Quotes
Quotes about God
He whom the gods favour dies in youth.
If you are wise, be wise; keep what goods the gods provide you.
Immortal gods! how much does one man excel another! What a difference there is between a wise person and a fool!
When God is planning ruin for a man, He first deprives him of his reason.
A god could hardly love and be wise.
Dionysius the Elder, being asked whether he was at leisure, he replied, "God forbid that it should ever befall me!"
When he was wounded with an arrow in the ankle, and many ran to him that were wont to call him a god, he said smiling, "That is blood, as you see, and not, as Homer saith, ‘such humour as distils from blessed gods.'"
The great god Pan is dead.
As Meander says, "For our mind is God;" and as Heraclitus, "Man's genius is a deity."
Yet God hath not only granted these faculties, by which we may bear every event without being depressed or broken by it, but like a good prince and a true father, hath placed their exercise above restraint, compulsion, or hindrance, and wholly without our own control.
O slavish man! will you not bear with your own brother, who has God for his Father, as being a son from the same stock, and of the same high descent? But if you chance to be placed in some superior station, will you presently set yourself up for a tyrant?
When you have shut your doors, and darkened your room, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; but God is within, and your genius is within,--and what need have they of light to see what you are doing?
Dare to look up to God and say, "Make use of me for the future as Thou wilt. I am of the same mind; I am one with Thee. I refuse nothing which seems good to Thee. Lead me whither Thou wilt. Clothe me in whatever dress Thou wilt."
Reckon the days in which you have not been angry. I used to be angry every day; now every other day; then every third and fourth day; and if you miss it so long as thirty days, offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving to God.
Let not another's disobedience to Nature become an ill to you; for you were not born to be depressed and unhappy with others, but to be happy with them. And if any is unhappy, remember that he is so for himself; for God made all men to enjoy felicity and peace.
The gods looked with favour on superior courage.
The ways of the gods are full of providence.
Live with the gods.
One Universe made up of all that is; and one God in it all, and one principle of Being, and one Law, the Reason, shared by all thinking creatures, and one Truth.
One of his sayings was, "Even the gods cannot strive against necessity."
Socrates said, "Those who want fewest things are nearest to the gods."
That the gods superintend all the affairs of men, and that there are such beings as dæmons.
He used to say that personal beauty was a better introduction than any letter; but others say that it was Diogenes who gave this description of it, while Aristotle called beauty "the gift of God;" that Socrates called it "a short-lived tyranny;" Theophrastus, "a silent deceit;" Theocritus, "an ivory mischief;" Carneades, "a sovereignty which stood in need of no guards."
He used to teach that God is incorporeal, as Plato also asserted, and that his providence extends over all the heavenly bodies.
The Stoics also teach that God is unity, and that he is called Mind and Fate and Jupiter, and by many other names besides.
