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God Quotes

The writers with the most entries are not theologians: a Sufi saint, Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki, then Shakespeare, Homer, Pope and Ovid. The sourced lines are mostly sceptical ones. Bertrand Russell, in Religion and Science (1935), says that with omnipotence and millions of years he would not think Man much to boast of, and Shaw, in 1903, warns against the man whose god is in the skies.

Three famous sayings are marked disputed. Voltaire’s clockwork-and-clockmaker line has no firm source. Newton’s remark that the thumb would convince him of God is reported from a palmistry article in Dickens’s magazine All the Year Round (1864). “I looked and looked but I didn’t see God,” credited to Yuri Gagarin, is traced in the notes only to a 2006 book.

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Most quoted on god:

Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.

Frederick Douglass Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845)

God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.

Jerry Falwell

I do not preach universal salvation, what I say is that I cannot exclude the possibility that God would save all men at the Judgment.

Karl Barth Witness to an Ancient Truth (1962)

The ancient God created the old man, capable of erring — thus he erred himself.

Yevgeny Zamyatin We (1921)

I don’t think God has any more idea than you or I about what’s going on.

Jasper Fforde The Woman Who Died a Lot (2012)

Imaginative truth is the most immediate way of presenting ultimate reality to a human being … ultimate reality is what we call God.

R. S. Thomas

Let us also once more rejoice in, and thank God for, the fact that we know nothing about Homer, and practically nothing about Shakespeare.

George Saintsbury

“Perhaps Keith is exactly the way God intended him to be.”

Sheila Walsh Angel Song (2010)

“That’s why God sends His angels to me and you, maybe. So we won’t be sad anymore.”

Sheila Walsh Angel Song (2010)

God bestows His anguish (Pain) on the enlightened one.

Abu al-Hassan al-Kharaqani The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2002)

Gratitude is the vision of the Gives, not of the gift-it comes from God Himself.

Al-Qushayri The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2002)

Whom God loves, on him He sends sufferings and whom He does not like, on him He bestows comforts.

Al-Fudayl ibn 'Iyad The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004)

The savant whose learning pursuits the Almighty God, all people hold reverential fear of him, and he whose objective is worldly gain, is afraid of the people.

Shaqiq al-Balkhi The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004)

The philosopher deep in debate cannot find God,
He is untangling the string but cannot find where to begin!

Akbar Allahabadi

I think we have reason to thank God for Abraham Lincoln. With all his deficiencies, it must be admitted that he has grown continually.

Lydia Maria Child

A mathematical formula should never be "owned" by anybody! Mathematics belong to God.

Donald Knuth

The Sufi's love to God goes with God's love towards him. Sufis are folk who have preferred God to everything, so that God has preferred them to everything.

Dhul-Nun al-Misri The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004)

O Dear! Live in this world brokenhearted and miserable. When Moses asked God: "O Lord where should I search You?" The answer came: "In the heart which is broken by the hand of detiny."

Makhdoom Sharfuddin Ahmed Yahya Maneri The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004)

Worship of God which is done for ostentation is submerged in the earth. And that which is done for God's sake ascends to celestial spheres.

Shaqiq al-Balkhi The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004)

The seeker's real approach to God means his preoccupation with afflictions appearing on the way to Him. Tribulations in separation from God is to be treated as a boon granted by God to His elect.

Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004)

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