Faith, Spirituality and Religion

The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.

Under all that we think, lives all we believe, like the ultimate veil of our spirits.

Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.

 

Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens. J. R. R.

It is well that the stately synagogue should lift its walls by the side of the aspiring cathedral, a perpetual reminder that there are many mansions in Father’s earthly house as well as in the heavenly ones.

Spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison.

I . . . once read the Old Testament and the four Gospels straight through, from a vainglorious desire to do what nobody else had done.

‘God bless us every one!’ said Tiny Tim.

This is the month, and this the happy morn, Wherein the Son of Heav’n’s eternal King, Of wedded maid and virgin mother born, Our great redemption from above did bring; For so the holy sages once did sing, That He our deadly forfeit should release, And with His Father work us a perpetual peace.

Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees That half a proper gardener’s work is done upon his knees.

Earth’s crammed with heaven,

What was he doing, the great god Pan,

God has pity on kindergarten children. He has less pity on school children. And on grownups he has no pity at all, he leaves them alone, and sometimes they must crawl on all fours in the burning sand to reach the first-aid station covered with blood.

Dieu est, ou il n’est pas. Mais de quel côté pencherons-nous? La raison n’y peut rien déterminer. Il y’a un chaos infini qui nous sépare. Il se joue un jeu, à l’extrémité de cette distance infinie, où il arrivera croix ou pile: que gagerez-vous?

Pesons le gain et la perte, en prenant croix que Dieu est. Estimons ces deux cas: Si vous gagnez, vous gagnez tout; si vous perdez, vous ne perdez rien. Gagez donc qu’il est, sans hésiter!

I hold it true, whate’er befall;

 

What does he [God] then but reveal Himself to his servants, and as his manner is, first to his Englishmen?

God made man, without man’s consent, andmade 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.

Love beauty; it is the shadow of God on the universe.

Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence.

When Zarathustra was alone he spoke thus to his heart: “Could it be possible? This old saint in the forest has not yet heard anything of this, that God is dead! ”

If I were called in To construct a religion I should make use of water.

[ On the Bible :] It is full of interest. It hasnoble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies.

Gott ist tot: aber so wie die Art der Menschen ist, wird es vielleicht noch Jahrtausende lang Höhlen geben, in denen man seinen Schatten zeigt.—Und wir—wir müssen auch noch seinen Schatten besiegen!