Sourced and curated.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.

Proverbs 3:5-6

686 BC

★ 7.1

Personal journal

God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.

Soren Kierkegaard

1838

★ 7.0

Presocratic fragment · Fragment · Philosophical literature

If cows and horses or lions had hands, or could draw with their hands and make things as men can, horses would have drawn horse-like gods, cows cow-like gods, and each species would have made the gods' bodies just like their own.

Xenophanes

★ 6.9

Sermon · Religious literature

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire.

Jonathan Edwards

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God · 1741

★ 5.3

Poem

So, loath to suffer mute, We, peopling the void air, Make Gods to whom to impute The ills we ought to bear.

Matthew Arnold

Empedocles on Etna · 1852

★ 5.3

An honest God is the noblest work of man.

Robert G. Ingersoll

1874

★ 5.3

Poem

The only freedom the gods grant us Is this: to submit Of our own free will to their sovereignty We should do just that, Since only in the illusion of freedom Does freedom exist.

Fernando Pessoa

1914

★ 5.0

For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

Apostle Paul

Acts 17:28 · 62

★ 4.6

Film · Musical comedy (film) · Musical (film) · Musical comedy · Musical

We're on a mission from God.

Elwood Blues

The Blues Brothers · 1980

★ 4.5

Novel · Science fiction

The most preposterous notion that Homo sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.

Robert A. Heinlein

Time Enough for Love · 1973

★ 4.2

Poem · Epic poem

The Olympian is a difficult foe to oppose.

Homer

The Iliad · 700 BC

★ 4.1

Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God.

Martin Luther

1529

★ 4.0

The Lord searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts.

David

1st Chronicles 28:9 · 430 BC

★ 3.9

He cannot have God for his father who has not the church for his mother.

St. Cyprian

251

★ 3.9

They consider the deed but God weighs the motive.

Thomas a Kempis

The Imitation of Christ · 1418

★ 3.9

We cannot all be friars, and many are the ways by which God leads his own to eternal life. Knight-errantry is religion.

Miguel de Cervantes

Don Quixote · 1615

★ 3.9

Play · Greek tragedy · Tragedy (play)

Zeus, author of all, worker of all! For what is brought to pass for mortal men save by will of Zeus? What herein is not wrought of god?

Aeschylus

Agamemnon · 458 BC

★ 3.8

Too late I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new! Too late I loved you! And, behold, you were within me, and I out of myself and there I searched for you.

St. Augustine

Confessions · 400

★ 3.8

We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.

Isaiah

Isaiah 64:8 · 681 BC

★ 3.7

Play · Tragedy (play)

Twas only fear first in the world made gods.

Ben Jonson

1603

★ 3.7

Philosophical literature

I could not possibly exist with the nature I actually have, that is, one endowed with the idea of God, unless there really is a God; the very God, I mean, of whom I have an idea.

Rene Descartes

Meditations on First Philosophy · 1641

★ 3.7

Speech · Political speech

I believe that our Great Maker is preparing the world, in His own good time, to become one nation, speaking one language, and when armies and navies will be no longer required.

Ulysses S. Grant

Second Inaugural Address of Ulysses S. Grant · 1873

★ 3.7

Novel · Epistolary novel

Have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God.

Alice Walker

The Color Purple · 1982

★ 3.7

Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.

God

Job 38:4 · 500 BC

★ 3.6

Hymn · Song

Just as I am - without one plea, But that Thy blood was shed for me, And that Thou bidst me come to Thee, -O Lamb of God, I come!

Charlotte Elliott

Just as I Am · 1834

★ 3.6

Short story

God made man, without man's consent, and made his nature, too; made it vicious instead of angelic, and then said, Be angelic, or I will punish you and destroy you. But no matter, God is responsible for everything man does, all the same; He can't get around that fact. There is only one Criminal, and it is not man.

Mark Twain

1910

★ 3.6

A belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.

Joseph Conrad

Under Western Eyes · 1911

★ 3.6

Psychological literature

You can take away a man's gods, but only to give him others in return.

Carl Jung

1958

★ 3.6

Essay

They that deny a God destroy a man's nobility, for certainly man is of a 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

1625

★ 3.5

Autobiography and memoir · Religious literature

There is surely a peece of Divinity in us, something that was before the Elements, and owes no homage unto the Sun.

Sir Thomas Browne

1643

★ 3.5

Some say that we shall never know, and that to the gods we are like the flies that the boys kill on a summer's day, and some say, to the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God.

Thornton Wilder

The Bridge on San Luis Rey · 1927

★ 3.5

Sports (film) · Biography (film) · Sports · Biography

Son, in 35 years of religious studies, I’ve come up with only two hard, incontrovertible facts: There is a God, and I’m not him.

Father Cavanaugh

Rudy · 1993

★ 3.5

I will lay mine hand upon my mouth.

Job

Job 40:4 · 500 BC

★ 3.5

Personal journal

The Lord showed me, so that I did see clearly, that he did not dwell in these temples which men had commanded and set up, but in people's hearts... His people were his temple, and he dwelt in them.

George Fox

1646

★ 3.5

Hymn · Song

Great is thy faithfulness! Great is thy faithfulness! Morning by morning new mercies I see; All I have needed thy hand hath provided. Great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me.

Thomas O. Chisholm

Great is Thy Faithfulness · 1923

★ 3.5

It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.

Peter De Vries

The Mackerel Plaza · 1958

★ 3.5