Book Of Genesis Quotes

The women are, of course, the biggest single group of oppressed people in the world and, if we are to believe the Book of Genesis, the very oldest. ~ Chinua Achebe

There's far more truth in the Book of Genesis than in the quantum theory. ~ Malcolm Muggeridge

The vocation of being a 'protector' [ ... ] means protecting all creation, the beauty of the created world, as the Book of Genesis tells us and as Saint Francis of Assisi showed us [ ... ] In the end, everything has been entrusted to our protection, and all of us are responsible for it. Be protectors of God's gifts! ~ Pope Francis

When God creates Eve, he calls her an ezer kenegdo. 'It is not good for the man to be alone, I shall make him [an ezer kenegdo]' (Gen. 2:18 Alter). Hebrew scholar Robert Alter, who has spent years translating the book of Genesis, says that this phrase is 'notoriously difficult to translate.' The various attempts we have in English are "helper" or "companion" or the notorious "help meet." Why are these translations so incredibly wimpy, boring, flat ... disappointing? What is a help meet, anyway? What little girl dances through the house singing "One day I shall be a help meet?" Companion? A dog can be a companion. Helper? Sounds like Hamburger Helper. Alter is getting close when he translates it "sustainer beside him"
The word ezer is used only twenty other places in the entire Old Testament. And in every other instance the person being described is God himself, when you need him to come through for you desperately. ~ Stasi Eldredge

The flame will cool tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow (in the Book of Genesis days are equal to years, ages). But someone must see this already today, and speak heretically today about tomorrow. Heretics are the only (bitter) remedy against the entropy of human thought. ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

There are many ways to tell the history of the world. Oral histories that were later written down, including the Book of Genesis, the Rig Veda, and the Popul Vuh, focused especially on the actions of gods and on human/divine interactions. The ~ Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks

hereditary and transmitted through the paternal line. Therefore, a person whose father is not a priest cannot be a priest either. * Though without being as insulting as Shammai was. * An infrequently quoted Talmudic passage teaches that Timna, a female character in the book of Genesis, came from a royal non-Israelite household. At an early age, she became interested in the Israelite faith and sought to convert. But when she approached the patriarchs - at one time or another, all three of ~ Joseph Telushkin

Who was this Abraham, and where did he come from? The Book of Genesis and related Biblical passages are the only evidence that he existed and these were compiled in written form perhaps a thousand years after his supposed lifetime. ~ Paul Johnson

It is utterly naive, futile, uninformed - to think that our species is exceptional. So designated to master the beasts of the Earth, as in the Book of Genesis! ~ Joyce Carol Oates

Feminists who accept the claim made in The Book of Genesis, and, that God is a he, need to make their minds up. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Where are you, Adam? According to the book of Genesis, Adam went into hiding after the fall. By trying to be more than human, Adam felt less than human. Before the fall, Adam was not ashamed; after the fall he was. Toxic shame is true agony. It is a pain felt from the inside, in the core of our being. It is excruciatingly painful. ~ John Bradshaw

Did the Abrahamic God know that, by "divinely inspiring" the book of Genesis and other tales in the Bible, that He would cause millions to impede scientific understandings of our origins and push for myth to be taught in schools? Shouldn't he have left out the bit about humans being made from dust and ribs, knowing that fact? ~ David G. McAfee

The book of Genesis tells us that God created man and woman entrusting them with the task of filling the earth and subduing it, which does not mean exploiting it, but nurturing and protecting it, caring for it through their work. ~ Pope Francis

When we talk about the environment, about creation, my thoughts turn to the first pages of the Bible, the Book of Genesis, which states that God placed man and woman on earth to cultivate and care for it. And the question comes to my mind: What does cultivating and caring for the earth mean? Are we truly cultivating and caring for creation? Or are we exploiting and neglecting it? ~ Pope Francis

A Creator must exist. The Big Bang ripples and subsequent scientific findings are clearly pointing to an ex nihilo creation consistent with the first few verses of the book of Genesis. ~ Henry F. Schaefer, III

For the pre-Darwinian age had come to be regarded as a Dark Age in which men still believed that the book of Genesis was a standard scientific treatise, and that the only additions to it were Galileo'a demonstration of Leonardo da Vinci's simple remark that the earth is a moon of the sun, Sir Humphrey Davy's invention of the safety lamp, the discovery of electricity, the application of steam to industrial purposes, and the penny post. ~ George Bernard Shaw

When I went to high school in Australia, I was exposed to textbooks that outlined evolutionary ideas - such as ape-like creatures turning into people. I recognized the conflict between evolutionary ideas and a literal reading of the book of Genesis. ~ Ken Ham

I consoled myself with Granddaddy's words on the fossil record and the Book of Genesis: It was more important to understand something than to like it. Liking wasn't necessary for understanding. Liking didn't enter into it. ~ Kelly Jacqueline

Regarding the age of the universe, many will wonder if this rules out the Biblical description of creation, as most Bible translations state in the book of Genesis that the universe was made in six days. Now, granted, it is possible that God made the universe in six literal days, and built the appearance of old age into it. But notice that the Hebrew word "yom", which is typically translated as "day" in the book of Genesis, can actually also mean "long period of time". In addition, the words "ereb" and "boqer", which are commonly translated as "evening" and "morning", can also mean "ending" and "beginning". Also, according to the fourth chapter of the book of Hebrews in the Bible, we are still in the seventh "yom", so obviously some days are much longer than 24 hours. ~ Stephen Williams

When it comes to the whole debate today over evolution versus creation, Jesus affirmed the early chapters of Genesis were accurate when He said, "Have you not read, that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female" (Matthew 19:4). Adam and Eve didn't come on the scene after billions of years of mutations and evolution. No. God created them all the way back in the beginning-just like Moses reported in the Book of Genesis. ~ Charlie Campbell

St. Augustine accepted a date of about 5000 B.C. for the Creation of the universe according to the book of Genesis. (It is interesting that this is not so far from the end of the last Ice Age, about 10,000 B.C., which is when archaeologists tell us that civilization really began.) ~ Stephen Hawking

Since religion intrinsically rejects empirical methods, there should never be any attempt to reconcile scientific theories with religion. [An infinitely old universe, always evolving may not be compatible with the Book of Genesis. However, religions such as Buddhism get along without having any explicit creation mythology and are in no way contradicted by a universe without a beginning or end.] Creatio ex nihilo, even as religious doctrine, only dates to around AD 200. The key is not to confuse myth and empirical results, or religion and science. ~ Hannes Alfven

No book in the world today comes to us in the particular way that the Bible comes to us, exactly where we are, in our exact predicament. In other words, this third chapter of the book of Genesis is absolutely essential to a true understanding of life, the whole of life as it is at this moment for each individual. ~ D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Every April God rewrites the book of Genesis. ~ Austin O'Malley

According to the creation story in the biblical book of Genesis, God said, "Let there be light." I like to imagine that light replied, saying, "God, I have to wait for my twin brother, darkness, to be with me. I can't be there without the darkness." God asked, "Why do you need to wait? Darkness is there." Light answered, "In that case, then I am also already there. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

the book of genesis received its English name from the Greek translation of the Heb word toledot, which is used thirteen times in Genesis and is translated as "story" (2.4), "record" (5.1), or "line" (10.1). In Heb, it is known, like many books in the Tanakh, by its first word, bereshit, which means, "In the beginning. ~ Adele Berlin

The biblical story of Noah can be found in the book of Genesis. ~ Noah

Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return, the priest quoted from the book of Genesis, holding his arms skyward. May your soul rest more peacefully than the manner in which you left us, beloved sister. ~ Kerri Maniscalco

Creation stories, so central in the religions of the Middle East, play a surprisingly marginal part in Greek myth. The Greeks had nothing to set alongside the resounding 'In the beginning' in the book of Genesis, where one eternal God creates the universe out of nothing. ~ Neil MacGregor

What if the book (of Genesis) is describing a dawning awareness of the world? The anthropologist Edmund Leach has argued that the 'bit' or binary digit is the basic unit of pre-logical communication. Genesis is a sprouting of 'bits', ie elementary binary distinctions ... ~ Charles Hampden-Turner

My feminism is what came squarely up against my faith. There's a lot of ecstatic post-patriarchal Christians who have stuff they do with that. But at that point, you're doing Christianity with a double-superscript. The Bible, and especially the book of Genesis, is pretty unapologetically patriarchal. ~ John Darnielle

The first command given by God when Adam and Eve were pitched out of the Garden of Eden in the Book of Genesis is, "Be fruitful and multiply, and subdue the Earth." We've been trying to do that for a long time, and now the Earth is fighting back. I'm not sure that we're going to survive as a species. ~ John Shelby Spong

If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.
His words, in His Bible. The Book of Genesis, chapter eleven
So our God, our all -powerful God got so scared He scattered the human race across the face of the earth, and shattered their language to heep His children apart.
An almighty God this insecure? Who pits his children against each other, to keep them weak. This is the God we're supposed to worship? ~ Chuck Palahniuk

The moment in the account of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis is when they realize they're naked and try and cover themselves with fig leaves. That seemed to me a perfect allegory of what happened in the 20th century with regard to literary modernism. Literary modernism grew out of a sense that, Oh my god! I'm telling a story! Oh, that can't be the case, because I'm a clever person. I'm a literary person! What am I going to do to distinguish myself? ... a lot of modernism does seem to come out of a fear of being thought an ordinary storyteller. ~ Philip Pullman

When the first list was being drawn up in the rock and roll book of Genesis, it would have been: In the beginning, God created Pink Floyd. ~ Rick Wakeman

Every single Biblical doctrine of theology, directly or indirectly, ultimately has its basis in the book of Genesis. ~ Ken Ham

The fact of the matter is that you should really stop concerning yourself with writing a book because anyone can write a book that totally sucks. There is nothing special about that. ~ Ashly Lorenzana

I still remember the day I got my first calculator

Teacher: All right, children, welcome to fourth grade math. Everyone take a calculator out of the bin.
Me: What are these?
Teacher: From now on we'll be using calculators.
Me: What do these things do?
Teacher: Simple operations, like multiplication and division.
Me: You mean this device just...does them? By itself?
Teacher: Yes. You enter in the problem and press equal.
Me: You...you knew about this machine all along, didn't you? This whole time, while we were going through this...this charade with the pencils and the line paper and the stupid multiplication tables!...I'm sorry for shouting...It's just...I'm a little blown away.
Teacher: Okay, everyone, today we're going to go over some word problems.
Me: What the hell else do you have back there? A magical pen that writes book reports by itself? Some kind of automatic social studies worksheet that...that fills itself out? What the hell is going on?
Teacher: If a farmer farms five acres of land a day--
Me: So that's it, then. The past three years have been a total farce. All this time I've been thinking, "Well, this is pretty hard and frustrating but I guess these are useful skills to have." Meanwhile, there was a whole bin of these things in your desk. We could have jumped straight to graphing. Unless, of course, there's some kind of graphing calculator!
Teacher: There is. You get one in nint ~ Simon Rich

But Ludmilla is always at least one step ahead of you. "I like to know that book exists that I will still be able to read ... " she says, sure that existent objects, concrete albeit unknown, must correspond to the strength of her desire. How can you keep up with her, this woman who is always reading another book besides the one before her eyes, a book that does not yet exist, but which, since she wants it, cannot fail to exist? ~ Italo Calvino

I raise my hand; I take a book from the other side of this desk; I hear the boys playing ball outside my window; I see the clouds blown away beyond the neighboring woods:-in all these I am practicing Zen, I am living Zen. No worldly discussion is necessary, or any explanation. ~ D.T. Suzuki

She could have wept. It was bad, it was bad, it was infinitely bad! She could have done it differently of course; the colour could have been thinned and faded; the shapes etherealised; that was how Paunceforte would have seen it. But then she did not see it like that. She saw the colour burning on a framework of steel; the light of a butterfly's wing lying upon the arches of a cathedral. Of all that only a few random marks scrawled upon the canvas remained. And it would never be seen; never be hung even, and there was Mr Tansley whispering in her ear, "Women can't paint, women can't write ..."

She now remembered what she had been going to say about Mrs Ramsay. She did not know how she would have put it; but it would have been something critical. She had been annoyed the other night by some highhandedness. Looking along the level of Mr Bankes's glance at her, she thought that no woman could worship another woman in the way he worshipped; they could only seek shelter under the shade which Mr Bankes extended over them both. Looking along his beam she added to it her different ray, thinking that she was unquestionably the loveliest of people (bowed over her book); the best perhaps; but also, different too from the perfect shape which one saw there. But why different, and how different? she asked herself, scraping her palette of all those mounds of blue and green which seemed to her like clods with no life in them now, yet she vowed, she would inspire them, force them t ~ Virginia Woolf

Instead of a book, what if we're actually writing (or not writing) in the margins of our lives? What if our lives are books? What is the sign of our presence? Are we pressing into the margins our interpretations and questions? Are we circling offending verbs and drawing furious arrows to the margin where we scrawl "irony," "frustration," "voiceless," "unfair!" Or do we simply turn the pages, passively receiving what's given, furiously disagreeing but remaining silent about it? ~ Patti Digh

No author, I think, is deserving of much censure for vanity if, taking down one of his ten-year-old books, he exclaims: "Great heavens, did I write as well as that then?" for the implication always is that one does not write any longer so well and few are so envious as to censure the complacencies of an extinct volcano. ~ Ford Madox Ford

She is a real bookworm. I think she lives on print. Her whole house is full of books - looks as if she likes them better than human company. ~ Cornelia Funke

One could not imagine a process more open to the elephantine logic of the Bible-smasher than this: that the sun should be created after the sunlight. The conception that lies at the back of the phrase is indeed profoundly antagonistic to much of the modern point of view. To many modern people it would sound like saying that foliage existed before the first leaf ; it would sound like saying that childhood existed before a baby was born. The idea is, as I have said, alien to most modern thought, and like many other ideas which are alien to most modern thought, it is a very subtle and a very sound idea. Whatever be the meaning of the passage in the actual primeval poem, there is a very real metaphysical meaning in the idea that light existed before the sun and stars. It is not barbaric; it is rather Platonic. The idea existed before any of the machinery which made manifest the idea. Justice existed when there was no need of judges, and mercy existed before any man was oppressed.

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists, as the mother can love the unborn child. In creative art the essence of a book exists before the book or before even the details or main features of the book; the author enjoys it and lives in it with a kind of prophetic rapture. He wishes to write a comic story before he has thought of a single comic inciden ~ G.K. Chesterton

In the Blue Room, Cora Cash was trying to concentrate on her book. Cora found most novels hard to sympathise with -- all those plain governesses -- but this one had much to recommend it. The heroine was 'handsome, clever, and rich', rather like Cora herself. Cora knew she was handsome -- wasn't she always referred to in the papers as 'the divine Miss Cash'? She was clever -- she could speak three languages and could handle calculus. And as to rich, well, she was undoubtedly that. Emma Woodhouse was not rich in the way that she, Cora Cash, was rich. Emma Woodhouse did not lie on a lit à la polonaise once owned by Madame du Barry in a room which was, but for the lingering smell of paint, an exact replica of Marie Antoinette's bedchamber at le petit Trianon. Emma Woodhouse went to dances at the Assembly Rooms, not fancy dress spectaculars in specially built ballrooms. But Emma Woodhouse was motherless which meant, thought Cora, that she was handsome, clever, rich and free. ~ Daisy Goodwin

It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write. ~ George Orwell

I am stealing the golden vessels of the Egyptians to build a tabernacle to my God from them, far far away from the boundaries of Egypt. If you forgive me, I shall rejoice; if you are enraged with me, I shall bear it. See, I cast the die, and I write the book. Whether it is to be read by the people of the present or of the future makes no difference: let it await its reader for a hundred years, if God himself has stood ready for six thousand years for one to study him. ~ Johannes Kepler

Melville's example demonstrates the wisdom of waiting to read the classics. Coming to a great book on your own after having accumulated essential life experience can make all the difference. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

It was the case for a number of years that I was doing a book a year, but that was back when I was part-time teaching - and since 1991, I've been a parent, so that cuts into the time! ~ Chris Van Allsburg

Many years from now when your children ask what New York City was like just after 9/11, this will be the book you give them in response. It's an exquisite novel full of heart, soul, passion and intelligence, and it's the one this great New York author was born to write. ~ Lee Child

It takes four angels to oversee an apocalypse: a recorder to make the book that would be scripture in the new world; a preserver to comfort and save those selected to be the first generation; an accuser to remind them why they suffer; and a destroyer to revoke the promise of survival and redemption, and to teach them the awful truth about furious sheltering grace. ~ Chris Adrian

If there is knowledge, it lies in the fusion of the book and the street. ~ Studs Terkel

Criticism, for a book, is a truthful, unfaked badge of attention, signaling that it is not boring; and boring is the only very bad thing for a book. Consider the Ayn Rand phenomenon: her books Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead have been read for more than half a century by millions of people, in spite of, or most likely thanks to, brutally nasty reviews and attempts to discredit her. The first-order information is the intensity: what matters is the effort the critic puts into trying to prevent others from reading the book, or, more generally in life, it is the effort in badmouthing someone that matters, not so much what is said. So if you really want people to read a book, tell them it is "overrated," with a sense of outrage (and use the attribute "underrated" for the opposite effect). ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

And Olvos said:
"Nothing is ever truly lost
The world is like the tide
Returning, for an instant, to the place it occupied before
Or leaving that same place once more
Celebrate, then, for what you lose shall be returned
Smile, then, for all good deeds you do shall be visited upon you
Weep, then, for all ills you do shall return to you
Or your children, or your children's children
What is reaped is what is sown.
What is sown is what is reaped."
Book of the Red Lotus,
Part IV, 13.51-13.61 ~ Robert Jackson Bennett

After I read David Suzuki's book, I took salmon from my dinner plate and I buried it in the woods, hoping to assist the growth of a large tree. ~ Ned Hayes

That day, when I returned to the bookshop after visiting the old house, I found a parcel bearing a Paris postmark. It contained a book called The Angel of Mist, ~ Anonymous

Nothing can do what a book can do. Lifts you out of your life ... to a whole new world, whole new perspective. A book is like a dream you're borrowing from a friend. ~ Dave Kellett

Writing is my passion. Words are the way to know ecstasy. Without them life is barren. The poet insists, language is a body of suffering and when you take up language you take up the suffering too. All my life I have been suffering for words. Words have been the source of the pain and the way to heal. Struck as a child for talking, for speaking out of turn, for being out of my place. Struck as a grown woman for not knowing when to shut up, for not being willing to sacrifice words for desire. Struck by writing a book that disrupts. There are many ways to be hit. Pain is the price we pay to speak the truth. ~ Bell Hooks

Books gnaw at me from around the edges of my life, demanding more time and attention. I am always left hungry. ~ Pamela Paul

Stephen Covey, in his book The 8th Habit, decribes a poll of 23,000 employees drawn from a number of companies and industries. He reports the poll's findings:

* Only 37 percent said they have a clear understanding of what their organization is trying to achieve and why
* Only one in five was enthusiastic about their team's and their organization's goals
* Only one in five said they had a clear "line of sight" between their tasks and their team's and organization's goals
* Only 15 percent felt that their organization fully enables them to execute key goals
* Only 20 percent fully trusted the organization they work for



Then, Covey superimposes a very human metaphor over the statistics. He says, "If, say, a soccer team had these same scores, only 4 of the 11 players on the field would know which goal is theirs. Only 2 of the 11 would care. Only 2 of the 11 would know what position they play and know exactly what they are supposed to do. And all but 2 players would, in some way, be competing against their own team members rather than the opponent. ~ Chip Heath

Liam cleared his throat again and turned to fully face me. "So, it's the summer and you're in Salem, suffering through another boring, hot July, and working part-time at an ice cream parlor. Naturally, you're completely oblivious to the fact that all of the boys from your high school who visit daily are more interested in you than the thirty-one flavors. You're focused on school and all your dozens of clubs, because you want to go to a good college and save the world. And just when you think you're going to die if you have to take another practice SAT, your dad asks if you want to go visit your grandmother in Virginia Beach."
"Yeah?" I leaned my forehead against his chest. "What about you?"
"Me?" Liam said, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. "I'm in Wilmington, suffering through another boring, hot summer, working one last time in Harry's repair shop before going off to some fancy university - where, I might add, my roommate will be a stuck-up-know-it-all-with-a-heart-of-gold named Charles Carrington Meriwether IV - but he's not part of this story, not yet." His fingers curled around my hip, and I could feel him trembling, even as his voice was steady. "To celebrate, Mom decides to take us up to Virginia Beach for a week. We're only there for a day when I start catching glimpses of this girl with dark hair walking around town, her nose stuck in a book, earbuds in and blasting music. But no matter how hard I try, I never get to talk to her.
"Then, as our fr ~ Alexandra Bracken

Thomas Merton, of course, constitutes a special threat to Christians, because he presents himself as a contemplative Christian monk, and his work has already affected the vitals of Roman Catholicism, its monasticism. Shortly before his death, Father Merton wrote an appreciative introduction to a new translation of the Bhagavad Gita, which is the spiritual manual or "Bible" of all Hindus, and one of the foundation blocks of monism or Advaita Vedanta. The Gita, it must be remembered, opposes almost every important teaching of Christianity. His book on the Zen Masters, published posthumously, is also noteworthy, because the entire work is based on a treacherous mistake: the assumption that all the so-called "mystical experiences" in every religion are true. He should have known better. ~ Seraphim Rose

In the "Intervention" section of the book we go into that looping from a battery of positions (where healer and sufferer are blurred). I'm very interested in "repetition and revision" (to use Suzan Lori-Parks's phrase) and in the culture's desire to loop or repeat. ~ Laura Mullen

All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorms room. Or maybe they'd realized I got my Essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book. ~ Rick Riordan

Then you start another book and suddenly the galley proofs of the last one come in and you have to wrench your attention away from what you're writing and try to remember what you were thinking when you wrote the previous one. ~ Bernard Cornwell

You had to let go of your past to embrace your future. ~ Lee Bice-Matheson

Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the temptation of buying new books. Whenever I walk into a bookstore and find a book on one of my hobbies - for example, Old English or Old Norse poetry - I say to myself, What a pity I can't buy that book, for I already have a copy at home. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Why did Ted Geisel end up writing and illustrating for young minds? He has specific imagery in the book, and we never would have moved beyond the discussion phase, if we couldn't have found an expression for The Lorax, dimensionally, that was true to the soul of what comes through in his simple line drawings, on the page. ~ Christopher Meledandri

I don't think I'm an exceptionally bad reader. I suspect that many people, maybe even most, are like me. We read and read and read,
and we forget and forget and forget. So why do we bother? Michel de Montaigne expressed the dilemma of extensive reading in the
sixteenth century: "I leaf through books, I do not study them," he wrote. "What I retain of them is something I no longer recognize as anyone else's.
It is only the material from which my judgment has profited, and the thoughts and ideas with which it has become imbued;
the author, the place, the words, and other circumstances, I immediately forget." He goes on to explain how "to compensate a
little for the treachery and weakness of my memory," he adopted the habit of writing in the back of every book a short critical
judgment, so as to have at least some general idea of what the tome was about and what he thought of it. ~ Joshua Foer