Divine Superiority Quotes

Man got into difficulty when he lifted his will against God's. He gets out of trouble when he bows to the divine superiority, when he repents and says humbly: "God be merciful to me a sinner." Man's extremity then becomes God's opportunity. ~ Billy Graham

Beneath her curls, I forget the world,
With a mere gaze she raises my hopes of gold.
Love is as much in her heart as in mine,
But she doesn't say it, her punishment so divine. ~ Faraaz Kazi

I doubt that my sense of personal freedom is any stronger than anybody else's. I'm happy to respect authority when it's genuine authority, based on moral or intellectual or even technical superiority. I'm eager to follow a hero if we can find one. But I tend to resist or evade any kind of authority based merely on the power to coerce. Government, for example. The Army tried to train us to salute the uniform, not the man. Failed. I will salute the man, maybe, if I think he's worthy of it, but I don't salute uniforms anymore. ~ Edward Abbey

Come to think of it, I do know one preacher who tried something like that - from the pulpit of a cathedral in a major city, no less. I do not remember what the subject of her sermon was, only the response to it. She must have suggested that the Christian way was one among many ways to God (a wave and not the ocean), because afterward a man came up to her and said, 'If God isn't partial to Christianity, then what am I doing here?'

I wish ordinary Christians took exams, so I could put that question on the final. As natural as it may be to want to play on the winning team, the wish to secure divine favoritism strikes me as the worst possible reason to practice any religion. If the man who asked that question could not think of a dozen better reasons to be a Christian than that, indeed, was he doing there? ~ Barbara Brown Taylor

As a general rule, those truths which we highly relish, and which shed a degree of practical light upon the things which we are required to give up for God, are leadings of Divine grace, which we should follow without hesitation. ~ Francois Fenelon

Unless Caesar Augustus is unwittingly complying with the will of God, if it is true that in His divine wisdom He has ordained that Joseph and Mary should go to Bethlehem at this time. ~ Jose Saramago

Human values are born with man. They are not got from outside. Man in his ignorance is not aware of these values. when man sheds his ignorance, he will experience his divine nature. ~ Sathya Sai Baba

Montanist Christians like Tertullian believed that Jesus possessed the same divine quality as God, but not in the same quantity as God. ~ Reza Aslan

It's the Divine Comedy, not the Divine Tragedy. ~ Cat Bauer

...and woe betide anyone foolish enough to question my caffeine intake. ~ Kieron Gillen

Without Divine assistance I can not succeed; with it I can not fail. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Believers keep up and maintain their walk with God by secret prayer. The spirit of grace is always accompanied with the spirit of supplication. It is the very breath of the new creature, the fan of the divine life, whereby the spark of holy fire, kindled in the soul by God, is not only kept in, but raised into a flame. ~ George Whitefield

When we are out of alignment with Christ we forget that we are children of God with divine destinies. We think with shriveled minds and operate with shriveled spirits. We settle for less than God wants to give us. We take a job that feels wrong. We enter a relationship that doesn't' feel right. We get stressed and anxious when reality doesn't match the images we have of the way things are supposed to be. We see failure as dead-ends instead of turn-around roads. There is no ease, no anointing as we move from one uneasy choice to another. That's when it's time to stop, breathe, and trust that our Highest Power is willing and able to set us right again. No matter what that voice inside your head says, you can always, always start again. ~ Toni Sorenson

I saw a Divine Being. I'm afraid I'm going to have to revise all my various books and opinions. ~ A.J. Ayer

Divinity is not something supernatural that ever and again invades the natural order in a crashing miracle. Divinity is not in some remote heaven, seated on a throne. Divinity is love ... Wherever goodness, beauty, truth, love, are-there is the divine. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick

What could be more hapless than a man controlled by his own creations? It is surely easier for a man to cease to be a man by worshiping man-made gods than for idols to become divine by being adored. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

Divine love always has met and always will meet every human need. ~ Mary Baker Eddy

The whole function of the life of prayer is, then, to enlighten and strengthen our conscience so that it not only knows and perceives the outward, written precepts of the moral and divine laws, but above all lives God's law in concrete reality by perfect and continual union with His will. ~ Thomas Merton

I am a happy healthy soul by divine grace. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Divine mind is the one and only reality. ~ Charles Fillmore

Broad paths are open to every endeavour, and a sympathetic recognition is assured to every one who consecrates his art to the divine services of a conviction of a consciousness. ~ Franz Liszt

Who shall deliver us from the sin of the flesh? GOD alone, the Divine Being. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

In the final analysis, then, love of enemies is trusting God for the miracle of divine forgiveness. If God can forgive, redeem, and transform me, I must also believe that God can work such wonders with anyone. Love of enemies is seeing one's oppressors through the prism of the Reign of God--not only as they now are but also as they can become: transformed by the power of God. ~ Walter Wink

At every point in the story of the transmission of biblical material from the original text to today we are dealing with the interaction of men and women with God. At every point, human judgment and human fallibility are involved, as they are in every attempt we make today to act faithfully in new situations. The idea that at a certain point in this long story a line was drawn before which everything is divine word and after which everything is human judgment is absurd. ~ Lesslie Newbigin

Our second remark is, that the office is of divine appointment, not merely in the sense in which the civil powers are ordained of God, but in the sense that ministers derive their authority from Christ, and not from the people. ~ Charles Hodge

Our government rests upon religion. It is from that source that we derive our reverence for truth and justice, for equality and liberality, and for the rights of mankind. Unless the people believe in these principles they cannot believe in our government. There are only two main theories of government in our world. One rests on righteousness and the other on force. One appeals to reason, and the other appeals to the sword. One is exemplified in the republic, the other is represented by despotism.

The government of a country never gets ahead of the religion of a country. There is no way by which we can substitute the authority of law for the virtue of man. Of course we endeavor to restrain the vicious, and furnish a fair degree of security and protection by legislation and police control, but the real reform which society in these days is seeking will come as a result of our religious convictions, or they will not come at all. Peace, justice, humanity, charity - these cannot be legislated into being. They are the result of divine grace. ~ Calvin Coolidge

The goodness of the world grew like moss in cracks, she thought. It grew, somehow, with hidden roots, nourished by something unseen. ~ K.J. Bishop

The Old Man's "job" was to ensure success of a certain Pagan holiday celebration–an exact opposite of LDS temple instruction that signified fellow sister-brother's unification with the Divine. ~ Judy Byington

To iterate is human, to recurse divine. ~ L Peter Deutsch

You may be a dreadful failure. Christ is a divine success. Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. ~ Edward Thomson

We had better want the consequences of what we believe or disbelieve, because the consequences will come! . . .

But how can a society set priorities if there are no basic standards? Are we to make our calculations using only the arithmetic of appetite? . . .

The basic strands which have bound us together socially have begun to fray, and some of them have snapped. Even more pressure is then placed upon the remaining strands. The fact that the giving way is gradual will not prevent it from becoming total. . . .

Given the tremendous asset that the family is, we must do all we can within constitutional constraints to protect it from predatory things like homosexuality and pornography. . . .

Our whole republic rests upon the notion of "obedience to the unenforceable," upon a tremendous emphasis on inner controls through self-discipline. . . .

Different beliefs do make for different behaviors; what we think does affect our actions; concepts do have consequences. . . .

Once society loses its capacity to declare that some things are wrong per se, then it finds itself forever building temporary defenses, revising rationales, drawing new lines - but forever falling back and losing its nerve. A society which permits anything will eventually lose everything!

Take away a consciousness of eternity and see how differently time is spent.

Take away an acknowledgement of divine design in the structure of li ~ Neal A. Maxwell

MY BETH.

Sitting patient in the shadow
Till the blessed light shall come,
A serene and saintly presence
Sanctifies our troubled home.
Earthly joys and hopes and sorrows
Break like ripples on the strand
Of the deep and solemn river
Where her willing feet now stand.

O my sister, passing from me,
Out of human care and strife,
Leave me, as a gift, those virtues
Which have beautified your life.
Dear, bequeath me that great patience
Which has power to sustain
A cheerful, uncomplaining spirit
In its prison-house of pain.

Give me, for I need it sorely,
Of that courage, wise and sweet,
Which has made the path of duty
Green beneath your willing feet.
Give me that unselfish nature,
That with charity divine
Can pardon wrong for love's dear sake -
Meek heart, forgive me mine!

Thus our parting daily loseth
Something of its bitter pain,
And while learning this hard lesson,
My great loss becomes my gain.
For the touch of grief will render
My wild nature more serene,
Give to life new aspirations,
A new trust in the unseen.

Henceforth, safe across the river,
I shall see for evermore
A beloved, household spirit
Waiting for me on the shore.
Hope and faith, born of my sorrow,
Guardian angels shall become,
And the sister gone before me
By their hands shall lead me home. ~ Louisa May Alcott

As Einstein said, 'If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed. ' Michael Shermer, In The Science of Good and Evil, calls it a debate stopper. If you agree that, in the absence of God, you would 'commit robbery, rape, and murder', you reveal yourself as an immoral person, 'and we would be well advised to steer a wide course around you'. If, on the other hand, you admit that you would continue to be a good person even when not under divine surveillance, you have fatally undermined your claim that God is necessary for us to be good. ~ Richard Dawkins

Choice is a divine teacher, for when we choose we learn that nothing is ever put in our path without a reason. ~ Iyanla Vanzant

People will often, almost always, prefer a male God. A male image of God gives them this sense of security, safety, order, no nonsense. So that's where their psyche is at. Probably it's something that they've got to go through. Not that there isn't a need for order in the world, but the mystical level seems to be the mature level of religion, and there the question is not order but union - divine union. And so, without some integration of the feminine, usually you never get to the mystical level. ~ Richard Rohr

That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil
widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower. ~ George Eliot

The first real thing was Divine as Jackie Kennedy [in Eat Your Makeup]. His mother found the bloody Jackie Kennedy outfit in the boot of his car and said, 'What is this?" and Divine said, "I am Jackie Kennedy!" His mother just changed the subject; she didn't know what to say. ~ John Waters

You are God's agents in the care of children He has entrusted to you. Let His divine influence remain in your hears as you teach and persuade. ~ Russell M. Nelson

Jesus' life is an invitation for us to believe, not primarily in him but in the relationship between himself and the God whom he names "Father." Furthermore, Jesus comes into the world to communicate to those of us who are listening that this very same relationship is uniquely available to each one of us. By his life and death Jesus announces the yearning in the heart of Love Divine, to be in relationship with each individual person. For you or I to engage this primal encounter is for us to return "home. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

Will be a divine fight, a holy war ... Armageddon on a miniature scale. ~ Muhammad Ali

The painter's mind is a copy of the divine mind, since it operates freely in creating the many kinds of animals, plants, fruits, landscapes, countrysides, ruins, and awe-inspiring places. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

For those who think religious people live in a constant state of fear and quaking, compare Ps 111:10 to Ps 112:7. There, you will find that the person who fears God will not fear anyone, or anything else. This is not living in fear. By choosing one fear, they are liberated from the many fears. ~ Michael Ben Zehabe

If you wish to make a man look noble, your best course is to kill him. What superiority he may have inherited from his race, what superiority nature may have personally gifted him with, comes out in death. ~ Alexander Smith

May living your truth set you free! ~ Erin Fall Haskell

I see a generation comprised of all ages, inclusive of men and women, awakening to the extraordinary qualities hidden within. The power to accomplish remarkable feats and live an exceptional life is not defined by an individual's family, education, or occupation; it's a disposition of the heart. Unless it's suppressed, there is an innate desire to rise above the norm. I encourage you to step into the unknown, embrace the divine empowerment, and live your extraordinary life. ~ John Bevere

Don't go to sleep now, for you have been awakened. Don't shut your eyes, or you will put out the light. Stay awake to the power and force that guides and protects your divine essence. ~ Debbie Ford

In the pure mathematics we contemplate absolute truths which existed in the divine mind before the morning stars sang together, and which will continue to exist there when the last of their radiant host shall have fallen from heaven. ~ Edward Everett Hale