, sed Deus disponit.''
** Man proposes, but God disposes.
** [[Thomas à Kempis]], ''Imitation of Christ'', Book I, Chapter XIX. Thomas Dibdin's translation.

* O God, I am thinking Thy thoughts after Thee.
** [[Johannes Kepler]], when studying astronomy.

* All but God is changing day by day.
** [[Charles Kingsley]], ''The Saints' Tragedy'', ''Prometheus''.

* God! there is no God but he, the living, the self-subsisting.
** Koran, Chapter II, Part III.

* There is no god but God.
** Koran, Chapter III.

* ''L'impossibilité où je suis de prouver que Dieu n'est pas, me decouvre son existence.''
** The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discloses to me His existence.
** [[Jean de La Bruyère]], ''Les Caractères'', XVI.

* ''Sire, je n'avais besoin de cet hypothèse.''
** Sire, I had no need for that hypothesis.
** [[La Place]] to [[Napoleon]], who asked why God was not mentioned in ''Traite de la Méchanique Céleste''.

* ''Denn Gott lohnt Gutes, hier gethan, auch hier noch.''
** For God rewards good deeds done here below—rewards them here.
** [[Gotthold Ephraim Lessing]], ''Nathan der Weise'', I, 2.

* "We trust, Sir, that God is on our side." "It is more important to know that we are on God's side."
** [[Abraham Lincoln]], reply to deputation of Southerners during Civil War.

* God had sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat for this planting.
** [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]], ''The Courtship of Miles Standish'', IV.

* ''Estne dei sedes nisi terra et pontus et aër Et cœlum et virtus? Superos quid quærimus ultra? Jupiter est quodcumque vides, quodcumque moveris.''
** Is there any other seat of the Divinity than the earth, sea, air, the heavens, and virtuous minds? why do we seek God elsewhere? He is whatever you see; he is wherever you move.
** [[Marcus Annaeus Lucanus]], ''Pharsalia'', IX. 578.

* ''Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott Ein gute Wehr und Waffen, Er hilft uns frei aus aller Not, Die uns jetzt hat betroffen.''
** A mighty fortress is our God, A bulwark never failing, Our helper he amid the flood Of mortal ills prevailing.
** [[Martin Luther]], ''Ein feste Burg''. Translation by F. H. Hedge.

* I fear no foe with Thee at hand to bless; Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
** [[Henry Francis Lyte]], ''Eventide''.

* A voice in the wind I do not know; A meaning on the face of the high hills Whose utterance I cannot comprehend. A something is behind them: that is God.
** [[George MacDonald]], ''Within and Without'', Part I, scene 1.

* ''Exemplumque dei quisque est in imagine parva.''
** Every one is in a small way the image of God.
** [[Marcus Manilius]], ''Astronomica'', IV. 895.

* ''Quis cœlum possit nisi cœli munera nosse? Et reperire deum nisi qui pars ipse deorum est?''
** Who can know heaven except by its gifts? and who can find out God, unless the man who is himself an emanation from God?
** [[Marcus Manilius]], ''Astronomica'', II. 115.

* The Lord who gave us Earth and Heaven Takes that as thanks for all He's given. The book he lent is given back All blotted red and smutted black.
** [[John Masefield]], ''Everlasting Mercy'', Stanza 27.

* One sole God; One sole ruler,—his Law; One sole interpreter of that law—Humanity.
** [[Giuseppe Mazzini]], ''Life and Writings'', ''Young Europe'', ''General Principles'', No. 1.

* Too wise to be mistaken still Too good to be unkind.
** [[Samuel Medley]], ''Hymn of God''.

* Who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best: his state Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest.
** [[John Milton]], ''Sonnet'', ''On His Blindness''.

* ''Gott-trunkener Mensch.''
** A God-intoxicated man.
** [[Novalis]] (of Spinoza).

* Trumpeter, sound for the splendour of God! . . . . . . Trumpeter, rally us, up to the heights of it! Sound for the City of God.
** [[Alfred Noyes]], ''Trumpet Call'', last lines.

* ''Est deus in nobis; et sunt commercia cœli.''
** There is a God within us and intercourse with heaven.
** [[Ovid]], ''Ars Amatoria'', Book III. 549. (Milton's "Looks commercing with the skies" said to be inspired by this phrase.)

* ''Est deus in nobis: agitante calescimus illo.''
** There is a God within us, and we glow when he stirs us.
** [[Ovid]], ''Fasti'', Book VI. 6.

* ''Sed tamen ut fuso taurorum sanguine centum, Sic capitur minimo thuris honore deux.''
** As God is propitiated by the blood of a hundred bulls, so also is he by the smallest offering of incense.
** [[Ovid]], ''Tristium'', II. 75.

* ''Nihil ita sublime est, supraque pericula tendit Non sit ut inferius suppositumque deo.''
** Nothing is so high and above all danger that is not below and in the power of God.
** [[Ovid]], ''Tristium'', IV. 8. 47.

* Fear God. Honour the King.
** I Peter, II. 17.

* One on God's side is a majority.
** [[Wendell Phillips]], speech at Harper's Ferry (Nov. 1, 1859).

* God is truth and light his shadow.
** [[Plato]].

* God is a geometrician.
** Attributed to [[Plato]], but not found in his works.

* ''Est profecto deus, qui, quæ nos gerimus, auditque et videt.''
** There is indeed a God that hears and sees whate'er we do.
** [[Plautus]], ''Captivi'', II. 2. 63.

* He from thick films shall purge the visual ray, And on the sightless eyeball pour the day.
** [[Alexander Pope]], ''Messiah''.

* Thou Great First Cause, least understood.
** [[Alexander Pope]], ''Universal Prayer''.

* The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork.
** Psalms, XIX. 1.

* He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
** Psalms, XXIII. 2.

* God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
** Psalms. XLVI. 1.

* ''Je crains Dieu, cher Abner, et n'ai point d'autre crainte.''
** I fear God, dear Abner, and I have no other fear.
** [[Jean Racine]], ''Athalie'', Act I, scene 1.

* There is no respect of persons with God.
** Romans, II. 11. Acts X. 34.

* Fear of God before their eyes.
** Romans, III. 18.

* If God be for us, who can be against us?
** Romans, VIII. 31.

* Give us a God—a living God, One to wake the sleeping soul, One to cleanse the tainted blood Whose pulses in our bosoms roll.
** [[C. G. Rosenberg]], ''The Winged Horn'', Stanza 7.

* We may scavenge the dross of the nation, we may shudder past bloody sod, But we thrill to the new revelation that we are parts of God.
** [[Robert Haven Schauffler]], ''New Gods for Old''.

* ''Es lebt ein Gott zu strafen und zu rächen.''
** There is a God to punish and avenge.
** [[Friedrich Schiller]], ''Wilhelm Tell'', IV. 3. 37.

* ''Nihil ab illo [i.e. a Deo] vacat; opus suum ipse implet.''
** Nothing is void of God; He Himself fills His work.
** [[Seneca]], ''De Beneficiis'', IV. 8.

* ''Deum non immolationibus et sanguine multo colendum: quæ enim ex trucidatione immerentium voluptas est? sed mente pura, bono honestoque proposito. Non templa illi, congestis in altitudinem saxis, struenda sunt; in suo cuique consecrandus est pectore.''
** God is not to be worshipped with sacrifices and blood; for what pleasure can He have in the slaughter of the innocent? but with a pure mind, a good and honest purpose. Temples are not to be built for Him with stones piled on high; God is to be consecrated in the breast of each.
** [[Seneca]], ''Fragment'', V. 204.

* God helps those who help themselves.
** [[Algernon Sidney]], ''Discourse Concerning Government'', Chapter II. Ovid—Metamorphoses. X. 586. [[Pliny the Elder]], viewing the Eruption of Vesuvius, Aug., 79. [[Friedrich Schiller]], ''William Tell'', I. 2. [[Simonides]] is quoted as author by Claudian. [[Sophocles]], ''Fragments''. [[Terence]], ''Phormio''. I. 4. [[Vergil]], ''Æneid'' (29-19 BC), X, 284. Quoted as a proverb by old and modern writers.

* From Piety, whose soul sincere Fears God, and knows no other fear.
** [[W. Smyth]], ''Ode for the Installation of the Duke of Gloucester as Chancellor of Cambridge''.

* ''Ad majorem Dei gloriam.''
** For the greater glory of God.
** Motto of the Society of Jesus.

* The divine essence itself is love and wisdom.
** [[Emanuel Swedenborg]], ''Divine Love and Wisdom'', Par. 28.

* God, the Great Giver, can open the whole universe to our gaze in the narrow space of a single lane.
** [[Rabindranath Tagore]], ''Jivan-smitri''.

* ''Ha sotto i piedi il Fato e la Natura. Ministri umili; e'l moto e chi'l misura.''
** Under whose feet (subjected to His grace), Sit nature, fortune, motion, time, and place.
** [[Torquato Tasso]], ''Gerusalemme'', IX, 66.

* At last I heard a voice upon the slope Cry to the summit, "Is there any hope?" To which an answer pealed from that high land, But in a tongue no man could understand; And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn, God made himself an awful rose of dawn.
** [[Alfred Tennyson]], ''Vision of Sin'', V.

* I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
** [[Francis Thompson]], ''The Hound of Heaven''.

* But I lose Myself in Him, in Light ineffable! Come then, expressive Silence, muse His praise. These, as they change, Almighty Father, these Are but the varied God. The rolling Year Is full of Thee.
** [[James Thomson (poet)|James Thomson]], ''Hymn'', line 116.

* The being of God is so comfortable, so convenient, so necessary to the felicity of Mankind, that, (as Tully admirably says) Dii immortales ad usum hominum fabricati pene videantur, if God were not a necessary being of himself, he might almost seem to be made on purpose for the use and benefit of men.
** [[Archbishop Tillotson]], ''Works'', Sermon 93, Volume I, p. 696. (Ed. 1712). Probable origin of Voltaire's phrase.

* Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in thee.
** [[Augustus Toplady]], ''Living and Dying Prayer''. "Rock of Ages" is translation. from the Hebrew of "everlasting strength." Isaiah, XXVI. 4.

* None but God can satisfy the longings of an immortal soul; that as the heart was made for Him, so He only can fill it.
** [[Richard Chenevix Trench]], ''Notes on the Parables'', ''Prodigal Son''.

* God, from a beautiful necessity, is Love.
** [[Martin Farquhar Tupper]], ''Of Immortality''.

* I believe that there is no God, but that matter is God and God is matter; and that it is no matter whether there is any God or no.
** "The Unbeliever's Creed", ''Connoisseur No. IX'' (March 28, 1754).

* Si genus humanum et mortalia temnitis arma, At sperate deos memores fandi atque nefandi.
** If ye despise the human race, and mortal arms, yet remember that there is a God who is mindful of right and wrong.
** [[Virgil]], ''[[w:Aeneid|Æneid]]'' (29-19 BC), I. 542.

* ''Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer.''
** If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him.
** [[Voltaire]], ''Epitre à l'Auteur du Livre des Trois Imposteurs'', CXI. See Œuvres Complètes de Voltaire, Volume I, p. 1076. Ed. Didot, 1827. Also in letter to Frederick, Prince Royal of Prussia.

* ''Je voudrais que vous écrasassiez l'infâme.''
** I wish that you would crush this infamy.
** Voltaire to D'Alembert June 23, 1760. Attributed to Voltaire by Abbé Barruch—Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism. Generally quoted "Écrasez l'infâme." A. De Morgan contends that the popular idea that it refers to God is incorrect. It refers probably to the Roman Catholic Church, or the traditions in the church.

* God on His throne is eldest of poets: Unto His measures moveth the Whole.
** [[William Watson]], ''England my Mother'', Part II.

* The God I know of, I shall ne'er Know, though he dwells exceeding nigh. Raise thou the stone and find me there, Cleave thou the wood and there am I. Yea, in my flesh his spirit doth flow, Too near, too far, for me to know.
** [[William Watson]], ''The Unknown God''. Third and fourth lines are from "newly discovered sayings of Jesus." Probably an ancient Oriental proverb.

* The Somewhat which we name but cannot know. Ev'n as we name a star and only see Its quenchless flashings forth, which ever show And ever hide him, and which are not he.
** [[William Watson]], ''Wordsworth's Grave'', I, Stanza 6.

* God is and all is well.
** [[John Greenleaf Whittier]], ''My Birthday''.

* I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care.
** [[John Greenleaf Whittier]], ''The Eternal Goodness'', Stanza 20.

* Though man sits still, and takes his ease, God is at work on man; No means, no moment unemploy'd, To bless him, if he can.
** [[Edward Young]], ''Resignation'', Part I, Stanza 119.

= Anonymous =
:Proverbs or widely known statements by unknown authors.

* The more science I come to understand, The more logic, reason and math I learn, The more I believe in God, for the complexity and depth of nature and cosmos, on its small and grand scales, I find it quite impossible by the same reasons, logic, and equations, for it to have come about merely on its own without any divine intervention.
**[[Anonymous]]

* Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
** English proverb

* God does not love those who have not suffered.
** Croatian Proverb

* God is like a barber: don't expect him to give you a haircut, you must first get at his barbershop.
** [[Anonymous]]

* God is beatiful. He loves beauty.
** Muslim proverb

* Trust in God but tie your camel.
** Muslim proverb (possibly attributed in the Masnavi of Rumi).

* If God lived on earth, people would break his windows.
** Yiddish proverb

* To make God laugh at you, tell him your plans.
** Yiddish proverb

* Black holes are where God is dividing by zero.
** [[Anonymous]]

* God is real, unless you declare him an integer.
** [[Anonymous]]

* Well you may throw your rock and hide your hand Workin' in the dark against your fellow man But as sure as God made black and white What's down in the dark will be brought to the light.
** [[Anonymous]], "[[w:God's Gonna Cut You Down|God's Gonna Cut You Down]]", traditional folk song, recorded by many artists.

* Go tell that long tongue liar Go and tell that midnight rider Tell the rambler, the gambler, the back biter Tell 'em that God's gonna cut 'em down.
** [[Anonymous]] "God's Gonna Cut You Down", traditional folk song

=See also=
*[[Life]]
*[[Death]]
*[[Atheism]]
*[[Religion]]
*[[Jesus Christ]]

=External links=
{{wikipedia}}
{{wiktionary}}
{{wikiversity}}
{{wikibooks|God and Religious Toleration}}
*[http://www.religiousbook.net/Books/Online_books/Ec/Ecology_4.html What is God] by Vladimir Antonov
*[http://www.allaboutgod.com/who-is-god-c.htm Who is God?]
*[http://www.whywontgodhealamputees.com Why Won't God Heal Amputees?]

[[Category:Religion]]

[[az:Tanrı]]
[[bg:Бог]]
[[bs:Bog]]
[[ca:Déu]]
[[cs:Bůh]]
[[de:Gott]]
[[et:Jumal]]
[[el:Θεός]]
[[es:Dios]]
[[eo:Dio]]
[[eu:Jainkoa]]
[[fr:Dieu]]
[[hr:Bog]]
[[is:Guð]]
[[it:Dio]]
[[he:אלוהים]]
[[ku:Yezdan]]
[[lt:Dievas]]
[[hu:Isten]]
[[ml:ദൈവം]]
[[ja:神]]
[[uz:Xudo]]
[[pl:Bóg]]
[[pt:Deus]]
[[ro:Esop]]
[[ru:Бог]]
[[sk:Boh]]
[[sl:Bog]]
[[sr:Бог]]
[[tr:Tanrı]]
[[uk:Бог]]
[[zh:神]]

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

2012-01-21T23:23:28Z

Nobody60: /* External links */

[[File:Tenzin Gyatzo foto 2.jpg|244px|thumb|right|The essence of spiritual practice is your attitude toward others. When you have a pure, sincere motivation, then you have right attitude toward others based on kindness, compassion, love and respect.]]
'''[[w:Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama|His Holiness, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama]]''' (born [[6 July]] [[1935]]) Head of state and spiritual leader of the people of Tibet; Awarded the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize; born '''Lhamo Dhondrub''', renamed '''Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso''' (Holy Lord, Gentle Glory, Compassionate, Defender of the Faith, Ocean of Wisdom) upon being officially recognized as the Dalai Lama. Tibetans often refer to him as '''Yeshe Norbu''', the "Wishfulfilling Gem" or just '''Kundun''' - "The Presence."

== Quotes ==
[[File:Jiuhuashan bodhisattva image.jpg|144px|thumb|right|The [[w:Mahayana|Great Vehicle]] path requires the vast motivation of a [[w:Bodhisattva|Bodhisattva]], who, not seeking just his or her welfare, takes on the burden of bringing about the welfare of all sentient beings.]]

* '''My true religion is Kindness.'''
** ''Kindness, Clarity, and Insight'' (1984)
** Variant: '''My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.'''
*** As quoted in ''Tibet, a Guide to the Land of Fascination'' (1988) by Trilok Chandra Majupuria and Indra Majupuria

* '''It is very important to generate a good attitude, a good heart, as much as possible.''' From this, happiness in both the short term and the long term for both yourself and others will come.
** ''Kindness, Clarity, and Insight'' (1984)

* '''Religion does not mean just precepts, a temple, monastery, or other external signs, for these as well as hearing and thinking are subsidiary factors in taming the mind.''' When the mind becomes the practices, one is a practitioner of religion, and when the mind does not become the practices one is not.
** ''Deity Yoga'' (1987) ISBN 0937938505 

[[File:14th Dalai Lama.jpg|144px|thumb|right|I am a simple Buddhist monk — no more, no less.]]
* What is the [[w:Mahayana|Great Vehicle]]? What is the mode of procedure of the [[w:Bodhisattva|Bodhisattva]] path? We begin with the topic of the altruistic intention to achieve enlightenment in which one values others more than oneself. '''The Great Vehicle path requires the vast motivation of a Bodhisattva, who, not seeking just his or her welfare, takes on the burden of bringing about the welfare of all sentient beings.''' When a person generate this attitude, they enter within the Great Vehicle, and as long as it has not been generated, one cannot be counted among those of the Great Vehicle. This attitude really has great power; it, of course, is helpful for people practicing religion, but it also is helpful for those who are just concerned with the affairs of this lifetime. '''The root of happiness is altruism — the wish to be of service to others.'''
** ''The Dalai Lama at Harvard: Lectures on the Buddhist Path to Peace'' (1988) by Jeffrey Hopkins

* '''I feel that the essence of spiritual practice is your attitude toward others.''' When you have a pure, sincere motivation, then you have right attitude toward others based on kindness, compassion, love and respect. Practice brings the clear realisation of the oneness of all human beings and the importance of others benefiting by your actions.
** Answering the question "Your Holiness, there are many people in the West who want to combine their spiritual practice with social and political responsibility. Do you feel that these two aspects are connected?" in an interview with Catherine Ingram, Dharamsala, India (2 November 1988).

[[File:Nagasaki temple destroyed.jpg|144px|thumb|right|I believe that in the 20th century, humanity has learned from many, many experiences. Some positive, and many negative...]]
* It is the enemy who can truly teach us to practice the virtues of compassion and tolerance.
** ''Ocean of Wisdom: Guidelines for Living'' (1989) ISBN 094066609X 
** Unsourced variant: In the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the best teacher.

* '''I am a simple Buddhist monk — no more, no less.'''
** As quoted in ''Nobel Prize Winners'' (1991) by by Lisa F. Dewitt

* Dr. [[w:Rajendra Prasad|Rajendra Prasad]] was a true Bodhisatva. His humility brought tears to my eyes.
** ''Freedom in Exile: The Autobiography of the Dalai Lama'' (1991)

[[File:Dharma Wheel.svg|144px|thumb|right|[[w:Bodhichitta|Bodhicitta]] is the medicine which revives and gives life to every sentient being who even hears of it.]]
* '''Don't compare me with [[Jesus]]. He is a great master, a great master...'''
** Interview in ''The New York Times'' (28 November 1993)

* '''I believe that in the 20th century, humanity has learned from many, many experiences. Some positive, and many negative.''' What misery, what destruction! The greatest number of human beings were killed in the two world wars of this century. But human nature is such that when we face a tremendous critical situation, the human mind can wake up and find some other alternative. That is a human capacity.
** Interview in ''The New York Times'' (28 November 1993)

* '''Reason well from the beginning and then there will never be any need to look back with confusion and doubt.'''
** ''The Path to Enlightenment'' (1994) ISBN 1559390328 

* '''Human happiness and human satisfaction must ultimately come from within oneself.''' It is wrong to expect some final satisfaction to come from money or from a computer.
** ''The Path to Tranquility: Daily Wisdom'' (1998) edited by Renuka Singh

* '''[[w:Bodhichitta|Bodhicitta]] is the medicine which revives and gives life to every sentient being who even hears of it.''' When you engage in fulfilling the needs of others, your own needs are fulfilled as a by-product.
** ''The Path to Tranquility: Daily Wisdom'' (1998) edited by Renuka Singh

[[File:Tenzin Gyatzo foto 1.jpg|144px|thumb|right|If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.]]
* It is also possible within this lifetime to enhance the power of the mind, enabling one to reaccess memories from previous lives. Such recollection tends to be more accessible during meditative experiences in the dream state. Once one has accessed memories of previous lives in the dream state, one gradually recalls them in the waking state.
** ''Consciousness at the Crossroads: Conversations with The Dalai Lama on Brain Science and Buddhism'' (1999) ISBN 1559391278 

* If there is love, there is hope that one may have real families, real brotherhood, real equanimity, real peace. If the love within your mind is lost and you see other beings as enemies, then no matter how much knowledge or education or material comfort you have, only suffering and confusion will ensue
** ''The Little Book of Buddhism'' (2000) ISBN 0712602402 

* '''If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.'''
** As quoted in ''Meditations for Living In Balance: Daily Solutions for People Who Do Too Much'' (2000) by Anne Wilson Schaef, p. 11

* '''Within the body there are billions of different particles. Similarly, there are many different thoughts and a variety of states of mind.''' It is wise to take a close look into the world of your mind and to make the distinction between beneficial and harmful states of mind. '''Once you can recognize the value of good states of mind, you can increase or foster them.'''
** ''The Dalai Lama's Book of Wisdom'' (2000)

[[File:Bbrot225x225x24.PNG|144px|thumb|right|True compassion is not just an emotional response but a firm commitment founded on reason...]]
* '''Compassion without attachment is possible.''' Therefore, we need to clarify the distinctions between compassion and attachment. True compassion is not just an emotional response but a firm commitment founded on reason. Therefore, a truly compassionate attitude towards others does not change even if they behave negatively. Genuine compassion is based not on our own projections and expectations, but rather on the needs of the other...
** ''The Compassionate Life'' (2001), Ch. 2 "How to Develop Compassion" p. 21

[[File:Mandala1 detail.jpg|144px|thumb|right|All living beings are believed to possess the nature of the Primordial Buddha [[w:Samantabhadra|Samantabhadra]], the potential or seed of enlightenment, within them.]]
* '''From the moment of birth every human being wants happiness and freedom and wants to avoid suffering. In this we are all the same; and the more we care for the happiness of others the greater our own sense of each other becomes.''' Many of our problems are created by ourselves based on divisions due to ideology, religion, race, resources, economic status or other factors. The time has come to think on a deeper, more human level and appreciate and respect our sameness as human beings. And to have a respect for endangered cultures that share these principles. We are at the dawn of an age in which many people feel that extreme political concepts should cease to dominate human affairs. We should use this opportunity to replace them with universal human and spiritual values and ensure that these values become the fiber of the global family that is emerging. It is not possible to find peace with anger, hatred, jealousy or greed. At every level of society, familial, tribal, national and international, the key to a happier and more peaceful and successful world is the growth of compassion. We do not necessarily need to become religious, nor even believe in an ideology. We need only to develop our good human qualities and know that love and compassion are the most essential concepts for human survival. So long as human beings live and suffer, the only world open to our present knowledge, the brotherhood of man will seem an unattainable principle. In order for us to achieve real lasting peace among one another, the effort to realize that noblest and most satisfactory moral value must be occupation of every individual intelligence.
** ''The Compassionate Life'' (2001) Ch. 3 "Global Compassion"

* According to Buddhism, individuals are masters of their own destiny. And all living beings are believed to possess the nature of the Primordial Buddha [[w:Samantabhadra|Samantabhadra]], the potential or seed of enlightenment, within them. So our future is in our own hands. What greater free will do we need?
** Answering the question: "Do sentient beings have free will?" in ''Dzogchen : The Heart Essence of the Great Perfection'' (2001) ISBN 155939157X 

[[Image:Light dispersion conceptual.gif|144px|thumb|right|As in science so in Buddhism, understanding the nature of reality is pursued by means of critical investigation...]]
* '''We need a little more compassion, and if we cannot have it then no politician or even a magician can save the planet.'''
** As quoted in ''Words Of Wisdom: Selected Quotes by His Holiness the Dalai Lama'' (2001) edited by Margaret Gee, p. 49

* '''Compassion and tolerance are not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength.'''
** As quoted in ''Words Of Wisdom: Selected Quotes by His Holiness the Dalai Lama'' (2001) edited by Margaret Gee, p. 71

* Each of us has the potential to contribute … You have a great opportunity to make a new shape of the world.
** As quoted in [http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20010515&slug=dalai15m0 "Dalai Lama urges students to shape world" in ''The Seattle Times'' (15 May 2001)]

* '''Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.'''
** As quoted in ''A Small Drop of Ink: A Collection of Inspirational and Moving Quotations of the Ages'' (2003) by Linda Pendleton

* '''My confidence in venturing into science lies in my basic belief that as in science so in Buddhism, understanding the nature of reality is pursued by means of critical investigation''': if scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.
**''The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality'' (2005)

* If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change. In my view, science and Buddhism share a search for the truth and for understanding reality. By learning from science about aspects of reality where its understanding may be more advanced, I believe that Buddhism enriches its own worldview.
** ''The New York Times'' (12 November 2005)

[[File:Dalai Lama & Bishop Tutu. Carey Linde.jpg|144px|thumb|right|All major religious traditions carry basically the same message, that is love, compassion and forgiveness... the important thing is they should be part of our daily lives.]]
* '''All major religious traditions carry basically the same message, that is love, compassion and forgiveness ... the important thing is they should be part of our daily lives.'''
** As quoted in ''Especially for Christians: Powerful Thought-provoking Words from the Past'' (2005) by Mark Alton Rose, p. 19

[[File:ReligionSymbol.svg|144px|thumb|right|The time has come to educate people, to cease all quarrels in the name of religion, culture, countries, different political or economic systems...]]
* His Holiness [[Pope John Paul II]] was a man I held in high regard. His experience in Poland and my own difficulties with communists gave us an immediate ground. The Pope was very sympathetic to the Tibetan problem. Of course, as the head of an institution trying to establish good relations with China and seriously concerned about the status of millions of Christians in china he could not express this publicly or officially. But right from the start of our friendship he revealed to me privately that he had a clear understanding of the Tibetan problem because of his own experience of communism in Poland. This gave me great personal encouragement.
** [http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1711921.cms "I am a simple Buddhist monk: Dalai Lama" in ''The Times of India'' (6 July 2006)]

* '''Media people should have long noses like an elephant to smell out politicians, mayors, prime ministers and businessmen. We need to know the reality, the good and the bad, not just the appearance.'''
** News conference in Vancouver, B.C. as quoted in [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060908.BCDALAILAMA08/TPStory/ ''The Globe and Mail.'' (8 September 2006)]

* '''The time has come to educate people, to cease all quarrels in the name of religion, culture, countries, different political or economic systems. Fighting is useless. Suicide.'''
** News conference in Vancouver, B.C. as quoted in ''The Globe and Mail.'' (8 September 2006)

* '''Forgiveness doesn't mean forget what happened. … If something is serious and it is necessary to take counter-measures, you have to take counter-measures.'''
** On the killing of al-Queda terrorist leader [[Osama bin Laden]] by US military forces, as quoted in [http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0504-dalai-lama-20110504,0,7229481.story "Dalai Lama suggests Osama bin Laden's death was justified" by Mitchell Landsberg, in ''The Los Angeles Times'' (4 May 2011)]

=== Letter to Deng Xiaoping (1981) ===
:Letter to [[Deng Xiaoping]] (23 March 1981) [http://www.tibet.ca/en/wtnarchive/1993/9/4_2.html Full text online]
[[File:Dalai Lama 1430 Luca Galuzzi 2007crop.jpg |144px|thumb|right|On my part, I remain committed to contribute my efforts for the welfare of all human beings, and in particular the poor and the weak to the best of my ability without any distinction based on national boundaries.]]

* '''I agree with and believe in the Communist ideology which seeks the well being of human beings in general and the proletariat in particular, and in [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]]'s policy of the equality of nationalities.''' Similarly, I was pleased with the discussions I had with Chairman [[Mao Zedong|Mao]] on ideology and the policy towards nationalities. '''If that same ideology and policy were implemented it would have brought much admiration and happiness. However, if one is to make a general comment on the developments during the past two decades, there has been a lapse in economic and educational progress, the basis of human happiness.''' Moreover, on account of the hardships caused by the unbearable disruptions, there has been a loss of trust between the Party and the masses, between the officials and the masses, among the officials themselves, and also among the masses themselves. '''By deceiving one another through false assumptions and misrepresentations there has been, in reality, a great lapse and delay in achieving the real goals.'''

* It is regrettable that some Tibetan officials, who lack the wisdom and competence required for promoting basic human happiness and the short and long term welfare of their own people, indulge in flattering Chinese officials and, collaborate with these Chinese officials who know nothing about Tibetans and work simply for their temporary fame indulging in fabricating impressive reports. In reality, the Tibetan people have not only undergone immeasurable sufferings, but large numbers have also unnecessarily lost their lives.

* On the political front, we have always pursued the path of truth and justice in our struggle for the legitimate rights of the Tibetan people. We have never indulged in distortions, exaggerations and criticism of the Chinese people. Neither have we harboured any ill will towards them. Above all, we have always held to our position of truth and justice without siding with any of the international political power blocks.

* We must improve the relationship between China and Tibet as well as between Tibetans in and outside Tibet. With truth and equality as our foundation, we must try to develop friendship between Tibetans and Chinese through better understanding in the future. The time has come to apply our common wisdom in a spirit of tolerance and broadmindedness to achieve genuine happiness for the Tibetan people with a sense of urgency. '''On my part, I remain committed to contribute my efforts for the welfare of all human beings, and in particular the poor and the weak to the best of my ability without any distinction based on national boundaries.'''

=== Nobel acceptance speech (1989) ===
:Nobel acceptance speech (10 December 1989) [http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1989/lama-acceptance.html Full text online]
[[Image:Friendship love and truth.jpg|144px|thumb|right|I am convinced that everyone can develop a good heart and a sense of universal responsibility with or without religion.]]

* '''I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance.''' People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their happiness or satisfaction. Yet true happiness comes from a sense of inner peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved through the cultivation of altruism, of love and compassion and elimination of ignorance, selfishness and greed. The problems we face today, violent conflicts, destruction of nature, poverty, hunger, and so on, are human-created problems which can be resolved through human effort, understanding and the development of a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood. We need to cultivate a universal responsibility for one another and the planet we share. Although I have found my own Buddhist religion helpful in generating love and compassion, even for those we consider our enemies, '''I am convinced that everyone can develop a good heart and a sense of universal responsibility with or without religion.'''

[[File:Halo in cirrostratus 1.jpg|144px|thumb|right|I am optimistic that the ancient values that have sustained mankind are today reaffirming themselves to prepare us for a kinder, happier twenty-first century.]]
* '''With the ever-growing impact of science on our lives, religion and spirituality have a greater role to play by reminding us of our humanity. There is no contradiction between the two.''' Each gives us valuable insights into the other. Both science and the teachings of the Buddha tell us of the fundamental unity of all things. This understanding is crucial if we are to take positive and decisive action on the pressing global concern with the environment. I believe all religions pursue the same goals, that of cultivating human goodness and bringing happiness to all human beings. Though the means might appear different the ends are the same.

* '''As we enter the final decade of this century I am optimistic that the ancient values that have sustained mankind are today reaffirming themselves to prepare us for a kinder, happier twenty-first century.''' I pray for all of us, oppressor and friend, that together we succeed in building a better world through human understanding and love, and that in doing so we may reduce the pain and suffering of all sentient beings.

=== Nobel lecture (1989) ===
:Nobel lecture (11 December 1989) [http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1989/lama-lecture.html Full text online]
[[File:Earth-Moon System.jpg|144px|thumb|right|We have to learn to live in harmony and peace with each other and with nature. That is not just a dream, but a necessity.]]

* When I meet people in different parts of the world, I am always reminded that we are all basically alike: we are all human beings. Maybe we have different clothes, our skin is of a different colour, or we speak different languages. That is on the surface. But basically, we are the same human beings. That is what binds us to each other. That is what makes it possible for us to understand each other and to develop friendship and closeness.

* '''Because we all share this small planet earth, we have to learn to live in harmony and peace with each other and with nature. That is not just a dream, but a necessity.''' We are dependent on each other in so many ways, that we can no longer live in isolated communities and ignore what is happening outside those communities, and we must share the good fortune that we enjoy.

[[File:Mueang Boran HAH 0674.jpg|144px|thumb|right|Inner peace is the key: if you have inner peace, the external problems do not affect your deep sense of peace and tranquility.]]
* I speak not with a feeling of anger or hatred towards those who are responsible for the immense suffering of our people and the destruction of our land, homes and culture. They too are human beings who struggle to find happiness and deserve our compassion. I speak to inform you of the sad situation in my country today and of the aspirations of my people, because in our struggle for freedom, truth is the only weapon we possess.

* '''Today, we are truly a global family. What happens in one part of the world may affect us all.''' This, of course, is not only true of the negative things that happen, but is equally valid for the positive developments. We not only know what happens elsewhere, thanks to the extraordinary modern communications technology. We are also directly affected by events that occur far away.

* '''Our own security is enhanced when peace breaks out between warring parties in other continents.''' But war or peace; the destruction or the protection of nature; the violation or promotion of human rights and democratic freedoms; poverty or material well-being; the lack of moral and spiritual values or their existence and development; and the breakdown or development of human understanding, are not isolated phenomena that can be analysed and tackled independently of one another. In fact, they are very much interrelated at all levels and need to be approached with that understanding.

* '''Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free.''' True peace with oneself and with the world around us can only be achieved through the development of mental peace.

* '''Inner peace is the key: if you have inner peace, the external problems do not affect your deep sense of peace and tranquility.''' In that state of mind you can deal with situations with calmness and reason, while keeping your inner happiness. That is very important. Without this inner peace, no matter how comfortable your life is materially, you may still be worried, disturbed or unhappy because of circumstances.

* '''Responsibility does not only lie with the leaders of our countries or with those who have been appointed or elected to do a particular job. It lies with each one of us individually.'''

[[File:Potala.JPG|144px|thumb|right|I would like to take this opportunity to explain the Zone of [[w:Ahimsa|Ahimsa]] or peace sanctuary concept...]]
* I am deeply touched by the sincere concern shown by so many people in this part of the world for the suffering of the people of Tibet. That is a source of hope not only for us Tibetans, but for all oppressed people.

* I would like to take this opportunity to explain the Zone of [[w:Ahimsa|Ahimsa]] or peace sanctuary concept, which is the central element of the Five-Point Peace Plan. I am convinced that it is of great importance not only for Tibet, but for peace and stability in Asia. It is my dream that the entire Tibetan plateau should become a free refuge where humanity and nature can live in peace and in harmonious balance.

* The following are key elements of the proposed Zone of Ahimsa:
:* the entire Tibetan plateau would be demilitarised;
:* the manufacture, testing, and stockpiling of nuclear weapons and other armaments on the Tibetan plateau would be prohibited;
:* the Tibetan plateau would be transformed into the world's largest natural park or biosphere. Strict laws would be enforced to protect wildlife and plant life; the exploitation of natural resources would be carefully regulated so as not to damage relevant ecosystems; and a policy of sustainable development would be adopted in populated areas;
:* the manufacture and use of nuclear power and other technologies which produce hazardous waste would be prohibited;
:* national resources and policy would be directed towards the active promotion of peace and environmental protection. Organisations dedicated to the furtherance of peace and to the protection of all forms of life would find a hospitable home in Tibet;
:* the establishment of international and regional organisations for the promotion and protection of human rights would be encouraged in Tibet.

[[File:CL0024+17.jpg|144px|thumb|right|''For as long as space endures, and for as long as living beings remain, until then may I, too, abide to dispel the misery of the world.'']]
* '''For the stability and peace of Asia, it is essential to create peace zones to separate the continent's biggest powers and potential adversaries.'''

* When I visited [[w:Costa Rica|Costa Rica]] earlier this year, I saw how a country can develop successfully without an army, to become a stable democracy committed to peace and the protection of the natural environment. This confirmed my belief that my vision of Tibet in the future is a realistic plan, not merely a dream.

* I believe that our Tibetan ability to combine spiritual qualities with a realistic and practical attitude enables us to make a special contribution, in however modest a way. This is my hope and prayer. In conclusion, let me share with you a short prayer which gives me great inspiration and determination:
:: ''For as long as space endures, And for as long as living beings remain, Until then may I, too, abide To dispel the misery of the world.''
::* This last statement is a traditional form of the [[w:Bodhisattva vows|Bodhisattva vows]].

=== ''The Dalai Lama: A Policy of Kindness'' (1990) ===
[[Image:Dalai Lama boy.jpg|144px|thumb|right|An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful...]]
: ''The Dalai Lama, A Policy of Kindness: An Anthology by and about the Dalai Lama'' (1990) edited by Sidney Piburn ISBN 8120815122
[[File:Bush - Dalai Lama (2007-10-07).jpg |144px|thumb|right|There isn't anyone who doesn't appreciate kindness and compassion.]]
[[File:Barack Obama with the 14th Dalai Lama in the Map Room.jpg|144px|thumb|right|It is necessary to help others, not only in our prayers, but in our daily lives. If we find we cannot help others, the least we can do is to desist from harming them.]]

* '''Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend — or a meaningful day.'''
** As quoted in "Tibet's Living Buddha" by [[w:Pico Iyer|Pico Iyer]], p. 32

* '''Whether one believes in a religion or not, and whether one believes in rebirth or not, there isn't anyone who doesn't appreciate kindness and compassion.'''
** "Kindness and Compassion" p. 47

* If I say, "I am a monk." or "I am a Buddhist," these are, in comparison to my nature as a human being, temporary. '''To be human is basic.'''
** "Kindness and Compassion" p. 47

* Today we face many problems. Some are created essentially by ourselves based on divisions due to ideology, religion, race, economic status, or other factors. Therefore, '''the time has come for us to think on a deeper level, on the human level, and from that level we should appreciate and respect the sameness of others as human beings.'''
** "Kindness and Compassion" p. 47

* This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. '''Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.'''
** "Kindness and Compassion" p. 52

[[File:Threejewels.svg|144px|thumb|right|To study Buddhism and then use it as a weapon in order to criticize others' theories or ideologies is wrong. The very purpose of religion is to control yourself, not to criticize others.]]
* '''To study Buddhism and then use it as a weapon in order to criticize others' theories or ideologies is wrong. The very purpose of religion is to control yourself, not to criticize others.''' Rather, we must criticize ourselves. How much am I doing about my anger? About my attachment, about my hatred, about my pride, my jealousy? These are the things which we must check in daily life with the knowledge of the Buddhist teachings.
** "A Talk to Western Buddhists" p. 87

* As Buddhists, while we practice our own teaching, we must respect other faiths, Christianity, Judaism and so forth. We must recognize and appreciate their contributions over many past centuries to human society, and at this time we must strive to make common effort to serve humankind.
** "A Talk to Western Buddhists" p. 87

* '''Sectarian feelings and criticism of other teachings or other sects is very bad, poisonous, and should be avoided.'''
** "A Talk to Western Buddhists" p. 87

* '''It is necessary to help others, not only in our prayers, but in our daily lives. If we find we cannot help others, the least we can do is to desist from harming them.'''
** "A Talk to Western Buddhists" p. 89
[[File:LuMaxArt Golden Family With World Religions .jpg|144px|thumb|right|As time passes I have firmed my conviction that all religions can work together despite fundamental differences in philosophy. Every religion aims at serving humanity. Therefore, it is possible for the various religions to work together to serve humanity and contribute to world peace.]]

* '''If there are sound reasons or bases for the points you demand, then there is no need for violence.''' On the other hand, when there is no sound reason that concessions should be made to you but mainly your own desire, then reason cannot work and you have to rely on force. Thus '''using force is not a sign of strength but rather a sign of weakness.'''
** "The Nobel Evening Address" p. 115

* '''As a result of more contact with people from other traditions, as time passes I have firmed my conviction that all religions can work together despite fundamental differences in philosophy.''' Every religion aims at serving humanity. Therefore, it is possible for the various religions to work together to serve humanity and contribute to world peace. So, during these last few years, at every opportunity I try to develop closer relations with other religions.
** "The Nobel Evening Address" p. 115

* '''Buddhism does not accept a theory of God, or a creator. According to Buddhism, one's own actions are the creator, ultimately.''' Some people say that, from a certain angle, Buddhism is not a religion but rather a science of mind. Religion has much involvement with faith. Sometimes it seems that there is quite a distance between a way of thinking based on faith and one entirely based on experiment, remaining skeptical. Unless you find something through investigation, you do not want to accept it as fact. '''From one viewpoint, Buddhism is a religion, from another viewpoint Buddhism is a science of mind and not a religion. Buddhism can be a bridge between these two sides.''' Therefore, with this conviction I try to have closer ties with scientists, mainly in the fields of cosmology, psychology, neurobiology and physics. In these fields there are insights to share, and to a certain extent we can work together.
** "The Nobel Evening Address" p. 115

=== ''Daily Telegraph'' interview (2006) ===
:[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/burmamyanmar/1514537/Westerners-are-too-self-absorbed.html "Westerners are too self-absorbed" by Alice Thomson, in ''The Daily Telegraph'' (1 March 2006)]
[[File:Dalai Lama Congressional Medal.jpg |144px|thumb|right|I don't want to convert people to Buddhism — all major religions, when understood properly, have the same potential for good.]]

* In the West, you have bigger homes, yet smaller families; you have endless conveniences — yet you never seem to have any time. You can travel anywhere in the world, yet you don’t bother to cross the road to meet your neighbours.

* '''Some say I am a good person, some say I am a charlatan — I am just a monk'''... I never asked people like [[w:Richard Gere|Richard Gere]] to come, but it is foolish to stop them. I have Tibetans, Indians, backpackers, AIDS patients, religious people, politicians, actors and princesses. My attitude is to give everyone some of my time. If I can contribute in any way to their happiness, that makes me happy.

* '''I don't want to convert people to Buddhism — all major religions, when understood properly, have the same potential for good.'''

* '''Fundamentalism is terrifying because it is based purely on emotion, rather than intelligence. It prevents followers from thinking as individuals and about the good of the world.'''

{{Misattributed begin}}

==Misattributed==
===Instructions for Life===
:These statements were falsely attributed to the Dalai Lama in an email hoax. They actually derive from advice in ''Life's Little Instruction Book: 511 suggestions, observations, and reminders on how to live a happy and rewarding life'' (1991) by [[w:H. Jackson Brown, Jr.|H. Jackson Brown, Jr]]; More information is available on the hoax at [http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/dalai.asp Snopes.com] 

#Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
#When you lose, don't lose the lesson.
#Follow the three Rs: '''R'''espect for self, '''R'''espect for others and '''R'''esponsibility for all your actions.
#Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
#Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
#Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
#When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
#Spend some time alone every day.
#Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.
#Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
#Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll be able to enjoy it a second time.
#In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don't bring up the past.
#Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality.
#Be gentle with the earth.
#Once a year, go someplace you've never been before.
#Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
#Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
#Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.
{{Misattributed end}}

== Quotes about the 14th Dalai Lama ==
[[File:Tibetian Wheel.svg|144px|thumb|right|Fewer and fewer people would venture to dismiss the Dalai Lama's philosophy as utopian: on the contrary, one would be increasingly justified in asserting that his gospel of nonviolence is the truly realistic one, with most promise for the future. ~ Egil Aarvik]]
[[File:Endlessknot.svg|144px|thumb|right|In awarding the Peace Prize to H.H. the Dalai Lama we affirm our unstinting support for his work for peace, and for the unarmed masses on the march in many lands for liberty, peace and human dignity. ~ Egil Aarvik]]

* The Dalai Lama said acts of violence should be remembered, and then forgiveness should be extended to the perpetrators. But if someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, he said, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun. Not at the head, where a fatal wound might result. But at some other body part, such as a leg.
** Hal Bernton, reporting on remarks made during a public discussion with regional high school students in Portland, Oregon, in [http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20010515&slug=dalai15m0 "Dalai Lama urges students to shape world" in ''The Seattle Times'' (15 May 2001)]

* The Dalai Lama in his struggle for the liberation of Tibet consistently has opposed the use of violence. He has instead advocated peaceful solutions based upon tolerance and mutual respect in order to preserve the historical and cultural heritage of his people. The Dalai Lama has developed his philosophy of peace from a great reverence for all things living and upon the concept of universal responsibility embracing all mankind as well as nature.
** [http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1989/press.html The Norwegian Nobel Committee press release awarding the Nobel Peace Prize (1989)]

* The world has shrunk. Increasingly peoples and nations have grown dependent on one another. No one can any longer act entirely in his own interest. It is therefore imperative that we should accept mutual responsibility for all political, economic, and ecological problems. In view of this, fewer and fewer people would venture to dismiss the Dalai Lama's philosophy as utopian: on the contrary, one would be increasingly justified in asserting that his gospel of nonviolence is the truly realistic one, with most promise for the future. And this applies not only to Tibet but to each and every conflict. The future hopes of oppressed millions are today linked to the unarmed battalions, for they will win the peace: the justice of their demands, moreover, is now so clear and the normal strength of their struggle so indomitable that they can only temporarily be halted by force of arms. In awarding the Peace Prize to H.H. the Dalai Lama we affirm our unstinting support for his work for peace, and for the unarmed masses on the march in many lands for liberty, peace and human dignity.
** [http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1989/presentation-speech.html Nobel Peace Prize presentation speech by Egil Aarvik, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee]

* I don't think China will negotiate. I think they are waiting for the Dalai Lama to die... The Chinese government feels he symbolizes the entire independence movement, and when he is gone, it will go away.
** Tenzin Choegyal, brother of Tenzin Gyatzo, in [http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/96/0510/feat1.html "The Private Dalai Lama" by Ron Gluckman, in ''AsiaWeek'' magazine (10 May 1996)]

* There's no question that His Holiness is my root guru, and he's been quite tough with me at times. I've had to explain to people who sometimes have quite a romantic vision of His Holiness that at times he's been cross with me, but it was very skillful. At the moment he did it, I'm not saying it was pleasant for me, but there was no ego attachment from his side. I'm very thankful that he trusts me enough to be the mirror for me and not pull any punches. Mind you, the first meetings were not that way; I think he was aware how fragile I was and was being very careful. Now I think he senses that my seriousness about the teachings has increased and my own strength within the teachings has increased. He can be much tougher on me.
** [[w:Richard Gere|Richard Gere]], in [http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1882 "My Journey as a Buddhist" an interview with Melvin McLeod in ''Shambhala Sun'' (May 1999)]

* I found also that the question of His Holiness in terms of a political movement was very tricky. It's a non-violent movement, which is a problem in itself-you don't get headlines with nonviolence. And His Holiness doesn't see himself as [[Mahatma Gandhi|Gandhi]]; he doesn't create dramatic, operatic situations. So we've ended up taking a much steadier kind of approach. It's not about drama. It's about, little by little, building truth, and I think it's probably been deeper because of that. The senators, congressmen, legislators and parliamentarians who have got involved go way beyond what they would normally give to a cause they believed in.
** Richard Gere, in "My Journey as a Buddhist" an interview with Melvin McLeod in ''Shambhala Sun'' (May 1999)

* I think the universality of His Holiness' words and teachings have made this so much bigger than just Tibet. When His Holiness won the Nobel Peace Prize, there was a quantum leap. He is not seen as solely a Tibetan anymore; he belongs to the world.
** Richard Gere, in "My Journey as a Buddhist" an interview with Melvin McLeod in ''Shambhala Sun'' (May 1999)

* Maybe the Dalai Lama is the only person who is totally honest, and even with him, he's skillful not to hurt anybody. He's skillful.
** Richard Gere in [http://movies.about.com/library/weekly/aa050102a.htm "Interview - ''Unfaithful''" by Rebecca Murray and Fred Tope]

* His Holiness opposes violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation. He urges respect, tolerance, compassion and the full recognition of human rights for all.
** Office of Tibet spokeswoman Dawa Tsering

==External links==
{{wikipedia}}
{{commonscat}}
{{wikiversity|Buddha oracle#The Middle Way}}
* [http://www.fpmt.org/teachers/hhdl/ His Holiness the Dalai Lama at the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition]
* [http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1989/lama-bio.html Tenzin Gyatso at the official Nobel Prize site.]
** [http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1989/lama-lecture.html Nobel lecture (11 December 1989)]
* [http://www.john-bauer.com/dalai-lama.htm "Compassion and the Individual" by Tenzin Gyatso]
* [http://www.tibet.com/DL/index.html His Holiness the Dalai Lama at Tibet.com]
** [http://www.tibet.com/DL/biography.html Biography at Tibet.com.]
* [http://www.harvard.edu/news/dalai.html "XIVth Dalai Lama visits Harvard" (September 2003)]
* [http://www.gluckman.com/DalaiLama.html "The Private Dalai Lama" by Ron Gluckman]
* [http://www.lamrim.com/index2.html His Holiness the Dalai Lama at LamRim.com Tibetan Buddhist Internet Radio]
* [http://www.onelittleangel.com/wisdom/quotes/dalai_lama.asp Quotes and pictures]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama}}

[[Category:Authors]]
[[Category:Nobel Prize winners]]
[[Category:Pacifists]]
[[Category:Philosophers]]
[[Category:Political leaders]]
[[Category:Religious leaders]]
[[Category:Buddhist teachers]]
[[Category:Tibetans]]
[[Category:Living people]]

[[bg:Далай Лама]]
[[bs:Tenzin Gyatso]]
[[cs:Tändzin Gjamccho]]
[[de:Tenzin Gyatso]]
[[el:Δαλάι Λάμα]]
[[es:Tenzin Gyatso]]
[[eo:Tenzin Gyatso]]
[[fr:Tenzin Gyatso]]
[[it:Tenzin Gyatso]]
[[he:טנזין גיאטסו]]
[[lt:Dalai Lama XIV]]
[[hu:Tendzin Gyaco]]
[[nl:Dalai Lama]]
[[pl:Dalajlama XIV]]
[[pt:Tenzin Gyatso]]
[[sv:Tenzin Gyatso]]
[[tr:Tenzin Gyatso]]
[[zh:达赖喇嘛]]

Gautama Buddha

2011-12-19T14:27:44Z

Nobody60:

[[Image:StandingBuddha.jpg|144px|thumb|right|Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love. This is the eternal rule.]]
'''[[w:Gautama Buddha| Gautama Buddha ]]''' (c. [[563]] – c. [[483]] BC) was a [[w:Teacher|teacher]], and religious leader. "[[w:Buddha|Buddha]]", meaning "'''awakened one'''" or "'''enlightened one'''" is a title, not a name; the [[w:Shakya|Shakyamuni]] Buddha, whose original name was '''Siddhartha Gautama''', was the founder of '''[[Buddhism]]'''.

: See also '''''[[Dhammapada]]'''''
== Quotes ==
[[Image:Candidate for the Buddhist priesthood is ordaining to is a monk in a church.jpg|144px|thumb|Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.]]
[[File:Siddhartha Gautama Buddha portrait.PNG|144px|thumb|right|No one saves us but ourselves, no one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path but Buddhas clearly show the way.]]
[[File:Jigendo Otsu Amida-nyorai14s4592.jpg|144px|thumb|right|To cease from evil, to do good, and to purify the mind yourself, this is the teaching of all the Buddhas.]]
[[File:Bbrot225x225x24.PNG|144px|thumb|right|We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world.]]

* '''But truly, Ananda, it is nothing strange that human beings should die.'''
** [[w:Digha Nikaya|Digha Nikaya]] (DN) 16

* '''Whatever is subject to origination is all subject to cessation.'''
** [[w:Majjhima Nikaya|Majjhima Nikaya]] 74; Dighanaka Sutta (this saying is also in many other suttas as well)

* '''This is deathless, the liberation of the mind through lack of clinging.'''
** Majjhima Nikaya (MN) 106

* '''Do not go by revelation; Do not go by tradition; Do not go by hearsay; Do not go on the authority of sacred texts; Do not go on the grounds of pure logic; Do not go by a view that seems rational; Do not go by reflecting on mere appearances'''; Do not go along with a considered view because you agree with it; Do not go along on the grounds that the person is competent; Do not go along because "the recluse is our teacher." Kalamas, when you yourselves know: These things are unwholesome, these things are blameworthy; these things are censured by the wise; and when undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and ill, abandon them... Kalamas, '''when you know for yourselves: These are wholesome; these things are not blameworthy; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness, having undertaken them, abide in them.'''
** [[w:Kalama Sutta|Kalama Sutta]] - Angutarra Nikaya 3.65

* Behold now, Bhikkhus, I exhort you: '''All compounded things are subject to decay. Strive with diligence!'''
** Last words, as quoted in DN 16; ''[[w:Mahaparinibbana Sutta|Mahaparinibbana Sutta]]'' 6:8
** Variant translations:
** Mendicants, I now impress it upon you, '''the parts and powers of man must be dissolved; work out your own salvation with diligence.'''
*** As quoted in ''Present Day Tracts on the Non-Christian Religions of the World'' (1887) by Sir [[w:William Muir|William Muir]], p. 24
** Now, then, monks, I exhort you: All fabrications are subject to decay. Bring about completion by being heedful.
*** translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
** Behold now, bhikkhus, I exhort you: All compounded things are subject to vanish. Strive with earnestness!
*** translated by Sister Vajira & Francis Story

* Therefore, Ananda, be islands unto yourselves, refuges unto yourselves, seeking no external refuge; with the Dhamma as your island, the Dhamma as your refuge, seeking no other refuge. And how, Ananda, is a bhikkhu an island unto himself, a refuge unto himself, seeking no external refuge; with the Dhamma as his island, the Dhamma as his refuge, seeking no other refuge? When he dwells contemplating the body in the body, earnestly, clearly comprehending, and mindfully, after having overcome desire and sorrow in regard to the world; when he dwells contemplating feelings in feelings, the mind in the mind, and mental objects in mental objects, earnestly, clearly comprehending, and mindfully, after having overcome desire and sorrow in regard to the world, then, truly, he is an island unto himself, a refuge unto himself, seeking no external refuge; having the Dhamma as his island, the Dhamma as his refuge, seeking no other refuge. Those bhikkhus of mine, Ananda, who now or after I am gone, abide as an island unto themselves, as a refuge unto themselves, seeking no other refuge; having the Dhamma as their island and refuge, seeking no other refuge: it is they who will become the highest, if they have the desire to learn.
** ''Mahaparinibbana Sutta'' 2:33-35, as translated by Sister Vajira & Francis Story

* '''Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.'''
** As quoted in ''Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing'' (2006) edited by Larry Chang, p. 193

==== Exertion ====
:[http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/snp/snp.3.02.than.html Full text online], as translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu 
* Sensual passions are your first enemy.
:Your second is called Discontent.
:Your third is Hunger & Thirst.
:Your fourth is called Craving.
:Fifth is Sloth & Drowsiness.
:Sixth is called Terror.
:Your seventh is Uncertainty.
:Hypocrisy & Stubbornness, your eighth.
:Gains, Offerings, Fame, & Status wrongly gained,
:and whoever would praise self
:& disparage others.
:That, Namuci, is your enemy,
:the Dark One's commando force.
:A coward can't defeat it,
:but one having defeated it
:gains bliss.

* I spit on my life. Death in battle would be better for me than that I, defeated, survive.
** This statement is made in reference to his battle against the personification of temptation to evil, [[w:Mara (demon)|Mara]].

* That army of yours,
:that the world with its devas can't overcome,
:I will smash with discernment

*I will go about, from kingdom to kingdom,
:training many disciples.
:They — heedful, resolute
:doing my teachings —
:despite your wishes, will go
:where, having gone,
:there's no grief.
:* Sn 3.2, Buddha's Purpose

===After Enlightenment===

*Open are the doors to the Deathless to those with ears. Let them show their conviction.
** ''Ayacana Sutta''

*In a world become blind, I beat the drum of the Deathless.
** [http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.026.than.html Ariyapariyesana Sutta] 

* Conquerors are those like me who have reached fermentations' end. I've conquered evil qualities, and so, Upaka, I'm a conqueror
** ''Ariyapariyesana Sutta''

=== ''[[Dhammapada]]'' ===
: These are just a few samples, for more from this work see the page for the '''''[[Dhammapada]]'''' 

* '''No one saves us but ourselves, no one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path but Buddhas clearly show the way.'''
** Ch. 165

* '''To cease from evil, to do good, and to purify the mind yourself, this is the teaching of all the Buddhas.'''
** Ch. 183

* Can there be joy and laughter When always the world is ablaze? Enshrouded in darkness Should you not seek a light?

* '''We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world.'''
** As translated by T. Byrom (1993), Shambhala Publications.

=== ''[[w:Anguttara_Nikaya|Anguttara Nikaya]]'' ===


:Friends

:Nothing is as intractable as an untamed heart.
:The untamed heart is intractable.

:Nothing is as tractable as a tamed heart.
:The tamed heart is tractable.

:Nothing tends toward loss as does an untamed heart.
:The untamed heart tends towards loss.

:Nothing tends toward growth as does a tamed heart.
:The tamed heart tends towards growth.

:Nothing brings suffering as does
:the untamed, uncontrolled unattended and unrestrained heart.
:That heart brings suffering.

:Nothing brings joy as does a
:tamed, controlled, attended and restrained heart.
:This heart brings joy.'''

=== ''[[w:Samyutta_Nikaya|Samyutta Nikaya]]'' ===
:[http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/index.html Online Translations]

* Whatever is felt is within suffering.
** 36.11

'''Soma and Mara'''
An adapation of a translation by C.A.F. Rhys-Davids

:Once Soma, having returned from her alms round
:and having eaten her meal, entered the woods to meditate.
:Deep in the woods, she sat down under a tree.
[[Image:BuddhaLoutsSm.jpg|144px|thumb|Everything changes, nothing remains without change....]]

:The tempter Mara, desirous and capable of arousing fear, wavering and dread,
:and wishing her to interrupt her focused meditation, came to her and said,

:Your intent is difficult, even for the sages;
:Completion cannot be reached by a woman regardless the wisdom reaped."

:Then Soma thought, "Who is this speaking, human or nonhuman?
:Surely it is evil Mara desiring to interrupt my focused meditation."

:Knowing that it was Mara, she said,
:"What does gender matter with regard to a well-composed mind,
:which experiences insight in the light of the dharma?"

:The evil Mara thought, "Soma knows me"
:and sorrowful for the evil, instantly vanished into darkness.

[[Image:VajraMudra.JPG|144px|thumb|right|In protecting oneself, others are protected; In protecting others, oneself is protected.]]
'''Bamboo Acrobats'''
An adaptation of a translation by John Ireland.

:The Exalted One was dwelling in the Sumbha country,
:in a location of the Sumbhas called Sedaka
:There He addressed the monks:

:"Once upon a time, a bamboo-acrobat set up his pole
:and called to his pupil, Medakathalika, saying,

:'Come my lad Medakathalika,
:climb the pole and stand on my shoulders!'

:'All right master,'
:replied the pupil to the bamboo-acrobat.
:The student then climbed the pole
:and stood on the master's shoulders.

:Then the bamboo-acrobat said to his pupil:
:'Now Medakathalika, protect me well and I shall protect you.
:Thus watched and warded by each other,
:we will show our tricks, get a good fee and
:come down safe from the bamboo pole.'
[[Image:Ss460-319-070-Buddha2-1.jpg|thumb|144px|Meditation brings wisdom; lack of meditation leaves ignorance. Know well what leads you forward and what hold you back, and choose the path that leads to wisdom.]]

:At these words Medakathalika the pupil
:said to the bamboo-acrobat,

:'No, no! That won't do master!
:Look after yourself and I'll look after myself.
:Thus watched and warded each by himself,
:we'll show our tricks and get a good fee and
:come down safe from the bamboo-pole.'"

:"In the synthesis is the right way,"
:said the Exalted One,
:"Just as Medakathalika the pupil said to his master,
:'I shall protect myself,'
:by this the Foundation of Mindfulness is practiced.
:'I shall protect others,'
:by this the Foundation of Mindfulness is practiced.
:In protecting oneself, others are protected;
:In protecting others, oneself is protected."
[[Image:Chinese temple bouddha.jpg|thumb|right|144px|Words have the power to both destroy and heal.
When words are both true and kind, they can change our world.]]

:And how does one in protecting oneself, protect others?
:By frequent practice, development and
:making much of the Foundation of Mindfulness.
:Thus in protecting oneself, others are protected.

:And how does one, in protecting others, protect oneself?
:By forbearance and nonviolence,
:By loving kindness and compassion.
:Thus in protecting others, one protects oneself.

:With the intention, 'I shall protect myself,'
:the Foundation of Mindfulness is practiced.
:With the intention, 'I shall protect others,'
:the Foundation of Mindfulness is practiced.
:In protecting oneself, others are protected;
:In protecting others, oneself is protected."

* And this, monks, is the noble truth of the origination of dukkha: the craving that makes for further becoming — accompanied by passion & delight, relishing now here & now there — i.e., craving for sensual pleasure, craving for becoming, craving for non-becoming.
** 56.11 ''Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta: Setting the Wheel of Dhamma in Motion'' translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

=== ''The Gospel of Buddha'' (1894) ===
:[http://reluctant-messenger.com/gospel_buddha/preface.htm ''The Gospel of Buddha''] is a compilation from ancient records by [[w:Paul Carus|Paul Carus]]
[[Image:Phutthamonthon03.jpg|144px|thumb|right|thumb|right|Neither fire, nor moisture, nor wind can destroy the blessing of good deeds, and blessings enlighten the whole world.]]
Ch. 58 '''The Buddha Replies to the Deva'''

:On a certain day when the Blessed One
:dwelt at Jetavana, the garden of [[w:Anathapindika|Anathapindika]],
:a celestial deva came to him in the shape of a Brahman
:enlightened and wearing clothing as white as snow.

The deva asked,
:What is the sharpest sword?
:What is the deadliest poison?
:What is the fiercest fire?
:What is the darkest night?"

The Blessed One replied,
:The sharpest sword is a word spoken in wrath;
:the deadliest poison is covetousness;
:the fiercest fire is hatred;
:the darkest night is ignorance.

The deva said,
:What is the greatest gain?
:What is the greatest loss?
:Which armour is invulnerable?
:What is the best weapon?

The Blessed One replied,
:The greatest gain is to give to others;
:the greatest loss is to greedily receive without gratitude;
:an invulnerable armor is patience;
:the best weapon is wisdom.

The deva said,
:Who is the most dangerous thief?
:What is the most precious treasure?
:Who can capture the heavens and the earth?
:Where is the securest treasure-trove?
[[Image:Kamakura Budda Daibutsu front 1885.jpg|thumb|144px|right|A saviour has a greater right over the saved one than killer.]]

The Blessed One replied,
:The most dangerous thief is unwholesome thought;
:the most precious treasure is virtue;
:the heavens and the earth may be captured by the mind's eye;
:surpassing rebirth locates the securest treasure-trove.

The deva asked,
:What is attraction?
:What is repulsion?
:What is the most horrible pain?
:What is the greatest enjoyment?

The Buddha replied,
:Attraction is wholeness;
:repulsion is unwholesomeness;
:the most tormenting pain is bad conscience;
:the height of bliss is redeemed awakening.

The deva asked,
:What causes ruin in the world?
:What breaks off friendships?
:What is the most violent fever?
:Who is the best physician?"

The Blessed One replied,
:Ruin in the world is caused by ignorance;
:friendships are broken off by envy and selfishness;
:the most violent fever is hatred;
:the best physician is the Buddha;

The deva continued,
:Now I have only one doubt to resolve and absolve:
:What is it fire cannot burn,
:nor moisture corrode,
:nor wind crush down,
:but is able to enlighten the whole world.
[[Image:BuddhaHead.JPG|144px|thumb|right|To conquer oneself is a greater task than conquering others.]]

The Buddha replied,
:Blessing!
:Neither fire, nor moisture, nor wind
:can destroy the blessing of good deeds,
:and blessings enlighten the whole world.

Hearing these answers,
:the deva was overflowing with joy.
:Then clasping hands, bowed down in respect and
:disappeared suddenly from the presence of the Buddha.

*True charity occurs only when there are no notions of giving, giver, or gift.
**David Ross, ''1,001 Pearls of Wisdom'', 2006, p. 26

*We forgive principally for our own sake, so that we may cease to bear the burden of rancour.
**David Ross, ''1,001 Pearls of Wisdom'', 2006, p. 30

*Rather than continuing to seek the truth, simply let go of your views.
**David Ross, ''1,001 Pearls of Wisdom'', 2006, p. 39



{{disputed begin}}

== Disputed ==
:''These quotes are unsourced and their authenticity as sayings of the Gautama Buddha has been questioned.''
[[Image:Ayutthaya buddha.jpg|144px|thumb|Life is no more than a dewdrop balancing on the end of a blade of grass.]]

* Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.

* Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Just as the candle won't be shortend, one's happiness never decreases by being shared.

* The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.

* Words have the power to both destroy and heal. When words are both true and kind, they can change our world.

* If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.

* Let us all be thankful for this day, for we have learned a great deal; if we have not learned a great deal, then at least we learned slightly; if we did not learn slightly, then at least we did not become sick; if we did become sick, then at least we did not die. So, let us all be thankful.

* On life's journey faith is nourishment, virtuous deeds are a shelter, wisdom is the light by day and right mindfulness is the protection by night. If a man lives a pure life, nothing can destroy him.

* Teach this triple truth to all: A generous heart, kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are the things which renew humanity.

* Desire is the cause for all your sickness and misery.

* It is your mind that creates this world.

{{disputed end}}
{{Misattributed begin}}
== Misattributed ==

* To understand everything is to forgive everything.
** This is generally reported as a French proverb, and one familiar as such in Russia as well, in many 19th and 20th century works; it seems to have first become attributed to Gautama Buddha without citation of sources in ''Farm Journal'', Vol. 34 (1910), p. 417

* I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.
** [[G. K. Chesterton]], in "On Holland" in ''Illustrated London News'' (29 April 1922)

{{Misattributed end}}

== Quotes about Buddha ==
[[Image:Standing_Bodhisattva_Gandhara_Musee_Guimet.jpg|144px|thumb|The Buddha is a being who is totally free of all delusions and faults, who is endowed with all good qualities and has attained the wisdom eliminating the darkness of ignorance. ~ [[Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama]] ]][[Image:Bodhi tree foster botanical gardens hawaii.jpg|144px|thumb|right|Buddha in a different language called men to self-forgetfulness five hundred years before[[ Christ]]. In some ways he was near to us and our needs. ~ [[H. G. Wells]] ]]
* The age in which true history appeared in [[India]] was one of great intellectual and spiritual ferment. Mystics and sophists of all kinds roamed through the Ganga Valley, all advocating some form of mental discipline and asceticism as a means to salvation; but the age of the Buddha, when many of the best minds were abandoning their homes and professions for a life of asceticism, was also a time of advance in commerce and politics. It produced not only philosophers and ascetics, but also merchant princes and men of action.
** [[w:Arthur Llewellyn Basham|Arthur Llewellyn Basham]] in ''[[w:The Wonder That was India|The Wonder that was India]]'' (1954)

* For the first time in human history, the Buddha admonished, entreated and appealed to people not to hurt a living being, and it is not necessary to offer prayer, praise or sacrifice to gods. With all the eloquence at his command the Buddha vehemently proclaimed that gods are also in dire need of salvation themselves.
** [[w:Thomas William Rhys Davids|Thomas William Rhys Davids]]

*[[India]] was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages: she was the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.
** [[Will Durant]],prolific American writer, historian, and philosopher in (The Case for India (1931)

* I have no hesitation in declaring that I owe a great deal to the inspiration that I have derived from the life of the Enlightened One. Asia has a message for the whole world, if only it would live up to it. There is the imprint of Buddhistic influence on the whole of Asia, which includes India, China, Japan, Burma, Ceylon, and the Malay States. For Asia to be not for Asia but for the whole world, it has to re-learn the message of the Buddha and deliver it to the whole world. His love, his boundless love went out as much to the lower animal, to the lowest life as to human beings. And he insisted upon purity of life.
** [[Mahatma Gandhi]]

*The Buddha is a being who is totally free of all delusions and faults, who is endowed with all good qualities and has attained the wisdom eliminating the darkness of ignorance. The Dharma is the result of his enlightenment. After having achieved enlightenment, a Buddha teaches, and what he or she teaches is called the Dharma. The Sangha is made up of those who engage in the practice of the teachings given by the Buddha. . . . One of the benefits of refuge is that all of the misdeeds you have committed in the past can be purified, because taking refuge entails accepting the Buddha's guidance and following a path of virtuous action.
** [[Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama]], in ''The Way to Freedom'.

* Now in this realm Buddha's speeches are a source and mine of quite unparalleled richness and depth. As soon as we cease to regard Buddha's teachings simply intellectually and acquiesce with a certain sympathy in the age-old Eastern concept of unity, if we allow Buddha to speak to us as vision, as image, as the awakened one, the perfect one, we find him, almost independently of the philosophic content and dogmatic kernel of his teachings, a great prototype of mankind. Whoever attentively reads a small number of the countless speeches of Buddha is soon aware of harmony in them, a quietude of soul, a smiling transcendence, a totally unshakeable firmness, but also invariable kindness, endless patience. As ways and means to the attainment of this holy quietude of soul, the speeches are full of advice, precepts, hints. The intellectual content of Buddha's teaching is only half his work, the other half is his life, his life as lived, as labour accomplished and action carried out. A training, a spiritual self training of the highest order was accomplished and is taught here, a training about which unthinking people who talk about "quietism" and "Hindu dreaminess" and the like in connection with Buddha have no conception; they deny him the cardinal Western virtue of activity. Instead Buddha accomplished a training for himself and his pupils, exercised a discipline, set up a goal, and produced results before which even the genuine heroes of European action can only feel awe.
** [[Herman Hesse]]

* For natures such as [[Jesus]] of Nazareth, [[Mohammed]] and Gautama Buddha is already the capacity of its openness for a world vision part of its application documents. With its virtues, experiences and abilities they belong to each post written out in the world with each interview to the most promising candidates and easy are erhalten.
** [[w:James Redfield|James Redfield]], in the ''Manual of the 10th Celestine Prophecy'' part of I: The threshold; Heyne publishing house Munich, German-language edition 1997,ISBN 3-453-11809X

* If we ask, for instance, whether the position of the electron remains the same, we must say 'no'; if we ask whether the electron's position changes with time, we must say 'no'; if we ask whether the electron is at rest, we must say 'no'; if we ask whether it is in motion, we must say 'no'. The Buddha has given such answers when interrogated as to the conditions of a man's self after his death; but they are not familiar answers for the tradition of seventeenth and eighteenth century science.
** [[J. Robert Oppenheimer]]

* The fundamental teachings of Gautama, as it is now being made plain to us by study of original sources, is clear and simple and in the closest harmony with modern ideas. It is beyond all disputes the achievement of one of the most penetrating intelligence the world has ever known. Buddhism has done more for the advance of world civilization and true culture than any other influence in the chronicles of mankind.
** [[H. G. Wells]]

* The Buddha Is Nearer to Us You see clearly a man, simple, devout, lonely, battling for light, a vivid human personality, not a myth. Beneath a mass of miraculous fable I feel that there also was a man. He too, gave a message to mankind universal in its character. Many of our best modern ideas are in closest harmony with it. All the miseries and discontents of life are due, he taught, to selfishness. Selfishness takes three forms — one, the desire to satisfy the senses; second, the craving for immortality; and the third the desire for prosperity and [[worldliness]]. Before a man can become serene he must cease to live for his senses or himself. Then he merges into a greater being. Buddha in a different language called men to self-forgetfulness five hundred years before[[ Christ]]. In some ways he was near to us and our needs. Buddha was more lucid upon our individual importance in service than Christ, and less ambiguous upon the question of personal immortality.
** [[H. G. Wells]], in ''[[The Outline of History]]'' Ch. 25

*The teachings of Buddha are eternal, but even then Buddha did not proclaim them to be infallible. The religion of Buddha has the capacity to change according to times, a quality which no other religion can claim to have ... Now what is the basis of Buddhism? If you study carefully, you will see that Buddhism is based on reason. There is an element of flexibility inherent in it, which is not found in any other religion.
**[[Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar]] , Indian scholar, philosopher and architect of Constitution of India, in his writing and speeches

==See also==
* [[Buddhism]]
* [[Zen proverbs]]

==External links==
{{wikipedia}}
{{commons|Gautama Buddha}}
{{wikiversity|Buddha oracle#Buddha (Gautama Buddha)}}
* [http://www.san.beck.org/Buddha.html The Buddha's First Sermon as translated by Sanderson Beck (1996)]
* [http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ Access to Insight: Readings in Theravada Buddhism]
** [http://www.accesstoinsight.org/canon/index.html Tipitaka : The Pali Canon]
* [http://www.dharmanet.org/ DharmaNet International]
* [http://www.meditateinfortcollins.org/life_of_buddha_shakyamuni.htm The Life of Buddha]
* [http://www.vipassana.com/ Vipassanā Fellowship]
** [http://www.vipassana.com/resources/ Literary resources]
* [http://www.dhamma.org/ Vipassanā Meditation Website]
* [http://www.onelittleangel.com/wisdom/quotes/buddha_sakyamuni.asp Quotes from Buddhist texts and pictures]
* [http://www.buddhaquotes.co.uk Buddha Quotes]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Buddha, Gautama}}

[[Category:Philosophers]]
[[Category:Religious leaders]]
[[Category:Buddhist teachers]]
[[Category:Indians]]
[[Category:Deaths BCE]]

[[az:Qautama Budda]]
[[bg:Буда]]
[[bs:Buda]]
[[cs:Buddha]]
[[cy:Gautama Bwdha]]
[[de:Siddhartha Gautama]]
[[et:Buddha]]
[[el:Βούδας]]
[[es:Buda Gautama]]
[[fa:گوتاما بودا]]
[[gl:Buda]]
[[ko:싯다르타 고타마]]
[[hr:Buda]]
[[id:Sidharta Gautama]]
[[it:Buddha]]
[[he:גאוטמה בודהה]]
[[lt:Buda Šakjamunis]]
[[hu:Buddha]]
[[ml:ഗൗതമബുദ്ധന്‍]]
[[nl:Boeddha]]
[[ja:釈迦]]
[[pl:Budda Siakjamuni]]
[[pt:Buda]]
[[ru:Будда Гаутама]]
[[sk:Budha]]
[[sl:Gautama Buda]]
[[sr:Готама Буда]]
[[sv:Buddha]]
[[ta:புத்தர்]]
[[tr:Gautama Buddha]]
[[uk:Будда]]
[[zh:釋迦牟尼]]

Mata Amritanandamayi

2011-12-16T16:39:46Z

Nobody60:

[[Image:Amma1.jpg|thumb|right|If you have patience, then you'll also have love. Patience leads to love.]]
'''[[w:Mātā Amritanandamayī Devi|Mātā Amritanandamayī Devi]]''' (Devanagiri: माता अमृतानन्‍दमयी, Malayalam: മാതാ അമൃതാനന്ദമയി; born [[27 September]] [[1953]]) is an Indian spiritual leader revered as a saint by her followers, who also know her as "[[w:Amma|Amma]]", "Ammachi" or "Mother". She is a widely respected humanitarian and called by some "the hugging saint".

== Sourced ==
=== Conversation in Helsinki (2000) ===
:Conversation with Riitta Uosukainen, as quoted in [http://archives.amritapuri.org/amma/2000/euro-fin.php "Patience Leads To Love"] 

* '''If you have patience, then you'll also have love. Patience leads to love.''' If you forcefully open the petals of a bud, you won't be able to enjoy its beauty and fragrance. Only when it blossoms by following its natural course, will the beauty and fragrance of a flower unfold.

* Today people live to work rather than work for a living. They have forgotten their true goal in life. Subsequently they have forgotten their [[w:Dharma|dharma]]. There is no communication between hearts, there is no sharing. Having lost contact with other's hearts, we become totally isolated. But in truth we are not isolated islands, we are links that form one chain.

* The heart does not talk, it is the intellect that does all the talking. All dealings are at the intellectual level. We have become like machines; our very lives have become mechanical. Life has lost its naturalness — like a garland of plastic flowers. There is no heart in life anymore. Only when hearts come together does true life blossom.

* Changing the world is like trying to straighten a dog's tail. However much you may try, you won't succeed. But although the tail won't straighten, if you keep trying every day, at least you will put on some muscle. Similarly, even though it is difficult to make a change, our effort to do so in itself brings positive results. It will help us change. Without waiting for others to change,if we change ourselves first, that will make a difference. Instead of worrying about results, focus on doing our best in what we are engaged in.

*God is not a limited individual who sits alone up in the clouds on a golden throne. God is pure Consciousness that dwells within everything. Understanding this truth, learn to accept and love everyone equally.

== Unsourced ==
* Just as hatred and vengefullness exist in the mind, peace and love can also exist in the mind.

== External links ==
{{Wikiversity|Angel oracle#The Enlightened Master}}
*[http://www.google.com/ig/adde?synd=open&source=ggyp&moduleurl=hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/102278687733335926746/Amma_Quotes.xml Amma quotes ''iGoogle'' gadget] (quotes displayed in Google homepage)
*[http://ammaquotes.googlepages.com Amma quotes]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Amritanandamayi, Mata}}
[[Category:Indians]]
[[Category:Hindu gurus]]
[[Category:Living people]]

[[ml:അമൃതാനന്ദമയി]]
[[nn:Mata Amritanandamayi]]

Angels

2011-12-08T14:13:29Z

Nobody60:

[[Image:Angel statue.jpg|144px|thumb|right|It is not because angels are holier than men or devils that makes them angels, but because they do not expect holiness from one another, but from God alone. ~ [[William Blake]] ]]
'''[[w:Angel|Angels]]''' are divine messengers or [[w:Transcendence (philosophy)|transcendental]] beings found in many religions. This page is for quotes about or referring to Angels.
: See also '''[[Michael (archangel)|Michael]]'''
== Quotes ==
[[File:MichaelKi.jpg|144px|thumb|right|Calm and serene he drives the furious blast; And, pleas'd th' Almighty's orders to perform, Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm. ~ [[Joseph Addison]] ]]
[[Image:Franz von Stuck 003.jpg|144px|thumb|right| A tear is an intellectual thing, And a sigh is the Sword of an Angel King. ~ [[William Blake]] ]]
[[Image:Friedensengel ORA.jpg|144px|thumb|right|I heard an Angel singing When the day was springing: "Mercy, Pity, and Peace Are the world's release." ~ [[William Blake]] ]]
[[File:Angel - Abbott Thayer.jpg|144px|thumb|right|Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. ~ [[G. K. Chesterton]] ]]
[[Image:Paradiso Canto 31.jpg|144px|thumb|right|The soul at its highest is formed like God, but an angel gives a closer idea of Him. That is all an angel is: an idea of God. ~ [[Meister Eckhart]] ]]
[[Image:Hoag's object.jpg|144px|thumb|right|Knowledge comes through likeness. And so because the soul may know everything, it is never at rest until it comes to the original idea, in which all things are one. And there it comes to rest in God. ~ [[Meister Eckhart]] ]]
[[File:AnttlersNewM45.jpg |144px|thumb|right|Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven, Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels. ~ [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]] ]]
[[File:Psyché.jpg|144px|thumb|right|You are pulled from the wreckage of your silent revelrie You're in the arms of the Angel; may you find some comfort here. ~ [[Sarah McLachlan]] ]]
[[Image:Cloches du soir.jpg|144px|thumb|right| Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep. ~ [[John Milton]] ]]
[[File:La busqueda del angel... (257576369).jpg|144px|thumb|right|Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. ~ [[Paul of Tarsus]] ]]
[[Image:Teresabernini.JPG|144px|thumb|right|Though I have visions of angels frequently, yet I see them only by an intellectual vision ... Their names they never tell me; but I see very well that there is in heaven so great a difference between one angel and another, and between these and the others, that I cannot explain it. ~ [[Teresa of Ávila]] ]]
[[File:Amandus Faure Gasse in Neapel.jpg|144px|thumb|right|Outside the open window The morning air is all awash with angels. ~ [[Richard Wilbur]] ]]
:Alphabetized by author

* So when an angel by divine command With rising tempests shakes a guilty land, Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past, '''Calm and serene he drives the furious blast; And, pleas'd th' Almighty's orders to perform, Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm.'''
** [[Joseph Addison]], ''The Campaign'' (1704), line 287. (A similar use of words was later made in [[Alexander Pope]]'s ''[[The Dunciad|Dunciad]]'', Book III, line 264, but not in reference to an angel.).

* An angel can illuminate the thought and mind of man by strengthening the power of vision, and by bringing within his reach some truth which the angel himself contemplates.
** St [[Thomas Aquinas]], as quoted in ''Angels : A Joyous Celebration'' (1999) by Running Press, p. 121

* O white-robed Angel, guide my timorous hand to write as on a lofty rock with iron pen the words of truth, that all who pass may read.
** [[William Blake]], "Samson", ''Poetical Sketches'' (1783).

* '''Cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from ye door.'''
** [[William Blake]], "Holy Thursday"

* I heard an Angel singing When the day was springing: "Mercy, Pity, and Peace Are the world's release."
** [[William Blake]], "The Two Songs"

* '''A tear is an intellectual thing, And a sigh is the Sword of an Angel King.'''
** [[William Blake]], "The Agony of Faith"

* '''It is not because angels are holier than men or devils that makes them angels, but because they do not expect holiness from one another, but from [[God]] alone.'''
** [[William Blake]], "A Vision of the Last Judgement"

* The player is a liar when he says : "Angels are happier than men, because they are better." Angels are happier than men and devils, because they are not always prying after good and evil in one another, and eating the tree of knowledge for Satan's gratification.
** [[William Blake]], "A Vision of the Last Judgement"

* '''Hey if God will send his angels And if God will send a sign And if God will send his angels Would everything be alright?'''
** [[Bono]], "[[w:If God Will Send His Angels|If God Will Send His Angels]]" on ''[[w:Pop (album)|Pop]]'' (1997); also used in ''[[City of Angels]]'' (1998).

* If God will send his angels I sure could use them here right now Well if God would send his angels And I don't have to know how.
** [[Bono]], "If God Will Send His Angels" on ''Pop'' (1997); also used in ''City of Angels'' (1998).

* Angels and Demons can't cross over into our plane. So, instead we get what I call half-breeds. The influence peddlers. They can only whisper in our ears. A single word can give you courage, or turn your favorite pleasure into your worst nightmare. Those with the demon's touch and those part angel, living alongside us. They call it the balance. I call it hypocritical bullshit.
** [[w:John Constantine|John Constantine]], in ''[[Constantine (film)|Constantine]]'' written by [[w:Kevin Brodbin|Kevin Brodbin]], [[w:Mark Bomback|Mark Bomback]], and [[w:Frank Capello|Frank Capello]], based on the DC/Vertigo comic book ''[[Hellblazer]]''.

* '''We are not this story's author, who fills time and eternity with his purpose.''' Yet his purpose is achieved in our duty; and our duty is fulfilled in service to one another. Never tiring, never yielding, never finishing, we renew that purpose today: to make our country more just and generous; to affirm the dignity of our lives and every life. This work continues. This story goes on. And an angel still rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm.
** [[George W. Bush]], in his first Inaugural speech (21 January 2001), referring to a famous quote of [[w:John Page (Virginia politician)|John Page]] (see below) about the [[w:American Revolutionary War|American Revolution]], which itself refers to the earlier use of the concept by [[Joseph Addison]] (see above).

* '''''When you reach for a [[Stars|star]] Only angels are there''' And it's not very far Just a step on a stair…''
** [[Kate Bush]], in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkfbkVKmbG0 "The Magician"] a song written for the soundtrack of ''[[w:The Magician of Lublin (film)|The Magician of Lublin]]'' (1979), based on the 1960 novel by [[Isaac Bashevis Singer]]

* ''I don't mind if it's dangerous I don't mind if it's raining Take me up to the top of the city And put me up on the angel's shoulders.''
** [[Kate Bush]], in "Top of the City" on ''[[w:The Red Shoes (album)|The Red Shoes]]'' (1993)

* ''[[w:Gabriel|Gabriel]] before me [[w:Raphael (archangel)|Raphael]] behind me [[Michael (archangel)|Michael]] to my right [[w:Uriel|Uriel]] on my left side In the circle of fire.''
** [[Kate Bush]], in "Lily" on ''[[w:The Red Shoes (album)|The Red Shoes]]'' (1993)

* '''''Aren't we all the same? In and out of doubt. I can see angels standing around you.''' They shimmer like mirrors in Summer. But you don't know it. And they will carry you o'er the walls. If you need us, just call.''
** [[Kate Bush]], in "Among Angels" on ''[[w:50 Words for Snow|50 Words for Snow]]'' (2011)

* '''What is all this shit about angels? Have you heard this? Three out of four people now, believe in angels.''' What're you, fucking stupid? Has everybody lost their fucking minds in this country? Angels, shit. You know what I think it is? I think it's a massive collective psychotic chemical flashback of all the drugs — ''all'' the drugs — smoked, swallowed, snorted, shot, and absorbed rectally by all Americans from 1960 to 1990. Thirty years of adulterated street drugs'll get you some fucking angels, my friend.
** [[George Carlin]], "Angels" on ''[[w:You Are All Diseased|You Are All Diseased]]'' (1999)

* '''Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.'''
** [[G. K. Chesterton]], "[[w:Orthodoxy (book)|Orthodoxy]]" (1908), Chapter VII : The Eternal Revolution; this is sometimes paraphrased "The reason angels can fly is because they take themselves lightly."

* We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another.
** [[w:Luciano De Crescenzo|Luciano De Crescenzo]], quoted in ''Wisdom for the Soul : Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing'' (2006) by Larry Chang, p. 127

* '''If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil. He cannot stop at the beast. '''The most savage of men are not beasts; they are worse, a great deal worse.
** [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]] in conversation (30 August 1833), as quoted in ''Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge'' (1835), edited by [[w:Henry Nelson Coleridge|Henry Nelson Coleridge]]

* I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to every-body! A happy New Year to all the world!
** [[w:Ebenezer Scrooge|Ebenezer Scrooge]], after awakening on Christmas morning, in ''[[w:A Christmas Carol|A Christmas Carol]]'' (1843), by [[Charles Dickens]]

* It was the beginning of a day in June; the deep blue sky unsullied by a cloud, and teeming with brilliant light. The streets were, as yet, nearly free from passengers, the houses and shops were closed, and the healthy air of morning fell like breath from angels, on the sleeping town.
** [[Charles Dickens]] in ''[[w:The Old Curiosity Shop|The Old Curiosity Shop]]'' (1841).

* The shadows of our own desires stand between us and our better angels, and thus their brightness is eclipsed.
** [[Charles Dickens]] in ''[[w:Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty|Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty]]'' (1841).

* President [[Barack Obama]] loves to quote the lyrical closing lines of [[Abraham Lincoln]]'s First Inaugural Address, calling on "the better angels of our nature" to overcome partisan hatreds and political divisions. Obama cited those words in his own inaugural proclamation and rested his hand on Lincoln's Bible when he took the oath of office. He has come back to those angels again and again ever since. … He used the phrase to eulogize [[Ted Kennedy]], to chide a would-be Quran burner in Florida, and to say goodbye to chief of staff [[Rahm Emanuel]]. Obama, it seems, sees better angels just about everywhere. Even as he traveled in India this week he talked about his efforts to live up to the example of [[Mahatma Gandhi]], [[Martin Luther King Jr.]], and, yes, Abraham Lincoln. But in light of today's real-world politics, Obama should think a little harder about the context in which Lincoln summoned those better angels on March 4, 1861. Led by South Carolina (now home to Sen. [[w:Jim DeMint|Jim DeMint]], seven of 33 states had already seceded from the Union to form the Confederacy at that point. … If, in the end, Lincoln did manage to hold the Union together, it was not because of the better angels of human nature, but because he finally found the killer angels among his generals who could, and did, and at enormous cost, crush the secessionists.
** [[w:Christopher Dickey|Christopher Dickey]], in [http://www.newsweek.com/2010/11/10/better-angels-and-killer-angels.html "Better Angels and Killer Angels", ''Newsweek'' (10 November 2010)]

* Lincoln had an ally then of a kind that Obama could use now. Lincoln's old rival from Illinois, [[Stephen Douglas]], whose party had been split by the fire-eaters and whom Lincoln defeated at the polls, became a wise and vital friend. In the months between the inauguration and Douglas's early death in June 1861, the "little giant," as he was known, spent many long hours talking to Lincoln about how best to preserve the Union—and compromise wasn't part of the picture. … "You do not know the dishonest purposes of those men as I do," he told Lincoln. What both of those great politicians understood by then was that there may be better angels in the nature of some people, but there are others who are willing to weaken, even destroy a nation to serve their own self-righteous self-interest, and they will do it in the name of the Constitution. If Obama hasn't learned that yet, perhaps it's time he did.
** [[w:Christopher Dickey|Christopher Dickey]], "Better Angels and Killer Angels", ''Newsweek'' (10 November 2010).

* Heaven, too, was very near to them in those days. God's direct agency was to be seen in the thunder and the rainbow, the whirlwind and the lightning. To the believer, clouds of angels and confessors, and martyrs, armies of the sainted and the saved, were ever stooping over their struggling brethren upon earth, raising, encouraging, and supporting them.
** Sir [[Arthur Conan Doyle]] in ''[[w:The White Company|The White Company]]'' (1891).

* '''When God has sent his angel to me, then I know of a surety. ... When God sends his angel to the soul it becomes the one who knows for sure.''' Not for nothing did God give the keys into [[Saint Peter|St. Peter]]'s keeping, for Peter stands for knowledge, and knowledge is the key that unlocks the door, presses forward and breaks in, to discover God as he is.
** [[Meister Eckhart]], in Sermon 9, as translated in ''The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church'' (1999) by Hughes Oliphant Old, Chapter 9 : The German Mystics, p. 448

* The authorities teach that next to the first emanation, which is the Son coming out of the Father, the angels are most like God. And it may well be true, for the soul at its highest is formed like God, but an angel gives a closer idea of Him. That is all an angel is: an idea of God. For this reason the angel was sent to the soul, so that the soul might be re-formed by it, to be the divine idea by which it was first conceived. Knowledge comes through likeness. And so because the soul may know everything, it is never at rest until it comes to the original idea, in which all things are one. And there it comes to rest in God.
** [[Meister Eckhart]], in Sermon 9, as translated in ''The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church'' (1999) by Hughes Oliphant Old, Chapter 9 : The German Mystics, p. 449

* The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.
** [[George Eliot]] in "Janet's Repentance", ''[[w:Scenes of Clerical Life|Scenes of Clerical Life]]'' (1857).

* In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's.
** [[George Eliot]], ''[[w:Silas Marner|Silas Marner]]'' (1861), Chapter 14

* Angels shine from without because their spirits are lit from within by the light of God.
** Eileen Elias Freeman, in ''The Angels' Little Instruction Book : Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers'' (1994), p. 4, ISBN 0446671215 

* Angels can fly lightly because they take God seriously.
** Eileen Elias Freeman, in ''The Angels' Little Instruction Book : Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers'' (1994), p. 5

* Angels can fly because they carry no burdens.
** Eileen Elias Freeman, in ''The Angels' Little Instruction Book : Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers'' (1994).

* Be an angel to someone else whenever you can, as a way of thanking God for the help your angel has given you.
** Eileen Elias Freeman, in ''The Angels' Little Instruction Book : Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers'' (1994).

* Pay attention to your dreams — God's angels often speak directly to our hearts when we are asleep.
** Eileen Elias Freeman in ''The Angels' Little Instruction Book : Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers'' (1994).

* Life is a tapestry: We are the warp; angels, the weft; God, the weaver. Only the Weaver sees the whole design.
** Eileen Elias Freeman in ''The Angels' Little Instruction Book : Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers'' (1994).

* Angels fly at light speed, because they are servants of the Light.
** Eileen Elias Freeman in ''The Angels' Little Instruction Book : Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers'' (1994).

* If angels rarely appear, it's because we all too often mistake the medium for the Message.
** Eileen Elias Freeman in ''The Angels' Little Instruction Book : Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers'' (1994).

* Insight is better than eyesight when it comes to seeing an angel.
** Eileen Elias Freeman in ''The Angels' Little Instruction Book : Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers'' (1994).

* Angels are all around us, all the time, in the very air we breathe.
** Eileen Elias Freeman in ''The Angels' Little Instruction Book : Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers'' (1994).

* When babies look beyond you and giggle, maybe they're seeing angels.
** Eileen Elias Freeman in ''The Angels' Little Instruction Book : Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers'' (1994).

* How wonderful it must be to speak the language of the angels, with no words for hate and a million words for love!
** Eileen Elias Freeman in ''The Angels' Little Instruction Book : Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers'' (1994).

* God not only sends special angels into our lives, but sometimes He even sends them back again if we forget to take notes the first time!
** Eileen Elias Freeman in ''The Angels' Little Instruction Book : Learning from God's Heavenly Messengers'' (1994).

* From the east to the west sped the angels of the Dawn, from sea to sea, from mountain-top to mountain-top, scattering light with both their hands.
** [[w:Henry Rider Haggard|Henry Rider Haggard]], ''[[w:She (novel)|She]]'' (1887).

* The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
** [[Abraham Lincoln]], closing of [[s:Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address|First Inaugural Address]] (4 March 1861).

* Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven, Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.
** [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]], ''[[w:Evangeline| Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie]]'' (1847).

* In the arms of the Angel Far away from here From this dark, cold hotel room, And the endlessness that you fear You are pulled from the wreckage of your silent revelrie You're in the arms of the Angel; may you find some comfort here.
** [[Sarah McLachlan]], "[[w:Angel (Sarah McLachlan song)|Angel]]" from ''[[w:Surfacing (album)|Surfacing]]'' (1997); also used in ''[[City of Angels]]'' (1998) - ([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDkcJ-62uuY Video performance at YouTube] - [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j42ApkIIdNc ''City of Angels'' video at YouTube]).

* O welcome, pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope, Thou hovering angel, girt with golden wings!
** [[John Milton]], ''[[Comus]]'' (1634).

* '''Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.'''
** [[John Milton]], in [[Paradise Lost]] (1667; 1674).

* We know the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong. Do you not think an angel rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm?
** [[w:John Page (Virginia politician)|John Page]], about the [[w:American Revolutionary War|American Revolutionary War]] in a letter to [[Thomas Jefferson]]; quoted in ''Angel in the Whirlwind'' (1997) by Benson Bobrick.

* '''Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.'''
** [[Paul of Tarsus]] in [http://bible.cc/hebrews/13-2.htm ''Hebrews'' 13:2] ([[w:Authorized King James Version|KJV]])

* Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
** [[Alexander Pope]], ''[[An Essay on Criticism]]'' (1711).

* Why should I fear? When was I less by dying? ''' Yet once more I shall die as Man, to soar With angels blest; but even from angelhood I must pass on: all except God doth perish. '''When I have sacrificed my angel-soul, I shall become what no mind e'er conceived. Oh, let me not exist! for Non-existence Proclaims in organ tones, ''To Him we shall return.'''''
** [[Rumi]], "I Died as a Mineral", as translated in ''The Mystics of Islam'' (1914) edited by Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, p. 125

* '''In Heaven an angel is nobody in particular.'''
** [[George Bernard Shaw]], ''[[w:Man and Superman|Man and Superman : A Comedy and a Philosophy]]'' (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists : Greatness"

* Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''[[Hamlet|Hamlet, Prince of Denmark]]'' (''c''.1600).

* I charge thee, fling away ambition: by that sin fell the angels.
** [[William Shakespeare]], lines spoken by [[w:Thomas Wolsey|Wolsey]] in ''[[w:Henry VIII (play)|Henry VIII]]'' [originally titled ''All is True''](1613).

* I saw an angel close by me, on my left side, in bodily form. This I am not accustomed to see, unless very rarely. Though I have visions of angels frequently, yet I see them only by an intellectual vision, such as I have spoken of before. It was our Lord's will that in this vision I should see the angel in this wise. He was not large, but small of stature, and most beautiful — his face burning, as if he were one of the highest angels, who seem to be all of fire: they must be those whom we call cherubim. '''Their names they never tell me; but I see very well that there is in heaven so great a difference between one angel and another, and between these and the others, that I cannot explain it.'''
** Saint [[Teresa of Ávila]], ''The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus'' (c.1565).

* There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.
** [[Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.]], ''[[w:The Sirens of Titan|The Sirens of Titan]]'' (1959)

* I'll help you. I'm an angel.
** Monica, played by [[w:Roma Downey|Roma Downey]] in the first episode of [[Touched_By_An_Angel#Southbound_Bus_.5B1.1.5D|''Touched By An Angel'' : "Southbound Bus"]] (1994), written by [[w:Martha Williamson|Martha Williamson]]

* '''I know a lot of people who don't believe in angels but I've never met a soul that didn't want to believe in them.'''
** Tess, played by [[w:Della Reese|Della Reese]] in [[Touched_By_An_Angel#Interview_With_An_Angel_.5B2.1.5D|''Touched By An Angel'' : "Interview With An Angel"]] (1995) written by [[w:Martha Williamson|Martha Williamson]]

* How do the angels get to sleep when the devil leaves the porch light on?
** [[Tom Waits]], "Mr Siegal" on ''[[w:Heartattack and Vine|Heartattack and Vine]]'' (1980).

* Outside the open window The morning air is all awash with angels.
** [[Richard Wilbur]], in [http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=171793 "Love Calls Us To The Things Of This World"], from ''Poems'' (1956).

* An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave; Legions of angels can't confine me there.
** [[Edward Young]], ''Night I'', l. 89 (1742-1745).

===''Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations''===
:Quotes reported in ''Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations'' (1922), p. 26-27.

* As the moths around a taper, As the bees around a rose, As the gnats around a vapour, So the spirits group and close Round about a holy childhood, as if drinking its repose.
** [[Elizabeth Barrett Browning]], ''A Child Asleep''.

* But sad as angels for the good man's sin, Weep to record, and blush to give it in.
** [[Thomas Campbell]], ''Pleasures of Hope'', Part II, line 357.

* What though my winged hours of bliss have been Like angel visits, few and far between.
** [[Thomas Campbell]], ''Pleasures of Hope'', Part II, line 375.

* Hold the fleet angel fast until he bless thee.
** [[Nathaniel Cotton]], ''To-morrow'', line 36.

* When one that holds communion with the skies Has fill'd his urn where these pure waters rise, And once more mingles with us meaner things, 'Tis e'en as if an angel shook his wings.
** [[William Cowper]], ''Charity'', line 439.

* What is the question now placed before society with the glib assurance which to me is most astonishing? That question is this: Is man an ape or an angel? I, my lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence those new fangled theories.
** [[Benjamin Disraeli]], Speech at Oxford Diocesan Conference. Nov. 25, 1864.

* In merest prudence men should teach * * * * * * That science ranks as monstrous things Two pairs of upper limbs; so wings— E'en Angel's wings!—are fictions.
** [[Austin Dobson]], ''A Fairy Tale''.

* Let old Timotheus yield the prize Or both divide the crown; He rais'd a mortal to the skies She drew an angel down.
** [[John Dryden]], ''Alexander's Feast'' (1697), Last Stanza.

* Non Angli, sed Angeli. Not Angles, but Angels.
** Attributed to [[Gregory the Great]] on seeing British captives for sale at Rome.

* Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
** Hebrews, XIII. 2.

* Unbless'd thy hand!—if in this low disguise Wander, perhaps, some inmate of the skies.
** [[Homer]], ''Odyssey'', Book XVII, line 570. Pope's translation.

* But all God's angels come to us disguised: Sorrow and sickness, poverty and death, One after other lift their frowning masks, And we behold the Seraph's face beneath, All radiant with the glory and the calm Of having looked upon the front of God.
** [[James Russell Lowell]], ''On the Death of a Friend's Child'', line 21.

* In this dim world of clouding cares, We rarely know, till 'wildered eyes See white wings lessening up the skies, The Angels with us unawares.
** [[Gerald Massey]], ''The Ballad of Babe Christabel''.

* How sweetly did they float upon the wings Of silence through the empty-vaulted night, At every fall smoothing the raven down Of darkness till it smiled!
** [[John Milton]], ''[[Comus (John Milton)|Comus]]'' (1637), line 249.

* The helmed Cherubim, And sworded Seraphim, Are seen in glittering ranks with wings display'd.
** [[John Milton]], ''Hymn on the Nativity'', line 112.

* As far as angel's ken.
** [[John Milton]], ''[[Paradise Lost]]'' (1667; 1674), Book I, line 59.

* For God will deign To visit oft the dwellings of just men Delighted, and with frequent intercourse Thither will send his winged messengers On errants of supernal grace.
** [[John Milton]], ''[[Paradise Lost]]'' (1667; 1674), Book VII, line 569.

* Then too when angel voices sung The mercy of their God, and strung Their harps to hail, with welcome sweet, That moment watched for by all eyes.
** [[Thomas Moore]], ''Loves of the Angels'', Third Angel's Story.

* Men would be angels, angels would be gods.
** [[Alexander Pope]], ''An Essay on Man'' (1733-34), Epistle I, line 126.

* A guardian angel o'er his life presiding, Doubling his pleasures, and his cares dividing.
** [[Samuel Rogers]], ''Human Life'', line 353.

* All angel now, and little less than all, While still a pilgrim in this world of ours.
** [[Walter Scott]], ''Lord of the Isles'' (referring to Harriet, Duchess of Buccleugh.).

* And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''[[Hamlet]]'' (1600-02), Act V, scene 2, line 371.

* Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''[[Macbeth]]'' (1605), Act IV, scene 3, line 22.

* How oft do they their silver bowers leave To come to succour us that succour want!
** [[Edmund Spenser]], ''The Faerie Queene'' (1589-96), Book II, Canto VIII, Stanza 2.

* Around our pillows golden ladders rise, And up and down the skies, With winged sandals shod, The angels come, and go, the Messengers of God! Nor, though they fade from us, do they depart— It is the childly heart We walk as heretofore, Adown their shining ranks, but see them nevermore.
** [[R. H. Stoddard]], ''Hymn to the Beautiful'', Stanza 3.

* Sweet souls around us watch us still, Press nearer to our side; Into our thoughts, into our prayers, With gentle helpings glide.
** [[Harriet Beecher Stowe]], ''The Other World''.

* I have no angels left Now, Sweet, to pray to: Where you have made your shrine They are away to. They have struck Heaven's tent, And gone to cover you: Whereso you keep your state Heaven is pitched over you.
** [[Francis Thompson]], ''A Carrier Song'', Stanza 4.

* For all we know Of what the Blessèd do above Is, that they sing, and that they love. . . . What know we of the Blest above But that they sing, and that they love?
** [[William Wordsworth]], ''Scene on the Lake of Brienz'' (quoted from [[Waller]]).

== Unsourced ==

* Man was created a little lower than the angels, and has been getting lower ever since.
** [[Josh Billings]]

* The Angels were all singing out of tune, And hoarse with having little else to do, Excepting to wind up the sun and moon Or curb a runaway young star or two.
** [[Lord Byron]]

* Music is well said to be the speech of angels.
** [[Thomas Carlyle]]

* Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by all men for the beauty of the character, though few can decipher even fragments of their meaning.
** [[Lydia Child]]

* A pillow for thee will I bring, Stuffed with down of angel's wing.
** [[Richard Crashaw]]

* I feel that there is an angel inside me whom I am constantly shocking.
** [[Jean Cocteau]]

* Angels descending, bring from above, Echoes of mercy, whispers of love.
** [[Fanny Crosby]]

* We trust in plumed procession For such the angels go — Rank after Rank, with even feet — And uniforms of Snow.
** [[Emily Dickinson]]

* The angels are so enamored of the language that is spoken in heaven that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether their be any who understand it or not.
** [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]]

* Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.
** [[John Keats]]

* All God's angels come to us disguised.
** [[James Russell Lowell]]

* He spake well who said that graves are the footprints of angels.
** [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]]

* If I have freedom in my love, And in my soul am free, Angels alone that soar above, Enjoy such liberty.
** [[Richard Lovelace]]

* I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
** [[Michelangelo]]

* The guardian angels of life fly so high as to be beyond our sight, but they are always looking down upon us.
** [[Jean Paul]]

* It is not known precisely where angels dwell — whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has not been God's pleasure that we should be informed of their abode.
** [[Voltaire]]

* I'm no angel, but I've spread my wings a bit.
** [[Mae West]]

== External links ==
{{wikipedia}}
{{wiktionary|angel}}
{{commonscat|angels}}
{{wikiversity|Angel oracle}}
* [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01476d.htm Catholic Encyclopedia entry on angels]
* [http://www.persiandna.com/angels.htm Zoroastrian angels]
* [http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=1521&letter=A&search=angelology Jewish Encyclopedia entry on angels]
* [http://www.sunna.info/Lessons/islam_331.html Angels in Islam]
* [http://www.heart7.net/spirit/top.html Christian/occult-oriented A-Z guide to names of individual angels, angelic hierarchies and other reference materials]
* [http://www.angelgift.com/newsite/shop/custom.aspx?recid=10 Nine Orders of Angels]

[[Category:Religion]]

[[bs:Anđeo]]
[[cs:Anděl]]
[[de:Engel]]
[[eo:Anĝelo]]
[[fr:Angel]]
[[it:Angelo]]
[[lt:Angelas]]
[[nn:Englar]]
[[pl:Anioł]]
[[pt:Angel]]
[[sk:Anjel]]
[[tr:Melek]]

Spirituality

2011-08-04T12:05:49Z

Nobody60: /* External links */

'''[[w:Spirituality|Spirituality]]''' concerns itself with matters of the [[w:spirit|spirit]], a concept closely tied to religious belief and faith, a transcendent reality, or one or more deities. Spiritual matters are thus those matters regarding humankind's ultimate nature and meaning, not only as material biological organisms, but as beings with a unique relationship to that which is perceived to be [[Reality]] beyond the bodily senses, time and the material world.

{{theme-stub}}
== Sourced ==

* Politics and Religion are obsolete. The time has come for Science and Spirituality.
** Often quoted by [[Arthur C. Clarke]] as one of his favorite remarks of [[Jawaharlal Nehru]], though some of his earliest citations of it, in ''Voices from the Sky : Previews of the Coming Space Age'' (1967), p. 154, indicate that Nehru may himself been either quoting or paraphrasing a statement of [[w:Vinoba Bhave|Vinoba Bhave]].

* Whenever you wash dishes, cook, or clean, if you make no sound, this is smartness itself. A person who enters a house and makes a lot of noise is revealing a lack of spirituality; even cats and dogs do not make unnecessary sounds, and man as he naturally is does not make any either.
**[[Michio Kushi]] with [[Edward Esko]], ''Spiritual Journey'' (1994), p. 4

* See the person's eating and cooking, and then you can judge his or her spirituality.
** [[Michio Kushi]] with [[Edward Esko]], ''Spiritual Journey'' (1994)

* The contemplation of celestial things will make a man both speak and think more sublimely and magnificently when he descends to human affairs.
** [[Cicero]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 562.

== External links ==
{{wikipedia}}
{{wiktionary}}
{{wikiversity}}
{{wikibooks|God and Religious Toleration/What is God}}

[[Category:Religion]]

[[de:Spiritualität]]
[[it:Spiritualità]]
[[lt:Dvasingumas]]
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Spirituality

2011-04-18T09:29:11Z

Nobody60:

'''[[w:Spirituality|Spirituality]]''' concerns itself with matters of the [[w:spirit|spirit]], a concept closely tied to religious belief and faith, a transcendent reality, or one or more deities. Spiritual matters are thus those matters regarding humankind's ultimate nature and meaning, not only as material biological organisms, but as beings with a unique relationship to that which is perceived to be [[Reality]] beyond the bodily senses, time and the material world.

{{theme-stub}}
== Sourced ==

* Politics and Religion are obsolete. The time has come for Science and Spirituality.
** Often quoted by [[Arthur C. Clarke]] as one of his favorite remarks of [[Jawaharlal Nehru]], though some of his earliest citations of it, in ''Voices from the Sky : Previews of the Coming Space Age'' (1967), p. 154, indicate that Nehru may himself been either quoting or paraphrasing a statement of [[w:Vinoba Bhave|Vinoba Bhave]].

* Whenever you wash dishes, cook, or clean, if you make no sound, this is smartness itself. A person who enters a house and makes a lot of noise is revealing a lack of spirituality; even cats and dogs do not make unnecessary sounds, and man as he naturally is does not make any either.
**[[Michio Kushi]] with [[Edward Esko]], ''Spiritual Journey'' (1994), p. 4

* See the person's eating and cooking, and then you can judge his or her spirituality.
** [[Michio Kushi]] with [[Edward Esko]], ''Spiritual Journey'' (1994)

* The contemplation of celestial things will make a man both speak and think more sublimely and magnificently when he descends to human affairs.
** [[Cicero]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 562.

== External links ==
{{wikipedia}}
{{wiktionary}}
{{wikibooks|God and Religious Toleration/What is God#Religion will lead to enlightenment}}

[[Category:Religion]]

[[de:Spiritualität]]
[[it:Spiritualità]]
[[lt:Dvasingumas]]
[[pl:Duchowość]]

Nirvana

2011-04-15T14:53:09Z

Nobody60: /* External links */

Quotes on ideas of '''[[w:Nirvana|Nirvana]]''' (निर्वाण in [[w:Sanskrit|Sanskrit]]; also '''Nibbana''', निब्बान in [[w:Pali|Pali]]), a [[w:Shramana|sramana]] philosophical concept, used by the [[w:Jainism|Jains]] and the [[w:Buddhism|Buddhists]], to describe the enlightenment and liberation of their respective teachers. The word's original use involved the meanings "to cease blowing" (as when a candle flame ceases to flicker) or ''extinguishing'' (in reference to the passions).

== Sourced ==

* Nirvana is a state of pure bliss and knowledge... It has nothing to do with the individual. The ego or its separation is an illusion. Indeed in a certain sense two "I"'s are identical namely when one disregards all special contents — their [[w:Karma|Karma]]. The goal of man is to preserve his Karma and to develop it further... when man dies his Karma lives and creates for itself another carrier.
** [[Erwin Schrödinger|Erwin Schrödinger]], writings of July 1918, quoted in ''A Life of Erwin Schrödinger'' (1994) by Walter Moore ISBN 0521437679 

* Nirvana is not the blowing out of the candle. It is the extinguishing of the flame because day is come.
** [[Rabindranath Tagore]], as quoted in ''Wrestling Archangels'' (2001) by Bede Clarke

== External links ==
{{wikipedia}}
{{wikibooks|God and Religious Toleration/Buddhism#Nirvana}}
[[Category:Religion]]

[[it:Nirvāṇa]]
[[ka:ნირვანა]]

Buddhism

2011-04-15T14:09:34Z

Nobody60: /* See also */

'''[[w:Buddhism|Buddhism]]''' is a religion and philosophy with between 230 to 500 million adherents worldwide, said to have been founded by [[Gautama Buddha]]. The vast majority of Buddhists live in Asia. It consists of two major schools: [[w:Mahayana|Mahayana]] and [[w:Theravada|Theravada]].

{{theme-cleanup|2006-12-06}}

* The religion of future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description... If there is any religion that would cope with modern scientific needs, it would be Buddhism.
** [[Albert Einstein]]<ref>The Buddha in the Eyes of Eminent Scholars, Phra Sripariyattimoli. 1999. ISBN 974-575-539-7</ref>

*Renunciation is not getting rid of the things of this world, but accepting that they pass away.
**Aitken Roshi

*I prefer Buddhism because it gives three principles in combination, which no other religion does. Buddhism teaches prajna (understanding as against superstition and supernaturalism), karuna (love), and samata (equality). This is what man wants for a good and happy life. Neither god nor soul can save society.
**[[Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar]],Indian scolar,nationalist, jurist, political leader ,Buddhist revivalist and an architect of the Indian Constitution

*The greatest achievement is selflessness. The greatest worth is self-mastery. The greatest quality is seeking to serve others. The greatest precept is continual awareness. The greatest medicine is the emptiness of everything. The greatest action is not conforming with the world's ways. The greatest magic is transmuting the passions. The greatest generosity is non-attachment. The greatest goodness is a peaceful mind. The greatest patience is humility. The greatest effort is not concerned with results. The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go. The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances.
**Atisha

*In criticizing, the teacher is hoping to teach. That's all.
**Bankei

*The true meaning of the precepts is not just that one should refrain from drinking alcohol, but also from getting drunk on nirvana.
**Bassui

*All know the Way, but few actually walk it.
**[[w:Bodhidharma|Bodhidharma]]

*If you don't find a teacher soon, you'll live this life in vain. It's true, you have the buddha-nature. But without the help of a teacher, you'll never know it. Only one person in a million becomes enlightened without a teacher's help. If, though, by the conjunction of conditions, someone understands what the Buddha meant, that person doesn't need a teacher. Such a person has a natural awareness superior to anything taught. But unless you're so blessed, study hard, and by means of instruction you'll understand.

*Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance of the present experience. It isn't more complicated that that. It is opening to or receiving the present moment, pleasant or unpleasant, just as it is, without either clinging to it or rejecting it.
**Sylvia Boorstein

*If only I could throw away the urge to trace my patterns in your heart, I could really see you.
**David Brandon (Zen in the Art of Helping)

*You can explore the universe, looking for somebody who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and you will not find that person anywhere.

*Develop the mind of equilibrium. You will always be getting praise and blame, but do not let either affect the poise of the mind: follow the calmness, the absence of pride.
**The Buddha - Sutta Nipata

*One day, Ananda, who had been thinking deeply about things for a while, turned to the Buddha and exclaimed: "Lord, I've been thinking - spiritual friendship is at least half of the spiritual life!" The Buddha replied: "Say not so, Ananda, say not so. Spiritual friendship is the whole of the spiritual life!"
**Samyutta Nikaya, Verse 2

*In what is seen, there should be just the seen; In what is heard, there should be just the heard; In what is sensed; there should be just the sensed; In what is thought, there should be just the thought. ... He should not kill a living being, nor cause it to be killed, nor should he incite another to kill. Do not injure any being, either strong or weak in the world.
**Sutta Nipata II,14

*One should follow a man of wisdom who rebukes one for one's faults, as one would follow a guide to some buried treasure. To one who follows such a wise man, it will be an advantage and not a disadvantage. ... These teachings are like a raft, to be abandoned once you have crossed the flood. Since you should abandon even good states of mind generated by these teachings, how much more so should you abandon bad states of mind! ... Conquer the angry man by love. Conquer the ill-natured man by goodness. Conquer the miser with generosity. Conquer the liar with truth.
**The [[Dhammapada]]

*In Aryans' Discipline, to build a friendship is to build wealth, to maintain a friendship is to maintain wealth and to end a friendship is to end wealth.
**Cakkavatti Sutta, Patika Vagga, Digha Nikaya

*If beings knew, as I know, the results of sharing gifts, they would not enjoy their gifts without sharing them with others, nor would the taint of stinginess obsess the heart and stay there. Even if it were their last and final bit of food, they would not enjoy its use without sharing it, if there were anyone to receive it.
**Itivuttaka 18

*A brahmin once asked the Blessed One: "Are you a God?" "No, brahmin," said the Blessed One. "Are you a saint?" "No, brahmin," said the Blessed One. "Are you a magician?" "No, brahmin," said the Blessed One. "What are you then?" "I am awake."

*Let your love flow outward through the universe, To its height, its depth, its broad extent, A limitless love, without hatred or enmity. Then, as you stand or walk, Sit or lie down, As long as you are awake, Strive for this with a one-pointed mind; Your life will bring heaven to earth. ... Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, And the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared ... I teach one thing and one only: suffering and the end of suffering. ... Just as a mother would protect with her life her own son, her only son, so one should cultivate an unbounded mind towards all beings, and loving-kindness towards all the world. One should cultivate an unbounded mind, above and below and across, without obstruction, without enmity, without rivalry. Standing, or going, or seated, or lying down, as long as one is free from drowsiness, one should practice this mindfulness. This, they say, is the holy state here.
**Sutta Nipata

*What is this world condition? Body is the world condition. And with body and form goes feeling, perception, consciousness, and all the activities throughout the world. The arising of form and the ceasing of form--everything that has been heard, sensed, and known, sought after and reached by the mind--all this is the embodied world, to be penetrated and realized. ... The fool thinks he has won a battle when he bullies with harsh speech, but knowing how to be forbearing alone makes one victorious.
**Samyutta Nikaya

*Make an island of yourself, make yourself your refuge; there is no other refuge. Make truth your island, make truth your refuge; there is no other refuge.
**Digha Nikaya, 16

*Solitude is happiness for one who is content, who has heard the Dhamma and clearly sees. Non-affliction is happiness in the world - harmlessness towards all living beings.
**Udana 10

*Things are not what they appear to be: nor are they otherwise.
**Surangama Sutra

*Do not try to become anything. Do not make yourself into anything. Do not be a meditator. Do not become enlightened. When you sit, let it be. What you walk, let it be. Grasp at nothing. Resist nothing.
**[[Ajhan Chah]]

*If you haven't wept deeply, you haven't begun to meditate. ... The only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes.
**Pema Chodron

*Remember always that you are just a visitor here, a traveler passing through. your stay is but short and the moment of your departure unknown. None can live without toil and a craft that provides your needs is a blessing indeed. But if you toil without rest, fatigue and weariness will overtake you, and you will denied the joy that comes from labor's end. Speak quietly and kindly and be not forward with either opinions or advice. If you talk much, this will make you deaf to what others say, and you should know that there are few so wise that they cannot learn from others. Be near when help is needed, but far when praise and thanks are being offered. Take small account of might, wealth and fame, for they soon pass and are forgotten. Instead, nurture love within you and and strive to be a friend to all. Truly, compassion is a balm for many wounds. Treasure silence when you find it, and while being mindful of your duties, set time aside, to be alone with yourself. Cast off pretense and self-deception and see yourself as you really are. Despite all appearances, no one is really evil. They are led astray by ignorance. If you ponder this truth always you will offer more light, rather than blame and condemnation. You, no less than all beings have Buddha Nature within. Your essential Mind is pure. Therefore, when defilements cause you to stumble and fall, let not remorse nor dark foreboding cast you down. Be of good cheer and with this understanding, summon strength and walk on. Faith is like a lamp and wisdom makes the flame burn bright. Carry this lamp always and in good time the darkness will yield and you will abide in the Light.
**Dhammavadaka

*Sometimes one creates a dynamic impression by saying something, and sometimes one creates as significant an impression by remaining silent.
**H.H. The 14th Dalai Lama

*Through violence, you may 'solve' one problem, but you sow the seeds for another. ... One has to try to develop one's inner feelings, which can be done simply by training one's mind. This is a priceless human asset and one you don't have to pay income tax on! ... First one must change. I first watch myself, check myself, then expect changes from others. ... Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive. ... I myself feel, and also tell other Buddhists that the question of Nirvana will come later. There is not much hurry. If in day to day life you lead a good life, honesty, with love, with compassion, with less selfishness, then automatically it will lead to Nirvana. ... The universe that we inhabit and our shared perception of it are the results of a common karma. Likewise, the places that we will experience in future rebirths will be the outcome of the karma that we share with the other beings living there. The actions of each of us, human or nonhuman, have contributed to the world in which we live. We all have a common responsibility for our world and are connected with everything in it. ... If the love within your mind is lost and you see other beings as enemies, then no matter how much knowledge or education or material comfort you have, only suffering and confusion will ensue. ... It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others. ... Whenever Buddhism has taken root in a new land, there has been a certain variation in the style in which it is observed. The Buddha himself taught differently according to the place, the occasion and the situation of those who were listening to him. ... Samsara - our conditioned existence in the perpetual cycle of habitual tendencies and nirvana - genuine freedom from such an existence- are nothing but different manifestations of a basic continuum. So this continuity of consciousness us always present. This is the meaning of tantra. ... According to Buddhist practice, there are three stages or steps. The initial stage is to reduce attachment towards life. The second stage is the elimination of desire and attachment to this samsara. Then in the third stage, self-cherishing is eliminated. ... The creatures that inhabit this earth-be they human beings or animals-are here to contribute, each in its own particular way, to the beauty and prosperity of the world. ... To develop genuine devotion, you must know the meaning of teachings. The main emphasis in Buddhism is to transform the mind, and this transformation depends upon meditation. in order to meditate correctly, you must have knowledge. ... Anything that contradicts experience and logic should be abandoned. ... The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis. ... From one point of view we can say that we have human bodies and are practicing the Buddha's teachings and are thus much better than insects. But we can also say that insects are innocent and free from guile, where as we often lie and misrepresent ourselves in devious ways in order to achieve our ends or better ourselves. From this perspective, we are much worse than insects. ... When the days become longer and there is more sunshine, the grass becomes fresh and, consequently, we feel very happy. On the other hand, in autumn, one leaf falls down and another leaf falls down. The beautiful plants become as if dead and we do not feel very happy. Why? I think it is because deep down our human nature likes construction, and does not like destruction. Naturally, every action which is destructive is against human nature. Constructiveness is the human way. Therefore, I think that in terms of basic human feeling, violence is not good. Non-violence is the only way. ... We humans have existed in our present form for about a hundred thousand years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our overall population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever. This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are "news"; compassionate activities are so much a part of daily life that they are taken for granted and , therefore, largely ignored. ... The fundamental philosophical principle of Buddhism is that all our suffering comes about as a result of an undisciplined mind, and this untamed mind itself comes about because of ignorance and negative emotions. For the Buddhist practitioner then, regardless of whether he or she follows the approach of the Fundamental Vehicle, Mahayana or Vajrayana, negative emotions are always the true enemy, a factor that has to be overcome and eliminated. And it is only by applying methods for training the mind that these negative emotions can be dispelled and eliminated. This is why in Buddhist writings and teachings we find such an extensive explanation of the mind and its different processes and functions. Since these negative emotions are states of mind, the method or technique for overcoming them must be developed from within. There is no alternative. They cannot be removed by some external technique, like a surgical operation."
**from 'Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great Perfection'

*The beauty of life is, while we cannot undo what is done, we can see it, understand it, learn from it and change so that every new moment is spent not in regret, guilt, fear or anger but in wisdom, understanding and love.
**Jennifer Edwards

*View all problems as challenges. Look upon negativities that arise as opportunities to learn and to grow. Don't run from them, condemn yourself, or bury your burden in saintly silence. You have a problem? Great. More grist for the mill. Rejoice, dive in, and investigate.
**Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, "Mindfulness in Plain English"

*Humans prepare for the future all their lives, yet meet the next life totally unprepared.
**[[Drakpa Gyaltsen]]

*To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality; to assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality. The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you wander from the truth. Stop talking and thinking and there is nothing you will not be able to know.
**[[Hsin Hsin Ming]]

*Although gold dust is precious, when it gets in your eyes, it obstructs your vision.
**[[Hsi-Tang]]

*When one does what Buddhas do, one is a Buddha. When one does what Bodhisattvas do, one is a Bodhisattva. When one does what Arhats do, one is an Arhat. When one does what ghosts do, one is a ghost. These are all natural phenomena. There are no shortcuts in cultivation.
**Venerable Master Hsuan Hua

*Our lives are based on what is reasonable and common sense; Truth is apt to be neither.
**Christmas Humphreys

*... And the other half is taking complete personal responsibility for getting there!
**[[Joshua Bryer]]

*If you live the sacred and despise the ordinary, you are still bobbing in the ocean of delusion.
**[[Lin-Chi]]

*One day I complained to Suzuki Roshi about the people I was working with. He listened intently. Finally he said, "If you want to see virtue, you have to have a calm mind."
**"To Shine One Corner of the World: Moments with Shuryu Suzuki" (Edited by David Chadwick)

*Like it or not, if you look at your own mind you will discover it is void and groundless; as insubstantial as empty space.
**Padma Sambhava

*Suttas are not meant to be 'sacred scriptures' that tell us what to believe. One should read them, listen to them, think about them, contemplate them, and investigate the present reality, the present experience with them. Then, and only then, can one insightfully know the truth beyond words.
**Venerable Sumedho

*Of the great religions of history I prefer Buddhism, especially in its earliest forms because it has had the smallest element of persecution.
**[[Bertrand Russell]], British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, advocate for social reform, and pacifist

*As a student of comparative religions, I believe that Buddhism is the most perfect one the world has even seen. The philosophy of the theory of evolution and the law of karma were far superior to any other creed. It was neither the history of religion nor the study of philosophy that first drew me to the world of Buddhist thought but my professional interest as a doctor. My task was to treat psychic suffering and it was this that impelled me to become acquainted with the views and methods of that great teacher of humanity, whose principal theme was the chain of suffering, old age, sickness and death.
**Dr [[Carl Jung]] (1875-1961) Swiss psychologist / psychiatrist, Founder of the Jungian school of psychology

*Buddhism is an earnest struggle to win. This is what the Daishonin teaches. A Buddhist must not be defeated. I hope you will maintain an alert and winning spirit in your work and daily life, taking courages action and showing triumphant actual proof time and again.
**Daisaku Ikeda ,president of Soka Gakkai International (SGI),
== Unsourced ==
* Buddhists believe that all human sufferings and dissatisfactions stem from desire or "thirst" ''(trishna)''—for possessions , sensual pleasures, power, even for wisdom and knowledge—which warps our minds and distorts our understanding. The Buddha compared a life governed by the delusions of ''trishna'' to a river in flood, sweeping us away to a life of constant discontentment. Learning how to control our cravings is the raft that can carry us over the flood to the opposite shore of insight and peace of mind.
*Sow a thought and reap an act
Sow an act and reap a habit
Sow a habit and reap a character
Sow a character and reap a destiny

== References ==
{{reflist}}

==See also==
{{wikipedia}}
{{wiktionary}}
{{wikibooks|God and Religious Toleration/Buddhism}}
* [[Gautama Buddha]]
* [[Dōgen Zenji]]
* [[The Gateless Gate]]
* [[Huang Po]]
* [[Nagarjuna]]
* [[Shunryu Suzuki]]
* [[Traditional Chinese medicine]]
* [[Zen proverbs]]

[[Category:Buddhism|*]]

[[cs:Buddhismus]]
[[de:Buddhismus]]
[[eo:Budhismo]]
[[it:Buddhismo]]
[[pl:Buddyzm]]
[[pt:Budismo]]
[[sk:Budhizmus]]

Heaven

2011-04-12T21:48:50Z

Nobody60: /* External links */

[[File:Arco iris circular.JPG|144px|thumb|right|The heavens declare the glory of God ; and the firmament showeth his handywork. ~ ''[[Psalms]]'' 19:1]]
'''[[w:Heaven|Heaven]]''' may refer to the physical heavens, the sky, the seemingly endless expanse of the universe beyond or to an afterlife plane of existence (often held to exist in another realm) in various religions and spiritual philosophies, often described as the holiest possible place, accessible by people according to various standards of divinity, goodness, piety, faith or awareness.

==Sourced==
[[File:Brocken Spectre at Peak Korzhenevskaya.jpg|144px|thumb|right|I see Heaven's glories shine, And Faith shines equal, arming me from Fear. ~ [[Emily Brontë]] ]]
[[File:Glory, spectre.jpg|144px|thumb|right|All the way to heaven is heaven; and as those angels, which came from heaven hither, bring heaven with them, and are in heaven here, so that soul that goes to heaven, meets heaven here. ~ [[John Donne]] ]]
[[File:Paradiso Canto 31.jpg|144px|thumb|right|The redeemed shall walk there. ~ [[Isaiah]] 35:9]]
[[File:Whirpool Galaxy.jpg|144px|thumb|right|To everything (turn, turn, turn) There is a season (turn, turn, turn) And a time for every purpose under heaven. ~ [[Pete Seeger]] ]]

* Heaven is not a place, and it is not a time. Heaven is being perfect.
** [[Richard Bach]], in ''[[Jonathan Livingston Seagull]]'' (1970)

* I cannot be content with less than heaven; Living, and comprehensive of all life. Thee, universal heaven, celestial all; Thee, sacrjd seat of intellective time; Field of the soul's best wisdom: home of truth, Star-throned.
** [[Philip James Bailey]], ''Festus'' (1903)

* If our Creator has so bountifully provided for our existence here, which is but momentary, and for our temporal wants, which will soon be forgotten, how much more must He have done for our enjoyment in the everlasting world?
** [[w:Hosea Ballou|Hosea Ballou]], as quoted in ''Biography of Rev. Hosea Ballou'' (1854) p. 261

* Heaven will be inherited by every man who has heaven in his soul. "The kingdom of God is within you."
** [[Henry Ward Beecher]], in ''Life Thoughts: Gathered from the Extemporaneous Discourses of Henry Ward Beecher''

* A robin redbreast in a cage Puts all Heaven in a rage.
** [[William Blake]] in [[w:Auguries of Innocence|Auguries of Innocence]] (''c''. 1803)

* To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.
** [[William Blake]] in [[w:Auguries of Innocence|Auguries of Innocence]] (''c''. 1803)

* Let heaven exist, though my own place may be in hell. Let me be tortured and battered and annihilated, but let there be one instant, one creature, wherein thy enormous Library may find its justification.
** [[Jorge Luis Borges]], in "The Library of Babel" (1941)

* No coward soul is mine, No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere: I see Heaven's glories shine, And Faith shines equal, arming me from Fear.
** [[Emily Brontë]] in "No Coward Soul Is Mine" (1848)

* Heaven does not make holiness, but holiness makes heaven; because if you do not give yourself in sympathy to goodness, goodness cannot give itself in influence to you.
** [[Phillips Brooks]], in "The Gift And Its Return" in ''Sermons'' (1883), p. 275

* All the way to Heaven is heaven because He said,"'I am the Way."
** St. [[Catherine of Siena]], as quoted in ''My God and My All: The Life of St. Francis of Assisi'' (1959) by Elizabeth Goudge, p. 107

* Howling is the noise of hell, singing the voice of heaven; sadness the damp of hell, rejoicing the serenity of heaven. And he that hath not this joy here, lacks one of the best pieces of his evidence for the joys of heaven; and hath neglected or refused that earnest, by which God uses to bind his bargain, that true joy in this world shall flow into the joy of heaven, as a river flows into the sea; this joy shall not be put out in death, and a new joy kindled in me in heaven; but as my soul, as soon as it is out of my body, is in heaven, and does not stay for the possession of heaven, nor for the fruition of the sight of God, till it be ascended through air, and lire, and moon, and sun, and planets and firmament, to that place which we conceive to be heaven, but without the thousandth part of a minute's stop, as soon as it issues, is in a glorious light, which is heaven, (for all the way to heaven is heaven; and as those angels, which came from heaven hither, bring heaven with them, and are in heaven here, so that soul that goes to heaven, meets heaven here ; and as those angels do not divest heaven by coming, so these souls invest heaven, in their going.) As my soul shall not go towards heaven, but go by heaven to heaven, to the heaven of heavens, so the true joy of a good soul in this world is the very joy of heaven
** [[John Donne]] in Sermon LXVI in ''The Works of John Donne: With a Memoir of His Life'' (1839) edited by Henry Alford, p. 177

* He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.
** [[Jim Elliot]], ''The Journals of Jim Elliot'' (28 October 1949)

* Heaven is the day of which grace is the dawn; the rich, ripe fruit of which grace is the lovely flower; the inner shrine of that most glorious temple to which grace forms the approach and outer court.
** [[w:Thomas Guthrie|Thomas Guthrie]], in ''Christ and the Inheritance of the Saints'' (1859), p. 22

* Nothing is further than Earth from Heaven: nothing is nearer than Heaven to Earth.
** [[w:Augustus William Hare|Augustus William Hare]] and [[w:Julius Charles Hare|Julius Charles Hare]], ''Guesses at Truth''

* He who seldom thinks of heaven is not likely to get thither; as the only way to hit the mark is to keep the eye fixed upon it.
** [[w:George Horne|Bishop Horne]], ''Aphorisms and Opinions of Dr. George Horne''

* The redeemed shall walk there.
** [[Isaiah]] 35:9

* Heaven will be no heaven to me if I do not meet my wife there.
** [[Andrew Jackson]], in a statement shortly before his death, as quoted in ''Life of Andrew Jackson'' (1860) by James Parton, p. 679.

* Blessed is the pilgrim, who in every place, and at all times of this his banishment in the body, calling upon the holy name of Jesus, calleth to mind his native heavenly land, where his blessed Master, the King of saints and angels, waiteth to receive him. Blessed is the pilgrim who seeketh not an abiding place unto himself in this world; but longeth to be dissolved, and be with Christ in heaven.
** [[Thomas à Kempis]], ''Vera Sapientia or True Wisdom''

* The generous who is always just, and the just who is always generous, may, unannounced, approach the throne of heaven.
** [[Johann Kaspar Lavater]], as quoted in ''Laconics: or, the Best Words of the Best Authors'' (1929) by John Timbs

* Through death Christian's soul goes to—1st. Perfect purity 2dly. Fullness of joy. 3dly. Everlasting freedom. 4thly. Perfect rest. 5thly. Health and fruition. 6thly. Complete security. 7thly. Substantial and eternal good.
** [[Hannah More]], diary entry (7 January 1798)

*The number of levels in Heaven is the number of verses in the Qur'an. Thus, when a reciter of the Qur'an enters into Heaven, it will be said to him: 'Go up one level for every verse that you can recite.' Thus, no one will be in a higher level than the one who has memorized the entire Qur'an.
**[[Muhammad]], ''Biharul Anwar'', Volume 92, Page 22; note that the Qur'an has 6,236 verses.

* The heavens declare the glory of God ; and the firmament showeth his handywork.
** ''[[Psalms]]'' 19:1

* ''To everything (turn, turn, turn) There is a season (turn, turn, turn) And a time for every purpose under heaven.''
** [[Pete Seeger]], in "[[w:Turn!_Turn!_Turn!|Turn! Turn! Turn!]]" (1954)

* Heaven, as conventionally conceived, is a place so inane, so dull, so useless, so miserable, that nobody has ever ventured to describe a whole day in heaven, though plenty of people have described a day at the seaside.
** [[George Bernard Shaw]], ''A Treatise On Parents And Children'' (1910)

* ''Heaven's not a place that you go when you die, it's that moment in life when you actually feel alive''
** [[w:The Spill Canvas|The Spill Canvas]] in "The Tide"

* Yet stay, heaven gates are not so highly arch'd As princes' palaces; they that enter there, Must go upon their knees.
** [[John Webster]], ''[[w:The Dutchess of Malfi|The Dutchess of Malfi]]'' act IV, scene II

* If Christians have the monopoly of salvation, over whom will they rule? And how will this promise be fulfilled, that to faithful servants is given the authority over five or ten cities (Luke 19:17-19)? It is no fun to be king over empty towns. So they will be populated by those who have not been faithful servants. We Christians will be in the heavenly Jerusalem, but there will also be nations walking in its light (Revelation 21:24). The leaves of the tree of life will serve for the healing of the nations (Revelation 22:2), which means that there will be in the life beyond people who need a cure for their souls.
** [[Richard Wurmbrand]], ''If Prison Walls Could Speak'' (1972)

===''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895)===
Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895).

*O rest of rests! O peace serene, eternal! Thou ever livest, and Thou changest never! And in the secret of Thy presence dwelleth Fullness of joy, forever and forever.
** [[Mrs. H. B. Stowe]], p. 299.

* We are born for a higher destiny than earth; there is a realm where the rainbow never fades, where the stars will be spread before us like islands that slumber on the ocean, and where the beings that pass before us like shadows will stay in our presence forever.
** [[Bulwer Lytton]], p. 299.

* When this passing world is done, When has sunk yon, glowing sun, When we stand with Christ in glory, Looking o'er life's f1nished story, Then, Lord, shall I fully know — Not till then — how much I owe.
** [[Robert McCheyne]], p. 299.

* No wearisome days, no sorrowful nights; no hunger or thirst; no anxiety or fears; no envies, no jealousies, no breaches of friendship, no sad separations, no distrusts or forebodings, no self-reproaches, no enmities, no bitter regrets, no tears, no heartaches; "And there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away."
** [[Randolph Sinks Foster]], p. 300.

* No more fatigue, no more distress, Nor sin nor death shall reach the place; No groans shall mingle with the songs That warble from immortal tongues.
** [[Philip Doddridge]], p. 300.

* Christ and His cross are not separable in this life, howbeit Christ and His cross part at heaven's door, for there is no house-room for crosses in heaven. One tear, one sigh, one sad heart, one fear, one loss, one thought of trouble cannot find lodging there.
** [[Samuel Rutherford]], p. 300.

*"A little while," and the load Shall drop at the pilgrim's feet, Where the steep and thorny road Doth merge in the golden street.
** [[Washington Gladden]], p. 300.

*After the fever of life — after wearinesses, sicknesses, fightings and despondings, languor and fretfulness, struggling and failing, struggling and succeeding — after all the changes and chances of this troubled and unhealthy state, at length comes death — at length the white throne of God — at length the beatific vision.
** [[Newman]], p. 301.

*And then, the quiet of the green, inland valleys of our Father's land, where no tempest comes any more, nor the loud winds are ever heard, nor the salt sea is ever seen; but perpetual calm and blessedness; all mystery gone, and all rebellion hushed and silenced, and all unrest at an end forever! " No more sea;" but, instead of that wild and yeasty chaos of turbulent waters, there shall be the river that makes glad the city of God, the river of water of life, that proceeds "out of the throne of God and of the Lamb."
** [[Alexander Maclaren]], p. 301.

* An everlasting tranquillity is, in my imagination, the highest possible felicity, because I know of no felicity on earth higher than that which a peaceful mind and contented heart afford.
** [[Zimmerman]], p. 301.

* Selfishness, eager for a heaven of enjoyment, is quite a different thing in the soul from love and purity and truth, yearning together for what is their natural element.
** [[William Mountford]], p. 302.

* What tranquillity will there be in heaven! Who can express the fullness and blessedness of this peace! What a calm is this! How sweet and holy and joyous! What a haven of rest to enter, after having passed through the storms and tempests of this world, in which pride and selfishness and envy and malice and scorn and contempt and contention and vice are as waves of a restless ocean, always rolling, and often dashed about in violence and fury! What a Canaan of rest to come to, after going through this waste and howling wilderness, full of snares and pitfalls and poisonous serpents, where no rest could be found.
** [[Jonathan Edwards (theologian)|Jonathan Edwards]], p. 302.

* O, land of rest, how near thou art! O, judgment-seat of Jesus, how thin are the clouds that veil thee! Through the rifts of cloudland shine rays from this righteous crown. It is "laid up" for him whose hope can never be satisfied with less than the presence of the King.
** [[Stephen H. Tyng, Jr]], p. 302.

* One should go to sleep as homesick passengers do, saying " Perhaps in the morning we shall see the shore."
** [[Henry Ward Beecher]], p. 302.

* And looking back upon " the sea that brought us thither," we shall behold its waters flashing in the light of that everlasting morning, and hear them breaking into music upon the eternal shore. And then, brethren, when all the weary night-watchers on the stormy ocean of life are gathered together around Him who watched with them from His throne on the bordering mountains of eternity, where the day shines forever — then He will seat them at His table in His kingdom, and none will need to ask, "Who art Thou?" or, "Where am I?" " for all shall know it is the Lord," and the full, perfect, unchangeable vision of His blessed face will be heaven.
** [[Alexander Maclaren]], p. 303.

* In our Father's house it will not be the pearl gate or the streets of gold that will make us happy. But oh, how tran- scendently glad shall we be when we see our Lord. Perhaps in that "upper room," also, He may show us His hands and His side, and we may cry out with happy Thomas, "My Lord and my God!"
** [[Theodore L. Cuyler]], p. 303.

* Oh, heaven without my Saviour Would be no heaven to me; Dim were the walls of jasper — Rayless the crystal sea. He gilds earth's darkest valleys With light and joy and peace; What then must be the radiance When night and death shall cease?
** [[Helen L. Parmlee]], p. 303.

* Perhaps heaven may not be so far away as we fancy; and if our eyes were not holden, we should see angels ascending and descending, and blessed spirits thronging all about us.
** [[Arthur Henry Kenney]], p. 304.

* There is not such a great difference between grace and glory after all. Grace is the bud, and glory is the blossom. Grace is glory begun; and glory is grace perfected. It won't come hard to people that are serving God down here to do it when they go up yonder. They will change places, but they won't change employments.
** [[Dwight L. Moody]], p. 304.

* I change my place, but not my company. While here I have sometimes walked with God, and now I go to rest with Him,
** [[Dr. Preston]], p. 304.

* Every Christian that goes before us from this world is a ransomed spirit waiting to welcome us in heaven.
** [[Jonathan Edwards (theologian)|Jonathan Edwards]], p. 304.

* What we sow here, we reap there! Can it be supposed that the soul will enjoy a reward or endure a retribution for deeds of which it has no recollection? Is the thing possible? Will it enjoy the bliss of heaven, praising Christ forever as its great Saviour, without any remembrance of the sins and sufferings from which He redeemed and saved it? The idea is absurd.
** [[Randolph Sinks Foster]], p. 305.

* Death must obliterate all memories and affections and ideas and laws, or the awakening in the next world will be amid the welcomes, and loves and raptures of those who left us with tearful farewells, and with dying promises that they would wait to welcomes us when we should arrive. And so they do. Not sorrowfully, not anxiously, but lovingly, they wait to bid us welcome.
** [[Randolph Sinks Foster]], p. 305.

* With Christ, and like Christ, and not love our friends! Impossible! when He loves them so tenderly. Going into the fuller presence of Him whose very name is "Love" can never make our hearts less loving.
** [[Arthur Henry Kenney]], p. 305.

* I shall know the loved who have gone before, And joyfully sweet will the meeting be, When over the river, the peaceful river, The angel of death shall carry me.
** [[N. A. W. Priest]], p. 305.

* Then re-united to the friends with whom vve took sweet counsel upon earth, we shall recount our toil, only to heighten our ecstasy; and call to mind the toil and the din of war, oniy that, with a more bounding throb and a richer song, we may fee! and celebrate the wonders of redemption.
** [[Henry Melvill]], p. 305.

* Blessed loves! how happy they have made us on the earth; what will they be when they have deepened through ages, with no alloy of envy or suspicion or selfishness or sorrow?
** [[Randolph Sinks Foster]], p. 306.

* God would never have let us long for our friends with such a strong and holy love, if they were not waiting for us.
** [[William Mountford]], p. 306.

* They are kings and priests unto God. They wear crowns that flash in the everlasting light. They wear robes that are spotlessly white. They wave victorious palms. They sing anthems of such exceeding sweetness as no earthly choirs ever approach. They stand before the throne. They fly on ministries of love. They muse on the top of Mount Zion. They meditate on the banks of the river of life. They are rapturous with ecstasies of love. God wipes away all tears from their eyes.
** [[Randolph Sinks Foster]], p. 306.

* In heaven, knowledge shall be commensurate with the enlarged powers of the glorified soul.
** [[Theodore L. Cuyler]], p. 307.

* The joys of heaven are not the joys of passive contemplation, of dreamy remembrance, of perfect repose; but they are described thus: "They rest not day nor night." "His servants serve Him, and see His face."
** [[Alexander Maclaren]], p. 307.

* Man has in his power, now developed, nothing more than a mere hint or initial sign of what is to be the real stature of his personality in the process of his everlasting development. We exist here only in the small, that God may have us in a state of flexibility, and bend or fashion us, at the best advantage, to the model of His own great life and character.
** [[Horace Bushnell]], p. 307.

* It doth not yet appear what we shall be. We lie here in our nest, unfledged and weak, guessing dimly at our future, and scarce believing what even now appears. But the power is in us, and that power is finally to be revealed. And what a revelation will that be!
** [[Horace Bushnell]], p. 307.

* Will not this be the description of our future being — "reaching forth unto those things which are before?" I believe that we shall thus live through all the eternities that are before us, growing wiser, nobler, stronger, greater; plunging deeper into God, and being more and more filled with more and more of Him. So we shall move forever as in ascending spirals that rise ever higher, and draw ever closer to the throne we compass and to Him that dwells alone; ever perfect, yet ever growing, for we have an inexhaustible Saviour to absorb into our hearts, and we have hearts that never reach the ultimate bound and term of their indefinite possibility of receiving.
** [[Alexander Maclaren]], p. 307.

* Heaven is endless longing, accompanied with an endless fruition — a longing which is blessedness, a longing which is life.
** [[Alexander Maclaren]], p. 308.

* As we look up into these glorious culminations, how grand life becomes! To be forever with the Lord, and forever changing into His likeness, and, still more, forever deepening in the companionship of His thought and bliss, "from glory to glory," — could we desire more?
** [[Randolph Sinks Foster]], p. 308.

* We should carry up our affections to the mansions prepared for us above, where eternity is the measure, felicity the state, angels the company, the Lamb the light, and God the inheritance and portion of His people forever.
** [[Jeremy Taylor]], p. 308.

* Yes, it is a truth that for a good man,— honored, beloved, useful,— with all around him that God ever gives to His children here;— nay, with all that God could give him of earth, it would be " gain " to die. Heaven is a better, a happier, a more desirable world than this is or can be.
** [[Albert Barnes]], p. 308.

* Beyond the smiling and the weeping, I shall be soon; Beyond the waking and the sleeping, Beyond the sowing and the reaping, I shall be soon! Love, rest, and home — Sweet hope! Lord, tarry not, but come!
** [[Horatius Bonar]], p. 308.

* Oil, when shall the night be gone, the shadows flee away, and the morning of that long, long day, without cloud or night, dawn.
** [[Samuel Rutherford]], p. 309.

* Rejoice, oh! grieving heart, The hours fly past; With each some sorrow dies, With each some shadow flies, Until at last The red dawn in the east Bids weary night depart, And pain is past.
** [[Adelaide Anne Procter]], p. 309.

* When the day of toil is done, When the race of life is run, Father, grant Thy wearied one Rest for evermore! When the heart by sorrow tried Feels at length its throbs subside, Bring us, where all tears are dried, Joy for evermore!
** [[C. C. Scholefield]], p. 309.

==External links==
{{wikipedia}}{{wikibooks|God and Religious Toleration/Paradise Meditation}}
*[http://www.religiousbook.net/Books/Online_books/Jt/Jesus_Teaching_5.html Sky - versus Heaven]

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Paradise

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Quotes about '''[[w:paradise|paradise]]''':

== Sourced ==
* ''Aus dem Paradies, das [[Georg Cantor|Cantor]] uns geschaffen, soll uns niemand vertreiben können.''
** Translation: No one shall expel us from the Paradise that Cantor has created.
** [[David Hilbert]] ''Über das Unendliche'' (On the Infinite), Math. Ann. 95

* "He who builds a [[mosque]] in the way of [[Allah]], God will build a house for him in the paradise." - ''Sahih Muslim, Nr. 828; [http://muslim-canada.org/sayingsabubakr.html muslim-canada.org]''
** [[Muhammad]]

{{wiktionary|paradise}}
{{wikibooks|God and Religious Toleration/Paradise Meditation}}
* {{cite book|title = Many Thoughts of Many Minds |author = Klopsch, Louis, 1852-1910 |year = 1896}}

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[[Category:Themes]]

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Theology

2011-04-12T13:32:18Z

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'''[[w:Theology|Theology]]''' is the study of a [[God]] or, more generally the study of [[religion|religious]] faith, practice, and experience, or of [[spirituality]].

==Sourced==
===''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895)===
:Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895).

* We can no more have exact religious thinking without theology, than exact mensuration and astronomy without mathematics, or exact iron-making without chemistry,
** [[John Hall (Presbyterian pastor)|John Hall]], p. 580.

* The theological systems of men and schools of men are determined always by the character of their ideal of Christ, the central fact of the Christian system.
** [[Josiah Gilbert Holland]], p. 580.

* Comparative theology testifies that Jesus Christ, who is not less truly the incarnation of the Christian's theology than of the Christian's God, is indeed the desire of the nations, but not their product, their invention, or their discovery.
** [[George D. B. Pepper]], p. 580.

* All my theology is reduced to this narrow compass — "Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners."
** [[Archibald Alexander]], p. 580.

* A man must have a stout digestion to feed upon some men's theology; no sap, no sweetness, no life, but all stern accuracy, and fleshless definition. Proclaimed without tenderness, and argued without affection, the gospel from such men rather resembles a missile from a catapult than bread from a Father's hand.
** [[Charles Spurgeon]], p. 580.

==External links==
{{wikipedia}}
{{wiktionary|theology}}
{{wikibooks|God and Religious Toleration}}

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God

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[[Image:Blake_ancient_of_days.jpg|300px|thumb|right|One boy would not get it through his head that for all adults God is not an old man in a white beard sitting on a cloud... ~ [[Madeleine L'Engle]] ]]
'''[[w:God|God]]''' is a term used in referring to various notions of a supreme being, often described to be the ruler or creator of the universe, or immanent within it.

= A - Z =
== A ==
:Quotations listed alphabetically by author or work.
[[File:Carina Nebula by ESO.jpg|144px|thumb|right|In the Beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. ~ [[Douglas Adams]] ]]

* '''In the Beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.'''
** [[Douglas Adams]], in ''[[w:The Restaurant at the End of the Universe|The Restaurant at the End of the Universe]]'' (1980), Ch. 1

* "Does God know he [exists]?" "Of course he does. Otherwise, you could not have asked the question, and I could not have answered."
** [[Douglas Adams]]

* When we say God is a spirit, we know what we mean, as well as we do when we say that the pyramids of Egypt are matter. Let us be content, therefore, to believe him to be a spirit, that is, an essence that we know nothing of, in which originally and necessarily reside all energy, all power, all capacity, all activity, all wisdom, all goodness.
** [[John Adams]], in a letter to [[Thomas Jefferson]] (17 January 1820)

* When I observe into what inconsistent absurdities those persons run who make speculative, metaphysical religion a matter of importance, I am fully determined never to puzzle myself in the mazes of religious discussion, [and] to content myself with practicing the dictates of God and reason so far as I can judge for myself...
** [[John Adams]]

*Facts are the words of God, and we may heap them together endlessly, but they will teach us little or nothing till we place them in their true relations, and recognize the thought that binds them together.
**[[Louis Agassiz]]

*It is the job of prophets and scientists alike to proclaim the glories of God
**[[Louis Agassiz]]

*"We have one life; it soon will be past; what we do for God is all that will last."
**[[Muhammad Ali]]

*God will not place a burden on a man's shoulders knowing that he cannot carry it.
**[[Muhammad Ali]]

* '''Never place a period where God has placed a comma.'''
** [[Gracie Allen]], in her last letter to [[George Burns]], as quoted in ''Two Minutes for God : Quick Fixes for the Spirit'' (2007) by Peter B. Panagore, p. 73; this was later used in a slogan for the United Church of Christ: '''Never place a period where God has placed a comma. God Is Still Speaking.'''

* Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends.
** [[Woody Allen]], in ''Getting Even'' (1971)

* If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name in a Swiss bank.
** [[Woody Allen]], in ''[[w:Without Feathers|Without Feathers]]'' (1975)

* The important thing, I think, is not to be bitter... if it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he is evil. I think that the worst thing you could say is that he is, basically, an under-achiever. If God exists, I hope he has a good excuse.
** [[Woody Allen]], in ''[[w:Love and Death|Love and Death]]'' (1975); also quoted in ''What Do Jews Believe? : The Customs and Culture of Modern Judaism'' (2007) by Edward Kessler, p. 66

* To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.
** [[Woody Allen]], in ''[[w:Stardust Memories|Stardust Memories]]'' (1980)

* How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?
** [[Woody Allen]], as quoted in ''Love, Sex, Death & The Meaning of Life : The Films of Woody Allen'' (2001) by Foster Hirsch, p. 50

* God is not a limited individual who sits alone up in the clouds on a golden throne. God is pure Consciousness that dwells within everything. Understanding this truth, learn to accept and love everyone equally.
** [[Amma]]

[[Image:TenCommandmentsAustinStateCapitol.jpg|144px|thumb|right|I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. ~ [[Susan B. Anthony]] ]]
* I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
** [[Susan B. Anthony]], in an address to the National American Woman Suffrage Association (1896)

* To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.
** [[Isaac Asimov]]

* '''A God who cannot smile could not have created this humorous universe.'''
** [[Sri Aurobindo]], in ''Thoughts and Aphorisms''

*In God alone, essence (what He is) and existence (that he is) coincide.
** [[Avicenna]]

* God, the supreme being, is neither circumscribed by space, nor touched by time; he cannot be found in a particular direction, and his essence cannot change. The secret conversation is thus entirely spiritual; it is a direct encounter between God and the soul, abstracted from all material constraints.
** [[Avicenna]], as quoted in ''366 Readings From Islam'' (2000), edited by Robert Van der Weyer

== B ==

* God alone is real, nothing matters but love for God.
** [[Meher Baba]]

*It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion; for while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate, and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.
** [[Francis Bacon]]

* There are two books laid before us to study, to prevent our falling into error; first, the volume of the Scriptures, which reveal the will of God; then the volume of the Creatures, which express His power.
** [[Francis Bacon]]

* I reverse the phrase of [[Voltaire]], and say that if God would have existed, it would be necessary to abolish Him.
** [[Mikhail Bakunin]] in "On God and the State"

* God was a clever idea ... The human race came up with a winner there.
** [[J. G. Ballard]], as quoted in [http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/sep/06/fiction.jgballard "The benign catastrophist" by Susie Mackenzie in ''The Guardian'' (6 September 2003)]

* The orthodox faith painted God as a revengeful being, and yet people talk about loving such a being.
** [[P. T. Barnum]]

* That men should live honestly, quietly, and comfortably together, it is needful that they should live under a sense of God's will, and in awe of the divine power, hoping to please God, and fearing to offend Him, by their behaviour respectively.
** [[w:Isaac Barrow|Isaac Barrow]], teacher of [[Isaac Newton]].

* If by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot.
** [[Samuel Beckett]], on the title of one of his most famous plays, ''[[w:Waiting for Godot|Waiting for Godot]]'', as quoted in ''The Essential Samuel Beckett : An Illustrated Biography'', by Enoch Brater (revised edition, 2003), p.75

* '''[[w:Zeus|Zeus]]''', ''n''. The chief of Grecian gods, adored by the Romans as [[w:Jupiter|Jupiter]] and by the modern Americans as God, Gold, Mob and Dog. Some explorers who have touched upon the shores of America, and one who professes to have penetrated a considerable distance to the interior, have thought that these four names stand for as many distinct deities, but in his monumental work on Surviving Faiths, Frumpp insists that the natives are monotheists, each having no other god than himself, whom he worships under many sacred names.
** [[Ambrose Bierce]], in ''The Cynic's Word Book'' (1906), later retitled ''[[w:The Devil's Dictionary|The Devil's Dictionary]]''

* Stop telling God what to do with his dice.
**[[Niels Bohr]]

*When with bold telescopes I survey the old and newly discovered stars and planets, when with excellent microscopes I discern the unimitable subtility of nature’s curious workmanship; and when, in a word, by the help of anatomical knives, and the light of chemical furnaces, I study the book of nature, I find myself oftentimes reduced to exclaim with the Psalmist, ‘How manifold are Thy works, O Lord! In wisdom hast Thou made them all!
** Sir [[w:Robert Boyle|Robert Boyle]]

*An outlook through this peephole [that manned space flight had opened] at the vast mysteries of the universe should only confirm our belief in the certainty of its Creator. I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science.
** [[Wernher Von Braun ]]

* All names of God remain hallowed because they have been used not only to speak ''of'' God but also to speak ''to'' him.
** [[Martin Buber]], in ''[[w:I and Thou|I and Thou]]'' (1923)

* Some would deny any legitimate use of the word God because it has been misused so much. Certainly it is the most burdened of all human words. Precisely for that reason it is the most imperishable and unavoidable. And how much weight has all erroneous talk about God's nature and works (although there never has been nor can be any such talk that is not erroneous) compared with the one truth that all men who have addressed God really meant him? For whoever pronounces the word God and really means Thou, addresses, no matter what his delusion, the true Thou of his life that cannot be restricted by any other and to whom he stands in a relationship that includes all others.
** [[Martin Buber]], in ''[[w:I and Thou|I and Thou]]'' (1923)

* God's merits are so transcendent that it is not surprising his faults should be in reasonable proportion.
** [[Samuel Butler]] "Rebelliousness" in ''Note-Books'' (1912)

* To the lexicographer, [[Wiktionary:God|God]] is simply the word that comes next to [[Wiktionary:go-cart|go-cart]]
** [[Samuel Butler]]

== C ==

* God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that.
** [[Joseph Campbell]]

* Well, you have to say yes to [Eternity], you have to say it's great this way. It's the way God intended it.
** [[Joseph Campbell]]

* At best, God can be viewed as nothing more than an uncaring incompetent father-figure.
** [[George Carlin]]

* Religion has never really had a big problem with murder. Not really. More people have been killed in the name of God than for any other reason.
** [[George Carlin]]

* Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time! But He loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs '''money'''! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing and all-wise, but somehow, just can't handle money!
** [[George Carlin]]

* Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God.
** [[Chesterton]]

* Nihil est, quod deus efficere non possit ("there is nothing that God cannot do").
** [[Cicero]]

* God: a disease we imagine we are cured of because no one dies of it nowadays.
** [[Emile Cioran]], ''The Trouble with Being Born''

* I don't believe in God, but I'm very interested in Her.
** [[Arthur C. Clarke]]

* Perhaps our role on this planet is not to worship God — but to create Him.
** [[Arthur C. Clarke]]

* I've steered clear of God. He was an incredible sadist.
** [[John Collier]]

* We 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 Cosby]]

== D ==

* Realization of Happiness Itself Is Realization of God, Truth, or Reality Itself
** [[Adi Da]]

* I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose.
** [[Clarence Darrow]]

* I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars.
** [[Charles Darwin]]

* A man who recognizes no God is probably placing an inordinate value on himself.
** [[Robertson Davies]] in ''Conversations''

* The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
** [[Richard Dawkins]] in ''The God Delusion''

* Nothing is discovered without God’s intention and assistance, and I suppose every new knowledge of His works that is conceded to man to be distinctly a revelation by which men are to guide themselves.
**[[Charles Dickens]]

[[Image:Stellar spire eagle nebula.jpg|144px|thumb|right|It is solemn to remember that Vastness — Is but the Shadow of the Brain which casts it — ~ [[Emily Dickinson]] ]]
* They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse.
** [[Emily Dickinson]] Letter to Mrs. J. G. Holland [L551] (Spring 1878)

* It is solemn to remember that Vastness — Is but the Shadow of the Brain which casts it — All things swept sole away This — is immensity —
** [[Emily Dickinson]] Letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson [L551] (1881)

* If there is a supreme being, he's crazy.
** [[Marlene Dietrich]], as quoted in ''Rave'' magazine (November 1986)

* God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road.
** [[Isak Dinesen]]

* God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world.
** [[Paul Dirac]]

* I do not know whether there are gods, but there ought to be.
** [[Diogenes of Sinope]]

* With God, every moment is the moment of beginning again.
** [[Catherine Doherty]]

== E ==

* God says do what you wish, but make the wrong choice and you will be tortured for eternity in hell. That, sir, is not free will. It would be akin to a man telling his girlfriend, 'Do what you wish, but if you choose to leave me, I will track you down and blow your brains out.' When a man says this we call him a psychopath and cry out for his imprisonment/execution. When a god says the same, we call him ''loving'' and build churches in his honor.
** Computer programmer, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Easttom -Chuck Easttom]

* If we pray to God as a corporeal person, this will prevent us from relinquishing the human doubts and fears which attend such a belief, and so we cannot grasp the wonders wrought by infinite, incorporeal Love, to whom all things are possible.
** [[w:Mary Baker Eddy|Mary Baker Eddy]] in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures"

* Before God we are all equally wise — and equally foolish
** [[Albert Einstein]]

* I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.
** [[Albert Einstein]] (24 April 1929)

* I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance — but for us, not for God.
** [[Albert Einstein]]

* I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him.
** [[Albert Einstein]], Letter to Edgar Meyer (2 January 1915)

* It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious, then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
** [[Albert Einstein]] from a letter to an atheist, written in English (24 March 1954). It is included in ''Albert Einstein: The Human Side'', edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman

* My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment.
** [[Albert Einstein]], Letter to M. Berkowitz (25 October 1950)

* Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the Old One. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.
** [[Albert Einstein]]

[[File:2003-32-GravitationalLens.jpg|144px|thumb|right|The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science... ~ [[Albert Einstein]] ]]
* The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man.
** [[Albert Einstein]]
** Variant translation: The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.

* Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to... If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked... If, as they say, God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?... If he is unable to do either, then why call him 'God'?
** [[Epicurus]]

* If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are always praying for evil against one another.
** [[Epicurus]]

* God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.
** ''[[w:Exodus|Exodus]]'' 3:14 (King James Version)
** Variant: God said to Moses, 'I will be what I will be'

== F ==

* When people expect God to plan their lives for them, and protect them, they tend to lose their motivation to guide and control their own lives.
** [[Charles W. Faulkner]]

* God heals, and the doctor takes the fee.
** [[Benjamin Franklin]]

* God helps those who help themselves.
** [[Benjamin Franklin]]

* Beer is proof God loves us. (misattributed)
** [[Benjamin Franklin]]

* If you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
** "God" in ''[[Futurama]]''

== G ==

* I looked and looked but I didn't see God.
** [[Yuri Gagarin]] after becoming the first person to orbit the Earth. Sometimes misquoted as "I see no God up here" as if he said this in space, but there are no transcripts or recordings indicating that he ever did.

* I do not think it is necessary to believe that the same God who has given us our senses, reason, and intelligence wished us to abandon their use, giving us by some other means the information that we could gain through them.
** [[Galileo Galilei]]

* Mathematics is the language in which God wrote the universe.
** [[Galileo Galilei]]

* It is beyond my power to induce in you a belief in God. There are certain things which are self proved and certain which are not proved at all. The existence of God is like a geometrical axiom. It may be beyond our heart grasp. I shall not talk of an intellectual grasp. Intellectual attempts are more or less failures, as a rational explanation cannot give you the faith in a living God. For it is a thing beyond the grasp of reason. It transcends reason. There are numerous phenomena from which you can reason out the existence of God, but I shall not insult your intelligence by offering you a rational explanation of that type. I would have you brush aside all rational explanations and begin with a simple childlike faith in God. If I exist, God exists. With me it is a necessity of my being as it is with millions. They may not be able to talk about it, but from their life you can see that it is a part of their life. I am only asking you to restore the belief that has been undermined. In order to do so, you have to unlearn a lot of literature that dazzles your intelligence and throws you off your feet. Start with the faith which is also a token of humility and an admission that we know nothing, that we are less than atoms in this universe. We are less than atoms, I say, because the atom obeys the law of its being, whereas we in the insolence of our ignorance deny the law of nature. But I have no argument to address to those who have no faith.
** [[Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi]] in ''Young India'' (24 September 1931); also in [http://www.archive.org/details/teachingsofmahat029222mbp ''Teachings Of Mahatma Gandhi'' (1945), edited by Jag Parvesh Chander, p. 458]

* Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious beliefs. [[Stephen Jay Gould]]. Impeaching a Self-Appointed Judge," Scientific American, July 1992

== H ==

* Give according to your means, or God will make your means according to your giving.
** Reverend [[John Hall (Presbyterian pastor)|John Hall]], reported in Tryon Edwards, ''A Dictionary of Thoughts'' (1908), p. 194.

* If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is 'God is crying.' And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is 'Probably because of something you did.'
** [[Jack Handey]]

* Futurist [[w:Aldo Palazzeschi|Aldo Palazzeschi]]... exhorts us in ''L'antidolore'' (1913) to laugh heartily at the mortality built into the plan of creation not out of spite, as has traditionally been the case, but because suffering and death are nothing but pranks of the prime trickster, God. If anything it is the devil who is the spirit of gravity, and it is in taking him seriously that we plummet from grace.
** [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3806/is_200605/ai_n17220907/print Thomas Harrison, in "Laughter and the Tree Of Knowledge" in the ''Romanic Review'' (May-November 2006)]

* I've never understood how God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion by faith — it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe.
** "Jubal Harshaw", in ''[[Stranger in a Strange Land]]'' by [[Robert A. Heinlein]]''

* Men rarely (if ever) managed to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.
** [[Robert A. Heinlein]]

* How much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in his divine system of creation?
** [[Joseph Heller]], ''Catch 22''

* Faith must have adequate evidence, else it is mere superstition.
** [[Alexander Hodge]]

* Consciousness is Gods’ gift to mankind.
** Dr. [[w:Albert Hofmann|Albert Hofmann]] discoverer of LSD. (15 January 2006)

* God only speaks to those who understand the language
** Dr. [[w:Albert Hofmann|Albert Hofmann]] discoverer of LSD. (15 January 2006)

* Never tell a young person that something cannot be done. God may have been waiting for centuries for somebody ignorant enough of the impossibility to do that thing.
** Dr. [[J.A. Holmes]]

== I ==

* All laws for the purpose of making man worship God, are born of the same spirit that kindled the fires of the ''[[w:Auto de fe|auto da fe]]'', and lovingly built the dungeons of the Inquisition. All laws defining and punishing blasphemy — making it a crime to give your honest ideas about the Bible, or to laugh at the ignorance of the ancient Jews, or to enjoy yourself on the Sabbath, or to give your opinion of Jehovah, were passed by impudent bigots, and should be at once repealed by honest men. An infinite God ought to be able to protect himself, without going in partnership with State Legislatures.
** [[Robert Ingersoll]]

* An honest God is the noblest work of man.
** [[Robert Ingersoll]]

* I do not believe in forgiveness as it is preached by the church. We do not need the forgiveness of God, but of each other and of ourselves.
** [[Robert Ingersoll]]

* I have made up my mind that if there is a God, he will be merciful to the merciful. Upon that rock I stand. That he will not torture the forgiving. Upon that rock I stand. That every man should be true to himself, and that there is no world, no star, in which honesty is a crime. Upon that rock I stand. The honest man, the good woman, the happy child, have nothing to fear, either in this world or the world to come. Upon that rock I stand.
** [[Robert Ingersoll]]

* The old doctrine that God wanted man to do something for him, and that he kept a watchful eye upon all the children of men; that he rewarded the virtuous and punished the wicked, is gradually fading from the mind. We know that some of the worst men have what the world calls success. We know that some of the best men lie upon the straw of failure. We know that honesty goes hungry, while larceny sits at the banquet. We know that the vicious have every physical comfort, while the virtuous are often clad in rags.
** [[Robert Ingersoll]]

* Would God give a bird wings and make it a crime to fly? Would he give me brains and make it a crime to think? Any God that would damn one of his children for the expression of his honest thought wouldn't make a decent thief. When I read a book and don't believe it, I ought to say so. I will do so and take the consequences like a man.
** [[Robert Ingersoll]] (14 October 1879)

* I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me: That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create calamity: I the LORD do all these things.
** Isaiah 45:5-7 (King James Version)
** Variant: I am the Lord and there is no other. Who forms light and creates darkness, Who makes peace and creates calamity; I am the Lord, who makes all these.

* When gods quarrel, it is the mortals who suffer
** [[Tatsuya Ishida]]

* GOD is the invisible power that governs the universe.
** ''Ishan Arora''

== J ==

* The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)

* It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], Query 17 in ''Notes on the State of Virginia'' (1781-1785)

* Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], Query 18 in ''Notes on the State of Virginia'' (1781-1785)

* Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], in a letter to his nephew Peter Carr from Paris, France, (10 August 1787).

* No historical fact is better established, than that the doctrine of one God, pure and uncompounded, was that of the early ages of Christianity … Nor was the unity of the Supreme Being ousted from the Christian creed by the force of reason, but by the sword of civil government, wielded at the will of the fanatic [[w:Athanasius|Athanasius]].
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], in a letter to James Smith (1822)

* The doctrines of [[Jesus]] are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man.
: 1. That there is one only God, and he all perfect.
: 2. That there is a future state of rewards and punishments.
: 3. That to love God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself, is the sum of religion.
::* [[Thomas Jefferson]], in a letter to Benjamin Waterhouse, (26 June 1822)

* You cannot serve both God and [[w:Mammon|Mammon]].
**[[Jesus]], in ''Matthew'' 6:24

* Some foolish men declare that creator made the world. The doctrine that the world was created is ill advised and should be rejected. If God created the world, where was he before the creation? If you say he was transcendent then and needed no support, where is he now? How could God have made this world without any raw material? If you say that he made this first, and then the world, you are faced with an endless regression. If you declare that this raw material arose naturally you fall into another fallacy, For the whole universe might thus have been its own creator, and have arisen quite naturally. If God created the world by an act of his own will, without any raw material, then it is just his will and nothing else — and who will believe this silly nonsense? If he is ever perfect and complete, how could the will to create have arisen in him? If, on the other hand, he is not perfect, he could no more create the universe than a potter could. If he is form-less, action-less and all-embracing, how could he have created the world? Such a soul, devoid of all morality, would have no desire to create anything. If he is perfect, he does not strive for the three aims of man, so what advantage would he gain by creating the universe? If you say that he created to no purpose because it was his nature to do so, then God is pointless. If he created in some kind of sport, it was the sport of a foolish child, leading to trouble. If he created because of the karma of embodied beings [acquired in a previous creation] He is not the Almighty Lord, but subordinate to something else. If out of love for living beings and need of them he made the world, why did he not take creation wholly blissful free from misfortune? If he were transcendent he would not create, for he would be free: Nor if involved in transmigration, for then he would not be almighty. Thus the doctrine that the world was created by God makes no sense at all, And God commits great sin in slaying the children whom he himself created. If you say that he slays only to destroy evil beings, why did he create such beings in the first place? Good men should combat the believer in divine creation, maddened by an evil doctrine. Know that the world is uncreated, as time itself is, without beginning or end, and is based on the principles, life and rest. Uncreated and indestructible, it endures under the compulsion of its own nature.
** [[w:Jinasena|Jinasena]] (9th Century) in the ''[[w:Mahapurana (Jainism)|Mahāpurāna]]'', as translated in ''Primal Myths'' (1979) by Barbara Sproul

* The very pure spirit does not bother about the regard of others or human respect, but communes inwardly with God, alone and in solitude as to all forms, and with delightful tranquility, for the knowledge of God is received in divine silence.
** [[John of the Cross]] in ''The Sayings of Light and Love'' as translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (1991)

* It is easy to understand God as long as you don't try to explain him.
** [[Joseph Joubert]] (1754-1824)

*For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life
**John 3:16

== K ==

* It is not God's will merely that we should be happy, but that we should make ourselves happy.
** [[Immanuel Kant]]

* Reason can never prove the existence of God.
** [[Immanuel Kant]]

* The wish to talk to God is absurd. We cannot talk to one we cannot comprehend — and we cannot comprehend God; we can only believe in Him. The uses of prayer are thus only subjective.
** [[Immanuel Kant]]

*I had the intention of becoming a theologian...but now I see how God is, by my endeavors, also glorified in astronomy, for 'the heavens declare the glory of God.'
**[[Johannes Kepler]]

*[God] is the kind Creator who brought forth nature out of nothing."
**[[Johannes Kepler]]

*"The Creator, the fountain of all wisdom, the approver of perpetual order, the eternal and superessential spring of geometry and harmonics."
**[[Johannes Kepler]]

* God is cruel, sometimes he makes you live.
** ''Desperation'', by [[Stephen King]]

* God said take what you want...and pay for it.
** "Johnny Marinville" in ''Desperation'', by [[Stephen King]]

* We say the name of God, but that is only out of habit.
** [[Nikita Krushchev]]

== L ==

* It isn't always the middle-aged who refuse to listen, who will not even try to understand another point of view. One boy would not get it through his head that for all adults God is not an old man in a white beard sitting on a cloud. As far as this boy was concerned, this old gentleman was the adult's god, and therefore he did not believe in God.
** [[Madeleine L'Engle]] in ''The Crosswicks Journal, Book One : A Circle of Quiet'' (1972)

* God is only a great imaginative experience.
** [[D.H. Lawrence]], ''Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence'' (1936) pt. 4, edited by E. McDonald

* God created the world and then created the devil, to blame for his mistakes.
** [[Simon Le Bon]]

* God is love, but get it in writing.
** [[Gypsy Rose Lee]]

* God is a concept by which we measure our pain.
** [[John Lennon]], ''God'' (1970)

* God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
** [[C. S. Lewis]]

* God will look to every soul like its first love because He is its first love.
** [[C. S. Lewis]]

* If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will... then we may take it it is worth paying.
** [[C. S. Lewis]]

* Is it not better to place a question mark upon a problem while seeking an answer than to put the label "God" there and consider the matter solved? Does not the word "God" only confuse and make more difficult the solution by assuming a conclusion that is utterly groundless and palpably absurd?
** [[Joseph Lewis]], ''The Philosophy of Atheism''

*I can see how it might be possible for someone to look around on earth and not believe in God, but I cannot conceive how anyone could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.
**[[Abraham Lincoln]]

* You notice how God's not around anymore? He spends all that time playing with Adam and Eve and the Israelites and smiting cities and things and has got bored over the last... recorded history or so. I wonder if he has new toys? And if so, are the old toys still going to be wanted when we show up to cash in the "life everafter" tokens.
** Katie Lucas

* I believe our limited minds are unable to grasp such a concept
**[[Jared Leto]]

== M ==

* I'm not against God. I'm against the Misuse of God.
** [[Marilyn Manson]]

* Bright and clear mind - that we call God.
** [[Namboku Mizuno]], ''Food Governs Your Destiny'', p. 103

* God is living in people's hearts, and in God there is no distinction or rank. Therefore God lives in everyone. That's why traditionally it is said that all deities are the same. They say God comes to a person who is very humble and honest.
** [[Namboku Mizuno]], ''Food Governs Your Destiny'', p. 105

* If, it was natural to reason, God punishes men with eternal torment, it is surely lawful for men to use doses of it in a good cause.
** [[Joseph McCabe]] in ''A History of Torture''.

* Creator — A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.
** [[H.L. Mencken]], ''A Mencken Chrestomathy,'' ch. 30 (1949)

* God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in his arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; He will set them above their betters.
** [[H. L. Mencken]], ''Minority Report'' (1956)

* When people ask what my beliefs are, I respond that if I try to explain I would get lost.
** Edgar Mendez

* To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that Love is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.
** [[Thomas Merton]] in ''Seeds of Contemplation'' (1949)

* O God, we are one with You. You have made us one with You. You have taught us that if we are open to one another, You dwell in us. Help us to preserve this openness and to fight for it with all our hearts. Help us to realize that there can be no understanding where there is mutual rejection. O God, in accepting one another wholeheartedly, fully, completely, we accept You, and we thank You, and we adore You, and we love You with our whole being, because our being is Your being, our spirit is rooted in Your spirit. Fill us then with love, and let us be bound together with love as we go our diverse ways, united in this one spirit which makes You present in the world, and which makes You witness to the ultimate reality that is love. Love has overcome. Love is victorious. Amen.
** [[Thomas Merton]], in his closing prayer to an informal address delivered in Calcutta, India (October 1968), from ''The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton'' (1975); quoted in ''Thomas Merton, Spiritual Master : The Essential Writings'' (1992), p. 237

* God is a word to express, not our ideas, but the want of them.
** [[John Stuart Mill]]

* And God said, 'Let there be light' and there was light, but the Electricity Board said he would have to wait until Thursday to be connected.
** [[Spike Milligan]]

* There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided.
** [[Charles de Montesquieu]], ''Lettres persannes.''

* One thing I can't stand, it's people groveling.
** God, in ''[[Monty Python and the Holy Grail]]''

*If there is anything so precious that without it history and the world will be destroyed, where will you keep it? You will naturally want to keep it in the deepest part of your mind. If you desire to place it in the depths of your mind, it needs to be invisible. It is for this very reason that God exists as an invisible being. It is fortunate that He is invisible, for if He were visible how could a great contest to gain Him be avoided? It would be difficult for God to endure the pain of seeing it.
** [[Sun Myung Moon]], [http://www.unification.net/wogw/wogw1-01.html ''The Way of God's Will'' Chapter 1-1. The Will of God] Translated [[1980]].

*God is not stupid.
** [[Sun Myung Moon]], [http://www.unification.org/ucbooks/WofGW/wogw1-05.htm ''The Way of God's Will'' Chapter 1-5. Tradition, Official Business, and Responsibility] Translated [[1980]].

== N ==
[[File:Light dispersion conceptual.gif|144px|thumb|right|From blind physical necessity, which is always and everywhere the same, no variety adhering to time and place could evolve, and all variety of created objects which represent order and life in the universe could happen only by the willful reasoning of its original Creator, Whom I call the Lord God. ~ [[Isaac Newton]] ]]
[[File:Darwinek-bnw.jpg|144px|thumb|right|God is dead: but considering the state Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown. ~ [[Friedrich Nietzsche]] ]]
[[File:Orvieto Pozzo San Patrizio 5.JPG|144px|thumb|right| I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time. ~ [[Friedrich Nietzsche]] ]]

* '''This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.''' This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all, and on account of His dominion He is wont to be called Lord God, Universal Ruler.
** [[Isaac Newton]], in ''[[w:Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica|Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica]]'' (1687)

* All these things being considered, it seems probable to me, that God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, moveable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportion to space, as most conduced to the end for which he formed them; and that these primitive particles, being solids, are incomparably harder than any porous bodies compounded of them; even so very hard, as never to wear or break in pieces; no ordinary power being able to divide what God himself made one in the first creation.
** [[Isaac Newton]], in ''[[w:Opticks|Opticks, or A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light]]'', 4th edition (1730)

* A Heavenly Master governs all the world as Sovereign of the universe. We are astonished at Him by reason of His perfection, we honor Him and fall down before Him because of His unlimited power. From blind physical necessity, which is always and everywhere the same, no variety adhering to time and place could evolve, and all variety of created objects which represent order and life in the universe could happen only by the willful reasoning of its original Creator, Whom I call the Lord God.
** [[Isaac Newton]], as quoted in ''Our Humanist Heritage'' (2010) by George Frater, p. 75

* '''God is a thought which makes crooked all that is straight.'''
** [[Friedrich Nietzsche]], "Upon the Blessed Isles", ''Thus Spoke Zarathustra''

* '''God is dead: but considering the state Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown.'''
** [[Friedrich Nietzsche]], in ''The Gay Science'' (1882), section 125
** The reduction of Nietzsche's thought to … the first-liner of a graffito sometimes found in certain modern tiled cells and catacombs:
:: '''God is dead''' — Nietzsche Nietzsche is dead — '''God'''
: This reduction could appear to be the creative interpretation of masterful will to power — if Nietzsche's thought and style are as uncontrolled as the critics suggest. … Nietzsche himself anticipates the strife of revengeful graffiti at the conclusion of his text: "Wherever there are walls I shall inscribe this eternal accusation against Christianity upon them — I can write in letters which make even the blind see." …Nietzsche says in his preface that his readers must have a "predestination for the labyrinth" and "new ears for new music" if they are to understand this difficult writing.
:* Gary Shapiro in ''Nietzschean Narratives'' (1989), p. 126

* '''I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.'''
** [[Friedrich Nietzsche]], as quoted in ''20,000 Quips & Quotes'' (1995) edited by Evan Esar, p. 347

* '''Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man?'''
** [[Friedrich Nietzsche]]

* '''God is just a mean kid with a magnifying glass. And I'm the ant.''' He could fix my life in five minutes if He wanted to, but he'd rather tear of my feelers and watch me squirm.
** "Bruce [[Giordano Bruno|Nolan]]" in ''[[Bruce Almighty]]'' (2003)

== O ==

== P ==
[[File:General George S. Patton gravesite, Luxembourg.jpg|144px|thumb|right|It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived. ~ [[George S. Patton, Jr.]] ]]

* '''It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.'''
** General [[George S. Patton, Jr.]], in a speech at the Copley Plaza Hotel, Boston Massachusetts (7 June 1945), quoted in ''Patton : Ordeal and Triumph'' (1970) by Ladislas Farago

*The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator.
**[[Louis Pasteur]]

* Science brings men nearer to God.
**[[Louis Pasteur]]

* I cannot believe that God is a weak left-hander.
** [[Wolfgang Pauli]] after hearing of experiments that violated parity conservation

* For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse.
** [[Paul of Tarsus]] in ''[[w:Epistle to the Romans|Romans]]'' 1:20 (ASV)

* '''What if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar'''; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged. But if our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance? (I speak as a man) God forbid: for then how shall God judge the world? For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner? And not rather, (as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say,) Let us do evil, that good may come? whose damnation is just.
** [[Paul of Tarsus]] in {{Bibleverse||Romans|3}}:3-8

* '''We conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.''' ''Is he'' the God of the Jews only? ''is he'' not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also: Seeing ''it is'' one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith. '''Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.'''
** [[Paul of Tarsus]], in ''Romans'' 3:19-31

* '''God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.'''
** [[w:John the Apostle|John the Apostle]] in 1 John 1:5

* '''God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.'''
** [[w:John the Apostle|John the Apostle]] in 1 John 4:16

* All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. '''This mind is the matrix of all matter.'''
** [[Max Planck]], as he accepted the Nobel Prize (1919)

* I talk to God but the sky is empty.
** [[Sylvia Plath]]

* '''An honest man's the noblest work of God.'''
** [[Alexander Pope]]

* '''God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. '''Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.
** ''[[Psalms]]'' 46:1 - 3

* There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early. The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.
** ''[[Psalms]]'' 46:4 - 7

* Come, behold the works of the LORD, what desolations he hath made in the earth. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire. '''Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.'''
** ''[[Psalms]]'' 46:8 - 10

* The fool says in his heart "There is no God".
** ''[[Psalms]]'' 53:1

== Q ==

* God! There is no god but He, — the Living, the Self-subsisting, Eternal. No slumber can seize Him nor sleep. His are all things in the heavens and on earth. Who is there that can intercede in His presence except as He permitteth? he knoweth what before or after or behind them. Nor shall they compass aught of His knowledge except as He willeth. His Throne doth extend over the heavens and the earth, and He feeleth no fatigue in guarding and preserving them for He is the Most High, the Supreme.
** [[Qur'an]]

== R ==
[[File:Ngc1999.jpg|144px|thumb|right|The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation. ~ [[John Ray]] ]]
[[File:Electric iron stand.jpg|144px|thumb|right|God is an iron. ~ [[Spider Robinson]] ]]

* '''The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation.'''
** [[John Ray]], title of a book (1691)

* '''God is an iron.'''
** [[Spider Robinson]], in "God is an Iron" (1977)

* God, that checkroom of our dreams.
** [[Jean Rostand]]

* Kill one man and you are a murderer. Kill millions and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone and you are a God.
** [[Jean Rostand]], ''Thoughts of a Biologist'' (1939)

* '''If I were granted omnipotence, and millions of years to experiment in, I should not think Man much to boast of as the final result of all my efforts.'''
** [[Bertrand Russell]], ''Religion and Science''

* So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
** [[Bertrand Russell]]

* We must be greater than God, for we have to undo His injustice.
** [[w:Jules Renard|Jules Renard]]

== S ==

* I think that if there were a God, there would be less evil on this earth. I believe that if evil exists here below, then either it was willed by God or it was beyond His powers to prevent it. Now I cannot bring myself to fear a God who is either spiteful or weak. I defy Him without fear and care not a fig for his thunderbolts.
** [[Marquis de Sade]], ''Justine or The Misfortunes of Virtue'' (1787) [This quote is strikingly similar to Epicurus' above.]

* The existence of the world without God seems to me less absurd than the presence of a God, existing in all his perfection,creating an imperfect man in order to make him run the risk of Hell.
** [[w:Armand Salacrou|Armand Salacrou]] in ''Ceritudes et incertitudes'' (1943)

* Respectable society believed in God in order to avoid having to speak about him.
** [[Jean-Paul Sartre]], ''The Words'' (1964)

* We are all writing God's poem.
** [[Anne Sexton]], as quoted by [[Erica Jong]], in [http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2000/oct/26/features11.g2 "Into the lion's den" in ''The Guardian'' (26 October 2000)]

* You don't fuck around with the infinite.
** ''Mean Streets'' (1977) by [[Martin Scorsese]] and Mardik Martin; later quoted by [[Stephen King]] in ''IT'' (1986)

* [God is] a force more powerful than mom and dad put together.
** "Lisa Simpson" in ''[[The Simpsons]]''

* '''Lisa Simpson''': I haven't stopped believing in God, I just think there's a different path to him...Or her. '''Marge Simpson''': HER?! [addressing God] She's just kidding, Mister Lord!
** ''[[The Simpsons]]''

* '''Stan''': Why would God let Kenny die, Chef? Why? Kenny's my Friend. Why can't God take someone else's friend? '''Chef''': Stan, sometime God take those closest to us, because it makes him feel better about Himself. He's a very vengeful God, Stan. He's all pissed off about something we did thousands of years ago. He just can't get over it. So he doesn't care who he takes: children, puppies, it don't matter to him, so long as it makes us sad. Do you understand? '''Stan''': Then why does God give us anything to start with? '''Chef''': Well, look at it this way: if you want to make a baby cry, first you give it a lollipop. Then, you take it away. If you never give it a lollipop to begin with, then you would have nothing to cry about. That's like God, who gives us life and love and health just so that he can tear it all away and make us cry, so he can drink the sweet milk of our tears...You see, it's our tears, Stan, that give God his great power. '''Stan''': I think I understand.
** [[South Park]]

* It is sometimes hard, in times like these, to understand God's way. Why would he allow nine innocent people to be run down in the prime of their lives by a senior citizen who, perhaps, shouldn't be driving? It is then that we must understand, God's sense of humor is very different from our own. He does not laugh at the simple "man walks into a bar" joke. No, God needs complex irony and subtle farcical twists that seem macabre to you and me. All that we can hope for is that God got his good laugh and a tragedy such as this will never happen again.
** [[South Park]]

* Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.~ [[Baruch Spinoza|Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza]] in ''Ethics'' Pt. I, prop. 15

* God and all attributes of God are eternal.
** [[Baruch Spinoza|Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza]] in ''Ethics'' Pt. I, prop. 19

* God is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things.~ [[Baruch Spinoza|Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza]]

* Things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained.
** [[Baruch Spinoza|Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza]]

* Get out of our schools God, get out of our textbooks God, get out of our government God, go away God, go away God, go away God, Katrina hits, God, where are you?
** [[w:Brad Stine|Brad Stine]]

* I bring up God alot in my show, know why? Because I miss him.
** Brad Stine

* It is an insult to God to believe in God. For on the one hand it is to suppose that he has perpetrated acts of incalculable cruelty. On the other hand, it is to suppose that he has perversely given his human creatures an instrument — their intellect — which must inevitably lead them, if they are dispassionate and honest, to deny his existence. It is tempting to conclude that if he exists, it is the atheists and agnostics that he loves best, among those with any pretensions to education. For they are the ones who have taken him most seriously.
** [[w:Galen Strawson|Galen Strawson]]

== T ==
[[File:Arco iris circular.JPG|144px|thumb|right|The meaning of our self is not to be found in its separateness from God and others, but in the ceaseless realisation of yoga, of union. ~ [[Rabindranath Tagore]] ]]

* Bondage and liberation are not antagonistic in love. For love is most free and at the same time most bound. If God were absolutely free there would be no creation. The infinite being has assumed unto himself the mystery of finitude. And in him who is love the finite and the infinite are made one.
** [[Rabindranath Tagore]]

* Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.
** [[Rabindranath Tagore]], in ''Stray Birds'' (1916); paraphrased variant: Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of humanity.

* I believe in a spiritual world — not as anything separate from this world — but as its innermost truth. With the breath we draw we must always feel this truth, that we are living in God.
** [[Rabindranath Tagore]]

* Those who have everything but thee, my God, laugh at those who have nothing but thyself.
** [[Rabindranath Tagore]]

* The meaning of our self is not to be found in its separateness from God and others, but in the ceaseless realisation of yoga, of union.
** [[Rabindranath Tagore]]

* The self-expression of God is in the endless variety of creation; and our attitude toward the Infinite Being must also in its expression have a variety of individuality ceaseless and unending. Those sects which jealously build their boundaries with too rigid creeds excluding all spontaneous movement of the living spirit may hoard their theology but they kill religion.
** [[Rabindranath Tagore]]

* Your idol is shattered in the dust to prove that God's dust is greater than your idol.
** [[Rabindranath Tagore]]

* We cannot know whether we love God, although there may be strong reason for thinking so; but there can be no doubt about whether we love our neighbor or not. Be sure that, in proportion as you advance in fraternal charity, you are increasing your love of God.
** [[Teresa of Avila]]

* If you do not believe in a personal God the question: 'What is the purpose of life?' is unaskable and unanswerable.
** [[J.R.R. Tolkien]]

* Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.
** [[Leo Tolstoy]] in ''[[w:War and Peace|War and Peace]]'' Bk XIII, Ch. 16

[[File:Brocken-tanzawa2.JPG|144px|thumb|right|God is that infinite All of which man knows himself to be a finite part. God alone exists truly. Man manifests Him in time, space and matter. ~ [[Leo Tolstoy]] ]]
* The Kingdom of God is within you... and all beings.
** [[Leo Tolstoy]]

* The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the [[w:Kingdom of God|kingdom of God]]; and this can be done only by means of the acknowledgment and profession of the truth by each one of us.
** [[Leo Tolstoy]] in ''[[w:The Kingdom of God is Within You|The Kingdom of God is Within You]]'' (1894) Ch. 12

* God is that infinite All of which man knows himself to be a finite part. God alone exists truly. Man manifests Him in time, space and matter. The more God's manifestation in man (life) unites with the manifestations (lives) of other beings, the more man exists. This union with the lives of other beings is accomplished through love. God is not love, but the more there is of love, the more man manifests God, and the more he truly exists... We acknowledge God only when we are conscious of His manifestation in us.
** [[Leo Tolstoy]] in his diary (1 November 1910)

* Why is it when we talk to God we're said to be praying, but when God talks to us we're schizophrenic?
** [[Lily Tomlin]]

* I am what you call "The World". Or perhaps "The Universe". Or perhaps "God". Or perhaps "Truth". Or perhaps "Everything". Or perhaps "One". And, I am "You".
** [[Truth]] Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood

== U ==

== V ==

* '''I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.'''
** [[Voltaire]], in a letter to Étienne Noël Damilaville (16 May 1767)

* '''If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.'''
** [[Voltaire]] in ''Épître à l'Auteur du Livre des Trois Imposteurs'' (10 November 1770)

* "If God did not exist, He would have to be invented." But all nature cries aloud that he does exist: that there is a supreme intelligence, an immense power, an admirable order, and everything teaches us our own dependence on it.
** Voltaire quoting himself in a letter to Prince Frederick William of Prussia (28 November 1770), as quoted in ''Voltaire in His Letters'' (1919) by [[Evelyn Beatrice Hall|S. G. Tallentyre (Evelyn Beatrice Hall)]]

* I cannot imagine how the clockwork of the universe can exist without a clockmaker.
** [[Voltaire]], as quoted in ''More Random Walks in Science : An Anthology'' (1982) by Robert L. Weber, p. 65

* '''Take Care of the People, and God Almighty Will Take Care of Himself.'''
** [[Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.]] in ''[[w:The Sirens of Titan|The Sirens of Titan]]'' (1959)

== W ==
[[File:Rosace.jpg|144px|thumb|right|To believe that the desire for good is always fulfilled — that is faith, and whoever has it is not an atheist. ~ [[Simone Weil]] ]]
[[File:The Storm Spirits.jpg|144px|thumb|right|"[[w:Elohim|Elohim]]," the name for the creative power in ''[[w:Book of Genesis|Genesis]]'', is a female plural, a fact that generations of learned rabbis and Christian theologians have all explained as merely grammatical convention. The King James and most other Bibles translate it as "God," but if you take the grammar literally, it seems to mean "goddesses." [[w:El Shaddai|Al Shaddai]], god of battles, appears later, and [[w:Tetragrammaton|YHWH]], mispronounced [[Jehovah]], later still. ~ [[Robert Anton Wilson]] ]]
[[File:US Navy 060608-N-6501M-005 The U.S. Military Sealift Command (MSC) Hospital ship USNS Mercy (T-AH 19), anchored off of the coast of Jolo City.jpg|144px|thumb|right|I prefer to say that nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see. If we wish to know the truth concerning anything, we'll find it in the nature of that thing. ~ [[Frank Lloyd Wright]] ]]

* Don't you know there ain't no devil? There's only God when He's drunk.
**[[Tom Waits]], in "[[w:Heartattack and Vine (song)|Heartattack and Vine]]" on ''[[w:Heartattack and Vine|Heartattack and Vine]]'' (1980)

* God's greatness and goodness are measured by the fact that he gives us choices. He doesn't require us to thank him for our food. (In case you hadn't noticed.) God is not a Modernist. He doesn't view us as nails. God expects us to behave like carpenters. Indeed, he gave us a carpenter as an example. So I think God is postmodern. He has his own ideas of what rules, and what sucks, and he doesn't expect everyone else to agree with him.
** [[Larry Wall]] in [http://www.perl.com/pub/a/1999/03/pm.html "Perl, the first postmodern computer language" (9 March 1999)]

* One of the most exquisite pleasures of human love — to serve the loved one without his knowing it — is only possible, as regards the love of God, through atheism.
** [[Simone Weil]], in ''Last Notebook'' (1942)

* In order to obey God, one must receive his commands. How did it happen that I received them in adolescence, while I was professing atheism? To believe that the desire for good is always fulfilled — that is faith, and whoever has it is not an atheist.
** [[Simone Weil]], in ''Last Notebook'' (1942)

* No human being escapes the necessity of conceiving some good outside himself towards which his thought turns in a movement of desire, supplication, and hope. consequently, the only choice is between worshipping the true God or an idol. Every atheist is an idolater — unless he is worshipping the true God in his impersonal aspect. The majority of the pious are idolaters.
** [[Simone Weil]], in ''Last Notebook'' (1942)

* There are two atheisms of which one is a purification of the notion of God.
** [[Simone Weil]], as quoted in ''The New Christianity'' (1967) edited by William Robert Miller

* Ever since the Greeks, we have been drunk with language! We have made a cage with words and shoved our God inside!
** [[Morris West]], in ''The Heretic'' (1968)

* If God be God and man a creature made in image of the divine intelligence, his noblest function is the search for truth.
** [[Morris West]], in ''The Heretic'' (1968)

* Once you accept the existence of God — however you define him, however you explain your relationship to him — then you are caught forever with his presence in the center of all things. You are also caught with the fact that man is a creature who walks in two worlds and traces upon the walls of his cave the wonders and the nightmare experiences of his spiritual pilgrimage.
** [[Morris West]], in ''The Clowns of God'' (1981)

* No reason can be given for the nature of God, because that nature is the ground of rationality.
** [[Alfred North Whitehead]], in ''Science and the Modern World'' (1925)

* All your Western theologies, the whole mythology of them, are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent.
** [[Tennessee Williams]], in ''The Night of the Iguana'' (1963)

* "[[w:Elohim|Elohim]]," the name for the creative power in ''[[w:Book of Genesis|Genesis]]'', is a female plural, a fact that generations of learned rabbis and Christian theologians have all explained as merely grammatical convention. The King James and most other Bibles translate it as "God," but if you take the grammar literally, it seems to mean "goddesses." [[w:El Shaddai|Al Shaddai]], god of battles, appears later, and [[w:Tetragrammaton|YHWH]], mispronounced [[Jehovah]], later still.
** [[Robert Anton Wilson]], in ''Everything Is Under Control : Conspiracies, Cults, and Cover-Ups'' (1998), p. 197

* I believe in God, only I spell it "Nature".
** [[Frank Lloyd Wright]], in ''Quote'' magazine (14 August 1966)

* God is the great mysterious motivator of what we call nature and it has been said often by philosophers, that nature is the will of God. And, I prefer to say that nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see. If we wish to know the truth concerning anything, we'll find it in the nature of that thing.
** [[Frank Lloyd Wright]], quoted in ''Truth Against the World : Frank Lloyd Wright speaks for an organic architecture'' (1987) edited by Patrick J. Meehan

== X ==

== Y ==

== Z ==
*"Time is the brush of God, as he paints his masterpiece on the heart of humanity."
**[[Ravi Zacharias]]

*'''Arthur Frayn:''' "And you, poor creatures, who conjured you out of the clay? Is God in show business, too?"
** [[Zardoz]] (1974)

= Anonymous =
:Proverbs or widely known statements by unknown authors.

* The more science I come to understand, The more logic, reason and math I learn, The more I believe in God, for the complexity and depth of nature and cosmos, on its small and grand scales, I find it quite impossible by the same reasons, logic, and equations, for it to have come about merely on its own without any divine intervention.
**[[Anonymous]]

* Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
** English proverb

* God does not love those who have not suffered.
** Croatian Proverb

* God is like a barber: don't expect him to give you a haircut, you must first get at his barbershop.
** [[Anonymous]]

* God is beatiful. He loves beauty.
** Muslim proverb

* Trust in God but tie your camel.
** Muslim proverb (possibly attributed in the Masnavi of Rumi).

* If God lived on earth, people would break his windows.
** Yiddish proverb

* To make God laugh at you, tell him your plans.
** Yiddish proverb

* Black holes are where God is dividing by zero.
** [[Anonymous]]

* God is real, unless you declare him an integer.
** [[Anonymous]]

* Well you may throw your rock and hide your hand Workin' in the dark against your fellow man But as sure as God made black and white What's down in the dark will be brought to the light.
** [[Anonymous]], "[[w:God's Gonna Cut You Down|God's Gonna Cut You Down]]", traditional folk song, recorded by many artists.

* Go tell that long tongue liar Go and tell that midnight rider Tell the rambler, the gambler, the back biter Tell 'em that God's gonna cut 'em down.
** [[Anonymous]] "God's Gonna Cut You Down", traditional folk song

=See also=
*[[Life]]
*[[Death]]
*[[Atheism]]
*[[Religion]]
*[[Jesus Christ]]

=External links=
{{wikipedia}}
{{wiktionary}}
{{wikiversity|God and Enlightenment}}
{{wikibooks|God and Religious Toleration}}
*[http://www.religiousbook.net/Books/Online_books/Ec/Ecology_4.html What is God] by Vladimir Antonov
*[http://www.allaboutgod.com/who-is-god-c.htm Who is God?]
*[http://www.whywontgodhealamputees.com Why Won't God Heal Amputees?]

[[Category:Religion]]

[[ml:ദൈവം]]
[[bg:Бог]]
[[bs:Bog]]
[[ca:Déu]]
[[cs:Bůh]]
[[de:Gott]]
[[et:Jumal]]
[[el:Θεός]]
[[es:Dios]]
[[eo:Dio]]
[[eu:Jainkoa]]
[[fr:Dieu]]
[[hr:Bog]]
[[is:Guð]]
[[it:Dio]]
[[he:אלוהים]]
[[ku:Yezdan]]
[[lt:Dievas]]
[[hu:Isten]]
[[ja:神]]
[[uz:Xudo]]
[[pl:Bóg]]
[[pt:Deus]]
[[ru:Бог]]
[[sk:Boh]]
[[sl:Bog]]
[[sr:Бог]]
[[tr:Tanrı]]
[[uk:Бог]]
[[zh:神]]

Patañjali

2011-04-11T11:49:48Z

Nobody60: /* External links */

'''[[w:Patañjali|Patañjali]]''' ([[w:Devanagari|Devanāgarī]] पतञ्जलि) is the compiler of the ''[[w:Yoga Sutra|Yoga Sutra]]'', a major work containing aphorisms on the practical and philosophical wisdom regarding practice of [[w:Raja Yoga|Raja Yoga]].

== Sourced ==

=== Yoga Sutras of Patañjali ===
* Where the heart is full of kindness which seeks no injury to another, either in act or thought or wish, this full love creates an atmosphere of harmony, whose benign power touches with healing all who come within its influence. Peace in the heart radiates peace to other hearts, even more surely than contention breeds contention.
** Translation by: Charles Johnston

=== The Mahābhāṣya ===

* In deep meditation the flow of concentration is continuous like the flow of oil.

* Peace can be reached through meditation on the knowledge which dreams give. Peace can also be reached through concentration upon that which is dearest to the heart.

* Progress in meditation comes swiftly for those who try their hardest.

* When a gifted team dedicates itself to unselfish trust and combines instinct with boldness and effort, it is ready to climb.

* When a man becomes steadfast in his abstention from harming others, then all living creatures will cease to feel enmity in his presence

* When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and your discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.
** As quoted by [[Wayne Dyer]]

== External links==
{{wikipedia}}{{wikibooks|God and Religious Toleration/Hinduism#Patanjali (Yoga Sutra)}}
* [http://hrih.net/patanjali/ Internet Archive of the Yoga Sutras of Patañjali], featuring different interpretations (70+) translated into 34 different languages
* [http://www.urday.com/prajali1.htm PATANJALI YOGA]
* [http://kalakendra.com/shopping/product_info.php?products_id=58 Patanjali's Yoga Sutras] Translation and commentary by Yoga Expert [http://www.kym.org/tkvd.html T K V Desikachar]
* [http://www.bindu.freeserve.co.uk/yoga/yogasutra/ys1.htm English translation of the Yoga Sutras by T.K.V.Desikachar], with links to 6 additional English translations and word-by-word definitions of included source text
* [http://kalakendra.com/shopping/product_info.php?products_id=59 Patanjali's Yoga Sutra Chanting by Kausthub Desikachar]
* [http://www.bindu.freeserve.co.uk/yoga/yogasutra/ys1.htm Another English translation of the Yoga Sutras]
* [http://www.exoticindiaart.com/article/yogasutras/ Cultivating Loneliness: The Ethical Fragrance of Yoga] - A Commentary on Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, by Sri Nitin Kumar.
* [http://www.atmajyoti.org/med_foundations_of_yoga.asp Exposition of Patañjali's Yama and Niyama]
* [http://www.atmajyoti.org/essays_yoga_sutras_1.asp Essays on the Yoga Sutras] by Raghavan Iyer, plus much more
* {{gutenberg author| id=Patañjali | name=Patañjali}}

[[Category:Philosophers]]

[[es:Patañjali]]

Hell

2011-04-10T10:54:30Z

Nobody60: /* External links */

[[Image:Hortus Deliciarum - Hell.jpg|thumb|250px|Medieval illustration of Hell in the Hortus deliciarum manuscript of Herrad of Landsberg (about 1180)]]
'''[[w:Hell|Hell]]''' is an afterlife concept found in many religions or spiritual philosophies. In many religions, Hell is where the wicked, the sinners or the unfaithful spend either eternity or a transitionary phase between [[reincarnation|reincarnations]] in the afterlife.
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==Sourced==


* Let heaven exist, though my own place may be in hell. Let me be tortured and battered and annihilated, but let there be one instant, one creature, wherein thy enormous Library may find its justification.
** [[Jorge Luis Borges]], in "The Library of Babel" (1941)

* ''Tros Anchisiade, facilis descensus Auerno: Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis; Sed reuocare gradum superasque euadere ad auras, Hoc opus, hic labor est. Pauci, quos aequus amauit.''
** It is easy to go down to hell; Night and Day the Gates of Dark Death stand wide; But to climb back up again, to retrace ones steps to the open air, there lies the problem, the difficult task.
** [[Virgil]], ''The Aeneid'', Book VI

* ''Quisque suos patimur manis.''
** Each of us bears his own Hell.
** [[Virgil]], ''The Aeneid'', Book VI, 743

* Now the devil that told me I did well Says that this deed is chronicled in hell.
** [[William Shakespeare]] (Richard II [Act V, Scene 5])

* You, mistress, That have the office opposite to Saint Peter, And keeps the gate of hell!
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''[[Othello]]'', IV

* Just as seeing Heaven's light gave him an awareness of God's presence in all things in the mortal plane, so it has made him aware of God's absence in all things in Hell.
** [[Ted Chiang]], "Hell Is the Absence of God", in ''Starlight 3'', 2001.

===''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895)===
Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895).

* What will you do in a world where the Holy Spirit never strives; where every soul is fully left to its own depravity; and where there is no leisure for repentance, if there were even the desire, but where there is too much present pain to admit repentance; where they gnaw their tongues with pain, and blaspheme the God of heaven?
** [[James Hamilton]], p. 311.

* An immortality of pain and tears; an infinity of wretchedness and despair; the blackness of darkness across which conscience will forever shoot her clear and ghastly flashes, — like lightning streaming over a desert when midnight and tempest are there; weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth; long, long eternity, and things that will make eternity seem longer, — making each moment seem eternity, — oh, miserable condition of the damned!
** [[Richard Fuller]], p. 311.

* The Lamb is, indeed, the emblem of love; but what so terrible as the wrath of the Lamb? The depth of the mercy despised is the measure of the punishment of him that despiseth. No more fearful words than those of the Saviour. The threatenings of the law were temporal, those of the gospel are eternal. It is Christ who reveals the never-dying worm, the unquenchable fire, and He who contrasts with the eternal joys of the redeemed the everlasting woes of the lost. His loving arms would enfold the whole human race, but not while impenitent or unbelieving; the benefits of His redemption are conditional.
** [[Edward Thomson]], p. 311.

* Many might go to heaven with half the labor they go to hell, if they would venture their industry the right way.
** [[Ben Jonson]], p. 311.

* The longer men sin, the more easily they can; for every act of transgression weakens conscience, stupefies intellect, hardens hearts, adds force to bad habits, and takes force from good example. And, surely, there is nothing in such associations; as wicked affinities will insure to the sinner in the future state, to incline him to repentance.
** [[Edward Thompson]], p. 312.

* The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
** [[John Milton]], p. 312.

==Unsourced==
{{unsourced|section comprising most of the article}}
* Hell is an eternity spent with your friends.
**Unknown
* A clergyman earns his living by assuring idiots that he can save them from an imaginary hell.
** [[H.L. Mencken]]

* A civilized society looks with horror upon the abuse and torture of children or adults. Even where capital punishment is practiced, the aim is to implement it as mercifully as possible. Are we to believe then that a holy God - our heavenly Father - is less just than the courts of men?
** Sidney Hatch

* A man cannot be happy who believes in hell, any more than he can sweeten his coffee with a pickle.
** [[Lemuel K. Washburn]]

* According to Christianity, eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions God's infinite love. That's the message we're brought up with: believe or die. "Thank you, forgiving Lord, for all those options!"
** [[Bill Hicks]]

* Again I ask whence it happened that the fall of Adam involved, without remedy, in eternal death so many nations, together with their infant children, except because it so seemed good to God? A decree horrible, I confess, and yet true.
** [[John Calvin]], leader in the Protestant reformation

* Ah! I have lost my freedom, and hell is now beginning.
** [[Albert Camus]]

* All the meanness, all the revenge, all the selfishness, all the cruelty, all the hatred, all the infamy of which the heart of man is capable, grew, blossomed and bore fruit in this one word, Hell.
** [[Robert G. Ingersoll]]

* An idea, which has terrified millions, claims that some of us will go to a place called Hell, where we will suffer eternal torture. This does not scare me because, when I try to imagine a Mind behind this universe, I cannot conceive that Mind, usually called "God," as totally mad. I mean, guys, compare that "God" with the worst monsters you can think of - Adolph Hitler, Joe Stalin, that sort of guy. None of them ever inflicted more than finite pain on their victims. Even de Sade, in his sado-masochistic fantasy novels, never devised an unlimited torture. The idea that the Mind of Creation (if such exists) wants to torture some of its critters for endless infinities of infinities seems too absurd to take seriously. Such a deranged Mind could not create a mud hut, much less the exquisitely mathematical universe around us.
** [[Robert Anton Wilson]]

* And yet this same Deity says to me, "resist not evil; pray for those that despitefully use you; love your enemies, but I will eternally damn mine." It seems to me that even gods should practice what they preach.
** [[Robert Ingersoll]]

* As a tot I was given the usual terrifying mixed message:'''a)''' God is love; and'''b)''' If you don't believe how much he loves you, you will stand in the corner for eternity.
** [[w:James Lileks|James Lileks]]

* Better to reign in hell, than serve in heav'n.
** [[John Milton]], [[Paradise Lost]]

*Carson Daly's not invited to hell!
** [[Billie Joe Armstrong]]

* ''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]]

* Father of Mercies! Why from silent earth didst thou awake and curse me into birth, tear me from quiet, banish me from night, and make a thankless present of thy light, push into being a reverse of thee and animate a clod with misery?
** [[Edward Young]], ''Night Thoughts'' (1741)

* For a plot hatched in hell, don't expect angels for witnesses.
** Attorney [[Robert Perry]], making summation to trial of [[John DeLorean]]

* Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.
** [[Mark Twain]]

* God cannot send to eternal pain a man who has done something toward improving the condition of his fellow-man. If he can, I had rather go to hell than to heaven and keep company with such a god.
** [[Robert Ingersoll]]

* God is dead and no one cares. If there is a hell, I'll see you there.
** [[Trent Reznor]] (Nine Inch Nails)

* God says do what you wish, but make the wrong choice and you will be tortured for eternity in hell. That sir, is not free will. It would be akin to a man telling his girlfriend, do what you wish, but if you choose to leave me, I will track you down and blow your brains out. When a man says this we call him a psychopath and cry out for his imprisonment/execution. When god says the same we call him "loving" and build churches in his honor.
** [[William C. Easttom II]]

* God so loved the world that he made up his mind to damn a large majority of the human race.
** [[Robert G. Ingersoll]]

* Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned
** often quoted as: "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned"
** [[William Congreve]], ''The Mourning Bride''

* Hell has three doors: lust, rage, and greed.
** [[Bhagavad Gita]]

* Hell is an outrage on humanity. When you tell me that your Deity made you in his own image, I reply that he must have been very ugly.
** [[Victor Hugo]]

* Hell is where cowards have sent heroes.
** [[Lemuel K. Washburn]], from ''Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays''

* Hell is sin fully developed, —a man’s own soul permitted to go to extreme limits with that which it now carries out in a mitigated form, and so, becoming like a furnace heated seven times hotter than usual, tormenting itself beyond all power of imagination.
** [[Charles Spurgeon]]

* Hell: A cooking stove which heats the sacerdotal sauce-pan here below. It was founded on behalf of our priests, to the end that the latter may never be wanting in good cheer.
** [[Voltaire]]

* Hell is empty and all the devils are here.
** [[William Shakespeare]]

* Hell is repetition.
** ''[[Storm of the Century]]'' [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0135659/quotes]

* Hell would be ending up on an episode of Celebrity Fear Factor in a worm eating contest with [[Anna Nicole Smith]]!
** [[Jennifer Tilly]] in [[Seed of Chucky]] (2004)

* How anyone can believe in eternal punishment, or in any soul which God has made being "lost" and also believes in the love, nay, even in the justice of God is a mystery indeed.
** [[C.G. Montefiore]]

* I am not afraid of any god in the universe who would send me or any other man or woman to hell. If there were such a being, he would not be a god; he would be a devil.
** [[Clarence Darrow]]

*I am the way into the city of woe,
I am the way to a forsaken people,
I am the way into eternal sorrow.
Sacred justice moved my architecture,
I was raised here by
Divine omnipotence,
Primordial love,
And ultimate intellect.
Only those elements time cannot wear were made before me,
And beyond time I stand.
Abandon all hope ye who enter here.
** [[Dante Alighieri]], ''Inferno'' (Inscription on the gates of hell)

* I cannot help thinking that the menace of Hell makes as many devils as the severe penal codes of inhuman humanity make villains.
** [[Lord Byron]]

* I care little in the existence of a heaven or hell; self respect does not allow me to guide my acts with an eye toward heavenly salvation or hellish punishment. All our acts should originate from the spring of unselfish love, whether there be a continuation after death or not.
** [[Heinrich Hein]]

* I died in Hell - (They called it Passchendaele).
** [[Siegfried Sassoon]] in ''Memorial Tablet (Great War)''

* I do not consider it a sign of divine love to consign to hell people who live good lives but make an honest mistake in belief.
** [[Moshe Shulman]]

* I have lately taken to read the New Testament which I assure you is a very good book; but there is one article to which I cannot accede; it is that of the eternity of punishment. I cannot comprehend how this eternity is compatible with the goodness of God!
** [[La Fontaine]] (1621-1695)

* I know it isn't the fetus's fault, but the mother shouldn't have had an abortion if she didn't want the baby to go to hell.
** Jim Staal, ''net.fundie.idiot''

* I never see thy face but I think upon hell-fire.
** [[William Shakespeare]]

* I read in the Gospels that Jesus forgave the men who nailed him to the cross. He even promised "this day you shall be with me in paradise" to a thief crucified next to him - a thief who addressed Jesus simply as a "man" rather than as "the son of God." Yet, today, this same Jesus cannot forgive my kindly old aunt and allow her to dwell in paradise, simply because her "beliefs" do not match Reverend So-and-So's?
** [[Arthur Silver]]

* I will call no being good, who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow-creatures; and if such a being can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go.
** [[John Stuart Mill]]

* I would not for my life destroy one star of human hope, but I want it so that when a poor woman rocks the cradle and sings a lullaby to the dimpled darling, she will not be compelled to believe that ninety-nine chances in a hundred she is raising kindling wood for hell.
** [[Robert Ingersoll]]

* If I cannot prevail upon heaven, I shall move hell.
** [[Virgil]] (spoken by Juno in ''The Aeneid'')

* If the fundamentalists are right, then all the cool people are in Hell!
** [[Jeffery Jay Lowder]]

* If thinking freely for yourself is a sure ticket to hell, then the conversations in heaven must be awfully boring.
** [[Dr. Weirde]]

* If you love your neighbors as yourself, yes, even if you have just a little bit of human love and are not solely a selfish wretch, how could you have a single happy moment in heaven, knowing that contemporaneously with your blessed estate continues the endless torment and agony of innumerable millions of the accursed?
** [[John Persone]], Swedish Lutheran Bishop

* If you're going to go through hell... I suggest you come back learning something.
** [[Drew Barrymore]]

* I'm not a bad guy! I work hard, and I love my kids. So why should I spend half my Sunday hearing about how I'm going to Hell?
** Homer Simpson, ''The Simpsons''

* It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse. It is obviously much easier to find inhabitants for an inferno or even a purgatorio.
** [[Ezra Pound]]

* It serves no purpose to man if there is no room for repentance, and he who is tormented can never grow better.
** Thomas Burnet, "A Treatise Concerning the State of Departed Souls"

* If you're going through hell... keep going!
** [[Winston Churchill]] / American Airborne Maxim

* Imagine there's no heaven. It's easy if you try. No hell below us, Above us, only sky.
** [[John Lennon]]

* It is Hell, of course, that makes priests powerful, not Heaven, for after thousands of years of so-called civilization fear remains the one common denominator of mankind.
** [[H. L. Mencken]]

* Kill them all. God will select those who should go to heaven and those who should go to hell.
** [[Abbot Arnold de Citeaux]], 1205

* L'enfer, c'est les autres.
** Translation: Hell is other people.
** [[Jean-Paul Sartre]]

* ...little children who have begun to live in their mothers' womb and have there died, or who, having just been born, have passed away from the world without the sacrament of holy baptism... must be punished by the eternal torture of undying fire.
** ''Hell, A Christian Doctrine''

* Nothing could add to the horror of hell, except the presence of its creator, God. While I have life, as long as I draw breath, I shall deny with all my strength, and hate with every drop of my blood, this infinite lie.
** [[Robert Ingersoll]]

* Oh, threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise! One thing at least is certain: This life flies. One thing is certain and the rest is lies; the flower that once has blown forever dies.
** [[Omar Khayyam]] (11th century) ''The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam''

* One of the things that most pains and torments these Japanese is that we teach them that the prison of hell is irrevocably shut. For they grieve over the fate of their departed children, of their parents and relatives; and they often show their grief by their tears. So they ask us if there is any hope... .and I am obliged to answer that there is absolutely none. The grief at this affects and torments them wonderfully; they almost pine away with sorrow... .I can hardly restrain my tears sometimes at seeing many so dear to my heart suffer such intense pain about a thing which is already done with and can never be undone.
** [[St. Francis Xavier]], a Roman Catholic missionary to Japan, 1552

* Orthodoxy cannot afford to put out the fires of hell.
** [[Robert G. Ingersoll]]

* Punishments of unreasonable severity, especially where indiscriminately afflicted, have less effect in preventing crimes, and amending the manners of a people, than such as are more merciful in general, yet properly intermixed with due distinctions of severity.
** [[William Blackstone]], on whether the doctrine of Hell was an effective deterrent to crime, 1769

* So behold here the triumph: God's wisdom has won. Behold here the damage that can't be undone. Stagnation is good, and we're good to the core, while faith rots us like salt rots the land. If your god helps the helpless, may he help you all well. I'm bound for the outside to find my own hell. If defiance means death, I would die before stand like a sheep to be thrown to God's hand.
** [[Julia Ecklar]]

* So revolting to my moral nature is the creed of eternal punishment that it, more than any other cause, produces the most widespread unbelief. Compared with this, all objections to Christianity fade to insignificance.
** [[Loren Anderson]]

* Some conservative Christians argue in favor of hell by calling it "God's great compliment." "Compliment?" If hell is such a "compliment" then what does God do when he wants to "insult" somebody?
** [[Ed Babinski]]

* Somebody once wrote: 'Hell is the impossibility of reason.' That's what this place feels like. Hell.
** [[Charlie Sheen]] in [[Platoon]]

* Speaking on the teaching of Hell, if there is anything consistent among orthodox and traditional teachers on the subject, it would be their inconsistencies and contradictions.
** [[Gary Amirault]]

* Strange... a God who mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness, then invented Hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!
** [[Mark Twain]]

* Tell me there is a God in the serene heavens that will damn his children for the expression of an honest belief! More men have died in their sins, judged by your orthodox creeds, than there are leaves on all the forests in the wide world ten thousand times over. Tell me these men are in hell; that these men are in torment; that these children are in eternal pain, and that they are to be punished forever and forever! I denounce this doctrine as the most infamous of lies.
** [[Robert G. Ingersoll]]

* That any should suffer forever, lingering on in hopeless despair, and rolling amidst infinite torments without the possibility of alleviation and without end; that since God can save men and will save a part, he has not proposed to save all-these are real, not imaginary, difficulties... My whole soul pants for light and relief on these questions. But I get neither; and in the distress and anguish of my own spirit, I confess that I see no light whatever. I see not one ray to disclose to me why sin came into the world; why the earth is strewn with the dying and the dead; and why man must suffer to all eternity. I have never seen a particle of light thrown on these subjects, that has given a moment's ease to my tortured min... I confess, when I look on a world of sinners and sufferers-upon death-beds and grave-yards-upon the world of woe filled with hosts to suffer for ever: when I see my friends, my family, my people, my fellow citizens when I look upon a whole race, all involved in this sin and danger-and when I see the great mass of them wholly unconcerned, and when I feel that God only can save them, and yet he does not do so, I am stuck dumb. It is all dark, dark, dark to my soul, and I cannot disguise it.
** [[Albert Barnes]]

* That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell.
** [[Thomas Aquinas]]

* The difficulty over the question of eternal torments lies in how it is irreconcilable with the goodness of God, to put any persons at all upon a necessity of making such an option, wherein if they choose amiss, the misery they incur must be irrevocable.
** [[Samuel Clarke]]

* The gods have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that's where they believe, in their deepest heart, that they deserve to go. Which they won't do if they don't know about it. This explains why it is so important to shoot missionaries on sight.
** [[Terry Pratchett]]

* The good Christian should beware of mathematicians... The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell.
** [[Saint Augustine]]

* The fundamentalist belief system is one that purports to have all the answers. It also claims to be the only way — all deviations lead to hell. It follows then that parents who believe this would be very concerned about what their children believe. Any alternative ways of thinking about major life questions would be highly threatening. Consequently, the fundamentalist household rarely encourages children to explore their own thoughts, to be open-minded about ideas, or to come to their own conclusions. In fact, fundamentalist parents are typically vocal in their opposition to the teaching of critical thinking skills or values clarification in schools.
** [[Marlene Winell]], ''Leaving the Fold''

* The idea that a good God would send people to a burning Hell is utterly damnable to me. The ravings of insanity! Superstition gone to seed! I don't want to have anything to do with such a God. No avenging Jewish God, no satanic devil, no fiery hell is of any interest to me.
** [[Luther Burbank]]

* The Puritan is simply one who, because of mental cowardice or religious superstition, is unable to get any joy out of the satisfaction of his natural appetites. Taking a drink, he fears that he is headed for the gutter. Grabbing a gal, he is staggered by thoughts of hell and syphilis. Observing that other men do such things innocently, he hates them.
** [[H. L. Mencken]]

* The only thing that makes life endurable in this world is human love, and yet, according to Christianity, that is the very thing that we are not to have in the other world. We are to be so taken up with Jesus and angels, that we shall care nothing about our brothers and sisters that have been damned. We shall be so carried away with the music of the harp that we shall not even hear the wail of father and mother. Such a religion is a disgrace to human nature.
** [[Robert Ingersoll]]

* The whole point of Christianity is that everyone in the world, from Charles Manson to Mother Teresa, deserves to go to hell.
** Sean P. Ningen

* There are no physicists in the hottest parts of hell, because the existence of a "hottest part" implies a temperature difference, and any marginally competent physicist would immediately use this to run a heat engine and make some other part of hell comfortably cool.
** [[Richard Davisson]]

* There is no Heaven, there is no Hell; These are the dreams of baby minds; Tools of the wily Fetisheer, To fright the fools his cunning blinds.
** [[Richard Francis Burton]]

* There were days when the Church could club men into obedience by preaching Hell to them, but that day has long passed. The world has outgrown it.
** [[John G. Lake]]

* They say that when god was in Jerusalem he forgave his murderers, but now he will not forgive an honest man for differing with him on the subject of the Trinity. They say that God says to me, "Forgive your enemies." I say, "I do;" but he says, "I will damn mine." God should be consistent. If he wants me to forgive my enemies he should forgive his. I am asked to forgive enemies who can hurt me. God is only asked to forgive enemies who cannot hurt him. He certainly ought to be as generous as he asks us to be.
** [[Robert Ingersoll]]

* Those people who tell me that I'm going to hell while while they are going to heaven somehow make me very glad that we're going to separate destinations.
** [[Martin Terman]]

* This isn't hell, but you can see it from here.
** ''[[The Crow Graphic Novel]]''

* [We are] among murderers. We are in hell, my dear, there is never a mistake and people are not damned for nothing.
** [[Jean-Paul Sartre]], ''No Exit''

* We are in hell and I will have my turn!
** [[Jean-Paul Sartre]], ''No Exit''

* We want ... to plunge into the depths of the abyss, Hell or Heaven, what does it matter? Into the depths of the Unknown to find something new!
** [[Charles Baudelaire]]

* When all has been considered, it seems to me to be the irresistible intuition that infinite punishment for finite sin would be unjust, and therefore wrong. We feel that even weak and erring Man would shrink from such an act. And we cannot conceive of God as acting on a lower standard of right and wrong.
** [[Lewis Carroll]]

* When I see what the actual condition of the neglected and downtrodden races of men has been; if I thought that in addition to all this there was a God who stood at door where men go out of life to crush them downward into eternal hell - every instinct of charity, of sympathy and of love that is in me would stand crying. It would be the sorrow of the universe that would raise this cry.
** [[Henry Ward Beecher]]

* When you die you go to heaven. Until then, welcome to hell!
** Popular welcoming words in the Swedish army

* Who will say with confidence that sexual abuse is more permanently damaging to children than threatening them with the eternal and unquenchable fires of hell?
** [[Richard Dawkins]]

* Who would dare so much as to smile, if he really believed endless torments were certain to be the portion of some members of his household. Marriage would be a crime; each birth the occasion of an awful dread. The shadow of a possible Hell would darken every home, sadden every family hearth. All this becomes evident when we reflect, that to perpetuate the race would be to help on the perpetuation of moral evil. For if this creed be true, out of all the yearly births a stady current is flowing on to help fill the abyss of hell, to make larger and vaster the total moral evil which is to endure forever. 'The world would be one vast madhouse' says the American scholar Hallsted, 'if realizing and continued pressure of such a doctrine was present.'
** [[Thomas Allin]], ''Christ Triumphant'', p. 57

* Why were a few, or a single one, made at all, if only to exist in order to be made eternally miserable, which is infinitely worse than non-existence?
** [[Immanuel Kant]], ''End of All Things''

* You are going to see again the child that was condemned to hell. See! it is a pitiful sight. The little child is in this red hot oven. Hear the fire! It beats its head against the roof of the oven. It stamps its little feet on the floor. You can see on the face of this little child what you see on the faces of all in hell: despair, desperate and horrible. This child sinned, so God, in His mercy, called it out of the world in its early childhood.
** from ''Tracts for Spiritual Reading'', 1880, a Catholic Children's book.

* You've got a Methodist Coloring Book And you color really well But don't color outside the lines Or God will send you to hell
** from ''Methodist Coloring Book'' by the [[w:Dead Milkmen|Dead Milkmen]]

* Not even hell can hurt me.. Only hell can hurt you.
** Krazaknan, the last one

*And when his eyes go dead, the hell I send him to will seem like heaven after what I've done to him.
** "Marv" in ''Sin City''

*The hottest places in hell are reserved for those, who in the time of greatest moral conflict, remain neutral.
** [[John F. Kennedy]], misquoting [[Dante Alighieri]]

*The Hell Law says that Hell is reserved exclusively for them that believe in it. Further, the lowest Rung in Hell is reserved for them that believe in it on the supposition that they'll go there if they don't.
** [[Principia Discordia]]

* The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
** Proverb, see [http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-english-proverbs Answers.com] for earlier variants.

* Sometimes you go to hell, and sometimes hell comes to you.
**Flavor Text of "Helldozer", a card from Magic: The Gathering

*How deep its pit, how hot its fires, how strong its chains.
**Anonymous.

*From a hypothesis about hell existence the hypothesis about immorality of a child-bearing automatically follows.
**Anonymous.

*Heaven and hell seem out of proportion to me: the actions of men do not deserve so much.
**[[Jorge Luis Borges]]

*Oh, they're gonna have to glue you back together! ''IN HELL!''
**''Team Fortress 2''

==External links==
{{wikipedia}}
{{wiktionary}}
{{wikibooks|God and Religious Toleration/Christianity#Is There a Hell?}}

[[Category:Religion]]

[[cs:Peklo]]
[[de:Hölle]]
[[et:Põrgu]]
[[eo:Infero]]
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Devil

2011-04-10T10:50:40Z

Nobody60: /* External links */

[[File:Devil_and_Barbarella_costumers.jpg|thumb|right]]
[[w:Devil|The Devil]] is the name given to a supernatural entity, who, in most Western religions, is the central embodiment of evil. See also [[Satan]].

==Sourced==
* Don't you know there ain't no devil, there's just God when he's drunk.
**[[Tom Waits]] ''"Heartattack and Vine", Heartattack and Vine'' (1980)

* The Devil wants your soul! ...fuck, when is that contest going to be over? When do they calculate the souls in heaven and hell and go "we got a winner!"
** [[David Cross]], from the "''Shut Up, You Fucking Baby!''" CD

*The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.
** [[Charles Baudelaire]], "The Generous Gambler" (Feb. 1864)

*A Warning: Please look for signs of possession before performing this rite. Signs include speaking in tongues, Hulk-like strength, and unusual knowledge.
**''De Exorcisms'' (Exorcism Rite), approved by [[John Paul II]], the pope, January 26, 1999

* We may not pay Satan reverence, for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents.
** [[Mark Twain]], "Concerning the Jews", ''Harper's Magazine'' (Sept. 1899)

*And now I would ask a strange question: who is the most diligentest bishop and prelate in all England that passeth all the rest in doing his office? I can tell for I know him who it is; I know him well. But now I think I see you listening and hearkening that I should name him. There is one that passeth all the other, and is the most diligent prelate and preacher in all England. And will ye know who it is? I will tell you: it is the devil. He is the most diligent preacher of all other; he is never out of his diocese; he is never from his cure; ye shall never find him unoccupied; he is ever in his parish; he keepeth residence at all times; ye shall never find him out of the way, call for him when you will he is ever at home; the diligentest preacher in all the realm; he is ever at his plough; no lording nor loitering can hinder him; he is ever applying his business, ye shall never find him idle, I warrant you. And his office is to hinder religion, to maintain superstition, to set up idolatry, to teach all kind of [[w:Popery|popery]]. He is ready as he can be wished for to set forth his plough; to devise as many ways as can be to deface and obscure God's glory...O that our prelates would be as diligent to sow the corn of good doctrine as Satan is to sow cockle and darnel.
**[[Hugh Latimer]]'s ''Sermon on the Plough'' 29 January, 1548. (G. E. Corrie (ed.), ''Sermons by Hugh Latimer, sometime Bishop of Worcester, Martyr, 1555'' (Cambridge University Press, 1844), pp. 70-1.)

* <blockquote>''"Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. 2After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.- Matthew 4:1-3"''</blockquote>

* Wow! I like that, see? Because that's the way the devil does it. Everytime you make an error, everytime you make a mistake and I mean it's nothing but a mistake; the first thing he says is 'if you are what you say you are', 'If you are a preacher', 'If you were a Christian'. That's the devil, everytime you hear it from somebody. Did you hear what I said? Everytime you hear somebody make a suggestion like that, remember that's not them, that's the devil! And I don't want to go too much further without telling you this: Before the devil even opens his mouth you ought already know who you are. It won't shake you, it won't bother you, because you already know who you are!"
**[[Archbishop LeRoy Bailey Jr.]], Senior Pastor [[w:The First Cathedral|The First Cathedral]]in a sermon entitled "An Abundant Overflowing Thought" 2008. The First Cathedral Media Ministries

== Unsourced ==
* "And does evil like beauty,steal the soul by night?. And Satan himself as a beacon, come as an angel of light?" [[Steve Sayles]]

* Though Satan should never be given undue prominence, it is important that the place given to him in Scripture be realised. No other individual, except the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, is afforded so prominent a place in the Bible from its very beginning to its end, as the character whom we know as Satan, the Devil. Of no one else are we so minutely informed concerning his origin, his fall, his character and work, his influence, and his ultimate judgment and destiny. Heathen lands have been enveloped in the grossest darkness and basest superstitions and practices because they lack clear teachings concerning him which the scripture afford. We need not be “ignorant of his devices.”
** [[Duffield & Van Cleave]]

* And lo, God said: Let there be Satan, so people don't blame everything on me, and let there be lawyers, so people don't blame everything on Satan.
** [[w:John Wing|John Wing]]

* Demons do not exist any more than gods do, being only the products of the psychic activity of man.
** [[Sigmund Freud]]

* The greatest trick that Satan ever pulled was convincing the world that He was God.
** [[Anonymous]]

* Devils can be driven out of the heart by the touch of a hand on a hand, or a mouth on a mouth.
** [[Tennessee Williams]]

* If the devil does not exist, and man has therefore created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness
** [[Fyodor Dostoevsky]]

* It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.
** [[Helen Keller]]

* The Devil's voice is sweet to hear.
** [[Stephen King]]

* They said God was on high and he controlled the world and therefore we must pray against Satan. Well, if God controls the world, he controls Satan. For me, religion was full of misstatements and reaches of logic that I just couldn't agree with.
** [[Gene Roddenberry]]

* This cumbersome concept that men call the beast; I will destroy it, my men need a feast. I am the blasphemer, I make your kind heel; Bring forth Satan and cleave him with steel. Worship God or the Devil... it's all the same. Religion is a haven for the weak and lame.
** [[w:Gwar|Gwar]] - ''Anti-Anti-Christ''

==External links==
{{wikipedia}}
{{wiktionary|devil}}
{{wikibooks|God and Religious Toleration/Christianity#Is There a Devil?}}

[[Category:Religion]]

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Mysticism

2011-04-08T09:50:46Z

Nobody60: /* External links */

[[File:Peter Mel at Cortez Bank.jpg |144px|thumb|right|True mystics simply open their souls to the oncoming wave. Sure of themselves, because they feel within them something better than themselves, they prove to be great men of action, to the surprise of those for whom mysticism is nothing but visions, and raptures and ecstasies. ~ [[Henri Bergson]] ]]
'''[[w:Mysticism|Mysticism]]''' (from the Greek μυστικός, ''mystikos'', an initiate of a [[w:Greco-Roman mysteries|mystery religion]]) is the pursuit of communion with, identification with, or conscious awareness of an ultimate reality, divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight. Mysticism usually centers on a practice or practices intended to nurture those experiences or awareness. Mysticism may be [[w:Monism|monistic]], [[w:Dualism|dualistic]], [[w:Nondualism|nondualistic]], or [[w:Ontological pluralism|ontologically pluralistic]]. Differing religious traditions have described this fundamental mystical experience in many different ways. The words "mystical" and "mysticism", though commonly used by mystics to affirm extraordinary insights ''beyond'' all expression, and thus impossible to ''communicate'' to others, have also sometimes been used in a presumptive sense which insists that others must believe and accept what aspects of the experiences can be communicated, or in an entirely pejorative sense, strongly related to rejection of such authoritarian claims.

== Quotes ==
[[File:Taijitu polarity.PNG|144px|thumb|right|Mystics understand the roots of the [[Tao]] but not its branches; scientists understand its branches but not its roots. Science does not need mysticism and mysticism does not need science; but man needs both. ~ [[Fritjof Capra]] ]]
:Alphabetized by author or source 
[[File:Thanksgiving chapel interior.jpg|144px|thumb|right|Men talk of the extravagances and frenzies that have been produced by mysticism; they are a mere drop in the bucket. In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. ~ [[G. K. Chesterton]] ]]
[[File:Dublin Castle o15.jpg|144px|thumb|right|A mystic is a man who separates heaven and earth even if he enjoys them both. ~ [[G. K. Chesterton]] ]]
[[File:Spiral aloe.jpg|144px|thumb|right|As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. ~ [[G. K. Chesterton]] ]]
[[File:NautilusCutawayLogarithmicSpiral.jpg|144px|thumb|right|The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid. ~ [[G. K. Chesterton]] ]]
[[File:Uji-bashi 03.JPG|144px|thumb|right|The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein lies the germ of all art and all true science. ~ [[Albert Einstein]] ]]
[[File:Whirpool Galaxy.jpg|144px|thumb|right|When you study natural science and the miracles of creation, if you don't turn into a mystic you are not a natural scientist. ~ [[Albert Hofmann]] ]]
[[File:Soap bubble sky.jpg|144px|thumb|right| Deliberate provocation of mystical experience, particularly by LSD and related hallucinogens, in contrast to spontaneous visionary experiences, entails dangers that must not be underestimated. ~ [[Albert Hofmann]] ]]
[[File:Arco iris circular.JPG|144px|thumb|right|There are moments of sentimental and mystical experience … that carry an enormous sense of inner authority and illumination with them when they come. ~ [[William James]] ]]
[[Image:Bronnikov gimnpifagoreizev.jpg|144px|thumb|right|Nature loves to hide her secrets, and she does not suffer the hidden truth about the essential nature of the gods to be flung in naked words to the ears of the profane. ~ [[Julian]] ]]
[[File:Collage.jpg|144px|thumb|right|The experience may lead occasionally to some insight into inner and less obvious processes, but it is also likely to lead to self-delusion. ~ [[Jawaharlal Nehru]] ]]
[[File:Brocken-tanzawa.JPG|144px|thumb|right|What is Mysticism? Is it not the attempt to draw near to God, not by rites or ceremonies, but by inward disposition? ~ [[Florence Nightingale]] ]]
[[Image:Ebisu.jpg|144px|thumb|right|What is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom is sought by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?]]
[[Image:Ichthys.svg|144px|thumb|right|Wen considered this for some time, and at last said: "A fish!" And Clodpool went away, satisfied.]]
[[File:LuMaxArt Golden Family With World Religions .jpg|144px|thumb|right|In the mystic traditions of the different religions we have a remarkable unity of spirit. Whatever religion they may profess, they are spiritual kinsmen. ~ [[w:Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan|Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan]] ]]
[[File:Sando.jpg|144px|144px|thumb|right|The way to true mysticism leads up through rational thought to deep experience of the world and of our will-to-live. ~ [[Albert Schweitzer]] ]]
[[File:Ulam Spiral Divisors 100000.png|144px|thumb|right|The multiplicity is only apparent. ~ [[Erwin Schrödinger]] ]]
[[File:Herz aus Feuer.jpg|144px|thumb|right|In no other fire than that of the mysticism of reverence for life can the broken sword of idealism be forged anew. ~ [[Albert Schweitzer]] ]]
[[File:M51 whirlpool galaxy black hole.jpg|144px|thumb|right|For the true mystic the principle continues to hold: the creature must be silent so that God may speak. ~ [[Max Weber]] ]]
[[File:Swirlyclock.png|144px|thumb|right|Is that story, sung by mystics and sages the world over, any crazier than the scientific materialism story, which is that the entire sequence is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing? ~ [[Ken Wilber]] ]]

* '''From each a mystic silence Love demands.'''
** [[Attar]], in "Intoxicated by the Wine of Love" as translated by Margaret Smith from "The Jawhar Al-Dhat" and ''Readings from the Mystics of Islām : translations from the Arabic and Persian'' (1950) by Margaret Smith, p. 85

* '''We are dealing with mystic experience.''' I mean mystic experience taken in its immediacy, apart from all interpretation. '''True mystics simply open their souls to the oncoming wave.''' Sure of themselves, because they feel within them something better than themselves, they prove to be great men of action, to the surprise of those for whom mysticism is nothing but visions, and raptures and ecstasies.
** [[Henri Bergson]], in ''Deux sources de la morale et de la religion'' [The two sources of morality and religion] (1935), Ch. 3 : Dynamic Religion

* '''Religion is to mysticism what popularization is to science.''' What the mystic finds waiting for him, then, is a humanity which has been prepared to listen to his message by other mystics invisible and present in the religion which is actually taught. Indeed his mysticism itself is imbued with this religion, for such was its starting point. His theology will generally conform to that of the theologians. His intelligence and his imagination will use the teachings of the theologians to express in words what he experiences, and in material images what he sees spiritually. And this he can do easily, since theology has tapped that very current whose source is the mystical. Thus his mysticism is served by religion, against the day when religion becomes enriched by his mysticism. This explains the primary mission which he feels to be entrusted to him, that of an intensifier of religious faith.
** [[Henri Bergson]], in ''Deux sources de la morale et de la religion'' [The two sources of morality and religion] (1935), Ch. 3 : Dynamic Religion

* If physics leads us today to a world view which is essentially mystical, it returns, in a way, to its beginning, 2,500 years ago. ... This time, however, it is not only based on intuition, but also on experiments of great precision and sophistication, and on a rigorous and consistent mathematical formalism.
** [[Fritjof Capra]], in ''The Tao of Physics : An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism'' (1975)

* '''Both the physicist and the mystic want to communicate their knowledge, and when they do so with words their statements are paradoxical and full of logical contradictions.'''
** [[Fritjof Capra]], in ''The Tao of Physics : An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism'' (1975), Ch. 3, Beyond Language, p. 46

* The mystic and the physicist arrive at the same conclusion; one starting from the inner realm, the other from the outer world. The harmony between their views confirms the ancient Indian wisdom that ''[[w:Brahman|Brahman]]'', the ultimate reality without, is identical to ''[[w:Atman|Atman]]'', the reality within.
** [[Fritjof Capra]], in ''The Tao of Physics : An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism'' (1975), Epilogue, p. 305

* '''Mystics understand the roots of the [[Tao]] but not its branches; scientists understand its branches but not its roots. Science does not need mysticism and mysticism does not need science; but man needs both.'''
** [[Fritjof Capra]], in ''The Tao of Physics : An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism'' (1975), Epilogue, p. 306

* '''Men talk of the extravagances and frenzies that have been produced by mysticism; they are a mere drop in the bucket. In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane.''' The thing that has driven them mad was logic. ...The only thing that has kept the race of men from the mad extremes of the convent and the pirate-galley, the night-club and the lethal chamber, has been mysticism — the belief that logic is misleading, and that things are not what they seem.
** [[G. K. Chesterton]], in ''Tolstoy'' (1903)

* A mystic is a man who separates heaven and earth even if he enjoys them both.
** [[G. K. Chesterton]], in "William Blake" (1920)

* The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake.
** [[G. K. Chesterton]], in ''Heretics'' (1905), Chapter XX : Concluding Remarks on the Importance of Orthodoxy

* '''Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity.''' The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus, he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also. Thus, he believes that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid.
** [[G. K. Chesterton]], in ''Orthodoxy'' (1908)

* '''It is something to have smelt the mystic rose, Although it break and leave the thorny rods''', It is something to have hungered once as those Must hunger who have ate the bread of gods.
** [[G. K. Chesterton]], in "The Great Minimum" in ''Poems'' (1922)

* There is a single main definition of the object of all magical Ritual. It is the uniting of the Microcosm with the Macrocosm. The Supreme and Complete Ritual is therefore the Invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel; or, in the language of Mysticism, Union with God.
** [[Aleister Crowley]], in [[w:Magick (Book 4)|Magick Book IV : ''Liber ABA'']], Part III : Magick in Theory and Practice (1929)

* The mystical trend of our time, which shows itself particularly in the rampant growth of the so-called Theosophy and Spiritualism, is for me no more than a symptom of weakness and confusion. Since our inner experiences consist of reproductions, and combinations of sensory impressions, the concept of a soul without a body seem to me to be empty and devoid of meaning.
** [[Albert Einstein]], as quoted in ''Albert Einstein: The Human Side'' (1954)

* '''The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein lies the germ of all art and all true science.''' Anyone to whom this feeling is alien, who is no longer capable of wonderment and lives in a state of fear is a dead man. To know that what is impenetrable for us really exists and manifests itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, whose gross forms alone are intelligible to our poor faculties — this knowledge, this feeling ... that is the core of the true religious sentiment. In this sense, and in this sense alone, I rank myself among profoundly religious men.
** [[Albert Einstein]], as quoted in ''After Einstein : Proceedings of the Einstein Centennial Celebration'' (1981) by Peter Barker and Cecil G. Shugart, p. 179

* '''I said before, the most beautiful and most profound religious emotion that we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. And this mysticality is the power of all true science.''' If there is any such concept as a God, it is a subtle spirit, not an image of a man that so many have fixed in their minds. In essence, my religion consists of a humble admiration for this illimitable superior spirit that reveals itself in the slight details that we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds.
** [[Albert Einstein]], as quoted in ''The Private Albert Einstein'' (1992) by Peter A. Bucky and Allen G. Weakland, p. 86

* '''I love mysticism — it's such fun.'''
** [[w:Jerry Hall|Jerry Hall]], in [http://www.indexmagazine.com/interviews/jerry_hall.shtml Jerry Hall, 2005" in ''Index Magazine'']

* '''There are experiences that most of us are hesitant to speak about, because they do not conform to everyday reality and defy rational explanation.''' These are not particular external occurrences, but rather events of our inner lives, which are generally dismissed as figments of the imagination and barred from our memory. Suddenly, the familiar view of our surroundings is transformed in a strange, delightful, or alarming way: it appears to us in a new light, takes on a special meaning. Such an experience can be as light and fleeting as a breath of air, or it can imprint itself deeply upon our minds. … Many persons also have visionary experiences in daily life, though most of us fail to recognize their meaning and value. '''Mystical experiences, like those that marked my childhood, are apparently far from rare.'''
** [[Albert Hofmann]], in ''LSD : My Problem Child'' (1980), Foreword

* '''The cultural-historical meaning of the [[w:Eleusinian Mysteries|Eleusinian Mysteries]], their influence on European intellectual history, can scarcely be overestimated.''' Here suffering humankind found a cure for its rational, objective, cleft intellect, in a mystical totality experience, that let it believe in immortality, in an everlasting existence. '''This belief had survived in early Christianity, although with other symbols.'''
** [[Albert Hofmann]], in ''LSD : My Problem Child'' (1980), Ch. 11 : LSD Experience and Reality

* '''When you study natural science and the miracles of creation, if you don't turn into a mystic you are not a natural scientist.'''
** [[Albert Hofmann]], in [http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/01/70015 "LSD: The Geek's Wonder Drug?" in ''WIRED'' magazine (16 January 2006)]

* '''No word in our language — not even "Socialism"— has been employed more loosely than "[[Mysticism]].''' … The history of the ''word'' begins in close connexion with the Greek mysteries. A mystic is one who has been, or is being, initiated into some esoteric knowledge of Divine things, about which he must keep his mouth shut…
** [[William Ralph Inge]], in [http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14596 ''Christian Mysticism'' (1899)], Preface

* '''The phase of thought or feeling which we call Mysticism has its origin in that which is the raw material of all religion, and perhaps of all philosophy and art as well, namely, that dim consciousness of the ''beyond'', which is part of our nature as human beings.''' Men have given different names to these "obstinate questionings of sense and outward things." We may call them, if we will, a sort of higher instinct, perhaps an anticipation of the evolutionary process; or an extension of the frontier of consciousness; or, in religious language, the voice of God speaking to us. Mysticism arises when we try to bring this higher consciousness into relation with the other contents of our minds.
** [[William Ralph Inge]], in ''Christian Mysticism'' (1899)

* '''There are moments of sentimental and mystical experience … that carry an enormous sense of inner authority and illumination with them when they come. But they come seldom, and they do not come to everyone'''; and the rest of life makes either no connection with them, or tends to contradict them more than it confirms them. Some persons follow more the voice of the moment in these cases, some prefer to be guided by the average results. Hence the sad discordancy of so many of the spiritual judgments of human beings
** [[William James]], in "Religion and Neurology" in ''[[w:The Varieties of Religious Experience|The Varieties of Religious Experience]]'' (1902)

* I feel bound to say that religious experience, as we have studied it, cannot be cited as unequivocally supporting the infinitist belief. '''The only thing that it unequivocally testifies to is that we can experience union with something larger than ourselves and in that union find our greatest peace.''' Philosophy, with its passion for unity, and mysticism with its monoideistic bent, both "pass to the limit" and identify the something with a unique God who is the all-inclusive soul of the world. Popular opinion, respectful to their authority, follows the example which they set.
** [[William James]], in "Religion and Neurology" in ''The Varieties of Religious Experience'' (1902), Postscript

* '''The religion-builders have so distorted and deformed the doctrines of [[Jesus]], so muffled them in mysticisms, fancies and falsehoods, have caricatured them into forms so monstrous and inconceivable, as to shock reasonable thinkers.''' ... Happy in the prospect of a restoration of primitive Christianity, I must leave to younger athletes to encounter and lop off the false branches which have been engrafted into it by the mythologists of the middle and modern ages.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], in ''The Writings of Thomas Jefferson'' (1853-1854), edited by H. A. Washington, Vol. 7, pp. 210, 257

* '''Nature loves to hide her secrets, and she does not suffer the hidden truth about the essential nature of the gods to be flung in naked words to the ears of the profane…'''
** [[Julian]], in "Oration VII": "To the Cynic Heracleios", as quoted in ''The Works of the Emperor Julian'' (1923) by Wilmer Cave France Wright, p. 105; also in ''Hidden Wisdom: Esoteric Traditions and the Roots of Christian Mysticism'' (2005) by Gedaliahu A. G. Stroumsa, p. 25

* '''The [[Tao]] that can be told is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.''' The named is the mother of ten thousand things. Ever desireless, one can see the mystery. Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations. These two spring from the same source but differ in name; this appears as darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gate to all mystery.
** [[Laozi|Laozi (Lao Tzu)]], in ''[[w:Tao Te Ching|Tao Te Ching]]'' Ch. 1, as translated by Gia-Fu Feng & Jane English (1972)

* Sex is the mysticism of materialism and the only possible religion in a materialistic society.
** [[Malcolm Muggeridge]], BBC1 TV broadcast (21 October 1963), as quoted in "The American Way of Sex", in ''Muggeridge Through the Microphone'' (1967)

* '''Religion merges into mysticism and metaphysics and philosophy. There have been great mystics, attractive figures, who cannot easily be disposed of as self-deluded fools. Yet, mysticism (in the narrow sense of the word) irritates me'''; it appears to be vague and soft and flabby, not a rigorous discipline of the mind but a surrender of mental faculties and living in a sea of emotional experience. '''The experience may lead occasionally to some insight into inner and less obvious processes, but it is also likely to lead to self-delusion.'''
** [[Jawaharlal Nehru]], in ''Autobiography'' (1936; 1949; 1958)

* '''What is Mysticism? Is it not the attempt to draw near to God, not by rites or ceremonies, but by inward disposition?''' Is it not merely a hard word for "The [[w:Kingdom of God|Kingdom of Heaven]] is within"? Heaven is neither a place nor a time. There might be a Heaven not only ''here'' but ''now''...
** [[Florence Nightingale]], in ''Notes from Devotional Authors of the Middle Ages'' (1873-1874)

* [[w:Christ|Christ]] Himself was the first true Mystic. "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me and to finish His work." What is this but putting in fervent and the most striking words the foundation of all real Mystical Religion? — which is that for all our actions, all our words, all our thoughts, the food upon which they are to live and have their being is to be the indwelling presence of God, the union with God; that is, with the Spirit of Goodness and Wisdom.
** [[Florence Nightingale]], in ''Notes from Devotional Authors of the Middle Ages'' (1873-1874)

* It was amazing, this mystic business. You tell them a lie, and then when you don't need it any more you tell them another lie and tell them they're progressing along the road to wisdom. Then instead of laughing they follow you even more, hoping that at the heart of all the lies they'll find the truth. And bit by bit they accept the unacceptable.
** [[Terry Pratchett]], in ''[[w:Guards! Guards!|Guards! Guards!]]'' (1989)

* ''In the Second Scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised'' a story is written concerning one day when the apprentice Clodpool, in a rebellious mood, approached Wen and spake thusly: "'''Master, what is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom is sought by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?'''" Wen considered this for some time, and at last said: "'''A fish!'''" And Clodpool went away, satisfied.
** [[Terry Pratchett]], in ''[[w:Thief of Time|Thief of Time]]'' (2001)

* '''In the mystic traditions of the different religions we have a remarkable unity of spirit. Whatever religion they may profess, they are spiritual kinsmen.''' While the different religions in their historic forms bind us to limited groups and militate against the development of loyalty to the world community, the mystics have already stood for the fellowship of humanity in harmony with the spirit of the mystics of ages gone by.
** [[w:Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan|Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan]], as quoted in ''The Visva-Bharati Quarterly'' Vol. 5 (1939-1940); this is often misattributed to [[Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia]], who quoted it in [http://www.jah-rastafari.com/selassie-words/show-jah-word.asp?word_id=radhakrishan an address] during the Indian President's state visit to Ethiopia (13 October 1965); also quoted in ''Foreign Affairs Record'' Vol. 11-12 (1965-1966) by India Ministry of External Affairs, p. 266

* Unless we proceed cautiously, there might well arise a few generations of mystics who conceive of the orgone metaphysically, divorced from non-living nature and who do not comprehend it from the standpoint of natural science. And it seems to me that we have more than enough mysticism as it is.
** [[Wilhelm Reich]], in ''Orgonotic Pulsation in International Journal of Sex-Economy and Orgone-Research'', Vol. 3, No. 1, (March, 1944); Reich here and throughout his writings seems to use the word "mysticism" in the pejorative sense.

* I was giving a reading at some university. Down in the front row of the auditorium was a young lady in a leather microskirt and a leather microbolero, tied with a leather bootlace, and nothing else whatever. I said, "I have an extremely wide repertory. What would you like — sex, revolution, or mysticism?" She looked up and said quietly, "What’s the difference?"
** [[Kenneth Rexroth]], in "The Libertarian Circle", in ''An Autobiographical Novel'' (1991)

* ''The place that [[Solomon]] made to worship in, called the Far Mosque, is not built of earth and water and stone, but of intention and wisdom and mystical conversation and compassionate action.''
** [[Rumi]], in "The Far Mosque" in ''The Essential Rumi'' (1995) translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne, A. J. Arberry and Reynold Nicholson, in Ch. 17 : Solomon Poems, p. 191

* '''Wit is the appearance, the external flash of imagination. Thus its divinity, and the witty character of mysticism.'''
** [[Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel]], Aphorism 26, as translated in ''Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms'' (1968), by Friedrich von Schlegel, p. 151
** Variant translation: Wit is the appearance, the external flash, of fantasy. Hence its divinity and the similarity to the wit of mysticism.
*** As translated in ''The Early Political Writings of the German Romantics'' (1996) edited by Frederick C. Beiser, p. 131

* Honour is the mysticism of legality
** [[Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel]], Aphorism 77, of ''Ideas'' as translated in ''The Early Political Writings of the German Romantics'' (1996) edited by Frederick C. Beiser, p. 131

* '''The multiplicity is only apparent.''' This is the doctrine of the [[Upanishads]]. And not of the Upanishads only. The mystical experience of the union with God regularly leads to this view, unless strong prejudices stand in the way.
** [[Erwin Schrödinger]], as quoted in ''The Eye of Shiva: Eastern Mysticism and Science'' (1981) by Amaury de Riencourt

* The mystics of many centuries, independently, yet in perfect harmony with each other (somewhat like the particles in an ideal gas) have described, each of them, the unique experience of his or her life in terms that can be condensed in the phrase: DEUS FACTUS SUM (I have become God). To Western ideology, the thought has remained a stranger... in spite of those true lovers who, as they look into each other's eyes, become aware that their thought and their joy are numerically one, not merely similar or identical...
** [[Erwin Schrödinger]], "The I That Is God" as translated in ''Quantum Questions : Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists'' (1984) edited by [[Ken Wilber]]

* From an inner necessity, I exert myself in producing values and practising ethics in the world and on the world even though I do not understand the meaning of the world. For in world- and life-affirmation and in ethics I carry out the will of the universal will-to-live which reveals itself in me. I live my life in God, in the mysterious divine personality which I do not know as such in the world, but only experience as mysterious Will within myself. '''Rational thinking which is free from assumptions ends therefore in mysticism.''' To relate oneself in the spirit of reverence for life to the multiform manifestations of the will-to-live which together constitute the world is ethical mysticism. '''All profound world-view is mysticism, the essence of which is just this: that out of my unsophisticated and naïve existence in the world there comes, as a result of thought about self and the world, spiritual self-devotion to the mysterious infinite Will which is continuously manifested in the universe.'''
** [[Albert Schweitzer]], in ''Kulturphilosophie'' (1923), translated by C. T. Campion as ''Philosophy of Civilisation'' (1949), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics, Preface

* '''The way to true mysticism leads up through rational thought to deep experience of the world and of our will-to-live.''' We must all venture once more to be "thinkers," so as to reach mysticism, which is the only direct and the only profound world-view. We must all wander in the field of knowledge to the point where knowledge passes over into experience of the world. We must all, through thought, become religious. This rational thought must become the prevailing force among us, for all the valuable ideas that we need develop out of it. '''In no other fire than that of the mysticism of reverence for life can the broken sword of idealism be forged anew.'''
** [[Albert Schweitzer]], in ''Kulturphilosophie'' (1923), translated by C. T. Campion as ''Philosophy of Civilisation'' (1949), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics, Preface

* '''[[w:Mysticism|Mysticism]] intends a state of "possession," not action, and the individual is not a tool but a "vessel" of the divine.''' Action in the world must thus appear as endangering the absolutely irrational and other-worldly religious state. Active [[w:Asceticism|asceticism]] operates within the world; rationally active asceticism, in mastering the world, seeks to tame what is creatural and wicked through work in a worldly "vocation" (inner-worldly asceticism). Such asceticism contrasts radically with mysticism, if the latter draws the full conclusion of fleeing from the world (contemplative flight from the world). The contrast is tempered, however, if active asceticism confines itself to keeping down and to overcoming creatural wickedness in the actor's own nature. For then it enhances the concentration on the firmly established God-willed and active redemptory accomplishments to the point of avoiding any action in the orders of the world (asceticist flight from the world). Thereby active asceticism in external bearing comes close to contemplative flight from the world. '''The contrast between asceticism and mysticism is also tempered if the contemplative mystic does not draw the conclusion that he should flee from the world, but, like the inner-worldly asceticist, remain in the orders of the world (inner-worldly mysticism).''' In both cases the contrast can actually disappear in practice and some combination of both forms of the quest for salvation may occur. But the contrast may continue to exist even under the veil of external similarity. '''For the true mystic the principle continues to hold: the creature must be silent so that God may speak.'''
** [[Max Weber]], in [http://www.ne.jp/asahi/moriyuki/abukuma/weber/world/reject/rejection_frame.html ''The Rejection of the World and Theodicy'']

* What I don't like today is, to put it coarsely, the phony Hasidism, the phony mysticism. Many students say, "Teach me mysticism." It's a joke.
** [[Elie Wiesel]], in interview with John S. Friedman, published in ''The Paris Review'' 26 (Spring 1984); and in ''Elie Wiesel : Conversations'' (2002) edited by Robert Franciosi, p. 86

* '''Miracles in mysticism don't occupy such an important place.''' It's metaphor, for the peasants, for the crowds, to impress people. What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. '''It's close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically. You plunge into it.''' Philosophy is a slow process of logic and logical discourse: A bringing B bringing C and so forth. In mysticism you can jump from A to Z. But the ultimate objective is the same. It's knowledge. It's truth.
** [[Elie Wiesel]], in interview with John S. Friedman, published in ''The Paris Review'' 26 (Spring 1984); and in ''Elie Wiesel : Conversations'' (2002) edited by Robert Franciosi, p. 87

* '''Are the mystics and sages insane? Because they all tell variations on the same story, don't they?''' The story of awakening one morning and discovering you are one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and infinite fashion. Yes, maybe they are crazy, these divine fools. Maybe they are mumbling idiots in the face of the Abyss. Maybe they need a nice, understanding therapist. Yes, I'm sure that would help. But then, I wonder. Maybe the evolutionary sequence really is from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace. And in the highest reaches of evolution, maybe, just maybe, an individual's consciousness does indeed touch infinity — a total embrace of the entire Kosmos — a Kosmic consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature. It's at least plausible. And tell me: is that story, sung by mystics and sages the world over, any crazier than the scientific materialism story, which is that the entire sequence is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing? '''Listen very carefully: just which of those two stories actually sounds totally insane?'''
** [[Ken Wilber]], in ''A Brief History of Everything'' (1996)

== External links ==
{{wikibooks|God and Religious Toleration/What is God}}
{{wikipedia}}
{{Commonscat}}

*[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mysticism/ "Mysticism" at the ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'']
*[http://hirr.hartsem.edu/ency/Mysticism.htm "Mysticism" at ''Encyclopedia of Religion and Society'']
*[http://ibcsr.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=147:removal-of-portions-of-the-parietal-occipital-cortex-enhances-self-transcendence&catid=25:research-news&Itemid=59 "Self-transcendence enhanced by removal of portions of the parietal-occipital cortex"] Article from the [http://ibcsr.org/ Institute for the Biocultural Study of Religion]
*[http://www.dinur.org/resources/resourceCategoryDisplay.aspx?categoryid=450&rsid=478 Jewish Mysticism at The Jewish History Resource Center, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem]

[[Category:Themes]]

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[[it:Mistica]]

Meditation

2011-04-07T22:51:08Z

Nobody60: /* External links */

{{nointro}}

==[[Meditation]]==

==Sourced==
* Mind without agitation is meditation. Mind in the present moment is meditation. Mind that has no hesitation, no anticipation is meditation. Mind that has come back home, to the source, is meditation. Mind that becomes ‘‘no mind’’ is meditation.
** [[Sri Sri Ravi Shankar]], "What is Meditation?"

==Unsourced==
* Meditation is the life of the soul; action is the soul of meditation; honor is the reward of action; so meditate, that thou mayst do; so do, that thou mayst purchase honor; for which purchase, give God the glory.
** [[Francis Quarles]]
*Meditation brings wisdom, lack of meditation creates ignorance. Have awareness of what makes evolution, and of what creates delays.
** [[Gautama Buddha]]

==''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895)==
Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895).

* Meditation is the soul's perspective glass, whereby, in her long remove, she discerneth God, as if He were nearer at hand.
** [[Owen Feltham]], p. 406.

* Profound meditation in solitude and silence frequently exalts the mind above its natural tone, fires the imagination, and produces the most refined and sublime conceptions. The soul then tastes the purest and most refined delight, and almost loses the idea of existence in the intellectual pleasure it receives. The mind on every motion darts through space into eternity; and raised, in its free enjoyment of its powers by its own enthusiasm, strengthens itself in the habitude of contemplating the noblest subjects, and of adopting the most heroic pursuits.
** [[John G. Zimmerman]], p. 406.

* It is not he that reads most, but he that meditates most on Divine truth, that will prove the choicest, wisest, strongest Christian.
** Bishop [[Joseph Hall]], p. 406.

* For with all our pretension to enlightenment, are we not now a talking, desultory, rather than a meditative generation?
** [[John Campbell Shairp]], p. 406.

* It is an excellent sign, that after the cares and labors of the day, you can return to your pious exercises and meditations with undiminished attention.
** [[Hannah More]], p. 406.

* Night by night I will lie down and sleep in the thought of God, and in the thought, too, that my waking may be in the bosom of the Father; and some time it will be, so I trust.
** [[William Mountford]], p. 406.

* Avoid all refined speculations; confine yourself to simple reflections, and recur to them frequently. Those who pass too rapidly from one truth to another feed their curiosity and restlessness; they even distract their intellect with too great a multiplicity of views. Give every truth time to send down deep root into the heart.
** [[François Fénelon]], p. 407.

==External links==
{{wikipedia}}
{{wiktionary|meditation}}
{{wikiversity|Meditation}}

[[Category:Mind]]

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Afterlife

2011-03-29T12:01:50Z

Nobody60: /* See also */

{{unreferenced|article}}
The '''''[[w:Afterlife|afterlife]]''''' is the idea that the mind of a being continues after physical death.

== Sourced ==
* He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.
** [[Douglas Adams]], ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''

* The chief problem about death, incidentally, is the fear that there may be no afterlife – a depressing thought, particularly for those who have bothered to shave. Also, there is the fear that there is an afterlife, but no one will know where it's being held.
** [[Woody Allen]], ''The Early Essays''

* I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is ready for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
** [[Winston Churchill]] [http://www.winston-churchill-leadership.com/churchill-quote-himself.html]

* Why is it that almost every human culture yet discovered has found it necessary to believe in an afterlife of some sort, but not a "before-life"? Why are there so many versions of Heaven, Paradise and The Great Beyond, but almost none about The Great Before?
** Judith Hayes [http://www.thehappyheretic.com/10-97.htm]

* If this life is all there is, there is no basis for any meaning, hope, purpose, or significance to life. Everything in your life would simply be a random change of fate at best, or an accident at worst. Your life, and your death, would not matter at all. The logical end of such a life is despair. Moreover, we can forget about being decent or ethical, with no basis for human dignity, rights, or liberty.
** [[Rick Warren]], pastor of the Saddleback Church and author of "The Purpose Driven Life," in "Lifer After Death" by Dinesh D'Souza, 2009, the foreword, pgs. x-xi.

* How do we know there is an afterlife? Because the Bible says so. How do we know that the Bible is correct? Because God wrote it. How do we know that God wrote it? Because it says so in the Bible. Yes, we have to admit this is circular reasoning, and those outside the circle are unlikely to accept it.
**[[w:Dinesh D'Souza| Dinesh D'Souza]], Life after Death, 2009.

== Unsourced ==
* I do not believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.
** [[Woody Allen]]

* I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.
** [[Isaac Asimov]]

* Men long for an afterlife in which there apparently is nothing to do but delight in heaven's wonders.
** [[Louis D. Brandeis]]

* I do not believe in any religion. I will have nothing to do with immortality. We are miserable enough in this life without speculating upon another.
** [[Lord Byron]]

* We have no reliable guarantee that the afterlife will be any less exasperating than this one, have we?
** [[Noel Coward]]

* Heaven will be no heaven to me if I do not meet my wife there.
** [[Andrew Jackson]]

== See also ==
{{wikiversity|God and Enlightenment#Is There a Life After Death?}}
* [[Heaven]]
* [[Hell]]

[[Category:Death and dying]]

Ageing

2011-03-28T13:11:04Z

Nobody60: /* External links */

Quotes about '''[[w:ageing|age]]'''

==Sourced==
''Organized alphabetically by author''
* All the best sands of my life are somehow getting into the wrong end of the hourglass. If I could only reverse it! Were it in my power to do so, would I?
** [[Thomas Bailey Aldrich]], ''Leaves From a Notebook'', ''Ponkapog Papers'' (1903)

* I still think of myself as I was 25 years ago. Then I look in a mirror and see an old bastard and I realize it's me.
** [[w:Dave Allen (comedian)|Dave Allen]], ''The Independent'' (1993)

* I recently turned 60. Practically a third of my life is over.
** [[Woody Allen]], ''The Observer Review]] (1996)

* When you're forty, half of you belongs to the past — and when you're seventy, nearly all of you.
** [[Jean Anouilh]], ''Time Remembered''

* Age is strictly a case of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
** [[Jack Benny]], ''New York Times'' (1974)

* No one is so old that he does not think he could live another year.
** [[Cicero]], ''De senectute''

* "I said, Days should speak, and multitude of years should teach wisdom.
: But there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding.
: Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgment."
::* Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite ([[Job]] 32:7-9)

* Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man
** [[Leviticus]] 19:32

* A man is as old as he's feeling, a woman is as old as she looks.
** [[Mortimer Collins]], ''The Unknown Quantity''

* As we grow old....the beauty turns inward.
** [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]], ''Journals''

* We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.
** [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]], ''Journals''

* If youth only knew; if only age could.
** [[Henri Estienne]], ''Les Prémices'' (1594)

* An old goat is never the more reverend for his beard.
** [[Thomas Fuller]], ''Gnomologia''

* Old age is not so fiery as youth, but when once provoked cannot be appeased.
** [[Thomas Fuller]], ''Gnomologia''

* To an old man any place that's warm is homeland.
** [[Maxim Gorky]], ''The Lower Depths''

* Old age is like an opium-dream. Nothing seems real except what is unreal.
** [[Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.]], ''Over the Teacups''

* When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age.
** [[Victor Hugo]], ''Les Miserables''

* Old age deprives the intelligent man only of qualities useless to wisdom.
** [[Joseph Joubert]], ''Pensees''

* Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms inside your head, and having people in them, acting. People you know, yet can't quite name.
** [[Phillip Larkin]], ''The Old Fools'' (1974)

* I've changed my attitudes about what it means to age. Sometimes people decide it's their lot in life to be old, but people like Grandma bring color and excellence to their lives. That's what I've tried to do, too. I'm looking forward to the next stage.
** [[Cloris Leachman]], reported in Bill Adler, ''Funny Ladies: The Best Humor from America's Funniest Women'' (2001), p. 19.

* Old age has its pleasures, which though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.
** [[W. Somerset Maugham]], ''The Summing Up''

* Age imprints more wrinkles on the mind than it does on the face.
** [[Montaigne]], ''Essays''

* I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''Richard II''

* There are so few who can grow old with a good grace.
** [[Richard Steele]], ''The Spectator'' (1712)

* Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.
** [[Leon Trotsky]], ''Diary in Exile'' (1959)

===''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895)===
Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895).

* An aged Christian with the snow of time on his head may remind us that those points of earth are whitest that are nearest heaven.
** [[Edwin Hubbell Chapin]], p. 439.

* Thanks to that regular and temperate course of life I have ever lived, I am still capable of taking an active part in these public scenes of business. In fine, he who fills up every hour of his life in such kind of labors as those I have mentioned, will insensibly slide into old age without perceiving its arrival; and his powers, instead of being suddenly and prematurely extinguished, will gradually decline by the gentle and natural effect of accumulated years.
** [[Cicero]], p. 438.

* The day of life spent in honest and benevolent labor comes in hope to an evening calm and lovely; and though the sun declines, the shadows that he leaves behind are only to curtain the spirit unto rest.
** [[Henry Giles]], p. 438.

* It is not so bad a thing to grow old; it is only getting a little nearer home; a little nearer to immortal youth.
** [[Arthur Henry Kenney]], p. 439.

* Age is not all decay; it is the ripening, the swelling of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husk.
** [[George MacDonald]], p. 439.

* The second childhood of a saint is the early infancy of a happy immortality, as we believe.
** [[William Mountford]], p. 438.

* The years of old age are stalls in the cathedral of life in which for aged men to sit and listen and meditate and be patient till the service is over, and in which they may get themselves ready to say "Amen" at the last, with all their hearts and souls and strength.
** [[William Mountford]], p. 439.

* My God! my time is in Thine hands. Should it please Thee to lengthen my life, and complete, as Thou hast begun, the work of blanching my locks, grant me grace to wear them as a crown of unsullied honor.
** [[Christian Scriver]], p. 439.

==Unsourced==

* Age has a good mind and sorry shanks.
** [[Pietro Aretino]]

* Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appears to be best in four things, —- old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.
** [[Francis Bacon]]

* I believe the true function of age is memory. I'm recording as fast as I can.
** [[Rita Mae Brown]]

* A man's only as old as the woman he feels.
** [[Groucho Marx]]

* Growing old is no more than a bad habbit which a busy man has no time to form.
** [[André Maurois]], quoted in ''The Aging American''

* An old man loved is winter with flowers.
** [[German proverbs|German proverb]]

* I think age is a very high price to pay for maturity.
** [[Tom Stoppard]]

* Regrets are the natural property of grey hairs.
** [[Charles Dickens]]

* The whole business of marshaling one's energies becomes more and more important as one grows older.
** [[Hume Cronyn]]

* There are only three ages for women in Hollywood — Babe, District Attorney, and Driving Miss Daisy.
** [[Goldie Hawn]]

* Times go by: reputation increases, ability declines.
** [[Dag Hammarskjold]]

* To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am.
** [[Bernard Baruch]]

* We are always the same age inside.
** [[Gertrude Stein]]

* When a man retires and time is no longer a matter of urgent importance, his colleagues generally present him with a watch.
** [[R. C. Sherriff]]

* When you become senile, you won't know it.
** [[Bill Cosby]]

* When young we are faithful to individuals, when older we grow loyal to situations and to types.
** [[Cyril Connolly]]

* When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it's a sure sign you're getting old.
** [[Mark Twain]]

* You will become a hypocrite, you'll become a liar. You'll try and paper up your own cracks... and that's what being an adult is all about. Then you have babies and... that's it. Sorry!
** [[Thom Yorke]]

* Your life only tips into old age if regrets begin to outnumber dreams.
** Peter Baskerville

*Growing old isn't so bad when you consider the alternative.
**[[w:Maurice Chevalier|Maurice Chevalier]]

==Anonymous==

* Age before beauty.

* Age brings wisdom, but pain brings understanding.

* Age is a bad traveling companion.
** [[English proverbs|English proverb]]

* To be mature is to accept imperfections
** Fortune cookie

* Age is nothing but a number
** Dove Chocolate Promise Message

* There are no charms or medicine against old age.
** [[Anonymous]], quoted in ''The Journal of Negro History, Edited by Carter G. Woodson, Volume 1 Number 1'' (1916)

==External links==
* [http://www.bdayquotes.com/Quotations_About_Growing_Older/ BdayQuotes.com] offers quotations about aging and growing older.

{{wikipedia}}
{{wiktionary|age}}
{{wikiversity|Happiness and Life#Have a Happy Old Age}}

[[Category:Age]]

[[bs:Starost]]
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Family

2011-03-28T13:04:00Z

Nobody60: /* External links */

{{theme-stub}}
A [[w:Family|'''family''']] consists of a domestic group of people (or a number of domestic groups), typically affiliated by [[birth]] or [[marriage]], or by analogous or comparable relationships — including domestic partnership, cohabitation, adoption, surname and (in some cases) ownership (as occurred in the Roman Empire). In many societies, family ties are only those recognized as such by law or a similar normative system. The different types of families occur in a wide variety of settings, and their specific functions and meanings depend largely on their relationship to other social institutions.

== Sourced ==
* The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
** Article 16(3) of the [[w:Universal Declaration of Human Rights|Universal Declaration of Human Rights]]

* When harmony, mutual consideration and trust pass out of the home, hell enters in.
** [[David O. McKay]], ''Pathways To Happiness'', (1957), p. 296.

* More often than not the people that you happen to be related to are your best friends… You can never really turn away from them, and you will always defend them to the best of your ability, they are your greatest resource, and the greatest love will come from them... that is family.
** [[Jerry Grant Blakeney]]

*The Court must never forget, and will never forget, first of all, the rights of family life which are sacred.
** Bowen, L.J., In re Agar-Ellis, Agar-Ellis v. Lascelles, (1883), id., L. R. 24 C. D. 337; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, ''Dictionary of Legal Quotations'' (1904), p. 188.

* "In other words, I don't think people ought to be compelled to make the decision which they think is best for their family." — [[George W. Bush]]
:—Washington, D.C., December 11, 2002

* The family is always the family but during vacations it is an extended family and that is exhausting.
** [[Gertrude_Stein|Stein, Gertrude]]. Paris France. New York: Liveright, 1970. (p. 107)

* ''Eine Familie, die keine schwarzen Schafe hat, ist keine charakteristische Familie.''
** A family without a black sheep is not a typical family.
** [[Heinrich Böll]], "Die schwarzen Schafe" (1951); cited from ''1947 bis 1951'' (Köln: F. Middelhauve, 1963) p. 478. Translation: "Black Sheep", in Leila Vennewitz (trans.) ''The Stories of Heinrich Böll'' (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1995) p. 408.

* The family consists of those who live under the same roof with the ''pater familias''; those who form (if I may use the expression) his fire-side.
** Lord Kenyon, C.J., ''R. v. Inhabitants of Darlington'' (1792), 4 T. R. 800; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, ''Dictionary of Legal Quotations'' (1904), p. 92.

== Unsourced ==
* Two or more persons related by birth, marriage, or adoption, who reside together.
** The U.S. Bureau of the Census

==External links==
{{wikipedia}}
{{wiktionary|family}}
{{wikiversity|Happiness and Life#Have a Happy Family}}

[[Category:Family| ]]

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Friendship

2011-03-28T12:53:58Z

Nobody60: /* External links */

:''"Friends" redirects here, for the television series, see [[Friends (TV series)]].''
'''[[w:Friendship|Friendship]]''' is a term used to denote co-operative and supportive behavior between two or more people. It can be taken to mean a supportive relationship which involves mutual knowledge, esteem, and affection.

{{theme-cleanup|2008-06-15}}

==Sourced==
:Alphabetized by author or source

* The beauty of friendship so deep and nurturing, with infinite laughter is that it comes with no price and shall always be carried in your heart.
** [[Jenny Acasio]], in ''Strain for Eric Grossmann''

* He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.
** [[Ali]], in ''A Hundred Sayings''

* Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.
** [[Richard Bach]], ''[[w:Illusions (novel)|Illusions, The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah]]''

* Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appears to be best in four things, — old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.
** [[Francis Bacon]], quoting Alonso de Aragon, in ''Apothegms'', No. 97, as reported in ''Bartlett's Familiar Quotations'', 10th edition (1919); Alonso's statement is also the source of another rendition:
:: Old wood to burn! Old wine to drink! Old friends to trust! Old authors to read! — Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appeared to be best in these four things.
:: * Melchior de Santa Cruz, ''Floresta Española de Apothegmas o sentencias'', etc., ii. 1, 20, reported in ''Bartlett's Familiar Quotations'', 10th edition (1919)

* I get by with a little help from my friends.
** [[The Beatles]], in ''[[w:With a Little Help from My Friends|With a Little Help from My Friends]]''

* I am a companion of all them that fear thee, and of them them that keep thy precepts.
** {{bibleverse||Psalms|119:63|9}}

* A friend loves at all times, and kinsfolk are born to share adversity.
** ''[[The Bible]]'', Proverbs 17:17 (NRSV)

* A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
** [[The Bible]] Proverbs 18:24 (New International Version)

* Faithful are the wounds of a friend, But deceitful are the kisses of an enemy.
** ''[[The Bible]]'', Proverbs 27:6 (NASB)

* A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter; he who finds one finds a treasure. A faithful friend is beyond price, no sum can balance his worth.
** Sirach 6:14-15 (The New American Bible)

* Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up."
** ''[[The Bible]]'', Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

* The blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one's deepest as well as one's most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely. Oh, the comfort — the inexpressible comfort of feeling ''safe'' with a person — having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.
** [[Dinah Craik]], in ''A Life for a Life'' (1859); since the 1930s this has also been published in many paraphrased forms, often uncredited to Craik, including: A friend is one To whom one may pour out all The contents of one's heart Chaff and grain, together, Knowing that the gentlest of hands Will take and sift it, Keep what's worth keeping And blow the rest away.

* Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
** "[[w:Michael Corleone|Michael Corleone]]" in ''[[The Godfather Part II]]'' (1974), written by [[w:Mario Puzo|Mario Puzo]] & [[w:Francis Ford Coppola|Francis Ford Coppola]]; this has often become attributed to [[Sun Tzu]] and sometimes to [[Niccolò Machiavelli]] or [[Petrarch]], but there are no published sources yet found which predate its use in the second Godfather film, where Corleone states: My father taught me many things here — he taught me in this room. He taught me — keep your friends close but your enemies closer.

* ''Le sort fait les parents, la choix fait les amis''.
** Fate chooses our relatives, we choose our friends.
** [[w:Jacques Delille|Jacques Delille]], in ''Malheur at Pitié'' (1803), Canto I

* A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud.
** [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]], in "Friendship" in ''Essays'', First series (1841)

* A friendship that can be ended didn't ever start.
** [[Mellin de Saint-Gelais]], ''Oeuvres poétiques''

* Your friend is your needs answered. He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving. And he is your board and your fireside. For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
** [[Kahlil Gibran]], in ''[[The Prophet]]'' (1923)

* I love everything that's old, — old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.
** [[Oliver Goldsmith]], in ''She Stoops to Conquer'', Act I, reported in ''Bartlett's Familiar Quotations'', 10th edition (1919)

* Defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies.
** [[w:Jean Herauld Gourville|Jean Hérault, sieur de Gourville]] as quoted in ''Considérations sur l'esprit et les moeurs'' (1788) by [[w:Gabriel Sénac de Meilhan|Gabriel Sénac de Meilhan]]; a similar remard "May God defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies." has become attributed to [[Voltaire]], since at least 1908, but without sourcing.

* Friendship is often outgrown; and his former child’s clothes will no more fit a man than some of his former friendships.
** [[w:Sir Arthur Helps|Sir Arthur Helps]]. ‘Unreasonable Claims in Social Affections and Relations’, Ch. IX, ''Friends in Council'' (First Series) (1847)

* The finest friendships are between those who can do without each other.
** [[w:Elbert Hubbard|Elbert Hubbard]]. ‘Exclusive Friendships’, ''Love, Life & Work'' (1906)

* One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and more symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.
** [[Aldous Huxley]], in ''[[Brave New World]]'' (1932)

* Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
** [[Jesus]], in John 15:13

* Nothing changes your opinion of a friend so surely as success — yours or his.
** Franklin P. Jones, in ''Saturday Evening Post'' (29 November 1953)

* What find you better or more honourable than age? Take the preheminence of it in everything, — in an old friend, in old wine, in an old pedigree.
** [[w:Shackerley Marmion|Shackerley Marmion]]in ''The Antiquary'', reported in ''Bartlett's Familiar Quotations'', 10th edition (1919)

*A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules. The partners do not need to hold on tightly, because they move confidently in the same pattern, intricate but gay and swift and free, like a country dance of Mozart's. To touch heavily would be to arrest the pattern and freeze the movement, to check the endlessly changing beauty of its unfolding. There is no place here for the possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy hand; only the barest touch in passing. Now arm in arm, now face to face, now back to back — it does not matter which. Because they know they are partners moving to the same rhythm, creating a pattern together, and being invisibly nourished by it. The joy of such a pattern is not only the joy of creation or the joy of participation, it is also the joy of living in the moment. Lightness of touch and living in the moment are intertwined. One cannot dance well unless one is completely in time with the music, not leaning back to the last step or pressing forward to the next one, but poised directly on the present step as it comes. Perfect poise on the beat is what gives good dancing its sense of ease, of timelessness, of the eternal.
**[[Anne Morrow Lindbergh]], in ''Gift from the Sea''

* Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
** [[Anaïs Nin]], Diary entry (March 1937)

* When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing, and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
** [[Henri Nouwen]], in ''Out of Solitude'' (1996)

* But remember! when it comes to friends, it's not how much time you spend with them, just how you spend it!
** [[w:Eiichiro Oda|Eiichiro Oda]], "Mr. 2 Bon Clay" in ''[[One Piece]]''

* ''Al amigo todo, al enemigo ni justicia.''
** Everything for a friend, not even justice for an enemy.
**[[Juan Domingo Perón]], as quoted in [http://books.google.com/books?id=wVTUtWafSDYC&pg=PT218&dq=%22al+enemigo+ni+justicia&as_brr=3&ei=vkxSS-HaMoO-zASX383iCw&cd=5#v=onepage&q=%22al%20enemigo%20ni%20justicia&f=false ''Dictatorship, Democracy, and Globalization: Argentina and the Cost of Paralysis, 1973-2001'' (2009)] by Klaus Friedrich Veigel

* To like and dislike the same things, that is indeed true friendship.
** [[Sallust]], as quoted in ''The Quotation Dictionary'' (1962) by Robin Hyman

* A friend in need is a friend indeed.
** Scots proverb, as published in ''Beauties of Allan Ramsay: Being a Selection of the Most Admired Pieces of that Celebrated Author, viz. The Gentle Shepherd; Christ's Kirk on the Green; The Monk, and the Miller's Wife; with his valuable collection of Scots Proverbs'' (1815), "Scots Proverbs" Ch. 1; also quoted in ''[[w:Pure Morning|Pure Morning]]'', a song by [[w:Placebo|Placebo]].

* Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes; they were easiest for his feet.
** [[John Selden]], in "Friends" in ''Table Talk'' (1689)

* If you should die before me, ask if you could bring a friend.
** [[w:Stone Temple Pilots|Stone Temple Pilots]] in "Still Remains" on ''[[w:Purple (album)|Purple]]'' (1994)

* Friendship is not for merriment but for stern reproach when friends go astray.
** [[Tiruvalluvar]], ''Tirukkural: 784''

* You that would judge me, do not judge alone This book or that, come to this hallowed place Where my friends’ portraits hang and look thereon, Ireland’s history in their lineaments trace, Think where man's glory most begins and ends, And say my glory was I had such friends.
** [[William Butler Yeats]], ''The Municipal Gallery Re-Visited''

===''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895)===
:Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895).
* The friendship of high and sanctified spirits loses nothing by death but its alloy; failings disappear, and the virtues of those whose faces we shall behold no more appear greater and more sacred when beheld through the shades of the sepulchre.
** [[Robert Hall]], p. 254.

* A good man is the best friend, and therefore soonest to be chosen, longest to be retained, and indeed never to be parted with, unless he cease to be that for which he was chosen.
** [[Jeremy Taylor]], p. 254.

* I consider beyond all wealth, honor, or even health, is the attachment due to noble souls; because to become one with the good, generous, and true, is to be, in a manner, good, generous, and true yourself.
** Dr. [[Thomas Arnold]], p. 254.

* Friendship is a cadence of divine melody melting through the heart.
** [[Charles Mildway]], p. 255.

* Character is so largely affected by associations that we cannot afford to be indifferent as to who and what our friends are. They write their names in our albums, but they do more, they help make us what we are. Be therefore careful in selecting them; and when wisely selected, never sacrifice them.
** [[M. Hulburd]], p. 255.

==Unsourced==
* In the word FRIEND, each alphabet stand for something: F for fair, R for real, I for intelligent, E for eligible, N for near and D for dear.

*A good friend will bail you out of jail and lecture you about how you messed up. A great friend will be sitting right next to you laughing about it saying "damn, we really screwed up!"
** [[Unknown]]

* If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you.
** [[Winnie the Pooh]]

* It's the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.
** [[Marlene Dietrich]]

* Someone has said that we should refrain from speaking of another's faults until we are sure that we have none of our own.
**[[Reverend Canon Peter Bertram]]

* Life without a friend is death without a witness.
** [Spanish Proverb]

* My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.
** [[Henry Ford]]

* My father always used to say that, when you die, if you've got five real friends, then you've had a great life.
** [[Lee Iacocca]]

* My friend, if I could give you one thing, I would give you the ability to see yourself as others see you... then you would realize what a truly special person you are.
** Barbara A. Billings

* No love, no friendship, can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever.
** [[w:François Mauriac|François Mauriac]]

* One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.
** [[Henry Adams]]

* '''The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend, as to find a friend worth dying for.'''
** [[Homer]]

* True friends are a reward, leaving them is the penalty of life.
** Faryal Khan Kharal

* True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.
** [[Charles Caleb Colton]]

* True wealth can not be found in your bank account. It can only be found in those you call friend. Those with whom you share your deepest feelings. And those who accept you for who you really are.
** Mary Vandergrift

* In giving advice seek to help, not to please, your friend.
** [[w:Solon|Solon]]

* I'll lean on you and you lean on me and we'll be okay.
** [[w:Dave Matthews Band|Dave Matthews Band]]

* Involvement with people is always a very delicate thing — it requires real maturity to become involved and not get all messed up.
** Bernard Cooke

* I realized that the impossible stands for three things: the ghoul, the phoenix, and the loyal friend.
** Safi el-Din el-Hilli

* It is a great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults; greater to tell him his.
** [[Benjamin Franklin]]

*# Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.
*# A true friend stabs you in the front.
*# Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.
** [[Oscar Wilde]]

* Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Walk beside me and be my friend.
** [[Albert Camus]]

* Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
** [[Dave Attell]]

* Friends hold both the power to excel your life, or destroy it.
** Adam Murphy

* Go slowly to the entertainments of thy friends, but quickly to their misfortunes.
** Chilo

* Hold a true friend with both of your hands.
** [[Friedrich Nietzsche]]

* A friend is someone who is there for you when he'd rather be anywhere else.
** [[Len Wein]]

* Your friend is that man who knows all about you, and still likes you.
** [[Elbert Hubbard]]

* A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself-and especially to feel, or not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at any moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is.
** [[Jim Morrison]]

* A friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails.
** Donna Roberts

* Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
** [[Abraham Lincoln]]

* Blessed are they who have the gift of making friends, for it is one of God's best gifts. It involves many things, but above all, the power of going out of one's self and appreciating whatever is noble and loving in another.
** Thomas Hughes

* I have lost friends, some by death, others through sheer inability to cross the street.
** [[Virginia Woolf]]

* Stay is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary.
** [[Louisa May Alcott]]

* You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years of trying to get other people interested in you.
** Dale Carnegie

* People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.
** Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

* In prosperity, our friends know us; in adversity, we know our friends.
** J. Churton Collins

* Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over.
** [[Octavia Butler]]

* True friendship comes when the silence between two people is comfortable.
** D.T. Gentry

* And when somebody knows you well, well there's no comfort like that. And when somebody needs you, well there's no drug like that.
** Heather Nova

* There's the people you've known forever. Who like...know you...in this way, that other people can't. Because they've seen you change; they've let you change.
** My So Called Life

* The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.
** [[Katherine Mansfield]]

* Yes'm, old friends is always best, 'less you can catch a new one that's fit to make an old one out of.
** [[Sarah Orne Jewett]]

* True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.
** [[Charles Caleb Colton]]

* Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather is one of those things that gives value to survival.
** [[C.S. Lewis]]

* Never explain - your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.
** [[Elbert Hubbard]]

* The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
** [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]]

* Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.
** [[Oprah Winfrey]]

* The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers, and cities; but to know someone here and there who thinks and feels with us, and though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.
** [[Goethe]]

* We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over. So in a series of acts of kindness there is, at last, one which makes the heart run over.
** [[James Boswell]]

* I value the friend who for me finds time on his calendar, but I cherish the friend who for me does not consult his calendar.
** Robert Brault

* A true friend is one soul divided into two people.
** [[Aristotle]]

* The road to a friend's house is never long.
** [[Danish proverbs|Danish proverb]]

* Do not protect yourself by a fence, but rather by your friends.
** [[Czech proverbs|Czech proverb]]

* There are three friends in this world -- courage, sense, and insight.
** [[African proverbs|African proverb]]

* To attract good fortune spend a new penny on an old friend, share an old pleasure with a new friend and lift up the heart of a true friend by writing his name on the wings of a dragon.
** [[Chinese proverbs|Chinese proverb]]

* A true friend is one who overlooks your failures and tolerates your success.
** Doug Larson

* A true friend knows your weaknesses but shows you your strengths; feels your fears but fortifies your faith; sees your anxieties but frees your spirit; recognizes your disabilities but emphasizes your possibilities.
** [[William Arthur Ward]]

* Friends never betray you, only people you thought were your friends.
** T.Mike Runger

* Friendship is like pee in your pants. Everyone can see it's there, but only you can feel the true warmth.
** Steve Valentine as Derek Jupiter in the tv show I'm in the Band

* A true friend is one, who sits next to you without talking, who makes you feel comfortable.
** Sundeep Reddy

*Friendship with oneself is all-important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.
**[[Eleanor Roosevelt]]

* Friends are those who you believe are closer to you, but never nearer to you...
** [[Hanu]]

* There is no stronger bond of friendship than a mutual enemy.
** [[Frankfort Moore]]

* True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable.
** [[David Tyson Gentry]]

* Instead of loving your enemies, treat your friends a little better.
** [[Ed Howe]]

*Love is rarer than genius itself. And friendship is rarer than love.
**[[Charles Peguy]]
*…life can gives you a lot of miracles. It can gives success, prosperity and safety, but all of them are meaningless unless it gives you a good friend.
**[[Mate Istvan Suto]]
* Show me who your friends are, and I'll tell you all about yourself
**[[Greek Traditional]]

==See also==

* [[Love]]

==External links==

{{wikipedia}}
{{wiktionarypar|friendship}}
{{wikiversity|Happiness and Life#Have a Happy Relationship}}

* [http://www.kevinstilley.com/friendship-select-quotes/ Friendship - Select Quotes]
* [http://www.entrainbow.com/quotations/topic/friendship_quotes/friendship_quotes.html Famous quotes on friendship]
* [http://www.famousquotesfunnyquotes.com/quotes/friendship_quotes/ Famous friendship quotes]

[[Category:Interpersonal relationships]]
[[Category:Virtues]]

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[[cy:Cyfeillgarwch]]
[[de:Freundschaft]]
[[et:Sõprus]]
[[el:Φιλία - Φίλοι]]
[[es:Amistad]]
[[eo:Amikeco]]
[[fa:دوستی]]
[[fr:Amitié]]
[[gl:Amizade]]
[[hy:Ընկերություն]]
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[[it:Amicizia]]
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[[nl:Vriendschap]]
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Health

2011-03-28T12:43:05Z

Nobody60: /* External links */

[[File:Star of life2.svg|144px|thumb|right|Day by day, in every way, I'm getting better and better. ~ [[w:Émile Coué|Émile Coué]] ]]
Quotes about '''[[w:Health|Health]]''':

== Sourced ==
:Alphabetized by author 

* The best six doctors anywhere And no one can deny it Are sunshine, water, rest, and air Exercise and diet. These six will gladly you attend If only you are willing Your mind they'll ease Your will they'll mend And charge you not a shilling. 
** Anonymous nursery rhyme set to the tune of "Yankee Doodle", quoted in "The Health Club" in ''School Life'', Vol. IV (January - June 1920), p. 17 

* I am pretty sure that, if you will be quite honest, you will admit that a good rousing sneeze, one that tears open your collar and throws your hair into your eyes, is really one of life's sensational pleasures.
** [[Robert Benchley]], in "Hiccoughing Makes Us Fat" in ''No Poems: or Around the World Backwards and Sideways'' (1932)

* I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.
**[[Samuel Butler]], in ''The Way of All Flesh'' (1903)

* Thank Him for health. Consecrate it as His trust to innocent enjoyment, manly effort, social usefulness, and preparation for an honorable and holy career.
** [[William Ellery Channing]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 299.

* ''Tous les jours, à tous points de vue, je vais de mieux en mieux.''
** Day by day, in every way, I'm getting better and better.
*** [[w:Émile Coué|Émile Coué]], in his auto-suggestive formula for health, as quoted in ''The Practice of Autosuggestion by the Method of Emile Coué'' (1922) by Cyrus Harry Brooks
** Variant translation: Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better.

* If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don't actually live longer; it just seems longer.
**[[w:Clement Freud|Clement Freud]], as quoted in ''The Observer'' (27 December 1964)

* If you start to think about your physical or moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.
**[[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]], ''Proverbs in Prose'' (1819)

* Sickness is the first warning that we have made a wrong judgement. A healthy person is never unhappy."
** [[George Ohsawa]], ''Essential Ohsawa - From Food to Health, Happiness to Freedom - Understanding the Basics of Macrobiotics'' (1994), p. 77

* Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
** Attributed to [[w:Markus Herz|Markus Herz]] by [[w:Ernst, Baron von Feuchtersleben|Ernst von Feuchtersleben]], ''Zur Diätetik der Seele'' (1841), [http://books.google.com/books?id=FLc6AAAAcAAJ&pg=PA95&dq=%22Lieber+Freund+Sie+werden+noch+einmal+an+einem+Druckfehler+sterben%22 p. 95]. ([[Talk:Mark_Twain#You_may_die_of_a_misprint|more info]])

* Christ's gospel could never have been delivered by one who was diseased.
** [[John McClellan Holmes]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 299.

* If you wish to keep as well as possible, the less you think about your health the better.
**[[Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.]], ''Over the Teacups'' (1891)

* How sickness enlarges the dimension of a man's self to himself!
**[[Charles Lamb]], in ''Last Essays of Elia'' (1833)

* In minds crammed with thoughts, organs clogged with toxins, and bodies stiffened with neglect, there is just no space for anything else.
**[[w:Alison Rose Levy|Alison Rose Levy]], in "An Ancient Cure for Modern Life" in ''Yoga Journal'' (January - February 2002)

* If the pain wanders, do not waste your time with doctors.
**[[w:Mignon McLaughlin|Mignon McLaughlin]], in ''The Neurotic's Notebook'' (1960)

* Healthy people are invalids who don't know it.
**[[w:Jules Romains|Jules Romains]], in ''Dr. Knock'' (1923)

* Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.
**[[Susan Sontag]], ''Illness as Metaphor'' (1977).

* As a people, we have become obsessed with Health. There is something fundamentally, radically unhealthy about all this. We do not seem to be seeking more exuberance in living as much as staving off failure, putting off dying. We have lost all confidence in the human body.
**[[w:Lewis Thomas|Lewis Thomas]], in ''The Medusa and the Snail'' (1979).

== Unsourced ==
{{theme-cleanup|2006-08-28}}
* A bad cold wouldn't be so annoying if it weren't for the advice of our friends.
**[[w:Kin Hubbard|Kin Hubbard]]

* A cough is a symptom, not a disease. Take it to your doctor and he can give you something serious to worry about.
** [[Robert Morley]]

* A cripple of the worst sort, and consumptive into the bargain.
**[[Alan Bennett]]

* A filling is a dentist's food supplement.
**[[w:Leonard S. Wisdon|Leonard S. Wisdon]]

* A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor's book.
**[[Irish Proverbs|Irish Proverb]]

* I have a headache, my tummy feels hurty, I feel sick, quite frankly it'd be less trouble if I just had cancer.
**[[Alex Mallett]], ex-Black Reverence drummer.

* A healthy body is the guest-chamber of the soul; a sick, its prison.
**[[Francis Bacon]]

* After these two, Dr. Diet and Dr. Quiet, Dr. Merriman is requisite to preserve health.
**[[James Howell]]

* A man's health can be judged by which he takes two at a time ... pills or stairs.
**[[Joan Welsh]]

* An imaginary ailment is worse than a disease.
**[[Yiddish proverbs|Yiddish Proverb]]

* Bacteria keeps us from heaven and puts us there.
**[[w:Martin H. Fischer|Martin H. Fischer]].

* Disease is somatic; the suffering from it, psychic.
**[[w:Martin H. Fischer|Martin H. Fischer]]

* Diseases crucify the soul of man, attenuate our bodies, dry them, wither them, rivel them up like old apples, make them as so many Anatomies.
**[[Robert Burton]], ''The Anatomy of Melancholy''

* Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and more numerous than those of the body.
**[[Cicero]]

* Eat right, exercise regularly, die anyway.
**Author Unknown

* Every man's disease is his personal property.
**[[w:Alonzo Clark|Alonzo Clark]]

* First need in the reform of hospital management? That's easy! The death of all dietitians, and the resurrection of a French chef.
**[[w:Martin H. Fischer|Martin H. Fischer]]

* Fresh air impoverishes the doctor.
**[[Danish proverbs|Danish Proverb]]

* From the bitterness of disease man learns the sweetness of health.
**[[Catalan proverbs|Catalan Proverb]]

* Half the modern drugs could well be thrown out the window, except that the birds might eat them.
**[[w:Martin H. Fischer|Martin H. Fischer]].

* Happiness lies, first of all, in health.
**[[w:George William Curtis|George William Curtis]], ''Lotus-Eating''

* He who has health has hope; and he who has hope has everything.
**[[Arabic proverbs|Arabic Proverb]].

* He who takes medicine and neglects to diet wastes the skill of his doctors.
**[[Chinese proverbs|Chinese Proverb]]

* Health and cheerfulness naturally beget each other.
**[[Joseph Addison]]

* Health is a large word. It embraces not the body only, but the mind and spirit as well;... and not today's pain or pleasure alone, but the whole being and outlook of a man.
**[[w:James H. West|James H. West]].

* Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
**World Health Organization, (1948)

* Health is like money, we never have a true idea of its value until we lose it.
**[[w:Josh Billings|Josh Billings]].

* Health is merely the slowest way someone can die.
**Author Unknown

* Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.
**[[w:Redd Foxx|Redd Foxx]]

* Health of body and mind is a great blessing, if we can bear it.
**[[w:John Henry Cardinal Newman|John Henry Cardinal Newman]]

* I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol.
**Author Unknown

* I refuse to spend my life worrying about what I eat. There is no pleasure worth forgoing just for an extra three years in the geriatric ward.
**[[John Mortimer]]

* I see rejection in my skin, worry in my cancers, bitterness and hate in my aching joints. I failed to take care of my mind, and so my body now goes to hospital.
**[[w:Astrid Alauda|Astrid Alauda]]

* I think you might dispense with half your doctors if you would only consult Dr. Sun more.
**[[Henry Ward Beecher]]

* If by gaining knowledge we destroy our health, we labour for a thing that will be useless in our hands.
**[[John Locke]]

* If I had my way I'd make health catching instead of disease.
**[[Robert Ingersoll]]

* If I'd known I was going to live so long, I'd have taken better care of myself.
**[[w:Leon Eldred|Leon Eldred]]

* If you do everything you should do, and do not do anything you should not do, you will, according to the best available statistics, live exactly eighteen hours longer than you would otherwise.
**[[w:Logain Clendening|Logain Clendening]]

* If you have health, you probably will be happy, and if you have health and happiness, you have all the wealth you need, even if it is not all you want.
**[[Elbert Hubbard]]

* In a disordered mind, as in a disordered body, soundness of health is impossible.
**[[Cicero]]

* In order to change we must be sick and tired of being sick and tired.
**Author Unknown

* It's bizarre that the produce manager is more important to my children's health than the pediatrician.
**[[w:Meryl Streep|Meryl Streep]]

* It's no longer a question of staying healthy. It's a question of finding a sickness you like.
**[[w:Jackie Mason|Jackie Mason]]

* Joy and Temperance and Repose Slam the door on the doctor's nose. ~ [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]]

* Know, then, whatever cheerful and serene Supports the mind supports the body too. ~ [[w:John Armstrong|John Armstrong]]

* Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon.
**[[w:Doug Larson]]

* Life is not merely to be alive, but to be well.
**[[w:Marcus Valerius Martial|Marcus Valerius Martial]]

* Like everybody else, when I don't know what else to do, I seem to go in for catching colds.
**[[w:George Jean Nathan|George Jean Nathan]]

* Live in rooms full of light Avoid heavy food Be moderate in the drinking of wine Take massage, baths, exercise, and gymnastics Fight insomnia with gentle rocking or the sound of running water Change surroundings and take long journeys Strictly avoid frightening ideas Indulge in cheerful conversation and amusements Listen to music.
** [[w:A. Cornelius Celsus|A. Cornelius Celsus]]

* May you live as long as you are fit to live, but no longer! Or, may you rather die before you cease to be fit to live than after!
**[[w:Philip Dormer Stanhope|Philip Dormer Stanhope]], 1749

* Men make use of their illnesses at least as much as they are made use of by them.
**[[Aldous Huxley]]

* Men that look no further than their outsides, think health an appurtenance unto life, and quarrel with their constitutions for being sick; but I that have examined the parts of man, and know upon what tender filaments that fabric hangs, do wonder that we are not always so; and considering the thousand doors that lead to death, do thank my God that we can die but once.
**[[Thomas Browne]]

* Nature does require Her time of preservation, which perforce I her frail son amongst my brethren mortal Must give my attendance to. ~ [[William Shakespeare]]

* Nothing is more fatal to health than an overcare of it.
**[[Benjamin Franklin]]

* Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.
**Rev. Dr. [[Martin Luther King, Jr.]]

* Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself, it will do more than if you paralyze it by encumbering it with remedies.
**[[Leo Tolstoy]]

* People who are always taking care of their health are like misers who are hoarding a treasure which they have never spirit enough to enjoy.
**[[w:Laurence Sterne|Laurence Sterne]]

* Physical ills are the taxes laid upon this wretched life; some are taxed higher, and some lower, but all pay something.
**[[w:Lord Chesterfield|Lord Chesterfield]]

* Physick, for the most part, is nothing else but the Substitute of Exercise or Temperance.
**[[Joseph Addison]]

* Preserving the health by too strict a regimen is a wearisome malady.
**[[François Duc de La Rochefoucauld]]

* Red meat is not bad for you. Now blue-green meat, that's bad for you!
**[[w:Tommy Smothers|Tommy Smothers]]

* Sickness comes on horseback, but goes away on foot.
**[[w:William C. Hazlitt|William C. Hazlitt]]

* Sickness is poor-spirited, and cannot serve anyone; it must husband its resources to live. But health or fullness answers its own ends, and has to spare, runs over, and inundates the neighborhoods and creeks of other men's necessities.
**[[Ralph Waldo Emerson]]

* Sickness is the vengeance of nature for the violation of her laws.
**[[w:Charles Simmons|Charles Simmons]]

* So many people spend their health gaining wealth, and then have to spend their wealth to regain their health.
**[[w:A.J. Reb Materi|A.J. Reb Materi]], ''Our Family''

* The appearance of a disease is swift as an arrow; its disappearance slow, like a thread.
**[[Chinese proverbs|Chinese Proverb]]

* The longer I live the less confidence I have in drugs and the greater is my confidence in the regulation and administration of diet and regimen.
**[[w:John Redman Coxe|John Redman Coxe]], 1800

* The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd druther not.
**[[Mark Twain]]

* The power of love to change bodies is legendary, built into folklore, common sense, and everyday experience. Love moves the flesh, it pushes matter around.... Throughout history, "tender loving care" has uniformly been recognized as a valuable element in healing.
**[[w:Larry Dossey|Larry Dossey]]

* The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind.
**[[G.K. Chesterton]]

* The... patient should be made to understand that he or she must take charge of his own life. Don't take your body to the doctor as if he were a repair shop.
**[[w:Quentin Regestein|Quentin Regestein]]

* There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry.
**[[Mark Twain]]

* There are two things in life that a sage must preserve at every sacrifice, the coats of his stomach and the enamel of his teeth. Some evils admit of consolations, but there are no comforters for dyspepsia and the toothache.
**[[w:Henry Lytton Bulwer|Henry Lytton Bulwer]]

* There's lots of people in this world who spend so much time watching their health that they haven't the time to enjoy it.
**[[w:Josh Billings|Josh Billings]]

* They claim red meat is bad for you. But I never saw a sick-looking tiger.
**[[w:Chi Chi Rodriguez|Chi Chi Rodriguez]]

* Those obsessed with health are not healthy; the first requisite of good health is a certain calculated carelessness about oneself.
**[[w:Sydney J. Harris|Sydney J. Harris]]

* To avoid sickness eat less; to prolong life worry less.
**[[w:Chu Hui Weng|Chu Hui Weng]]

* To feel keenly the poetry of a morning's roses, one has to have just escaped from the claws of this vulture which we call sickness.
**[[w:Henri Frederic Amiel|Henri Frederic Amiel]]

* Water, air, and cleanliness are the chief articles in my pharmacopoeia.
**[[Napoleon Bonaparte]]

* What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease.
**[[w:George Dennison Prentice|George Dennison Prentice]], ''Prenticeana'', 1860

* “Health is what my friends are always drinking to before they fall down.”
**[[w:Phyllis Diller|Phyllis Diller]]

== External links ==
{{wikipedia}}
{{wiktionary|health}}
{{wikiversity|Happiness and Life#Practice the Five Principles of Health}}

[[Category:Health| ]]

[[bs:Zdravlje]]
[[ca:Salut]]
[[cs:Zdraví]]
[[de:Gesundheit]]
[[et:Tervis]]
[[es:Salud]]
[[eo:Sano]]
[[fr:Santé]]
[[hr:Zdravlje]]
[[it:Salute]]
[[he:בריאות]]
[[nl:Gezondheid]]
[[ja:健康]]
[[nn:Helse]]
[[pt:Saúde]]
[[pl:Zdrowie]]
[[sk:Zdravie]]
[[sr:Здравље]]

Christianity

2011-03-27T16:15:57Z

Nobody60: /* See also */

{{NPOV}}

[[Image:Byzantinischer Mosaizist um 1020 001.jpg|thumb|360px|right|''I am the LORD that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone'' ([[w:Isaiah|Isaiah]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah%2044:24&version=9; 44:12]) versus ''In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.'' ([[w:Gospel of John|John]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%201:1-3&version=9; 1:1–2])]]

==The Bible==
[[File:Saint Pierre l'Ermite Amiens 190908.jpg|thumb|Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear... [[w:First Epistle of Peter|First Epistle of Peter]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Peter%202:18&version=KJV 2:18] ]]

* Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
** [[Jesus]], [[w:Gospel of Matthew|Matthew]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew%205:11;&version=31; 5:11]

* If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.
** [[Jesus]], [[w:Gospel of Matthew|Matthew]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=47&chapter=5&verse=29&version=31&context=verse 5:29]

* "Go!" He told them. So when they had come out, they entered the pigs. And suddenly the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and perished in the water. Then the men who tended them fled. They went into the city and reported everything—especially what had happened to those who were demon-possessed. At that, the whole town went out to meet Jesus. When they saw Him, they begged Him to leave their region.
** [[Jesus]], [[w:Gospel of Matthew|Matthew]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%208:32-34;&version=77; 8:32–34]

*Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child. Children will even rise up against their parents and have them put to death.
** [[Jesus]], [[w:Gospel of Matthew|Matthew]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2010:21;&version=77; 10:21]

* Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven.
** [[Jesus]], [[w:Gospel of Matthew|Matthew]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2010:32-33;&version=31; 10:32–33]

* Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn <blockquote>'a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her motherinlaw— a man's enemies will be the members of his own household.'</blockquote>
** [[Jesus]], [[w:Gospel of Matthew|Matthew]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2010:34-36;&version=31; 10:34–36]

* Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
** [[Jesus]]; [[w:Gospel of Matthew|Matthew]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2011:28;&version=31; 11:28]

*The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
** [[Jesus]], [[w:Gospel of Matthew|Matthew]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2013:41-42;&version=31; 13:41–42]

*[T]he kingdom of heaven can be compared to a king who wanted to settle accounts with his slaves.
** [[Jesus]], [[w:Gospel of Matthew|Matthew]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2018:23;&version=77; 18:23]

*[H]is master was angry, and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him. “So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses.”
** [[Jesus]], [[w:Gospel of Matthew|Matthew]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2018:34-35;&version=50; 18:34–35]

*[E]veryone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.
** [[Jesus]], [[w:Gospel of Matthew|Matthew]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2019:29;&version=31; 19:29]

* When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. "I am innocent of this man's blood," he said. "It is your responsibility!" All the people answered, "Let his blood be on us and on our children!"
** [[w:Gospel of Matthew|Matthew]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew%2027:24-25;&version=31; 27:24-25]

* [T]he sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken. … They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory. … ''I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.''
** [[Jesus]], [[w:Gospel of Matthew|Matthew]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2024:29-34;&version=31; 24:29-34], foretelling His [[w:Second Coming|Second Coming]] during the lifetimes of His disciples

* Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin.
** [[God]], [[w:Deuteronomy|Deuteronomy]][http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=deuteronomy%2024:16;&version=31; 24:16]

* But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin.
** [[Jesus]], [[w:Gospel of Mark|Mark]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=48&chapter=3&verse=29&version=31&context=verse 3:29]

* He also said to them, "You completely invalidate God's command in order to maintain your tradition! For Moses said: <blockquote>Honor your father and your mother; and, Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must be put to death.</blockquote>
** [[Jesus]], [[w:Gospel of Mark|Mark]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%207:9-10;&version=77; 7:9–10]

* … whoever is not against us is for us.
** [[Jesus]], [[w:Gospel of Mark|Mark]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%209:40;&version=31; 9:40]

* The next day when they came out from Bethany, He was hungry. After seeing in the distance a fig tree with leaves, He went to find out if there was anything on it. When He came to it, He found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. He said to it, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again!"
** [[Jesus]], [[w:Gospel of Mark|Mark]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2011:12-14;&version=77; 11:12–14]

* Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.
** [[Jesus]], [[w:Gospel of Mark|Mark]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2016:17-18;&version=31; 16:16–18]

* God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. … [T]he angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end." "How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?" The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.
** [[w:Gospel of Luke|Luke]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%201:26-36;&version=31; 1:26-36]

* He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me, scatters.
** [[Jesus]], [[w:Gospel of Luke|Luke]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2011:23;&version=31; 11:23]

* And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' lend to 'sinners,' expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back.
** [[Jesus]] on [[usury]] from the [[w:Sermon on the Mount|Sermon on the Mount]], [[w:Gospel of Luke|Luke]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%206:35;&version=31; 6:34–35]

* The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers.
** [[Jesus]], [[w:Gospel of Luke|Luke]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2012:46;&version=31; 12:46]

* That servant who knows his master's will and does not get ready or does not do what his master wants will be beaten with many blows.
** [[Jesus]], [[w:Gospel of Luke|Luke]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2012:47;&version=31; 12:47]

*If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.
** [[Jesus]], [[w:Gospel of Luke|Luke]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2014:26;&version=50; 14:26]

* But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and kill them in front of me.
** [[Jesus]]'s ''Parable of the Ten Minas'', [[w:Gospel of Luke|Luke]] [[s:Bible, King James, Luke#Chapter 19|19:27]]. This has often been quoted out of context, as if it were a command of Jesus, when it is in fact a command given by the protaganist of one of his parables. [[John Chrysostom]], a [[w:Portal:Saints|Sainted]] [[w:Archbishop|Archbishop]], one of the only [[w:Three Holy Hierarchs|Three Holy Hierarchs]], and a [[w:Doctor of the Church|Doctor of the Church]] later used this passage directly to condemn the Jews:
*** [T]he Jewish people were driven by their drunkenness and plumpness to the ultimate evil; they kicked about, they failed to accept the yoke of Christ, nor did they pull the plow of his teaching. Another prophet hinted at this when he said: "Israel is as obstinate as a stubborn heifer." … Although such beasts are unfit for work, they are fit for killing. And this is what happened to the Jews: while they were making themselves unfit for work, they grew fit for slaughter. This is why Christ said: "But as for these my enemies, who did not want me to be king over them, bring them here and slay them." ([[w:Gospel of Luke|Luke]] [[s:Bible, King James, Luke#Chapter 19|19:27]])
**** [[John Chrysostom]] (349–ca. 407), ''[http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/chrysostom-jews6.html Eight Homilies Against the Jews],'' Homily 1

* For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
** [[Jesus]], [[w:Gospel of John|John]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=50&chapter=3&verse=16&version=31; 3:16]

* If I [Jesus] testify about myself, my testimony is not valid.
** [[Jesus]], [[w:Gospel of John|John]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%205:31;&version=31; 5:31]

* Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.
** [[Jesus]], [[w:Gospel of John|John]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=50&chapter=6&verse=54&version=31&context=verse 6:54]

* You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.
** [[Jesus]], [[w:Gospel of John|John]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2014:14;&version=31; 14:14]

* After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it.
* On the first day of the week came Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulcher and saw the stone taken away from the sepulcher.
** [[w:Gospel of Matthew|Matthew]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2028:1-2;&version=31; 28:1-2]'s account of the discovery of the tomb (two Mary's arrive at the tomb after sunrise, but before the stone had been removed) versus [[w:Gospel of John|John]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2020:1;&version=48; 20:1]'s account (one Mary arrives at the tomb before sunrise, but after the stone had been removed)

* So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them. "Greetings," he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him.
* Jesus said unto her, "Touch Me not, for I am not yet ascended to My Father …"
** [[w:Gospel of Matthew|Matthew]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2028:8-9;&version=31; 28:8-9]'s account of the appearance of the resurrected Jesus (Jesus appears away from that tomb, and the Mary's touch his feet; see also [[w:Gospel of Luke|Luke]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2024:13-15;&version=31; 24:13-15] in which Jesus appears on the road to [[w:Emmaus|Emmaus]], seven miles from [[w:Jerusalem|Jerusalem]]) versus [[w:Gospel of John|John]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2020:11-17;&version=48; 20:17]'s account (Jesus appears at the tomb and tells Mary not to touch him)

* the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight.
** [[Paul of Tarsus|Paul]], [[w:First Epistle to the Corinthians|1 Corinthians]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians%201:20-24;&version=31http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians%203;&version=31; 3:19]

* We are fools for Christ …
** [[Paul of Tarsus|Paul]], [[w:First Epistle to the Corinthians|1 Corinthians]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=53&chapter=4&version=31 4:10]

* Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be loosed. Are you loosed from a wife? Do not seek a wife.
** [[Paul of Tarsus|Paul]], [[w:First Epistle to the Corinthians|1 Corinthians]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians%207:27;&version=77; 7:27]

*[Y]e also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews: Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men.
** [[Paul of Tarsus|Paul]], [[w:First Epistle to the Thessalonians|1 Thessalonians]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Thessalonians%202:14-15;&version=9; 2:14-15]

* In flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power. (2 Thessalonians 1:8-9)
** [[Paul of Tarsus|Paul]], [[w:Second Epistle to the Thessalonians|2 Thessalonians]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Thessalonians%201:8-9;&version=31; 1:8-9]

*For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.
** [[Paul of Tarsus|Paul]], [[w:Second Epistle to the Thessalonians|2 Thessalonians]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Thessalonians%202:11-12;&version=31; 2:11-12]

* A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.
** [[Paul of Tarsus|Paul]], [[w:First Epistle to Timothy|1 Timothy]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Timothy%202:11-12;&version=31; 2:11-12]

*For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision: Whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake.
** [[Paul of Tarsus|Paul]], [[w:Epistle to Titus|Titus]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Titus%201:10-11;&version=9; 1:10-11]

* Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
** [[w:James the Just|James]], [[w:Epistle of James|1 James]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James%204;&version=50; 4:4]

* Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; Or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well.
** [[w:Saint Peter|Peter]], [[w:First Epistle of Peter|1 Peter]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Peter%202:13-14;&version=9; 2:13–14]

* Household slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the cruel.
** [[w:Saint Peter|Peter]], [[w:First Epistle of Peter|1 Peter]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Peter%202:18;&version=77; 2:18]

* If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you.
** [[w:Saint Peter|Peter]], [[w:First Epistle of Peter|1 Peter]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Peter%204:14;&version=31; 4:14]

* Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.
** [[w:Saint Peter|Peter]], [[w:First Epistle of John|1 John]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20John%202:18;&version=9; 2:18]

* I will kill her children with the plague.
** [[Jesus]], [[w:Book of Revelation|Revelation]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation%202:23;&version=77; 2:23]

* The victor and the one who keeps My works to the end: I will give him authority over the nations— <blockquote>and He will shepherd them with an iron scepter; He will shatter them like pottery— just as I have received [this] from My Father.</blockquote>
** [[Jesus]], [[w:Book of Revelation|Revelation]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation%202:26-27;&version=77; 2:26–27]

* … Worship God! For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. … Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written: <blockquote>KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.</blockquote> Then I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the birds that fly in the midst of heaven, “Come and gather together for the supper of the great God, that you may eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and of those who sit on them, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, both small and great.” And I saw the beast, the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against Him who sat on the horse and against His army. Then the beast was captured, and with him the false prophet who worked signs in his presence, by which he deceived those who received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image. These two were cast alive into the lake of fire burning with brimstone. And the rest were killed with the sword which proceeded from the mouth of Him who sat on the horse. And all the birds were filled with their flesh.
** [[w:Book of Revelation|Revelation]] [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation%2019:10-21;&version=9; 19:10–21] (NKJV)

== The [[w:Gnostic Gospels|Gnostic Gospels]]==
=== The [[w:Gospel of Judas|Gospel of Judas]] ===

* [Jesus laughs as he watches his disciples offering a prayer to God before Passover.] Disciples: Why are you laughing at us? Jesus says that he is laughing not at them but at their strange idea of pleasing their God.
** Jesus to his disciples. See "[http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/04/17/060417crbo_books Jesus Laughed]" and "[http://www.slate.com/id/2139781/ Judas Saves: Why the lost gospel makes sense]".

* You will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.
** Jesus to Judas

* Judas: I know who you are and where you have come from. You are from the immortal realm of [[w:Barbelo|Barbelo]]. Jesus: Step away from the others and I shall tell you the mysteries of the Kingdom.
** Exchange between Judas and Jesus. See "[http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/04/17/060417crbo_books Jesus Laughed]" and "[http://www.slate.com/id/2139781/ Judas Saves: Why the lost gospel makes sense]".

* Only Judas has guessed the master aright—and has discerned that he comes from the heavenly realm of the god "[[w:Barbelo|Barbelo]]." In the realm of Barbelo, it seems, earthly pains are unknown and the fortunate inhabitants are free from the attentions of the God of the Old Testament. Jesus himself is descended in some fashion from Adam's third son, Seth. With Judas' help, he hopes to guide the seed of Seth back to the realm of Barbelo.
** A paraphrasing of Jesus' statements from "[http://www.slate.com/id/2139781/ Judas Saves: Why the lost gospel makes sense]". See also "[http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/04/17/060417crbo_books Jesus Laughed]".

* [O]ut beyond the stars, there exists a divine, blessed realm, free of the materiality of this earthly one. This is the realm of [[w:Barbelo|Barbelo]], a name that gnostics gave the celestial Mother, who lives there with, among others, her progeny, a good God awkwardly called the Self-Generated One. Jesus, it turns out, is not the son of the Old Testament God, whose retinue includes a rebellious creator known as [[w:Yaldabaoth|Yaldabaoth]], but an avatar of Adam’s third son, Seth. His mission is to show those lucky members of mankind who still have a “Sethian” spark the way back to the blessed realm. Jesus, we learn, was laughing at the disciples’ prayer because it was directed at their God, the Old Testament God, who is really no friend of mankind but, rather, the cause of its suffering.
** A paraphrasing of Jesus' statements from "[http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/04/17/060417crbo_books Jesus Laughed]". See also "[http://www.slate.com/id/2139781/ Judas Saves: Why the lost gospel makes sense]".

* Judas: I saw myself as the twelve disciples were stoning me. Jesus: You will be cursed by the other generations … you will come to rule over them.
** Exchange between Judas and Jesus. See "[http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/04/17/060417crbo_books Jesus Laughed]" and "[http://www.slate.com/id/2139781/ Judas Saves: Why the lost gospel makes sense]".

* Lift up your eyes and look at the cloud and the light within it and the stars surrounding it. The star that leads the way is your star.
** Jesus to Judas. See "[http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/04/17/060417crbo_books Jesus Laughed]" and "[http://www.slate.com/id/2139781/ Judas Saves: Why the lost gospel makes sense]".

=== The [[w: Gospel of Mary|Gospel of Mary]] ===

* He questioned them about the Saviour: Did He really speak privately with a woman and not openly to us? Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did He prefer her to us? Then Mary wept and said to Peter, My brother Peter, what do you think? Do you think that I have thought this up myself in my heart, or that I am lying about the Saviour? Levi answered and said to Peter, Peter you have always been hot tempered. Now I see you contending against the woman like the adversaries. But if the Saviour made her worthy, who are you indeed to reject her? Surely the Saviour knows her very well. That is why He loved her more than us. Rather let us be ashamed and put on the perfect Man, and separate as He commanded us and preach the gospel, not laying down any other rule or other law beyond what the Saviour said. And when they heard this they began to go forth to proclaim and to preach.
** [[w: Gospel of Mary|Mary]] 9:4–10

* Sin as such does not exist, but you make sin when you do what is of the nature of fornication, which is called "sin." For this reason the Good came into your midst, to the essence of each nature, to restore it to its root. For this reason you come into existence and die.
** In response to a question by Peter: "Since you have now explained all things to us, tell us this: what is the sin of the world?"

=== The [[w:Gospel of Thomas|Gospel of Thomas]] ===

* The man old in days will not hesitate to ask a small child seven days old about the place of life, and he will live. For many who are first will become last, and they will become one and the same.
** Jesus, [[w:Gospel of Thomas|Thomas]] 4

* Recognize what is in your sight, and that which is hidden from you will become plain to you. For there is nothing hidden which will not become manifest.
** Jesus, [[w:Gospel of Thomas|Thomas]] 5

* Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate, for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain without being uncovered.
** Jesus, [[w:Gospel of Thomas|Thomas]] 6

* Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man; and cursed is the man whom the lion consumes, and the lion becomes man.
** Jesus, [[w:Gospel of Thomas|Thomas]] 7

* I have cast fire upon the world, and see, I am guarding it until it blazes.
** Jesus, [[w:Gospel of Thomas|Thomas]] 10

* Whoever blasphemes against the Father will be forgiven, and whoever blasphemes against the Son will be forgiven, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven either on earth or in heaven.
** Jesus, [[w:Gospel of Thomas|Thomas]] 44

==Acts of Pilate, or The Gospel of Nicodemus==
* The elders of the Jews answered and said unto Jesus: What shall we see? Firstly, that thou wast born of fornication; secondly, that thy birth in Bethlehem was the cause of the slaying of children; thirdly, that thy father Joseph and thy mother Mary fled into Egypt because they had no confidence before the people.
** [[w:Acts of Pilate|Acts of Pilate]], or [http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/gospelnicodemus.html The Gospel of Nicodemus] (ca. 150–255)

==The Talmud==
===Babylonian Talmud===

* [[w:Yeshua (name)|Yeshua]]'s mother was Miriam [Mary] … This is as they say about her in the [[w:Pumbedita|Pumbeditha]]: This one strayed from [was unfaithful to] her husband. … He is guilty as a beguiler who says, "I will worship (other gods)," … In the case of any one who is liable to death penalties enjoined in the Law, it is not proper to lie in wait for him except he be a beguiler … [as] they did to [[w:Yeshu#ben-Stada|Ben Stada]] whom they hanged on the eve of the Passover. … The husband of his mother was called [[w:Yeshu#ben-Stada|Stada]], and her seducer [[w:Yeshu#ben-Pandera|Pandera]].
** ''[[Talmud|The Talmud]]'', [[w:Mishnah|Mishnah]] 27:15, "Offenders Liable to Capital Punishment: The Beguiler to Idolatry" (ca. 200). Peter Schäfer in ''Jesus in the Talmud'' (Princeton, 2007) explains: "if the [[w: Talmud#Talmud Bavli (Babylonian Talmud)|Babylonian Talmud]] takes it for granted that [[Jesus]]' mother was an adulteress, then the logical conclusion follows that we was a ''[[w:mamzer|mamzer]],'' a bastard or illegitimate child."

===Palestinian Talmud===
==Early Middle Ages==

* … the Son of God died; it is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd.
** [http://www.tertullian.org/articles/evans_carn/evans_carn_03latin.htm Original Latin]: ''et mortuus est dei filius: prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est.''
** [[Tertullian]], ''[[w:De Carne Christi|De Carne Christi]]'' (5), (ca. 155–230). See also [[w:Fideism|Fideism]] and ''[[w:Credo quia absurdum|Credo quia absurdum]].

* This, I shall say, is He, ''the son of the carpenter or the whore'', the destroyer of the ''Sabbath'', the ''Samaritan'' and Who ''had a devil''. This is He, Whom ye bought of Judas: this is He, Who was smitten with a reed and with bufferings, dishonoured with spittings, drugged with gall and vinegar. This is He, Whom the disciples stole secretly away, that it might be said that He had risen again[.]
** [[Tertullian]], ''[[w:De spectaculis|De spectaculis]]'' (ca. 197–202).

* Jesus reveals the law to us when he reveals to us the secrets of the law. For we who are of the catholic Church, we do not spurn the law of Moses but accept it, so long as it is Jesus who reads it to us. Indeed, we can only possess a correct understanding of the Law when he reads it to us, and we are able to receive his sense and understanding.
** [[w:Origen|Origen]] (''c.'' 185–''c.'' 254), in R. B. Tollington, trans., ''Selections from the Commentaries and Homilies of Origen, London, 1929, p. 54.

* ‘If,’ said he, ‘the Father begat the Son, he that was begotten had a beginning of existence: and from this it is evident, that there was a time when the Son was not. It therefore necessarily follows, that he had his substance from nothing.’
** [[w:Arius|Arius of Alexandria]], (ca250/256–336) on the [[w:Arianism|Arian heresy]] [http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/202/2020014.htm]

* How can we admit that the divine became an embryo, and that after its birth, it was wrapped in swaddling clothes, covered with blood, bile, and even worse things?
** [[w:Porphyry (philosopher)|Porphyry of Tyre]] (''c.'' 233–''c.'' 309 CE), ''Porphyry Against the Christians: The Literary Remains'' (Guildford 1994), expressing the [[w:Neoplatonic|Neoplatonist]]'s skepticism about Jesus' divinity

* Every prophet, every ancient writer, every revolution of the state, every law, every ceremony of the old covenant points only to Christ, announces only him, represents only him.
** [[w:Eusebius of Caesarea|Eusebius of Caesarea]] (''c.'' 263–339?), ''Demonstratio'' Evangelium, 4: 15 in J. P. Migne, ed., ''Patrologia Graeca'', Paris, 1857–66, vol. 22, p. 296.

* It was … declared improper to follow the custom of the Jews in the celebration of this holy festival, because, their hands having been stained with crime, the minds of these wretched men are necessarily blinded. … Let us, then, have nothing in common with the Jews, who are our adversaries. ... avoiding all contact with that evil way. … who, after having compassed the death of the Lord, being out of their minds, are guided not by sound reason, but by an unrestrained passion, wherever their innate madness carries them. … a people so utterly depraved. … Therefore, this irregularity must be corrected, in order that we may no more have any thing in common with those parricides and the [[w:deicide|murderers of our Lord]]. … no single point in common with the perjury of the Jews.
** [[w:First Council of Nicaea|First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea]], in which the [[w:Christian Church|Christian Church]] separates the calculation of the date of [[w:Easter|Easter]] from the Jewish [[w:Passover|Passover]]. See [http://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf203.iv.viii.i.x.html The Epistle of the Emperor Constantine, concerning the matters transacted at the Council, addressed to those Bishops who were not present] and [http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/25023.htm ''Life of Constantine'' Vol. III Ch. XVIII] by Eusebius.

* Nothing is more miserable than those people who never failed to attack their own salvation. When there was need to observe the Law, they trampled it under foot. … On this account Stephen said: "You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart, you always resist the Holy Spirit", not only by transgressing the Law but also by wishing to observe it at the wrong time.
** [[John Chrysostom]] (349–ca. 407), ''[http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/chrysostom-jews6.html Eight Homilies Against the Jews]'', Homily 1

* [T]he Jewish people were driven by their drunkenness and plumpness to the ultimate evil; they kicked about, they failed to accept the yoke of Christ, nor did they pull the plow of his teaching. Another prophet hinted at this when he said: "Israel is as obstinate as a stubborn heifer." … Although such beasts are unfit for work, they are fit for killing.
** [[John Chrysostom]] (349–ca. 407), ''[http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/chrysostom-jews6.html Eight Homilies Against the Jews]'', Homily 1

* Before they committed the crime of crimes, before they killed their Master, before the cross, before the slaying of Christ, [Jewish sacrifices were] an abomination.
** [[John Chrysostom]] (349–ca. 407), ''[http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/chrysostom-jews6.html Eight Homilies Against the Jews]'', Homily 1

* You [Jews] did slay Christ, you did lift violent hands against the Master, you did spill his precious blood. This is why you have no chance for atonement, excuse, or defense.
** [[John Chrysostom]] (349–ca. 407), ''[http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/chrysostom-jews6.html Eight Homilies Against the Jews]'', Homily 6

* [T]he Jews are enduring their present troubles because of Christ.
** [[John Chrysostom]] (349–ca. 407), ''[http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/chrysostom-jews6.html Eight Homilies Against the Jews]'', Homily 6

* We know that salvation belongs to the Church alone, and that no one can partake of Christ nor be saved outside the Catholic Church and the Catholic Faith.
** [[John Chrysostom]] (349–ca. 407), ''De Capto Eutropia''

* Whoever is separated from this Catholic Church, by this single sin of being separated from the unity of Christ, no matter how estimable a life he may imagine he is living, shall not have life, but the wrath of God rests upon him.
** [[Augustine of Hippo]], (412), ''[[w:Augustine of Hippo#Letters|Letters]]'' '''141''':5.

* [S]uch infants as quit the body without being baptized will be involved in the mildest condemnation of all. That person, therefore, greatly deceives both himself and others, who teaches that they will not be involved in condemnation[.]
** [[Augustine of Hippo]], (415–16), ''[http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf105.x.iii.xxi.html St. Augustine: Anti-Pelagian Writings]''

* We must be on our guard against giving interpretations which are hazardous or opposed to science, and so exposing the word of God to the ridicule of unbelievers.
** [[Augustine of Hippo]], ''De genesi ad litteram libri duodecim'' (''The Literal Meaning of Genesis'') (415), I, nos. 19, 21, 39 [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02089a.htm]

* [T]here is another form of temptation, more complex in its peril. … It originates in an appetite for knowledge. … From this malady of curiosity are all those strange sights exhibited in the theatre. Hence do we proceed to search out the secret powers of nature (which is beside our end), which to know profits not, and wherein men desire nothing but to know.
** [[Augustine of Hippo]], ''[[s:Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume I/Confessions/Book X/Chapter 35|Confessions]]'' (397), Book X, Chap. 35.

* Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. … Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, ''although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.'' [1 Timothy 1:7]
** [[Augustine of Hippo]], ''De genesi ad litteram libri duodecim'' (''The Literal Meaning of Genesis'') (415), from J. H. Taylor, transl., ''Ancient Christian Writers'', Newman Press, 1982, volume 41.

* As I follow no leader save Christ, so I communicate with none but your blessedness, that is, with the Chair of Peter. For this, I know, is the rock on which the Church is built. … This is the ark of Noah, and he who is not found in it shall perish when the flood prevails. … And as for heretics, I have never spared them; on the contrary, I have seen to it in every possible way that the Church's enemies are also my enemies.
** [[Jerome]], (405–420), ''Manual of Patrology and History of Theology''

* It is no fault of Christianity that a hypocrite falls into sin[.]
** [[Jerome]], letter 125, to Rusticus (405–420), W.H. Fremantle, transl. [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf206.v.CXXV.html]

* Most firmly hold and never doubt that not only pagans, but also all Jews, all heretics, and all schismatics who finish this life outside of the Catholic Church, will go into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
** [[w:Fulgentius of Ruspe|Saint Fulgentius]] (467–527), ''Enchriridion Patristicum''

* The holy universal Church teaches that God cannot be truly adored except within its fold; she affirms that all those who are separated from her will not be saved.
** [[w:Pope Gregory I|Pope Gregory I]], ''[[w:Commentary on Job|Commentary on Job]]'' (578–595), XIV, 5, Chap. 158.

==The Qur'an ({{lang|ar|القرآن|rtl}}) and the Hadith ({{lang|ar|الحديث|rtl}})==

[[Image:Harhab mini.JPG|thumb|360px|right|[[w:The Dome of the Rock|The Dome of the Rock]] ({{lang|ar|مسجد قبة الصخرة|rtl}}) in Jerusalem (built 692 AD), that contains numerous inscriptions that proclaim God's uniqueness and deny that He has any son or requires any assistance.]]

===The Qur'an (القرآن)===

* And when Allah said: O Isa, [Jesus] I am going to terminate the period of your stay (on earth) and cause you to ascend unto Me and purify you of those who disbelieve and make those who follow you above those who disbelieve to the day of resurrection; then to Me shall be your return, so l will decide between you concerning that in which you differed.
** [[s:ar:أَلْقُرآن أَلْكَرِيم|Original]]: {{lang|ar|إِذْ قَالَ اللّهُ يَا عِيسَى إِنِّي مُتَوَفِّيكَ وَرَافِعُكَإِلَيَّ وَمُطَهِّرُكَ مِنَ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُواْ وَجَاعِلُ الَّذِينَ اتَّبَعُوكَفَوْقَ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُواْ إِلَى يَوْمِ الْقِيَامَةِ ثُمَّ إِلَيَّ مَرْجِعُكُمْفَأَحْكُمُ بَيْنَكُمْ فِيمَا كُنتُمْ فِيهِ تَخْتَلِفُونَ|rtl}}
** The [[Qur'an]] ({{lang|ar|القرآن|rtl}}), [http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/k/koran/koran-idx?type=DIV0&byte=72808 Sura 3:55] ([[w:Al Imran|The Family of Amran]], {{lang|ar|سورة آل عمران|rtl}})

* Then because of their breaking of their covenant, and their disbelieving in the revelations of Allah, and their slaying of the prophets wrongfully, and their saying: Our hearts are hardened—Nay, but Allah set a seal upon them for their disbelief, so that they believe not save a few— And because of their disbelief and of their speaking against Mary a tremendous calumny; And because of their saying: We slew the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, Allah's messenger—they slew him not nor crucified him, but it appeared so unto them; and lo! those who disagree concerning it are in doubt thereof; they have no knowledge thereof save pursuit of a conjecture; they slew him not for certain. But Allah took him up unto Himself. Allah was ever Mighty, Wise. There is not one of the People of the Scripture but will believe in him before his death, and on the Day of Resurrection he will be a witness against them.
** [[s:ar:أَلْقُرآن أَلْكَرِيم|Original]]: {{lang|ar|فَبِمَا نَقْضِهِم مِّيثَاقَهُمْ وَكُفْرِهِم بَآيَاتِ اللّهِ وَقَتْلِهِمُ الأَنْبِيَاءَبِغَيْرِ حَقًّ وَقَوْلِهِمْ قُلُوبُنَا غُلْفٌ بَلْ طَبَعَ اللّهُ عَلَيْهَابِكُفْرِهِمْفَلاَ يُؤْمِنُونَ إِلاَّ قَلِ وَبِكُفْرِهِمْ وَقَوْلِهِمْ عَلَى مَرْيَمَبُهْتَاناً عَظِيماً وَقَوْلِهِمْ إِنَّا قَتَلْنَا الْمَسِيحَ عِيسَى ابْنَمَرْيَمَرَسُولَ اللّهِ وَمَا قَتَلُوهُ وَمَا صَلَبُوهُ وَلَـكِن شُبِّهَ لَهُمْ وَإِنَّالَّذِينَاخْتَلَفُواْ فِيهِ لَفِي شَكٍّ مِّنْهُ مَا لَهُم بِهِ مِنْ عِلْمٍ إِلاَّ اتِّبَاعَالظَّنِّوَمَا قَتَلُوهُ يَقِينا بَل رَّفَعَهُ اللّهُ إِلَيْهِ وَكَانَ اللّهُعَزِيزاً حَكِيماً وَإِن مِّنْ أَهْلِ الْكِتَابِ إِلاَّ لَيُؤْمِنَنَّ بِهِ قَبْلَ مَوْتِهِوَيَوْمَالْقِيَامَةِ يَكُونُ عَلَيْهِمْ شَهِيدا|rtl}}
** The [[Qur'an]] ({{lang|ar|القرآن|rtl}}), [http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/pick/004.htm Sura 4:155–159] ([[w:An-Nisa|The Women]], {{lang|ar|سورة النساء|rtl}})

* O followers of the Book! [The Bible] do not exceed the limits in your religion, and do not speak (lies) against Allah, but (speak) the truth; the Messiah, Isa son of Marium [Jesus son of Mary] is only an apostle of Allah and His Word which He communicated to Marium and a spirit from Him; believe therefore in Allah and His apostles, and say not, Three. Desist, it is better for you; Allah is only one God; far be It from His glory that He should have a son, whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth is His, and Allah is sufficient for a Protector.
** [[s:ar:أَلْقُرآن أَلْكَرِيم|Original]]: {{lang|ar| يَا أَهْلَ الْكِتَابِ لاَ تَغْلُواْ فِي دِينِكُمْ وَلاَ تَقُولُواْعَلَى اللّهِ إِلاَّ الْحَقِّ إِنَّمَا الْمَسِيحُ عِيسَى ابْنُ مَرْيَمَ رَسُولُاللّهِ وَكَلِمَتُهُ أَلْقَاهَا إِلَى مَرْيَمَ وَرُوحٌ مِّنْهُ فَآمِنُواْ بِاللّهِوَرُسُلِهِ وَلاَ تَقُولُواْ ثَلاَثَةٌ انتَهُواْ خَيْراً لَّكُمْ إِنَّمَا اللّهُإِلَـهٌوَاحِدٌ سُبْحَانَهُ أَن يَكُونَ لَهُ وَلَدٌ لَّهُ مَا فِي السَّمَاوَاتوَمَا فِي الأَرْضِ وَكَفَى بِاللّهِ وَكِيل|rtl}}
** The [[Qur'an]] ({{lang|ar|القرآن|rtl}}), [http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/k/koran/koran-idx?type=DIV0&byte=114839 Sura 4:171] ([[w:An-Nisa|The Women]], {{lang|ar|سورة النساء|rtl}})

* Certainly they disbelieve who say: Surely Allah, He is the Messiah, son of Marium; and the Messiah said: O Children of Israel! serve Allah, my Lord and your Lord. Surely whoever associates (others) with Allah, then Allah has forbidden to him the garden, and his abode is the fire; and there shall be no helpers for the unjust. Certainly they disbelieve who say: Surely Allah is the third (person) of the three; and there is no god but the one God, and if they desist not from what they say, a painful chastisement shall befall those among them who disbelieve.
** [[s:ar:أَلْقُرآن أَلْكَرِيم|Original]]: {{lang|ar|لَقَدْ كَفَرَ الَّذِينَ قَالُواْ إِنَّ اللّهَ هُوَالْمَسِيحُ ابْنُ مَرْيَمَ وَقَالَ الْمَسِيحُ يَا بَنِي إِسْرَائِيلَ اعْبُدُواْاللّهَ رَبِّي وَرَبَّكُمْ إِنَّهُ مَن يُشْرِكْ بِاللّهِ فَقَدْ حَرَّمَ اللّهُعَلَيهِالْجَنَّةَ وَمَأْوَاهُ النَّارُ وَمَا لِلظَّالِمِينَ مِنْ أَنصَارٍ لَّقَدْ كَفَرَ الَّذِينَ قَالُواْ إِنَّ اللّهَ ثَالِثُ ثَلاَثَةٍ وَمَا مِنْإِلَـهٍ إِلاَّ إِلَـهٌ وَاحِدٌ وَإِن لَّمْ يَنتَهُواْ عَمَّا يَقُولُونَ لَيَمَسَّنَّالَّذِينَ كَفَرُواْ مِنْهُمْ عَذَابٌ أَلِي|rtl}}
** The [[Qur'an]] ({{lang|ar|القرآن|rtl}}), [http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/k/koran/koran-idx?type=DIV0&byte=158021 Sura 5:72–73] ([[w:Al-Ma'ida|The Dinner Table]], {{lang|ar|سورة المائدة|rtl}})

* And when Allah will say: O Isa son of Marium! [Jesus son of Mary] did you say to men, Take me and my mother for two gods besides Allah he will say: Glory be to Thee, it did not befit me that I should say what I had no right to (say); if I had said it, Thou wouldst indeed have known it; Thou knowest what is in my mind, and I do not know what is in Thy mind, surely Thou art the great Knower of the unseen things.
** [[s:ar:أَلْقُرآن أَلْكَرِيم|Original]]: {{lang|ar| وَإِذْ قَالَ اللّهُ يَا عِيسَى ابْنَ مَرْيَمَ أَأَنتَ قُلتَ لِلنَّاسِ اتَّخِذُونِيوَأُمِّيَ إِلَـهَيْنِ مِن دُونِ اللّهِ قَالَ سُبْحَانَكَ مَا يَكُونُ لِي أَنْأَقُولَ مَا لَيْسَ لِي بِحَقٍّ إِن كُنتُ قُلْتُهُ فَقَدْ عَلِمْتَهُ تَعْلَمُمَا فِينَفْسِي وَلاَ أَعْلَمُ مَا فِي نَفْسِكَ إِنَّكَ أَنتَ عَلاَّمُ الْغُيُوب|rtl}}
** The [[Qur'an]] ({{lang|ar|القرآن|rtl}}), [http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/k/koran/koran-idx?type=DIV0&byte=158021 Sura 5:116] ([[w:Al-Ma'ida|The Dinner Table]], {{lang|ar|سورة المائدة|rtl}})

* Then she brought him to her own folk, carrying him. They said: O Mary! Thou hast come with an amazing thing. O sister of Aaron! Thy father was not a wicked man nor was thy mother a harlot. Then she pointed to him. They said: How can we talk to one who is in the cradle, a young boy? He spake: Lo! I am the slave of Allah. He hath given me the Scripture and hath appointed me a Prophet, And hath made me blessed wheresoever I may be, and hath enjoined upon me prayer and almsgiving so long as I remain alive, And (hath made me) dutiful toward her who bore me, and hath not made me arrogant, unblest. Peace on me the day I was born, and the day I die, and the day I shall be raised alive! Such was Jesus, son of Mary: (this is) a statement of the truth concerning which they doubt. It befitteth not (the Majesty of) Allah that He should take unto Himself a son. Glory be to Him! When He decreeth a thing, He saith unto it only: Be! and it is. And lo! Allah is my Lord and your Lord. So serve Him. That is the right path. The sects among them differ: but woe unto the disbelievers from the meeting of an awful Day. See and hear them on the Day they come unto Us! yet the evil-doers are today in error manifest. And warn them of the Day of anguish when the case hath been decided. Now they are in a state of carelessness, and they believe not.
** [[s:ar:أَلْقُرآن أَلْكَرِيم|Original]]: {{lang|ar|فَأَتَتْ بِهِ قَوْمَهَا تَحْمِلُهُ قَالُوا يَا مَرْيَمُ لَقَدْ جِئْتِ شَيْئاًفَرِيّاً يَا أُخْتَ هَارُونَ مَا كَانَ أَبُوكِ امْرَأَ سَوْءٍ وَمَا كَانَتْأُمُّكِ بَغِيّاً فَأَشَارَتْ إِلَيْهِ قَالُوا كَيْفَ نُكَلِّمُ مَن كَانَفِيالْمَهْدِ صَبِيّاً قَالَ إِنِّي عَبْدُ اللَّهِ آتَانِيَ الْكِتَابَ وَجَعَلَنِينَبِيّاً وَجَعَلَنِي مُبَارَكاً أَيْنَ مَا كُنتُ وَأَوْصَانِي بِالصَّلَاةِوَالزَّكَاةِ مَا دُمْتُ حَيّاً وَبَرّاً بِوَالِدَتِي وَلَمْ يَجْعَلْنِيجَبَّاراً شَقِيّاً وَالسَّلَامُ عَلَيَّ يَوْمَ وُلِدتُّ وَيَوْمَ أَمُوتُوَيَوْمَ أُبْعَثُ حَيّاً ذَلِكَ عِيسَى ابْنُ مَرْيَمَ قَوْلَ الْحَقِّالَّذِي فِيهِ يَمْتَرُونَ مَا كَانَ لِلَّهِ أَن يَتَّخِذَ مِن وَلَدٍ سُبْحَانَهُإِذَا قَضَى أَمْراً فَإِنَّمَا يَقُولُ لَهُ كُن فَيَكُونُ وَإِنَّ اللَّهَرَبِّي وَرَبُّكُمْفَاعْبُدُوهُ هَذَا صِرَاطٌ مُّسْتَقِيمٌ فَاخْتَلَفَ الْأَحْزَابُ مِنبَيْنِهِمْ فَوَيْلٌ لِّلَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا مِن مَّشْهَدِ يَوْمٍ عَظِيمٍ أَسْمِعْ بِهِمْوَأَبْصِرْ يَوْمَ يَأْتُونَنَا لَكِنِ الظَّالِمُونَ الْيَوْمَ فِي ضَلَالٍ مُّبِينٍ وَأَنذِرْهُمْ يَوْمَ الْحَسْرَةِ إِذْ قُضِيَ الْأَمْرُ وَهُمْ فِي غَفْلَةٍوَهُمْ لَا يُؤْمِنُونَ |rtl}}
** The [[Qur'an]] ({{lang|ar|القرآن|rtl}}), [http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/pick/019.htm Sura 19:27–39] ([[w:Maryam|Maryam]], {{lang|ar|سورة مريم|rtl}})

* And when Isa son of Marium [Jesus son of Mary] said: O children of Israel! surely I am the apostle of Allah to you, verifying that which is before me of the Taurat and giving the good news of an Apostle who will come after me, his name being [[w:Ahmad (name)|Ahmad]] [Muhammad], but when he came to them with clear arguments they said: This is clear magic.
** [[s:ar:أَلْقُرآن أَلْكَرِيم|Original]]: {{lang|ar|وَإِذْ قَالَ عِيسَى ابْنُ مَرْيَمَ يَا بَنِي إِسْرَائِيلَ إِنِّي رَسُولُ اللَّهِإِلَيْكُم مُّصَدِّقاًلِّمَا بَيْنَ يَدَيَّ مِنَ التَّوْرَاةِ وَمُبَشِّراً بِرَسُولٍ يَأْتِي مِنبَعْدِي اسْمُهُ أَحْمَدُ فَلَمَّاجَاءهُم بِالْبَيِّنَاتِ قَالُوا هَذَا سِحْرٌ مُّبِينٌ|rtl}}
** The [[Qur'an]] ({{lang|ar|القرآن|rtl}}), [http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/k/koran/koran-idx?type=DIV0&byte=874756 Sura 61:6] ([[w:As-Saff|The Ranks]], {{lang|ar|سورة الصف|rtl}})

* Say: He, Allah, is One. Allah is He on Whom all depend. He begets not, nor is He begotten. And none is like Him.
** [[s:ar:أَلْقُرآن أَلْكَرِيم|Original]]: {{lang|ar|بِسْمِ اللهِ ٱلرَّحْمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ قُلْ هُوَ اللَّهُ أَحَدٌ اللَّهُ الصَّمَدُ لَمْ يَلِدْوَلَمْ يُولَدْ وَلَمْ يَكُن لَّهُ كُفُواً أَحَدٌ|rtl}}
** The [[Qur'an]] ({{lang|ar|القرآن|rtl}}), [http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/k/koran/koran-idx?type=DIV0&byte=969810 Sura 112:1–4] ([[w:Al-Ikhlas|The Unity]], {{lang|ar|سورة الإخلاص|rtl}})

===The Hadith ({{lang|ar|الحديث|rtl}})===

* The Prophet said, "On the night of my Ascent to the Heaven, I saw Moses who was a tall brown curly-haired man as if he was one of the men of Shan'awa tribe, and I saw Jesus, a man of medium height and moderate complexion inclined to the red and white colors and of lank hair. I also saw Malik, the gate-keeper of the (Hell) Fire and [[w:Dajjal|Ad-Dajjal]] [the [[w:Antichrist|Antichrist]]] amongst the signs which Allah showed me."
** Translation of [[w:Sahih Bukhari|Sahih Bukhari]], [http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/bukhari/054.sbt.html#004.054.462 Volume 4, Book 54, Number 462]

* Allah's Apostle said "How will you be when the son of Mary ([[w:Jesus Christ|Jesus]]) descends amongst you and he will judge people by the Law of the Qur'an and not by the law of Gospel?"
** Translation of [[w:Sahih Bukhari|Sahih Bukhari]], [http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/bukhari/055.sbt.html#004.055.554 Volume 4, Book 55, Number 65]

* The Prophet said, "On the Day of Resurrection the Believers will assemble and say, 'Let us ask somebody to intercede for us with our Lord.' … 'Go to Jesus, Allah's Slave, His Apostle and Allah's Word and a Spirit coming from Him.' Jesus will say, 'I am not fit for this undertaking, go to Muhammad the Slave of Allah whose past and future sins were forgiven by Allah.' So they will come to me and I will proceed till I will ask my Lord's Permission and I will be given permission.
** Translation of [[w:Sahih Bukhari|Sahih Bukhari]], [http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/bukhari/060.sbt.html#006.060.149 Volume 6, Book 50, Number 3]

===Islamic Inscriptions from the Dome of the Rock ({{lang|ar|مسجد قبة الصخرة|rtl}})===

[[Image:Dehio 10 Dome of the Rock Floor plan.jpg|thumb|360px|right|Floor plan for the octagonal arcade of [[w:The Dome of the Rock|The Dome of the Rock]] ({{lang|ar|مسجد قبة الصخرة|rtl}}) in Jerusalem (built 692 CE), that contains numerous inscriptions that proclaim God's uniqueness and deny that He has any son or requires any assistance.]]

* O People of the Book! Do not exaggerate in your religion nor utter aught concerning God save the truth. The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, was only a Messenger of God, and His Word which He conveyed unto Mary, and a spirit from Him. So believe in God and His messengers, and say not 'Three' - Cease! (it is better for you! - God is only One God. Far be it removed from His transcendent majesty that He should have a son. His is all that is in the heavens and all that is in the earth. And God is sufficient as Defender.
** [[Islam|Islamic]] inscription in the east-northeast inner octagonal arcade of the [[w:Dome of the Rock|Dome of the Rock]], Jerusalem (692 CE), [link to [http://www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Inscriptions/DoTR.html full text and translation]

* Oh God, bless Your Messenger and Your servant Jesus son of Mary. Peace be on him the day he was born, and the day he dies, and the day he shall be raised alive! Such was Jesus, son of Mary, (this is) a statement of the truth concerning which they doubt.
** [[Islam|Islamic]] inscription in the north-northwest inner octagonal arcade of the [[w:Dome of the Rock|Dome of the Rock]], Jerusalem (692 CE), [link to [http://www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Inscriptions/DoTR.html full text and translation]

* It befitteth not (the Majesty of) God that He should take unto Himself a son. Glory be to Him! When He decreeth a thing, He saith unto it only: Be! and it is. Lo! God is my Lord and your Lord. So serve Him. That is the right path. God (Himself) is witness that there is no God save Him.
** [[Islam|Islamic]] inscription in the northwest-west inner octagonal arcade of the [[w:Dome of the Rock|Dome of the Rock]], Jerusalem (692 CE), [link to [http://www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Inscriptions/DoTR.html full text and translation]

* There is no god but God. He is One. Praise be to God, Who hath not taken unto Himself a son, and Who hath no partner in the Sovereignty, nor hath He any protecting friend through dependence.
** [[Islam|Islamic]] inscription in the west-northwest inner octagonal arcade of the [[w:Dome of the Rock|Dome of the Rock]], Jerusalem (692 CE), [link to [http://www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Inscriptions/DoTR.html full text and translation]

==High Middle Ages==

* There is one Universal Church of the faithful, outside of which there is absolutely no salvation.
** ''[[w:Fourth Council of the Lateran|The Canons of the Fourth Lateran Council]]'', 1215, [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/lateran4.html Canon 1]

* Jesus Christ, whose body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine; the bread being changed (''transsubstantiatio'') by divine power into the body, and the wine into the blood, so that to realize the mystery of unity we may receive of Him what He has received of us. And this sacrament no one can effect except the priest who has been duly ordained in accordance with the keys of the Church, which Jesus Christ Himself gave to the Apostles and their successors.
** ''[[w:Fourth Council of the Lateran|The Canons of the Fourth Lateran Council]]'', 1215, [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/lateran4.html Canon 1], asserting the [[w:dogma|dogma]] of [[w:transubstantiation|transubstantiation]]

* Jews and Saracens [Muslims] of both sexes in every Christian province must be distinguished from the Christian by a difference of dress. On Passion Sunday and the last three days of Holy Week they may not appear in public.
** ''[[w:Fourth Council of the Lateran|The Canons of the Fourth Lateran Council]]'', 1215, [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/lateran4.html Canon 68]; see [[w:Judenhut|Judenhut]], [[w:yellow badge|yellow badge]]. This is partly so that Christians will not unknowingly have sexual relations with Jews or Muslims.

* Jews are not to be given public offices. Anyone instrumental in doing this is to be punished. A Jewish official is to be denied all intercourse with Christians.
** ''[[w:Fourth Council of the Lateran|The Canons of the Fourth Lateran Council]]'', 1215, [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/lateran4.html Canon 69]

* I am a man of one book.
** [[Thomas Aquinas]]. See also ''[[w:Homo unius libri|Homo unius libri]]''.

* There is no entering into salvation outside the Church, just as in the time of the deluge there was none outside the ark, which denotes the Church.
** [[Thomas Aquinas]], 1265–1274, ''[[w:Summa Theologiae|Summa Theologiae]]''.

* ''Pange, lingua, gloriosi Corporis mysterium Sanguinisque pretiosi, Quem in mundi pretium Fructus ventris generosi Rex effudit gentium.''
** Translation: Sing, my tongue, the Savior's glory, Of His Flesh the mystery sing; Of the Blood, all price exceeding, Shed by our immortal King.
** [[Thomas Aquinas]], ''Pange, Lingua'' (hymn for Vespers on the Feast of Copus Christi), stanza 1

* Christians, be ye more serious in your movements; Be ye not like a feather at each wind, And think not every water washes you. Ye have the Old and the New Testament, And the Pastor of the Church who guideth you Let this suffice you unto your salvation. If evil appetite cry aught else to you, Be ye as men, and not as silly sheep, So that the Jew among you may not mock you.
** [[Dante Alighieri]], [[w:Divine Comedy|The Divine Comedy]], [[w:Paradiso (Dante)|Paradiso]], [[s:The Divine Comedy/Paradiso/Canto V|Canto V]], 73-81 (Translated by [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]])

==Late Middle Ages==

*When the existence of the Church is threatened, she is released from the commandments of morality. With unity as the end, the use of every means is sanctified, even deceit, treachery, violence, usury, prison, and death. Because order serves the good of the community, the individual must be sacrificed for the common good.
**[[w:Dietrich von Nieheim|Dietrich von Nieheim]], [[w:Bishopric of Verden|Bishop of Verden]], ''De schismate libri III'' (1411). Quoted in [[Arthur Koestler]]'s 1941 novel ''[[w:Darkness at Noon|Darkness at Noon]].''

* We sacrifice the intellect to God.
** ''Dei sacrificium intellectus''.
** [[Ignatius of Loyola]]. See also ''[[w:de:sacrificium intellectus|sacrificium intellectus]]''.

* It appears utterly absurd and impermissible that the Jews, whom God has condemned to eternal slavery for their guilt, should enjoy our Christian love.
** [[w:Pope Paul IV|Pope Paul IV]], Papal Bull ''[[w:Cum nimis absurdum|Cum nimis absurdum]]'' (1555)

* All the world suffers from the usury of the Jews, their monopolies and deceit. … Then as now Jews have to be reminded intermittently anew that they were enjoying rights in any country since they left Palestine and the Arabian desert, and subsequently their ethical and moral doctrines as well as their deeds rightly deserve to be exposed to criticism in whatever country they happen to live.
** [[w:Pope Clement VIII|Pope Clement VIII]], ''Caeca et obdurata'' ("Blind Obstinacy", 1593)

* Christ is not God, not the saviour of the world, but a mere man, a sinful man, and an abominable idol. All who worship him are abominable idolaters. And Christ did not rise again from death to life nor did he ascend into heaven.
** [[Matthew Hammond]], burned at the stake by the [[w:Bishop of Norwich|Bishop of Norwich]] on 20 May 1579, as quoted in ''[[w:Raphael Holinshed|Holinshed]]'s Chronicle'' (1587), Vol. III; also in ''The Catholic Doctrine of the Church of England'' (1854) by Thomas Rogers, and J. J. S. Perowne, and ''The Tyranny of God : Liberating Ourselves from Our Own Beliefs‎'' (2008) by Marquez Comelab, p. 198; also cited in {{cite video | people=[[w:Jonathan Miller|Jonathan Miller]] |title=[[w:Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief|A Brief History of Disbelief]] | medium=TV-Series | publisher=[[w:BBC Four|BBC Four]]| date=2004 | url=http://www.veoh.com/series/briefhistoryofdisbelief }}

==The Reformation and Counter-Reformation==

* Reason is the Devil's harlot, who can do nought but slander and harm whatever God says and does.
** German: ''Vernunft … ist die höchste Hur, die der Teufel hat …''
** [[Martin Luther]], Last Sermon in Wittenberg, Second Sunday in Epiphany, 17 January 1546. Sources: <cite>Dr. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe</cite>, (Weimar: Herman Boehlaus Nachfolger, 1914), Band 51:126, Line 7ff; {{cite web|url=http://www.iep.utm.edu/l/luther.htm|title=Martin Luther (1483-1546)|publisher=The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy}}; [[H. L. Mencken]], ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=YMjdLA0eTAAC&pg=PA244&dq=Luther+Reason+is+the+Devil%27s+harlot,+who+can+do+nought+but+slander+and+harm+whatever+God+says+and+does.#v=onepage&q=Luther%20Reason%20is%20the%20Devil%27s%20harlot%2C%20who%20can%20do%20nought%20but%20slander%20and%20harm%20whatever%20God%20says%20and%20does.&f=false Treatise on the Gods]'', p.  244; [[Christopher Hitchens]], ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=cZ1dgxQx8tMC&dq=Luther+Reason+is+the+Devil%27s+harlot,+who+can+do+nought+but+slander+and+harm+whatever+God+says+and+does. god is not great: how religion poisons everything]'', p. 73.

* What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church … a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them.
** [[Martin Luther]], cited by his secretary, in a letter in Max Lenz, ed., ''Briefwechsel Landgraf Philips des Grossmuthigen von Hessen mit Bucer'', vol. 1. Source: Sissela Bok, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=-kU6AAAAMAAJ&q=Max+Lenz+Briefwechsel+Landgraf+Phillips+des+Grossmuthigen+von+Hessen+mit+Bucer&dq=Max+Lenz+Briefwechsel+Landgraf+Phillips+des+Grossmuthigen+von+Hessen+mit+Bucer Lying: Moral Choice In Public and Private Life‎]'', New York: Pantheon Books, 1978, p. 47. [http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~shallit/luther1.jpg German text] of the quote.

* I cannot forbid a person to marry several wives, for it does not contradict Scripture.
** [[Martin Luther]], letter to Chancellor ''Gregory Brück'' (An Den Kanzler Brück), [[1524-01-13]], in ''Dr. Martin Luther's Briefe, Sendschreiben und Bedenken:'' volständig aus den verschiedenen Ausgaben seiner Werke und Briefe, aus andern Büchern und noch unbenutzten Handschriten gesammelt. From the [[w:De Wette|Wilhelm Martin Leberecht De Wette]] Collection of Luther's Letters (Berlin: [http://www.degruyter.de/rs/222_5927_ENU_h.htm Georg reimer], 1826) vol. 2, p. 459 (Letter DLXXII; Latin text).

* When the Gospel is preached unto faith, hope, love, and patience, God gives His wonder-working Spirit. Paul reminds the Galatians of this. "God had not only brought you to faith by my preaching. He had also sanctified you to bring forth the fruits of faith. And one of the fruits of your faith was that you loved me so devotedly that you were willing to pluck out your eyes for me." To love a fellow-man so devotedly as to be ready to bestow upon him money, goods, eyes in order to secure his salvation, such love is the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
** [[Martin Luther]], ''Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians'' (1535), Theodore Graebner, transl., (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1949) Chapter 2, pp. 86–106. [http://www.ctsfw.edu/etext/luther/galatians/Gal3-01.txt]

* When we pay attention to reason, God seems to propose impossible matters in the Christian Creed. To reason it seems absurd that Christ should offer His body and blood in the Lord's Supper; that Baptism should be the washing of regeneration; that the dead shall rise; that Christ the Son of God was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary, etc. Reason shouts that all this is preposterous. Are you surprised that reason thinks little of faith? Reason thinks it ludicrous that faith should be the foremost service any person can render unto God. Let your faith supplant reason.
** [[Martin Luther]], ''Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians'' (1535), Theodore Graebner, transl., (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1949) Chapter 2, pp. 86–106. [http://www.ctsfw.edu/etext/luther/galatians/Gal3-01.txt]

* Therefore we Christians, in turn, are obliged not to tolerate their [the Jews'] wanton and conscious blasphemy.
** [[Martin Luther]] (1543), ''[[w:On the Jews and Their Lies|On the Jews and Their Lies]]'' [http://http://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=Christianity&action=edit&section=6#–www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/luther-jews.html]

* What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? … First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn … This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians. … Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. … Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them. … Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb. … Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. … Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them and put aside for safekeeping. … Seventh, I commend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow, as was imposed on the children of Adam (Gen 3[:19]).
** [[Martin Luther]] (1543), ''[[w:On the Jews and Their Lies|On the Jews and Their Lies]]'' [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/luther-jews.html]

* Be a sinner and sin strongly, but more strongly have faith and rejoice in Christ.
** [[Martin Luther]]

*Prayer is a strong wall and fortress of the church; it is a goodly Christian weapon.
** [[Martin Luther]]

* Whoever shall maintain that wrong is done to heretics and blasphemers in punishing them makes himself an accomplice in their crime and guilty as they are. There is no question here of man's authority; it is God who speaks, and clear it is what law he will have kept in the church, even to the end of the world. Wherefore does he demand of us a so extreme severity, if not to show us that due honor is not paid him, so long as we set not his service above every human consideration, so that we spare not kin, nor blood of any, and forget all humanity when the matter is to combat for His glory.
** [[John Calvin]]'s justification of torture and execution for heretics. John Marshall, ''John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture (Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History)'', Cambridge University Press, 2006, ISBN 0-521-65114-X p. 325.

* After he [Servetus] had been recognized, I thought he should be detained. My friend [[w:Nicholas de la Fontaine|Nicolas]] summoned him on a capital charge, offering himself as a security according to the ''[[w:lex talionis|lex talionis]]''. On the following day he adduced against him forty written charges. He at first sought to evade them. Accordingly we were summoned. He impudently reviled me, just as if he regarded me as obnoxious to him. I answered him as he deserved … of the man’s effrontery I will say nothing; but such was his madness that he did not hesitate to say that devils possessed divinity; yea, that many gods were in individual devils, inasmuch as a deity had been substantially communicated to those equally with wood and stone. I hope that sentence of death will at least be passed on him; but I desired that the severity of the punishment be mitigated.
** [[John Calvin]], to [[w:William Farel|William Farel]] on the execution for heresy of [[w:Michael Servetus|Michael Servetus]], 20 August 1553, [http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC04575872&id=MnG0aSU9QnwC&pg=PA22&lpg=PA22&dq=%22bonnet+jules+%22 Bonnet, Jules (1820–1892)] ''Letters of John Calvin'', Carlisle, Penn: [[w:Banner of Truth Trust|Banner of Truth Trust]], 1980, pp. 158–159. ISBN 0-85151-323-9. [[w:Michael Servetus|Servetus]] was arrested while attending a church service officated by Calvin.

*Is it faith to understand nothing, and merely submit your convictions implicitly to the Church?
** [[John Calvin]]

*God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation.
** [[John Calvin]]

==The Age of Reason (Seventeenth Century)==

* I have often wondered, that persons who make a boast of professing the Christian religion, namely, love, joy, peace, temperance, and charity to all men, should quarrel with such rancorous animosity, and display daily towards one another such bitter hatred, that this, rather than the virtues they claim, is the readiest criterion of their faith. Matters have long since come to such a pass, that one can only pronounce a man Christian, Turk, Jew, or Heathen, by his general appearance and attire, by his frequenting this or that place of worship, or employing the phraseology of a particular sect—as for manner of life, it is in all cases the same.
** [[Baruch Spinoza]], Preface to the ''[[w:Theologico-Political Treatise|Theologico-Political Treatise]]'' [http://www.yesselman.com/ttpelws1.htm#PR] (1677)

* I must at this juncture declare that those doctrines which certain churches put forward concerning Christ, I neither affirm nor deny, for I freely confess that I do not grasp them.
** [[Baruch Spinoza]], ''[[w:Theologico-Political Treatise|Theologico-Political Treatise]]'' [http://www.yesselman.com/ttpelws1.htm#1:50understand] (1677)

* Had it been published by a voice from heaven, that twelve poor men, taken out of boats and creeks, without any help of learning, should conquer the world to the cross, it might have been thought an illusion against all reason of men; yet we know it was undertaken and accomplished by them.
** [[w:Stephen Charnock|Stephen Charnock]], ''Discourses Upon the Existence and Attributes of God'' (1682) On the Existence of God

* Don't you see that the appalling history of sectarianism, persecution, heresy hunting, shows you that this way of thinking about the world is intrinsically unsound?
** [[Thomas Hobbes]], cited in {{cite video | people=[[w:Jonathan Miller|Jonathan Miller]] |title=[[w:Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief|A Brief History of Disbelief]] | medium=TV-Series | publisher=[[w:BBC Four|BBC Four]]| date=2004 | url=http://www.veoh.com/series/briefhistoryofdisbelief }}

* The universe, the whole mass of all things that are, is corporeal, that is to say body, and hath dimensions of magnitude, length breadth and depth. Every part of the universe is body and that which is not body is no part of the universe. And because the universe is all, that which is no part of it is nothing. Consequently, nowhere.
** [[Thomas Hobbes]], cited in {{cite video | people=[[w:Jonathan Miller|Jonathan Miller]] |title=[[w:Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief|A Brief History of Disbelief]] | medium=TV-Series | publisher=[[w:BBC Four|BBC Four]]| date=2004 | url=http://www.veoh.com/series/briefhistoryofdisbelief }}

==The Age of Enlightenment (Eighteenth Century)==

* A few persons of an odious and despised country could not have filled the world with believers, had they not shown undoubted credentials from the divine person who sent them on such a message.
** [[Joseph Addison]], ''Of The Christian Religion'' (1721)

* I think it better to keep a profound silence with regard to the Christian fables, which are canonized by their antiquity and the credulity of absurd and insipid people.
** [[Frederick II of Prussia|Frederick the Great]], ''Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great'' (New York: Brentano's, 1927), transl. [[w:Richard Aldington|Richard Aldington]], letter 37 from [[Frederick II of Prussia|Frederick]] to [[Voltaire]], June 1738.

* Of all religions, Christianity ought doubtless to inspire the most toleration, although hitherto the Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.
** [[Voltaire]], "Toleration," ''Dictionnaire philosophique portatif'' (1764)

* Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], ''Whether Christianity is Part of the Common Law'' (1764). Published in [http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php ''The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes''], Federal Edition, [[w:Paul Leicester Ford|Paul Leicester Ford]], ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, [http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-01_Bk.pdf Vol. 1], p. 459.

* [Christianity] is assuredly the most ridiculous, the most absurd and the most bloody religion which has ever infected this world. Your Majesty will do the human race an eternal service by extirpating this infamous superstition, I do not say among the rabble, who are not worthy of being enlightened and who are apt for every yoke; I say among honest people, among men who think, among those who wish to think. … My one regret in dying is that I cannot aid you in this noble enterprise, the finest and most respectable which the human mind can point out.
** [[Voltaire]], ''Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great'' (New York: Brentano's, 1927), transl. [[w:Richard Aldington|Richard Aldington]], letter 156 from [[Voltaire]] to [[Frederick II of Prussia|Frederick]], 5 January 1767.

* Where is the prince sufficiently educated to know that for seventeen hundred years the Christian sect has done nothing but harm?
** [[Voltaire]], ''Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great'' (New York: Brentano's, 1927), transl. [[w:Richard Aldington|Richard Aldington]], letter 160 from [[Voltaire]] to [[Frederick II of Prussia|Frederick]], 6 April 1767.

* [N]either antiquity nor any other nation has imagined a more atrocious and blasphemous absurdity than that of eating God. This is how Christians treat the autocrat of the universe.
** [[Frederick II of Prussia|Frederick the Great]], ''Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great'' (New York: Brentano's, 1927), transl. [[w:Richard Aldington|Richard Aldington]], letter 215 from [[Frederick II of Prussia|Frederick]] to [[Voltaire]], 19 March 1776.

* God's power is infinite, Whatever he wills is executed; But neither man nor any other animal is happy; therefore he does not will their happiness. Epicurus' old questions are yet unanswered. Is he both able and willing to prevent evil? Then whence cometh evil?
** [[David Hume]], ''[[s:Dialogues concerning Natural Religion|Dialogues concerning Natural Religion]]'' (1779), cited in {{cite video | people=[[w:Jonathan Miller|Jonathan Miller]] |title=[[w:Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief|A Brief History of Disbelief]] | medium=TV-Series | publisher=[[w:BBC Four|BBC Four]]| date=2004 | url=http://www.veoh.com/series/briefhistoryofdisbelief }}

* If we go back to the beginning, we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit adorned them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them and that custom, respect and tyranny support them in order to make the blindness of men serve their own interests. If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them.
** [[Baron d'Holbach]], cited in {{cite video | people=[[w:Jonathan Miller|Jonathan Miller]] |title=[[w:Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief|A Brief History of Disbelief]] | medium=TV-Series | publisher=[[w:BBC Four|BBC Four]]| date=2004 | url=http://www.veoh.com/series/briefhistoryofdisbelief }}

* In the middle ages of Christianity opposition to the State opinions was hushed. The consequence was, Christianity became loaded with all the Romish follies. Nothing but free argument, raillery & even ridicule will preserve the purity of religion.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], ''Notes on Religion'' (October, 1776). Published in [http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php ''The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes''], Federal Edition, [[w:Paul Leicester Ford|Paul Leicester Ford]], ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, [http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-02_Bk.pdf Vol. 2], p. 256.

* '''Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned: yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.''' What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth. Let us reflect that it is inhabited by a thousand millions of people. That these profess probably a thousand different systems of religion. That ours is but one of that thousand. That if there be but one right, and ours that one, we should wish to see the 999 wandering sects gathered into the fold of truth. But against such a majority we cannot effect this by force. Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free inquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves. But every state, says an inquisitor, has established some religion. "No two, say I, have established the same." Is this a proof of the infallibility of establishments? Our sister states of Pennsylvania and New York, however, have long subsisted without any establishment at all.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], ''Notes on Virginia'', 1782. Published in [http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php ''The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes''], Federal Edition, [[w:Paul Leicester Ford|Paul Leicester Ford]], ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, [http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-04_Bk.pdf Vol. 4], p. 80.

* I doubt whether the people of this country would suffer an execution for heresy, or a three years imprisonment for not comprehending the mysteries of the trinity.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], ''Notes on Virginia'', 1782. Published in [http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php ''The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes''], Federal Edition, [[w:Paul Leicester Ford|Paul Leicester Ford]], ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, [http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-04_Bk.pdf Vol. 4], p. 81.

* During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.
** [[James Madison]], ''[[w:Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments|Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments]]'' (1785), opposing a "Bill establishing a provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion" [http://religiousfreedom.lib.virginia.edu/sacred/madison_m&r_1785.html]

* What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the Civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny: in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not.
** [[James Madison]], ''[[w:Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments|Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments]]'' (1785), opposing a "Bill establishing a provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion" [http://religiousfreedom.lib.virginia.edu/sacred/madison_m&r_1785.html]

* Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object [religion]. In the first place divest yourself of all bias in favour of novelty & singularity of opinion. Indulge them in any other subject rather than that of religion. It is too important, & the consequences of error may be too serious. On the other hand shake off all the fears & servile prejudices under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. '''Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.''' You will naturally examine first the religion of your own country. Read the bible then, as you would read Livy or Tacitus. … But '''those facts in the bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care''', and under a variety of faces. … Examine upon what evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so strong as that its falsehood would be more improbable than a change in the laws of nature in the case he relates. For example in the book of Joshua we are told the sun stood still several hours. Were we to read that fact in Livy or Tacitus we should class it with their showers of blood, speaking of statues, beasts, etc. But it is said that the writer of that book was inspired. Examine therefore candidly what evidence there is of his having been inspired. The pretension is entitled to your inquiry, because millions believe it. On the other hand you are astronomer enough to know how contrary it is to the law of nature that a body revolving on its axis as the earth does, should have stopped, should not by that sudden stoppage have prostrated animals, trees, buildings, and should after a certain time have resumed its revolution, & that without a second general prostration. Is this arrest of the earth's motion, or the evidence which affirms it, most within the law of probabilities? You will next read the new testament. It is the history of a personage called Jesus. Keep in your eye the opposite pretensions I. of those who say he was begotten by god, born of a virgin, suspended & reversed the laws of nature at will, & ascended bodily into heaven: and 2. of those who say he was a man of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mind, who set out without pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them, & was Punished capitally for sedition by being gibbeted according to the Roman law which punished the first commission of that offence by whipping, & the second by exile or death in ''furcâ''. … '''Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of it's consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no god, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort & pleasantness you feel in it's exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you.''' If you find reason to believe there is a god, a consciousness that you are acting under his eye, & that he approves you, will be a vast additional incitement; if that there be a future state, the hope of a happy existence in that increases the appetite to deserve it; if that Jesus was also a god, you will be comforted by a belief of his aid and love. In fine, I repeat that you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, & neither believe nor reject anything because any other persons, or description of persons have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable not for the rightness but uprightness of the decision. I forgot to observe '''when speaking of the new testament that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists.''' Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration as much as the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, & not by the reason of those ecclesiastics. Most of these are lost. There are some however still extant, collected by Fabricius which I will endeavor to get & send you.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], Letter to Peter Carr (August 10, 1787). Published in [http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php ''The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes''], Federal Edition, [[w:Paul Leicester Ford|Paul Leicester Ford]], ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, [http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-05_Bk.pdf Vol. 5], pp. 324–327.

* The Christians, in the course of their intestine dissensions, have inflicted far greater severities on each other than they had experienced from the zeal of infidels.
** [[Edward Gibbon]] (1788), ''[[w:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire|The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire]]'', [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/gibbon/decline/files/volume1/chap16.htm Chap. 16], Conduct of the Roman government towards the Christians

* The virtue of the primitive Christians, like that of the first Romans, was very frequently guarded by poverty and ignorance.
** [[Edward Gibbon]] (1788), ''[[w:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire|The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire]]'', [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/gibbon/decline/files/volume1/chap15.htm 1, Chap. 15], on the progress of the Christian religion, and the sentiments, manners, numbers, and condition of the primitive Christians [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/gibbon/decline/files/volume1/chap15.htm]

* The ancient and popular doctrine of the Millennium was intimately connected with the second coming of Christ. As the works of the creation had been finished in six days, their duration in their present state, according to a tradition which was attributed to the prophet Elijah, was fixed to six thousand years. By the same analogy it was inferred that this long period of labour and contention, which was now almost elapsed, would be succeeded by a joyful Sabbath of a thousand years; and that Christ, with the triumphant band of the saints and the elect who had escaped death, or who had been miraculously revived, would reign upon earth till the time appointed for the last and general resurrection. So pleasing was this hope to the mind of believers, that the new Jerusalem, the seat of this blissful kingdom, was quickly adorned with all the gayest colours of the imagination. … Though it might not be universally received, it appears to have been the reigning sentiment of the orthodox believers; and it seems so well adapted to the desires and apprehensions of mankind, that it must have contributed in a very considerable degree to the progress of the Christian faith. But when the edifice of the church was almost completed, the temporary support was laid aside. The doctrine of Christ's reign upon earth was at first treated as a profound allegory, was considered by degrees as a doubtful and useless opinion, and was at length rejected as the absurd invention of heresy and fanaticism. A mysterious prophecy, which still forms a part of the sacred canon, but which was thought to favour the exploded sentiment, has very narrowly escaped the proscription of the church.
** [[Edward Gibbon]] (1788), ''[[w:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire|The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire]]'', [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/gibbon/decline/files/volume1/chap15.htm 1, Chap. 15], on the progress of the Christian religion, and the sentiments, manners, numbers, and condition of the primitive Christians [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/gibbon/decline/files/volume1/chap15.htm]

* Whilst the happiness and glory of a temporal reign were promised to the disciples of Christ, the most dreadful calamities were denounced against an unbelieving world. … A regular series was prepared of all the moral and physical evils which can afflict a flourishing nation; intestine discord, and the invasion of the fiercest barbarians from the unknown regions of the North; pestilence and famine, comets and eclipses, earthquakes and inundations. The calmest and most intrepid sceptic could not refuse to acknowledge that the destruction of the present system of the world by fire was in itself extremely probable. The Christian, who founded his belief much less on the fallacious arguments of reason than on the authority of tradition and the interpretation of Scripture, expected it with terror and confidence as a certain and approaching event; and as his mind was perpetually filled with the solemn idea, he considered every disaster that happened to the empire as an infallible symptom of an expiring world.
** [[Edward Gibbon]] (1788), ''[[w:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire|The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire]]'', [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/gibbon/decline/files/volume1/chap15.htm 1, Chap. 15], on the progress of the Christian religion, and the sentiments, manners, numbers, and condition of the primitive Christians [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/gibbon/decline/files/volume1/chap15.htm]

* The condemnation of the wisest and most virtuous of the Pagans, on account of their ignorance or disbelief of the divine truth, seems to offend the reason and the humanity of the present age. But the primitive church, whose faith was of a much firmer consistence, delivered over, without hesitation, to eternal torture the far greater part of the human species.
** [[Edward Gibbon]] (1788), ''[[w:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire|The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire]]'', [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/gibbon/decline/files/volume1/chap15.htm 1, Chap. 15], on the progress of the Christian religion, and the sentiments, manners, numbers, and condition of the primitive Christians [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/gibbon/decline/files/volume1/chap15.htm]

* The chaste severity of the fathers in whatever related to the commerce of the two sexes flowed from the same principle—their [[abhorrence]] of every enjoyment which might gratify the sensual and degrade the spiritual nature of man. It was their favourite opinion, that if Adam had preserved his obedience to the Creator, he would have lived for ever in a state of virgin purity, and that some harmless mode of vegetation might have peopled paradise with a race of innocent and immortal beings. The use of marriage was permitted only to his fallen posterity, as a necessary expedient to continue the human species, and as a restraint, however imperfect, on the natural licentiousness of desire. The enumeration of the very whimsical laws which they most circumstantially imposed on the marriage-bed would force a smile from the young and a blush from the fair. It was their unanimous sentiment that a first marriage was adequate to all the purposes of nature and of society. The sensual connection was refined into a resemblance of the mystic union of Christ with his church, and was pronounced to be indissoluble either by divorce or by death. The practice of second nuptials was branded with the name of a legal adultery; and the persons who were guilty of so scandalous an offence against Christian purity were soon excluded from the honours, and even from the arms, of the church. Since desire was imputed as a crime, and marriage was tolerated as a defect, it was consistent with the same principles to consider a state of celibacy as the nearest approach to the Divine perfection.
** [[Edward Gibbon]] (1788), ''[[w:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire|The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire]]'', [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/gibbon/decline/files/volume1/chap15.htm 1, Chap. 15], on the progress of the Christian religion, and the sentiments, manners, numbers, and condition of the primitive Christians [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/gibbon/decline/files/volume1/chap15.htm]

* The names of Seneca, of the elder and the younger Pliny, of Tacitus, of Plutarch, of Galen, of the slave Epictetus, and of the emperor Marcus Antoninus, adorn the age in which they flourished, and exalt the dignity of human nature. They filled with glory their respective stations, either in active or contemplative life; their excellent understandings were improved by study; philosophy had purified their minds from the prejudices of the popular superstition; and their days were spent in the pursuit of truth and the practice of virtue. Yet all these sages (it is no less an object of surprise than of concern) overlooked or rejected the perfection of the Christian system. Their language or their silence equally discover their contempt for the growing sect which in their time had diffused itself over the Roman empire. Those among them who condescend to mention the Christians consider them only as obstinate and perverse enthusiasts, who exacted an implicit submission to their mysterious doctrines, without being able to produce a single argument that could engage the attention of men of sense and learning.
** [[Edward Gibbon]] (1788), ''[[w:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire|The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire]]'', [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/gibbon/decline/files/volume1/chap15.htm 1, Chap. 15], on the progress of the Christian religion, and the sentiments, manners, numbers, and condition of the primitive Christians [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/gibbon/decline/files/volume1/chap15.htm]

* [H]ow shall we excuse the supine inattention of the Pagan and philosophic world to those evidences which were presented by the hand of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to their senses? During the age of Christ, of his apostles, and of their first disciples, the doctrine which they preached was confirmed by innumerable prodigies. The lame walked, the blind saw, the sick were healed, the dead were raised, daemons were expelled, and the laws of Nature were frequently suspended for the benefit of the church. … Under the reign of Tiberius, the whole earth, or at least a celebrated province of the Roman empire, was involved in a preternatural darkness of three hours. Even this miraculous event, which ought to have excited the wonder, the curiosity, and the devotion of mankind, passed without notice in an age of science and history. It happened during the lifetime of Seneca and the elder Pliny, who must have experienced the immediate effects, or received the earliest intelligence, of the prodigy. Each of these philosophers, in a laborious work, has recorded all the great phenomena of Nature, earthquakes, meteors, comets, and eclipses, which his indefatigable curiosity could collect. Both the one and the other have omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which the mortal eye has been witness since the creation of the globe.
** [[Edward Gibbon]] (1788), ''[[w:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire|The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire]]'', [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/gibbon/decline/files/volume1/chap15.htm 1, Chap. 15], on the progress of the Christian religion, and the sentiments, manners, numbers, and condition of the primitive Christians [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/gibbon/decline/files/volume1/chap15.htm]

* But the most interesting conquest of the Seljukian Turks was that of Jerusalem, which soon became the theatre of nations. In their capitulation with Omar, the inhabitants had stipulated the assurance of their religion and property; … and the sepulchre of Christ, with the church of the Resurrection, was still left in the hands of his votaries. Of these votaries, the most numerous and respectable portion were strangers to Jerusalem: the pilgrimages to the Holy Land had been stimulated, rather than suppressed, by the conquest of the Arabs; … The harmony of prayer in so many various tongues, the worship of so many nations in the common temple of their religion, might have afforded a spectacle of edification and peace; but the zeal of the Christian sects was imbittered by hatred and revenge; and in the kingdom of a suffering Messiah, who had pardoned his enemies, they aspired to command and persecute their spiritual brethren.
** [[Edward Gibbon]] (1788), ''[[w:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire|The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire]]'', [http://www.ccel.org/g/gibbon/decline/decline5.txt Vol.  5, Chap. 57], on [[w:Jerusalem|Jerusalem]] under the Muslims and the motivation of the [[w:Crusades|Crusades]]

* About four hundred and sixty years after the conquest of Omar, the holy city was rescued from the Mahometan yoke. In the pillage of public and private wealth, the adventurers had agreed to respect the exclusive property of the first occupant; and the spoils of the great mosque, seventy lamps and massy vases of gold and silver, rewarded the diligence, and displayed the generosity, of Tancred. '''A bloody sacrifice was offered by his mistaken votaries to the God of the Christians: resistance might provoke but neither age nor sex could mollify, their implacable rage: they indulged themselves three days in a promiscuous massacre; and the infection of the dead bodies produced an epidemical disease. After seventy thousand Moslems had been put to the sword, and the harmless Jews had been burnt in their synagogue, they could still reserve a multitude of captives, whom interest or lassitude persuaded them to spare.''' … Bareheaded and barefoot, with contrite hearts, and in an humble posture, they ascended the hill of Calvary, amidst the loud anthems of the clergy; kissed the stone which had covered the Savior of the world; and bedewed with tears of joy and penitence the monument of their redemption. … '''nor shall I believe that the most ardent in slaughter and rapine were the foremost in the procession to the holy sepulchre.'''
** [[Edward Gibbon]] (1788), ''[[w:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire|The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire]]'', [http://www.ccel.org/g/gibbon/decline/decline5.txt Vol.  5, Chap. 58], on the Christian conquest of [[w:Jerusalem|Jerusalem]] from the Muslims

* Let divines and philosophers, statemen and patriots, unite their endeavours to renovate the age by impressing the minds of men with the importance of educating little boys and girls; of inculcating in the minds of youth the fear and love of the Deity…in short leading them in the study and practice of the exalted virtues of the Christian system….
** [[Samuel Adams]], letter to John Adams October 4, 1790.

* [A]ll churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, are simply human inventions. They use fear to enslave us. They are a monopoly for power and profit.
** [[Thomas Paine]], ''[[s:The Age of Reason|The Age of Reason]]'' (1794)

* What have we learned from this false thing called "revealed religion"? Absolutely nothing that is useful to man, and everything that is dishonorable to God. What does the Bible teach us?—rapine, cruelty, and murder. What does the New Testament teach us?—to believe that God had sex with a woman engaged to be married. The belief in this debauchery is what is called faith.
** [[Thomas Paine]], ''[[s:The Age of Reason|The Age of Reason]]'' (1794)

* People in general do not realize the wickedness that is in this so-called word of God. They are raised with the superstitious ideas that the Bible is true and good, and don't allow themselves to doubt it. The ideas that they form from the generosity of God are carried over to the book that they have been taught to believe was written by his authority. Good heavens, it is something else entirely! It is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy. What can be a greater blasphemy than to say that the wickedness of man was done by the order of God?
** [[Thomas Paine]], ''[[s:The Age of Reason|The Age of Reason]]'' (1794)

* The most horrible wickedness and cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have troubled the human race began with this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. … It would be far, far better for us to let a thousand devils roam the world, and publicly preach the doctrine of devils (if there were such a thing, which there isn't), than to let one impostor and monster such a Moses, Joshua, Samuel or the Bible prophets come speaking the so-called word of God, and causing men to believe it.
** [[Thomas Paine]], ''[[s:The Age of Reason|The Age of Reason]]'' (1794)

* Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet; as if the way to God was not open to every man alike. Each of those churches shows certain books, which they call ''revelation'', or the Word of God. The Jews say that their Word of God was given by God to Moses face to face; the Christians say, that their Word of God came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say, that their Word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them all.
** [[Thomas Paine]], ''[[w:The Age of Reason|The Age of Reason]]'' (1794) [http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/HTML.php?recordID=0548.04]

* Having thus made an insurrection and a battle in heaven, in which none of the combatants could be either killed or wounded—put Satan into the pit—let him out again—given him a triumph over the whole creation—damned all mankind by the eating of an apple, these Christian mythologists bring the two ends of their fable together. They represent this virtuous and amiable man, Jesus Christ, to be at once both God and man, and also the Son of God, celestially begotten, on purpose to be sacrificed, because they say that Eve in her longing had eaten an apple.
** [[Thomas Paine]], ''[[w:The Age of Reason|The Age of Reason]]'' (1794) [http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/HTML.php?recordID=0548.04]

* If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to put me in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and pay it for me. But if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case is changed. Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even if the innocent would offer itself. To suppose justice to do this, is to destroy the principle of its existence, which is the thing itself. It is then no longer justice. It is indiscriminate revenge.
** [[Thomas Paine]], ''[[w:The Age of Reason|The Age of Reason]]'' (1794) [http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/HTML.php?recordID=0548.04]

* As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of atheism; a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of man-ism with but little deism, and is as near to atheism as twilight is to darkness. It introduces between man and his Maker an opaque body, which it calls a redeemer[.]
** [[Thomas Paine]], ''[[w:The Age of Reason|The Age of Reason]]'' (1794) [http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/HTML.php?recordID=0548.04]

* The most extraordinary of all the things called miracles, related in the New Testament, is that of the devil flying away with Jesus Christ, and carrying him to the top of a high mountain; and to the top of the highest pinnacle of the temple, and showing him and promising to him ''all the kingdoms of the world''. How happened it that he did not discover America? or is it only with ''kingdoms'' that his sooty highness has any interest.
** [[Thomas Paine]], ''[[w:The Age of Reason|The Age of Reason]]'' (1794) [http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/HTML.php?recordID=0548.04]

* Here then is the whole story, foolish as it is, of this child and this virgin; and it is upon the barefaced perversion of this story that the book of Matthew, and the impudence and sordid interest of priests in later times, have founded a theory, which they call the gospel; and have applied this story to signify the person they call Jesus Christ; begotten, they say, by a ghost, whom they call holy, on the body of a woman, engaged in marriage, and afterwards married, whom they call a virgin, seven hundred years after this foolish story was told; a theory which, speaking for myself, I hesitate not to believe, and to say, is as fabulous and as false as God is true. … It is not then the existence or the non-existence, of the persons that I trouble myself about; it is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in the New Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon, against which I contend. The story, taking it as it is told, is blasphemously obscene. It gives an account of a young woman engaged to be married, and while under this engagement, she is, to speak plain language, debauched by a ghost, under the impious pretence, (Luke i. 35,) that "the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee." Notwithstanding which, Joseph afterwards marries her, cohabits with her as his wife, and in his turn rivals the ghost. This is putting the story into intelligible language, and when told in this manner, there is not a priest but must be ashamed to own it
** [[Thomas Paine]], ''[[w:The Age of Reason|The Age of Reason]]'' (1794) [http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/HTML.php?recordID=0548.04]

* Matthew says, that the angel that was sitting upon the stone on the outside of the sepulchre told the two Marys that Christ was risen, and that the women went ''away'' quickly. Mark says, that the women, upon seeing the stone rolled away, and wondering at it, went ''into'' the sepulchre, and that it was the angel that was ''sitting'' within on the right side, that told them so. Luke says, it was the two angels that were standing up; and John says, it was Jesus Christ himself that told it to Mary Magdalene; and that she did not go into the sepulchre, but only stooped down and looked in. Now, if the writers of these four books had gone into a court of justice to prove an ''alibi'', (for it is of the nature of an alibi that is here attempted to be proved, namely, the absence of a dead body by supernatural means,) and had they given their evidence in the same contradictory manner as it is here given, they would have been in danger of having their ears cropt for perjury, and would have justly deserved it. Yet this is the evidence, and these are the books, that have been imposed upon the world as being given by divine inspiration, and as the unchangeable word of God.
** [[Thomas Paine]], ''[[w:The Age of Reason|The Age of Reason]]'' (1794) [http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/HTML.php?recordID=0548.04]

* Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics. As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of despotism; and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests; but so far as respects the good of man in general, it leads to nothing here or hereafter.
** [[Thomas Paine]], ''The Age of Reason,'' Part II (1795) Ch. 2

* '''As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion'''; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims] … it is declared … that no pretext arising from religious opinion shall ever product an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries. … '''The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation.'''
** ''The [[w:Treaty of Tripoli|Treaty of Tripoli]]'' (January 4, 1797). Carried unanimously by the U.S. Senate and signed into law by President [[John Adams]].

* [W]hen the clergy addressed General Washington on his departure from the government, it was observed in their consultation that he had never on any occasion said a word to the public which showed a belief in the Christian religion and they thought they should so pen their address as to force him at length to declare publicly whether he was a Christian or not. They did so. However [Dr. Rush] observed the old fox was too cunning for them. He answered every article of their address particularly except that, which he passed over without notice. Rush observes he never did say a word on the subject in any of his public papers except in his valedictory letter to the Governors of the states when he resigned his commission in the army, wherein he speaks of the benign influence of the Christian religion. I know that Gouverneur Morris, who pretended to be in his secrets & believed himself to be so, has often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system than he himself did.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], the ''Anas'' (February 1, 1800), on [[George Washington]]'s absent Christianity. Published in [http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php ''The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes''], Federal Edition, [[w:Paul Leicester Ford|Paul Leicester Ford]], ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, [http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-01_Bk.pdf Vol. 1], pp. 352–353.

==The Nineteenth Century==

* '''The Author of the Sermon on the Mount is assuredly a far more benign being than the Author of Nature.''' But unfortunately, the believer in the Christian revelation is required to believe that the same being is the author of both! If he doesn’t resolutely avert his mind from this subject or practise the act of quieting his conscience by sophistry, he will be involved in endless moral perplexities, because the ways of his Deity in Nature are often totally at variance with what he thinks to be the commands of that same Deity in the Gospel. Those who suffer the least moral damage from this tangle are probably those who never try to reconcile the two standards — ''the one set by Nature, and the one set by Jesus in the Gospels'' — with one another, but admits to himself that the purposes of Providence are mysterious, that its ways are not our ways, that its justice and goodness are not the justice and goodness that we can understand and that it is fitting for us to practise. When this is how the believer feels, however, the worship of God stops being the adoration of abstract moral perfection. It becomes a matter of the bowing down to a gigantic image of something not fit for us to imitate. It is the worship of pure power. '''I say nothing of the moral difficulties and perversions involved in revelation itself; though even in the Christianity of the Gospels, at least in its ordinary interpretation, there are some that are so flagrant that they almost outweigh all the beauty and benignity and moral greatness that so clearly distinguish the sayings and character of Christ.''' For example, thinking "This is the object of highest worship!" of a being who could make a Hell and create countless generations of human beings with the certain foreknowledge that he was creating them to be sent to Hell. '''Is there any moral atrocity that couldn’t be justified by the imitation of such a Deity? And could we possibly adore such a being without frightfully distorting the standard of right and wrong? Any other of the outrages to the most ordinary justice and humanity involved in the common Christian idea of God’s moral character sinks into insignificance beside this dreadful ''Hell-focused'' idealization of wickedness.'''
** [[John Stuart Mill]], ''[http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/milless.html The Usefulness of Religion]'' (1874)

* In his last moments he cries out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!" What conclusion is it natural to draw from this distressing exclamation? It appears to be this, that on the part of Jesus Christ, there was a virtual renunciation of his confidence in the Creator; and on the supposition that there was originally a concerted plan of execution well understood by both the parties, the fulfilment of it seems here to have been relinquished, and the beneficial effects annihilated. On the part of Jesus, it is saying, "I have been deceived in this undertaking. I did not expect that I should have been forsaken in this hour of my greatest distress; but I rested with confidence on eternal wisdom, for a timely escape from this wretched misfortune." On the part of the Father, there is a want of attention and support in this trying hour. He forsakes his beloved Son; he gives him up to the murderous fury of vindictive enemies; and neither the one nor the other of the parties exhibits that spirit of fortitude and constancy which might justly have been expected on so interesting an occasion. The reflecting mind concludes, therefore, that the whole is but a fiction, and that no such stipulation ever took place between the man Jesus Christ, and the Creator of the world.
** [[w:Elihu Palmer|Elihu Palmer]], ''[[s:Principles of nature; or, a development of the morals causes of happiness and misery among the human species|Principles of nature; or, a development of the morals causes of happiness and misery among the human species]]'' (1801)

* The disadvantages under which his doctrines appear are remarkable... Like [[Socrates]] & [[Epictetus]], he wrote nothing himself... But he had not, like them, a [[Xenophon]] or an [[w:Arrian|Arrian]] to write for him. ... According to the ordinary fate of those who attempt to enlighten and reform mankind, he fell an early victim to the jealousy & combination of the altar and the throne, at about 33 years of age, his reason having not yet attained the maximum of its energy, nor the course of his preaching, which was but of 3 years at most, presented occasions for developing a complete system of morals. Hence the doctrines which he really delivered were defective as a whole, and fragments only of what he did deliver have come to us mutilated, misstated, & often unintelligible.... They have been still more disfigured by the corruptions of schismatising followers, who have found an interest in sophisticating & perverting the simple doctrines he taught by engrafting on them the mysticisms of a Grecian sophist, frittering them into subtleties, & obscuring them with jargon, until they have caused good men to reject the whole in disgust, & to view Jesus himself as an impostor. Notwithstanding these disadvantages, a system of morals is presented to us, which, if filled up in the true style and spirit of the rich fragments he left us, would be the most perfect and sublime that has ever been taught by man. ... His moral doctrines, relating to kindred & friends, were more pure & perfect than those of the most correct of the philosophers, and greatly more so than those of the Jews; and they went far beyond both in inculcating universal philanthropy, not only to kindred and friends, to neighbors and countrymen, but to all mankind, gathering all into one family, under the bonds of love, charity, peace, common wants and common aids. A development of this head will evince the peculiar superiority of the system of Jesus over all others.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], '[http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/jeff1122.htm "Syllabus of an Estimate of the Merit of the Doctrines of Jesus, Compared with Those of Others" in a letter to [[Benjamin Rush]] (12 April 1803)]. Published in [http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php ''The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes''], Federal Edition, [[w:Paul Leicester Ford|Paul Leicester Ford]], ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, [http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-09_Bk.pdf Vol. 9 ''Works'' Vol. 9 (PDF)], pp. 462.

* [E]ven while admitting the existence of the theological God, and the reality of his so discordant attributes which they impute to him, one can conclude nothing to authorize the conduct or the cult which one is prescribed to render him. … If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has, filled with weaknesses? If grace does everything for them, what reason would he have for recompensing them? If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him? If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable? If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees? If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him? IF HE HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS THE UNIVERSE NOT CONVINCED? If the knowledge of a God is the most necessary, why is it not the most evident and the clearest.
** [[Percy Bysshe Shelley]], ''[[s:The Necessity of Atheism|The Necessity of Atheism]]'' (1811)

* Since its introduction, human nature has made great progress, and society experienced great changes; and in this advanced condition of the world, Christianity, instead of losing its application and importance, is found to be more and more congenial and adapted to man's nature and wants. Men have outgrown the other institutions of that period when Christianity appeared, its philosophy, its modes of warfare, its policy, its public and private economy; but Christianity has never shrunk as intellect has opened, but has always kept in advance of men's faculties, and unfolded nobler views in proportion as they have ascended. The highest powers and affections which our nature has developed, find more than adequate objects in this religion. Christianity is indeed peculiarly fitted to the more improved stages of society, to the more delicate sensibilities of refined minds, and especially to that dissatisfaction with the present state, which always grows with the growth of our moral powers and affections.
** [[William Ellery Channing]] ''The Evidences of Revealed Religion'' 14 March 1812

* The general principles, on which the Fathers achieved independence, were the only Principles in which that beautiful Assembly of young Gentlemen could Unite…And what were these general Principles? I answer, the general Principles of Christianity, in which all these Sects were United:…Now I will avow, that I then believe, and now believe, that those general Principles of Christianity, are as eternal and immutable, as the Existence and Attributes of God; and that those Principles of Liberty, are as unalterable as human Nature and our terrestrial, mundane System.
** [[John Adams]] letter to [[Thomas Jefferson]] (28 June 1813)

* Indeed, Mr. Jefferson, what could be invented to debase the ancient Christianism which Greeks, Romans, Hebrews and Christian factions, above all the Catholics, have not fraudulently imposed upon the public? Miracles after miracles have rolled down in torrents.
** [[John Adams]], letter to [[Thomas Jefferson]] (December 3, 1813). Published in ''[http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0807842303&id=SzSWYPOz6M8C&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&ots=kTAZL3ImRq&dq=%22Adams-Jefferson+letters%22&sig=tVGzBe0XVhXaF2p0FQLGy4GK6bk#PRA2-PR17,M1 Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams]'' (UNC Press, 1988), p. 404.

* God is an essence we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is gotten rid of there will never be any liberal science in the world.
** [[John Adams]], cited in {{cite video | people=[[w:Jonathan Miller|Jonathan Miller]] |title=[[w:Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief|A Brief History of Disbelief]] | medium=TV-Series | publisher=[[w:BBC Four|BBC Four]]| date=2004 | url=http://www.veoh.com/series/briefhistoryofdisbelief }} Published in ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=26V5sFshT_4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22The+Quotable+John+Adams%22#v=onepage&q=&f=false The Quotable John Adams]'' (Globe Pequot, 2008), p. 185ff.

* God … created this Speck of Dirt and the human Species for his glory: and with the deliberate design of making nine tenths of our Species miserable forever, for his glory. This is the doctrine of Christian Theologians in general: ten to one.
** [[John Adams]], letter to [[Thomas Jefferson]] (September 14, 1813). Published in ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=26V5sFshT_4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22The+Quotable+John+Adams%22#v=onepage&q=&f=false The Quotable John Adams]'' (Globe Pequot, 2008), p. 185ff.

* We have now, it Seems, a National Bible Society, to propagate the King James's Bible through all Nations. Would it not be better to apply the pious SubScriptions, to purify Christendom from the Corruptions of Christianity; than to propagate those corruptions in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America!
** [[John Adams]], letter to [[Thomas Jefferson]] (November 4, 1816). Published in ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=26V5sFshT_4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22The+Quotable+John+Adams%22#v=onepage&q=&f=false The Quotable John Adams]'' (Globe Pequot, 2008), p. 185ff.

* Do you think a Protestant Popedom is annihilated in America? Do you recollect, or have you ever attended to the ecclesiastical Strifes in Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and every part of New England? What a mercy it is that these people cannot whip and crop, and pillory and roast, as yet in the U.S.! If they could they would.
** [[John Adams]], letter to [[Thomas Jefferson]] (May 18, 1817). Published in ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=26V5sFshT_4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22The+Quotable+John+Adams%22#v=onepage&q=&f=false The Quotable John Adams]'' (Globe Pequot, 2008), p. 185ff.

* Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion?
** [[John Adams]], letter to [[Thomas Jefferson]] (May 19, 1821). Published in ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=26V5sFshT_4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22The+Quotable+John+Adams%22#v=onepage&q=&f=false The Quotable John Adams]'' (Globe Pequot, 2008), p. 185ff.

* The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity.
** [[John Adams]], letter to [[Thomas Jefferson]]. Published in ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=26V5sFshT_4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22The+Quotable+John+Adams%22#v=onepage&q=&f=false The Quotable John Adams]'' (Globe Pequot, 2008), p. 185ff.

* I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved—the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced.
** [[John Adams]], letter to [[Thomas Jefferson]]. Published in ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=26V5sFshT_4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22The+Quotable+John+Adams%22#v=onepage&q=&f=false The Quotable John Adams]'' (Globe Pequot, 2008), p. 185ff.

* They believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]] on members of the clergy who sought to establish some form of "official" Christianity in the U.S. government. Letter to Dr. [[Benjamin Rush]] (September 23, 1800); The first portion of this statement has also been widely paraphrased as "The clergy believe that any power confided in me will be exerted in opposition to their schemes, and they believe rightly."
** 

* The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ levelled to every understanding, and too plain to need explanation, saw in the mysticism of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system, which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child ; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them; and for this obvious reason, that nonsense can never be explained.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], letter to [[John Adams]] (July 5, 1814). Published in [http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php ''The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes''], Federal Edition, [[w:Paul Leicester Ford|Paul Leicester Ford]], ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, [http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-11_Bk.pdf Vol. 11], pp. 397–398.

* If the Christian religion, as I understand it, or as you understand it, should maintain its ground, as I believe it will, yet Platonic, Pythagoric, Hindoo, and cabalistic Christianity, which is Catholic Christianity, and which has prevailed for 1,500 years, has received a mortal wound, of which the monster must finally die. Yet so strong is his constitution, that he may endure for centuries before he expires.
** [[John Adams]], letter to [[Thomas Jefferson]] (July 16, 1814). From the [http://books.google.com/books?id=9G0vAAAAYAAJ&dq=works%20of%20john%20adams%20%22volume%20x%22&pg=PA100#v=onepage&q&f=false Works of John Adams, Vol. X], p.  100.

* 48: And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
:49: Some of them that stood there, when they heard that, said, This man calleth for Elias.
:50: And straightway one of them ran, and took a spunge, and filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink.
:51: The rest said, Let be, let us see whether Elias will come to save him.
:52: Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.
:53: And many women were there beholding afar off, which followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto him:
:54: Among which was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee's children.
:55: The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath day, (for that sabbath day was an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away.
:56: Then came the soldiers, and brake the legs of the first, and of the other which was crucified with him.
:57: But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs:
:58: But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.
:59: And after this Joseph of Arimathaea, being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus: and Pilate gave him leave. He came therefore, and took the body of Jesus.
:60: And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight.
:61: Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury.
:62: Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid.
:63: There laid they Jesus,
:64: And rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.
:* [[Thomas Jefferson]], The "[[w:Jefferson Bible|Jefferson Bible]]" (''[http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefJesu.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=all The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth]'') on the crucifixion, death, and burial of Jesus, which omits all Biblical passages asserting Jesus' virgin birth, miracles, divinity, and resurrection

* The priests have so disfigured the simple religion of Jesus that no one who reads the sophistications they have engrafted on it, from the jargon of Plato, of Aristotle & other mystics, would conceive these could have been fathered on the sublime preacher of the sermon on the mount.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], Letter to [[w:Benjamin Waterhouse|Benjamin Waterhouse]] (October 13, 1815). Published in [http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php ''The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes''], Federal Edition, [[w:Paul Leicester Ford|Paul Leicester Ford]], ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, [http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-11_Bk.pdf Vol. 11], p. 492.

* I, too, have made a wee-little book from the same materials, which I call the Philosophy of Jesus; it is a paradigma of his doctrines, made by cutting the texts out of the book, and arranging them on the pages of d blank book, in a certain order of time or subject. A more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen; it is a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call me infidel and themselves Christians and preachers of the gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its author never said nor saw. They have compounded from the heathen mysteries a system beyond the comprehension of man, of which the great reformer of the vicious ethics and deism of the Jews, were he to return on earth, would not recognize one feature.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], Letter to [[w:Charles Thomson|Charles Thomson]] (January 9, 1816), on his ''[http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefJesu.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=all The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth]'' (the "[[w:Jefferson Bible|Jefferson Bible]]"), which omits all Biblical passages asserting Jesus' virgin birth, miracles, divinity, and resurrection. Published in [http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php ''The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes''], Federal Edition, [[w:Paul Leicester Ford|Paul Leicester Ford]], ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, [http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-11_Bk.pdf Vol. 11], pp. 498–499.

* I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved — the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!
** [[John Adams]], letter to [[Thomas Jefferson]] (September 3, 1816). Published in ''[http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0807842303&id=SzSWYPOz6M8C&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&ots=kTAZL3ImRq&dq=%22Adams-Jefferson+letters%22&sig=tVGzBe0XVhXaF2p0FQLGy4GK6bk#PRA2-PR17,M1 Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams]'' (UNC Press, 1988), p. 488.

* I may say Christianity itself divided into it's thousands also, who are disputing, anathematizing and where the laws permit burning and torturing one another for abstractions which no one of them understand, and which are indeed beyond the comprehension of the human mind[.]
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], Letter to George Loan (November 12, 1816). Published in [http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php ''The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes''], Federal Edition, [[w:Paul Leicester Ford|Paul Leicester Ford]], ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, [http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-12_Bk.pdf Vol. 12], pp. 43.

* But the greatest of all the reformers of the depraved religion of his own country, was Jesus of Nazareth. '''Abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its lustre from the dross of his biographers, and as separable from that as the diamond from the dunghill[.] … The establishment of the innocent and genuine character of this benevolent moralist, and the rescuing it from the imputation of imposture, which has resulted from artificial systems,[footnote: e.g. The immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity; original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of Hierarchy, etc. —T.J.] invented by ultra-Christian sects, unauthorized by a single word ever uttered by him, is a most desirable object''', and one to which Priestley has successfully devoted his labors and learning. It would in time, it is to be hoped, effect a quiet euthanasia of the heresies of bigotry and fanaticism which have so long triumphed over human reason, and so generally and deeply afflicted mankind; but this work is to be begun by winnowing the grain from the chaff of the historians of his life.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], Letter to [[w:William Short|William Short (American ambassador), October 31, 1819. Published in [http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php ''The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes''], Federal Edition, [[w:Paul Leicester Ford|Paul Leicester Ford]], ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, [http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-12_Bk.pdf Vol. 12], pp. 141–142.

* '''My aim in that was, to justify the character of Jesus against the fictions of his pseudo-followers [the authors of the Gospels], which have exposed him to the inference of being an impostor. For if we could believe that he really countenanced the follies, the falsehoods and the charlatanisms which his biographers father on him, and admit the misconstructions, interpolations and theorizations of the fathers of the early, and fanatics of the latter ages, the conclusion would be irresistible by every sound mind, that he was an impostor.''' I give no credit to their falsifications of his actions and doctrines, and to rescue his character, the postulate in my letter asked only what is granted in reading every other historian. When Livy and Siculus, for example, tell us things which coincide with our experience of the order of nature, we credit them on their word, and place their narrations among the records of credible history. But when they tell us of calves speaking, of statues sweating blood, and other things against the course of nature, we reject these as fables not belonging to history. … '''That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking,''' I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], Letter to [[w:William Short (American ambassador)|William Short]], August 4, 1820, on his reason for compiling the ''Syllabus of an Estimate of the Merit of the Doctrines of Jesus''. Published in ''Thomas Jefferson: Writings'', Merrill D. Peterson, ed., New York: Library of America, 1994, pp. 1435–1440.[http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/jefferson_jesus.html]

* His [Jesus'] object was the reformation of some articles in the religion of the Jews, as taught by Moses. That sect had presented for the object of their worship, a being of terrific character, cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], Letter to [[w:William Short (American ambassador)|William Short]], August 4, 1820, on his reason for compiling the ''Syllabus of an Estimate of the Merit of the Doctrines of Jesus''. Published in ''Thomas Jefferson: Writings'', Merrill D. Peterson, ed., New York: Library of America, 1994, pp. 1435–1440.[http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/jefferson_jesus.html]

* The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man.
::1. That there is one only God, and he all perfect.
::2, That there is a future state of rewards and punishments.
::3. That to love God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself, is the sum of religion.
:These are the great points on which he endeavored to reform the religion of the Jews. But compare with these the demoralizing dogmas of Calvin.
::1. That there are three Gods.
::2. That good works, or the love of our neighbor, are nothing.
::3. That faith is every thing, and the more incomprehensible the proposition, the more merit in its faith.
::4. That reason in religion is of unlawful use.
::5. That God, from the beginning, elected certain individuals to be saved, and certain others to be damned; and that no crimes of the former can damn them; no virtues of the latter save.
:Now, which of these is the true and charitable Christian? He who believes and acts on the simple doctrines of Jesus? Or the impious dogmatists, as Athanasius and Calvin? Verily I say these are the false shepherds foretold as to enter not by the door into the sheepfold, but to climb up some other way. '''They are mere usurpers of the Christian name, teaching a counter-religion made up of the deliria of crazy imaginations, as foreign from Christianity as is that of Mahomet. Their blasphemies have driven thinking men into infidelity''', who have too hastily rejected the supposed author himself, with the horrors so falsely imputed to him. Had the doctrines of Jesus been preached always as pure as they came from his lips, the whole civilized world would now have been Christian. '''I rejoice that in this blessed country of free inquiry and belief, which has surrendered its creed and conscience to neither kings nor priests'''[.]
:* [[Thomas Jefferson]], letter to [[w:Benjamin Waterhouse|Benjamin Waterhouse]], (June 26, 1822). Published in [http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php ''The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes''], Federal Edition, [[w:Paul Leicester Ford|Paul Leicester Ford]], ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, [http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-12_Bk.pdf Vol. 12], pp. 241–243.

* The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], letter to [[John Adams]], April 11, 1823.[http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/02/04/opinion/main671823.shtml]

* I thank you, Sir, for the copy you were so kind as to send me of the revd. Mr. Bancroft's Unitarian sermons. I have read them with great satisfaction, and always rejoice in efforts to restore us to primitive Christianity, in all the simplicity in which it came from the lips of Jesus. Had it never been sophisticated by the subtleties of Commentators, nor paraphrased into meanings totally foreign to it's character, it would at this day have been the religion of the whole civilized world. But the metaphysical abstractions of Athanasius, and the maniac ravings of Calvin, tinctured plentifully with the foggy dreams of Plato, have so loaded it with absurdities and incomprehensibilities, as to drive into infidelity men who had not time, patience, or opportunity to strip it of it's meretricious trappings[.]
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], Letter to John Davis (January 18, 1824). Published in [http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php ''The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes''], Federal Edition, [[w:Paul Leicester Ford|Paul Leicester Ford]], ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, [http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-12_Bk.pdf Vol. 12], pp. 331–332.

* It is between fifty and sixty years since I read the Apocalypse, and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy, nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams. … what has no meaning admits no explanation.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], letter to [[w:Alexander Smyth|Alexander Smyth]], January 17, 1825.[http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/02/04/opinion/main671823.shtml]

* We think ourselves possessed, or, at least, we boast that we are so, of liberty of conscience on all subjects, and of the right of free inquiry and private judgment in all cases, and yet how far are we from these exalted privileges in fact! There exists, I believe, throughout the whole Christian world, a law which makes it blasphemy to deny or doubt the divine inspiration of all the books of the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to Revelations. In most countries of Europe it is punished by fire at the stake, or the rack, or the wheel. In England itself it is punished by boring through the tongue with a red-hot poker. In America it is not better; even in our own Massachusetts, which I believe, upon the whole, is as temperate and moderate in religious zeal as most of the States, a law was made in the latter end of the last century, repealing the cruel punishments of the former laws, but substituting fine and imprisonment upon all those blasphemers upon any book of the Old Testament or New. Now, what free inquiry, when a writer must surely encounter the risk of fine or imprisonment for adducing any argument for investigating into the divine authority of those books? Who would run the risk of translating Dupuis? But I cannot enlarge upon this subject, though I have it much at heart. I think such laws a great embarrassment, great obstructions to the improvement of the human mind. Books that cannot bear examination, certainly ought not to be established as divine inspiration by penal laws. It is true, few persons appear desirous to put such laws in execution, and it is also true that some few persons are hardy enough to venture to depart from them. But as long as they continue in force as laws, the human mind must make an awkward and clumsy progress in its investigations. I wish they were repealed. The substance and essence of Christianity, as I understand it, is eternal and unchangeable, and will bear examination forever, but it has been mixed with extraneous ingredients, which I think will not bear examination, and they ought to be separated.
** [[John Adams]], letter to [[Thomas Jefferson]] (January 23, 1825). Published in ''[http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0807842303&id=SzSWYPOz6M8C&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&ots=kTAZL3ImRq&dq=%22Adams-Jefferson+letters%22&sig=tVGzBe0XVhXaF2p0FQLGy4GK6bk#PRA2-PR17,M1 Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams]'' (UNC Press, 1988), p. 607.

* Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the christian religion, whose morality is so sublime and pure... are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free government.
** [[w:Charles Carroll of Carrollton|Charles Carroll]], letter to James Mchenry, November 4, 1800.

* A Christian is God Almighty's gentleman: a gentleman, in the vulgar superficial way of understanding the word, is the Devil's Christian.
** [[w:Augustus William Hare|Augustus William Hare]] and [[w:Julius Charles Hare|Julius Charles Hare]] ''Guesses at Truth'' (1827)

* The real security of Christianity is to be found in its benevolent morality, in its exquisite adaptation to the human heart, in the facility with which its scheme accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect, in the consolation which it bears to every house of mourning, in the light with which it brightens the great mystery of the grave.
** [[Thomas Babington Macaulay]] ''Edinburgh Review'' January 1830, review of [[Robert Southey|Southey's]] ''Colloquies on Society''

* Why is it that, next to the birthday of the saviour of the world, your most joyous and venerated festival returns on this day? Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the saviour? That it forms a leading event in the progress of the gospel dispensation? Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the redeemer's mission on earth? That it laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity?
** [[John Quincy Adams]], 4 July 1837 speech at Newburyport, Massachusetts.

* I have seldom met an intelligent person whose views were not narrowed and distorted by religion.
** [[James Buchanan]], cited in {{cite video | people=[[w:Jonathan Miller|Jonathan Miller]] |title=[[w:Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief|A Brief History of Disbelief]] | medium=TV-Series | publisher=[[w:BBC Four|BBC Four]]| date=2004 | url=http://www.veoh.com/series/briefhistoryofdisbelief }}

* My earlier views on the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation have become clearer and stronger with advancing years.
** [[Abraham Lincoln]], cited in {{cite video | people=[[w:Jonathan Miller|Jonathan Miller]] |title=[[w:Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief|A Brief History of Disbelief]] | medium=TV-Series | publisher=[[w:BBC Four|BBC Four]]| date=2004 | url=http://www.veoh.com/series/briefhistoryofdisbelief }}

* The law given from Sinai was a civil and municipal as well as a moral and religious code…
** [[John Quincy Adams]] ''Letters of John Quincy Adams to His Son on the Bible and its Teachings'' (Auburn: James M. Alden, 1850) letter V, p. 61

* "It is a refiner as well as a purifier of the heart; it imparts correctness of perception, delicacy of sentiment, and all those nicer shades of thought and feeling which constitute elegance of mind."
** [[Mrs. John Sanford]], ''The Lady's Manual of Moral and Intellectual Culture'' (1854) Causes of Female Influence

* There will soon be no more priests. Their work is done. They may wait awhile … perhaps a generation or two … dropping off by degrees. … A new order shall arise and they shall be the new priests of man, and every man shall be his own priest. The churches built under their umbrage shall be the churches of men and women. Through the divinity of themselves shall the kosmos and the new breed of poets be interpreters of men and women and of all events and things. They shall find their inspiration in real objects today, symptoms of the past and future. … They shall not deign to defend immorality or God or the perfection of things or liberty or the exquisite beauty and reality of the soul. They shall arise in America and and be responded to from the remainder of the earth.
** [[Walt Whitman]], Preface to the first edition of ''[[Leaves of Grass]]'' (1855). Quoted in [[w:Susan Jacoby|Susan Jacoby]]'s ''Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism'', pp. 214–215.

* I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae [wasps] with the express intention of their [larva] feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.
** [[Charles Darwin]], [http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/ce/3/part10.html letter] to [[w:Asa Gray|Asa Gray]] (22 May 1860)

* One sacrifice, however great, is insufficient to pay the debt of sin. The atonement requires constant self-immolation on the sinner’s part. That God’s wrath should be vented upon His beloved Son, is divinely unnatural. Such a theory is man-made. … The material blood of Jesus was no more efficacious to cleanse from sin when it was shed upon ‘the accursed tree,’ than when it was flowing in his veins as he went daily about his Father’s business. … His disciples believed Jesus to be dead while he was hidden in the sepulchre, whereas he was alive[.]
** [[Mary Baker Eddy]] (1867), Founder of the [[w:Church of Christ, Scientist|Church of Christ, Scientist]], ''[[w:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures|Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures]]'', pp. 23:3–6, 25:6–8, 44:28–29.

* It is plain that God does not employ drugs or hygiene, nor provide them for human use; else Jesus would have recommended and employed them in his healing. The sick are more deplorably lost than the sinning, if the sick cannot rely on God for help and the sinning can. … The universal belief in physics weighs against the high and mighty truths of Christian metaphysics. This erroneous general belief, which sustains medicine and produces all medical results, works against Christian Science[.] … If we would heal by the Spirit, we must not hide the talent of spiritual healing under the napkin of its form[.] … The tender word and Christian encouragement of an invalid, pitiful patience with his fears and the removal of them, are better than hecatombs of gushing theories, stereotyped borrowed speeches, and the doling of arguments, which are but so many parodies on legitimate Christian Science, aflame with divine Love.
** [[Mary Baker Eddy]] (1867), Founder of the [[w:Church of Christ, Scientist|Church of Christ, Scientist]] on the denial of drugs, hygiene, and medicine to the sick and their replacement by spiritual healing, ''[[w:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures|Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures]]'', pp. 143:5, 155:15.

* The theory of three person in one God (that is, a personal Trinity or Tri-unity) suggests polytheism, rather than the one ever-present I AM. … Jesus Christ is not God, as Jesus himself declared, but is the Son of God.
** [[Mary Baker Eddy]] (1867), Founder of the [[w:Church of Christ, Scientist|Church of Christ, Scientist]], ''[[w:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures|Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures]]'', pp. 256:9–11, 361:11–13.

* We teach and define that it is a dogma divinely revealed: that the Roman pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when in discharge of the office of pastor and doctor of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme apostolic authority he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church, by the divine assistance promised him in blessed Peter, is possessed of that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed that his Church should be endowed for defining doctrine regarding faith and morals; and that therefore such definitions of the Roman pontiff are irreformable of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church.
** Vatican Council, (24 April 1870)

* ''Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before. Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe; forward into battle see his banners go! ''
** Lyrics to ''[[w:Onward, Christian Soldiers|Onward, Christian Soldiers]]'' by the Reverend [[Sabine Baring-Gould]] (1871)
[[File:AgnusDeiWindow.jpg|144px|thumb|right|Are there no [[w:Moravian Church|Moravians]] in the Moon, that not a missionary has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours, to civilise civilisation and christianise Christendom? ~ [[Herman Melville]], ]]

* Are there no [[w:Moravian Church|Moravians]] in the Moon, that not a missionary has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours, to civilise civilisation and christianise Christendom?
** [[Herman Melville]], in ''[[w:White-Jacket|White-Jacket]]'' (1850), Ch. 64; this has often been quoted with modernized American spelling, rendering it ''"to civilize civilization and christianize Christendom?"''

* The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.
** [[Friedrich Nietzsche]], ''The Gay Science,'' (1882), Sec. 130

* In Christianity neither morality nor religion has even a single point of contact with reality.
** [[Friedrich Nietzsche]], ''The AntiChrist'' (1888), Sec. 15

* The very word 'Christianity' is a misunderstanding — in truth, there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross.
** [[Friedrich Nietzsche]], ''The AntiChrist'' (1888), Sec. 39

* I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, petty—I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind.
** [[Friedrich Nietzsche]] ''[[The Antichrist]]'' (1888) Sec. 62

* There is in every village a torch: The schoolteacher. And an extinguisher: The priest.
** [[Victor Hugo]], cited in {{cite video | people=[[w:Jonathan Miller|Jonathan Miller]] |title=[[w:Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief|A Brief History of Disbelief]] | medium=TV-Series | publisher=[[w:BBC Four|BBC Four]]| date=2004 | url=http://www.veoh.com/series/briefhistoryofdisbelief }}

* Civilization will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.
** [[Émile Zola]],cited in {{cite video | people=[[w:Jonathan Miller|Jonathan Miller]] |title=[[w:Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief|A Brief History of Disbelief]] | medium=TV-Series | publisher=[[w:BBC Four|BBC Four]]| date=2004 | url=http://www.veoh.com/series/briefhistoryofdisbelief }}

* Christianity, above all, consoles; but there are naturally happy souls who do not need consolation. Consequently, Christianity begins by making such souls unhappy, for otherwise it would have no power over them.
** [[André Gide]], journal entry, October 10, 1893

* The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence, from Jerusalem, of a lunatic asylum.
** [[Havelock Ellis]], cited in {{cite video | people=[[w:Jonathan Miller|Jonathan Miller]] |title=[[w:Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief|A Brief History of Disbelief]] | medium=TV-Series | publisher=[[w:BBC Four|BBC Four]]| date=2004 | url=http://www.veoh.com/series/briefhistoryofdisbelief }}

* Christianity is the solace of the poor. Christ has ever been the poor man's Friend.
** [[Ellen G. White]] cited in ''The Signs of the Times'', [http://egwtext.whiteestate.org June 21, 1899], paragraph 7

==The ''[[Book of Mormon]]'' and LDS Scriptures==

* It is my will, that in time, '''ye should take unto you wives of the [[w:Lamanites|Lamanites]] and [[w:Nephites|Nephites]], that their posterity, may become white, delightsome and just.'''
** [[Joseph Smith, Jr.|Joseph Smith]], in an unpublished 17 July 1831 polygamy revelation quoted in an 1861 letter from [[w:W.W. Phelps|W.W. Phelps]] to [[Brigham Young]]. In the 8 December 1831 ''Ohio Star'', Ezra Booth wrote of a revelation directing Mormon elders to marry with the `natives'.

===The ''Book of Mormon'' (1830)===
* Behold, I am Jesus Christ. I am the Father and the Son.
** The ''[[Book of Mormon]]'', [[s:Book of Mormon/Ether|Ether]] [[s:Book of Mormon/Ether#Chapter Three|3:14]].

* And behold, he shall be born of Mary, at Jerusalem which is the land of our forefathers, she being a virgin, a precious and chosen vessel, who shall be overshadowed and conceive by the power of the Holy Ghost, and bring forth a son, yea, even the Son of God.
** The ''[[Book of Mormon]]'', [[s:Book of Mormon/Alma|Alma]] [[s:Book of Mormon/Alma#Chapter Seven|7:10]].

* And if there were miracles wrought then, why has God ceased to be a God of miracles and yet be an unchangeable Being? And behold, I say unto you he changeth not; if so he would cease to be God; and he ceaseth not to be God, and is a God of miracles. And the reason why he ceaseth to do miracles among the children of men is because that they dwindle in unbelief, and depart from the right way, and know not the God in whom they should trust. Behold, I say unto you that whoso believeth in Christ, doubting nothing, whatsoever he shall ask the Father in the name of Christ it shall be granted him; and this promise is unto all, even unto the ends of the earth.
** The ''[[Book of Mormon]]'', [[s:Book of Mormon/Mormon|Mormon]] [[s:Book of Mormon/Mormon#Chapter Nine|9:19–21]]

* And he had caused the cursing to come upon them [the [[w:Lamanites|Lamanites]], or Native Americans], yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity … wherefore, as they were white, and exceeding fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them.
** The ''[[Book of Mormon]]'', [[s:Book of Mormon/2 Nephi|2 Nephi]] [[s:Book of Mormon/2 Nephi#Chapter Five|5:21]]

* The gospel of Jesus Christ shall be declared among them [the Native Americans] … [a]nd then shall they rejoice; … and their scales of darkness shall begin to fall from their eyes; and many generations shall not pass away among them, save they shall be a white and a delightsome people.
** The ''[[Book of Mormon]]'', [[s:Book of Mormon/2 Nephi|2 Nephi]] [[s:Book of Mormon/2 Nephi#Chapter Thirty|30:5–6]]. {{cite book | title=Book of Mormon | author=[[w:Joseph Smith, Jr.|Joseph Smith, Jr.]] | publisher=[[w:E. B. Grandin|E. B. Grandin]] |location=[[w:Palmyra|Palmyra]], [[w:New York|New York]] | date=1830 | chapter=[[w:2 Nephi|2 Nephi]] 30:5–6 | url=http://www.inephi.com/117.htm }} {{cite journal | author=Douglas Campbell| title=‘White’ or ‘Pure’: Five Vignettes. | journal=Dialogue | volume=29 | number=4 | date=Winter 1996 | pages=119–135| url=http://www.geocities.com/marcschindler1/vignette.htm }}

* Behold, that great city Zarahemla have I burned with fire, and the inhabitants thereof. And behold, that great city Moroni have I caused to be sunk in the depths of the sea, and the inhabitants thereof to be drowned. And behold, that great city Moronihah have I covered with earth, … And behold, the city of Gilgal have I caused to be sunk, and the inhabitants thereof to be buried up in the depths of the earth; Yea, and the city of Onihah and the inhabitants thereof, and the city of Mocum and the inhabitants thereof, and the city of Jerusalem and the inhabitants thereof; and waters have I caused to come up in the stead thereof, to hide their wickedness and abominations from before my face, … And behold, the city of Gadiandi, and the city of Gadiomnah, and the city of Jacob, and the city of Gimgimno, all these have I caused to be sunk, … that great city Jacobugath, which was inhabited by the people of king Jacob, have I caused to be burned with fire … the city of Laman, and the city of Josh, and the city of Gad, and the city of Kishkumen, have I caused to be burned with fire, and the inhabitants thereof, because of their wickedness in casting out the prophets, and stoning those whom I did send to declare unto them concerning their wickedness and their abominations. And because they did cast them all out, that there were none righteous among them, I did send down fire and destroy them, … And many great destructions have I caused to come upon this land, and upon this people, … Behold, I am Jesus Christ the Son of God.
** [[Jesus]], The ''[[Book of Mormon]]'', [[s:Book of Mormon/3 Nephi|3 Nephi]] [[s:Book of Mormon/3 Nephi#Chapter Nine|9:3–15]]

===Doctrine and Covenants (1835)===
* Hearken, O ye elders of my church, saith the Lord your God, who have assembled yourselves together, according to my commandments, in this land, which is the land of Missouri, which is the land which I have appointed and consecrated for the gathering of the saints. Wherefore, this is the land of promise, and the place for the city of Zion. And thus saith the Lord your God, if you will receive wisdom here is wisdom. Behold, the place which is now called Independence is the center place; and a spot for the temple is lying westward, upon a lot which is not far from the courthouse.
** [[Joseph Smith, Jr.|Joseph Smith]]'s revelation that that Jesus will come to Independence, Missouri when he returns to reign on earth, The ''[[w:Doctrine and Covenants|Doctrine and Covenants]]'', [[s:The Doctrine and Covenants/Section 57|57:1–3]], revelation through Joseph Smith, in Zion, Jackson County, Missouri (July 20, 1831).

* I was in the beginning with the Father, and am the Firstborn[.]
** [[Jesus]], The ''[[w:Doctrine and Covenants|Doctrine and Covenants]]'', [[s:The Doctrine and Covenants/Section 93|93:21]].

* Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you my servant [[Joseph Smith, Jr.|Joseph]], that inasmuch as you have inquired of my hand to know and understand wherein I, the Lord, justified my servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as also Moses, David and Solomon, my servants, as touching '''the principle and doctrine of their having many wives and concubines—''' Behold, and lo, I am the Lord thy God, and will answer thee as touching this matter. Therefore, prepare thy heart to receive and obey the instructions which I am about to give unto you; for all those who have this law revealed unto them must obey the same. For behold, '''I reveal unto you a new and an everlasting covenant; and if ye abide not that covenant, then are ye damned; for no one can reject this covenant and be permitted to enter into my glory.''' … if a man marry a wife by my word, which is my law, and by the new and everlasting covenant, and it is sealed unto them by the Holy Spirit of promise, by him who is anointed, unto whom I have appointed this power and the keys of this priesthood … Then shall ''they be gods'', because they have no end … to know the only wise and true God, and '''Jesus Christ, whom he hath sent. I am he. Receive ye, therefore, my law.''' … God commanded Abraham, and Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham to wife. And why did she do it? Because this was the law; and from Hagar sprang many people. This, therefore, was fulfilling, among other things, the promises. … Was Abraham, therefore, under condemnation? Verily I say unto you, Nay; for I, the Lord, commanded it. … Abraham received concubines, and they bore him children; and it was accounted unto him for righteousness, because they were given unto him, and he abode in my law; as Isaac also and Jacob did none other things than that which they were commanded; and because they did none other things than that which they were commanded, they have entered into their exaltation, according to the promises, and sit upon thrones, and are not angels but are gods. David also received ''many wives and concubines'', and also Solomon and Moses my servants, as also many others of my servants, from the beginning of creation until this time; and in nothing did they sin save in those things which they received not of me. … David's ''wives and concubines'' were given unto him of me … And let mine handmaid, [[w:Emma Smith|Emma Smith]], receive all those that have been given unto my servant Joseph … Let no one, therefore, set on my servant Joseph; for I will justify him … as pertaining to the law of the priesthood—'''if any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent, and if he espouse the second, and they are virgins, and have vowed to no other man, then is he justified; he cannot commit adultery for they are given unto him; for he cannot commit adultery with that that belongeth unto him and to no one else.''' '''And if he have ten virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot commit adultery, for they belong to him, and they are given unto him; therefore is he justified.''' … [T]hen shall she believe and administer unto him, or she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord your God; for I will destroy her; … if she receive not this law … she then becomes the transgressor; and he is exempt[.]
** [[Jesus]], speaking through [[Joseph Smith, Jr.|Joseph Smith]]'s 12 July 1843 polygamy revelation on plural marriage and His demand that [[w:Emma Smith|Emma Smith]], the first wife, accept all of Smith's plural wives; The ''[[w:Doctrine and Covenants|Doctrine and Covenants]]'', [[s:The Doctrine and Covenants/Section 132|132:1–4, 19, 20, 24, 34, 35, 38, 39, 52, 60–66]].

* Verily, verily, saith the Lord your Redeemer … [I]t is my will, that in time, ye should take unto you wives of the [[w:Lamanites|Lamanites]] and [[w:Nephites|Nephites]] [Native Americans], that their posterity may become white, delightsome, and Just.
** [[w:Jesus Christ|Jesus Christ]], speaking through [[w:Joseph Smith, Jr.|Joseph Smith]]'s 17 July [[w:1831 polygamy revelation|1831 polygamy revelation]], as recorded by Smith's scribe and [[w:Mormon church|Mormon Church]] elder [[w:W. W. Phelps (Mormon)|William W. Phelps]]. {{cite book | author=H. Michael Marquardt | title=The Joseph Smith Revelations: Text and Commentary | publisher=Signature Books | date=1999 | url=http://books.google.com/books?id=x5AJAAAACAAJ&dq=The+Joseph+Smith+Revelations:+Text+and+Commentary }}

===The Pearl of Great Price (1888)===
* … I saw the stars, that they were very great, and that one of them was nearest unto the throne of God; and there were many great ones which were near unto it; And the Lord said unto me: These are the governing ones; and the name of the great one is Kolob, because it is near unto me, for I am the Lord thy God: I have set this one to govern all those which belong to the same order as that upon which thou standest. … Kolob was after the manner of the Lord, according to its times and seasons in the revolutions thereof; that one revolution was a day unto the Lord, after his manner of reckoning, it being one thousand years according to the time appointed unto that whereon thou standest. This is the reckoning of the Lord's time, according to the reckoning of Kolob.
** [[w:Abraham|Abraham]], The ''[[w:Pearl of Great Price|Pearl of Great Price]]'', [[s:Pearl of Great Price/Abraham|Abraham]] [[s:Pearl of Great Price/Abraham#Chapter 3|3:2–4]]. [God explains to Abraham that on a day of the star [[w:Kolob|Kolob]] is one thousand years on earth, and is the way God measures time.]

==The Twentieth Century==

* '''Should the church be trying to erect a spiritual reign of terror over people by threatening earthly and eternal punishment on its own authority and commanding everything a person must believe and do to be saved?''' Should the church's word bring new tyranny and violent abuse to human souls? It may be that some people yearn for such servitude. But could the church ever serve such a longing? '''When holy scripture speaks of following [[Jesus]], it proclaims that people are free from all human rules, from everything which presumes, burdens, or causes worry and torment of conscience.''' In following Jesus, people are released from the hard yoke of their own laws to be under the gentle yoke of Jesus [[w:Christ|Christ]]. ... '''Jesus' commandment never wishes to destroy life, but rather to preserve, strengthen, and heal life.'''
** [[Dietrich Bonhoeffer]], in ''[[w:The Cost of Discipleship|Discipleship]]'' (1937), "Preface", as translated by Barbara Green and Reihhard Krauss (2001) 

* Nearly all the Latin Fathers are Africans - Tertullian of Carthage, the Numid Arnobius of Sicca and his pupil Lactantius, Saint Cyprian of Carthage, the African Marius Victorinus, the Berber Saint Augustine, in short, all this glorious vanguard of Latin patristic culture. What splendid gifts these were from Africa to the Church of Rome while the latter had only the works of Saint Ambrose and of Saint Jerome to put in the Balance !
**[[:w:Etienne Gilson|Etienne Gilson]], ''The Philosopher and Theology (1960)'', Random House New York, 1962, pp.195-196

*The whole of North Africa was a glory of Christendom with St. Augustine, himself a Berber, its chief ornament.
** [[:w:Paulist Fathers|Paulist Fathers]], in ''[[:w:Catholic World|Catholic World]]'', Volumes 175-176, Paulist Fathers, 1952, p.376

*The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianty's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity. Bolshevism practices a lie of the same nature, when it claims to bring liberty to men, whereas in reality it seeks only to enslave them. In the ancient world the relations between men and gods were founded on instinctive respect. It was a world enlightened by the idea of tolerance. Christianity was the first creed in the world to exterminate its adversaries in the name of love. Its key note is intolerance.
**[[:w:Adolf Hitler|Adolf Hitler]], Night of 11-12 July, ''Hitler'sTable Talk 1941-44'', Enigma books, 2008, p.8

* The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.
** [[G. K. Chesterton]] ''What's Wrong With The World'' (1910) Part One: The Homelessness Of Man, Ch. 5 : The Unfinished Temple

* '''Christian''', n. One who follows the teachings of Christ so long as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.
** [[Ambrose Bierce]], ''[[w:Devil's Dictionary|Devil's Dictionary]]'' (1911)

* Christianity is most admirably adapted to the training of slaves, to the perpetuation of a slave society; in short, to the very conditions confronting us to-day. … The rulers of the earth have realized long ago what potent poison inheres in the Christian religion. That is the reason they foster it; that is why they leave nothing undone to instill it into the blood of the people. They know only too well that the subtleness of the Christian teachings is a more powerful protection against rebellion and discontent than the club or the gun.
** [[Emma Goldman]], ''The Failure of Christianity'' (1913)

* Everywhere and always, since its very inception, Christianity has turned the earth into a vale of tears; always it has made of life a weak, diseased thing, always it has instilled fear in man, turning him into a dual being, whose life energies are spent in the struggle between body and soul. In decrying the body as something evil, the flesh as the tempter to everything that is sinful, man has mutilated his being in the vain attempt to keep his soul pure, while his body rotted away from the injuries and tortures inflicted upon it. The Christian religion and morality extols the glory of the Hereafter, and therefore remains indifferent to the horrors of the earth. Indeed, the idea of self-denial and of all that makes for pain and sorrow is its test of human worth, its passport to the entry into heaven.
** [[Emma Goldman]], ''The Failure of Christianity'' (1913)

* I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. The materialism of affluent Christian countries appears to contradict the claims of Jesus Christ that says it's not possible to worship both Mammon and God at the same time.
** [[Mohandas Gandhi]] as quoted by William Rees-Mogg in The Times [London] (4 April 2005). Gandhi here makes reference to a statement of Jesus: “No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon." (Luke 16:13)

* My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Saviour as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognised these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognise more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow my self to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice...and if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.
** [[Adolf Hitler]], Speech in Munich ([http://www.hitler.org/speeches/04-12-22.html 12 April 1922])

* I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.
** [[Bertrand Russell]] ''Why I Am Not a Christian'' (6 March 1927)

* The Spaniards in Mexico and Peru used to baptize Indian infants and then immediately dash their brains out: by this means they secured these infants went to Heaven.
** [[Bertrand Russell]] ''Why I Am Not a Christian'' (6 March 1927)

* The Catholic Church considered the Jews pestilent for fifteen hundred years, put them in ghettos, etc, because it recognized the Jews for what they were. … I recognize the representatives of this race as pestilent for the state and for the church and perhaps I am thereby doing Christianity a great service by pushing them out of schools and public functions.
** [[Adolf Hitler]], 26 April 1933, cited from Richard Steigmann-Gall's ''The Holy Reich'')

* And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary, He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God.
** [[Adolf Hitler]], ''[[w:Mein Kampf|Mein Kampf]]'' (1925), Vol. 1, p. 174

* So far as I can remember, there's not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
** [[Bertrand Russell]], cited in {{cite video | people=[[w:Jonathan Miller|Jonathan Miller]] |title=[[w:Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief|A Brief History of Disbelief]] | medium=TV-Series | publisher=[[w:BBC Four|BBC Four]]| date=2004 | url=http://www.veoh.com/series/briefhistoryofdisbelief }}

* We began to stir against slavery. Hearts grew soft, here, there, and yonder. There was no place in the land where the seeker could not find some small budding sign of pity for the slave. No place in all the land but one—the pulpit. It yielded at last; it always does. It fought a strong and stubborn fight, and then did what it always does, joined the procession—at the tail end. Slavery fell. The slavery text remained; the practice changed, that was all.
** [[Mark Twain]], ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=sujuHO_fvJgC&pg=PA568&dq=twain+%22Bible+Teaching+and+Religious+Practice%22&cd=1#v=onepage&q=twain%20%22Bible%20Teaching%20and%20Religious%20Practice%22&f=false Bible Teaching and Religious Practice]'' (1923)

* During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. the Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumb-screws, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry. Who discovered that there was no such thing as a witch—the priest, the parson? No, these never discover anything. … There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed. Hell fire is gone, but the text remains. Infant damnation is gone, but the text remains. More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the texts that authorized them remain.
** [[Mark Twain]], ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=sujuHO_fvJgC&pg=PA568&dq=twain+%22Bible+Teaching+and+Religious+Practice%22&cd=1#v=onepage&q=twain%20%22Bible%20Teaching%20and%20Religious%20Practice%22&f=false Bible Teaching and Religious Practice]'' (1923)

* Christ says, "The Son of Man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth"; and He goes on about the wailing and gnashing of teeth. It comes in one verse after another, and it is quite manifest to the reader that there is a certain pleasure in contemplating wailing and gnashing of teeth, or else it would not occur so often. Then you all, of course, remember about the sheep and the goats; how at the second coming He is going to divide the sheep from the goats, and He is going to say to the goats: "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire." He continues: "And these shall go away into everlasting fire." Then He says again, "If thy hand offend thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched, where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched." He repeats that again and again also. I must say that I think all this doctrine, that hell-fire is a punishment for sin, is a doctrine of cruelty. It is a doctrine that put cruelty into the world, and gave the world generations of cruel torture; and the Christ of the Gospels, if you could take Him as his chroniclers represent Him, would certainly have to be considered partly responsible for that.
** [[Bertrand Russell]], ''[[w:Why I am not a Christian|Why I am not a Christian]]'' (March 6, 1927) [http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell0.htm]

* There is the instance of the Gadarene swine, where it certainly was not very kind to the pigs to put the devils into them and make them rush down the hill into the sea. You must remember that He was omnipotent, and He could have made the devils simply go away; but He chose to send them into the pigs. Then there is the curious story of the fig-tree, which always rather puzzled me. You remember what happened about the fig-tree. "He was hungry; and seeing a fig-tree afar off having leaves, He came if haply He might find anything thereon; and when he came to it He found nothing but leaves, for the time of figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto it: 'No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever'.... and Peter.... saith unto Him: 'Master, behold the fig-tree which thou cursedst is withered away.'" This is a very curious story, because it was not the right time of year for figs, and you really could not blame the tree. I cannot myself feel that either in the matter of wisdom or in the matter of virtue Christ stands quite as high as some other people known to History. I think I should put Buddha and Socrates above Him in those respects.
** [[Bertrand Russell]], ''[[w:Why I am not a Christian|Why I am not a Christian]]'' (March 6, 1927) [http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell0.htm]

* That is the idea—that we should all be wicked if we did not hold to the Christian religion. It seems to me that the people who have held to it have been for the most part extremely wicked. You find this curious fact, that the more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs. In the so-called Ages of faith, when men really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness, there was the Inquisition, with all its tortures; there were millions of unfortunate women burned as witches; and there was every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion. You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress of humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or ever mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. … You may think that I am going too far when I say that that is still so, I do not think that I am. Take one fact. You will bear with me if I mention it. It is not a pleasant fact, but the churches compel one to mention facts that are not pleasant. Supposing that in this world that we live in today an inexperienced girl is married to a syphilitic man, in that case the Catholic Church says, "This is an indissoluble sacrament. You must stay together for life," and no steps of any sort must be taken by that woman to prevent herself from giving birth to syphilitic children. This is what the Catholic church says. I say that that is fiendish cruelty, and nobody whose natural sympathies have not been warped by dogma, or whose moral nature was not absolutely dead to all sense of suffering, could maintain that it is right and proper that that state of things should continue. That is only an example. There are a great many ways in which at the present moment the church, by its insistence upon what it chooses to call morality, inflicts upon all sorts of people undeserved and unnecessary suffering.
** [[Bertrand Russell]], ''[[w:Why I am not a Christian|Why I am not a Christian]]'' (March 6, 1927) [http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell0.htm]

* Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing—fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by the help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and
** [[Bertrand Russell]], ''[[w:Why I am not a Christian|Why I am not a Christian]]'' (March 6, 1927) [http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell0.htm]

* The whole conception of a God is a conception derived from the ancient oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.
** [[Bertrand Russell]], ''[[w:Why I am not a Christian|Why I am not a Christian]]'' (March 6, 1927) [http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell0.htm]

* We are a people of different faiths, but we are one. Which faith conquers the other is not the question; rather, the question is whether Christianity stands or falls. … We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity … in fact our movement is Christian. We are filled with a desire for Catholics and Protestants to discover one another in the deep distress of our own people.
** [[Adolf Hitler]], Speech in Passau, (October 27, 1928), Bundesarchiv Berlin-Zehlendorf, cited from Richard Steigmann-Gall's ''The Holy Reich''

* The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life.
** [[Adolf Hitler]], Proclamation to the German nation at Berlin ([http://www.adolfhitler.ws/lib/speeches/text/speeches.htm February 1, 1933])

* Jewish persecution only followed after [[w:Christians|Christians]] first were persecuted.
** American Catholic priest [[Charles Coughlin]]'s radio address following the Nazi [[w:Kristallnacht|Kristallnacht]] attack on German Jews, November 20, 1938. In New York, two thousand followers of [[w:Charles Coughlin|Coughlin]] chanted <blockquote>Send Jews back where they came from in leaky boats! Wait until Hitler comes over here!</blockquote> on December 18, 1938 in protest to a potential U.S. [[w:Right of asylum|asylum law]].

* I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so.
** [[Adolph Hitler]] to Gen. [[w:Gerhard Engel|Gerhard Engel]], 1941

* Today Christians … stand at the head of [this country] … I pledge that I never will tie myself to parties who want to destroy Christianity .. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit … We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press—in short, we want to burn out the ''poison of immorality'' which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of ''liberal excess'' during the past … [few] years.
** [[Adolf Hitler]], ''The Speeches of Adolph Hitler'', 1922–1939, Vol. 1 (London, Oxford University Press, 1942), pp. 871–872.

* We are determined, as leaders of the nation, to fulfill as a national government the task which has been given to us, swearing fidelity only to God, our conscience, and our Volk. … This the national government will regard its first and foremost duty to restore the unity of spirit and purpose of our Volk. It will preserve and defend the foundations upon which the power of our nation rests. It will take Christianity, as the basis of our collective morality, and the family as the nucleus of our Volk and state, under its firm protection. … May God Almighty take our work into his grace, give true form to our will, bless our insight, and endow us with the trust of our Volk.
** [[Adolf Hitler]], 1 February 1933, addressing the German nation as Chancellor for the first time, Volkischer Beobachter, 5 August 1935, from Richard Steigmann-Gall's ''The Holy Reich''

* The Catholic Church considered the Jews pestilent for fifteen hundred years, put them in ghettos, etc, because it recognized the Jews for what they were. … I recognize the representatives of this race as pestilent for the state and for the church and perhaps I am thereby doing Christianity a great service by pushing them out of schools and public functions.
** [[Adolf Hitler]], 26 April 1933, cited from Richard Steigmann-Gall's ''The Holy Reich'')

* The bishops play the hero and say they are ready to fight, even if it costs them their lives. The fight against whom? Against the people's government, of course, against our new democratic Yugoslavia ... But how is it that the bishops did not issue this kind of pastoral letter, to be read in all the churches, in the days of [[wikipedia:Ante Pavelic|Pavelic]] and the Germans, against those terrible massacres of Serbs in Croatia in which hundreds of thousands of women, children and menfolk lost their lives?
** Marshal [[Tito]], as quoted in Jasper Ridley, ''Tito: A Biography'' (Constable and Company Ltd., 1994), p. 278.

* Christian mythology incorporated the cosmological theories current eighteen centuries ago. Dante found it a slight strain to combine this mythology with the facts known in his own day. Milton found it harder. Mr. Lewis finds it impossible.
** [[J. B. S. Haldane]], [http://www.solcon.nl/arendsmilde/cslewis/reflections/e-haldane.htm review] of [[w:C. S. Lewis|C. S. Lewis]]'s ''[[w:Space Trilogy|Space Trilogy]]'' (1946)

* No egoism is so insufferable as that of the Christian with regard to his soul.
** [[William Somerset Maugham]], ''A Writer's Notebook'' (1949), entry for 1901

* Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between Communistic Atheism and Christianity.
** [[Joseph McCarthy]] speech at Wheeling, West Virginia (9 February 1950)

* My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?
** [[C. S. Lewis]] in ''[[w:Mere Christianity|Mere Christianity]]'' (1952)

* '''We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He has disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity. That is what has to be believed.'''
**[[C. S. Lewis]] in ''[[w:Mere Christianity|Mere Christianity]]" (1952)

* I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would be either a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.
** [[C. S. Lewis]] in ''[[w:Mere Christianity|Mere Christianity]]'' (1952)

* All the western theologies are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent.
** [[Tennessee Williams]], cited in {{cite video | people=[[w:Jonathan Miller|Jonathan Miller]] |title=[[w:Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief|A Brief History of Disbelief]] | medium=TV-Series | publisher=[[w:BBC Four|BBC Four]]| date=2005 | url=http://www.veoh.com/series/briefhistoryofdisbelief }}

* Christ is a new man. The new man is a Soviet man. Therefore Christ is a Soviet man!
** [[w:Justinian Marina|Justinian Marina]], [[w:Romania|Romanian]] patriarch, quoted by [[w:Czesław Miłosz|Czesław Miłosz]] in ''[[w:The Captive Mind|The Captive Mind]]'' (1953)

* I have known many Christians—Poles, Frenchman, Spaniards—who were strict Stalinists in the field of politics but who retained certain inner reservations, believing God would make corrections once the bloody sentences of the all-mighties of History were carried out. They pushed their reasoning rather far. They argue that history develops according to immutable laws that exist by the will of God; one of these laws is the class struggle; the twentieth century marks the victory of the proletariat, which is led in its struggle by the Communist Party; Stalin, the leader of the Communist Party, fulfils the law of history or in other words acts by the will of God, therefore one must obey him. Mankind can be renewed only on the Russian pattern; that is why no Christian can oppose the one—cruel, it is true—idea which will create a new kind of man over the entire planet. Such reasing is often used by clerics who are party tools. “Christ is a new man. The new man is a Soviet man. Therefore Christ is a Soviet man!” said [[w:Justinian Marina|Justinian Marina]], the [[w:Romania|Rumanian]] patriarch.
** [[Czesław Miłosz]] in ''[[w:The Captive Mind|The Captive Mind]]'' (1953)

* The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.
** [[Albert Einstein]], Gutkind Letter (3 January 1954), {{cite news | title=Childish superstition: Einstein's letter makes view of religion relatively clear | publisher=The Guardian | date=13 May 2008 | url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/may/12/peopleinscience.religion }}

* Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty -- necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels.
** [[James Baldwin]], "Letter from a Region in My Mind," ''The New Yorker'' (17 November 1962), republished as "Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind" in ''The Fire Next Time'' (1963)

* Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first — rock and roll or Christianity.
** [[John Lennon]], as quoted in ''The Evening Standard'' (London, 4 March 1966).
** After a controversy arose surrounding this remark, Lennon stated it had been taken out of context.

* You just come to them and look them straight in the eye and say, "Yes brother, I'm washed in the same blood as you." It all comes in the blood—you hear all these sayings "power in the blood," "are you washed in the blood," it's a very bloody religion.
** [[w:Marjoe Gortner|Marjoe Gortner]], one-time child evangelist who [http://youtube.com/watch?v=6O0p4ZDnDoQ exposed] the fraudulence of fundamentalist Christian sermons in America in the 1972 academy-award winning documentary ''[[w:Marjoe|Marjoe]]''. He estimates that he raised $3 million (1960s) dollars in donations.

* On this earth you must belong to the church militant or get the hell out of it. That's the right word. You're either with me or against me' There is no middle ground in this battle between Christ and the anti-Christ. If you step out of (the battle), you're worse than those boys who ran off to Norway, Sweden, those boys who deserted the government. You're deserters, rotten deserters.
** American Catholic priest [[Charles Coughlin]] (1973) [Citation Needed]

* When [Jesus] executes judgment over the world at Armageddon, he will destroy all but the faithful Jehovah's witnesses. [Jesus is then shown hurling fireballs that destroy New York City, breaking dams, causing fires, and murdering many people, including children]. Jesus, alias [[w:Archangel Michael|Michael]], will always remain invisible to those on earth, and can be seen only by the 144,000 select Jehovah's witnesses who rule with Him from heaven.
** From a [[w:Jehovah's Witness|Jehovah's Witness]]'s [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeXCQ6CrgjA cartoon] explaining Jesus.

*Examine the history of Christianity. Professing the salvation of humankind, Christianity has expanded through a tumultuous history of two thousand years, extending its influence throughout the world in the present era. Yet what has become of the Christian spirit that once cast flames of life so brilliant that, despite the most brutal persecution by the Roman empire, Roman citizens were brought to their knees before the crucified Jesus? Medieval feudal society buried Christianity alive. Even though the Reformation raised high the torch of new life, its flame could not turn back the sweeping tide of darkness. When ecclesiastic love waned, when waves of capitalistic greed surged across Christian Europe, when starving masses cried out bitterly in the slums, the promise of their salvation came not from heaven but from the earth. Its name was communism. Christianity, though it professed the love of God, had degenerated into a dead body of clergy trailing empty slogans. It was then only natural that a banner of rebellion would be raised, arguing that a merciless God who would allow such suffering could not exist. Hence, modern materialism was born. Western society became a hotbed of materialism; it was the fertile soil in which communism flourished. Christianity lost the ability to equal the successes of either communism or materialism and failed to present the truth that could conquer their theories. Christians watched helplessly as these ideologies budded and thrived in their midst and expanded their influence all over the world. What a pity this is! What is more, although Christian doctrine teaches that all humanity descended from the same parents, many citizens of Christian nations who profess this doctrine will not even sit together with their brothers and sisters of different skin colors. This illustrates the actual situation of today's Christianity, which has lost much of the power to put the words of Jesus into practice. It has become a house of lifeless rituals, a whitewashed tomb.
**[[Sun Myung Moon]], ''[[Divine Principle]]'', 1974.

* The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country.
** [[Jerry Falwell]], Sermon (4 July 1976)

* I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!
** [[Jerry Falwell]], ''America Can Be Saved!'' (1979) [[w:Sword of the Lord|Sword of the Lord Publishers]], Murfreesboro, Tennessee, pp. 52–53, quoted at [http://www.theocracywatch.org/schools2.htm "The Rise of the Religious Right in the Republican Party"]

* I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
** [[C.S. Lewis]] ''The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses'' (New York: HarperCollins, 1976) p. 140

* The [Supreme] Court, by seeking to ''equate'' Christianity with other religions, merely assaults the ''one'' faith. The Court in essence is assailing the true God by democratizing the Christian religion.
** [[John Whitehead]] ''The Separation Illusion: A Lawyer Examines the First Ammendmant'' (Mott Media 1977)

* "I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and small enough -- I call it the one immortal blemish upon the human race."
** [[Friedrich Nietzsche]]

* Yes, religion and politics do mix. America is a nation based on biblical principles. Christian values dominate our government. The test of those values is the Bible. Politicians who do not use the bible to guide their public and private lives do not belong in office.
** [[w:Beverly LaHaye|Beverly LaHaye]] quoted in ''Watch the Right: The Amazing Rise of Beverly LaHaye'' by Connie Page ''Ms.'' magazine, (February 1987)

* The long-term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise. Those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to His Church's public marks of the covenant–baptism and holy communion–must be denied citizenship, just as they were in ancient Israel.
** [[w:Gary North|Gary North]] ''Political Polytheism'' (1989)

* You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense! I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist.
** [[Pat Robertson]] ''The 700 Club'' (14 January 1991)

* Our culture is superior. Our culture is superior because our religion is Christianity and that is the truth that makes men free.
** [[Pat Buchanan]] speech to the Christian Coalition quoted in ''New York Times'' 12 September 1993 p. 37

* Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It's no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians. Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today. More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history."
** [[Pat Robertson]] interview with [[Molly Ivins]], ''Fort Worth Star-Telegram'', September 14, 1993

* The Christian community has a golden opportunity to train an army of dedicated teachers who can invade the public school classrooms and use them to influence the nation for Christ.
** [[w:D. James Kennedy|James Kennedy]] ''Education: Public Problems and Private Solutions'' (Coral Ridge Ministries 1993)

* If the resurrection of Jesus cannot be believed except by assenting to the fantastic descriptions included in the Gospels, then Christianity is doomed. For that view of resurrection is not believable, and if that is all there is, then Christianity, which depends upon the truth and authenticity of Jesus' resurrection, also is not believable.
** Bishop [[w:John Shelby Spong|John Shelby Spong]], ''Resurrection: Myth or Reality?'' (San Fransisco: HarperCollins, 1994), p. 238.

* Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.
** [[C.S. Lewis]] ''God in the Dock'' (1994) p. 101

* Atheistic secular humanists should be removed from office and Christians should be elected... Government and true Christianity are inseparable.
** [[Robert Simonds]] ''How to Elect Christians to Public Office'' (1996)

* ''Some fools in the desert With nothing else to do So scared of the dark They didn't know if they were coming or goin So they invented me And they invented You And other fools keep it all going And growing ''
** ''[http://www.randynewman.com/tocdiscography/disc_faust/lyricsfaust/ Glory Train]'' (sung by God), in ''Faust'' ([[1996]]). [[w:Randy Newman|Randy Newman]], cited in {{cite video | people=[[w:Jonathan Miller|Jonathan Miller]] |title=[[w:Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief|A Brief History of Disbelief]] | medium=TV-Series | publisher=[[w:BBC Four|BBC Four]]| date=2005 | url=http://www.veoh.com/series/briefhistoryofdisbelief }}

* Why should I spend half my Sunday hearing about how I'm going to Hell?
** [[Homer Simpson]]

* Where is my faith? Even deep down … there is nothing but emptiness and darkness … If there be God—please forgive me. When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul … How painful is this unknown pain—I have no Faith. Repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal, … What do I labor for? If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true.
** [[Mother Teresa]], ''Letters''. {{cite book | title = Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light | last = Teresa | first = Mother | last2 = Kolodiejchuk | first2 = Brian | year = 2007 | publisher = Doubleday | location = New York | isbn = 0385520379 | url = http://books.google.com/books?id=EVaPAgAACAAJ&dq=Mother+Teresa:+Come+Be+My+Light }}

===''The Dictionary of Legal Quotations'' (1904)===
:Quotes reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, ''The Dictionary of Legal Quotations'' (1904), p. 27-29.

* The Christian religion is from heaven. The gates of hell shall not prevail against it, and its professors are not afraid of its being examined. It has stood for eighteen hundred years, and it will stand long.
** Best, J., Trial of Mary Ann Carlile (1821), 1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 408.

* The Court has no fears for the safety of the Christian religion. It does not believe that the rock upon which Christianity stands can ever be shaken.
** Bayley, J., Trial of Mary Ann Carlile (1821), 1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 1050.

* The Christian religion is part of the law of the land.
** Kenyon, L.C.J., William's Case (1797), 26 How. St. Tr. 704.

* I will not suffer the Christian religion to be reviled, while I sit in this Court, and possess the power of preventing it.
** Lord Ellenborough, Baton's Case (1812), 31 How. St. Tr. 939.

* The preservation of Christianity as a national religion, is, abstracted from its own intrinsic truth, of the utmost consequence to the civil state.
** Sir William Blackstone (1765), Com. Bk. 4 Ch. iv., p. 35.

* It is certain that the Christian religion is part of the law of the land.
** Patteson, J., Rex v. Hetherington (1841), 5 Jur. (0. S.) 530.

* We have no law practised in this land but is the law of God; and so did the lawyers maintain it before the King in Henry the 8th's time, the pope's legates, and chief archbishops and bishops of England; and did then prove it to them, that there was no law practised in England but the law of God, which our ministers are loth to touch, and busy themselves to study.
** Keble, L.P., Christopher Love's Case (1651), 5 How. St. Tr. 238.

* Christianity came in here by external spiritual force, and discipline, was introduced as a custom, and is part of the law.
**Hale, C.J., Taylor's Case (1675), 1 Vent. 293; 3 Keb. 607, 621; see also Rex v. Woolston, Fitz. 64 ; 2 Str. Rep. 834.

* I apprehend that it is the duty of every Judge presiding in an English Court of justice, when he is told that there is no difference between worshipping the Supreme Being in chapel, church, or synagogue to recollect that Christianity is part of the law of England.
** Lord Hardwicke, L.C., In re Masters, &c. of the Bedford Charity (1819), 2 Swanston's Rep. 527; per Kelly, C.B., Cowan v. Milbourn (1867), 15 W. R. 751. See also Att.-Gen. v. Pearson, 3 Mer. Rep. 353.

* The second ground of the law of England is the law of God.
** Hyde, J., Manby v. Scott (1663), 1 Mod. Rep. 126.

* The laws of the realm do admit nothing against the law of God.
** Hobart, C.J., Colt v. Glover (1614), LordHobart's Rep. 149

* It is no longer true in the sense in which it was true when these ''dicta'' were uttered, that " Christianity is part of the law of the land." Nonconformists and Jews were then under penal laws, and were hardly allowed civil rights. But now, so far as I know the law, a Jew might be Lord Chancellor. Certainly he might be Master of the Rolls, and the great Judge whose loss we have all had to deplore2 might have had to try such a case, and if the view of the law supposed be correct, he would have had to tell the jury, perhaps partly composed of Jews, that it was blasphemy to deny that Jesus Christ was the Messiah, which he himself did deny, and which Parliament has allowed him to deny, and which it was part of " the law of the land " that he might, deny.
** Lord Coleridge, L.C.J., Reg. v. Ramsay and Foote (1883), 15 Cox, C. C. 235.

* The duty of relieving his fellow creature in distress is imposed on the Christian irrespective of religious doctrines and tenets, and notwithstanding that the object of charity may worship God in an erroneous manner, but in that which he believes to be most acceptable to his Creator.
** Sir John Romilly, M.R., Att.-Gen. v. Calvert (1857), 23Beav. 258.

* There is no act which Christianity forbids, that the law will not reach : if it were otherwise, Christianity would not be, as it has always been held to be, part of the law of England.
** Best, C.J., Bird v. Holbrook (1828), 4 Bing. 641.

==The Twenty-First Century==

* In 1939, in a stadium much like this, in Munich Germany, they packed it out with young men and women in brown shirts, for a fanatical man standing behind a podium named Adolf Hitler, the personification of evil. And in that stadium, those in brown shirts formed with their bodies a sign that said, in the whole stadium, "Hitler, we are yours." And they nearly took the world. Lenin once said, "give me 100 committed, totally committed men and I'll change the world." And, he nearly did. A few years ago, they took the sayings of Chairman Mao, in China, put them in a little red book, and a group of young people committed them to memory and put it in their minds and they took that nation, the largest nation in the world by storm because they committed to memory the sayings of the Chairman Mao. When I hear those kinds of stories, I think 'what would happen if American Christians, if world Christians, if just the Christians in this stadium, followers of Christ, would say 'Jesus, we are yours'? What kind of spiritual awakening would we have?
** Pastor [[Rick Warren]] (17 April [[2005]]) speech at the Anaheim Angels sports stadium, [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-wilson/follow-jesus-like-nazis-f_b_158295.html transcript and video].

* His message of peace and reconciliation under almost all circumstances is simply incompatible with Christian teachings as I interpret them. This 'turn the other cheek' business is all well and good but it's not what Jesus fought and died for. What we need to do is take the battle to the Muslim heathens and do unto them before they do unto us.
** [[Jerry Falwell]], on [[w:Jimmy Carter|Jimmy Carter]] in a radio interview on ([[4 March]] [[2002]]).

* You've got to kill the terrorists before the killing stops and I am for the President — chase them all over the world, if it takes ten years, blow them all away in the name of the Lord.
** [[Jerry Falwell]], [http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0410/24/le.01.html CNN Debate] with [[Jesse Jackson]] (24 October 2004)

* The prevalence of evil and misery has always bothered those who believe in a benevolent and omnipotent God. Sometimes God is excused by pointing to the need for free will. [[John Milton|Milton]] gives God this argument in ''Paradise Lost'': <blockquote>I formed them free, and free they must remain Till they enthrall themselves: I else must change Their nature, and revoke the high decree Unchangeable, eternal, which ordained Their freedom; they themselves ordained their fall. </blockquote> It seems a bit unfair to my relatives to be murdered in order to provide an opportunity for free will for the Germans, but even putting that aside, how does free will account for cancer? Is it an opportunity of free will for tumors?
** [[Steven Weinberg]], ''Facing Up: Science and Its Cultural Adversaries'' (2001), p. 240.

* Only a humorless tyrant could want a perpetual chanting of praises that, one has no choice but to assume, would be the innate virtues and splendors furnished him by ''his'' creator, infinite regression, drowned in praise!
** [[Christopher Hitchens]], ''Letter to a Young Contrarian'' (2001)

* "If you don't worship me you will burn forever." I always thought that was ugly.
** [[Gore Vidal]], cited in {{cite video | people=[[w:Jonathan Miller|Jonathan Miller]] |title=[[w:Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief|A Brief History of Disbelief]] | medium=TV-Series | publisher=[[w:BBC Four|BBC Four]]| date=2005 | url=http://www.veoh.com/series/briefhistoryofdisbelief }}

* [Christ of Revelation] comes forth as one who no longer seeks either friendship or love … His garments are dipped in blood, the blood of others. He descends that he may shed the blood of men.
** Isaac Haldemann, quoted by [[w:Karen Armstrong|Karen Armstrong]] (2007) in ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=abDXgrePDLUC&pg=PA209&dq=isaac+haldemann&sig=-BYPkXqdcqeeRhAMQx3PhTQw4Nc The Bible: A Biography]'', p. 209.

* I have been called arrogant myself in my time, and hope to earn the title again, but to claim that I am privy to the secrets of the universe and its creator—that's beyond my conceit. I therefore have no choice but to find something suspect even in the humblest believer[.] … Even the most humane and compassionate of the monotheisms and polytheisms are complicit in this quiet and irrational authoritarianism: they proclaim us, in Fulke Greville's unforgettable line, “Created sick—Commanded to be well.” And there are totalitarian insinuations to back this up if its appeal should fail. Christians, for example, declare me redeemed by a human sacrifice that occurred thousands of years before I was born. I didn't ask for it, and would willingly have foregone it, but there it is: I'm claimed and saved whether I wish it or not. And if I refuse the unsolicited gift? Well, there are still some vague mutterings about an eternity of torment for my ingratitude. That is somewhat worse than a Big Brother state, because there could be no hope of its eventually passing away. In any case, I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless sins onto a scapegoat and expect them to pass from me; we rightly sneer at the barbaric societies that practice this unpleasantness in its literal form. There's no moral value in the vicarious gesture anyway. As Thomas Paine pointed out, you may if you wish take on a another man's debt, or even to take his place in prison. That would be self-sacrificing. But you may not assume his actual crimes as if they were your own; for one thing you did not commit them and might have died rather than do so; for another this impossible action would rob him of individual responsibility. So the whole apparatus of absolution and forgiveness strikes me as positively immoral, while the concept of revealed truth degrades the concept of free intelligence by purportedly relieving us of the hard task of working out the ethical principles for ourselves. You can see the same immorality or ammorality in the Christian view of guilt and punishment. There are only two texts, both of them extreme and mutually contradictory. The Old Testament injunction is the one to exact and eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (it occurs in a passage of perfectly demented detail about the exact rules governing mutual ox-goring; you should look it up in its context [[http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=2&chapter=21&version=50&context=chapter Exodus 21]]). The second is from the Gospels and says that only those without sin should cast the first stone. The first is a moral basis for capital punishment and other barbarities; the second is so relativeistic and “nonjudgmental” that it would not allow the prosecution of Charles manson. Our few notions of justice have had to evolve despite these absurd codes of ultra vindictiveness and ultracompassion. … Judaism has some advantages over Christianity in that, for example, it does not proselytise—except among Jews—and it does not make the cretinous mistake of saying that the Messiah has already made his appearance. … However, along with Islam and Christianity, it does insist that some turgid and contradictory and sometimes evil and mad texts, obviously written by fairly unexceptional humans, are in fact the word of god. I think that the indispensable condition of any intellectual liberty is the realisation that there is no such thing.
** [[Christopher Hitchens]], ''Letter to a Young Contrarian'' (2001)

* There is no need to teach that stars can fall out of the sky and land on a flat Earth in order to defend our religious faith.
** President [[Jimmy Carter]], ([http://www.aibs.org/public-policy-reports/public-policy-reports-2004_02_03.html January 30, 2004])

* The [Catholic] church, as far as I know, has not endorsed any war as just since it supported General Franco's invasion of Spain to destroy the Spanish republic with a Muslim mercenary army in the thirties, on the side of Hitler.
** [[Christopher Hitchens]] with [[Andrew Sullivan]] on [[w:Tim Russert|Tim Russert]] (25 September 2004)

* Give us this day our daily bread. Oh sure. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Nobody better trespass against me. I'll tell you that. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the merciful. You mean we can't use torture? Blessed are the peacemakers. Jane Fonda? Love your enemies - Arabs? Ye cannot serve God and Mammon. The hell I can't! Look at the Reverend [[w:Pat Robertson|Pat Robertson]]. And He is as happy as a pig in shit.
** [[Kurt Vonnegut]], on [[w:The Daily Show|The Daily Show]], 15 September 2005

* Since Jesus came to the earth the first time 2,000 years ago as a Jewish male, many evangelicals believe the Antichrist will, by necessity, be a Jewish male. This belief is 2,000 years old and has no anti-Semitic roots. This is simply historic and prophetic orthodox Christian doctrine that many theologians, Christian and non-Christian, have understood for two millennia.
** [[Jerry Falwell]], quoted in "Religion, Politics a Potent Mix for Jerry Falwell" by Steve Inskeep in ''Morning Edition'' on NPR (30 June 2006)

* I said last year that Israel was entering into the most dangerous periods of its entire existence as a nation. That is intensifying this year with the loss of Sharon. … I think we need to look at the Bible and the Book of Joel. The prophet Joel makes it very clear that God has enmity against those who 'divide my land.' God considers this land to be His. You read the Bible and He says 'this is my land' and for any Prime Minister of Israel who decides he is going to carve it up and give it away, God says 'no, this is mine.' I had a wonderful meeting with Yitzhak Rabin in 1974. He was tragically assassinated, it was a terrible thing that happened but nevertheless he was dead. And now Ariel Sharon who again was a very likeable person, a delightful person to be with, I prayed with him personally, but here he's at the point of death. He was dividing God's land and I would say woe unto any Prime Minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the EU, the United Nations, or the United States of America. God says 'this land belongs to me. You'd better leave it alone.'
** [[Pat Robertson]], after [[w:Ariel Sharon|Ariel Sharon]]'s [http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Robertson_said_Sharon_being_punished_by_0105.html severe stroke] (2006)

* The god of Moses would call for other tribes, including his favorite one, to suffer massacre and plague and even extirpation, but when the grave closed over his victims he was essentially finished with them unless he remembered to curse their succeeding progeny. Not until the advent of the Prince of Peace do we hear of the ghastly idea of further punishing and torturing the dead.
** [[Christopher Hitchens]], ''[[w:God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything|God is not Great]]'', pp. 175–176 (2007)

* A thread of hatred runs through the New Testament. It is inaccurate to call the Christian scriptures anti-Semitic, as the authors were themselves Jewish, but many of them had become disenchanted with Jewish religion.
** [[w:Karen Armstrong|Karen Armstrong]] (2007), ''The Bible: A Biography'', p. 76.

* "I desire no other evidence of the truth of Christianity than the Lord's Prayer."
** [[Anne Louise Germaine de Staël]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 138.

==Unsourced==

* The greatest source of atheism in the world today is Christians, who acknowledge Jesus with their lips but deny Him by their lifestyles. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.
** [[Brennan Manning]]

* Christianity demands the crucifixion of the intellect.
** [[Søren Kierkegaard]]

* Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love"
** [[H.L. Mencken]]

* I am a Muslim and a Hindu and a Christian and a Jew and so are all of you.
** [[Mohandas Gandhi]]

* I would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol was a guy nailed to two pieces of wood.
** [[George Carlin]]

* If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being.
** [[Jerry Falwell]]

* It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded not by religionists, but by christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. For that reason alone, people of other faiths have been afforded freedom of worship here.
** [[Patrick Henry]], 1776

* Let us be done with being anti-anybody. Let us become pro-Christ and pro-love! Let us stop talking against this person and that, this nation and that. Let us begin to live Christianity!
** [[Catherine Doherty]]

* My parents would always tell me that I should not hate the white man, but that it was my duty as a Christian to love all.
** [[Martin Luther King, Jr.]]

* Our goal must be simple. We must have a Christian nation built on God's law, on the ten Commandments. No apologies.
** [[Randall Terry]]

* Raising your children under Americanism or any other principles other than true Christianity is child abuse.
** [[Robert T. Lee]] (Society for the Practical Establishment of the Ten Commandments)

* This is God's world, not Satan's. Christians are the lawful heirs, not non-Christians.
** [[Gary North]] (Institute for Christian Economics)

* We don't have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand.
** [[James Watt]] (Secretary of the Interior in the Reagan Admin)

* We need a legal strategy which protects the rights of those of us who hold Christian convictions which will afford us the opportunity to contend once again for the mind of this culture.
** [[Keith A. Fournier]] (Catholic Way)

* We recognize no sovereign But God, and no king But Jesus.
** [[John Adams]] and [[John Hancock]], April 18,1775

* We've staked our future on our abilty to follow the ten commandments with all our heart.
** [[James Madison]]

* When the Christian majority takes over this country, there will be no satanic churches, no more free distribution of pornography, no more talk of rights for homosexuals. After the Christian majority takes control, pluralism will be seen as immoral and evil and the state will not permit anybody the right to practice evil.
** [[Gary Potter]] (Catholics for Christian Political Action)

* It is the truth divine, speaking to our whole being: occupying, calling into action, and satisfying man's every faculty, supplying the minutest wants of his being, and speaking in one and the same moment to his reason, his conscience and his heart. It is the light of reason, the life of the heart, and the strength of the will.
** [[Pierre]]

* There was a book that said the world was created in seven days. Best seller too.
** Anonymous

==See also==
{{Similarlinks}}
{{wikiversity|God and Enlightenment}}
{{wiktionary}}

*[[Atheism]]
*[[Hinduism]]
*[[Islam]]
*[[Jesus]]
*[[Judaism]]

[[Category:Belief]]

[[Category:Christianity|*]]

[[cs:Křesťanství]]
[[de:Christentum]]
[[el:Χριστιανισμός]]
[[es:Cristianismo]]
[[eo:Kristanismo]]
[[fr:Christianisme]]
[[ko:기독교]]
[[it:Cristianesimo]]
[[he:נצרות]]
[[nn:Kristendom]]
[[pl:Chrześcijaństwo]]
[[pt:Cristianismo]]
[[sk:Kresťanstvo]]

Religion

2011-03-27T16:01:40Z

Nobody60: /* External links */

[[File:LuMaxArt Golden Family With World Religions .jpg|144px|thumb|right|It is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be judged. ~ [[Thomas Jefferson]] ]]
'''[[w:Religion|Religion]]''' is a word which refers to approaches to human spirituality which usually encompass a set of narratives, symbols, beliefs and practices, often with a supernatural or transcendent quality, that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power or truth. It may be expressed through prayer, ritual, meditation, music and art, among other things. It may focus on specific supernatural, metaphysical, and moral claims about reality (the cosmos and human nature) which may yield a set of religious laws, ethics, and a particular lifestyle. Religion also encompasses ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and religious experience. The term "religion" refers to both the personal practices related to communal faith and to group rituals and communication stemming from shared conviction.

:''See also [[Religiousness]] and [[Irreligiousness]] for additional quotations on religion.''

__NOTOC__
[[#A|A]] - [[#B|B]] - [[#C|C]] - [[#D|D]] - [[#E|E]] - [[#F|F]] - [[#G|G]] - [[#H|H]] - [[#I|I]] - [[#J|J]] - [[#K|K]] - [[#L|L]] - [[#M|M]] - [[#N|N]] - [[#O|O]] - [[#P|P]] -[[#Q|Q]] - [[#R|R]] - [[#S|S]] - [[#T|T]] - [[#U|U]] - [[#V|V]] - [[#W|W]] - [[#X|X]] - [[#Y|Y]] - [[#Z|Z]] - [[#Anon|Anon]]

==Sourced==
:Alphabetized by author or source

=== A ===
[[File:Collage.jpg|144px|thumb|right|Children of men! the unseen Power, whose eye Forever doth accompany mankind, Hath look'd on no religion scornfully That men did ever find. ~ [[Matthew Arnold]] ]]

* "'''In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.'''" It's an oral history. It was passed down, word-of-mouth, father to son, from Adam to Seth, from Seth to Enos, from Enos to Cainan, for 40 generations, a growing, changing, story, it was handed down, word-of-mouth, father to son. Until [[Moses]] finally gets it down on lambskin. But lambskins wear out, and need to be recopied. Copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of an oral history passed down through 40 generations. From Hebrew it's translated into Arabic, from Arabic to Latin, from Latin to Greek, from Greek to Russian, from Russian to German, from German to an old form of English that you could not read. '''Through 400 years of evolution of the English language to the book we have today, which is: a translation of a translation of a translation of a translation of a translation of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of an oral history passed down through 40 generations.''' You can't put a grocery list through that many translations, copies, and re-telling, and not expect to have some big changes in the dinner menu when the kids make it back from Kroger's. And yet people are killing each other over this written word. '''Here's a tip: If you're killing someone in the name of God — you're missing the message.'''
** [[w:Nick Annis|Nick Annis]] in the preface to ''God is Good''.

* '''The religious persecution of the ages has been done under what was claimed to be the command of God. I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do to their fellows, because it always coincides with their own desires.'''
** [[Susan B. Anthony]], in [http://www.thelizlibrary.org/undelete/library/library005.html a defense] of [[Elizabeth Cady Stanton]] against a motion to repudiate her ''Woman's Bible'' at a meeting of the National-American Woman Suffrage Association 1896 Convention, HWS, IV (1902), p. 263

* '''Children of men! the unseen Power, whose eye Forever doth accompany mankind, Hath look'd on no religion scornfully That men did ever find.'''
** [[Matthew Arnold]], ''Progress''. St. 10.

* '''Religion is, by definition, interpretation; and by definition, all interpretations are valid. However, some interpretations are more reasonable than others.'''
** [[w:Reza Aslan|Reza Aslan]], in [http://east-westdialogue.blogspot.com/2007/03/from-islam-pluralist-democracies-will.html "From Islam, Pluralist Democracies Will Surely Grow" in ''The Chronicle of Higher Education'' (11 March 2005)]

=== B ===
[[File:DCmontage2.jpg|144px|thumb|right|The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion. ~ [[Joel Barlow]] ]]
[[File:Editor at large 1206.svg|144px|thumb|right|At the center of religion is love. I love you and I forgive you. I am like you and you are like me. I love all people. I love the world. I love creating. Everything in our life should be based on love. ~ [[Ray Bradbury]] ]]
[[File:Rainbow droplet 630x441.jpg|144px|thumb|right|All Faith is false, all Faith is true: Truth is the shattered mirror strown in myriad bits; while each believes his little bit the whole to own. ~ [[Richard Francis Burton]] ]]

* There was never law, or sect, or opinion did so much magnify goodness, as the Christian religion doth.
** [[Francis Bacon]], ''Essays. Of Goodness, and Goodness of Nature'' (1625)

* '''The greatest vicissitude of things amongst men, is the vicissitude of sects and religions.'''
** [[Francis Bacon]], ''Essays. Of Vicissitude of Things'' (1625)

* All religions, with their gods, demigods, prophets, messiahs and saints, are the product of the fancy and credulity of men who have not yet reached the full development and complete possession of their intellectual powers.
** [[Mikhail Bakunin]], ''God and the State'' (1871)

* '''The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.'''
** [[Joel Barlow]], in the Treaty of Tripoli, arranged during the presidential term of [[George Washington]], and signed by President [[John Adams]] (1796)

* '''One's religion is whatever he is most interested in.'''
** [[J.M. Barrie]] ''The Twelve-Pound Look'' (1910)

* Men use religion just as they use buoys and life-preservers; they do not intend to navigate the vessel with them, but they keep just enough of them on hand to float into a safe harbor when a storm comes up and the vessel is shipwrecked; and it is only then that they intend to use them. I tell you, you will find air-holes in all such life-preservers as that.
** [[Henry Ward Beecher]], ''595 Pulpit Pungencies'' (1866) evening sermon, 12 June 1859

* '''By religion I do not mean outward things, but inward states, I mean perfected manhood.''' I mean the quickening of the soul by the beatific influence of the divine Spirit in truth, and love, and sympathy, and confidence, and trust.
** [[Henry Ward Beecher]], ''The sermons of Henry Ward Beecher: in Plymouth church, Brooklyn'' (1874)

* ''Religio peperit divitias et filia devoravit matrem.''
** Religion brought forth riches, and the daughter devoured the mother.
** Saying of [[Bernard of Clairvaux]]. Religio censum peperit, sed filia matri caussa suæ leti perniti osa fuit. See Reusner's ''Ænigmatographia''. Ed. 2. 1602. Pt. I. Page 361. Heading of an epigram ascribed to Henricus Meibomius.

* The primary epiphenomenona of any religion’s foundation are the production and flourishment of hypocrisy, megalomania and psychopathy, and the first casualties of a religion’s establishment are the intentions of its founder.
** [[w:Louis de Bernières|Louis de Bernières]], in ''Birds Without Wings''

* Am I my brother's keeper?
**''The Bible, [[Genesis]]'' 4:9

* '''Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.'''
** ''The Bible, [[w:Epistle of James|James]]'' 1:27 (New International Version)

* '''Religion''', n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
** [[Ambrose Bierce]], ''The Devil's Dictionary''

* The British finally seem to have taken to heart words attributed to an anonymous British elder statesman in the 19th century: ''We must preserve the Church of England. It's our only defense against real religion.''
** [[w:Rob Blackhurst|Rob Blackhurst]], in [http://robblackhurst.com/2006/christmas-iht/ "Britain's Unholy War Over Christmas" in ''The International Herald Tribune'' (23 December 2006)]

* In short, in whatever light we view religion, it appears solemn and venerable. It is a temple full of Majesty, to which the worshiper may approach with comfort, in the hope of ''obtaining grace and finding mercy;'' but where they cannot enter without being inspired with awe. If we may be permitted to compare spiritual with natural things, religion resembles not those scenes of natural beauty where every object smiles. It cannot be likened to the gay landscape or the flowery field. It resembles more the august and sublime appearances of Nature; the lofty mountain, the expanded ocean, and the starry firmament; at the sight of which the mind is at once overawed and delighted; and, from the union of grandeur with beauty, derives a pleasing but a serious emotion.
** [[Hugh Blair]], ''The Works: Sermons'' (1820) Sermon XIV "On the Mixture of Joy and Fear in Religion"

* '''The spirit of true religion breathes gentleness and affability; it gives a native, unaffected ease to the behavior.''' It is social, kind, cheerful; far removed from the cloudy and illiberal superstition which clouds the brow, sharpens the temper, and dejects the spirit.
** [[Hugh Blair]], ''The Works: Sermons'' (1820) Sermon X "On the Duties of the Young"

* I went to the Garden of Love And saw what I never had seen: A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green. And The Gates of this Chapel were shut, And "Thou Shalt Not" writ over the door... And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds, And binding with briars my joys & desires.
** [[William Blake]], ''The Garden of Love''

* ''Tant de fiel entre-t-il dans l'âme des dévots?''
** Can such bitterness enter into the heart of the devout?
** [[Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux]], ''Lutrin''. I. 12

* '''At the center of religion is love.''' I love you and I forgive you. I am like you and you are like me. I love all people. I love the world. I love creating. Everything in our life should be based on love.
** [[Ray Bradbury]], as quoted in [http://articles.cnn.com/2010-08-02/living/Bradbury_1_ray-bradbury-dandelion-wine-sam-weller?_s=PM:LIVING "Sci-fi legend "Ray Bradbury on God, 'monsters and angels'" by John Blake, ''CNN : Living'' (2 August 2010)], p. 1

* You humans, most of you, subscribe to this policy of an eye for an eye, a life for a life, which is known throughout the universe for its… ''stupidity''. Even your [[Gautama Buddha|Buddha]] and your [[Jesus|Christ]] had quite a different vision; but nobody's paid much attention to them, not even the Buddhists or the Christians.
** [[w:Gene Brewer|Gene Brewer]] and [[w:Charles Leavitt|Charles Leavitt]], lines for the character "prot" in ''[[K-PAX]]''

* '''Vain are the thousand creeds That move men's hearts: unutterably vain'''; Worthless as withered weeds, Or idlest froth amid the boundless main, To waken doubt in one Holding so fast by Thine infinity; So surely anchored on The steadfast Rock of immortality.
** [[Emily Brontë]], ''No Coward Soul Is Mine'' (1848)

* '''Persecution is a bad and indirect way to plant religion.'''
** Sir [[Thomas Browne]], ''Religio Medici''. XXV.

* ''Curva trahit mites, pars pungit acuta rebelles.''
** The crooked end obedient spirits draws, The pointed, those rebels who spurn at Christian laws.
** [[w:Thomas Broughton|Thomas Broughton]], ''Dictionary of all Religions''. (1756). The croisier is pointed at one end and crooked at the other. "Curva trahit, quos virga regit, pars ultima pungit"; is the Motto on the Episcopal staff said to be preserved at Toulouse.

* Speak low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet From out the hallelujahs, sweet and low, Lest I should fear and fall, and miss Thee so Who art not missed by any that entreat.
**[[Elizabeth Barrett Browning]], ''Comfort''.

* But the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance, it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant religion.
** [[Edmund Burke]], ''Speech on Conciliation with America'' (1774)

* The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.
** [[Edmund Burke]], ''A Vindication of Natural Society'' (1756) Preface. Vol. I. p. 7

* The body of all true religion consists, to be sure, in obedience to the will of the Sovereign of the world, in a confidence in His declarations, and in imitation of His perfections.
** [[Edmund Burke]], ''Reflections on the Revolution in France'' (1790)

* '''People differ in their discourse and profession about these matters, but men of sense are really but of one religion.''' — "What religion?" — the Earl said, "'''Men of sense never tell it.'''"
**[[w:Gilbert Burnet|Gilbert Burnet]], ''History of his Own Times''. Vol. I. Bk. I. Sec. 96. Footnote by Onslow, referring to Earl of Shaftesbury.

* An Atheist's laugh's a poor exchange For Deity offended!
**[[Robert Burns]], ''Epistle to a Young Friend''.

*G__ knows I'm no the thing I should be, Nor am I even the thing I could be, But twenty times I rather would be An atheist clean, Than under gospel colours hid be, Just for a screen.
**[[Robert Burns]], ''Epistle to Rev. John M'Math''. St. 8.

* '''All Faith is false, all Faith is true: Truth is the shattered mirror strewen In myriad bits; while each believes his little bit the whole to own.'''
** [[Richard Francis Burton]], in ''[[w:The Kasidah|The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî]]'' (1870), Section VI

* One religion is as true as another.
** [[Robert Burton]], ''Anatomy of Melancholy''. Bk. III. Sec. IV. Memb. 2. Subsec. 1.

* It is only religion, the great bond of love and duty to God, that makes any existence valuable or even tolerable. Without this, to live were only to graze.… Without this, the beauties of the world are but splendid gewgaws, the stars of heaven glittering orbs of ice, and, what is yet far worse and colder, the trials of existence profitless and unadulterated miseries.
** [[Horace Bushnell]], ''Sermons for the New Life'' (1859) ch. XI, "Obligation a Privilege" pp. 221-222

* What but the mighty mastership of religion has ever led a people up through civil wars and revolutions into a regenerated order and liberty? What has planted colonies for a great history but religion? The most august and beautiful structures of the world have been temples of religion; crystallizations, we may say, of worship. The noblest charities, the best fruits of learning, the richest discoveries, the best institutions of law and justice, every greatest thing the world has seen, represents more or less directly the fruitfulness and creativeness of religious talents.
** [[Horace Bushnell]], ''Sermons for the New Life'' (1859) ch. IX, "Extirpated by Disguise" p. 170

* As if Religion were intended For nothing else but to be mended.
** [[Samuel Butler (poet)|Samuel Butler]], ''Hudibras''. Pt. I. Canto I. L. 205.

* Synods are mystical Bear-gardens, Where Elders, Deputies, Church-wardens, And other Members of the Court, Manage the Babylonish sport.
** [[Samuel Butler (poet)|Samuel Butler]], ''Hudibras''. Pt. I. Canto III. L. 1,095.

* So 'ere the storm of war broke out, Religion spawn'd a various rout Of petulant capricious sects, The maggots of corrupted texts, That first run all religion down, And after every swarm its own.
** [[Samuel Butler (poet)|Samuel Butler]], ''Hudibras''. Pt. III. Canto II. L. 7.

* There's naught, no doubt, so much the spirit calms as rum and true religion.
** [[Lord Byron]], ''Don Juan''. Canto II. St. 34.

=== C ===

* '''Religion is not a perpetual moping over good books.''' Religion is not even prayer, praise, holy ordinances — these are necessary to religion — no man can be religious without them. But religion, I repeat, is, mainly and chiefly the glorifying God amid the duties and trials of the world; the guiding of our course amid adverse winds and currents of temptation by the star-light of duty and the compass of divine truth, the bearing up manfully, wisely, courageously, for the honor of Christ, our great Leader, in the conflict of life.
** [[w:John Caird|John Caird]], ''Religion in Common Life'' (1856) pp. 24-25

* '''Carry religious principles into common life, and common life will lose its transitoriness.''' "The world passes away!" The things seen are temporal. Soon business, with all its cares and anxieties — the whole "unprofitable stir and fever of the world" — will be to us a thing of the past. But '''religion does something better than sigh and moan over the perishableness of earthly things; it finds in them the seeds of immortality.'''
** [[w:John Caird|John Caird]], ''Religion in Common Life'' (1856) pp. 55-56

* His religion at best is an anxious wish; like that of Rabelais, "a great Perhaps".
** [[Thomas Carlyle]], ''Essays'' (1828) "Burns"

* '''On the whole we must repeat the often repeated saying, that it is unworthy a religious man to view an irreligious one either with alarm or aversion; or with any other feeling than regret, and hope, and brotherly commiseration.'''
** [[Thomas Carlyle]], ''Essays''. Voltaire.

* It seems to me a great truth … that human things can not stand on selfishness, mechanical utilities, economics, and law-courts; that if there be not a religious element in the relations of men, such relations are miserable, and doomed to ruin.
** [[Thomas Carlyle]], letter to [[Thomas Chalmers]] (11 October 1841)

* The world is full, also, of great traditional books tracing the history of man (but focused narrowly on the local group) from the age of mythological beginnings, through periods of increasing plausibility, to a time almost within memory, when the chronicles begin to carry the record, with a show of rational factuality, to the present. Furthermore, just as all primitive mythologies serve to validate the customs, systems of sentiments, and political aims of their respective local groups, so do these great traditional books. On the surface they may appear to have been composed as conscientious history. In depth they reveal themselves to have been conceived as myths: poetic readings of the mysteries of life from a certain interested point of view. '''But to read a poem as a chronicle of fact is — to say the least — to miss the point. To say a little more, it is to prove oneself a dolt.'''
** [[Joseph Campbell]], in ''Occidental Mythology: The Masks of God'' (1964)

* The church has been so harsh with heretics only because she deemed that there is no worse enemy than a child who has gone astray. But the record of Gnostic effronteries and the persistence of Manichean currents have contributed more to the construction of orthodox dogma than all the prayers.
**[[Albert Camus]], in "Absurd Creation" in ''The Myth of Sisyphus'' (1942), as translated by Justin O'Brien,Vantage International, 1991, ISBN 0-679-73373-6, p. 113

* Religion… is such a belief of the Bible as maintains a living influence on the heart.
** [[Richard Cecil]], ''The works of the Rev. Richard Cecil'' vol. 3 (1825) "On Scriptures", p. 359

* '''If you are seeking the comforts of religion rather than the glory of our Lord, you are on the wrong track. The Comforter meets us unsought in the path of duty.''' There is something in religion, when rightly comprehended, that is masculine and grand. It removes those little desires which are "the constant hectic of a fool."
** [[Richard Cecil]], ''The works of the Rev. Richard Cecil'' vol. 3 (1825) p. 290

* '''O Heavenly Father! convert my religion from a name to a principle.''' Bring all my thoughts and movements into an habitual reference to Thee.
** [[Thomas Chalmers]], diary entry, 14 March 1812

* The sum and substance of the preparation needed for a coming eternity is that you believe what the Bible tells you, and do what the Bible bids you.
** [[Thomas Chalmers]], ''Lectures on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans'' vol. 1 (1837) pp. 29-30

* Religion is faith in an Infinite Creator, who delights in and enjoins that Rectitude which conscience commands us to seek, This conviction gives a Divine Sanction to duty.
** [[William Ellery Channing]], ''The Perfect Life'' (1873) "The Perfecting Power of Religion"

* '''The true office of religion is to bring out the whole nature of man in harmonious activity…'''
** [[William Ellery Channing]], ''The Perfect Life'' (1873) "The Perfecting Power of Religion"

* It was religion which, by teaching men their near relation to God, awakened in them the consciousness of their importance as individuals. It was the struggle for religious rights which opened men's eyes to all their rights. It was resistance to religious usurpation which led men to withstand political oppression. It was religious discussion which roused the minds of all classes to free and vigorous thought.
** [[William Ellery Channing]], ''Self-Culture'' (1838)

* I realized that ritual will always mean throwing away something; Destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.
** [[G. K. Chesterton]], ''Tremendous Trifles. Secret of a Train''.

* The rigid saint, by whom no mercy's shown To saints whose lives are better than his own, Shall spare thy crimes; and Wit, who never once Forgave a brother, shall forgive a dunce.
** [[Charles Churchill]], ''Epistle to Hogarth'' (July 1763) l. 25.

* ''Deos placatos pictas efficiet et sanctitas.''
** '''Piety and holiness of life will propitiate the gods.'''
** [[Cicero]], ''De Officiis''. II. 3.

* ''Res sacros non modo manibus attingi, sed ne cogitatione quidem violari fas fuit.''
** Things sacred should not only be untouched with the hands, but unviolated in thought.
**[[Cicero]], ''Orationes in Verrem''. II. 4. 45.

* Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses.
** [[Arthur C. Clarke]], The Onion AV Club interview (18th February 2004)

* Forth from his dark and lonely hiding place, (Portentous sight!) the owlet atheism, Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon, Drops his blue-fring'd lids, and holds them close, And hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven, Cries out, "Where is it?"
**[[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]], ''Fears in Solitude''. ll. 81-86 (1798)

* Too soon did the Doctors of the Church forget that the ''Heart'', the ''Moral'' Nature, was the Beginning and the End; and that Truth, Knowledge, and insight were comprehended in its expansion.
** [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]], ''Aids to Reflection'' (1825)

* Life and the Universe show spontaneity; Down with ridiculous notions of Deity! Churches and creeds are lost in the mists; Truth must be sought with the Positivists.
**[[Mortimer Collins]], ''The Positivists''.

* '''Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; anything but — live for it.'''
**[[C. C. Colton]], ''Lacon''. Vol. I XXV.

* The best thing about religion is that it’s so transparently absurd it can’t possibly last forever. I’m convinced it will only take a small shift in human consciousness for it to be laughed off the planet, and I hope I’m still around when that happens.
** [[Pat Condell]], in [http://freethinker.co.uk/2008/02/27/laughing-religion-off-the-planet-an-interview-with-pat-condell/ Laughing religion off the planet - an interview with Pat Condell] (27 February 2008)

* Religion, if in heavenly truths attired, Needs only to be seen to be admired.
**[[William Cowper]], ''Expostulation''. L. 492.

* The Cross! There, and there only (though the deist rave, And atheist, if Earth bears so base a slave); There and there only, is the power to save.
**[[William Cowper]], ''The Progress of Error''. L. 613.

* '''Religion does not censure or exclude Unnumbered pleasures, harmlessly pursued.'''
**[[William Cowper]], ''Retirement''. L. 782.

* Pity! Religion has so seldom found A skilful guide into poetic ground! The flowers would spring where'er she deign'd to stray And every muse attend her in her way.
** [[William Cowper]], ''Table Talk''. L. 688

=== D ===

* Sacred religion! Mother of Form and Fear!
** [[Samuel Daniel]], ''Musophilus''. St. 47.

* In the latter case it is often government that organizes the conquest, and religion that justifies it.
** [[Jared Diamond]], in ''Guns, Germs, and Steel'' (1997) "From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy", p. 266 ISBN 978-0-393-31755-8

* "As for that," said Waldenshare, "'''sensible men are all of the same religion.'''" "Pray what is that?" inquired the Prince. "'''Sensible men never tell.'''"
** [[Benjamin Disraeli]], ''Endymion''. Ch. LXXXI. Borrowed from Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper (Lord Shaftesbury.)

* Religion, in its most general view, is such a Sense of God in the soul, and such a conviction of our obligations to Him, and of our dependence upon Him, as shall engage us to make it our great care to conduct ourselves in a manner which we have reason to believe will be pleasing to Him.
** [[Philip Doddridge]], in [http://www.ccel.org/d/doddridge/rise ''The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul'']

* Our love, when it is without counting the cost, leads the other toward God. Our love makes straight the paths of the Lord.
** [[Catherine Doherty]] in [http://www.madonnahouse.org/mandate/living.html "Living The Little Mandate" in ''Unfinished Pilgrimage: The Little Mandate and How It Came to Be'']

* '''Religious experiences which are as real as life to some may be incomprehensible to others.'''
** [[William O. Douglas]], in ''United States v. Ballard'' (1944)

* You can and you can't — You shall and you shan't — You will and you won't — And you will be damned if you do — And you will be damned if you don't.
** [[w:Lorenzo Dow|Lorenzo Dow "Crazy Dow"]], defining [[w:Calvinism|Calvinism]] in ''Reflections on the Love of God''

* ''Gardez-vous bien de lui les jours qu'il communie.''
** Beware of him the days that he takes Communion.
** [[w:Jacques Du Lorens|Jacques Du Lorens]], ''Satires''. I.

* ''L'institut des Jesuites est une épée dont la poigée est à Rome et la pointe partout.''
** The Order of Jesuits is a sword whose handle is at Rome and whose point is everywhere.
**[[w:André M. J. Dupin|André M. J. Dupin]], ''Procès de tendance'' (1825). Quoted by him as found in a letter to Mlle. Voland from Abbé Raynal. Rousseau quotes it from D'Aubigné–Anti-Coton, who ascribes it to the saying of the Society of Jesus which is "a sword, the blade of which is in France, and the handle in Rome."

=== E ===
[[File:ReligijneSymbole.svg|144px|thumb|right|If the believers of the present-day religions would earnestly try to think and act in the spirit of the founders of these religions then no hostility on the basis of religion would exist among the followers of the different faiths. ~ [[Albert Einstein]] ]]
[[File:Love heart.jpg|144px|thumb|right|I see that sensible men and conscientious men all over the world were of one religion. ~ [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]] ]]

* '''Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in point of fact, religious.'''
** [[Albert Einstein]], in response to atheist, [[w:Alfred Kerr|Alfred Kerr]] in the winter 1927, who after deriding ideas of God and religion at a dinner party in the home of the publisher [[w:Samuel Fischer|Samuel Fischer]], had queried him "I hear that ''you'' are supposed to be deeply religious" as quoted in ''The Diary of a Cosmopolitan'' (1971) by H. G. Kessler 

* For any one who is pervaded with the sense of causal law in all that happens, who accepts in real earnest the assumption of causality, the idea of a Being who interferes with the sequence of events in the world is absolutely impossible. Neither the religion of fear nor the social-moral religion can have any hold on him.
** [[Albert Einstein]], as quoted in ''Has Science Discovered God? : A Symposium of Modern Scientific Opinion'' (1931) by Edward Howe Cotton, p. 101

* '''All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.''' It is no mere chance that our older universities developed from clerical schools. Both churches and universities — insofar as they live up to their true function — serve the ennoblement of the individual. They seek to fulfill this great task by spreading moral and cultural understanding, renouncing the use of brute force. The essential unity of ecclesiastical and secular institutions was lost during the 19th century, to the point of senseless hostility. Yet there was never any doubt as to the striving for culture. No one doubted the sacredness of the goal. It was the approach that was disputed.
** [[Albert Einstein]], "Moral Decay" (1937); Later published in ''Out of My Later Years'' (1950)

* '''While religion prescribes brotherly love in the relations among the individuals and groups, the actual spectacle more resembles a battlefield than an orchestra.''' Everywhere, in economic as well as in political life, the guiding principle is one of ruthless striving for success at the expense of one's fellow men. This competitive spirit prevails even in school and, destroying all feelings of human fraternity and cooperation, conceives of achievement not as derived from the love for productive and thoughtful work, but as springing from personal ambition and fear of rejection. '''There are pessimists who hold that such a state of affairs is necessarily inherent in human nature; it is those who propound such views that are the enemies of true religion, for they imply thereby that religious teachings are Utopian ideals and unsuited to afford guidance in human affairs.''' The study of the social patterns in certain so-called primitive cultures, however, seems to have made it sufficiently evident that such a defeatist view is wholly unwarranted.
** [[Albert Einstein]], in [http://www.einsteinandreligion.com/irrec.html "Religion and Science: Irreconcilable?"] in ''The Christian Register'' (June 1948); republished in ''Ideas and Opinions'' (1954)

* '''I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one.''' You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. '''I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.'''
** [[Albert Einstein]], in a letter to Guy H. Raner Jr. (28 September 1949), from article by Michael R. Gilmore in ''Skeptic'' magazine, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1997)

* '''A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space.''' He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish it but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of piece of mind.
** [[Albert Einstein]], in "a letter to a distraught father who had lost his young son and had asked Einstein for some comforting words" (12 February 1950), quoted in ''The New Quotable Einstein'' (2005) by Alice Calaprice, p. 206

* '''I have found no better expression than "religious" for confidence in the rational nature of reality, insofar as it is accessible to human reason. Whenever this feeling is absent, science degenerates into uninspired empiricism.'''
** [[Albert Einstein]], in letter to Maurice Solovine, (1 January 1951) [Einstein Archive 21-174]; published in ''Letters to Solovine'' (1993) 

* '''I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.'''
** [[Albert Einstein]], in a letter to an atheist (1954) as quoted in ''Albert Einstein: The Human Side'' (1979) edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman 

* I said before, the most beautiful and most profound religious emotion that we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. And this mysticality is the power of all true science. If there is any such concept as a God, it is a subtle spirit, not an image of a man that so many have fixed in their minds. In essence, my religion consists of a humble admiration for this illimitable superior spirit that reveals itself in the slight details that we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds.
** [[Albert Einstein]], as quoted in ''The Private Albert Einstein'' (1992) by Peter A. Bucky and Allen G. Weakland, p. 86

* I can understand your aversion to the use of the term "religion" to describe an emotional and psychological attitude which shows itself most clearly in [[Baruch Spinoza|Spinoza]]... I have not found a better expression than "religious" for the trust in the rational nature of reality that is, at least to a certain extent, accessible to human reason.
** [[Albert Einstein]], as quoted in [http://www.einsteinandreligion.com/spinoza.html ''Einstein : Science and Religion''] by Arnold V. Lesikar

* I do not find that the age or country makes the least difference; no, nor the language the actors spoke, nor the religion which they professed whether Arab in the desert or Frenchman in the Academy, '''I see that sensible men and conscientious men all over the world were of one religion.'''
**[[Ralph Waldo Emerson]], ''Lectures and Biographical Sketches''. The Preacher. P. 215.

* I like the church, I like a cowl, I love a prophet of the soul; And on my heart monastic aisles Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles; Yet not for all his faith can see, Would I that cowlèd churchman be.
**[[Ralph Waldo Emerson]], ''The Problem''.

* '''In the matter of religion, people eagerly fasten their eyes on the difference between their own creed and yours; whilst the charm of the study is in finding the agreements and identities in all the religions of humanity.'''
** [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]], as quoted in ''Thinking Outside The Church : 110 Ways to Connect with Your Spiritual Nature'' (2004) by Jennifer Leigh Selig, p. 53

=== F ===

* ''Die Theologie ist die Anthropologie.''
** Theology is Anthropology.
** [[Ludwig Feuerbach]], ''The Essence of Christianity'' ["Wesen des Christenthums"], Preface to the 2nd Ed. (1843)

* Religion is the dream of the human mind. But even in dreams we do not find ourselves in emptiness or in heaven, but on earth, in the realm of reality; we only see real things in the entrancing splendor of imagination and caprice, instead of in the simple daylight of reality and necessity.
** [[Ludwig Feuerbach]], ''The Essence of Christianity'' (1841)

* Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.
** [[Sigmund Freud]], ''New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis'' (1915 - 1917)

* A religion, even if it calls itself a religion of love, must be hard and unloving to those who do not belong to it.
** [[Sigmund Freud]], ''Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego'' (1921)

* The different religions have never overlooked the part played by the sense of guilt in civilization. What is more, they come forward with a claim...to save mankind from this sense of guilt, which they call sin.
** [[Sigmund Freud]], ''Civilization and its Discontents''(1931)

* Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities. ... If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man's evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity.
** [[Sigmund Freud]], ''Moses and Monotheism'' (1939)

* There are at bottom but two possible religions — that which rises in the moral nature of man, and which takes shape in moral commandments, and that which grows out of the observation of the material energies which operate in the external universe.
** [[James Anthony Froude]], ''Short Studies on Great Subjects. Calvinism''. P. 20.

* Sacrifice is the first element of religion, and resolves itself in theological language into the love of God.
** [[James Anthony Froude]], ''Short Studies on Great Subjects''. Sea Studies.

* But our captain counts the image of God — nevertheless his image — cut in ebony as if done in ivory, and in the blackest Moors he sees the representation of the King of Heaven.
** [[Thomas Fuller]], ''Holy and Profane States'' (1642) The Good Sea-Captain. Maxim 5.

* Indeed, a little skill in antiquity inclines a man to Popery; but depth in that study brings him about again to our religion.
** [[Thomas Fuller]], ''Holy and Profane States'' (1642) The True Church Antiquary, Maxim 1.

* Religion is the best armour in the world, but the worst cloak.
** [[Thomas Fuller (writer)|Thomas Fuller]], ''Gnomologia'' (1732) 4011

=== G ===

* '''I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.'''
** [[Galileo Galilei]], in ''[[w:Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina|Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina]]'' (1615)

* And when we take our last remove, I fear that we shall find that a great deal which we call religion, and which we were at the trouble of lugging about with us through our whole pilgrimage, is perfectly worthless, fit only to be burned…
** [[w:William Goodell|William Goodell]], ''Forty Years in the Turkish Empire. Or, Memoirs of Rev. William Goodell'' (1876)

=== H ===

* '''We do ourselves wrong, and too meanly estimate the holiness above us, when we deem that any act or enjoyment good in itself, is not good to do religiously.'''
** [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]], ''Marble Faun''. Bk. II. Ch. VII.

* From Greenland's icy mountains, From India's coral strand, Where Afric's sunny fountains Roll down their golden sand; From many an ancient river, From many a palmy plain, They call us to deliver Their land from error's chain.
** [[Reginald Heber]], ''Missionary Hymn''.

* For the men that history enshrines on her immortal pages, the men whose memories are embalmed in the hearts of their fellows for all ages, were men who placed unfaltering trust in the loftiest convictions of the soul, and consecrated life and death to their realization.
** [[w:Isaac Hecker|Isaac Hecker]], ''Aspirations of Nature'' (1857) ch. 2, p. 19

* Religion, therefore, is the answer to that cry of Reason which nothing can silence, that aspiration of the soul which no created thing can meet, that want of the heart which all creation cannot supply.
** [[w:Isaac Hecker|Isaac Hecker]], ''Aspirations of Nature'' (1857) ch. 3, p. 24

* '''There is no use disguising the fact, our religious needs are the deepest. There is no peace until they are satisfied and contented.''' The attempt to stifle them is in vain. If their cry be drowned by the noise of the world, they do not cease to exist. In some unexpected moment they will break through with redoubled energy. '''They must be answered.'''
** [[w:Isaac Hecker|Isaac Hecker]], ''Aspirations of Nature'' (1857) ch. 6, p. 38

* It is the very nature and essence of religion to raise men, peoples, and nations, above the common level of life, to break through its ordinary bounds, and express itself in a thousand ways, in poetry, painting, music, sculpture, and in every other form of ideal expression. The splendid monuments of the genius and greatness of by-gone ages are the monuments inspired by their religion.
** [[w:Isaac Hecker|Isaac Hecker]], ''Aspirations of Nature'' (1857) ch. 8, p. 46

* '''Anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion is a monotheism can believe anything — just give him time to rationalize it. Forgive me for being blunt.'''
** [[Robert Heinlein]], in ''[[Job: A Comedy of Justice]]'' (1984)

* ''La couronne vaut bien une messe (Paris vaut bien une messe.''
** The crown, (or Paris), is well worth a mass.
** Attributed to [[w:Henry IV of France|Henry IV]].

* '''Nothing exposes religion more to the reproach of its enemies than the worldliness and half-heartedness of the professors of it.'''
** [[Matthew Henry]], ''An Exposition of All the Books of the Old and New Testaments'', vol. 2 (1804) p. 482

* Religion stands on tiptoe in our land, Ready to pass to the American strand.
** [[George Herbert]], ''The Church Militant''. L. 235.

* Dresse and undresse thy soul: mark the decay And growth of it: if, with thy watch, that too Be down, then winde up both: since we shall be Most surely judged, make thy accounts agree.
** [[George Herbert]], ''Temple''. Church Porch. St. 76.

* My Fathers and Brethren, this is never to be forgotten that New England is originally a plantation of religion, not a plantation of trade.
** [[w:John Higginson|John Higginson]], ''Election Sermon''. The Cause of God and His People in New England. May 27, 1663.

* It may be that today gold has become the exclusive ruler of life, but the time will come when man will again bow down before a higher god.
** [[Adolf Hitler]], ''[[Mein Kampf]]'' (1926), [[w:Ralph Mannheim|Ralph Mannheim]] translation (1943), p. 436.

* Is religion one of the fine arts, that it should consist in going to meeting in good clothes every Sunday, saying grace at table, and praying night and morning? Is there every thing to receive, and nothing to give? Are we so literally a flock that we have nothing to do but to be fed all the year, yielding only the annual fleece which forms our pastor's salary?
** [[Josiah Gilbert Holland]], ''Gold-foil, Hammered from Popular Proverbs'' (1860) p. 295

* Religion may enter a pothouse as a minister of good, but it may not lay aside its dignity to argue its rights and claims there. The moment that it does this it is shorn of its power.
** [[Josiah Gilbert Holland]], ''Gold-foil, Hammered from Popular Proverbs'' (1860) p. 242

* There are men who stalk about the world gloomy and stiff and severe — self-righteous embodiments of the mischievous heresy that the religion of peace and good-will to all mankind — the religion of love and hope and joy, the religion that bathes the universal human soul in the light of paternal love, and opens to mankind the gates of immortality — is a religion of terror — men guilty of misrepresenting Christ to the world, and doing incalculable damage to His cause, yet who find it in them to rebuke the careless laughter that bubbles up from a maiden's heart that God has filled with life and gladness.
** [[Josiah Gilbert Holland]], ''Gold-foil, Hammered from Popular Proverbs'' (1860) pp. 184-185

* '''No solemn, sanctimonious face I pull, Nor think I'm pious when I'm only bilious''' — Nor study in my sanctum supercilious To frame a Sabbath Bill or forge a Bull.
** [[Thomas Hood]], ''Ode to Rae Wilson''.

* Remove from the history of the past all those actions which have either sprung directly from the religious nature of man, or been modified by it, and you have the history of another world and of another race.
** [[Mark Hopkins (educator)|Mark Hopkins]], ''Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity'' (1846) Lecture II, p. 49

* Who ever heard of a devout [[Deism|deist]]? Who ever heard of one who was willing to spend his life in missionary labor for the good of others? It is not according to the constitution of the mind that such a system should awaken the affections. And what is true of this system is true of every false system. All such systems leave the heart cold, and, accordingly, exert very little genuine transforming power over the life.
** [[Mark Hopkins (educator)|Mark Hopkins]], ''Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity'' (1846) Lecture V, p. 156

* A religion that never suffices to govern a man, will never suffice to save him; that that which does not distinguish him from a sinful world, will never distinguish him from a perishing world.
** [[John Howe]], ''The works of the Rev. John Howe'' vol. 2 (1835) p. 798

* Should all the banks of Europe crash, The bank of England smash, Bring all your notes to Zion's bank, You're sure to get your cash.
** [[w:Henry Hoyt|Henry Hoyt]], ''Zion's Bank, or Bible Promises Secured to all Believers''. Pub. in Boston, 1857. Probably a reprint of English origin.

=== I ===
* '''My creed is this: Happiness is the only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now. The way to be happy is to help make others so.'''
** [[Robert G. Ingersoll]], on the Title Page of Vol. XII. Farrell's Ed. of his Works.

* '''I belong to the Great Church which holds the world within its starlit aisles; that claims the great and good of every race and clime; that finds with joy the grain of gold in every creed, and floods with light and love the germs of good in every soul.'''
** [[Robert G. Ingersoll]], a declaration in discussion with Rev. Henry M. Field on Faith and Agnosticism, quoted in Vol. VI of Farrell's edition of his works, also in ''Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations'' (1922) edited by Kate Louise Roberts, p. 663

=== J ===
* I envy them, those monks of old Their books they read, and their beads they told.
** [[w:George Payne Rainsford James|G. P. R. James]], ''The Monks of Old''.

* Whoever saith, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire
** [[Jesus]], ''The Bible, Matthew'' 5:22 (King James Version)

* I never told my own religion nor scrutinized that of another. I never attempted to make a convert, nor wished to change another's creed. I am satisfied that yours must be an excellent religion to have produced a life of such exemplary virtue and correctness. For it is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be judged.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], in a letter to Mrs. H. Harrison Smith (1816)

* Sir, I think all Christians, whether Papists or Protestants, agree in the essential articles, and that their religious differences are trivial, and rather political than religious.
** [[Samuel Johnson]], ''Boswell's Life''. Ch. V. 1763.

* To be of no Church is dangerous.
** [[Samuel Johnson]], ''Life of Milton''.

* A little is fine, but the minute you start believing that you’ve picked the only right one out of the 4,200 or so on offer, you need to get a grip on yourself. Once you start thinking that it’s okay to hate someone that chose one of the 4,199 others... snap out of it.
** [[w:Arthur M. Jolly|Arthur M. Jolly]], in "The Questionnaire" (2010)

* We do not want churches because they will teach us to quarrel about God, as the Catholics and Protestants do. We do not want that. We may quarrel with men about things on earth, but we never quarrel about God. We do not want to learn that.
** [[Chief Joseph]], quoted in ''The wisdom of the Native Americans'' (1999) by Kent Nerburn

=== K ===
* Religion is hate, religion is fear, religion is war, religion is rape, religion's obscene, religion's a whore.
** [[w:Kerry King|Kerry King]] of [[w:Slayer|Slayer]], in "Cult" on ''[[w:Christ Illusion|Christ Illusion]]'' (2006)

=== L ===
* All religions are the same: religion is basically guilt, with different holidays.
** [[w:Cathy Ladman|Cathy Ladman]], quoted in ''The God Delusion'' (2006) by [[Richard Dawkins]], "The Roots of Religion", p. 167

* The word ''religion'' is extremely rare in the New Testament or the writings of mystics. The reason is simple. Those attitudes and practises to which we give the collective name of ''religion'' are themselves concerned with religion hardly at all. To be religious is to have one's attention fixed on God and on one's neighbor in relation to God. Therefore, almost by definition, a religious man, or a man when he is being religious, is not thinking about ''religion''; he hasn't the time. ''Religion'' is what we (or he himself at a later moment) call his activity from the outside.
** [[C. S. Lewis]] in "Lilies that Fester" in ''The Twentieth Century'' (April 1955)

* Other hope had she none, nor wish in life, but to follow Meekly, with reverent steps, the sacred feet of her Saviour.
** [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]], ''Evangeline''. Pt. II. V. L. 35.

* Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy.
** [[James Russell Lowell]], ''Among My Books''. New England Two Centuries Ago.

* God is not dumb, that he should speak no more; If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness And find'st not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor.
** [[James Russell Lowell]], ''Bibliolatres''.

*But he turned up his nose at their murmuring and shamming, And cared (shall I say?) not a d—n for their damning; So they first read him out of their church and next minute Turned round and declared he had never been in it.
** [[James Russell Lowell]], ''A Fable for Critics''. L. 876.

*Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum!
** ''Translated'': How many evils has religion caused!
** [[Lucretius]], ''De Rerum Natura''. I. 102.

* Blessed is the man that hath not walked in the way of the Sacramentarians, nor sat in the seat of the Zwinglians, nor followed the Council of the Zurichers.
** [[Martin Luther]], ''Parody of First Psalm''.

=== M ===
* The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.
** [[Thomas Babington Macaulay]], ''History of England''. Vol. I. Ch. II.

* To judge religion we must have it—not stare at it from the bottom of a seeming interminable ladder
** [[George Macdonald]], ''Warlock o' Glenwarlock'' ch 18

* Religion is no dry morality; no slavish, punctilious conforming of actions to a hard law. Religion is not right thinking alone, nor right emotion alone, nor right action alone. Religion is still less the semblance of these in formal profession, or simulated feeling, or apparent rectitude. Religion is not nominal connection with the Christian community, nor participation in its ordinances and its worship. But to be godly is to be godlike.
** [[Alexander Maclaren]], ''Expositions of Holy Scripture'' "Galatians"

* Religion to be permanently influential must be intelligent.
** [[w:Elias Lyman Magoon|Elias Lyman Magoon]], ''Proverbs for the People'' (1849) ch. 1, p. 16

* I never really hated a one true God, but the God of the people I hated.
** [[Marilyn Manson]], ''Disposable Teens'' (2000)

* To rely on intellectual methods for the direct advance of devout thought is to mistake philosophy for religion… Who does not know, out of his own heart, that he never was ''reasoned'' into holy wonder, love, or reverence? and who can fail to observe that there is no fixed proportion between force of understanding and clearness or depth of religion?
** [[James Martineau]], ''Hours of Thoughts on Sacred Things'' Vol. 2 (1879) "The Way of Rememberance" p. 96

* In any discussion of religion and personality integration the question is not whether religion itself makes for health or neurosis, but what kind of religion and how is it used? [[Sigmund Freud|Freud]] was in error when he held that religion is per se a compulsion neurosis. Some religion is and some is not.
** [[Rollo May]], in ''Man’s Search for Himself'' (1953), p. 166

* We define religion as the assumption that life has meaning. Religion, or lack of it, is shown not in some intellectual or verbal formulations but in one's total orientation to life. Religion is whatever the individual takes to be his ultimate concern.''' One's religious attitude is to be found at that point where he has a conviction that there are values in human existence worth living and dying for.
** [[Rollo May]], in ''Man’s Search for Himself'' (1953), p. 180

* While religion, contrary to the common notion, implies, in certain cases, a spirit of slow reserve as to assent, infidelity, which claims to despise credulity, is sometimes swift to it.
** [[Herman Melville]], in ''[[The Confidence-Man]]'' (1857)

* The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him a ride.
** [[H. L. Mencken]], ''Prejudices: Third Series'' (1917)

* We look at gorgeous churches and synagogues, but now they are only 10% to 15% filled. Those who are there are old; pretty soon they will go to the grave. Then there will be no one. This is true for all religions.
** [[Sun Myung Moon]] [http://www.unification.net/pr-mes/pr-mes-2.html The Reappearance of the Second Coming and the Completed Testament Era (10 January 1993) Belvedere International Training Center]

=== N ===
* The religion of some people is constrained; they are like people who use the cold bath—not for pleasure, but necessity, and for their health, they go in with reluctance, and is glad when they get out; but religion to a true believer is like water to a fish; it is his element, he lives in it, and could not live out of it.
** [[John Newton]], letter, 24 January 1800, ''The Aged Pilgrim's Triumph Over Sin and the Grave'' (1825) p. 158

* Even that Dionysus is a philosopher, and that gods, too, thus philosophy, seems to me a novelty that is far from innocuous and might arouse suspicion precisely among philosophers.
** [[Friedrich Nietzsche]] Beyond Good and Evil

=== O ===

=== P ===
* Do they profess to have delighted us by telling us that they hold our soul to be only a little wind and smoke, especially by telling us this in a haughty and self-satisfied tone of voice? Is this a thing to say gaily? Is it not, on the contrary, a thing to say sadly, as the saddest thing in the world?
**[[Blaise Pascal]], Pensées, [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18269/18269-h/18269-h.htm#p_194 194]

* No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.
**[[William Penn]], ''No Cross, No Crown''.

* It was a friar of orders grey Walked forth to tell his beads.
**[[Thomas Percy]], ''The Friar of Orders Grey'' (based on an older ballad)

* Religion, which true policy befriends, Design'd by God to serve man's noblest ends, Is by that old deceiver's subtle play Made the chief party in its own decay, And meets the eagle's destiny, whose breast Felt the same shaft which his own feathers drest.
** [[w:Katherine Philips|Katherine Philips]], ''On Controversies in Religion''.

* The Puritan did not stop to think; he recognized God in his soul, and acted.
** [[Wendell Phillips]], speech. 18 December, 1859.

* We have a Calvinistic creed, a Popish liturgy, and an Arminian clergy.
** [[William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham]], speech in the House of Lords (19 May 1772) The exact text was unrecorded, [[Edmund Burke]] reported this version in a speech (2 March, 1790) see ''Prior's Life of Burke''. Ch. X. (1824).

* So upright Quakers please both man and God.
** [[Alexander Pope]], ''The Dunciad''. Bk. IV. L. 208.

* To happy convents, bosom'd deep in vines, Where slumber abbots purple as their wines.
** [[Alexander Pope]], ''The Dunciad''. Bk. IV. L. 301.

* Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires, And unawares Morality expires.
** [[Alexander Pope]], ''The Dunciad''. Bk. IV. L. 649.

* For virtue's self may too much zeal be had; The worst of madmen is a saint run mad.
** [[Alexander Pope]], ''To Murray''. Ep. VI. of Horace. L. 26.

* I think while zealots fast and frown, And fight for two or seven, That there are fifty roads to town, And rather more to Heaven.
** [[Winthrop Mackworth Praed]], ''Chant of Brazen Head''. St. 8.

* The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.
** ''[[Psalms]]'' 14:1

* Let a man be firmly principled in his religion, he may travel from the tropics to the poles, it will never catch cold on the journey.
** [[William Morley Punshon]], ''Lectures and Sermons'' (1877) "Daniel in Babylon" p. 8

=== Q ===
* He that hath no cross deserves no crown.
** [[w:Frances Quarles|Frances Quarles]], ''Hadassa'' (1621)

=== R ===
* If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron.
** [[Spider Robinson]], in "God Is An Iron" (1977)

* Ils ont les textes pour eux; disait-il, j'en suis faché pour les textes.
** ''Translated'': They have the texts in their favor; said he, so much the worse for the texts.
** [[w:Pierre Paul Royer-Collard|Pierre Paul Royer-Collard]], ''Dictionnaire de Sciences Philosophiques'' (Paris 1851, vol. V) "Life of M. Royer Collard" p. 442

* Humanity and Immortality consist neither in reason, nor in love; not in the body, nor in the animation of the heart of it, nor in the thoughts and stirrings of the brain of it;]], ''but in the dedication of them all to Him who will raise them up at the last day.
** [[John Ruskin]], ''Stones of Venice''. Vol. I. Ch. II.

* I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion is anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds. One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it.
** [[Bertrand Russell]], ''[[w:Why I Am Not a Christian|Why I Am Not a Christian]]'' (1927)

* My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to civilization. It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they became able to predict them. These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others.
** [[Bertrand Russell]], ''Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?'' (1930)

=== S ===
[[File:Double-alaskan-rainbow.jpg|144px|thumb|right|Faith: The opposite of dogmatism. ~ [[John Ralston Saul]] ]]

* '''I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth and never cherishes any memory except the face of the woman on the American silver dollar.''' I ask you to come through and show me where you're pouring out the blood of your life.
** [[Carl Sandburg]], in "To a Contemporary Bunkshooter" in ''Chicago Poems'' (1916), p. 63

* '''Faith: The opposite of dogmatism.'''
** [[John Ralston Saul]], in ''The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense'' (1994): "Faith"

* Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.
** [[Arthur Schopenhauer]], ''Studies in Pessimism'' (1890)

* Religion is like the fashion, one man wears his doublet slashed, another laced, another plain; but every man has a doublet; so every man has a religion. We differ about the trimming.
** [[John Selden]], ''Table Talk''. P. 157. (Ed. 1696).

* [Lord Shaftesbury said] "'''All wise men are of the same religion.'''" Whereupon a lady in the room … demanded what that religion was. To whom Lord Shaftesbury straight replied, "'''Madam, wise men never tell.'''"
** [[Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury|Lord Shaftesbury]], [[w:John Toland|John Toland]], ''Clidophorus''. Ch. XIII.
*** Attributed to [[Samuel Rogers]] by [[James Anthony Froude|Froude]], ''Short Studies on Great Subjects. Plea for the Free Discussion of Theological Difficulties''. Attributed also to Franklin.

* I always thought It was both impious and unnatural That such immanity and bloody strife Should reign among professors of one faith.
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''[[Henry VI, Part 1|Henry VI]]''. Pt. I, Act V. Sc. 1. L. 11.

* In religion, What damned error, but some sober brow Will bless it and approve it with a text.
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''[[The Merchant of Venice]]''. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 77.

* The ground of all religion, that which makes it possible, is the relation in which the human soul stands to God.
** [[John Campbell Shairp]], ''Culture and Religion'' (1870) p. 14

* They who seek religion for culture's sake are aesthetic, not religious, and will never gain that grace which religion adds to culture, because they never can have the religion.
** [[John Campbell Shairp]], ''Culture and Religion'' (1870) pp. 62-63

* But now I think the belief in a Divine education, open to each man and to all men, takes up into itself all that is true in the end proposed by culture, supplements, and perfects it.
** [[John Campbell Shairp]], ''Culture and Religion'' (1870) p. 131

* '''Religion is a great force — the only real motive force in the world; but what you fellows don't understand is that you must get at a man through his own religion and not through yours.''' Instead of facing that fact, you persist in trying to convert all men to your own little sect, so that you can use it against them afterwards. '''You are all missionaries and proselytizers trying to uproot the native religion from your neighbor's flowerbeds and plant your own in its place.''' You would rather let a child perish in ignorance than have it taught by a rival sectary. You can talk to me of the quintessential equality of coal merchants and British officers; and yet you can't see the quintessential equality of all the religions.
** [[George Bernard Shaw]] in ''[[w:Getting Married|Getting Married]]'' (1908)

* The moon of Mahomet Arose, and it shall set: While, blazoned as on heaven's immortal noon, The cross leads generations on.
** [[Percy Bysshe Shelley]], ''Hellas''. L. 237.

* Indeed, I am a free rider, but only in the freedom from one set of cultural traditions usually gathered under the umbrella of religion. But, like everyone else, I face judges that are in their own ways transcendent and powerful: family and friends, colleagues and peers, mentors and teachers, and society at large. My judges may be lowercased and occasionally deceivable, but they are transcendent of me as an individual, even if they are not transcendent of nature; as such, together, we all stand in a long pilgrim community struggling down the evoloutionary and historical ages trying to live and love and learn to temper our temptations and do the right thing. I may be free from God, but the god of nature holds me to her temple of judgment no less than her other creations. I stand before my maker and judge not in some distant and future ethereal world, but in the reality of this world, a world inhabited not by spiritual and supernatural ephemera, but by real people whose lives are directly affected by my actions, and whose actions directly affect my life.
** [[Michael Shermer]] in ''[[w:The Science of Good and Evil|The Science of Good and Evil]]'' (2004)

* Government oppressed the body of the wage-slave, but Religion oppressed his mind, and poisoned the stream of progress at its source.
** [[Upton Sinclair]], in ''The Jungle'', Ch. 31

* Logic or so called intellectual reasoning have no real meaning in religious debates.
** Judge Jussi Sippola, [[w:Helsinki|Helsinki]] district court, in the [[w:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jussi_Halla-aho#2009_trial|Halla-Aho]] trial on charges of incitement of an ethnic group and disturbing religious worship, 2009. [http://www.effi.org/system/files?file=halla-aho-tuomio-20090908.txt]

* '''With many people, religion is merely a matter of words.''' So far as words go we do what we think right. But the words rarely lead to action, thought, and conduct, or to purity, goodness, and honesty. '''There is too much playing at religion, and too little of enthusiastic, hard work.'''
** [[Samuel Smiles]], ''Duty, With Illustrations of Courage, Patience & Endurance'' (1880)

* A Gay and flowery and heated imagination beware of; because the things of God are of deep import; and time, and experience, and careful and ponderous and solemn thoughts can only find them out. Thy mind, O man! if thou wilt lead a soul unto salvation, must stretch as high as the utmost heavens, and search into and contemplate the darkest abyss, and the broad expanse of eternity — thou must commune with God.
** [[Joseph Smith]], ''Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith'', p. 137

* Men of the present time testify of heaven and hell, and have never seen either.
** [[Joseph Smith]] ''Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith'', p. 160

* The best way to obtain truth and wisdom is not to ask from books, but to go to God in prayer, and obtain divine teaching.
** [[Joseph Smith]], ''History of the Church'', 4:425

* '''But meddle not with any man for his religion: all governments ought to permit every man to enjoy his religion unmolested. No man is authorized to take away life in consequence of difference of religion, which all laws and governments ought to tolerate and protect, right or wrong.''' Every man has a natural, and, in our country, a constitutional right to be a false prophet, as well as a true prophet. If I show, verily, that I have the truth of God, and show that ninety-nine out of every hundred professing religious ministers are false teachers, having no authority, while they pretend to hold the keys of God's kingdom on earth, and was to kill them because they are false teachers, it would deluge the whole world with blood.
** [[Joseph Smith]], ''History of the Church'' 6:304

* No man's religion ever survives his morals.
** [[Robert South]], a sermon preached at Christ-Church, Oxon. (17 October 1675)

* The human mind has an adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of God.
** [[Baruch Spinoza]], Ethics (1677) Part II: On the Nature and Origin of the Mind

* A religious life is a struggle and not a hymn.
** [[Madame de Staël]], ''Corinne''. Bk. X. Ch. V.

* Religion has nothing more to fear than not being sufficiently understood.
** [[w:Stanislaus|Stanislaus]] (King of Poland), ''Maxims''. No. 36.

* One must build to the praise of a Being above, to build the noblest memorial of himself. Then, Angelo may verily " hang the Pantheon in the air." Then the unknown builder, whose personality disappears in his work, may stand an almost inspired mediator between the upward-looking thought and the spheres overhead. Each line then leaps with a swift aspiration, as the vast structure rises, in nave and transept into pointed arch and vanishing spire. The groined roof grows dusky with majestic glooms; while, beneath, the windows flame, as with apocalyptic light of jewels. Angelic presences, sculptured upon the portal, invite the wayfarer, and wave before him their wings of promise. Within is a worship which incense only clouds, which spoken sermons only mar. The building itself becomes a worship, a Gloria in Excelsis, articulate in stone; the noblest tribute offered on earth, by any art, to Him from whom its impulse came, and with the ineffable majesty of whose spirit all skies are filled!
** [[Richard Salter Storrs]], ''The Recognition of the Supernatural in Letters and in life'' (1881)

* What religion is he of? Why, he is an Anythingarian.
**[[Jonathan Swift]], ''Polite Conversation''. Dialogue I.

* He made it a part of his religion, never to say grace to his meat.
**[[Jonathan Swift]], ''Tale of a Tub''. Sec. XI.

* '''We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.'''
**[[Jonathan Swift]], ''Thoughts on Various Subjects''. Collected by Pope and Swift. Found in Spectator No. 459.

=== T ===
[[File:Arco iris circular.JPG|144px|thumb|right|Though free to think and act, we are held together, like the stars in the firmament, with ties inseparable. These ties cannot be seen, but we can feel them. … The Buddhist expresses it in one way, the Christian in another, but both say the same: We are all one. ~ [[Nikola Tesla]] ]]
* '''The way to judge of religion is by doing our duty; and theology is rather a Divine life than a Divine knowledge.''' In heaven, indeed, we must first see, and then love; but here, on earth, we must first love, and love will open our eyes as well as our hearts; and we shall then, see and perceive, and understand.
** [[Jeremy Taylor]], "A sermon preached to the University of Dublin", ''The whole works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor. Vol 6'', (1839) Sermon VI, p. 379

* '''Though free to think and act, we are held together, like the stars in the firmament, with ties inseparable. These ties cannot be seen, but we can feel them.''' I cut myself in the finger, and it pains me: this finger is a part of me. I see a friend hurt, and it hurts me, too: my friend and I are one. And now I see stricken down an enemy, a lump of matter which, of all the lumps of matter in the universe, I care least for, and it still grieves me. Does this not prove that each of us is only part of a whole? '''For ages this idea has been proclaimed in the consummately wise teachings of religion, probably not alone as a means of insuring peace and harmony among men, but as a deeply founded truth.''' The Buddhist expresses it in one way, the Christian in another, but both say the same: '''We are all one.'''
** [[Nikola Tesla]], in [http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1900-06-00.htm "The Problem of Increasing Human Energy with Special References to the Harnessing of the Sun's Energy"] in [http://books.google.com/books?id=_XYAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA175&dq=%22humanity+as+a+whole,+and+before+applying+scientific+methods+to%22&num=100&ei=GpAFR4npDY6K7QLdhpCGDQ&ie=ISO-8859-1 ''Century Illustrated Magazine'' (June 1900)]

* If organized religion is the opium of the masses, then disorganized religion is the marijuana of the lunatic fringe.
** [[w:Kerry Wendell Thornley|Kerry Wendell Thornley]], in the Introduction to the 5th Edition of ''[[Principia Discordia]]''

* Honour your parents; worship the gods; hurt not animals.
** [[w:Triptolemus|Triptolemus]], according to [[w:Porphyry|Porphyry]] (On Abstinence IV.22) From his traditional laws or precepts.

=== U ===
* None are so likely to believe too little as those who have begun by believing too much.
** [[Miguel de Unamuno]], The Tragic Sense of Life (1913)

=== V ===

* '''To devote your life to the good of all and to the happiness of all is religion. Whatever you do for your own sake is not religion.'''
** [[Swami Vivekananda]], in ''Pearls of Wisdom'' (2008) edited by the Ramakrishna Mission

=== W ===

* Once I journeyd far from home To the gate of holy Rome; There the Pope, for my offence, Bade me straight, in penance, thence Wandering onward, to attain The wondrous land that height Cokaigne.
** [[w:Robert Wace|Robert Wace]], ''The Land of Cokaigne''.

* When I can read my title clear To mansions in the skies, I'll bid farewell to every fear, And wipe my weeping eyes.
** [[Isaac Watts]], ''Songs and Hymns''. Bk. II. No. 65.

* Religion is the tie that connects man with his Creator, and holds him to His throne.
** [[Daniel Webster]], speech at the Supreme Court of Massachusetts on the death of Jeremiah Mason (14 November 1848)

* Take care what you are about, for unless you base all this on religion, you are only making so many clever devils.
** [[Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington]], Philip Henry, Fifth Earl Stanhope, ''Notes of Conversation with the Duke of Wellington, 1831-1851'' (1886)
*** Talking about non-denominational education, often paraphrased as "Educate men without religion, and you make them but clever devils."

* The religion of the heathen mythology not only was not true, but was not even supported as true; it not only deserved no belief, but it demanded none. The very pretension to truth—the very demand of faith—were characteristic distinctions of Christianity.
** [[Richard Whately]], ''Bacon's Essays with Annotations by Richard Whately'' (1857)

* A legal religion is insufficient to bring the soul into harmony with God.
** [[Ellen G. White]], ''Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing'' (1896), p. 53

* The world has a thousand creeds, and never a one have I; Nor church of my own, though a million spires are pointing the way on high. But I float on the bosom of faith, that bears me along like a river; And the lamp of my soul is alight with love, for life, and the world, and the Giver.
** [[Ella Wheeler Wilcox]], ''Heresy''.

*So many gods, so many creeds— So many paths that wind and wind While just the art of being kind Is all the sad world needs.
** [[Ella Wheeler Wilcox]], ''The World's Need''.

* The Discordian Society, we repeat again, is not a complicated joke disguised as a new religion but really a new religion disguised as a complicated joke.
** [[Robert Anton Wilson]], in ''Cosmic Trigger: Final Secret of the Illuminati'' (1977), p. 103; paraphrases of this are sometimes attributed to Greg Hill ([[w:Malaclypse the Younger|Malaclypse the Younger]]), one of the authors of ''[[Principia Discordia]]''.

* Who God doth late and early pray More of his Grace than Gifts to lend; And entertains the harmless day With a Religious Book or Friend.
** Sir [[Henry Wotton]], ''The Character of a Happy Life''. St. 5.

=== X ===
=== Y ===

* Religion's all. Descending from the skies To wretched man, the goddess in her left Holds out this world, and, in her right, the next.
** [[Edward Young]], ''Night Thoughts''. Night IV. L. 550.

* But if man loses all, when life is lost, He lives a coward, or a fool expires. A daring infidel (and such there are, From pride, example, lucre, rage, revenge, Or pure heroical defect of thought), Of all earth's madmen, most deserves a chain.
** [[Edward Young]], ''Night Thoughts''. Night VII. L. 199.

=== Z ===

=== Anon ===

* Well you may throw your rock and hide your hand Workin' in the dark against your fellow man But as sure as God made black and white What's down in the dark will be brought to the light.
** [[Anonymous]], "[[w:God's Gonna Cut You Down|God's Gonna Cut You Down]]", traditional folk song, recorded by many artists.

* Go tell that long tongue liar Go and tell that midnight rider Tell the rambler, the gambler, the back biter Tell 'em that God's gonna cut 'em down
** [[Anonymous]] "God's Gonna Cut You Down", traditional folk song

* Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.
** [[Anonymous]]; quoted in ''Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon'' (2006) by Daniel C. Dennett, p. 17,ISBN 0-670-03472-X

* Some people complain because God put thorns on roses, while others praise Him for putting roses among thorns.
** [[Anonymous]], in ''The Baptist Observer'' No. 7 - (1966)


===''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895)===
Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895).

* You have no security for a man who has no religious principle.
** [[Richard Cobden]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 503.

* Too much is said in these days about the aesthetics of religion and its sensibilities. Religion's home is in the conscience. Its watchword is the word "ought." Its highest joy is in doing God's will.
** [[Theodore L. Cuyler]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 503.

* Religion, in its purity, is not so much a pursuit as a temper; or rather it is a temper, leading to the pursuit of all that is high and holy. Its foundation is faith; its action, works; its temper, holiness; its aim, obedience to God in improvement of self, and benevolence to men.
** [[Jonathan Edwards (theologian)|Jonathan Edwards]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 494.

* True religion is not what men see and admire; it is what God sees and loves; the faith which clings to Jesus in the darkest hour; the sanctity which shrinks from the approach of evil; the humility which lies low at the feet of the Redeemer, and washes them with tears; the love which welcomes every sacrifice; the cheerful consecration of all the powers of the soul; the worship which, rising above all outward forms, ascends to God in the sweetest, dearest communion — a worship often too deep for utterance, and than which the highest heaven knows nothing more sublime.
** [[Richard Fuller]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 496.

* I have now disposed of all my property to my family. There is one thing more I wish I could give them, and that is the Christian religion. If they had that, and I had not given them one shilling, they would have been rich; and if they had not that, and I had given them all the world, they would be poor.
** [[Patrick Henry]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 496.

* Religion is the only metaphysics that the multitude can understand and adopt.
** [[Joseph Joubert]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 504.

* How admirable is that religion which, while it seems to have in view only the felicity of another world, is at the same time the highest happiness of this.
** [[Charles de Montesquieu]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 498.

* Religion gives to virtue the sweetest hopes, to unrepenting vice just alarms, to true repentance the most powerful consolations; but she endeavors above all things to inspire in men love, meekness, and piety.
** [[Charles de Montesquieu]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 502.

* All noblest things are religious,— not temples and martyrdoms only, but the best books, pictures, poetry, statues, and music.
** [[William Mountford]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 500.

* You have respect for religion! How vastly condescending! How deeply humble! The creature has a respect for the service of the Creator! A grasshopper deigns to acknowledge that it has a respect for the King of kings and Lord of lords! Verily a subject of congratulation for the universe! A worm crawling in the dust confesses to its fellow worm that it has some respect for the government of the high and mighty One that inhabiteth eternity.
** [[William Augustus Muhlenberg]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 505.

* Human things must be known to be loved; but Divine things must be loved to be known.
** [[Blaise Pascal]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 496.

* Religious faith and purpose are the only certain safeguards against the growing perils of life. So far as there has been among educated men a decline of loyalty to Christ and His gospel, there has been a decline in those qualities which claim confidence and honor, which insure unblemished reputation, which minister to social well-being, and to the integrity and purity of public life.
** A. P. Peabody, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 498.

* Other religions have risen and decayed; Christ's comes down the ages in the strength of youth, through the seas of popular commotion, like the Spirit of God on the face of the waters, through the storms of philosophy, like an apocalyptic angel, and through all the wilderness of human thought and action, like the pillar of fire before the camp of the Israelites.
** [[Edward Thompson]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 500.

* There is a great deal too much in the world, of the "heavenly-mindedness" which expends itself in the contemplation of the joys of paradise, which performs no duty which it can shirk, and whose constant prayer is to be lifted in some overwhelming flood of Divine grace, and be carried, amidst the admiration of men and the jubilance of angels, to the very throne of God.
** [[Henry Clay Trumbull]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 502.

===''The Dictionary of Legal Quotations'' (1904)===
:Quotes reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, ''The Dictionary of Legal Quotations'' (1904), p. 219-220.
* It is the office of Judges to advance laws made for religion, according to their end, though the words be short and imperfect.
** Hobart, C.J., ''Colt v. Glover'' (1614), Ld. Hob. Rep. 157.

* He that seemeth to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, his religion is vain.
** Quoted by Lisle (Lord President), in ''Hewet's Case'' (1658), 5 How. St. Tr. 894.

* I for one would never be a party, unless the law were clear, to saying to any man who put forward his views on those most sacred things, that he should be branded as apparently criminal because he differed from the majority of mankind in his religious views or convictions on the subject of religion. If that were so, we should get into ages and times which, thank God, we do not live in, when people were put to death for opinions and beliefs which now almost all of us believe to be true.
** Lord Coleridge, L.C.J., ''Reg. v. Bradlaugh and others'' (1883), 15 Cox, C.C. 230.

* All persecution and oppression of weak consciences on the score of religious persuasions, are highly unjustifiable upon every principle of natural reason, civil liberty, or sound religion.
** Wm. Blackstone (1765), ''Com.'' Bk. IV., Ch. 4., p. 40.

* No laws can be of avail except in so far as they are founded on religion.
** Park, J., ''Williams v. Paul'' (1830), 6 Bing. 653.

==See also==
*[[Agnosticism]]

*[[Atheism]]
*[[Buddhism]]
*[[Bahá'í Faith]]
*[[Deism]]
*[[Hinduism]]
*[[Bhagavad Gita]]
*[[The Bible]]
*[[Christianity]]
*[[Faith]]
*[[God]]
*[[The Golden Rule]]
*[[Irreligiousness]]
*[[Islam]]
*[[Morality]]
*[[Nature#Nature and Religion|Nature]] - Nature and Religion
*[[Pandeism]]
*[[Panentheism]]
*[[Pantheism]]
*[[Politics]]
*[[Qur'an]]
*[[Religiousness]]

==Notes and references==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
{{wikipedia}}
{{wiktionary|religion}}
{{wikiversity|God and Enlightenment#Philosophy of Religion}}
* [http://www.sacred-texts.com/index.htm Sacred Texts of many traditions]
* [http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/qnavnamtop.htm Quotes against many religious traditions at Positive Atheism]

[[Category:Religion|*]]

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Philosophy

2011-03-27T16:00:11Z

Nobody60: /* See also */

Quotes regarding '''[[w:Philosophy|Philosophy]]''' and [[w:Philosopher|'''philosophers''']]:

==Sourced==
*The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.
** [[Karl Marx]], ''Theses on Feuerbach'', thesis 11

* Philosophy is not the owl of Minerva that takes flight after history has been realized in order to celebrate its happy ending; rather, philosophy is subjective proposition, desire, and praxis that are applied to the event.
** [[Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri]], ''Empire''

* What characterizes philosophy is this "step back" from actuality into possibility—the attitude best rendered by [[:w:Theodor W. Adorno|Adorno]]'s and [[:w:Max Horkheimer|Horkheimer]]'s motto quoted by [[:w:Fredric Jameson|Fredric Jameson]]: "Not Italy itself is given here, but the proof that it exists."
**[[Slavoj Žižek]], ''Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology'', p. 2. ISBN 0822313952

* "In order to live, man must act; in order to act, he must make choices; in order to make choices, he must define a code of values; in order to define a code of values, he must know what he is and where he is – i.e. he must know his own nature (including his means of knowledge) and the nature of the universe in which he acts – i.e. he needs metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, which means: philosophy. He cannot escape from this need; his only alternative is whether the philosophy guiding him is to be chosen by his mind or by chance."
**[[Ayn Rand]], ''"Philosophy, who needs it?"''.

* "'Philosophy' is a word which has been used in many ways, some wider, some narrower. I propose to use it in a very wide sense, which I will now try to explain."
** [[Bertrand Russell]] ''[[w:A History of Western Philosophy|A History of Western Philosophy]]'', Introductory, p. xiii

* Tigers are more beautiful than sheep, but we prefer them behind bars.
** [[w:Bertrand Russell|Bertrand Russell]], ''[[w:A History of Western Philosophy|A History of Western Philosophy]]'', Introductory, p. xxii

* Philosophers, for the most part, are constitutionally timid,and dislike the unexpected. Few of them would be genuinely happy as pirates or burglars.
** [[w:Bertrand Russell|Bertrand Russell]], ''Unpopular Essays'', Chapter IV, Part iii, p. 74

* Philosophy makes progress not by becoming more rigorous but by becoming more imaginative.
** [[Richard Rorty]], Introduction to ''Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3'' (1998).

* To philosophise is to learn to die – philosophising is a soaring up to the Godhead – the knowledge of Being as Being.
**[[Karl Jaspers]], ''Philosophy and Science, World Review Magazine, March 1950.''

* Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.
** [[Anonymous]]; quoted in {{cite book
| last = Dennett
| first = Daniel C.
| title = Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
| edition = 1st ed.
| year = 2006
| publisher = Viking Penguin
| id = ISBN 0-670-03472-X
| pages = p. 17
}}
* "Too much philosophy makes men mad." ~ [[Alan Judd]], ''The Noonday Devil'' (1987)

*"'You only think you are you barnpots,' shouted angry farmers from the meadows. 'Shut that row up! You're frightening the chickens, you lot and your bloody philosophy. You can't eat philosophy can you? Where would you be if us farmers went round spouting statements like that, eh? Dead, that's where you'd be! Because there'd be naff all to eat!"
** [[Mike Harding]] 'Rambling on'

* Physics and philosophy are at most a few thousand years old, but probably have lives of thousands of millions of years stretching away in front of them. They are only just beginning to get under way.
** [[James Jeans]], ''Physics and Philosophy,'' p.217.,(1942)

* "Shouldn’t I join the ranks of philosophers and merely make unsubstantiated claims about the wonders of human consciousness? Shouldn’t I stop trying to do some science and keep my head down? Indeed not".
** [[Kevin Warwick]], quoted in [[w:Vincent F. Hendricks|Hendricks, V]]: “Feisty Fragments for Philosophy”, King’s College Publications, London,2004.

* "I feel that we are all philosophers, and that those who describe themselves as a ‘philosopher’ simply do not have a day job to go to".
** [[Kevin Warwick]], quoted in [[w:Vincent F. Hendricks|Hendricks, V]]: “Feisty Fragments for Philosophy”, King’s College Publications, London,2004.

* "Believe nothing, O monks, merely because you have been told it … or because it is traditional, or because you yourselves have imagined it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings—that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide. ~ [[Gautama Buddha]] ([http://www.bartleby.com/73/105.html attributed], [http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an03/an03.065.than.html Original wording, source: Kalama Sutra, Pali Canon])

== Unsourced ==
* "Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest--whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories--comes afterward. These are games; one must first answer." ~ [[Albert Camus]]

* People often say to me, ''I understand what you are talking about [[intellect]]ually, but I don’t really feel it, I don’t realize it,'' and I am apt to reply, "I wonder whether you do understand it intellectually, because if you did, you would also feel it." ~ [[Alan Watts]]

* "Philosophy studies the fundamental nature of existence, of man, and of man's relationship to existence. In the realm of cognition, the special sciences are the trees, but philosophy is the soil which makes the forest possible." ~ [[Ayn Rand]]

* "Science is what we know and philosophy is what we don't know." ~ [[Bertrand Russell]]

* "What is your aim in philosophy? To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle." ~ [[Ludwig Wittgenstein]]

* "Philosophy is to the real world as masturbation is to sex." ~ [[Karl Marx]]

* "In pornography philosophers are called virgin voyeurs. They like to watch and criticize as an expert, but have never even had sex themselves" ~ [[Kevin Warwick]]

* "Philosophy is the peculiarly stubborn attempt to think clearly." ~ [[William James]]

* "Philosophy, n. A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing." ~ [[Ambrose Bierce]]

* "Shallow thoughts can be deep, when emphasized properly." ~ [[ Josh Duerrstein]]

* "True philosophy is that which renders us to ourselves, and all others who surround us, better, and at the same time more content, more patient, more calm and more ready for all decent and pure enjoyment." ~ [[Lavater]]

* "Philosophy abounds more than philosophers, and learning more than learned men." ~ [[W.B. Clulow]]

* "The road to true philosophy is precisely the same with that which leads to true religion; and from both the one and the other, unless we would enter in as little children, we must expect to be totally excluded." ~ [[Bacon]]

* "Philosophy is the art and law of life, and it teaches us what to do in all cases, and, like good marksmen, to hit the white at any distance." ~ [[Seneca]]

* "A little philosophy inclineth men's minds to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds to religion." ~ [[Bacon]]

* "Whence? whither? why? how?—these questions cover all philosophy." ~ [[Joseph Joubert]]

* "I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law." ~ [[Aristotle]]

* "Philosophy is just like art, it's not supposed to be dumb, stupid and senseless but people make it that way." ~ [[Anonymous]]

* “Philosophy has become the stuff of airport lounges instead of the Sorbonne.” ~ [[Kate Muir]], Times columnist.

* “Being a philosopher, I have a problem for every solution.” ~ [[w:Robert Zend|Robert Zend]]

* “Ther philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.” ~ [[Henry Ward Beecher]]

* “Philosophy: unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.” ~ [[Henry Adams]]

* “Life is an urge of the Universe to understand itself.” ~ [[N S Dhami]]

* “Philosophy—the purple bullfinch in the lilac tree.” ~ [[T. S. Eliot]]

* “I believe that in actual fact, philosophy ranks before and above the natural sciences.” ~ [[Thomas Mann]]

* “Philosophy is useless, Theology is worse.” ~ [[Mark Knopfler]] in the song Industrial Disease
* "Philosophy is like a damp wash cloth. You wonder who used it before you.... and where." ~ [[Christine McWilliams]]

== See also ==
{{wikipedia}}
{{wiktionary|philosophy}}
{{wikiversity|God and Enlightenment#Philosophy of Religion}}
:[[:Category:Philosophers|Philosophers]]

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Death

2011-03-27T14:30:12Z

Nobody60: /* External links */

{{theme-cleanup|2006-11-02}}

'''[[w:Death|Death]]''' is the permanent end of the [[life]] of a biological [[w:organism|organism]]. Death may refer to the end of life as either an event or condition. In many cultures and in the arts, death is considered a being or otherwise [[w:Death (personification)|personified]], wherein it is usually capitalized as "Death".

==Sourced==

* Men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.
** [[Francis Bacon]], ''Essays, 2, ‘Of Death’''

* To me the honour is sufficient of belonging to the universe — such a great universe, and so grand a scheme of things. Not even Death can rob me of that honour. For nothing can alter the fact that I have lived; I have been I, if for ever so short a time. And when I am dead, the matter which composes my body is indestructible—and eternal, so that come what may to my 'Soul,' my dust will always be going on, each separate atom of me playing its separate part — I shall still have some sort of a finger in the pie. When I am dead, you can boil me, burn me, drown me, scatter me — but you cannot destroy me: my little atoms would merely deride such heavy vengeance. Death can do no more than kill you.
** [[W. N. P. Barbellion]] (Bruce Frederick Cummings), ''The Journal of a Disappointed Man'', Chatto & Windus, 1920.

* We all labour against our own cure; for death is the cure of all disease.
** [[Thomas Browne]], ''Religio Medici, II. 9.''

* What argufies pride and ambition?Soon or late death will take us in tow:Each bullet has got its commission,And when our time's come we must go.
** [[Charles Dibdin]], ''Each Bullet has its Commission''

* Verse, Fame and beauty are intense indeed,But Death intenser – Death is life's high mead.
** [[John Keats]], ''Sonnet: Why did I laugh to-night?''

* Death opens unknown doors. It is most grand to die.
** [[John Masefield]], ''Pompey the Great, i.''

* Death hath a thousand doors to let out life:I shall find one.
** [[Philip Massinger]], ''A Very Woman, V. iv.''

* Death did not come to my mother Like an old friend. She was a mother, and she must Conceive him. Up and down the bed she fought crying Help me, but death Was a slow child Heavy.
** [[Josephine Miles]], "Conception" (1974) st. 1–2; ''Collected Poems'', University of Illinois Press, 1983

* There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.
**[[Book_of_Proverbs|''Proverbs'']] 14:12 (KJV)

* Death is swallowed up in victory. O Death where is thy sting, O Grave where is thy victory?
** [[Paul of Tarsus]], in ''I Corinthians'' 15:54 - 56

* Death is one of two things. Either it is annihilation, and the dead have no consciousness of anything; or, as we are told, it is really a change: a migration of the soul from this place to another.
** [[Socrates]], in [[Plato]]'s ''Apology'', 41

* And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
** [[John the Evangelist]], in ''Revelation'' 21: 3–4 (KJV)

===''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895)===
Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895).

* One may live as a conqueror, a king, or a magistrate; but he must die as a man.
** [[Daniel Webster]], p. 173.

* My friend, there will come one day to you a Messenger, whom you cannot treat with contempt. He will say, "Come with me;" and all your pleas of business cares and earthly loves will be of no avail. When his cold hand touches yours, the key of the counting-room will drop forever, and he will lead you away from all your investments, your speculations, your bank-notes and real estate, and with him you will pass into eternity, up to the bar of God. You will not be too busy to die.
** [[Abbott Eliot Kittredge]], p. 174.

* God's finger touched him, and he slept.
** [[Alfred Tennyson]], p. 174.

* O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised; thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of men, and covered them all over with these two narrow words, "Hie jacet."
** [[Walter Raleigh]], p. 174.

* What a power has Death to awe and hush the voices of this earth! How mute we stand when that presence confronts us, and we look upon the silence he has wrought in a human life! We can only gaze, and bow our heads, and creep with our broken, stammering utterances under the shelter of some great word which God has spoken, and in which we see through the history of human sorrow the outstretching and overshadowing of the eternal arms.
** [[Walton W. Battershall]], p. 174.

* Look forward a little further to the period when all the noise and tumult and business of this world shall have closed forever.
** [[John Gregory Pike]], p. 174.

* We shall be in the midst of some great work, when the tools shall drop from our relaxing fingers, and we shall work no more; we shall be planning some mighty project — house, business, society, book — when in one shattering moment all our thoughts shall perish. Life shall seem strong in us when we shall find that it is done. Oh, how happy they to whom all that remains is immortality; happy you who have that confidence in the Saviour, that, although nature start at the sudden midnight cry, "The Bridegroom cometh!" faith shall answer, the moment that we remember who He is, "Even so, come, Lord Jesus!"
** [[James Hamilton]], p. 175.

* However dreary we may have felt life to be here, yet when that hour comes — the winding up of all things, the last grand rush of darkness on our spirits, the hour of that awful sudden wrench from all we have ever known or loved, the long farewell to sun, moon, stars, and light — brother man, I ask you this day, and I ask myself humbly and fearfully, "What will then be finished? When it is finished, what will it be? Will it be the butterfly existence of pleasure, the mere life of science, a life of uninterrupted sin and self-gratification, or will it be, 'Father, I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do?'"
** [[Frederick William Robertson]], p. 175.

* How shocking must thy summons be, O Death! To him that is at ease in his possessions! Who, counting on long years of pleasure here, Is quite unfurnished for the world to come. In that dread moment, how the frantic soul Raves round the walls of her clay tenement; Runs to each avenue, and shrieks for help; But shrieks in vain.
** [[Hugh Blair]], p. 175.

* When we come to die, we shall be alone. From all our worldly possessions we shall be about to part. Worldly friends — the friends drawn to us by our position, our wealth, or our social qualities, — will leave us as we enter the dark valley. From those bound to us by stronger ties — our kindred, our loved ones, children, brothers, sisters, and from those not less dear to us who have been made our friends because they and we are the friends of the same Saviour, — from them also we must part. Yet not all will leave us. There is One who "sticketh closer than a brother" — One who having loved His own which are in the world loves them to the end.
** [[Albert Barnes]], p. 176.

* When I lived, I provided for every thing but death; now I must die, and am unprepared.
** [[Caesar Borgia]], p. 176.

* Reflect on death as in Jesus Christ, not as without Jesus Christ. Without Jesus Christ it is dreadful, it is alarming, it is the terror of nature. In Jesus Christ it is fair and lovely, it is good and holy, it is the joy of saints.
** [[Blaise Pascal]], p. 176.

* To the Christian, these shades are the golden haze which heaven's light makes, when it meets the earth, and mingles with its shadows.
** [[Henry Ward Beecher]], p. 176.

* So fades a summer cloud away; So sinks the gale when storms are o'er; So gently shuts the eye of day; So dies a wave along the shore.
** [[Anna Laetitia Barbauld]], p. 176.

*Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death! —
** [[Felicia Hemans]], p. 176.

* Soon for me the light of day Shall forever pass away; Then from sin and sorrow free, Take me, Lord, to dwell with Thee.
** [[William Croswell Doane]], p. 177.

* All life is surrounded by a great circumference of death; but to the believer in Jesus, beyond this surrounding death is a boundless sphere of life. He has only to die once to be done with death forever.
** [[James Hamilton]], p. 177.

* Yes, death, — the hourly possibility of it, — death is the sublimity of life.
** [[William Mountford]], p. 177.

* Death is a stage in human progress, to be passed as we would pass from childhood to youth, or from youth to manhood, and with the same consciousness of an everlasting nature.
** [[Edmund Sears]], p. 177.

* Thus star by star declines Till all are passed away, As morning high and higher shines To pure and perfect day: Nor sink those stars in empty night; They hide themselves in heaven's pure light.
** [[James Montgomery]], p. 177.

* Life's race well run, Life's work well done, Life's crown well won, Now comes rest.
** Epitaph of President Garfield, p. 177.

* "God giveth His beloved sleep;" and in that peaceful sleep, realities, not dreams, come round their quiet rest, and fill their conscious spirits and their happy hearts with blessedness and fellowship. In His own time He will make the eternal morning dawn, and the hand that kept them in their slumbers shall touch them into waking, and shall clothe them when they arise according to the body of His own glory; and they, looking into His face, and flashing back its love, its light, its beauty, shall each break forth into singing as the rising light of that unsetting day touches their transfigured and immortal heads, in the triumphant thanksgiving, "I am satisfied, for I awake in Thy likeness."
** [[Alexander Maclaren]], p. 178.

* When our earthly day is closing, And the night grows still and deep, Let us, in Thine arms reposing, Feel Thy power to save and keep. Blessed Jesus, Give Thine own beloved sleep.

* What is our death but a night's sleep? For as through sleep all weariness and faintness pass away and cease, and the powers of the spirit come back again, so that in the morning we arise fresh and strong and joyous; so at the Last Day we shall rise again as if we had only slept a night, and shall be fresh and strong.
** [[Martin Luther]], p. 178.

* Death, to a good man is but passing through a dark entry, out of one little dusky room of his Father's house into another that is fair and large, lightsome and glorious, and divinely entertaining.
** [[Adam Clarke]], p. 178.

* Death is the quiet haven of us all.
** [[William Wordsworth]], p. 178.

*Mysterious Night! When our first parent knew Thee from report Divine, and heard thy name, Did he not tremble for this lovely frame, This glorious canopy of light and blue? Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew, Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, Hesperus, with the host of heaven came; And lo! creation widened in man's view. Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed Within thy beams, O sun? or who could find, While fly and leaf and insect stood revealed, That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind? Why do we then shun death with anxious strife? If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life?
** [[Joseph Blanco White]], p. 179.

* And when no longer we can see Thee, may we reach out our hands, and find Thee leading us through death to immortality and glory.
** [[Henry Ward Beecher]], p. 179.

* "''Paid the debt of nature''." No; it is not paying a debt; it is rather like bringing a note to the bank to obtain solid gold for it. In this case you bring this cumbrous body which is nothing worth, and which you could not wish to retain long; you lay it down, and receive for it from the eternal treasures — liberty, victory, knowledge, rapture.
** [[John Foster]], p. 179.

* When darkness gathers over all. And the last tottering pillars fall, Take the poor dust Thy mercy warms. And mould it into heavenly forms.
** [[Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.]], p. 179.

* Death is the waiting-room where we robe ourselves for immortality.
** [[Charles Spurgeon]], p. 180.

* Death is like thunder in two particulars; we are alarmed at the sound of it; and it is formidable only from that which preceded it.
** [[Charles Caleb Colton]], p. 180.

* If life has not made youby God's grace, through faith, holy — think you, will death, without faith do it? The cold waters of that narrow stream are no purifying bath in which you may wash and be clean. No! no! as you go down into them, you will come up from them.
** [[Alexander Maclaren]], p. 180.

* This character wherewith we sink into the grave at death is the very character wherewith we shall reappear at the resurrection.
** [[Thomas Chalmers]], p. 180.

* He that always waits upon God is ready whenever He calls. Neglect not to set your accounts even; he is a happy man who to lives as that death at all times may find him at leisure to die.
** [[Owen Feltham]], p. 180.

* Death cannot come To him untimely who is fit to die; The less of this cold world, the more of heaven; The briefer life, the earlier immortality.
** [[Henry Hart Milman]], p. 180.

* No man who is fit to live need tear to die. Poor, timorous, faithless souls that we are! How we shall smile at our vain alarms when the worst has happened! To us here, death is the most terrible thing we know. But when we have tasted its reality, it will mean to us birth, deliverance, a new creation of ourselves. It will be what health is to the sick man. It will be what home is to the exile. It will be what the loved one given - back is to the bereaved. As we draw near to it, a solemn gladness should fill our hearts. It is God's great morning lighting up the sky. Our fears are the terror of children in the night. The night with its terrors, its darkness, its feverish dreams, is passing away; and when we awake, it will be into the sunlight of God.
** [[George S. Merriam]], p. 181.

* Tarry with me, O my Saviour! Lay my head upon Thy breast, Till the morning; then awake me — Morning of eternal rest.
** [[Caroline S. Smith]], p. 181.

* O that we may all be living in such a state of preparedness, that, when summoned to depart, we may ascend the summit whence faith looks forth on all that Jesus hath suffered and done, and exclaiming, " We have waited for Thy salvation, O Lord," lie down with Moses on Pisgah, to awake with Moses in paradise.
** [[Henry Melvill]], p. 181.

* Seek such union to the Son of God, as, leaving no present death within, shall make the second death impossible, and shall leave in all your future only that shadow of death which men call dissolution, and which the gospel calls sleeping in Jesus.
** [[James Hamilton]], p. 181.

* Love masters agony; the soul that seemed Forsaken feels her present God again And in her Father's arms Contented dies away.
** [[John Keble]], p. 182.

* Every day His servants are dying modestly and peacefully — not a word of victory on their lips; but Christ's deep triumph in their hearts — watching the slow progress of their own decay, and yet so far emancipated from personal anxiety that they are still able to think and plan for others, not knowing that they are doing any great thing. They die, and the world hears nothing of them; and yet theirs was the completest victory. They came to the battle field, the field to which they had been looking forward all their lives, and the enemy was not to be found. There was no foe to fight with.
** [[Frederick William Robertson]], p. 182.

* "Come and see how a Christian can die," said the dying sage to his pupil; how would it do to say, "Come and see how an infidel can die?" How would it have done for Voltaire to say this, who, in his panic at the prospect of eternity, offered his physician half his fortune for six weeks more of life?
** [[James Hamilton]], p. 182.

* Dying visions of angels and Christ and God and heaven are confined to credibly good men. Why do not bad men have such visions? They die of all sorts of diseases; they have nervous temperaments; they even have creeds and hopes about the future which they cling to with very great tenacity; why do not they rejoice in some such glorious illusions when they go out of the world?
** [[Enoch Fitch Burr]], p. 182.

* And now, with busy, but noiseless process, the Comforter is giving the last finish to the sanctifying work, and making the heir of glory meet for home, till, at a signal given, the portal opens, and even the numb body feels the burst of blessedness as the rigid features smile and say, "I see Jesus," then leave tne vision pictured on the pale but placid brow.
** [[James Hamilton]], p. 183.

* How well he fell asleep! Like some proud river, widening toward the sea; Calmly and grandly, silently and deep, Life joined eternity.
** [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]], p. 183.

* O Earth, so full of dreary noises! O men, with wailing in your voices! O delved gold, the waller's heap! O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall! God makes a silence through you all, And "giveth His beloved, sleep."
** [[Mrs. Browning]], p. 183.

* Earth has one angel less, and heaven one more since yesterday. Already, kneeling at the throne, she has received her welcome, and is resting on the bosom of her Saviour.
** [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]], p. 183.

* Beloved in the Lord, if you only will lay hold of the Saviour's strength, and cast yourself entirely on His kind arms, with His dying grace He will do wonders for you in the dying hour. A great trembling may come upon you when you think of going down to tread the verge of Jordan: "for ye have not passed this way heretofore." But Jesus has; and you shall see His footprints on the shore. He will be your guide unto death, and through death.
** [[Alexander Dickson]], p. 183.

* Dead is she? No; rather let us call ourselves dead, who tire so soon in the service of the Master whom she has gone to serve forever.
** [[W. S. Smart]], p. 184.

* So we fall asleep in Jesus. We have played long enough at the games of life, and at last we feel the approach of death. We are tired out, and we lay our heads back on the bosom of Christ, and quietly fall asleep.
** [[Henry Ward Beecher]], p. 184.

* I do not know why a man should be either regretful or afraid, as he watches the hungry sea eating away this "bank and shoal of time" upon which he stands, even though the tide has all but reached his feet — if he knows that God's strong hand will be stretched forth to him at the moment when the sand dissolves from under him, and will draw him out of many waters, and place him high above the floods on the stable land where there is "no more sea."
** [[Alexander Maclaren]], p. 184.

* When you take the wires of the cage apart, you do not hurt the bird, but help it. You let it out of its prison. How do vou know that death does not help me when it takes the wires of my cage down? — that it does not release me, and put me into some better place, and better condition of life?
** Bishop [[Randolph S. Foster]], p. 184.

* The most heaven-like spots I have ever visited, have been certain rooms in which Christ's disciples were awaiting the summons of death. So far from being a "house of mourning," I have often found such a house to be a vestibule of glory.
** [[Theodore L. Cuyler]], p. 183.

* The world recedes; it disappears! Heaven opens on my eyes!
** [[Alexander Pope]], p. 184.

* I am not in the least surprised that your impression of death becomes more lively, in proportion as age and infirmity bring it nearer. God makes use of this rough trial to undeceive us in respect to our courage, to make us feel our weakness, and to keep us in all humility in His hands.
** [[François Fénelon]], p. 185.

* When at last the angels come to convey your departing spirit to Abraham's bosom, depend upon it, however dazzling in their newness they may be to you, you will find that your history is no novelty, and you yourself no stranger to them.
** [[James Hamilton]], p. 185.

* And when, in the evening of life, the golden clouds rest sweetly and invitingly upon the golden mountains, and the light of heaven streams down through the gathering mists of death, I wish you a peaceful and abundant entrance into that world of blessedness, where the great riddle of life will be unfolded to you in the quick consciousness of a soul redeemed and purified.
** [[Josiah Gilbert Holland]], p. 185.

* Dear brethren, our ship is sailing fast. We shall soon hear the rasping of the shallows, and the commotion overhead which bespeaks the port in view. When it comes to that, how will you feel? Are you a stranger, or a convict, or are you going home? Brethren, we are all sailing home; and by and by, when we are not thinking of it, some shadowy thing (men call it death), at midnight, will pass by, and will call us by name, and will say, "I have a message for you from home; God wants you; heaven waits for you."
** [[Henry Ward Beecher]], p. 185.

* Do we not all, in this very hour, recall a death-bed scene in which some loved one has passed away? And, as we bring to mind the solemn reflections of that hour, are we not ready to hear and to heed the voice with which a dying wife once addressed him who stood sobbing by her side: "My dear husband, live for one thing, and only one thing; Just one thing, — the glory of God, the glory of God!"
** [[E. P. Tenney]], p. 186.

==Unsourced==

===Living with death - quotes and anecdotes===
* If you choose death and destruction, death and destruction will choose you.
** [[Dalek Sec]]

* Even at our birth, death does but stand aside a little. And every day he looks towards us and muses somewhat to himself whether that day or the next he will draw nigh.
** [[Robert Bolt]]

* People aren't afraid of being dead, they're afraid of getting dead.
** [[George Carlin]]

* It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.
** [[Francis Bacon]]

* If being a kid is about learning how to live, then being a grown-up is about learning how to die.
** Narration; [[Stephen King]], ''Christine'', Part 1, Chapter 5

* It is nobody's fault. The great circle of life has begun, but you see, not all of us arrive together in the end...She'll [Little Foot's mother] always be with you as long as you remember the things she taught you. In a way, you'll never be apart because you are still a ''part'' of each other.
** Rudder, ''[[w:The Land Before Time|The Land Before Time]]''

* Every blade in the field, Every leaf in the forest, Lays down its life in its season, As beautifully as it was taken up.
** [[Henry David Thoreau]]

* In this world, one day death is going to take the life from everything that you love. So while you're able, love what you have. Takes the death from your life.
** Mercy Ealing to Joe Carpenter, from [[Dean Koontz]], ''Sole Survivor'' (2000 film)

* For certain is death for the born And certain is birth for the dead; Therefore over the inevitable Thou shouldst not grieve.
** [[Bhagavad Gita]], Chapter 2

* Death is utterly acceptable to consciousness and life. There has been endless times of numberless deaths, but neither consciousness nor life has ceased to arise. The felt quality and cycle to death has not modified the fragility of flowers, even the flowers within the human body.
** [[Adi Da Samraj]], "Prologue", ''The Knee of Listening''

* Death is not the opposite of life; it exists as a part of them.
** Toru Watanabe, from [[Haruki Murakami]], ''[[w:Norwegian Wood (novel)|Norwegian Wood]]'' (1987)

* I am a good Christian, properly baptized and I will die... a good Christian.
** [[Joan of Arc]]

* No shit, there's worse ways to be dead than dying.
** Chuck Palahniuk, from [[Rant]]

*Death is a tragic event, but stopping the flow of traffic is always seen as the greater crime.
**Chuck Palahniuk, from [[Rant]]

* Death is so preoccupied with life, that is has no time for anything else.
** [[w:Mikhail Turovsky|Mikhail Turovsky]] (b. 1933), Russian-American artist and aphorist. ''Itch of Wisdom'' (Cicuta Press, 1986)

* Chicó - John! John! Died! Oh my God, poor died of John Cricket! So yellow, and so shameless to die like that! What do I do in the world without John? John! John! There is no way, John Cricket died. Ended the smartest Cricket in the world. '''He completed his sentence and met with the only irredeemable evil, what is the mark of our strange destiny on earth, that fact without explanation that matches everything that is alive in one flock of guilty, because all that is alive dies.''' What can I do now? Only your funeral and pray for his soul.
** Chicó in the play [[Auto da Compadecida]] by [[w:Ariano Suassuna]]

* While on a journey, Chuang Tzu found a skull, dry and parched. With sorrow he questioned and lamented the end to all things. When he finished speaking, he dragged the skull over, and using it as a pillow, lay down to sleep. In the night, the skull came to his dreams and said, "You are a fool to rejoice in the entanglements of life." Chuang Tzu couldn't believe this and asked "If I could return you to your life, you would want that, wouldn't you?" Stunned by Chuang Tzu's foolishness the skull replied, '''"How do you know that it is bad to be dead?"'''
* [[Zhuangzi]], ''[[w:Zhuangzi (book)|Zhuangzi]]''

===Coming to terms with death===

* We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.
** [[Richard Dawkins]], 'Unweaving The Rainbow'
** Dawkins has stated on many occasions that this passage will be read at his funeral.

* Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.
** [[Oscar Wilde]]

* Death smiles at us all. All a man can do is smile back.
** Marcus Aurelius and Maximus, ''[[Gladiator]]''

* Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all - the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved.
** [[Mark Twain]]

* Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because dawn has come.
** [[Rabindranath Tagore]]

* Death is for the living and not for the dead.
** Floyd McClure in ''[[Gates of Heaven]]'' (1980)

* When we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings.
** [[w:Sogyal Rinpoche|Sogyal Rinpoche]]

* On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down.
** [[Woody Allen]]

* Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.
** [[Kurt Vonnegut]], ''[[Slaughterhouse-Five]]'' (1969)

* I like the dead – they're so uncritical.
** [[Tom Baker]]

* Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
** [[Albert Einstein]]

* Life is but a passing dream, but the death that follows is eternal.
** [[w:Seymour Guado|Seymour Guado]] in ''[[Final Fantasy X]]''

* He's not afraid of dying. He's just afraid that his soul won't make it to God.
** ''Starbuck'', speaking of Leoben, ''Battlestar Galactica''

* The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.
** [[Kurt Vonnegut]], ''[[Slaughterhouse-Five]]''

* Ultimately, we're all dead men. Sadly, we cannot choose how. But, we can decide how we meet that end in order that we are remembered as men.
** Proximo, ''[[Gladiator]]''

* We do not mourn the loss of those who die fufilling their destinies
** Forestmaster, from the ''[[w:Dragonlance|Dragonlance]]'' saga

* To die would be an awfully big adventure.
** [[Peter Pan]]

* Death is the one thing that connects us all. It reminds us that what's really important is who we've touched, how much we've given. It makes us realize that we have to be good to one another.
** [[w:Peter Petrelli|Peter Petrelli]], from ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]''

* Death, then, being the way and condition of life, we cannot love to live if we cannot bear to die.
** [[William Penn]]

* Fear Death? – to feel the fog in my throat,The mist in my face.
** [[Robert Browning]], ''Prospice.''

* Having a child changes every aspect of your life - for the better, of course. The sacrifices are large, but what you get in return is even bigger than the sacrifices you make. I feel, in a sense, ready to die because you are living on in your child. Not literally, not ready to die - but you know, that sort of feeling in a profound way.
** [[Heath Ledger]]

* Everybody dies. You can't stop it, you can't run away from it..
** [[w: Big Boss (Metal Gear)|Big Boss]], from ''[[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots]]''

* I have often thought upon death, and I find it the least of all evils.
** [[Francis Bacon]], An Essay on Death.

* Sudden death leaves an impression on one.
** [[Anonymous]]

* I have no terror of Death. It is the coming of Death that terrifies me.
** [[Oscar Wilde]]

* A long illness seems to be placed between life and death, in order to make death a comfort both to those who die and to those who remain.
** Jean de La Bruyere (1645–1696)

===Death===
* The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.
** [[Mark Twain]]

* Our bodies are prisons for our souls. Our skin and blood, the iron bars of confinement. But fear not. All flesh decays. Death turns all to ash. And thus, death frees every soul.
** Grand Inquisitor Silecio, in ''[[The Fountain]]''

* A samurai once asked Zen Master Hakuin where he would go after he died. Hakuin answered "How am I supposed to know?" "How do you know? You're a Zen master!" exclaimed the samurai. "Yes, but not a dead one", Hakuin answered
** [[w:Zen|Zen]] [[w:Mondo|mondō]]

* Withdrawn into the peace of this desert, along with some books, few but wise, I live in conversation with the deceased, and listen to the dead with my eyes.
** [[Quevedo]], From the Tower

*Here. Astride the top of nothingness, I suddenly receive the call of death. Who, in passing, tells me that it's nothing. Nothing more than the absence of nothingness. Nothing more than the absence of the word itself. Nothing more, and simply nothingness.
** [[Giannina Braschi]]

* Death carries off a man who is gathering flowers and whose mind is distracted, as a flood carries off a sleeping village.
** [[Dhammapada]], Verse 47; F. Max Müller, translator

* ''[Death is]'' nature's way of telling you to slow down.
** [[American proverbs|American life insurance proverb]], unidentified article, ''Newsweek'', unidentified 1960 issue

* Death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist.
** [[Epicurus]]

* Despite the solace of hypocritical religiosity and its seductive promise of an after-life of heavenly bliss, most of us will do anything to thwart the inevitable victory of biological death.
** [[Jack Kevorkian]], describing his painting "Nearer My God To Thee"
** Quoted in {{cite web
| last = Walker
| first = Cliff
| date = January 2002
| url = http://www.positiveatheism.org/crt/cliff021.htm
| title = "I Can Think of Life, and Nothing Else"
| work = postiveatheism.org
| accessdate = 2007-11-09
}}

* Pale Death with impartial tread beats at the poor man's cottage door and at the palaces of kings.
** [[Horace]]

* The Death of One is a Tragedy.The Death of a Million is just a Statistic
** [[Erich Maria Remarque]]

* '''Hob Gadling''': Death's a capricious thing, innit? '''Morpheus''': Yes. Yes, she is.
** Discussing Morpheus' sister, the personification of Death
** ''[[w:The Sandman|Sandman]]'' #13: "Men of Good Fortune"

* I find myself wondering about humanity. Their attitude to my sister's gift is so strange. Why do they fear the sunless lands? It is as natural to die as it is to be born. But they fear her. Dread her. Feebly they attempt to placate her. They do not love her.
** Dream about Death, in SANDMAN #8: "The Sound of Her Wings"

* Anyway: '''I'm not blessed or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do and I do it. Listen: even as we're talking, I'm there for old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I'm in cars and boats and planes, in hospitals and forests and abattoirs. For some folks death is a release and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them.'''
** Death, in SANDMAN #20: "Façade"

* ''When the first living thing existed, I was there, waiting. When the last living thing dies, my job is finished. I'll put the chairs on tables, turn out the lights and lock the universe behind me when I leave.'''
** Death, in SANDMAN #20: "Façade"

* Rainie, mythologies take longer to die than people believe. They linger on in a kind of dream country that affects all of you.
** Death, in SANDMAN #20: "Façade"

* Who am I? Just a friend. Sometimes. Maybe. Sorry I couldn't help any. Be seeing you...
** Death, in SANDMAN #20: "Façade"

* Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?
** [[Plato]]

* We look at death from the selfish side, like, "That guy died. Oh, it's so sad." Why is it sad? He's away from all of this bad stuff that's here on Earth. I mean, at the worst, he's just somewhere quiet, no nothing. At best, he's an angel... or he's a spirit somewhere. What is so bad about that?
** [[Tupac Shakur]]

* When a tiger dies, it leaves its skin behind. When a person dies, he leaves his name behind.
** [[Chinese proverbs|Chinese proverb]]

* When I die, I would like to go peacefully, in my sleep, like my grandfather. Not screaming in terror like his passengers.
** [[Jack Handey]]

* When you were born, you cried, and the world rejoiced. Live your life in such a manner that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.
** [[Kabir]]

* We may have days, we may have hours. But sooner or later, we all push up flowers...
** Membrillo from ''[[w:Grim Fandango|Grim Fandango]]''

* Death is its own reward
** ''[[Warcraft III]]''

* Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so, For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow, Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me. From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee, Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow, And soonest our best men with thee doe goe, Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie. Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell, And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well, And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then; One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally, And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.
** "Holy Sonnet X", by [[John Donne]]

* That is not dead which can eternal lie / And with strange aeons even Death may die.
** "[[w:The Call of Cthulhu|The Call of Cthulhu]]", by [[H.P. Lovecraft]]

* Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so as long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.
** [[Ray Bradbury]], ''[[Fahrenheit 451]]'' (1953)

* Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful
** [[w: They Might Be Giants (band)|They Might Be Giants]], "[[w: Don't Let's Start|Don't Let's Start]]"

* Upon the Grave which swallows fast/'Tis peace at last, oh peace at last
** [[Metallica]] , "Cyanide" ([[w:Death Magnetic|Death Magnetic]])

* It is an ideal which I hope to live for. But, my lord, if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
** [[Nelson Mandela]] , statement at the Rivonia trial (20 April 1964)

===Death and relationships===

* You think the dead we love ever truly leave us? You think that we don't recall them more clearly than ever in times of great trouble?
** [[Albus Dumbledore]]

* Death ends a life, not a relationship.
** [[w:Morrie Schwartz|Morrie Schwartz]], as quoted from ''[[Tuesdays with Morrie]]'' (1997)

* The first day after a death, the new absence Is always the same; we should be careful   Of each other, we should be kind While there is still time.
** [[Philip Larkin]], "The Mower" (1979)

===Death and the meaning of life===

* Ancient Egyptians believed that upon death they would be asked two questions and their answers would determine whether they could continue their journey in the afterlife. The first question was, 'Did you bring joy?' The second was, 'Did you find joy?'
** [[Leo Buscaglia]]

* Death and death alone gives meaning to life and this meaning is entirely negative.
** [[w:Georges Poulet|Georges Poulet]]

* Every man dies. Not every man really lives.
** [[William Wallace]], in ''[[Braveheart]]''

* When one considers just what a man is,Happy it be that short his span is.
** [[James Cagney]]

* I said to Life, I would hear Death speak. And Life raised her voice a little higher and said, You hear him now.
** [[Khalil Gibran]]

* If man were immortal, do you realise what his meat bills would be?
** [[Woody Allen]]

* Never the spirit was born, the spirit shall cease to be never. Never was time it was not, end and beginning are dreams.
** The [[Bhagavad Gita]]

* Our souls are prisoners of the terror of death, and the day is beautiful.
** [[Paulo Coelho]], {{cite book
| others = translated by Clifford E. Landers
| title = Quinta Montanha (The Fifth Mountain)
| edition = 1st edition
| year = 1998
| publisher = HarperFlamingo
| location = New York
| language = English
| id = ISBN 0060175443
| chapter = Chapter 1
}}

* The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
** [[Harriet Beecher Stowe]]

* '''To be, or not to be''', —'''that is the question''':— Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? —'''To die, —to sleep''',— No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, —'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. '''To die, —to sleep''';— '''To sleep!''' perchance '''to dream''': —ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would these fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death,— The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn No traveller returns,—puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know naught of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; And enterprises of great pitch and moment, With this regard, their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.
** [[w:To be, or not to be|Hamlet's soliloquy]]
** [[William Shakespeare]], ''[[Hamlet]]'', Act III, Scene I

===Others===

* Everyone will come to my funeral to make sure that I stay dead.
** [[Marilyn Manson]]

* The dead, if not separated from the living, bring madness upon them.
** [[w:Nyakyusa|Nyakyusa]] proverb

* Death slue not him, but he made death his ladder to the skies.
** [[Edmund Spenser]], ''An Epitaph upon [[w:Philip Sydney|Philip Sydney]]'', line 20

* There is no justice - there's just me.
** Death
** [[Terry Pratchett]], ''[[Discworld|Mort]]'' (1987)

* It nice it happen to you. Like you come to the island and had a holiday. Sun didn't burn you red-red, just brown. You sleep and no mosquito eat you. But the truth is, it bound to happen if you stay long enough. So take that nice picture you got in your head home with you, but don't be fooled. We lonely here mostly too. If we lucky, maybe, we got some nice pictures to take with us.
** Jamaican Woman, in ''[[Meet Joe Black]]'', (1998)

*My uncle is a southern planter. He's an undertaker in Alabama.
**[[Fred Allen]]

* We all have it comin', kid.
** Will Munny ([[Clint Eastwood]]) in ''[[Unforgiven]]'' (1992)

* A Live Human Body and a Deceased Human body have the same Number of Particles.Structurally there's no Diffrence
** Dr Manhattan ''[[Watchmen]]''

* Men only think of their past right before their death, as if they were searching frantically for proof that they were alive.
** Jet Black, ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]''

* In a sense, Deng Xiaoping's death was inevitable, wasn't it?
** [[w:Jon Snow|Jon Snow]], [[w:Channel 4 News|Channel 4 News]]

* Death is everything.
** words inscribed on a statue of a knight from [[w: Resident Evil 1|Resident Evil 1]]

* No heralds come with death...
** [[w: Zhang Liao|Zhang Liao]] from [[w: Dynasty Warriors|Dynasty Warriors]]

* Faith in eternal life ceases — but death goes on.
** [[w:Vladimir Jankélévitch|Vladimir Jankélévitch]]

* Nothing will be left of me. I die utterly as unknown as if I had never been born. Nothingness receive your prey.
** [[w:Jan Potocki|Jan Potocki]]

===Humor===

* I am death, not taxes. I turn up only once.
** Death
** [[Terry Pratchett]], ''[[Discworld|Feet of Clay]]'' (1996)

* Since you are having a near-death experience, I am logically, by extension, having a near-Vimes experience. Don't worry about me, I've brought a book.
** Death to Sam Vimes
** [[Terry Pratchett]], ''[[Discworld|Thud!]]'' (2005)

* If you ever fall off the Sears Tower, just go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will try to catch you because, hey, free dummy.
** [[Jack Handey]]

* If your parents never had children, chances are ... neither will you.
** [[Dick Cavett]]

* Always look on the Bright side of Death.Just before You draw Your Terminal Breath
** [[Eric Idle]]

* Sometimes when I feel like killing someone, I do a little trick to calm myself down. I'll go over to the person's house and ring the doorbell. When the person comes to the door, I'm gone, but you know what I've left on the porch? A jack-o-lantern with a knife stuck in the side of its head with a note that says 'You.' After that I usually feel a lot better, and no harm done.
** [[Jack Handey]]

* You may be a king or a little street sweeper, but sooner or later you dance with the reaper!
** ''[[w:Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey|Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey]]'' (1991)

* Dying can't be that bad of a thing; I mean, ''everybody's'' doing it.
** [[Unknown]]

* I can't believe that I'm going to meet my end at the hands of converging red dots.
** Seamus Harper, ''[[Andromeda (TV series)|Andromeda]]''

* I intend to live forever. So far, so good!
** [[Woody Allen]]

* To live is to die.
** [[Cliff Burton]]

* Death comes for us all, Oroku Saki, but something much worse comes for you. For when you die, it will be without honour.
** Splinter, ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990 film)|Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]'' (1990)

* At the end of your life, you're lucky if you die.
** Bret McKenzie, "Think About It Think Think About It" - [[Flight of the Conchords]]

* Yes, even pricks turn into top blokes after death
** [[w: Andrew Hansen|Andrew Hansen]], "The Eulogy Song" from ''[[w: The Chaser's War on Everything|The Chaser's War on Everything]]''

* I don't believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.
** [[Woody Allen]]

* It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry a tune.
** [[Woody Allen]]

* Those who welcome death have only tried it from the ears up.
** [[Wilson Mizner]]

* To me, funerals are like bad movies. They last too long, they're overacted, and the ending is predictable.
** [[George Burns]]

*Why does Death cross the road? To get to you!
**[[Anonymous]]

* If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive!
** [[Samuel Goldwyn]]

* Dead people make the best patients. You can do whatever tests you want on them and they never complain. Oh, and you can yell at them without getting in trouble.
** [[Anonymous]]

==See also==

* [[Death of children]]
* [[Epitaphs]]
* [[Famous last words]]
* [[Life]]
* [[Saying goodbye]]
* [[Suicide]]

==External links==
[http://www.eulogyquotes.com/death-quotes/index.html Death Quotes] at eulogyquotes.com
{{wikipedia}}
{{wiktionary|death}}
{{wikiversity|God and Enlightenment#Is There a Life After Death?}}

[[Category:Death and dying]]

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[[ml:മരണം]]
[[br:Marv]]
[[ca:Mort]]
[[cs:Smrt]]
[[de:Tod]]
[[et:Surm]]
[[el:Θάνατος]]
[[es:Muerte]]
[[eu:Heriotza]]
[[fa:مرگ]]
[[fr:Mort]]
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[[hr:Smrt]]
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[[it:Morte]]
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[[ku:Mirin]]
[[la:Mors]]
[[lt:Mirtis]]
[[hu:Halál]]
[[nl:Dood]]
[[ja:死]]
[[nn:Døden]]
[[no:Død]]
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[[pl:Śmierć]]
[[pt:Morte]]
[[ru:Смерть]]
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[[uk:Смерть]]

God

2011-03-27T13:56:39Z

Nobody60: /* External links */

[[Image:Blake_ancient_of_days.jpg|300px|thumb|right|One boy would not get it through his head that for all adults God is not an old man in a white beard sitting on a cloud... ~ [[Madeleine L'Engle]] ]]
'''[[w:God|God]]''' is a term used in referring to various notions of a supreme being, often described to be the ruler or creator of the universe, or immanent within it.

= A - Z =
== A ==
:Quotations listed alphabetically by author or work.
[[File:Carina Nebula by ESO.jpg|144px|thumb|right|In the Beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. ~ [[Douglas Adams]] ]]

* '''In the Beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.'''
** [[Douglas Adams]], in ''[[w:The Restaurant at the End of the Universe|The Restaurant at the End of the Universe]]'' (1980), Ch. 1

* "Does God know he [exists]?" "Of course he does. Otherwise, you could not have asked the question, and I could not have answered."
** [[Douglas Adams]]

* When we say God is a spirit, we know what we mean, as well as we do when we say that the pyramids of Egypt are matter. Let us be content, therefore, to believe him to be a spirit, that is, an essence that we know nothing of, in which originally and necessarily reside all energy, all power, all capacity, all activity, all wisdom, all goodness.
** [[John Adams]], in a letter to [[Thomas Jefferson]] (17 January 1820)

* When I observe into what inconsistent absurdities those persons run who make speculative, metaphysical religion a matter of importance, I am fully determined never to puzzle myself in the mazes of religious discussion, [and] to content myself with practicing the dictates of God and reason so far as I can judge for myself...
** [[John Adams]]

*Facts are the words of God, and we may heap them together endlessly, but they will teach us little or nothing till we place them in their true relations, and recognize the thought that binds them together.
**[[Louis Agassiz]]

*It is the job of prophets and scientists alike to proclaim the glories of God
**[[Louis Agassiz]]

*"We have one life; it soon will be past; what we do for God is all that will last."
**[[Muhammad Ali]]

*God will not place a burden on a man's shoulders knowing that he cannot carry it.
**[[Muhammad Ali]]

* '''Never place a period where God has placed a comma.'''
** [[Gracie Allen]], in her last letter to [[George Burns]], as quoted in ''Two Minutes for God : Quick Fixes for the Spirit'' (2007) by Peter B. Panagore, p. 73; this was later used in a slogan for the United Church of Christ: '''Never place a period where God has placed a comma. God Is Still Speaking.'''

* Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends.
** [[Woody Allen]], in ''Getting Even'' (1971)

* If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name in a Swiss bank.
** [[Woody Allen]], in ''[[w:Without Feathers|Without Feathers]]'' (1975)

* The important thing, I think, is not to be bitter... if it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he is evil. I think that the worst thing you could say is that he is, basically, an under-achiever. If God exists, I hope he has a good excuse.
** [[Woody Allen]], in ''[[w:Love and Death|Love and Death]]'' (1975); also quoted in ''What Do Jews Believe? : The Customs and Culture of Modern Judaism'' (2007) by Edward Kessler, p. 66

* To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.
** [[Woody Allen]], in ''[[w:Stardust Memories|Stardust Memories]]'' (1980)

* How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?
** [[Woody Allen]], as quoted in ''Love, Sex, Death & The Meaning of Life : The Films of Woody Allen'' (2001) by Foster Hirsch, p. 50

* God is not a limited individual who sits alone up in the clouds on a golden throne. God is pure Consciousness that dwells within everything. Understanding this truth, learn to accept and love everyone equally.
** [[Amma]]

[[Image:TenCommandmentsAustinStateCapitol.jpg|144px|thumb|right|I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. ~ [[Susan B. Anthony]] ]]
* I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
** [[Susan B. Anthony]], in an address to the National American Woman Suffrage Association (1896)

* To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.
** [[Isaac Asimov]]

* '''A God who cannot smile could not have created this humorous universe.'''
** [[Sri Aurobindo]], in ''Thoughts and Aphorisms''

*In God alone, essence (what He is) and existence (that he is) coincide.
** [[Avicenna]]

* God, the supreme being, is neither circumscribed by space, nor touched by time; he cannot be found in a particular direction, and his essence cannot change. The secret conversation is thus entirely spiritual; it is a direct encounter between God and the soul, abstracted from all material constraints.
** [[Avicenna]], as quoted in ''366 Readings From Islam'' (2000), edited by Robert Van der Weyer

== B ==

* God alone is real, nothing matters but love for God.
** [[Meher Baba]]

*It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion; for while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate, and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.
** [[Francis Bacon]]

* There are two books laid before us to study, to prevent our falling into error; first, the volume of the Scriptures, which reveal the will of God; then the volume of the Creatures, which express His power.
** [[Francis Bacon]]

* I reverse the phrase of [[Voltaire]], and say that if God would have existed, it would be necessary to abolish Him.
** [[Mikhail Bakunin]] in "On God and the State"

* God was a clever idea ... The human race came up with a winner there.
** [[J. G. Ballard]], as quoted in [http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/sep/06/fiction.jgballard "The benign catastrophist" by Susie Mackenzie in ''The Guardian'' (6 September 2003)]

* The orthodox faith painted God as a revengeful being, and yet people talk about loving such a being.
** [[P. T. Barnum]]

* That men should live honestly, quietly, and comfortably together, it is needful that they should live under a sense of God's will, and in awe of the divine power, hoping to please God, and fearing to offend Him, by their behaviour respectively.
** [[w:Isaac Barrow|Isaac Barrow]], teacher of [[Isaac Newton]].

* If by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot.
** [[Samuel Beckett]], on the title of one of his most famous plays, ''[[w:Waiting for Godot|Waiting for Godot]]'', as quoted in ''The Essential Samuel Beckett : An Illustrated Biography'', by Enoch Brater (revised edition, 2003), p.75

* '''[[w:Zeus|Zeus]]''', ''n''. The chief of Grecian gods, adored by the Romans as [[w:Jupiter|Jupiter]] and by the modern Americans as God, Gold, Mob and Dog. Some explorers who have touched upon the shores of America, and one who professes to have penetrated a considerable distance to the interior, have thought that these four names stand for as many distinct deities, but in his monumental work on Surviving Faiths, Frumpp insists that the natives are monotheists, each having no other god than himself, whom he worships under many sacred names.
** [[Ambrose Bierce]], in ''The Cynic's Word Book'' (1906), later retitled ''[[w:The Devil's Dictionary|The Devil's Dictionary]]''

* Stop telling God what to do with his dice.
**[[Niels Bohr]]

*When with bold telescopes I survey the old and newly discovered stars and planets, when with excellent microscopes I discern the unimitable subtility of nature’s curious workmanship; and when, in a word, by the help of anatomical knives, and the light of chemical furnaces, I study the book of nature, I find myself oftentimes reduced to exclaim with the Psalmist, ‘How manifold are Thy works, O Lord! In wisdom hast Thou made them all!
** Sir [[w:Robert Boyle|Robert Boyle]]

*An outlook through this peephole [that manned space flight had opened] at the vast mysteries of the universe should only confirm our belief in the certainty of its Creator. I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science.
** [[Wernher Von Braun ]]

* All names of God remain hallowed because they have been used not only to speak ''of'' God but also to speak ''to'' him.
** [[Martin Buber]], in ''[[w:I and Thou|I and Thou]]'' (1923)

* Some would deny any legitimate use of the word God because it has been misused so much. Certainly it is the most burdened of all human words. Precisely for that reason it is the most imperishable and unavoidable. And how much weight has all erroneous talk about God's nature and works (although there never has been nor can be any such talk that is not erroneous) compared with the one truth that all men who have addressed God really meant him? For whoever pronounces the word God and really means Thou, addresses, no matter what his delusion, the true Thou of his life that cannot be restricted by any other and to whom he stands in a relationship that includes all others.
** [[Martin Buber]], in ''[[w:I and Thou|I and Thou]]'' (1923)

* God's merits are so transcendent that it is not surprising his faults should be in reasonable proportion.
** [[Samuel Butler]] "Rebelliousness" in ''Note-Books'' (1912)

* To the lexicographer, [[Wiktionary:God|God]] is simply the word that comes next to [[Wiktionary:go-cart|go-cart]]
** [[Samuel Butler]]

== C ==

* God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that.
** [[Joseph Campbell]]

* Well, you have to say yes to [Eternity], you have to say it's great this way. It's the way God intended it.
** [[Joseph Campbell]]

* At best, God can be viewed as nothing more than an uncaring incompetent father-figure.
** [[George Carlin]]

* Religion has never really had a big problem with murder. Not really. More people have been killed in the name of God than for any other reason.
** [[George Carlin]]

* Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time! But He loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs '''money'''! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing and all-wise, but somehow, just can't handle money!
** [[George Carlin]]

* Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God.
** [[Chesterton]]

* Nihil est, quod deus efficere non possit ("there is nothing that God cannot do").
** [[Cicero]]

* God: a disease we imagine we are cured of because no one dies of it nowadays.
** [[Emile Cioran]], ''The Trouble with Being Born''

* I don't believe in God, but I'm very interested in Her.
** [[Arthur C. Clarke]]

* Perhaps our role on this planet is not to worship God — but to create Him.
** [[Arthur C. Clarke]]

* I've steered clear of God. He was an incredible sadist.
** [[John Collier]]

* We 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 Cosby]]

== D ==

* Realization of Happiness Itself Is Realization of God, Truth, or Reality Itself
** [[Adi Da]]

* I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose.
** [[Clarence Darrow]]

* I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars.
** [[Charles Darwin]]

* A man who recognizes no God is probably placing an inordinate value on himself.
** [[Robertson Davies]] in ''Conversations''

* The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
** [[Richard Dawkins]] in ''The God Delusion''

* Nothing is discovered without God’s intention and assistance, and I suppose every new knowledge of His works that is conceded to man to be distinctly a revelation by which men are to guide themselves.
**[[Charles Dickens]]

[[Image:Stellar spire eagle nebula.jpg|144px|thumb|right|It is solemn to remember that Vastness — Is but the Shadow of the Brain which casts it — ~ [[Emily Dickinson]] ]]
* They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse.
** [[Emily Dickinson]] Letter to Mrs. J. G. Holland [L551] (Spring 1878)

* It is solemn to remember that Vastness — Is but the Shadow of the Brain which casts it — All things swept sole away This — is immensity —
** [[Emily Dickinson]] Letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson [L551] (1881)

* If there is a supreme being, he's crazy.
** [[Marlene Dietrich]], as quoted in ''Rave'' magazine (November 1986)

* God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road.
** [[Isak Dinesen]]

* God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world.
** [[Paul Dirac]]

* I do not know whether there are gods, but there ought to be.
** [[Diogenes of Sinope]]

* With God, every moment is the moment of beginning again.
** [[Catherine Doherty]]

== E ==

* God says do what you wish, but make the wrong choice and you will be tortured for eternity in hell. That, sir, is not free will. It would be akin to a man telling his girlfriend, 'Do what you wish, but if you choose to leave me, I will track you down and blow your brains out.' When a man says this we call him a psychopath and cry out for his imprisonment/execution. When a god says the same, we call him ''loving'' and build churches in his honor.
** Computer programmer, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Easttom -Chuck Easttom]

* If we pray to God as a corporeal person, this will prevent us from relinquishing the human doubts and fears which attend such a belief, and so we cannot grasp the wonders wrought by infinite, incorporeal Love, to whom all things are possible.
** [[w:Mary Baker Eddy|Mary Baker Eddy]] in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures"

* Before God we are all equally wise — and equally foolish
** [[Albert Einstein]]

* I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.
** [[Albert Einstein]] (24 April 1929)

* I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance — but for us, not for God.
** [[Albert Einstein]]

* I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him.
** [[Albert Einstein]], Letter to Edgar Meyer (2 January 1915)

* It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious, then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
** [[Albert Einstein]] from a letter to an atheist, written in English (24 March 1954). It is included in ''Albert Einstein: The Human Side'', edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman

* My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment.
** [[Albert Einstein]], Letter to M. Berkowitz (25 October 1950)

* Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the Old One. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.
** [[Albert Einstein]]

[[File:2003-32-GravitationalLens.jpg|144px|thumb|right|The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science... ~ [[Albert Einstein]] ]]
* The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man.
** [[Albert Einstein]]
** Variant translation: The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.

* Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to... If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked... If, as they say, God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?... If he is unable to do either, then why call him 'God'?
** [[Epicurus]]

* If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are always praying for evil against one another.
** [[Epicurus]]

* God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.
** ''[[w:Exodus|Exodus]]'' 3:14 (King James Version)
** Variant: God said to Moses, 'I will be what I will be'

== F ==

* When people expect God to plan their lives for them, and protect them, they tend to lose their motivation to guide and control their own lives.
** [[Charles W. Faulkner]]

* God heals, and the doctor takes the fee.
** [[Benjamin Franklin]]

* God helps those who help themselves.
** [[Benjamin Franklin]]

* Beer is proof God loves us. (misattributed)
** [[Benjamin Franklin]]

* If you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
** "God" in ''[[Futurama]]''

== G ==

* I looked and looked but I didn't see God.
** [[Yuri Gagarin]] after becoming the first person to orbit the Earth. Sometimes misquoted as "I see no God up here" as if he said this in space, but there are no transcripts or recordings indicating that he ever did.

* I do not think it is necessary to believe that the same God who has given us our senses, reason, and intelligence wished us to abandon their use, giving us by some other means the information that we could gain through them.
** [[Galileo Galilei]]

* Mathematics is the language in which God wrote the universe.
** [[Galileo Galilei]]

* It is beyond my power to induce in you a belief in God. There are certain things which are self proved and certain which are not proved at all. The existence of God is like a geometrical axiom. It may be beyond our heart grasp. I shall not talk of an intellectual grasp. Intellectual attempts are more or less failures, as a rational explanation cannot give you the faith in a living God. For it is a thing beyond the grasp of reason. It transcends reason. There are numerous phenomena from which you can reason out the existence of God, but I shall not insult your intelligence by offering you a rational explanation of that type. I would have you brush aside all rational explanations and begin with a simple childlike faith in God. If I exist, God exists. With me it is a necessity of my being as it is with millions. They may not be able to talk about it, but from their life you can see that it is a part of their life. I am only asking you to restore the belief that has been undermined. In order to do so, you have to unlearn a lot of literature that dazzles your intelligence and throws you off your feet. Start with the faith which is also a token of humility and an admission that we know nothing, that we are less than atoms in this universe. We are less than atoms, I say, because the atom obeys the law of its being, whereas we in the insolence of our ignorance deny the law of nature. But I have no argument to address to those who have no faith.
** [[Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi]] in ''Young India'' (24 September 1931); also in [http://www.archive.org/details/teachingsofmahat029222mbp ''Teachings Of Mahatma Gandhi'' (1945), edited by Jag Parvesh Chander, p. 458]

* Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious beliefs. [[Stephen Jay Gould]]. Impeaching a Self-Appointed Judge," Scientific American, July 1992

== H ==

* Give according to your means, or God will make your means according to your giving.
** Reverend [[John Hall (Presbyterian pastor)|John Hall]], reported in Tryon Edwards, ''A Dictionary of Thoughts'' (1908), p. 194.

* If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is 'God is crying.' And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is 'Probably because of something you did.'
** [[Jack Handey]]

* Futurist [[w:Aldo Palazzeschi|Aldo Palazzeschi]]... exhorts us in ''L'antidolore'' (1913) to laugh heartily at the mortality built into the plan of creation not out of spite, as has traditionally been the case, but because suffering and death are nothing but pranks of the prime trickster, God. If anything it is the devil who is the spirit of gravity, and it is in taking him seriously that we plummet from grace.
** [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3806/is_200605/ai_n17220907/print Thomas Harrison, in "Laughter and the Tree Of Knowledge" in the ''Romanic Review'' (May-November 2006)]

* I've never understood how God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion by faith — it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe.
** "Jubal Harshaw", in ''[[Stranger in a Strange Land]]'' by [[Robert A. Heinlein]]''

* Men rarely (if ever) managed to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.
** [[Robert A. Heinlein]]

* How much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in his divine system of creation?
** [[Joseph Heller]], ''Catch 22''

* Faith must have adequate evidence, else it is mere superstition.
** [[Alexander Hodge]]

* Consciousness is Gods’ gift to mankind.
** Dr. [[w:Albert Hofmann|Albert Hofmann]] discoverer of LSD. (15 January 2006)

* God only speaks to those who understand the language
** Dr. [[w:Albert Hofmann|Albert Hofmann]] discoverer of LSD. (15 January 2006)

* Never tell a young person that something cannot be done. God may have been waiting for centuries for somebody ignorant enough of the impossibility to do that thing.
** Dr. [[J.A. Holmes]]

== I ==

* All laws for the purpose of making man worship God, are born of the same spirit that kindled the fires of the ''[[w:Auto de fe|auto da fe]]'', and lovingly built the dungeons of the Inquisition. All laws defining and punishing blasphemy — making it a crime to give your honest ideas about the Bible, or to laugh at the ignorance of the ancient Jews, or to enjoy yourself on the Sabbath, or to give your opinion of Jehovah, were passed by impudent bigots, and should be at once repealed by honest men. An infinite God ought to be able to protect himself, without going in partnership with State Legislatures.
** [[Robert Ingersoll]]

* An honest God is the noblest work of man.
** [[Robert Ingersoll]]

* I do not believe in forgiveness as it is preached by the church. We do not need the forgiveness of God, but of each other and of ourselves.
** [[Robert Ingersoll]]

* I have made up my mind that if there is a God, he will be merciful to the merciful. Upon that rock I stand. That he will not torture the forgiving. Upon that rock I stand. That every man should be true to himself, and that there is no world, no star, in which honesty is a crime. Upon that rock I stand. The honest man, the good woman, the happy child, have nothing to fear, either in this world or the world to come. Upon that rock I stand.
** [[Robert Ingersoll]]

* The old doctrine that God wanted man to do something for him, and that he kept a watchful eye upon all the children of men; that he rewarded the virtuous and punished the wicked, is gradually fading from the mind. We know that some of the worst men have what the world calls success. We know that some of the best men lie upon the straw of failure. We know that honesty goes hungry, while larceny sits at the banquet. We know that the vicious have every physical comfort, while the virtuous are often clad in rags.
** [[Robert Ingersoll]]

* Would God give a bird wings and make it a crime to fly? Would he give me brains and make it a crime to think? Any God that would damn one of his children for the expression of his honest thought wouldn't make a decent thief. When I read a book and don't believe it, I ought to say so. I will do so and take the consequences like a man.
** [[Robert Ingersoll]] (14 October 1879)

* I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me: That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create calamity: I the LORD do all these things.
** Isaiah 45:5-7 (King James Version)
** Variant: I am the Lord and there is no other. Who forms light and creates darkness, Who makes peace and creates calamity; I am the Lord, who makes all these.

* When gods quarrel, it is the mortals who suffer
** [[Tatsuya Ishida]]

* GOD is the invisible power that governs the universe.
** ''Ishan Arora''

== J ==

* The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)

* It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], Query 17 in ''Notes on the State of Virginia'' (1781-1785)

* Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], Query 18 in ''Notes on the State of Virginia'' (1781-1785)

* Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], in a letter to his nephew Peter Carr from Paris, France, (10 August 1787).

* No historical fact is better established, than that the doctrine of one God, pure and uncompounded, was that of the early ages of Christianity … Nor was the unity of the Supreme Being ousted from the Christian creed by the force of reason, but by the sword of civil government, wielded at the will of the fanatic [[w:Athanasius|Athanasius]].
** [[Thomas Jefferson]], in a letter to James Smith (1822)

* The doctrines of [[Jesus]] are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man.
: 1. That there is one only God, and he all perfect.
: 2. That there is a future state of rewards and punishments.
: 3. That to love God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself, is the sum of religion.
::* [[Thomas Jefferson]], in a letter to Benjamin Waterhouse, (26 June 1822)

* You cannot serve both God and [[w:Mammon|Mammon]].
**[[Jesus]], in ''Matthew'' 6:24

* Some foolish men declare that creator made the world. The doctrine that the world was created is ill advised and should be rejected. If God created the world, where was he before the creation? If you say he was transcendent then and needed no support, where is he now? How could God have made this world without any raw material? If you say that he made this first, and then the world, you are faced with an endless regression. If you declare that this raw material arose naturally you fall into another fallacy, For the whole universe might thus have been its own creator, and have arisen quite naturally. If God created the world by an act of his own will, without any raw material, then it is just his will and nothing else — and who will believe this silly nonsense? If he is ever perfect and complete, how could the will to create have arisen in him? If, on the other hand, he is not perfect, he could no more create the universe than a potter could. If he is form-less, action-less and all-embracing, how could he have created the world? Such a soul, devoid of all morality, would have no desire to create anything. If he is perfect, he does not strive for the three aims of man, so what advantage would he gain by creating the universe? If you say that he created to no purpose because it was his nature to do so, then God is pointless. If he created in some kind of sport, it was the sport of a foolish child, leading to trouble. If he created because of the karma of embodied beings [acquired in a previous creation] He is not the Almighty Lord, but subordinate to something else. If out of love for living beings and need of them he made the world, why did he not take creation wholly blissful free from misfortune? If he were transcendent he would not create, for he would be free: Nor if involved in transmigration, for then he would not be almighty. Thus the doctrine that the world was created by God makes no sense at all, And God commits great sin in slaying the children whom he himself created. If you say that he slays only to destroy evil beings, why did he create such beings in the first place? Good men should combat the believer in divine creation, maddened by an evil doctrine. Know that the world is uncreated, as time itself is, without beginning or end, and is based on the principles, life and rest. Uncreated and indestructible, it endures under the compulsion of its own nature.
** [[w:Jinasena|Jinasena]] (9th Century) in the ''[[w:Mahapurana (Jainism)|Mahāpurāna]]'', as translated in ''Primal Myths'' (1979) by Barbara Sproul

* The very pure spirit does not bother about the regard of others or human respect, but communes inwardly with God, alone and in solitude as to all forms, and with delightful tranquility, for the knowledge of God is received in divine silence.
** [[John of the Cross]] in ''The Sayings of Light and Love'' as translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (1991)

* It is easy to understand God as long as you don't try to explain him.
** [[Joseph Joubert]] (1754-1824)

*For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life
**John 3:16

== K ==

* It is not God's will merely that we should be happy, but that we should make ourselves happy.
** [[Immanuel Kant]]

* Reason can never prove the existence of God.
** [[Immanuel Kant]]

* The wish to talk to God is absurd. We cannot talk to one we cannot comprehend — and we cannot comprehend God; we can only believe in Him. The uses of prayer are thus only subjective.
** [[Immanuel Kant]]

*I had the intention of becoming a theologian...but now I see how God is, by my endeavors, also glorified in astronomy, for 'the heavens declare the glory of God.'
**[[Johannes Kepler]]

*[God] is the kind Creator who brought forth nature out of nothing."
**[[Johannes Kepler]]

*"The Creator, the fountain of all wisdom, the approver of perpetual order, the eternal and superessential spring of geometry and harmonics."
**[[Johannes Kepler]]

* God is cruel, sometimes he makes you live.
** ''Desperation'', by [[Stephen King]]

* God said take what you want...and pay for it.
** "Johnny Marinville" in ''Desperation'', by [[Stephen King]]

* We say the name of God, but that is only out of habit.
** [[Nikita Krushchev]]

== L ==

* It isn't always the middle-aged who refuse to listen, who will not even try to understand another point of view. One boy would not get it through his head that for all adults God is not an old man in a white beard sitting on a cloud. As far as this boy was concerned, this old gentleman was the adult's god, and therefore he did not believe in God.
** [[Madeleine L'Engle]] in ''The Crosswicks Journal, Book One : A Circle of Quiet'' (1972)

* God is only a great imaginative experience.
** [[D.H. Lawrence]], ''Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence'' (1936) pt. 4, edited by E. McDonald

* God created the world and then created the devil, to blame for his mistakes.
** [[Simon Le Bon]]

* God is love, but get it in writing.
** [[Gypsy Rose Lee]]

* God is a concept by which we measure our pain.
** [[John Lennon]], ''God'' (1970)

* God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
** [[C. S. Lewis]]

* God will look to every soul like its first love because He is its first love.
** [[C. S. Lewis]]

* If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will... then we may take it it is worth paying.
** [[C. S. Lewis]]

* Is it not better to place a question mark upon a problem while seeking an answer than to put the label "God" there and consider the matter solved? Does not the word "God" only confuse and make more difficult the solution by assuming a conclusion that is utterly groundless and palpably absurd?
** [[Joseph Lewis]], ''The Philosophy of Atheism''

*I can see how it might be possible for someone to look around on earth and not believe in God, but I cannot conceive how anyone could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.
**[[Abraham Lincoln]]

* You notice how God's not around anymore? He spends all that time playing with Adam and Eve and the Israelites and smiting cities and things and has got bored over the last... recorded history or so. I wonder if he has new toys? And if so, are the old toys still going to be wanted when we show up to cash in the "life everafter" tokens.
** Katie Lucas

* I believe our limited minds are unable to grasp such a concept
**[[Jared Leto]]

== M ==

* I'm not against God. I'm against the Misuse of God.
** [[Marilyn Manson]]

* Bright and clear mind - that we call God.
** [[Namboku Mizuno]], ''Food Governs Your Destiny'', p. 103

* God is living in people's hearts, and in God there is no distinction or rank. Therefore God lives in everyone. That's why traditionally it is said that all deities are the same. They say God comes to a person who is very humble and honest.
** [[Namboku Mizuno]], ''Food Governs Your Destiny'', p. 105

* If, it was natural to reason, God punishes men with eternal torment, it is surely lawful for men to use doses of it in a good cause.
** [[Joseph McCabe]] in ''A History of Torture''.

* Creator — A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.
** [[H.L. Mencken]], ''A Mencken Chrestomathy,'' ch. 30 (1949)

* God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in his arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; He will set them above their betters.
** [[H. L. Mencken]], ''Minority Report'' (1956)

* When people ask what my beliefs are, I respond that if I try to explain I would get lost.
** Edgar Mendez

* To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that Love is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.
** [[Thomas Merton]] in ''Seeds of Contemplation'' (1949)

* O God, we are one with You. You have made us one with You. You have taught us that if we are open to one another, You dwell in us. Help us to preserve this openness and to fight for it with all our hearts. Help us to realize that there can be no understanding where there is mutual rejection. O God, in accepting one another wholeheartedly, fully, completely, we accept You, and we thank You, and we adore You, and we love You with our whole being, because our being is Your being, our spirit is rooted in Your spirit. Fill us then with love, and let us be bound together with love as we go our diverse ways, united in this one spirit which makes You present in the world, and which makes You witness to the ultimate reality that is love. Love has overcome. Love is victorious. Amen.
** [[Thomas Merton]], in his closing prayer to an informal address delivered in Calcutta, India (October 1968), from ''The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton'' (1975); quoted in ''Thomas Merton, Spiritual Master : The Essential Writings'' (1992), p. 237

* God is a word to express, not our ideas, but the want of them.
** [[John Stuart Mill]]

* And God said, 'Let there be light' and there was light, but the Electricity Board said he would have to wait until Thursday to be connected.
** [[Spike Milligan]]

* There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided.
** [[Charles de Montesquieu]], ''Lettres persannes.''

* One thing I can't stand, it's people groveling.
** God, in ''[[Monty Python and the Holy Grail]]''

*If there is anything so precious that without it history and the world will be destroyed, where will you keep it? You will naturally want to keep it in the deepest part of your mind. If you desire to place it in the depths of your mind, it needs to be invisible. It is for this very reason that God exists as an invisible being. It is fortunate that He is invisible, for if He were visible how could a great contest to gain Him be avoided? It would be difficult for God to endure the pain of seeing it.
** [[Sun Myung Moon]], [http://www.unification.net/wogw/wogw1-01.html ''The Way of God's Will'' Chapter 1-1. The Will of God] Translated [[1980]].

*God is not stupid.
** [[Sun Myung Moon]], [http://www.unification.org/ucbooks/WofGW/wogw1-05.htm ''The Way of God's Will'' Chapter 1-5. Tradition, Official Business, and Responsibility] Translated [[1980]].

== N ==
[[File:Light dispersion conceptual.gif|144px|thumb|right|From blind physical necessity, which is always and everywhere the same, no variety adhering to time and place could evolve, and all variety of created objects which represent order and life in the universe could happen only by the willful reasoning of its original Creator, Whom I call the Lord God. ~ [[Isaac Newton]] ]]
[[File:Darwinek-bnw.jpg|144px|thumb|right|God is dead: but considering the state Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown. ~ [[Friedrich Nietzsche]] ]]
[[File:Orvieto Pozzo San Patrizio 5.JPG|144px|thumb|right| I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time. ~ [[Friedrich Nietzsche]] ]]

* '''This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.''' This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all, and on account of His dominion He is wont to be called Lord God, Universal Ruler.
** [[Isaac Newton]], in ''[[w:Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica|Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica]]'' (1687)

* All these things being considered, it seems probable to me, that God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, moveable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportion to space, as most conduced to the end for which he formed them; and that these primitive particles, being solids, are incomparably harder than any porous bodies compounded of them; even so very hard, as never to wear or break in pieces; no ordinary power being able to divide what God himself made one in the first creation.
** [[Isaac Newton]], in ''[[w:Opticks|Opticks, or A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light]]'', 4th edition (1730)

* A Heavenly Master governs all the world as Sovereign of the universe. We are astonished at Him by reason of His perfection, we honor Him and fall down before Him because of His unlimited power. From blind physical necessity, which is always and everywhere the same, no variety adhering to time and place could evolve, and all variety of created objects which represent order and life in the universe could happen only by the willful reasoning of its original Creator, Whom I call the Lord God.
** [[Isaac Newton]], as quoted in ''Our Humanist Heritage'' (2010) by George Frater, p. 75

* '''God is a thought which makes crooked all that is straight.'''
** [[Friedrich Nietzsche]], "Upon the Blessed Isles", ''Thus Spoke Zarathustra''

* '''God is dead: but considering the state Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown.'''
** [[Friedrich Nietzsche]], in ''The Gay Science'' (1882), section 125
** The reduction of Nietzsche's thought to … the first-liner of a graffito sometimes found in certain modern tiled cells and catacombs:
:: '''God is dead''' — Nietzsche Nietzsche is dead — '''God'''
: This reduction could appear to be the creative interpretation of masterful will to power — if Nietzsche's thought and style are as uncontrolled as the critics suggest. … Nietzsche himself anticipates the strife of revengeful graffiti at the conclusion of his text: "Wherever there are walls I shall inscribe this eternal accusation against Christianity upon them — I can write in letters which make even the blind see." …Nietzsche says in his preface that his readers must have a "predestination for the labyrinth" and "new ears for new music" if they are to understand this difficult writing.
:* Gary Shapiro in ''Nietzschean Narratives'' (1989), p. 126

* '''I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.'''
** [[Friedrich Nietzsche]], as quoted in ''20,000 Quips & Quotes'' (1995) edited by Evan Esar, p. 347

* '''Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man?'''
** [[Friedrich Nietzsche]]

* '''God is just a mean kid with a magnifying glass. And I'm the ant.''' He could fix my life in five minutes if He wanted to, but he'd rather tear of my feelers and watch me squirm.
** "Bruce [[Giordano Bruno|Nolan]]" in ''[[Bruce Almighty]]'' (2003)

== O ==

== P ==
[[File:General George S. Patton gravesite, Luxembourg.jpg|144px|thumb|right|It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived. ~ [[George S. Patton, Jr.]] ]]

* '''It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.'''
** General [[George S. Patton, Jr.]], in a speech at the Copley Plaza Hotel, Boston Massachusetts (7 June 1945), quoted in ''Patton : Ordeal and Triumph'' (1970) by Ladislas Farago

*The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator.
**[[Louis Pasteur]]

* Science brings men nearer to God.
**[[Louis Pasteur]]

* I cannot believe that God is a weak left-hander.
** [[Wolfgang Pauli]] after hearing of experiments that violated parity conservation

* For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse.
** [[Paul of Tarsus]] in ''[[w:Epistle to the Romans|Romans]]'' 1:20 (ASV)

* '''What if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar'''; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged. But if our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance? (I speak as a man) God forbid: for then how shall God judge the world? For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner? And not rather, (as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say,) Let us do evil, that good may come? whose damnation is just.
** [[Paul of Tarsus]] in {{Bibleverse||Romans|3}}:3-8

* '''We conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.''' ''Is he'' the God of the Jews only? ''is he'' not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also: Seeing ''it is'' one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith. '''Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.'''
** [[Paul of Tarsus]], in ''Romans'' 3:19-31

* '''God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.'''
** [[w:John the Apostle|John the Apostle]] in 1 John 1:5

* '''God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.'''
** [[w:John the Apostle|John the Apostle]] in 1 John 4:16

* All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. '''This mind is the matrix of all matter.'''
** [[Max Planck]], as he accepted the Nobel Prize (1919)

* I talk to God but the sky is empty.
** [[Sylvia Plath]]

* '''An honest man's the noblest work of God.'''
** [[Alexander Pope]]

* '''God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. '''Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.
** ''[[Psalms]]'' 46:1 - 3

* There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early. The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.
** ''[[Psalms]]'' 46:4 - 7

* Come, behold the works of the LORD, what desolations he hath made in the earth. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire. '''Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.'''
** ''[[Psalms]]'' 46:8 - 10

* The fool says in his heart "There is no God".
** ''[[Psalms]]'' 53:1

== Q ==

* God! There is no god but He, — the Living, the Self-subsisting, Eternal. No slumber can seize Him nor sleep. His are all things in the heavens and on earth. Who is there that can intercede in His presence except as He permitteth? he knoweth what before or after or behind them. Nor shall they compass aught of His knowledge except as He willeth. His Throne doth extend over the heavens and the earth, and He feeleth no fatigue in guarding and preserving them for He is the Most High, the Supreme.
** [[Qur'an]]

== R ==
[[File:Ngc1999.jpg|144px|thumb|right|The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation. ~ [[John Ray]] ]]
[[File:Electric iron stand.jpg|144px|thumb|right|God is an iron. ~ [[Spider Robinson]] ]]

* '''The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation.'''
** [[John Ray]], title of a book (1691)

* '''God is an iron.'''
** [[Spider Robinson]], in "God is an Iron" (1977)

* God, that checkroom of our dreams.
** [[Jean Rostand]]

* Kill one man and you are a murderer. Kill millions and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone and you are a God.
** [[Jean Rostand]], ''Thoughts of a Biologist'' (1939)

* '''If I were granted omnipotence, and millions of years to experiment in, I should not think Man much to boast of as the final result of all my efforts.'''
** [[Bertrand Russell]], ''Religion and Science''

* So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
** [[Bertrand Russell]]

* We must be greater than God, for we have to undo His injustice.
** [[w:Jules Renard|Jules Renard]]

== S ==

* I think that if there were a God, there would be less evil on this earth. I believe that if evil exists here below, then either it was willed by God or it was beyond His powers to prevent it. Now I cannot bring myself to fear a God who is either spiteful or weak. I defy Him without fear and care not a fig for his thunderbolts.
** [[Marquis de Sade]], ''Justine or The Misfortunes of Virtue'' (1787) [This quote is strikingly similar to Epicurus' above.]

* The existence of the world without God seems to me less absurd than the presence of a God, existing in all his perfection,creating an imperfect man in order to make him run the risk of Hell.
** [[w:Armand Salacrou|Armand Salacrou]] in ''Ceritudes et incertitudes'' (1943)

* Respectable society believed in God in order to avoid having to speak about him.
** [[Jean-Paul Sartre]], ''The Words'' (1964)

* We are all writing God's poem.
** [[Anne Sexton]], as quoted by [[Erica Jong]], in [http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2000/oct/26/features11.g2 "Into the lion's den" in ''The Guardian'' (26 October 2000)]

* You don't fuck around with the infinite.
** ''Mean Streets'' (1977) by [[Martin Scorsese]] and Mardik Martin; later quoted by [[Stephen King]] in ''IT'' (1986)

* [God is] a force more powerful than mom and dad put together.
** "Lisa Simpson" in ''[[The Simpsons]]''

* '''Lisa Simpson''': I haven't stopped believing in God, I just think there's a different path to him...Or her. '''Marge Simpson''': HER?! [addressing God] She's just kidding, Mister Lord!
** ''[[The Simpsons]]''

* '''Stan''': Why would God let Kenny die, Chef? Why? Kenny's my Friend. Why can't God take someone else's friend? '''Chef''': Stan, sometime God take those closest to us, because it makes him feel better about Himself. He's a very vengeful God, Stan. He's all pissed off about something we did thousands of years ago. He just can't get over it. So he doesn't care who he takes: children, puppies, it don't matter to him, so long as it makes us sad. Do you understand? '''Stan''': Then why does God give us anything to start with? '''Chef''': Well, look at it this way: if you want to make a baby cry, first you give it a lollipop. Then, you take it away. If you never give it a lollipop to begin with, then you would have nothing to cry about. That's like God, who gives us life and love and health just so that he can tear it all away and make us cry, so he can drink the sweet milk of our tears...You see, it's our tears, Stan, that give God his great power. '''Stan''': I think I understand.
** [[South Park]]

* It is sometimes hard, in times like these, to understand God's way. Why would he allow nine innocent people to be run down in the prime of their lives by a senior citizen who, perhaps, shouldn't be driving? It is then that we must understand, God's sense of humor is very different from our own. He does not laugh at the simple "man walks into a bar" joke. No, God needs complex irony and subtle farcical twists that seem macabre to you and me. All that we can hope for is that God got his good laugh and a tragedy such as this will never happen again.
** [[South Park]]

* Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.~ [[Baruch Spinoza|Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza]] in ''Ethics'' Pt. I, prop. 15

* God and all attributes of God are eternal.
** [[Baruch Spinoza|Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza]] in ''Ethics'' Pt. I, prop. 19

* God is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things.~ [[Baruch Spinoza|Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza]]

* Things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained.
** [[Baruch Spinoza|Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza]]

* Get out of our schools God, get out of our textbooks God, get out of our government God, go away God, go away God, go away God, Katrina hits, God, where are you?
** [[w:Brad Stine|Brad Stine]]

* I bring up God alot in my show, know why? Because I miss him.
** Brad Stine

* It is an insult to God to believe in God. For on the one hand it is to suppose that he has perpetrated acts of incalculable cruelty. On the other hand, it is to suppose that he has perversely given his human creatures an instrument — their intellect — which must inevitably lead them, if they are dispassionate and honest, to deny his existence. It is tempting to conclude that if he exists, it is the atheists and agnostics that he loves best, among those with any pretensions to education. For they are the ones who have taken him most seriously.
** [[w:Galen Strawson|Galen Strawson]]

== T ==
[[File:Arco iris circular.JPG|144px|thumb|right|The meaning of our self is not to be found in its separateness from God and others, but in the ceaseless realisation of yoga, of union. ~ [[Rabindranath Tagore]] ]]

* Bondage and liberation are not antagonistic in love. For love is most free and at the same time most bound. If God were absolutely free there would be no creation. The infinite being has assumed unto himself the mystery of finitude. And in him who is love the finite and the infinite are made one.
** [[Rabindranath Tagore]]

* Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.
** [[Rabindranath Tagore]], in ''Stray Birds'' (1916); paraphrased variant: Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of humanity.

* I believe in a spiritual world — not as anything separate from this world — but as its innermost truth. With the breath we draw we must always feel this truth, that we are living in God.
** [[Rabindranath Tagore]]

* Those who have everything but thee, my God, laugh at those who have nothing but thyself.
** [[Rabindranath Tagore]]

* The meaning of our self is not to be found in its separateness from God and others, but in the ceaseless realisation of yoga, of union.
** [[Rabindranath Tagore]]

* The self-expression of God is in the endless variety of creation; and our attitude toward the Infinite Being must also in its expression have a variety of individuality ceaseless and unending. Those sects which jealously build their boundaries with too rigid creeds excluding all spontaneous movement of the living spirit may hoard their theology but they kill religion.
** [[Rabindranath Tagore]]

* Your idol is shattered in the dust to prove that God's dust is greater than your idol.
** [[Rabindranath Tagore]]

* We cannot know whether we love God, although there may be strong reason for thinking so; but there can be no doubt about whether we love our neighbor or not. Be sure that, in proportion as you advance in fraternal charity, you are increasing your love of God.
** [[Teresa of Avila]]

* If you do not believe in a personal God the question: 'What is the purpose of life?' is unaskable and unanswerable.
** [[J.R.R. Tolkien]]

* Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.
** [[Leo Tolstoy]] in ''[[w:War and Peace|War and Peace]]'' Bk XIII, Ch. 16

[[File:Brocken-tanzawa2.JPG|144px|thumb|right|God is that infinite All of which man knows himself to be a finite part. God alone exists truly. Man manifests Him in time, space and matter. ~ [[Leo Tolstoy]] ]]
* The Kingdom of God is within you... and all beings.
** [[Leo Tolstoy]]

* The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the [[w:Kingdom of God|kingdom of God]]; and this can be done only by means of the acknowledgment and profession of the truth by each one of us.
** [[Leo Tolstoy]] in ''[[w:The Kingdom of God is Within You|The Kingdom of God is Within You]]'' (1894) Ch. 12

* God is that infinite All of which man knows himself to be a finite part. God alone exists truly. Man manifests Him in time, space and matter. The more God's manifestation in man (life) unites with the manifestations (lives) of other beings, the more man exists. This union with the lives of other beings is accomplished through love. God is not love, but the more there is of love, the more man manifests God, and the more he truly exists... We acknowledge God only when we are conscious of His manifestation in us.
** [[Leo Tolstoy]] in his diary (1 November 1910)

* Why is it when we talk to God we're said to be praying, but when God talks to us we're schizophrenic?
** [[Lily Tomlin]]

* I am what you call "The World". Or perhaps "The Universe". Or perhaps "God". Or perhaps "Truth". Or perhaps "Everything". Or perhaps "One". And, I am "You".
** [[Truth]] Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood

== U ==

== V ==

* '''I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.'''
** [[Voltaire]], in a letter to Étienne Noël Damilaville (16 May 1767)

* '''If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.'''
** [[Voltaire]] in ''Épître à l'Auteur du Livre des Trois Imposteurs'' (10 November 1770)

* "If God did not exist, He would have to be invented." But all nature cries aloud that he does exist: that there is a supreme intelligence, an immense power, an admirable order, and everything teaches us our own dependence on it.
** Voltaire quoting himself in a letter to Prince Frederick William of Prussia (28 November 1770), as quoted in ''Voltaire in His Letters'' (1919) by [[Evelyn Beatrice Hall|S. G. Tallentyre (Evelyn Beatrice Hall)]]

* I cannot imagine how the clockwork of the universe can exist without a clockmaker.
** [[Voltaire]], as quoted in ''More Random Walks in Science : An Anthology'' (1982) by Robert L. Weber, p. 65

* '''Take Care of the People, and God Almighty Will Take Care of Himself.'''
** [[Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.]] in ''[[w:The Sirens of Titan|The Sirens of Titan]]'' (1959)

== W ==
[[File:Rosace.jpg|144px|thumb|right|To believe that the desire for good is always fulfilled — that is faith, and whoever has it is not an atheist. ~ [[Simone Weil]] ]]
[[File:The Storm Spirits.jpg|144px|thumb|right|"[[w:Elohim|Elohim]]," the name for the creative power in ''[[w:Book of Genesis|Genesis]]'', is a female plural, a fact that generations of learned rabbis and Christian theologians have all explained as merely grammatical convention. The King James and most other Bibles translate it as "God," but if you take the grammar literally, it seems to mean "goddesses." [[w:El Shaddai|Al Shaddai]], god of battles, appears later, and [[w:Tetragrammaton|YHWH]], mispronounced [[Jehovah]], later still. ~ [[Robert Anton Wilson]] ]]
[[File:US Navy 060608-N-6501M-005 The U.S. Military Sealift Command (MSC) Hospital ship USNS Mercy (T-AH 19), anchored off of the coast of Jolo City.jpg|144px|thumb|right|I prefer to say that nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see. If we wish to know the truth concerning anything, we'll find it in the nature of that thing. ~ [[Frank Lloyd Wright]] ]]

* Don't you know there ain't no devil? There's only God when He's drunk.
**[[Tom Waits]], in "[[w:Heartattack and Vine (song)|Heartattack and Vine]]" on ''[[w:Heartattack and Vine|Heartattack and Vine]]'' (1980)

* God's greatness and goodness are measured by the fact that he gives us choices. He doesn't require us to thank him for our food. (In case you hadn't noticed.) God is not a Modernist. He doesn't view us as nails. God expects us to behave like carpenters. Indeed, he gave us a carpenter as an example. So I think God is postmodern. He has his own ideas of what rules, and what sucks, and he doesn't expect everyone else to agree with him.
** [[Larry Wall]] in [http://www.perl.com/pub/a/1999/03/pm.html "Perl, the first postmodern computer language" (9 March 1999)]

* One of the most exquisite pleasures of human love — to serve the loved one without his knowing it — is only possible, as regards the love of God, through atheism.
** [[Simone Weil]], in ''Last Notebook'' (1942)

* In order to obey God, one must receive his commands. How did it happen that I received them in adolescence, while I was professing atheism? To believe that the desire for good is always fulfilled — that is faith, and whoever has it is not an atheist.
** [[Simone Weil]], in ''Last Notebook'' (1942)

* No human being escapes the necessity of conceiving some good outside himself towards which his thought turns in a movement of desire, supplication, and hope. consequently, the only choice is between worshipping the true God or an idol. Every atheist is an idolater — unless he is worshipping the true God in his impersonal aspect. The majority of the pious are idolaters.
** [[Simone Weil]], in ''Last Notebook'' (1942)

* There are two atheisms of which one is a purification of the notion of God.
** [[Simone Weil]], as quoted in ''The New Christianity'' (1967) edited by William Robert Miller

* Ever since the Greeks, we have been drunk with language! We have made a cage with words and shoved our God inside!
** [[Morris West]], in ''The Heretic'' (1968)

* If God be God and man a creature made in image of the divine intelligence, his noblest function is the search for truth.
** [[Morris West]], in ''The Heretic'' (1968)

* Once you accept the existence of God — however you define him, however you explain your relationship to him — then you are caught forever with his presence in the center of all things. You are also caught with the fact that man is a creature who walks in two worlds and traces upon the walls of his cave the wonders and the nightmare experiences of his spiritual pilgrimage.
** [[Morris West]], in ''The Clowns of God'' (1981)

* No reason can be given for the nature of God, because that nature is the ground of rationality.
** [[Alfred North Whitehead]], in ''Science and the Modern World'' (1925)

* All your Western theologies, the whole mythology of them, are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent.
** [[Tennessee Williams]], in ''The Night of the Iguana'' (1963)

* "[[w:Elohim|Elohim]]," the name for the creative power in ''[[w:Book of Genesis|Genesis]]'', is a female plural, a fact that generations of learned rabbis and Christian theologians have all explained as merely grammatical convention. The King James and most other Bibles translate it as "God," but if you take the grammar literally, it seems to mean "goddesses." [[w:El Shaddai|Al Shaddai]], god of battles, appears later, and [[w:Tetragrammaton|YHWH]], mispronounced [[Jehovah]], later still.
** [[Robert Anton Wilson]], in ''Everything Is Under Control : Conspiracies, Cults, and Cover-Ups'' (1998), p. 197

* I believe in God, only I spell it "Nature".
** [[Frank Lloyd Wright]], in ''Quote'' magazine (14 August 1966)

* God is the great mysterious motivator of what we call nature and it has been said often by philosophers, that nature is the will of God. And, I prefer to say that nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see. If we wish to know the truth concerning anything, we'll find it in the nature of that thing.
** [[Frank Lloyd Wright]], quoted in ''Truth Against the World : Frank Lloyd Wright speaks for an organic architecture'' (1987) edited by Patrick J. Meehan

== X ==

== Y ==

== Z ==
*"Time is the brush of God, as he paints his masterpiece on the heart of humanity."
**[[Ravi Zacharias]]

*'''Arthur Frayn:''' "And you, poor creatures, who conjured you out of the clay? Is God in show business, too?"
** [[Zardoz]] (1974)

= Anonymous =
:Proverbs or widely known statements by unknown authors.

* The more science I come to understand, The more logic, reason and math I learn, The more I believe in God, for the complexity and depth of nature and cosmos, on its small and grand scales, I find it quite impossible by the same reasons, logic, and equations, for it to have come about merely on its own without any divine intervention.
**[[Anonymous]]

* Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
** English proverb

* God does not love those who have not suffered.
** Croatian Proverb

* God is like a barber: don't expect him to give you a haircut, you must first get at his barbershop.
** [[Anonymous]]

* God is beatiful. He loves beauty.
** Muslim proverb

* Trust in God but tie your camel.
** Muslim proverb (possibly attributed in the Masnavi of Rumi).

* If God lived on earth, people would break his windows.
** Yiddish proverb

* To make God laugh at you, tell him your plans.
** Yiddish proverb

* Black holes are where God is dividing by zero.
** [[Anonymous]]

* God is real, unless you declare him an integer.
** [[Anonymous]]

* Well you may throw your rock and hide your hand Workin' in the dark against your fellow man But as sure as God made black and white What's down in the dark will be brought to the light.
** [[Anonymous]], "[[w:God's Gonna Cut You Down|God's Gonna Cut You Down]]", traditional folk song, recorded by many artists.

* Go tell that long tongue liar Go and tell that midnight rider Tell the rambler, the gambler, the back biter Tell 'em that God's gonna cut 'em down.
** [[Anonymous]] "God's Gonna Cut You Down", traditional folk song

=See also=
*[[Life]]
*[[Death]]
*[[Atheism]]
*[[Religion]]
*[[Jesus Christ]]

=External links=
{{wikipedia}}
{{wiktionary}}
{{wikiversity|God and Enlightenment}}
*[http://www.religiousbook.net/Books/Online_books/Ec/Ecology_4.html What is God] by Vladimir Antonov
*[http://www.allaboutgod.com/who-is-god-c.htm Who is God?]
*[http://www.whywontgodhealamputees.com Why Won't God Heal Amputees?]

[[Category:Religion]]

[[ml:ദൈവം]]
[[bg:Бог]]
[[bs:Bog]]
[[ca:Déu]]
[[cs:Bůh]]
[[de:Gott]]
[[et:Jumal]]
[[el:Θεός]]
[[es:Dios]]
[[eo:Dio]]
[[eu:Jainkoa]]
[[fr:Dieu]]
[[hr:Bog]]
[[is:Guð]]
[[it:Dio]]
[[he:אלוהים]]
[[ku:Yezdan]]
[[lt:Dievas]]
[[hu:Isten]]
[[ja:神]]
[[uz:Xudo]]
[[pl:Bóg]]
[[pt:Deus]]
[[ru:Бог]]
[[sk:Boh]]
[[sl:Bog]]
[[sr:Бог]]
[[tr:Tanrı]]
[[uk:Бог]]
[[zh:神]]

Peace

2011-03-26T15:35:42Z

Nobody60: /* External links */

[[File:LuMaxArt Golden Family With World Religions .jpg|144px|thumb|right|Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the children of God. ~ [[Jesus|Yeshua (Jesus Christ)]] ]]
This page is for quotations on the theme of '''[[w:Peace|Peace]]'''.

==Sourced==
:Listed alphabetically by author
[[File:Medizinrad.jpg|144px|thumb|right|The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells ''[[w:Wakan Tanka|Wakan-Tanka]]'', and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. ~ [[Black Elk]] ]]
[[File:Peace symb alt.jpg|144px|thumb|right|Better than a thousand hollow words Is one word that brings peace.Better than a thousand hollow verses Is one verse that brings peace. ~ [[Gautama Buddha]] ]]
[[File:Banner of Peace from the Roerich Pact.svg|144px|thumb|right| I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace. ~ [[Helen Keller]] ]]
[[File:UN and Banner of Peace (Stamp).jpg|144px|thumb|right| The pursuit of peace and progress, with its trials and errors, its successes and setbacks, can never be relaxed and never abandoned. ~ [[Dag Hammarskjöld]] ]]
[[File:Peace dove.svg|144px|thumb|right|All we are saying is give peace a chance. ~ [[John Lennon]] ]]
[[File:Peace love and happyness award.svg|144px|thumb|right|What's so funny 'bout Peace, Love, and Understanding? ~ [[Nick Lowe]] ]]
[[File:Peace button.svg|144px|thumb|right|Peace hath her victories No less renowned than war. ~ [[John Milton]] ]]
[[File:Edward Hicks - Peaceable Kingdom.jpg|144px|thumb|right|There is no way to peace; peace is the way. ~ [[A. J. Muste]] ]]
[[File:Gift of USSR.jpg|144px|thumb|right|There are only two powers in this world, the sword and the spirit ... in the long run the sword is always beaten by the spirit. ~ [[Napoleon I of France]] ]]
[[File:Eleanor Roosevelt and Human Rights Declaration.jpg|144px|thumb|right|It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it. ~ [[Eleanor Roosevelt]] ]]
[[File:Blue Pacific.svg|144px|thumb|right|Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice. ~ [[Baruch Spinoza]] ]]
[[File:Un-flag-square.png|144px|thumb|right|Recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. ~ [[w:Universal Declaration of Human Rights|Universal Declaration of Human Rights]] ]]
[[File:UN General Assembly.jpg|144px|thumb|right|Observe good faith and justice towards all Nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. ~ [[George Washington]] ]]

* '''Peace comes from being able to contribute the best that we have, and all that we are, toward creating a world that supports everyone. But it is also securing the space for others to contribute the best that they have and all that they are.'''
** [[w:Hafsat Abiola|Hafsat Abiola]] in [http://www.scu.edu/ethics/architects-of-peace/Abiola/essay.html ''Architects of Peace: Visions of Hope in Words and Images'' (2000) edited by Michael Collopy]

* Peace at home, peace in the world.
** [[Mustafa Kemal Atatürk ]], as quoted in many sources including, ''Atatürk'' (1963) by Uluğ İğdemir, p. 200; and ''Small Nations and Great Powers: A Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict in the Caucasus'' (2000) by Svante E. Cornell, p. 287; this later became the motto of the Republic of Turkey.

* '''There is no trust more sacred than the one the world holds with children. There is no duty more important than ensuring that their rights are respected, that their welfare is protected, that their lives are free from fear and want and that they grow up in peace.'''
** [[Kofi Annan]], in [http://www.unicef.org/sowc00/foreword.htm "Foreword" to ''The State of the World's Children 2000'']

* If you keep your mind stayed on [[Jesus]], he'll give you peace, that passes all understanding.
** Archbishop [[w:LeRoy Bailey Jr.|LeRoy Bailey Jr]], Senior Pastor of [[w:The First Cathedral|The First Cathedral]] from a sermon entitled "We Need GOD" (14 June 2007).

* '''The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes from within the souls of men when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells ''[[w:Wakan Tanka|Wakan-Tanka]]'', and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.''' This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this. The second peace is that which is made between two individuals, and the third is that which is made between two nations. '''But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is first known that true peace which is within the souls of men.'''
** [[Black Elk]] in ''The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk's Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux'' (1953).

* Peace is a resistance to the terrible satisfactions of war.
** [[Judith Butler]], Interview in ''The Believer'' Magazine - Issue 2

* '''Better than a thousand hollow words Is one word that brings peace.'''Better than a thousand hollow verses Is one verse that brings peace.Better than a hundred hollow lines Is one line of the law, bringing peace.
** [[Gautama Buddha]] in "The Thousands" from the ''[[Dhammapada]]'' as translated by Thomas Byrom

* '''No matter what someone else has done, it still matters how we treat people.''' It matters to our humanity that we treat offenders according to standards that we recognize as just. Justice is not revenge — it's deciding for a solution that is oriented towards peace, peace being the harder but more human way of reacting to injury. That is the very basis of the idea of rights.
** [[Judith Butler]], Interview in ''The Believer'' Magazine - Issue 2

* What all men are really after is some form, or perhaps only some formula, of peace.
** [[Joseph Conrad]], in ''[[w:Under Western Eyes|Under Western Eyes]]'' (1911)

* There never was a good war, or a bad peace.
**[[Benjamin Franklin]], ''Letter to Josiah Quincy'' (1783)

* '''Our work for peace must begin within the private world of each one of us. To build for man a world without fear, we must be without fear. To build a world of justice, we must be just.''' And how can we fight for liberty if we are not free in our own minds? How can we ask others to sacrifice if we are not ready to do so?... Only in true surrender to the interest of all can we reach that strength and independence, that unity of purpose, that equity of judgment which are necessary if we are to measure up to our duty to the future, as men of a generation to whom the chance was given to build in time a world of peace.
** [[Dag Hammarskjöld]], in UN Press Release SG/360 (22 December 1953)

* '''The pursuit of peace and progress cannot end in a few years in either victory or defeat. The pursuit of peace and progress, with its trials and its errors, its successes and its setbacks, can never be relaxed and never abandoned.'''
** [[Dag Hammarskjöld]], in ''United Nations Bulletin'' Vol. XVI, No. 4 (15 February 1954)

* '''The situation of the world is still like this. People completely identify with one side, one ideology.''' To understand the suffering and the fear of a citizen of the Soviet Union, we have to become one with him or her. To do so is dangerous — we will be suspected by both sides. But if we don't do it, if we align ourselves with one side or the other, we will lose our chance to work for peace. Reconciliation is to understand both sides, to go to one side and describe the suffering being endured by the other side, and then to go to the other side and describe the suffering being endured by the first side. Doing only that will be a great help for peace.
** [[Nhat Hanh|Thich Nhat Hanh]], ''Being Peace'', 1987 edition, Parallax Press, Berkeley, CA.

* '''The only way to abolish war is to make peace heroic.'''
** [[w:James Hinton|James Hinton]], ''Philosophy and Religion: Selections from the Manuscripts of the Late James Hinton'', ed. Caroline Haddon, (2nd ed., London: 1884), [http://books.google.com/books?id=DpxRAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA267 p. 267].
** Widely misattributed on the internet to [[John Dewey]], who actually attributes it to Hinton in ''Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology'' (New York: 1922), [http://books.google.com/books?id=Ws0RAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA115 p. 115].

* '''They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.'''
** [[w:Isaiah|Isaiah]] 2:4

* Maybe tomorrow when He looks down Every green field and every town All of his children every nation There'll be peace and good, brotherhood… Crystal blue persuasion
** [[w:Tommy James|Tommy James]], Eddie Gray and Mike Vale, [[w:Crystal Blue Persuasion|Crystal Blue Persuasion]] (1969)

* '''Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the children of God.'''
** [[Jesus|Yeshua (Jesus Christ)]] Matthew 5:9

* '''I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace.'''
** [[Helen Keller]], as quoted in ''Henry More: The Rational Theology of a Cambridge Plattonist'' (1962) by Aharon Lichtenstein

* Peace is the essential prerequisite because without peace we will be unable to achieve the levels of cooperation, inclusiveness and social equity necessary to solve our global challenges, let alone empower the international institutions needed to regulate the challenges.
** [[Steve Killelea]], Founder of the [[w:Global Peace Index|Global Peace Index]] in [http://www.visionofhumanity.org/images/content/Documents/2008%20GPi%20Discussion%20Paper.pdf ''The Study of Industries that Prosper in Peace - the "Peace Industry" '' (2008)]

* '''True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.'''
** [[Martin Luther King, Jr.]], during the [[w:Montgomery Bus Boycott|Montgomery Bus Boycott]] in 1955, as quoted by Stephen B. Oates, ''Let the Trumpet Sound: A Life of Martin Luther King, Jr.'' (1982)
* We will not build a peaceful world by following a negative path. It is not enough to say "We must not wage war." It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but on the positive affirmation of peace. ... We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody that is far superior to the discords of war. Somehow we must transform the dynamics of the world power struggle from the negative nuclear arms race which no one can win to a positive contest to harness man's creative genius for the purpose of making peace and prosperity a reality for all of the nations of the world. In short, we must shift the arms race into a "peace race". If we have the will and determination to mount such a peace offensive, we will unlock hitherto tightly sealed doors of hope and transform our imminent cosmic elegy into a psalm of creative fulfillment.
** [[Martin Luther King, Jr]], in his [http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-lecture.html Nobel lecture (11 December 1964)]

* '''Make love, not war.'''
** [[w:Gershon Legman|Gershon Legman]] in his lecture ''Love and death (and schmutz): G. Legman's second thoughts'' held at [[w:University of Ohio|University of Ohio]] in 1963. (According to Dudar, H. (1984, May 1))

* '''All we are saying is give peace a chance.'''
** [[John Lennon]] in "Give Peace A Chance"

* '''Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will live as one.'''
** [[John Lennon]] in "Imagine"

* If you wish for peace, understand war.
** [[w:Basil Liddell Hart|Basil Liddell Hart]], ''Strategy'' (1967)

* What's so funny 'bout Peace, Love, and Understanding?
** [[Nick Lowe]], in "[[w:(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding|(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding]]" (1974), which became a hit as sung by [[Elvis Costello]].

* '''Peace is not the absence of anything. Real peace is the presence of something beautiful.''' Both peace and the thirst for it have been in the heart of every human being in every century and every civilization.
** [[Maharaji (Prem Rawat)|Maharaji]]; Address to faculty, students and guests at Harvard University's Sanders Theater (August 2004)

* To have peace and not war, the drift toward a war economy, as facilitated by the moves and the demands of the sophisticated conservatives, must be stopped; to have peace without slump, the tactics and policies of the practical right must be overcome. The political and economic power of both must be broken. The power of these giants of main drift is both economically and politically anchored; both unions and an independent labor party are needed to struggle effective.
** [[C. Wright Mills]] in "The New Men of Power" (1948)

* The American elite does not have any real image of peace — other than as an uneasy interlude existing precariously by virtue of the balance of mutual fright. The only seriously accepted plan for peace is the full loaded pistol. In short, war or a high state of war-preparedness is felt to be the normal and seemingly permanent condition of the United States.
** [[C. Wright Mills]] in ''The Power Elite'' (1956)

* '''Peace hath her victoriesNo less renowned than war.'''
** [[John Milton]], "Sonnett: To the Lord General [[Oliver Cromwell|Cromwell]]" (1652)

* There is no way to peace; peace is the way.
** [[A. J. Muste]], as quoted in ''The New York Times'', (16 November 1967); this has come to sometimes be misattributed to [[Mahatma Gandhi]].

* '''If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots.'''
** [[Napoleon I of France]], to [[w:Alexander I of Russia|Alexander I of Russia]] at Tilsit (25 June 1807), as quoted in ''Libretto for the Republic of Liberia'' (1953) by Melvin Beaunorus Tolson

* Do you know what I admire most in the world? The inability of force to organize anything. '''There are only two powers in this world, the sword and the spirit ... in the long run the sword is always beaten by the spirit.'''
** [[Napoleon I of France]], in an 1808 conversation with [[w:Louis-Marcelin de Fontanes|Louis-Marcelin de Fontanes]], quoted in ''Madame de Staël et Napoléon'' (1903) by Henri Guillemin, p. 185, as translated in ''Dictatorship and Political Police: The Technique of Control by Fear'' (1945) by Ernest Kohn Bramsted
** Variants:
** Fontanes, do you know what I admire most in the world ? It is the powerlessness of force to organize anything. There are only two powers in the world, the sword and the mind .... In the long run the sword is always vanquished by the mind.
*** As quoted in "French Literature" by William Koren, in ''Modern Language Notes'', Vol. XX, No. 3, (March 1905), p.97
** The more I study the world, the more am I convinced of the inability of brute force to create anything durable.
*** As quoted by [[w:Charles Sumner|Charles Sumner]], "War System of the Commonwealth of Nations" (1849), in ''The works of Charles Sumner'' (1870), Vol. 2, p. 224

* '''It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.'''
** [[Eleanor Roosevelt]], Voice of America broadcast (11 November 1951)

* Sometimes there's truth in old cliches. There can be no real peace without justice. And without resistance there will be no justice.
** [[Arundhati Roy]], Speech on Accepting the Sydney Peace Prize (7 November 2004) [http://sydney.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=48189&group=webcast Sydney IMC article] - [http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=41&ItemID=6594 Peace?... Full speech]

* '''Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.'''
** [[Baruch Spinoza]], in ''Theological-Political Treatise'' (1670)

* If slavery, barbarism and desolation are to be called peace, men can have no worse misfortune.
** [[Baruch Spinoza]], in ''Political Treatise'' (1677)

* : '''A state of human life vaguely defined by the term "Universal Peace," while a result of cumulative effort through centuries past, might come into existence ''quickly'', not unlike a crystal suddenly forms in a solution which has been slowly prepared.''' But just as no effect can precede its cause, so this state can never be ''brought'' on by any pact between nations, however solemn. Experience is made before the law is formulated, both are related like cause and effect. So long as we are clearly conscious of the expectation, that peace is to result from such a parliamentary decision, so long have we a conclusive evidence that we are not fit for peace. '''Only then when we shall feel that such international meetings are mere formal procedures, unnecessary except in so far as they might serve to give definite expression to a common desire, will peace be assured.''' To judge from current events we must be, as yet, very distant from that blissful goal. It is true that we are proceeding towards it rapidly. There are abundant signs of this progress everywhere. The race enmities and prejudices are decidedly waning.
** [[Nikola Tesla]], in "The Transmission of Electrical Energy without wires as a means for furthering Peace" in Electrical World and Engineer (7 January 1905)

* '''Recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.'''
** [[w:Universal Declaration of Human Rights|Universal Declaration of Human Rights]], Preamble

* From somewhere in the Mediterranean — this is The Voice of Peace
** [[:w:Station identification|Station identification]] of Israeli humanist and peace activist [[:w:Abie Nathan|Abie Nathan]]'s pirate offshore radio [[:w:Voice of Peace|Voice of Peace]]

* '''Peace will come wherever it is sincerely invited.'''
** [[Alice Walker]] in ''Living by the word: selected writings, 1973-1987'', Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 192, (1989)

* '''To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.'''
** [[George Washington]], First Annual Address to both Houses of Congress (8 January 1790)

* '''Observe good faith and justice towards all Nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all.'''
** [[George Washington]], in his Farewell Address (17 September 1796)

* '''There is no way to peace, peace is the only way.'''
** [[Doris Allen, founder of CISV]]

===''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895)===
{{DOBW}}

* Two sorts of peace are more to be dreaded than all the troubles in the world — peace with sin, and peace in sin.
** [[Joseph Alleine]], p. 448.

* We shall never be at peace with ourselves until we yield with glad supremacy to our higher faculties.
** [[Joseph Cook]], p. 477.

* '''I could not live in peace if I put the shadow of a willful sin between myself and God.'''
** [[George Eliot]], p. 448.

* How different the peace of God from that of the world! It calms the passions, preserves the purity of the conscience, is inseparable from righteousness, unites us to God and strengthens us against temptations. The peace of the soul consists in an absolute resignation to the will of God.
** [[François Fénelon]], p. 446.

* '''Let not thy peace depend on the tongues of men; for whether they judge well of thee or ill, thou art not on that account other than thyself.''' Where are true peace and true glory? Are they not in God?
** [[Edward Garrett]], p. 448.

* When Christ was about to leave the world, He made His will. His soul He committed to His father; His body He bequeathed to Joseph to be decently interred; His clothes fell to the soldiers; His mother He left to the care of John; but what should He leave to His poor disciples that had left all for Him? Silver and gold He had none; but He left them that which was infinitely better, His peace.
** [[Matthew Henry]], p. 445.

* There have been keen agonies, sore heart-aches, but they have been short, and a sweet peace abides. Can it be His peace? Is it possible that to such a weak, sinful creature as I, the Comforter has indeed come? I must believe this, and that it is His presence that cheers me.
** [[Arthur Henry Kenney]], p. 446.

* After love comes peace. A great many people are trying to make peace. But that has already been done. God has not left it for us to do; all that we have to do is to enter into it.
** [[Dwight L. Moody]], p. 446.

* The promise is: "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee." Now, as long as our minds are stayed on our dear selves, we shall never have peace.
** [[Dwight L. Moody]], p. 447.

* You may assuredly find perfect peace, if you are resolved to do that which your Lord has plainly required,— and content that He should indeed require no more of you,— than to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with Him.
** [[John Ruskin]], p. 446.

* Patience and resignation are the pillars Of human peace on earth.
** [[Edward Young]], p. 447.

==External links==
{{wikipedia}}
{{wiktionary|peace}}
{{wikiversity|A World of Peace, Love and Happiness}}

[[Category:Themes]]

[[bs:Mir]]
[[cs:Mír]]
[[de:Frieden]]
[[el:Ειρήνη]]
[[es:Paz]]
[[eo:Paco]]
[[eu:Bakea]]
[[fa:صلح]]
[[fr:Paix]]
[[hy:Խաղաղություն]]
[[it:Pace]]
[[he:שלום]]
[[ku:Aştî]]
[[la:Pax]]
[[lt:Taika]]
[[nl:Vrede]]
[[ja:平和]]
[[nn:Fred]]
[[pl:Pokój]]
[[pt:Paz]]
[[sk:Mier]]
[[sl:Mir]]
[[tr:Barış]]

Love

2011-03-26T15:22:27Z

Nobody60: /* External links */

{{theme-cleanup}}
[[File:Love heart.jpg|thumb|right|The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return. ~ [[Eden Ahbez|eden ahbez]] ]]

'''Quotes regarding [[w:Love|Love]]''' (listed alphabetically by author):
__NOTOC__
[[#A|A]] - [[#B|B]] - [[#C|C]] - [[#D|D]] - [[#E|E]] - [[#F|F]] - [[#G|G]] - [[#H|H]] - [[#I|I]] - [[#J|J]] - [[#K|K]] - [[#L|L]] - [[#M|M]] - [[#N|N]] - [[#O|O]] - [[#P|P]] -[[#Q|Q]] - [[#R|R]] - [[#S|S]] - [[#T|T]] - [[#U|U]] - [[#V|V]] - [[#W|W]] - [[#X|X]] - [[#Y|Y]] - [[#Z|Z]] - [[#Anonymous|Anon]] - [[#External links|External links]]

==A==
* The Encyclopedia Galactica, in its chapter on Love states that it is far too complicated to define. The ''[[Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'' has this to say on the subject of love: "Avoid, if at all possible."
** ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'' (2005), film based on the novel by [[Douglas Adams]]

* The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
** [[Eden Ahbez|eden ahbez]], "[[w:Nature Boy|Nature Boy]]" (1948)

* Love is the answer, but while you're waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty interesting questions.
** [[Woody Allen]], reported in James Robert Parish, ''The Hollywood Book of Love'', (2003), p. 35

* Who sings of all of Love's eternity Who shines so bright In all the songs of Love's unending spells? Holy lightning strikes all that's evil Teaching us to love for goodness sake. Hear the music of Love Eternal Teaching us to reach for goodness sake.
** [[w:Jon Anderson|Jon Anderson]], in "Loved by the Sun", from movie ''[[Legend (film)|Legend]]'' (1985) - [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40eZABP5eJs (YouTube Video)]

* All our young lives we search for someone to love. Someone who makes us complete. We choose partners and change partners. We dance to a song of heartbreak and hope. All the while wondering if somewhere, somehow, there's someone perfect who might be searching for us.
** Kevin Arnold (played by Daniel Stern) narrating in ''[[The Wonder Years]]'' (1988)

* The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love.
** [[Margaret Atwood]]

* Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
** [[W. H. Auden]], ''The Dyer's Hand, and other essays‎'' (1962), p. 372.

* It is love that asks, that seeks, that knocks, that finds, and that is faithful to what it finds.
** [[Augustine of Hippo]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 392

* Once for all, then, a short precept is given thee: Love, and do what thou wilt: whether thou hold thy peace, through love hold thy peace; whether thou cry out, through love cry out; whether thou correct, through love correct; whether thou spare, through love do thou spare: let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good.
** [[Augustine of Hippo]], ''In epistulam Ioannis ad Parthos'', Tractatus VII, 8 ([http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/170207.htm ''Homilies on the First Epistle of John'', Homily 7])
** Latin: ''"dilige et quod vis fac."''; falsely often: ''"ama et fac quod vis."''
** Translation by Professor Joseph Fletcher: ''"Love and then what you will, do."''

== B ==
[[File:A Love for the Arts by Delacorr.jpg|144px|thumb|right|How do I love thee? Let me count the ways… [[Elizabeth Barrett Browning]] ]]

* The opposite of loneliness, it's not togetherness. It is intimacy.
** [[Richard Bach]], ''The Bridge Across Forever: A Lovestory'' (1989), p. 184.

*He has not known life, he who has not known love; and his destiny he is yet to find.
** Phumza Mafela.

* I love hiccups and I love sneezes and I love blinks and I love belches and I love gluttons. I love hair. I love bears. For me, the round. For me, the world.
** [[Giannina Braschi]] in "Empire of Dreams" (1988)

* '''Love means never having to say you're sorry.'''
** Oliver Barrett IV (Ryan O’Neal) in ''[[w:Love Story (1970 film)|Love Story]]'', (1970)

* If you say, I love you, then you have already fallen in love with language, which is already a form of break up and infidelity.
** [[Jean Baudrillard]], ''Cool memories‎'' (1990), p. 153.

* '''True love is your soul's recognition of its counterpoint in another'''.
** John Beckwith ([[Owen Wilson]]) in [[Wedding Crashers]]

* Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by the removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease, like ''caries'' and many other ailments, is prevalent only among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages. It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient.
** [[Ambrose Bierce]] in ''[[The Devil's Dictionary]]''

* '''We have common cause against the night...''' Why love the woman who is your wife? Her nose breathes the air of a world that I know; therefore I love that nose. Her ears hear the music I might sing half the night through; therefore I love her ears. Her eyes delight in seasons of the land; and so I love those eyes. Her tongue knows quince, peach, chokecherry, mint and lime; I love to hear it speaking. Because her flesh knows heat, cold, affliction, I know fire, snow, and pain... '''We love what we know, we love what we are. Common cause, common cause, common cause of mouth, eye, ear, tongue, hand, nose, flesh, heart, and soul.'''
** [[Ray Bradbury]], ''[[w:Something Wicked This Way Comes|Something Wicked This Way Comes]]'' (1962), p. 145.

* '''At the center of religion is love. I love you and I forgive you. I am like you and you are like me. I love all people. I love the world. I love creating. Everything in our life should be based on love.'''
** [[Ray Bradbury]], as quoted in [http://articles.cnn.com/2010-08-02/living/Bradbury_1_ray-bradbury-dandelion-wine-sam-weller?_s=PM:LIVING "Sci-fi legend "Ray Bradbury on God, 'monsters and angels'" by John Blake, ''CNN : Living'' (2 August 2010)], p. 1

* '''If thou must love me, let it be for nought Except for love's sake only.''' Do not say "I love her for her smile — her look — her way Of speaking gently, — for a trick of thought That falls in well with mine, and certes brought A sense of pleasant ease on such a day" — For these things in themselves, Beloved, may Be changed, or change for thee, — and love, so wrought, May be unwrought so. Neither love me for Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry, — A creature might forget to weep, who bore Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby! ''' But love me for love's sake, that evermore Thou may'st love on, through love's eternity'''.
**[[Elizabeth Barrett Browning]], in ''[[w:Sonnets from the Portugese|Sonnets from the Portugese]]'', No. XIV

* '''How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.''' I love thee to the level of everyday's Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints,—'''I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life! —and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.'''
**[[Elizabeth Barrett Browning]], in ''Sonnets from the Portugese'', No. LXIII

== C ==
[[File:Editor at large 1206.svg|144px|thumb|right|The growth of one blesses all. I am commited to grow in love. All that I touch, I leave in love. I move through this world consciously and creatively. ~ [[Julia Cameron]] ]]
[[Image:Bbrot225x225x24.PNG|144px|thumb|right| A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. ~ [[Leonard Cohen]] ]]
[[File:Nepalese-woman-with-baby.JPG|144px|thumb|right|Be loving, and you will never want for love; be humble, and you will never want for guiding. - [[Dinah Craik]] ]]

* Isn't everything we do in life a way to be loved a little more?
** "Celine" (played by [[w:Julie Delpy|Julie Delpy]]), in ''[[Before Sunrise]]'' (1995)

* '''Love is the substance of all life. Everything is connected in love, absolutely everything.'''
** [[Julia Cameron]], in ''Blessings : Prayers and Declarations for a Heartful Life'' (1998)

* '''When I listen to love, I am listening to my true nature. When I express love, I am expressing my true nature.''' All of us love. All of us do it more and more perfectly. The past has brought us both ashes and diamonds. In the present we find the flowers of what we've planted and the seeds of what we are becoming. '''I plant the seeds of love in my heart. I plant the seeds of love in the hearts of others.'''
** [[Julia Cameron]], in ''Blessings : Prayers and Declarations for a Heartful Life'' (1998)

* '''The growth of one blesses all. I am commited to grow in love. All that I touch, I leave in love. I move through this world consciously and creatively'''.
** [[Julia Cameron]], in ''Blessings : Prayers and Declarations for a Heartful Life'' (1998)

* ''Nous nous trompons toujours deux fois sur ceux que nous aimons: d`abord à leur avantage, puis à leur désavantage.''
** We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love — first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.
** [[Albert Camus]], quoted in {{cite book
| last = Robertson
| first = Connie
| title = The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations
| year = 1998
| publisher = Wordsworth Editions
| id = ISBN 185326489X
| pages = page 73
| chapter = "Camus, Albert 1913–1960
| chapterurl = http://books.google.com/books?id=n4p0O97RntAC&pg=PA73&dq=%22We+always+deceive+ourselves+twice+about+the+people%22&sig=lCB1NmOWaPVxoUdwmFgp6BZSjJw
}}

* That's love too. It ain't sex, and maybe that's too bad, but you know, Cindy, when a man and a woman care for each other, that doesn't always mean they have to sleep together or live together.
** [[Orson Scott Card]] in ''[[w:Homebody|Homebody]]'' (1998)

* '''Where there is the greatest love, there are always miracles.'''
** [[Willa Cather]], ''[[w:Death Comes for the Archbishop|Death Comes for the Archbishop]]'' (1927), Book I, Ch. 4.

* I have often had occasion to observe, that a warm blundering man does more for the world than a frigid wise man.
** [[Richard Cecil]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 394.

* A great love is a lot like a good memory. When it's there, and you know it's there, but it's just outta your reach, it can be all that you think about. And you can focus on it and try to force it, but the more you do, the more you seem to push it away. But if you're patient, and you hold still, well maybe, just maybe, it'll come to you.
** "Leonard Church", in ''[[Red vs. Blue]]''

* '''What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love.''' Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. '''A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory.''' He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is the caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. '''Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape.''' His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. '''It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love.'''
** [[Leonard Cohen]], ''[[w:Beautiful Losers|Beautiful Losers]]'' (1966)

* '''Be loving, and you will never want for love; be humble, and you will never want for guiding.'''
** [[Dinah Craik]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 394.

== D ==
[[Image:Barabas-galambposta.jpg|thumb|200px|<poem>
A song fluttered down in the form of a dove,
And it bore me a message, the one word—Love!
</poem>
[[wikisource:The Dove (Dunbar)|The Dove]] by Paul Laurence Dunbar]]

* If we seek the pleasures of love, passion should be occasional, and common sense continual.
** [[Robertson Davies]], "The Pleasures of Love," in ''Saturday Night'' (23 December 1961); reprinted in ''The Enthusiasms of Robertson Davies'' (1990)

* Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone-but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding.
** [[Bette Davis]] (1908-89), U.S. screen actor. ''The Lonely Life'', ch. 19 (1962).

* Today I begin to understand what love must be, if it exists. . . . When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: incompleteness in absence.
** [[Edmond de Goncourt]] (1822-96) and [[Jules de Goncourt]] (1830-70), French writers. The Goncourt Journals (1888-96; repr. in ''[[Pages from the Goncourt Journal]]'', ed. by Robert Baldick, 1962), entry for 15 Nov. 1859.

* Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time; effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end.
** [[Anne Louise Germaine de Staël]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 392.

* … What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.
** {{cite book
| last = Dostoevsky
| first = Fyodor M.
| authorlink = Fyodor Dostoevsky
| others = Constance Garnett, translator
| title = The Brothers Karamazov
| origyear = 1880
| year = 1999
| publisher = Signet Classic
| id = ISBN 0451527348
| pages = p. 312
}}
** Variant: Hell is the suffering of being unable to love.

* A purple robe he wore, o'erwrought with gold
:With the device of a great snake, whose breath
:Was a fiery flame: which when I did behold
:I fell a-weeping and I cried, "Sweet youth,
:Tell me why, sad and sighing, thou dost rove
:These pleasant realms? I pray thee speak me sooth
:What is thy name?" He said, "My name is Love."
:Then straight the first did turn himself to me
:And cried, "He lieth, for his name is Shame,
:But I am Love, and I was wont to be
:Alone in this fair garden, till he came
:Unasked by night; I am true Love, I fill
:The hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame."
:Then sighing said the other, "Have thy will,
:"I am the Love that dare not speak its name."
:* [[w:Lord Alfred Douglas|Lord Alfred Douglas]] from [[s:Two Loves (1894 poem)|Two Loves]] (1894)

* Love is a passion Which kindles honor into noble acts.
** [[John Dryden]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 392.

* You can't be wise and in love at the same time.
** [[Bob Dylan]], ''[[w:No Direction Home|No Direction Home]]'' (2005)

== E ==

* I was not, I lived and loved, I am not.
** [[Eric Rücker Eddison]], ''A Fish Dinner in Memison'', published [[1941]].

* Affection is the broadest basis of a good life.
** [[George Eliot]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 393.

== F ==
[[File:Francesco Hayez 008.jpg |thumb|right|Love has no uttermost, as the stars have no number and the sea no rest. ~ [[Eleanor Farjeon]] ]]

* Love has no uttermost, as the stars have no number and the sea no rest.
** [[Eleanor Farjeon]], ''Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard‎'' (1922), p. 172.

* For all the ill that is in us comes from fear, and all the good from love.
** [[Eleanor Farjeon]], ''Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard‎'' (1922), p. 174.

* Just one step at a time And closer to destiny I knew at a glance There'd always be a chance for me With someone I could live for Nowhere I would rather be. Is your love strong enough Like a rock in the sea? Am I asking too much? Is your love strong enough?
**"Is Your Love Strong Enough?" by [[Bryan Ferry]] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2m__rbD2IM (YouTube Video)]

* I wish I could take what I'm feeling right now and put it in the water system so everybody could drink it and we would all love each other.
** [[w:Jamie Foxx|Jamie Foxx]], at the Golden Globes ceremony (2005)

* I love love I love being in love I don't care what it does to me
** [[w:The Format|The Format]], in "Inches and Failing"

* I've made the most important discovery of my life. It's only in the mysterious equation of love that any logical reasons can be found.
** [[John Forbes Nash]] (portrayed by [[Russell Crowe]], in ''[[A Beautiful Mind (film)|A Beautiful Mind]]'' (2001)

* Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of the beloved person, love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness.
** [[Erich Fromm]], in ''Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics'' (1947)

* Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one’s country which is not part of one’s love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.
** [[Erich Fromm]], in ''The Sane Society'' (1955), Ch. 3 : The Human Situation, Sect. C : Rootedness — Brotherliness vs. Incest

* If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.
** [[Erich Fromm]], in ''Art of Loving'' (1956)

* I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me.
** [[Erich Fromm]], in ''Art of Loving'' (1956)

* I got love, I got so much love, love in my heart, and this feeling I can't let it go.
** [[w:The King Blues|Jonny 'Itch' Fox of The King Blues]], in "I Got Love" from'' [[w:Save the World. Get the Girl|Save the World. Get the Girl]]'' (2008)

* Truth is cosmically total: [[w:Synergy|synergetic]]. Verities are generalized principles stated in semimetaphorical terms. Verities are differentiable. But love is omniembracing, omnicoherent, and omni-inclusive, ''with no exceptions''. Love, like synergetics, is nondifferentiable, i.e., is integral.
** [[Buckminster Fuller]], in ''Synergetics : Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking'' (1975) 1005.54

* The highest of generalizations is the synergetic integration of truth and love.
** [[Buckminster Fuller]], in ''Synergetics : Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking'' (1975) 1005.56

== G ==

* Before my Soul taught me, Love was for me a delicate thread stretched between two adjacent pegs, but now it has been transformed into a halo; its first is its last, and its last is its first. It encompasses every being, slowly expanding to embrace all that ever will be.
** [[Khalil Gibran]], in ''The Vision : Reflections on the Way of the Soul'' (1994) edited by Robin H. Waterfield, translated by Juan R. I. Cole

* Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage? Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere.
** [[Emma Goldman]], "Marriage and Love" in ''Anarchism and Other Essays'' (1911)

== H ==
[[Image:Psyché.jpg |thumb|right|Love each other dearly always. There is scarcely anything else in the world but that: to love one another. ~ [[Victor Hugo]] ]]

* The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.
** [[Matthew Henry]] in Commentary on the Whole Bible, Vol. 1, under Genesis 2:21. [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/henry/mhc1.html]

* The love that gushes for all is the real elixir of life — the fountain of bodily longevity. It is the lack of this that always produces the feeling of age.
** [[Josiah Gilbert Holland]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 393.

* The most beautiful sight this earth affords is a man or woman so filled with love that duty is only a name, and its performance the natural outflow and expression of the love which has become the central principle of their life.
** [[Josiah Gilbert Holland]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 394.

* Love each other dearly always. There is scarcely anything else in the world but that: to love one another.
** [[w:Jean Valjean|Jean Valjean]] in ''[[Les Misérables]]'' (1862) by [[Victor Hugo]], Book IX - Supreme Shadow, Supreme Dawn, Ch. V - Night Behind Which Is Dawn

== I ==
* Hold the person that you love closely if they're next to you, the one you love, not the person that'll simply have sex with you.
** [[Immortal Technique]], "You Never Know", ''[[w:Revolutionary Vol. 2|Revolutionary Vol. 2]]'' (2003)

* '''Love is the only bow on Life's dark cloud. It is the morning and the evening star.''' It shines upon the babe, and sheds its radiance on the quiet tomb. It is the mother of art, inspirer of poet, patriot and philosopher. It is the air and light of every heart — builder of every home, kindler of every fire on every hearth. It was the first to dream of immortality. It fills the world with melody — for music is the voice of love. Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to Joy, and makes royal kings and queens of common clay. '''It is the perfume of that wondrous flower, the heart, and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts; but with it, earth is heaven, and we are gods.'''
** [[Robert G. Ingersoll]], in ''Orthodoxy'' (1884)

== J ==
[[Image:2006-12-03 Ring of love Edit.jpg|thumb|right|Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other. ~ [[Carl Jung]] ]]
*Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
**[[Jesus]] in [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2022:37-39&version=KJV ''Matthew'' 22:37-39] (KJV)

* Better get ready gonna see the light Love, love is the answer and that's all right So don't you give up now so easy to find Just look to your soul and open your mind
** [[w:Tommy James|Tommy James]], Eddie Gray and Mike Vale, [[w:Crystal Blue Persuasion|Crystal Blue Persuasion]] (1969)

* Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
** [[Jesus]] in ''Matthew'' 22:37-40 (KJV)

* Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
** [[Jesus]] in ''Matthew'' 24:5 (KJV)

* I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
** [[Jesus]] in Matthew 5:44 - 45 (KJV)

* Love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.
** [[Jesus]] in ''Luke'' 6:34–35 (NIV)

* A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
** [[Jesus]], in ''John'' 13:34-35 (KJV)

* At the evening of life, we shall be judged on our love.
** [[John of the Cross]], reported in the ''Catechism of the Catholic Church'' (2002), p. 231.

* She's the goddess of all things sweaty and sticky.
** [[w:Arthur M. Jolly|Arthur M. Jolly]] '''Cupid''' (referring to '''Venus''') in ''The Waiting Room of the Gods'' (2009)

* Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. . . . It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk everything, you risk even more.
** [[Erica Jong]] in ''How to Save Your Own Life'' (1977)

* Love loves to love love.
** [[James Joyce]], ''[[Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses]]'' (1946), p. 327.

* There is no fear in love, but perfect love throws fear outside, because fear exercises a restraint. Indeed, he that is under fear has not been made perfect in love.
**[[w:John the Evangelist|John the Evangelist]], ''1 John'' 4:18; [http://www.watchtower.org/e/bible/1jo/chapter_004.htm#bk18 1 John 4:18; New World Translation]

* Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.
** [[Carl Jung]], in ''The Psychology of the Unconscious'' (1943)

== K ==
[[File:Taijitu polarity.PNG|144px|thumb|right|When one has once fully entered the realm of Love, the world — no matter how imperfect — becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for Love. ~ [[Søren Kierkegaard]] ]]

* You are what you love, not what loves you.
** "Donald Kaufman" ([[w:Nicolas Cage|Nicolas Cage]]) in ''[[Adaptation]]'' (2001 film)

* '''The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen nor even touched, but just felt in the heart.'''
** [[Helen Keller]], ''The Story of My Life'' (1905), p. 203.

* Why only hate? Where does love remain? Or at least a little decency toward other people?
**[[Friedrich Kellner]], diary entry (30 March 1940)

* '''Love feels no burden, regards not labors, strives toward more than it attains, argues not of impossibility, since it believes that it may and can do all things.''' Therefore it avails for all things, and fulfils and accomplishes much where one not a lover falls and lies helpless.
** [[Thomas à Kempis]] (1380-1471), Dutch monk, mystic, in ''[[The Imitation of Christ]]'', pt. 3, ch. 6 (1471).

* '''Love is a word, what matters is the connection that word implies.'''
** Rama Chandra (Bernard White), ''[[The Matrix Revolutions]]''

* '''When one has once fully entered the realm of Love, the world — no matter how imperfect — becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for Love.'''
** [[Søren Kierkegaard]], in ''[[w:Works of Love|Works of Love]]'' (1847)

* '''It's love that holds it all together...it's love thats holding back the weather and the same will let it go.'''
** [[w: King's X|King's X]], "[[w: It's Love|It's Love]]"

* It takes a great deal of Christianity to wipe out uncivilized Eastern instincts, such as falling in love at first sight.
** [[Rudyard Kipling]], in ''[[s:Lispeth|Lispeth]]'' in ''[[s:Plain Tales from the Hills|Plain Tales from the Hills]]'' (1888)

== L ==

* Give in to love, or live in fear.
** [[Jonathan Larson]], "Another Day", ''[[Rent]]'' (1996).

* The world is wonderful and beautiful and good beyond one's wildest imagination. Never, never, never could one conceive what love is, beforehand, never. Life can be great-quite god-like. It can be so. God be thanked I have proved it.
** [[D. H. Lawrence]] (1885-1930), British author. Letter, 2 June 1912 (published in ''[[w:The Letters of D. H. Lawrence|The Letters of D. H. Lawrence]]'', Vol. 1, ed. by James T. Boulton, 1979). Lawrence wrote the letter after eloping to Germany with Frieda von Richthofen, wife of his old university professor, whom he later married.

* Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; re-made all the time, made new.
** [[Ursula Le Guin]], ''The Lathe of Heaven'' (1971), Ch. 10

* All you need is love.
** [[John Lennon]], in "[[w:All You Need Is Love|All You Need Is Love]]" from ''[[w:Magical Mystery Tour|Magical Mystery Tour]]'' (1967)

* ''We all been playing those mind games forever Some kinda druid dudes lifting the veil. Doing the mind guerrilla, Some call it magic — the search for the [[Holy Grail|grail]]. Love is the answer and you know that for sure. Love is a flower, you got to let it — you got to let it grow.''
** [[John Lennon]], in "[[w:Mind Games (song)|Mind Games]]" on ''[[w:Mind Games|Mind Games]]'' (1973)

* I want you to make love, not war, I know you've heard it before.
** [[John Lennon]], in his final fading statement in "[[w:Mind Games (song)|Mind Games]]" on ''[[w:Mind Games|Mind Games]]'' (1973)

* Ah, how skillful grows the hand That obeyeth Love's command! It is the heart, and not the brain, That to the highest doth attain, And he who followeth Love's behest Far excelleth all the rest!
** [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 394.

== M ==

* One plus one equals both.
** [[Gregory Maguire]], ''Wicked''

* I will make love my greatest weapon and none on whom I call can defend against its force. My reasoning they may counter; my speech they may distrust; my apparel they may disapprove; my face they may reject; and even my bargains may cause them suspicion; yet my love will melt all hearts liken to the sun whose rays soften the coldest clay. I will greet this day with love in my heart.
** [[Og Mandino]], in ''[[w:The Greatest Salesman in the World|The Greatest Salesman in the World]]'' (1968), Ch. 9 : The Scroll Marked II, p. 58

* Henceforth I will look upon all things with love and I will be born again. I will love the sun for it warms my bones; yet I will love the rain for it cleanses my spirit. I will love the light for it shows me the way; yet I will love the darkness for it shows me the stars. I will welcome happiness because it enlarges my heart; yet I will endure sadness because it opens my soul. I will acknowledge rewards because they are my due; yet I will welcome obstacles because they are my challenge. I will greet this day with love in my heart.
** [[Og Mandino]], in ''The Greatest Salesman in the World'' (1968), Ch. 9 : The Scroll Marked II, p. 58

* Contrary to Pascal's saying, we don't love qualities, we love persons; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as of their qualities.
** [[Jacques Maritain]], ''Reflections on America‎'' (1958), p. 20.

* To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else's heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. He had not missed a single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach her for fear of destroying the spell.
** [[Gabriel García Márquez]], in ''[[w:Love in the Time of Cholera‎|Love in the Time of Cholera‎]]'' (1985; translated by Alfred A. Knopf, 1988), p. 100.

* Learning to love yourself, it is the greatest love of all.
** [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Masser Michael Masser] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Creed Linda Creed], songwriters of "The Greatest Love of All"

* And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.
** [[Paul McCartney]], in "[[w:The End (The Beatles song)|The End]]" from ''[[w:Abbey Road (album)|Abbey Road]]'' (1969)

* The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
** [[Thomas Merton]]

* Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone-we find it with another.
** [[Thomas Merton]]

* Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; Yet many a man is making friends with death Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
** [[Edna St. Vincent Millay]], in "Sonnet XXX" from ''Fatal Interview'' (1931)

* Love would master self; and having made the mastery stretch onward and upward toward infinitude.
** [[w:Donald G. Mitchell|Donald G. Mitchell]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 394.

* Give love and forget that you gave it.
** [[Sun Myung Moon]] [http://www.unification.org/ucbooks/WofGW/wogw2-03.htm ''The Way of God's Will'' Chapter 2-3 Character] Translated [[1980]].

* '''My love for you is past the mind, beyond my heart, and into my soul'''.
** [[w:Boris Kodjoe|Boris Kodjoe]], ''[[w:Madea's Family Reunion|Madea's Family Reunion]]''

== N ==

* If only we could all escape from this house of incest, where we only love ourselves in the other, if only I could save you all from yourselves.
** [[Anaïs Nin]], in ''House of Incest'' (1936)

* '''Love reduces the complexity of living.'''
** [[Anaïs Nin]], in June 1932 entry in her journal; published in ''Henry and June : from a journal of love : the Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin'' (1990), p. 178

* '''You cannot save people, you can only love them.'''
** [[Anaïs Nin]], in ''The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume Two (1934-1939)''

* Someday I'll be locked up for love insanity. "She loved too much."
** [[Anaïs Nin]], in ''The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume Two (1934-1939)''

* '''Oh, God, I know no joy as great as a moment of rushing into a new love, no ecstasy like that of a new love.''' I swim in the sky; I float; my body is full of flowers, flowers with fingers giving me acute, acute caresses, sparks, jewels, quivers of joy, dizziness, such dizziness. Music inside of one, drunkenness. Only closing the eyes and remembering, and the hunger, the hunger for more, more, the great hunger, the voracious hunger, and thirst.
** [[Anaïs Nin]] (30 May 1934), in ''The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume Two (1934-1939)''

* No one but a woman in love ever sees the maximum of men's greatness .
** [[Anaïs Nin]] (18 June 1934), in ''The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume Two (1934-1939)''

* '''Love is the axis and breath of my life.''' The art I produce is a byproduct, an excrescence of love, the song I sing, the joy which must explode, the overabundance — that is all!
** [[Anaïs Nin]] (21 October 1934), in ''The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume Two (1934-1939)''

* You are like a person who consumes herself in love and giving and does not know the miracles that are born of this.
** [[Anaïs Nin]], in ''A Spy in the House of Love'' (1954)

* '''The enemy of a love is never outside, it's not a man or woman, it's what we lack in ourselves.'''
** [[Anaïs Nin]], in ''A Spy in the House of Love'' (1954)

* I think that natural truths will cease to be spat at us like insults, that aesthetics will once more be linked with ethics, and that people will become aware that in casting out aesthetics that they also cast out a respect for human life, a respect for creation, a respect for spiritual values. '''Aesthetics was an expression of man's need to be in love with his world. The cult of ugliness is a regression. It destroys our appetite, our love for our world.'''
** [[Anaïs Nin]], in ''The Novel of the Future (1969)

* '''Anxiety is love's greatest killer.''' It makes one feel as you might when a drowning man holds unto you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.
** [[Anaïs Nin]], as quoted in ''French Writers of the Past'' (2000) by Carol A. Dingle, p. 126.

* '''Love works magic. It is the final purpose Of the world story, The Amen of the universe.'''
** [[Novalis]], in ''Blüthenstaub-Fragmente'' (1798)

== O ==

== P ==
[[File:Vatican StPaul Statue.jpg |144px|thumb|right|Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away. ~ [[Paul of Tarsus]] ]]

* '''Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.''' And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. '''Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.''' '''Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.''' When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. '''Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known. And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.'''
** [[Paul of Tarsus]], in ''I Corinthians'' Ch. 13 (NKJV)
** Variant translation: Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud, it is not rude, it is not self seeking. It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrong. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perservers. Love never fails.
*** 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

* '''Love is the crowning grace of humanity, the holiest right of the soul, the golden link which binds us to duty and truth, the redeeming principle that chiefly reconciles the heart to life, and is prophetic of eternal good.'''
** [[Petrarch]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 392.

* In all of nature, a male belongs to a female that he fancies and who fancies him. And so among the animals there are no idiots. But with us!... I'm a [[Jews|Jew]], so I musn't love a Christian woman... He's a merchant, so he's got no right to a countess... And you who've got no money, you've no rights to any woman at all...
**[[w:Bolesław Prus|Bolesław Prus]], ''[[w:The Doll (novel)|The Doll]]'' (1889)

== Q ==

== R ==
* Love is like racing across the frozen tundra on a snowmobile which flips over, trapping you underneath. At night, the ice-weasels come.
** [[Tom Robbins]], ''Half Asleep In Frog Pajamas'' (1994), p. 103. In the book, it is a beat poem written by the main character's mother. Paraphrased by [[Matt Groening]] in the comic strip, ''Life in Hell''.

== S ==

* Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.
** [[Antoine de Saint-Exupery]]

* Love your neighbor as yourself but don't take down your fence
** [[Carl Sandburg]], ''[[w:The People, Yes|The People, Yes]]'' (1936), p. 107.

* The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.
** [[w:Morrie Schwartz|Morrie Schwartz]], ''[[Tuesdays with Morrie]]''

* We that are true lovers run into strange capers; but as all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly.
** [[William Shakespeare]] in [[As You Like It]] (II, iv, 53-56)

* "They do not love that do not show their love
** [[William Shakespeare]] in ''[[Two Gentlemen of Verona]]'', Act i, Sc.2

* "This is the very ecstasy of love
** [[William Shakespeare]] ''[[Hamlet]]'', Act ii, Sc.1

* Not that I lov'd Caesar less, but that I lov'd Rome more.
** [[William Shakespeare]] in [[Julius Caesar (play)|Julius Caesar]], act III, scene ii, line 22

* Sweet, above thought I love thee.
** [[William Shakespeare]] in ''[[Troilus and Cressida]]'', Act iii, Sc.1

* The course of true love never did run smooth.
** [[William Shakespeare]] in [[A Midsummer Night's Dream]] (I, i, 134)

* Then must you speak Of One that lov'd not wisely but too well.
** [[William Shakespeare]] in [[Othello]] (V, ii, 343-344)

* Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain
** [[William Shakespeare]] in ''[[Venus and Adonis]]''
* Love sought is good, but giv'n unsought is better.
** [[William Shakespeare]] in ''[[Twelfth Night]]'' (Act III, Scene I)

* Love that well which thou must leave ere long
** [[William Shakespeare]] in ''[[Sonnet 73]]''

* Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind.
** [[William Shakespeare]] in ''[[A Midsummer Night's Dream]]'' (I, i, 234)

* Love for thy love, and hand for hand I give
** [[William Shakespeare]] in ''[[Henry VI]]'', Part 1, Act iii, Sc.1

* "For stony limits cannot hold love out, and what love can do, that dares love attempt"
** [[William Shakespeare]] in ''[[Romeo and Juliet]]''

* Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none
** [[William Shakespeare]] in ''[[All's Well That Ends Well]]'', Act i, Sc.1

* Love comforteth like sunshine after rain
** [[William Shakespeare]] in ''[[Venus and Adonis]]''

* Journeys end in lovers meeting, Every wise man's son doth know.
** [[William Shakespeare]] in ''[[Twelfth Night]]'' (II, iii, 44-45)

* For where thou art, there is the world itself, and where though art not, desolation
** [[William Shakespeare]] in ''[[Henry VI, Part II]]'', Act iii, Sc.2

* When you depart from me sorrow abides, and happiness takes his leave.
** [[William Shakespeare]] in ''[[Much Ado About Nothing]]'', Act i, Sc.1

* Good night, sweet friend: thy love ne'er alter, till thy sweet life end
** [[William Shakespeare]] in ''[[A Midsummer Night's Dream]]'', Act ii, Sc.3

* "Upon thy cheek I lay this zealous kiss, as seal to the indenture of my love
** [[William Shakespeare]] in ''[[King John]]'', Act ii, Sc.1

* Doubt thou the stars are fire. Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar. But never doubt my love.
** [[William Shakespeare]] in ''[[Hamlet]]'', Act ii, Sc.2

* I can express no kinder sign of love, than this kind kiss.
** [[William Shakespeare]] in ''[[Henry VI]]'' (Act i, Sc.1)

* My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
:My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
:The more I have, for both are infinite.
:* [[William Shakespeare]] from [[Romeo and Juliet]]

* Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs
:Being purged, the fire in lovers' eyes,
:Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers' tears.
:What is it? A madness most discreet,
:A choking gall and a preserving sweet.
:* [[William Shakespeare]] "Romeo" from [[Romeo and Juliet]] (act 1, sc. 1)

* If music be the food of love, play on;
:Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
:The appetite may sicken, and so die.
:* [[William Shakespeare]] from [[Twelfth Night]] (I, i,1-3)

* O, how this spring of love resembleth
:The uncertain glory of an April day;
:Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,
:And by and by a cloud takes all away."
:* [[William Shakespeare]] from [[The Two Gentlemen of Verona]] (I, iii, 84-87)

* Love is seeing God in the person next to us, and meditation is seeing God within us.
** [[Sri Sri Ravi Shankar]], ''Wisdom for the New Millennium'' (2005), p. 9.

* All love is sweet, Given or returned. Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ever.
** [[Percy Bysshe Shelley]] in ''[[w:Prometheus Unbound|Prometheus Unbound]]''

* The night has a thousand eyes, and the heart but one; Yet the light of the world dies with the dying sun. The mind has a thousand eyes, and the heart but one; yet the light of a whole life dies when love is done.
** [[Kit Snicket]]
*** [[Lemony Snicket]], [[The End]]

* The feeling of love - is a fervent desire of goodness to a man.
** [[Simon Soloveychik]], ''Parenting for Everyone'' (1989)

* When I saw you, I was afraid of meeting you. When I met you, I was afraid of kissing you. When I kissed you, I was afraid to love you. Now that I love you, I'm afraid of losing you.
** Silard Somorjay, in "The Voice Of Love" on ''The Streets of Beijing'' movie soundtrack, Video Art Beijing

* The greater the love, the greater the tragedy when it's over.
** [[Nicholas Sparks]] in "[[Nights in Rodanthe]]"

* But love, I've come to understand, is more than three words mumbled before bedtime. Love is sustained by action, a pattern of devotion in the things we do for each other every day.
** [[Nicholas Sparks]] in ''[[The Wedding]]''

* In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.
** [[John Steinbeck]] in ''[[East of Eden (novel)|East of Eden]]''

* At the heart of its strength is a weakness: a lone candle can hold it back. Love is more than a candle, love can ignite the stars.
** [[Matthew Stover]] in the Revenge of the Sith Novelization.

* There are a great deal of a great many kinds of love.
** [[Lytton Strachey]] to [[Carrington]], 23.3.1917

* Love's a different sort of thing, hot enough to make you flow into something, interflow, cool and anneal and be a weld stronger than what you started with.
** [[Theodore Sturgeon]], in ''[[w:More Than Human|More Than Human]]'' (1953)

== T ==
[[File:Ilya Efimovich Repin (1844-1930) - Portrait of Leo Tolstoy (1887).jpg|144px|thumb|right|I have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live. He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love. ~ [[Leo Tolstoy]] ]]

* "How come we don't always know when love begins, but we always know when it ends?
** Harris K. Telemacher ([[Steve Martin]]) in ''[[L. A. Story]]''

* Love reflects the thing beloved.
** [[Alfred Tennyson]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895), p. 393.

* They say it is to know the union with love that the soul takes union with the body.
** [[Tiruvalluvar]], Tirukkural: 73

* The throb of life is love. Without it, humans are bodies of bones clad with skin.
** [[Tiruvalluvar]], Tirukkural: 80

* Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly.
** [[Leo Tolstoy]] in ''War and Peace'' (1865-1869)

* Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.
** [[Leo Tolstoy]] in ''War and Peace'' (1865-1869)

* To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings, in undeserved sufferings.
** [[Leo Tolstoy]] in ''War and Peace'' (1865-1869)

* I have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live. He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love.
** [[Leo Tolstoy]] in "What Men Live By" (1881)

* What are wanted ...are not Constitutions and Revolutions, nor all sorts of Conferences and Congresses, nor the many ingenious devices for submarine navigation and aerial navigation, nor powerful explosives, nor all sorts of conveniences to add to the enjoyment of the rich, ruling classes... but one thing only is needful: the knowledge of the simple and clear truth ...that for our life one law is valid — the law of love, which brings the highest happiness to every individual as well as to all mankind
** [[Leo Tolstoy]] in "A Letter to a Hindu" (1908)

* The more God's manifestation in man (life) unites with the manifestations (lives) of other beings, the more man exists. This union with the lives of other beings is accomplished through love. God is not love, but the more there is of love, the more man manifests God, and the more he truly exists...
** [[Leo Tolstoy]] in his Diary (1 November 1910)

== V ==
[[Image:Bigdayout crowd2.jpg|144px|thumb|right|A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved. ~ [[Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.]] ]]

* '''A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.'''
** [[Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.]] in ''[[w:The Sirens of Titan|The Sirens of Titan]]'' (1959)

* Make love when you can. It's good for you.
** [[Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.]] in ''[[w:Mother Night|Mother Night]]'' (1961)

* If somebody says, "I love you", to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol-holder requires? "I love you, too".
** [[Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.]] in ''[[w:Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons|Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons]]'', "Address at Dedication of Wheaton College Library, 1973" (1974)

* '''Love is where you find it.''' I think it is foolish to go looking for it, and I think it can often be poisonous.
** [[Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.]] from the prologue of ''[[Slapstick]]'' (1976)

* I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, "Please — a little less love, and a little more common decency."
** [[Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.]] from the prologue of ''[[Slapstick]]'' (1976)

== W ==
[[File:Gian Lorenzo Bernini - Dove of the Holy Spirit.JPG|144px|thumb|right|Love is the fulfilling of the law, the end of the commandment. ~ [[John Wesley]] ]]
[[File:Arco iris circular.JPG|144px|thumb|right|There's a reason for the sunshinin' sky And there's a reason why I'm feelin' so high Must be the season when that Love light shines all around us. ~ Larry E. Williams, in [[w:Let Your Love Flow|Let Your Love Flow]] ]]

* '''The world moves for love; it kneels before it in awe.'''
** Edward Walker ([[w:William Hurt|William Hurt]]), in ''[[The Village]]''

* '''Love is not consolation, it is light.'''
** [[Simone Weil]], as quoted in ''Simone Weil'' (1954) by [[w:E. W. F. Tomlin|Eric Walter Frederick Tomlin]], p. 47

* '''Love is a minefield.''' You take a step and get blown to pieces, put yourself back together again and stupidly take another step. I guess that's human nature. It hurts so much to be alone that we'd all rather blow up than be single.
** Kate Welles ([[w:Famke Janssen|Famke Janssen]]) in ''Love & Sex'' (2000)

* '''I observed, "Love is the fulfilling of the law, the end of the commandment." It is not only "the first and great" command, but all the commandments in one. "Whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise," they are all comprised in this one word, ''love''.'''
** [[John Wesley]] quoting his own earlier sermon on "The Circumsicion of the Heart" (1 January 1733) in the work ''A Plain Account Of Christian Perfection'' (Edition of 1777)

* An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.
** [[John Wesley]], ''The Works of the Rev. John Wesley'' (1830), p. 393.

* Even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other.
** [[Thornton Wilder]] in ''[[w:The Bridge of San Luis Rey|The Bridge of San Luis Rey]]''

* "Stop talking about love. Every asshole in the world says he loves somebody. It means nothing." "But it's true-" "Still doesn't mean anything. What you feel only matters to you. It is what you do to the people you love; that's what matters. That's the only thing that counts."
** Stephen ([[w:Tom Wilkinson (actor)|Tom Wilkinson]]), in ''[[w:The Last Kiss|The Last Kiss]]'' (2006).

* '''There's a reason for the sunshinin' sky''' And there's a reason why I'm feelin' so high Must be the season when that Love light shines all around us.
** Larry E. Williams, in [[w:Let Your Love Flow|Let Your Love Flow]] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKSNHcsqqKM (Bellamy Brothers performance)]

* Just let your love flow like a mountain stream And let your love grow with the smallest of dreams And let your love show and you'll know what I mean It's the season '''Let your love fly like a bird on a wing And let your love bind you to all livin' things And let your love shine and you'll know what I mean That's the reason.'''
** Larry E. Williams, in [[w:Let Your Love Flow|Let Your Love Flow]] (1976).

* Living might mean taking chances, but they're worth taking. Loving might be a mistake, but it's worth making.
** [[w:Lee Ann Womack|Lee Ann Womack]], [[w:I Hope You Dance (song)|I Hope You Dance]] (2000).

* '''Love is the true antithesis of fear. It expands where fear constricts. It embraces where fear repels.'''
** [[Marion Woodman]] and Elinor Dickson, ''Dancing in the Flames: The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness'', p. 45 (1997)

== X ==

== Y ==
[[File:Acrux.png|144px|thumb|right|I know a lot about love. I've seen it, seen centuries and centuries of it, and it was the only thing that made watching your world bearable. ~ "Yvaine" in [[Stardust (2007 film)|''Stardust'' (2007 film)]] ]]

* A pity beyond all telling Is hid in the heart of love.
** [[William Butler Yeats]], "The Pity of Love" in ''The Rose'' (1893)

* Love is in the air Everywhere I look around Love is in the air Every sight and every sound And I don't know if I'm being foolish Don't know if I'm being wise But it's something that I must believe in And it's there when I look in your eyes.
** [[w:John Paul Young|John Paul Young]], in [[w:Love Is in the Air|Love Is in the Air]] (1977) [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNC0kIzM1Fo (Performance in 1978)]

* Love is in the air In the whisper of the trees Love is in the air In the thunder of the sea And I don't know if I'm just dreaming Don't know if I feel sane But it's something that I must believe in And it's there when you call out my name.
** [[w:John Paul Young|John Paul Young]], in "Love Is in the Air" (1977)

* Only love can break your heart.
** Neil Young

* You know when I said I knew little about love? That wasn't true. I know a lot about love. I've seen it, seen centuries and centuries of it, and it was the only thing that made watching your world bearable. All those wars. Pain, lies, hate... Made me want to turn away and never look down again. But to see the way that mankind loves... I mean, you could search to the furthest reaches of the universe and never find anything more beautiful. So, yes, I know that love is unconditional. But I also know it can be unpredictable, unexpected, uncontrollable, unbearable and strangely easy to mistake for loathing, and... What I'm trying to say, Tristan, is... I think I love you. My heart... It feels like my chest can barely contain it. Like it doesn't belong to me any more. It belongs to you. And if you wanted it, I'd wish for nothing in exchange — no gifts, no goods, no demonstrations of devotion. Nothing but knowing you loved me, too. Just your heart, in exchange for mine.
** "Yvaine" in [[Stardust (2007 film)|''Stardust'' (2007 film)]], based on [[Stardust (novella)|''Stardust'' (1998)]], by [[Neil Gaiman]].

== Z ==

== Anonymous ==
:This section is for widely quoted statements by authors unknown or [[Anonymous]]

* Love rules without rules.
** Translation of Italian saying: ''Amor regge senza legge''; as quoted in ''Dictionary of Foreign Terms Found in English and American Writings of Yesterday and Today'', 2nd Edition (1934) edited by Christopher Orlando Sylvester Mawson

== External links ==
{{wikipedia}}
{{wiktionary}}
{{commonscat}}
{{wikiversity|A World of Peace, Love and Happiness}}

[[Category:Emotions]]
[[Category:Interpersonal relationships]]
[[Category:Virtues]]

[[ang:Lufu]]
[[ar:الحب]]
[[bg:Любов]]
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Meditation

2011-03-26T15:13:34Z

Nobody60: /* External links */

{{nointro}}

==[[Meditation]]==

==Sourced==
* Mind without agitation is meditation. Mind in the present moment is meditation. Mind that has no hesitation, no anticipation is meditation. Mind that has come back home, to the source, is meditation. Mind that becomes ‘‘no mind’’ is meditation.
** [[Sri Sri Ravi Shankar]], "What is Meditation?"

==Unsourced==
* Meditation is the life of the soul; action is the soul of meditation; honor is the reward of action; so meditate, that thou mayst do; so do, that thou mayst purchase honor; for which purchase, give God the glory.
** [[Francis Quarles]]
*Meditation brings wisdom, lack of meditation creates ignorance. Have awareness of what makes evolution, and of what creates delays.
** [[Gautama Buddha]]

==''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895)==
Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895).

* Meditation is the soul's perspective glass, whereby, in her long remove, she discerneth God, as if He were nearer at hand.
** [[Owen Feltham]], p. 406.

* Profound meditation in solitude and silence frequently exalts the mind above its natural tone, fires the imagination, and produces the most refined and sublime conceptions. The soul then tastes the purest and most refined delight, and almost loses the idea of existence in the intellectual pleasure it receives. The mind on every motion darts through space into eternity; and raised, in its free enjoyment of its powers by its own enthusiasm, strengthens itself in the habitude of contemplating the noblest subjects, and of adopting the most heroic pursuits.
** [[John G. Zimmerman]], p. 406.

* It is not he that reads most, but he that meditates most on Divine truth, that will prove the choicest, wisest, strongest Christian.
** Bishop [[Joseph Hall]], p. 406.

* For with all our pretension to enlightenment, are we not now a talking, desultory, rather than a meditative generation?
** [[John Campbell Shairp]], p. 406.

* It is an excellent sign, that after the cares and labors of the day, you can return to your pious exercises and meditations with undiminished attention.
** [[Hannah More]], p. 406.

* Night by night I will lie down and sleep in the thought of God, and in the thought, too, that my waking may be in the bosom of the Father; and some time it will be, so I trust.
** [[William Mountford]], p. 406.

* Avoid all refined speculations; confine yourself to simple reflections, and recur to them frequently. Those who pass too rapidly from one truth to another feed their curiosity and restlessness; they even distract their intellect with too great a multiplicity of views. Give every truth time to send down deep root into the heart.
** [[François Fénelon]], p. 407.

==External links==
{{wikipedia}}
{{wiktionary|meditation}}
{{wikiversity|A World of Peace, Love and Happiness#Globe Meditation}}

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Epicurus

2011-03-26T12:13:49Z

Nobody60: /* External links */

[[Image:Epikouros BM 1843.jpg|thumb|right|It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and honorably and justly, and it is impossible to live wisely and honorably and justly without living pleasantly.]]
'''[[w:Epicurus|Epicurus]]''' (341 BC – 270 BC) was an ancient Greek [[w:Philosopher|philosopher]] whose ideas gave rise to systems of thought known as [[w:Epicureanism|Epicureanism]].

== Sourced ==
[[File:Tetrapharmakos PHerc 1005 col 5.png|thumb|right|What is good is easy to get, and What is terrible is easy to endure.]]

* Άφοβον ο θεός, ανύποπτον ο θάνατος και ταγαθόν μεν εύκτητον, το δε δεινόν ευκαρτέρητον
** '''Don't fear god, Don't worry about death; What is good is easy to get, and What is terrible is easy to endure.'''
*** The "[[w:Tetrapharmakos|Tetrapharmakos]]" [τετραφάρμακος], or "The four-part cure" of Epicurus, from the "[[w:Herculaneum|Herculaneum]] Papyrus", 1005, 4.9-14 of [[w:Philodemus|Philodemus]], as translated in ''The Epicurus Reader: Selected Writings and Testimonia'' (1994) edited by D. S. Hutchinson, p. vi

* '''Luxurious food and drinks, in no way protect you from harm. Wealth beyond what is natural, is no more use than an overflowing container. Real value is not generated by theaters, and baths, perfumes or ointments, but by philosophy.'''
**From the esplanade wall at [[w:Oenoanda|Oenoanda]], now in [[W:Turkey|Turkey]], as recorded by [[W:Diogenes of Oenoanda|Diogenes of Oenoanda]]

* '''Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?
** As quoted in ''The Philosophy of Necessity : Or, Natural Law as Applicable to Moral, Mental, and Social Science'' (1863); also in ''Philosophical Papers'' (1864) by N. A. Nicholson, p. 40
** Disputed extension: Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
*** No published source for this additional line has been found prior to ''The Heretic's Handbook of Quotations: Cutting Comments on Burning Issues'' (1992) by Charles Bufe, p. 186

* '''Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search of it when he has grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul.''' And to say that the season for studying philosophy has not yet come, or that it is past and gone, is like saying that the season for happiness is not yet or that it is now no more. Therefore, both old and young alike ought to seek wisdom, the former in order that, as age comes over him, he may be young in good things because of the grace of what has been, and the latter in order that, while he is young, he may at the same time be old, because he has no fear of the things which are to come. So we must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are directed towards attaining it.
** [http://www.epicurus.net/en/menoeceus.html "Letter to Menoeceus"], as translated in ''Stoic and Epicurean'' (1910) by Robert Drew Hicks, p. 167
** Variant translation: '''Let no one delay to study philosophy while he is young, and when he is old let him not become weary of the study; for no man can ever find the time unsuitable or too late to study the health of his soul.''' And he who asserts either that it is not yet time to philosophize, or that the hour is passed, is like a man who should say that the time is not yet come to be happy, or that it is too late. So that both young and old should study philosophy, the one in order that, when he is old, he many be young in good things through the pleasing recollection of the past, and the other in order that he may be at the same time both young and old, in consequence of his absence of fear for the future.

* '''Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.'''
** [http://www.epicurus.net/en/menoeceus.html "Letter to Menoeceus"], as translated in ''Stoic and Epicurean'' (1910) by Robert Drew Hicks, p. 169

* '''He who is not satisfied with a little, is satisfied with nothing.'''
** ''The Essential Epicurus : Letters, Principal Doctrines, Vatican sayings, and fragments'' (1993) edited by Eugene Michael O'Connor, p. 99

* '''Self-sufficiency is the greatest of all wealth.'''
** ''The Essential Epicurus : Letters, Principal Doctrines, Vatican sayings, and fragments'' (1993) edited by Eugene Michael O'Connor, p. 99

=== Sovereign Maxims ===
:The 40 "Sovran Maxims" (or "Sovereign Maxims), or [http://classics.mit.edu/Epicurus/princdoc.html "Principal Doctrines" as translated by Robert Drew Hicks]
[[Image:Epicurus-PergamonMuseum.png|thumb|right|A happy and eternal being has no trouble himself and brings no trouble upon any other being; hence he is exempt from movements of anger and partiality, for every such movement implies weakness.]]

* '''A happy and eternal being has no trouble himself and brings no trouble upon any other being; hence he is exempt from movements of anger and partiality, for every such movement implies weakness.''' (1)
** Variant translations: What is blessed and indestructible has no troubles itself, nor does it give trouble to anyone else, so that it is not affected by feelings of anger or gratitude. For all such things are signs of weakness. (Hutchinson) The blessed and immortal is itself free from trouble nor does it cause trouble for anyone else; therefore it is not constrained either by anger of favour. For such sentiments exist only in the weak (O'Connor) A blessed and imperishable being neither has trouble itself nor does it cause trouble for anyone else; therefore, it does not experience anger nor gratitude, for such feelings signify weakness. (unsourced translation)

* '''It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and honorably and justly, and it is impossible to live wisely and honorably and justly without living pleasantly.''' Whenever any one of these is lacking, when, for instance, the man is not able to live wisely, though he lives honorably and justly, it is impossible for him to live a pleasant life. (5)

* '''No pleasure is in itself evil, but the things which produce certain pleasures entail annoyances many times greater than the pleasures themselves.''' (8)
** Variant translation: No pleasure is itself a bad thing, but the things that produce some kinds of pleasure, bring along with them unpleasantness that is much greater than the pleasure itself.

* It is impossible for someone to dispel his fears about the most important matters if he doesn't know the nature of the universe but still gives some credence to myths. So without the study of nature there is no enjoyment of pure pleasure. (12)
** Variant translation: One cannot rid himself of his primal fears if he does not understand the nature of the universe, but instead suspects the truth of some mythical story. So without the study of nature, there can be no enjoyment of pure pleasure. [http://www.epicurus.info/etexts/PD.html]

* The wealth required by nature is limited and is easy to procure; but the wealth required by vain ideals extends to infinity. (15)

[[Image:Metrodorus Louvre.jpg|thumb|right|Of all the means which wisdom acquires to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is friendship.]]
* Chance seldom interferes with the wise man; his greatest and highest interests have been, are, and will be, directed by reason throughout his whole life. (16).

* '''The just man is most free from disturbance, while the unjust is full of the utmost disturbance.''' (17)

* The flesh receives as unlimited the limits of pleasure; and to provide it requires unlimited time. But the mind, intellectually grasping what the end and limit of the flesh is, and banishing the terrors of the future, procures a complete and perfect life, and we have no longer any need of unlimited time. Nevertheless the mind does not shun pleasure, and even when circumstances make death imminent, the mind does not lack enjoyment of the best life. (20)

[[Image:Epicurus Louvre.jpg|thumb|right|Those who were best able to provide themselves with the means of security against their neighbors, being thus in possession of the surest guarantee, passed the most agreeable life in each other's society...]]
* We must consider both the ultimate end and all clear sensory evidence, to which we refer our opinions; for otherwise everything will be full of uncertainty and confusion. (22)

* If you reject absolutely any single sensation without stopping to discriminate with respect to that which awaits confirmation between matter of opinion and that which is already present, whether in sensation or in feelings or in any immediate perception of the mind, you will throw into confusion even the rest of your sensations by your groundless belief and so you will be rejecting the standard of truth altogether. If in your ideas based upon opinion you hastily affirm as true all that awaits confirmation as well as that which does not, you will not escape error, as you will be maintaining complete ambiguity whenever it is a case of judging between right and wrong opinion. (24)

* '''Of all the means which wisdom acquires to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is friendship.''' (28)

* Of our desires some are natural and necessary, others are natural but not necessary; and others are neither natural nor necessary, but are due to groundless opinion. (29)

* '''Natural justice is a symbol or expression of usefulness, to prevent one person from harming or being harmed by another.''' (31)
** Variant: Natural justice is a pledge of reciprocal benefit, to prevent one man from harming or being harmed by another.

* Those animals which are incapable of making binding agreements with one another not to inflict nor suffer harm are without either justice or injustice; and likewise for those peoples who either could not or would not form binding agreements not to inflict nor suffer harm. (32)

* It is impossible for a man who secretly violates the terms of the agreement not to harm or be harmed to feel confident that he will remain undiscovered, even if he has already escaped ten thousand times; for until his death he is never sure that he will not be detected. (35)

* Among the things held to be just by law, whatever is proved to be of advantage in men's dealings has the stamp of justice, whether or not it be the same for all; but if a man makes a law and it does not prove to be mutually advantageous, then this is no longer just. And if what is mutually advantageous varies and only for a time corresponds to our concept of justice, nevertheless for that time it is just for those who do not trouble themselves about empty words, but look simply at the facts. (37)

* Where without any change in circumstances the things held to be just by law are seen not to correspond with the concept of justice in actual practice, such laws are not really just; but wherever the laws have ceased to be advantageous because of a change in circumstances, in that case the laws were for that time just when they were advantageous for the mutual dealings of the citizens, and subsequently ceased to be just when they were no longer advantageous. (38)

* Those who were best able to provide themselves with the means of security against their neighbors, being thus in possession of the surest guarantee, passed the most agreeable life in each other's society; and their enjoyment of the fullest intimacy was such that, if one of them died before his time, the survivors did not mourn his death as if it called for sympathy. (40)

==External links==
{{wikipedia}}
{{wikiversity|Philosophy of Happiness}}
* [http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/e/epicur.htm Epicurus] at The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
* [http://www.epicurus.net/ Epicurus.net]
** [http://www.epicurus.net/en/principal.html Principle Doctrines]
*[http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761558192/Epicurus.html Encarta]

[[Category:Greeks]]
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Happiness

2011-03-25T16:12:19Z

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User:Nobody60

2011-03-25T12:04:44Z

Nobody60:

Hallo friends{{wikiversity|User:Nobody60}}

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2011-03-25T12:03:20Z

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