Great Throughts Treasury

"You see, God always takes the simplest way." - Albert Einstein

"Don’t let us rejoice in punishment, even when the hand of God alone inflicts it. The best of us are but poor wretches, just saved from shipwreck. Can we feel anything but awe and pity when we see a fellow-passenger swallowed by the waves?" - George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

"I could not live in peace if I put the shadow of a willful sin between myself and God." - George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

"If you mean to act nobly and seek to know the best things God has put within reach of men, you must learn to fix your mind on that end, and not on what will happen to you because of it." - George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

"It is a very serious duty, perhaps of all duties the most serious, to look into one's own character and conduct, and accurately read one's own heart. It is virtually looking into eternity, and all its vast and solemn realities, which must appear delightful or awful, according as the heart appears to be conformed or not conform to God." - Nathaniel Emmons

"Real holiness has love for its essence, humility for its clothing, the good of others as its employment, and the honor of God as its end." - Nathanael Emmons, also Nathaniel Emmons

"I am always content with that which happens, for I think that which God chooses is better than what I choose." -

"There is but one way to tranquillity of mind and happiness; let this, therefore, be always ready at hand with thee, both when thou wakes early in the morning, and all the day long, and when thou goest late to sleep, to account no external things thine own, but to commit all these to God." -

"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." -

"The care of God for us is a great thing, if a man believe it at heart: it plucks the burden of sorrow from him." - Euripedes NULL

"Those whom God wishes to destroy he first makes mad." - Euripedes NULL

"It is faith among men that holds the moral elements of society together, as it is faith in God that binds the world to his throne" - William Maxwell Evarts

"Failures are necessary to human experience. A man usually learns more from his failures than by his moments of success. No man ever succeeded in any cause without his share of failures... Our failures may sometimes be necessary in the sight of God to show us our own weakness, and that no man is sufficient unto himself." - Oliver Everette

"A life regardful of duty is crowned with an object, directed by a purpose, inspired by an enthusiasm, till the very humblest routine, carried out conscientiously for the sake of God is elevated into moral grandeur; and the very obscurest office, filled conscientiously at the bidding of God, becomes an imperial stage on which all the virtues play. To one who lies thus the insignificant becomes important, the unpleasant delightful, the evanescent eternal." -

"When men do anything for God, the very least thing, they never know where it will end, nor what amount of work it will do for Him. Love's secret, therefore, is to be always doing things for God, and not to mind because they are such very little ones." -

"While others talked about what they would do if they heard that they had to die within that very hour, Saint Charles Borromaeus said he would continue his game of chess. For he had begun it only in honor of god, and he could wish for nothing better than to be called away in the midst of an action undertaken in the honor of God." -

"No earthly purpose satisfies man’s longing to find his eternal reason for being... Man seeks incessantly for the meaning of life until he discovers the single eternal purpose for his existence. That purpose is the same for every man and woman. God created us because He longs to enter into fellowship with us. We belong to Him by right of creation. We can never know order and harmony in this life until we choose to establish a right relationship with God... Our search for meaning to life will end only when we establish that personal relationship with God and begin our walk with Him - for time and for eternity. Then comes that glorious personal fulfillment described in holy writ as the “peace that passes all understanding.”" - Jerry Falwell

"He who always waits upon God, is ready whensoever he calls. He is a happy man who so lives that death at all times may find him at leisure to die." - Owen Feltham

"God, who is liberal in all his other gifts, shows us, by the wise economy of his providence, how circumspect we ought to be in the management of our time, for he never gives us two moments together." - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

"How different the peace of god from that of the world! It calms the passions, preserves the purity of conscience, is inseparable from righteousness, unites us to God and strengthens us against temptations. The peace of the soul consists in an absolute resignation to the will of God." - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

"How does our will become sanctified? By conforming itself unreservedly to that of God." - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

"How rare to find a soul still enough to hear God speak." - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

"If we had strength and faith enough to trust ourselves entirely to God, and follow Him simply wherever He should lead us, we should have no need of any great effort of mind to reach perfection." - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

"It is this unquiet self-love that renders us so sensitive. The sick man, who sleeps ill, thinks the night long. We exaggerate, from cowardice, all the evils which we encounter; they are great, but our sensibility increases them. The true way to bear them is to yield ourselves up with confidence to God." - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

"True prayer is only another name for the love of God. Its excellence does not consist in the multitude of our words; for our Father knoweth what things we have need of before we ask Him. The true prayer is that of the heart, and the heart prays only for what it desires. To pray, then, is to desire - but to desire what God would have us desire." - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

"We may as well tolerate all religions, since God Himself tolerates all." - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

"'As above, so below' means that the two worlds are instantaneously seen to be one when we realize our essential unity with God... The One and the many, time and eternity, are all One." - Reshad Feild, born Richard Timothy Feild

"Man's extremity is God's opportunity." - John Flavel

"I believe God is managing affairs and that He doesn't need any advice from me. With God in charge, I believe everything will work out for the best in the end. So what is there to worry about." - Henry Ford

"God is not a cosmic bellboy for whom we can press a button to get things done." - Harry Emerson Fosdick

"God heals and the Doctor takes the fees." - Benjamin Franklin

"God helps those that help themselves." - Benjamin Franklin

"Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God." - Benjamin Franklin

"Serving God is doing good to man, but praying is thought as easier service and therefore more generally chosen." - Benjamin Franklin

"Understanding a person does not mean condoning; it only means that one does not accuse him as if one were God or a judge placed above him." -

"We try to evade the question [of existence] with property, prestige, power, production, fun, and, ultimately, by trying to forget that we - that I - exist. No matter how often he thinks of God or goes to church, or how much he believes in religious ideas, if he, the whole man, is deaf to the question of existence, if he does not have an answer to it, he is marking time, and he lives and dies like of the million things he produces. He thinks of God, instead of experiencing God." -

"It is impossible to conceive any contrast more entire and absolute than that which exists between a heart glowing with love to God, and a heart in which the love of money has cashiered all sense of God - His love, His presence, His glory; and which is no sooner relieved from the mockery of a tedious round of religious formalism than it reverts to the sanctuaries where its wealth is invested, with an intenseness of homage surpassing that of the most devout Israelite who ever, from a foreign land, turned his longing eyes toward Jerusalem." - Richard Fuller

"Life is passing; youth goes, strength decays. But duty performed, work done for God - this abides forever, this alone is imperishable." - Richard Fuller

"The narrow way, the way of holiness, not only leads to life, but it is life. Walking there, serene are our days, peaceful our nights, happy - high above the disorders and miseries of a wretched world - shall be our hourly communion with God; happy - full of assurance, of calm and sacred triumph, shall be our dying hour." - Richard Fuller

"True religion is not what men see and admire; it is what God sees and loves... The cheerful consecration of all the powers of the soul; the worship which rising above all outward forms, ascends to God in the sweetest, dearest communion - a worship often too deep for utterance, and than which the highest heaven knows nothing more sublime." - Richard Fuller

"Here is God's purpose- for God, to me, it seems, is a verb, not a noun, proper or improper." - Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller

"I conceive of God as a verb, not a noun. Intellect manifest in man is to some extent God. God is part of the thinking process of every man." - Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller

"What is the true end and aim of science but the discovery of the ultimate power - a seeking after God through the study of his ways." - William Henry Furness

"Ahlisma [nonviolence] means the largest love. It is the supreme law. By it alone can mankind be saved. He who believes in nonviolence believes in a living God." -

"God has no religion." -

"God is no dictator. He leaves us the freedom to master ourselves." -

"It is the quality of our work which will please God and not the quantity." -

"No one has the capacity to judge God. We are drops in that limitless ocean of mercy." -

"To a man with an empty stomach food is god." -

"Negative thinking is depriving people of their natural birthright of health. It is the prime cause in shortening the lives of so many of us. And yet it is so simple to live a healthier, longer and so much happier life. We have only to recognize how God works His wonders through laws governing nature and "human nature."" - Walter M. Germain