„There is no way our little minds can comprehend the love of God. But that didn't keep him from coming.“

„The knowledge of God proceeds from the love of God, and this love has little or nothing of the rational in it. For God is indefinable. To seek to define Him is to seek to confine Him within the limits of our mind — that is to say, to kill Him. In so far as we attempt to define Him, there rises up before us — Nothingness.“

—  Miguel de Unamuno 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher 1864 - 1936

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VIII : From God to God
Kontext: Not by way of reason, but only by way of love and suffering, do we come to the living God, the human God. Reason rather separates us from Him. We cannot first know Him in order that afterward we may love Him; we must begin by loving Him, longing for Him, hungering after Him, before knowing Him. The knowledge of God proceeds from the love of God, and this love has little or nothing of the rational in it. For God is indefinable. To seek to define Him is to seek to confine Him within the limits of our mind — that is to say, to kill Him. In so far as we attempt to define Him, there rises up before us — Nothingness.

„You see, Doctor, God didn't kill that little girl. Fate didn't butcher her and destiny didn't feed her to those dogs. If God saw what any of us did that night he didn't seem to mind. From then on I knew… God doesn't make the world this way. We do.“

—  Alan Moore, buch Watchmen

Quelle: Watchmen

„The wish to talk to God is absurd. We cannot talk to one we cannot comprehend — and we cannot comprehend God; we can only believe in Him.“

—  Immanuel Kant German philosopher 1724 - 1804

A lecture at Königsberg (1775), as quoted in A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles from Ancient and Modern Sources (1946) by H. L. Mencken, p. 955
Kontext: The wish to talk to God is absurd. We cannot talk to one we cannot comprehend — and we cannot comprehend God; we can only believe in Him. The uses of prayer are thus only subjective.

„Our rational minds can never understand what has happened, but our hearts.. if we can keep them open to God, will find their own intuitive way.“

—  Ram Dass American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now 1931 - 2019

„for Mercutio's soul
Is but a little way above our heads,
Staying for thine to keep him company:
Either thou, or I, or both, must go with him.“

—  William Shakespeare, buch Romeo und Julia

Quelle: Romeo and Juliet

„Many of our attempts to understand Christian faith have only cheapened it. I can no more understand the totality of God that the pancake I made for breakfast understands the complexity of me. The little we do understand, that grain of sand our minds are capable of grasping, those ideas such as God is good, God feels, God loves, God knows all, are enough to keep our hearts dwelling on His majesty and otherness forever.“

—  Donald Miller, buch Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

„Love's secret is to be always doing things for God, and not to mind because they are such little ones.“

—  Frederick William Faber British hymn writer and theologian 1814 - 1863

Quelle: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 386.

„My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance — but for us, not for God.“

—  Albert Einstein German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity 1879 - 1955

Quelle: Attributed in posthumous publications, p. 66 of the 1981 edition

„I think it is our privilege and felicity to love God for his beauty, without claiming or expecting love from him.“

—  Robinson Jeffers American poet 1887 - 1962

Letter to Sister Mary James Power (1 October 1934); published in The Wild God of the World : An Anthology of Robinson Jeffers (2003), edited by Albert Gelpi, p. 189; also partly quoted in the essay "Robinson Jeffers, Pantheist Poet" http://web.archive.org/20011119074326/members.aol.com/PHarri5642/jeffers.htm by John Courtney
Kontext: I believe that the Universe is one being, all its parts are different expressions of the same energy, and they are all in communication with each other, therefore parts of one organic whole. (This is physics, I believe, as well as religion.) The parts change and pass, or die, people and races and rocks and stars, none of them seems to me important in itself, but only the whole. This whole is in all its parts so beautiful, and is felt by me to be so intensely in earnest, that I am compelled to love it and to think of it as divine. It seems to me that this whole alone is worthy of the deeper sort of love and there is peace, freedom, I might say a kind of salvation, in turning one's affections outward toward this one God, rather than inwards on one's self, or on humanity, or on human imaginations and abstractions — the world of spirits.
I think it is our privilege and felicity to love God for his beauty, without claiming or expecting love from him. We are not important to him, but he to us.

„However great the exertion of our mind may be to comprehend the Divine Being or any of the ideals, we find a screen and partition between God and us.“

—  Maimónides, buch The Guide for the Perplexed

Quelle: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.9
Kontext: The corporeal element in man is a large screen and partition that prevents him from perfectly perceiving abstract ideals; this would be the case even if the corporeal element were as pure and superior as the substance of the spheres; how much more must this be the case with our dark and opaque body. However great the exertion of our mind may be to comprehend the Divine Being or any of the ideals, we find a screen and partition between God and us.

„It is recognizing God's eternality that liberates our minds from their consumer inclination to reduce him to a commodity.“

—  Skye Jethani

The Divine Commodity: Discovering A Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity (2009, Zondervan)

„God can dispense with us just as little as we can dispense with him.“

—  Meister Eckhart German theologian 1260 - 1328

Gott kann uns ebensowenig entbehren wie wir ihn.
Sermon 49

„Precious Saviour! come in spirit, and lay Thy strong, gentle grasp of love on our dear boys and girls, and keep these our lambs from the fangs of the wolf.“

—  Theodore L. Cuyler American minister 1822 - 1909

Quelle: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 50.

„You can't have it both ways. Either our rights come from God, as our Declaration of Independence says, or they come from human choice. If they come from human choice, then our whole way of life is meaningless, it has no foundation.“

—  Alan Keyes American politician 1950

PBS' Newshour with Jim Lehrer, December 20, 1999. http://renewamerica.us/archives/media/interviews/99_12_20lehrer.htm.
1999

„How can anything bad come out of love? The bad stuff comes out of mistrust, misunderstanding and God knows from hate and from ignorance.“

—  Elizabeth Taylor British-American actress 1932 - 2011

„The way to happiness: Keep your heart free from hate, your mind from worry. Live simply, expect little, give much. Scatter sunshine, forget self, think of others. Try this for a week and you will be surprised.“

—  Norman Vincent Peale, buch The Power of Positive Thinking

Quelle: The Power of Positive Thinking

„There is but one thing needful — to possess God. All our senses, all our powers of mind and soul, all our external resources, are so many ways of approaching the divinity, so many modes of tasting and of adoring God. We must learn to detach ourselves from all that is capable of being lost, to bind ourselves absolutely only to what is absolute and eternal, and to enjoy the rest as a loan, as a usufruct…. To worship, to comprehend, to receive, to feel, to give, to act: this our law, our duty, our happiness, our heaven.“

—  Henri-Frédéric Amiel Swiss philosopher and poet 1821 - 1881

16 July 1848
Only one thing is necessary: to possess God — All the senses, all the forces of the soul and of the spirit, all the exterior resources are so many open outlets to the Divinity; so many ways of tasting and of adoring God. We should be able to detach ourselves from all that is perishable and cling absolutely to the eternal and the absolute and enjoy the all else as a loan, as a usufruct…. To worship, to comprehend, to receive, to feel, to give, to act: this our law, our duty, our happiness, our heaven.
As translated in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries

„Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind; it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate — and quickly.“

—  Robert A. Heinlein American science fiction author 1907 - 1988

„Not by way of reason, but only by way of love and suffering, do we come to the living God, the human God.“

—  Miguel de Unamuno 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher 1864 - 1936

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VIII : From God to God
Kontext: Not by way of reason, but only by way of love and suffering, do we come to the living God, the human God. Reason rather separates us from Him. We cannot first know Him in order that afterward we may love Him; we must begin by loving Him, longing for Him, hungering after Him, before knowing Him. The knowledge of God proceeds from the love of God, and this love has little or nothing of the rational in it. For God is indefinable. To seek to define Him is to seek to confine Him within the limits of our mind — that is to say, to kill Him. In so far as we attempt to define Him, there rises up before us — Nothingness.