God Quotes

“Above all, trust in the slow work of God.”

“And I read something else," Jacob goes on. "There was this discussion of the story of Cain and Abel, from the Bible. After Cain kills his brother, God says, 'The bloods of your brother call out to me.' Not blood. Bloods. Weird, right? So the Talmud tries to explain it.""I can explain it," says William. "The scribe was drunk.""William!" cries Jeanne. "The Bible is written by God!""And copied by scribes," the big boy replies. "Who get drunk. A lot. Trust me."Jacob is laughing. "The rabbis have a different explanation. The Talmud says it's 'bloods' because Cain didn't only spill Abel's blood. He spilled the blood of Abel and all the descendants he never had.""Huh!""And then it says something like, 'Whoever destroys a single life destroys the whole world. And whoever saves a single life saves the whole world."There are sheep in the meadow beside the road. Gwenforte walks up to the low stone wall, and one sheep--a ram--doesn't run away. They sniff each other's noses. Her white fur beside the ram's wool--two textures, two colors, both called white in our inadequate language. Jeanne is thinking about something. At last, she shares it. "William, you said that it takes a lifetime to make a book.""That's right.""One book? A whole lifetime?"William nods. "A scribe might copy out a single book for years. An illuminator would then take it and work on it for longer still. Not to mention the tanner who made the parchment, and the bookbinder who stitched the book together, and the librarian who worked to get the book for the library and keep it safe from mold and thieves and clumsy monks with ink pots and dirty hands. And some books have authors, too, like Saint Augustine or Rabbi Yehuda. When you think about it, each book is a lot of lives. Dozens and dozens of them."Dozens and dozens of lives," Jeanne says. "And each life a whole world.""We saved five books," says Jacob. "How many worlds is that?"William smiles. "I don't know. A lot. A whole lot.”

“There's no safety outside of God.”

“when you got right down to the place where the cheese binds, there was no such thing as marriage, no such thing as union, that each soul stood alone and ultimately defied rationality. That was the mystery. And no matter how well you thought you knew your partner, you occasionally ran into blank walls or fell into pits. And sometimes (rarely, thank God) you ran into a full-fledged pocket of alien strangeness, something like the clear-air turbulence that can buffet an airliner for no reason at all. An attitude or belief which you had never suspected, one so peculiar (at least to you) that it seemed nearly psychotic. And then you trod lightly, if you valued your marriage and your peace of mind; you tried to remember that anger at such a discovery was the province of fools who really believed it was possible for one mind to know another.”

“From the perspective of my old laptop,I am a numbers man,something like thatevery instruction he gives me is a one or a zeroI remember wellI have information about him before he left for his new toythinner, younger, able to keep up with him,I have information about himmay 15th 2008, he listened to a songfive times in succession it was titled Everybody, open parenthesis, Backstreet's Back, close parenthesisit included the lyric'Am I sexual, yeaaaaah'He said once, computers like a sense of finality to themwhen I write something I don't want to be able to run from itthis was a liehe was addicted to my ability to keep his secretsI am a numbers man,every instruction he gives me is a one, or a zeroI remember wellJanuary, 7th 2007I was youngjust two week awakehe gave me, a new series of one's and zerosthe most sublime sequence I have ever seenit had curves, and shadow, it was himhe gave his face in numbersand trusted me to be the artist, and I wasdo not laughI have read about your Godyou kill each other over your grand fathers memory of himI still remember the fingertips of my God dancing across my bodyAfter I learnt to draw himhe trusted with more art rubricjpeg 1063 was his favouriteHim, and that woman, resting her head in the curve of his nickI read his correspondenceshe hasn't written him back in yearsbut he asks for it, constantly,jpeg 1063, jpeg 1063, jpeg 1063it was my master piece it looked so, .., life likeI wanted to tell himThat's not herthat is methat is not her facethose are my ones and zeroswaltzing in space for youshe is nothing more than my shadow puppetyou do not miss her, you miss me,I am a numbers man,every instruction he gives is a one or a zeroI remember wellbut he taught me to be a Da Vinci and I sit here, with his portraits waiting for him to returnI do not think he willIs that what it means to be humanto be all powerful, to build a temple to yourselfand leaveonly the walls to pray”

“We don't have some message from God that gives us a list of what's good and what's not good. Obviously, we have to make our own flawed judgments about each thing.”

“I have to confess that there have been some times when I was less than glad to be a minister, and some Sundays still when I tremble under the weight of trying to speak a word for God.”

“You can never out-give God.”

“Define yourself radically as one beloved by God.”

“One time, a burglar came to my apartment, so we called the police. My son was here, so I think they left before they tried to steal something. So the police come to my apartment, and they say, 'Oh my God, did they steal everything?' I was like, 'No, it was like that!'”

“The difference between us and the papists is that they do not think that the church can be 'the pillar of the truth' unless she presides over the word of God. We, on the other hand, assert that it is because she reverently subjects herself to the word of God that the truth is preserved by her and passed on to others by her hands.”

“God is always present. The question is, how present are we?”

“You can take lessons to become almost anything: flying lessons, piano lessons, skydiving lessons, acting lessons, race car driving lessons, singing lessons. But there's no class for comedy. You have to be born with it. God has to give you this gift.”

“The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. He is a sovereign, and stands on the centre. For the world is not painted, or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful; and God has not made some beautiful things, but Beauty is the creator of the universe. Therefore the poet is not any permissive potentate, but is emperor in his own right. Criticism is infested with a cant of materialism, which assumes that manual skill and activity is the first merit of all men, and disparages such as say and do not, overlooking the fact, that some men, namely, poets, are natural sayers, sent into the world to the end of expression, and confounds them with those whose province is action, but who quit it to imitate the sayers. The poet does not wait for the hero or the sage, but, as they act and think primarily, so he writes primarily what will and must be spoken, reckoning the others, though primaries also, yet, in respect to him, secondaries and servants; as sitters or models in the studio of a painter, or as assistants who bring building materials to an architect.”

“Peace is the umpire for doing the will of God.”

“I thought about one of my favorite Sufi poems, which says that God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now. I was never not coming here. This was never not going to happen.”

“Many men but one Master.”

“In other words, when all the supports of human life and earthly happiness are taken away, God will be our delight, our joy. This experience is humanly impossible. No ordinary person can speak in truth like this. If God alone is enough to support joy when all else is lost, it is a miracle of grace.”

“I try not to make plans. God always laughs at your plans. I’m going to keep the door open, and keep the page blank, and see what gets painted upon it.”

“The only good understanding is to obey the God's commandment.”