Gods And Goddesses Quotes

Aretmis gripped her bow. "Let us pray I am wrong."
Can goddesses pray? ~ Rick Riordan

The portraits, of more historical than artistic interest, had gone; and tapestry, full of the blue and bronze of peacocks, fell over the doors, and shut out all history and activity untouched with beauty and peace; and now when I looked at my Crevelli and pondered on the rose in the hand of the Virgin, wherein the form was so delicate and precise that it seemed more like a thought than a flower, or at the grey dawn and rapturous faces of my Francesca, I knew all a Christian's ecstasy without his slavery to rule and custom; when I pondered over the antique bronze gods and goddesses, which I had mortgaged my house to buy, I had all a pagan's delight in various beauty and without his terror at sleepless destiny and his labour with many sacrifices; and I had only to go to my bookshelf, where every book was bound in leather, stamped with intricate ornament, and of a carefully chosen colour: Shakespeare in the orange of the glory of the world, Dante in the dull red of his anger, Milton in the blue grey of his formal calm; and I could experience what I would of human passions without their bitterness and without satiety. I had gathered about me all gods because I believed in none, and experienced every pleasure because I gave myself to none, but held myself apart, individual, indissoluble, a mirror of polished steel: I looked in the triumph of this imagination at the birds of Hera, glowing in the firelight as though they were wrought of jewels; and to my mind, for which symbolism wa ~ W.B. Yeats

I do not believe that there are any such things as gods and goddesses, for exactly the same reasons as I do not believe there are fairies, goblins or sprites, and these reasons should be obvious to anyone over the age of ten. ~ A.C. Grayling

I inhabited a territory of loneliness which resembles the place where the dying spend their time before death, and from where those who do return, living, to the world bring, inevitably, a unique point of view that is a nightmare, a treasure, and a lifelong possession.[It is] equal in its rapture and chilling exposure [to] the neighbourhood of the ancient gods and goddesses. ~ Janet Frame

These are the beautiful people, who, befitting their rank as gods and goddesses of a powerful modern mythology, lead beautiful lives in beautiful houses, attired in beautiful clothes and, ostensibly, thinking only beautiful thoughts. ~ Helen Lawrenson

The Aztec gods and goddesses are, as far as we have known anything about them, an unlovely and unlovable lot. In their myths there is no grace or charm, no poetry. Only this perpetual grudge, grudge, grudging, one god grudging another, the gods grudging men their existence, and men grudging the animals. The goddess of love is goddess of dirt and prostitution, a dirt-eater, a horror, without a touch of tenderness ... ~ D.H. Lawrence

I was always interested in enchantment and magicians and still am. ~ Christopher Lee

I cannot imagine a life without books.
Without Father's stories of the ancient Greek gods and goddesses, without pirate stories and fairy tales and poems. Without the hope of another way, of freedom and adventure beyond what we have here and now. How dark life would be. ~ Jessica Spotswood

I call Algonquin Books 'the gods and goddesses of publishing.' Not only did they give me a career, they care deeply about every writer in their flock. ~ Caroline Leavitt

Well what can you expect?' I retorted. 'Those people are, as you say, simple and uneducated. Wasn't it Marx who said that peasants are like sacks of potatoes? Is it surprising that their lives are filled with gods and goddesses and demons?'
She glanced at me again. 'You really do not care for ordinary people, do you?'
The imputation of elitism made me bridle. 'Why you're quite wrong!' I said. 'I consider myself a person of the left. As a student I was a Maoist fellow traveller. I've always stood in solidarity with peasants and workers.'
'Oh yes, certo!' she said, suppressing a giggle. 'I knew many Maoists and fellow travellers in Italy. They had every regard for the bellies and bodies of poor people - but not, I think, for what is in their heads. ~ Amitav Ghosh

Adiyogi's legacy offers you the licence to believe in the god of your choice, or not to believe at all. And if you do not find a god to your taste, it allows you the freedom to create one. That is how the Indian subcontinent arrived at an exuberant 330 million gods and goddesses at last count! To see the divine in a tree, rock or elephant is not considered absurd because every speck of creation is seen as a portal to the ultimate reality. These ~ Sadhguru

It takes wisdom to know when you've had enough, strength to make the decision and determination to see it through. ~ Seraphine Abrams

We are souls, eternal and perfect, captains of our mystic ships: gods and goddesses of our universe. We are beautiful, we pearls of grit. We, the ember of everything. Our uniqueness IS what makes us special, and the expression of it is our gift to the rest of us. In order to feel happy and fulfilled, we must honour our own personal brand of creativity... let it out into the world... BE who we came here to BE. ~ Angie Karan

The Pentacle - The ancients envisioned their world in two halves - masculine and feminine. Their gods and goddesses worked to keep a balance of power. Yin and Yang. When male and female were balanced, there was harmony in the world. When they were unbalanced there was chaos. ~ Dan Brown

When you're dealing with these forces or powers in a philosophic and scientific way, contemplating them from an armchair, that rationalistic approach is useful. It is quite profitable then to regard the gods and goddesses and demons as projections of the human mind or as unconscious aspects of ourselves. But every truth is a truth only for one place and one time, and that's a truth, as I said, for the armchair. When you're actually dealing with these figures, the only safe, pragmatic and operational approach is to treat them as having a being, a will, and a purpose entirely apart from the humans who evoke them. If the Sorcerer's Apprentice had understood that, he wouldn't have gotten into so much trouble. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

The Gods and Goddesses of myth, legend and fairy tale represent archetypes, real potencies and potentialities deep within the psyche, which, when allowed to flower permit us to be more fully human. ~ Margot Adler

their own ends and to meddle in the affairs of others. I sometimes wonder if the gods and goddesses we call on today might once have walked the Earth as Witches themselves, having been so magical in life that they were deified in death. ~ Christian Day

It seemed to me I was living in an insane asylum of my own making. I went about with all these fantastic figures: centaurs, nymphs, satyrs, gods and goddesses, as though they were patients and I was analyzing them. I read a Greek or Negro myth as if a lunatic were telling me his anamnesis. ~ C. G. Jung

Gods and goddesses are not what people think they are. Their names are terms with which we try to convey a certain experience, a state of consciousness. ~ Frederick Lenz

Who are these gods we serve, this pantheon of the Realms, so rich and powerful and varied? If there is a universal truth, how then are there so many realizations of that truth, many similar, but each with rituals or specific demands to separate one from the other, sometimes by minute degree, sometimes by diametric opposition? How can this be? Yet there is universal truth, I believe - perhaps this is my one core belief! - and if that is so, then are not the majority of the pantheon claiming themselves as gods and goddesses truly frauds? ~ R.A. Salvatore

When the world was young, the gods and goddesses birthed the angels, Joy and Greed, Beauty and Empathy and Sorrow, Fear and Fury, sparks of humanity. To feel emotion, therefore, to be human,
is to be a child of the gods. ~ Marie Lu

In Bengal, Hindus are known to crack jokes at the expense of their gods and goddesses and that's what I did. ~ Sunil Gangopadhyay

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare ... it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. ~ Justin S. Holcomb

He thrust his hand in the air and summoned his sword of pure white flame. The gods and goddesses cowered. Throwing his head back and laughing, Surt grew to his full giant size. "You minor, forgotten, pathetic deities! So easy to bend to my will. Not one of you would dare to defy me!"
I chose that moment to shape-shift into a bee, buzz up Surt's teeny-tiny nose, and jab him with my stinger.
With a howl of pain, Surt dropped his sword and shrank to his previous size. I changed into my true form.
"I dare."
I whipped one end of my golden garrote around his neck and yanked it tight. Then I snatched up his flame sword and with one upward flick, sliced off his pubescent nose. "Jack and Magnus send their regards."
Surt lunged for me. I transformed into a bighorn sheep and head-butted him right where his nose used to be. Then I changed back to human, tightened the garrote until his eyes bulged, and threatened him with his own sword. "Come at me again," I warned, "and you'll regret it."
I surveyed the stunned deities. "If one einherji can do this, imagine what all of us can do. And will do, come Ragnarok. We are not destined to win, but we will fight with honor. We would welcome you on our side of the fight. But, if you must side with him" - I gave the garrote a vicious tug and was rewarded with a gurgle from Surt - "know this: I will personally hunt you down on the Last Battlefield of Vigridr and see that you are sent straight to Ginnungagap. The choice i ~ Rick Riordan

In the later nineteenth century, the tops of skyscrapers often took the shape of domes, surmounted by jaunty gilded lanterns; later came ziggurats, mausoleums, Alexandrian lighthouses, miniature Parthenons. These charming follies contained neither royal corpses nor effigies of gods and goddesses; rather they contained large wooden tanks filled with water. ~ Brendan Gill

That's why an artist must be a warrior and, like all warriors, artists over time acquire modesty and humility. They may, some of them, conduct themselves flamboyantly in public. But alone with the work they are chaste and humble. They know they are not the source of the creations they bring into being. They only facilitate. They carry. They are the willing and skilled instruments of the gods and goddesses they serve. ~ Steven Pressfield

Throughout history, the ruling class has gotten even better at enslaving you all," Gugalanna said. "They trick you into believing it's for your own good. They keep you safe, they promise. This is what you need, they guarantee. And now they've done such a wonderful job I doubt most of you even realize that you're caged.
"Those with all the power have always hidden away from those they oppress, and none are as far away or as powerful as those that hide in Vanaheimr, far removed from the mess that they've created." The Bull stopped speaking long enough to case a disparaging glare toward the sky, toward the legendary house of the Vanir gods and goddesses.
"It wasn't until I was trapped in the underworld that I began to see the earth for what it truly is: a cage," Gugalanna explained. "A place to hold you, to keep you busy, distracted. So you don't realize what they're doing to you and everything around you. ~ Amanda Hocking

When we are young, we make gods and goddesses of one another, then we soon come to realize that we are all merely human and imperfect. ~ Elizabeth Aston

Taboos, magic, superstition, personified abstraction, myths, gods, empty verbalisms, in every culture and at every period of history express man's persisting non-logical impulses. Gods and goddesses like Athena or Janus or Ammon are replaced by new divinities such as Progress and Humanity and even Science; hymns to Jupiter give way to invocations to the People; the magic of the votes and electoral manipulations supersedes the magic of dolls and wands; faith in the Historical Process does duty for faith in the God of our Fathers. ~ James Burnham

It is great good health to believe as the Hindus do that there are 33 million gods and goddesses in the world. It is great good health to want to understand one s dreams. It is great good health to desire the ambiguous and paradoxical. It is sickness of the profoundest kind to believe that there is one reality. There is sickness in any piece of work or any piece of art seriously attempting to suggest that the idea that there is more than one reality is somehow redundant. ~ Clive Barker

A man is the creator – he creates everything – all these deities. Nobody wants to keep a man like man. They will always try to drag down human being from his higher place and so they created different gods and goddesses. Seeing all these anomalies it seems that all these people have tried to displace man from his higher place to downwards. ~ Sri Jibankrishna Or Diamond

In order to make simple the great truths of Nature and the abstract principles of natural law, the vital forces of the universe were personified, becoming the gods and goddesses of the ancient mythologies. While ~ Manly P. Hall

In varying degrees and and upon different levels all gods and goddesses represent aspects of One God Which is both 'male' and 'female'. ~ Dion Fortune

You have, in America, you have gang signs. Well, 5,000 years ago, there was thing called a mudra, which is your sitting position when you do yoga or you're meditating or you're praying or whatever. And there's not a lot of them that are named after gods and goddesses, but the middle-finger is specifically named the Matangi mudra. ~ M.I.A.

Yet if I told you you are born of God-that you are pure Gods and Goddesses at birth-pure love-you would reject me. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

Some pious souls are troubled because they cannot at all times, or often, use, in its joyous import, the language of this Psalm. Such should remember that David, though he lived long, never wrote but one twenty-third Psalm. Some of his odes do indeed express as lively a faith as this, and faith can walk in darkness. But where else do we find a whole Psalm expressive of personal confidence, joy, and triumph, from beginning to end? God's people have their seasons of darkness and their times of rejoicing. ~ William Swan Plumer

Let the gods into your life and you rapidly lose faith in the natural laws. ~ Megan Whalen Turner

What the fates have writ, men shall not erase . . . . How many times he [Lut] had uttered those words. But what exactly did they mean? That one's fate was inalterably fixed? A man's entire life? Was there no chance for redemption? Though he had never revealed this to anyone, especially not the elders, he'd long entertained the notion that perhaps not all of a man's life was preordained. For, if so, what was the point of living? Perhaps, just perhaps, he dared to imagine, impediments were placed in our paths by the gods, and a man was judged by how well he dealt with those obstacles . . . . Instead of a man being wholly defined by his fate, perhaps a man's very character was defined by his response to the fate that was spun for him. Couldn't it at least be possible? ~ James Jennewein

Even the blind and meek and voiceless have gods. ~ Terry Pratchett

Over a period of forty years, God gave the children of Israel nothing to eat except manna ... From John 6 we ... know that this heavenly manna is a type of Christ. Christ came from God to be our diet. We need to eat Him, drink Him, and breathe Him ... As God's people today, we need to be reconstituted with Christ as our very element. In this way, we shall become Christ as far as our constitution is concerned. ~ Witness Lee

I do not think anyone can ever do anything without the help and will of God. ~ Andrea Bocelli

This is not a matter of weapons. We are hopeful for God's help. The real matter is the extinction of America. And, God willing, it will fall to the ground. ~ Mohammed Omar

Soul-force comes only through God's grace and never descends upon a man who is a slave to lust. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Prayer is not a vain attempt to change God's will; it is a filial desire to learn God's will and to share it. Prayer is not a substitute for work: it is the secret spring and indispensable ally of all true work. ~ George Arthur Buttrick

Prayer is of transcendent importance. Prayer is the mightiest agent to advance God's work. Praying hearts and hands only can do God's work. Prayer succeeds when all else fails. ~ Edward McKendree Bounds

See that your chief study be about heart, that there God's image may be planted, and his interest advanced, and the interest of the world and flesh subdued, and the love of every sin cast out, and the love of holiness succeed; and that you content not yourselves with seeming to do good in outward acts, when you are bad yourselves, and strangers to the great internal duties. The first and great work of a Christian is about his heart. ~ Richard Baxter

Retire from the world each day to some private spot. Stay in the secret place till the surrounding noises begin to fade out of your heart and a sense of God's presence envelops you. Deliberately tune out the unpleasant sounds and come out of your closet determined not to hear them. Listen for the inward voice till you learn to recognize it. ~ Aiden Wilson Tozer

It is a coal from God's altar must kindle our fire; and without fire, true fire, no acceptable sacrifice. ~ William Penn

God rewards the soul that focuses on Him with attention and love, and God rewards that soul by exercising a rigorous compulsion on it, mathematically proportional to this attention and love. We must abandon ourselves to this pressure, and run to the precise point where it leads, and not a single step further, not even in the direction of what is good. At the same time, we must continue to focus on God, with ever more love and attention, and in this way obtain an even greater compulsion - to become an object of a compulsion that possesses for itself a perpetually growing portion of the soul. Once God's compulsion possesses the whole soul, one has reached the state of perfection. But no matter what degree we reach, we must not accomplish anything beyond what we are irresistibly pressured (compelled) to do, not even in the way of good. ~ Simone Weil

The ancient voices that speak in Scripture evoke an ongoing dialogue that requires our active participation. Their sacred conversation about life in God's presence begs to be continued among believers today, for the fact of the matter is, the Bible is not self-interpreting. It is a living word through which God continues to meet us and speak to us in our own particular historical moment, and thus it demands to be newly interpreted for new historical situations. And interpretation is not simply reiteration of the text, repeating what was said before, but the hard work of bringing it into our own time and place. So every new generation of believers must join the interpretive conversation as it experiences the living God in relation to new circumstances. ~ Frances Taylor Gench

The choice before us is plain: Christ or chaos, conviction or compromise, discipline or disintegration. I am rather tired of hearing about our rights and privileges as Americans. The time is come - it is now - when we ought to hear about the duties and responsibilities of our citizenship. America's future depends upon her accepting and demonstrating God's government. ~ Peter Marshall

Most philosophers do not want intellectual matters to reduce to a question of morality (obedience or rebellion to God's Word). They want to hold the intellect or reason to be above matters of moral volition. They hold that truth is obtainable and testable no matter what ethical condition the thinker is in.
Hence, they maintain that all disputes must be rationally resolvable, and a rational case for a philosophic position relies on a valid chain of discursive argumentation that takes us back to incontestable first principles or facts. ~ Greg L. Bahnsen

Gods colliding, ethos and mythos trying to combine. The Sacred Band caught up in a whirlwind not of any god's devising: he and Niko had wanted to save twenty-three pairs of fated Theban fighters. Now everything feels fated and fighting oversweeps its boundaries of time and place and plane. ~ Janet Morris

Theology is the systematic inquiry into Scripture. Theology is a human attempt to make sense of and draw conclusions from God's special revelation. ~ Perry G. Downs

Mother of Aeneas, pleasure of men and gods. -Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas ~ Lucretius

My work with churches has led me to the conclusion that the single most important element in having an effective and life-changing ministry is to capture God's vision for your ministry. ~ Phil Pringle

Upon you will be founded a city, a city past compare in riches and marvels and beauty," she said. "But first, you must lose yourself, riding on the waves of seven oceans. Only at your journey's end will you come to rest, and only then will the city rise. It will be a city of eternal summer, a land of surpassing beauty. Indeed, it will come to be known as the city of the gods."

"Where must I journey? Where should I go?" asked the fisherman, staring in awe at her radiant beauty.

"Before, between, and beyond. Tomorrow night, take your boat and sail towards the rising moon," she replied. "And you will find your destiny. ~ Judith Huang

Spirituality is not something that comes through one encounter with God. It is the result of choosing the way of self denial and doing God's will consistently day after day, week after week and year after year. ~ Zac Poonen

Wherever we are, God's in that moment, God's speaking to us, and if we've just got our ears open and our antennas up, there's no lack of inspiration. He's not silent. We just have to be listening. ~ Steven Curtis Chapman

Even in the world today, it is often at the point where we are frustrated by the gap between fallen reality and our sense of God's desires that we are moved to action in a cause greater than ourselves. ~ John Ortberg

My dearest one, it is not proper for men to be without names. There was a time when each man had a name of his own to distinguish him from all other men. So let us choose our names. I have read of a man who lived many thousands of years ago, and of all the names in these books, his is the one I wish to bear. He took the light of the gods and brought it to men, and he taught men to be gods. And he suffered for his deed as all bearers of light must suffer. His name is Prometheus. ~ Ayn Rand

God will not hold us responsible to understand the mysteries of election, predestination, and the divine sovereignty. The best and safest way to deal with these truths is to raise our eyes to God and in deepest reverence say, "0 Lord, Thou knowest." Those things belong to the deep and mysterious Profound of God's omniscience. Prying into them may make theologians, but it will never make saints. ~ A.W. Tozer

It is the burning lava of the soul that has a furnace within
a very volcano of grief and sorrow-it is that burning lava of prayer that finds its way to God. No prayer ever reaches God's heart which does not come from our hearts. ~ Charles Spurgeon

The senseless killing of 20 children and their teachers and principal at Sandy Hook Elementary School was not part of God's grand plan. It was a thwarting of God's plan. It was the misuse of human freedom. ~ Adam Hamilton

Let me go: take back thy gift:
Why should a man desire in any way
To vary from the kindly race of men,
Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance
Where all should pause, as is most meet for all?
...Why wilt thou ever scare me with thy tears,
And make me tremble lest a saying learnt,
In days far-off, on that dark earth, be true?
'The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts.'
- Tithonus ~ Alfred Tennyson

Now, Max, I think we both know your parents aren't missionaries."
I opened my eyes wide. "No? Well, for God's sake, don't tell them. They'd be crushed. Thinking they're doing the
Lord's work and all. ~ James Patterson

In the name of God, with the help of God I liked to clarify little bit regarding those Ayahs in the beginning of some Swras in the holy Quran which they are 29 Swras, these Ayas are as follows:
{الم ,Swra Al-Baqara, Al-Imran, Al- Ankabwt, Al-Rom, Lukman, Al-Sajda} {المص ,Swra Al-Aaraf}
{الر ,Swra Younis, Hud, Yousif, Ibrahim, Al-Hijr} {الر, Swra Al- Raied} {کهیعص, Swra Maryam} {طه, Swra Taha} {طسم, Swra Al-Shuaraa, Al-Qasas} {,طس Swra Al-Naml} {یس, Swra Yasin} {ص Swra Sad} {حم, Swra Ghafir, Fwsilat,Al- Zakhraf, Al-Dwkhan, Al-Jathya, Al-Ahqaf} { حمعسق, Swra Shwra} { ق, Swra Qaf} { ن, Swra Al-Qalam} Dear brothers and sisters if these Ayahs are clarified they will take years. With the assistance of God I would clarify one of the clarifications the letters of the Arabic alphabetical Abjadyah are 28 letters 14 letters are brightness {النورانیة} and 14 letters are darkness {الظلمانیة} the brightness letters are:
{ ا ح ر س ص ط ع ق ك ل م ن ‌ه ي} the rest of letters are darkness the clarification of these Ayahs In most Swras the God says these Ayahs as oaths and endless sacred God refer to these letters saying these are the holy Quran these are the miracles of Quran , the holy Quran is the light and guidance in the holy Quran lightness is above darkness go and discover the Quran more than the three fourths 3/4 of Quran consist on brightness letters. These Ayahs are the key of supplication, if someone attained the key of God's door, easily will get close to God's thro ~ Kamaran Ihsan Salih

Wonderful, Annabeth thought. Her own mother, the most levelheaded Olympian, was reduced to a raving, vicious scatterbrain in a subway station. And, of all the gods who might help them, the only ones not affected by the Greek-Roman schism seemed to be Aphrodite, Nemesis and Dionysus. Love, revenge, wine. Very helpful. ~ Rick Riordan

But if man is free to define for himself the conditions of a life which is valid in his own eyes, can he not choose whatever he likes and act however he likes? Dostoievsky asserted, "If God does not exist, everything is permitted." Today's believers use this formula for their own advantage. To re-establish man at the heart of his destiny is, they claim, to repudiate all ethics. However, far from God's absence authorizing all license, the contrary is the case, because man is abandoned on the earth, because his acts are definitive, absolute engagements. He bears the responsibility for a world which is not the work of a strange power, but of himself, where his defeats are inscribed, and his victories as well. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

I imagine the gods saying, We will
make it up to you. We will give you
three wishes, they say. Let me see
the squirrels again, I tell them.
Let me eat some of the great hog
stuffed and roasted on its giant spit
and put out, steaming, into the winter
of my neighborhood when I was usually
too broke to afford even the hundred grams
I ate so happily walking up the cobbles,
past the Street of the Moon
and the Street of the Birdcage-Makers,
the Street of Silence and the Street
of the Little Pissing. We can give you
wisdom, they say in their rich voices.
Let me go at last to Hugette, I say,
the Algerian student with her huge eyes
who timidly invited me to her room
when I was too young and bewildered
that first year in Paris.
Let me at least fail at my life.
Think, they say patiently, we could
make you famous again. Let me fall
in love one last time, I beg them.
Teach me mortality, frighten me
into the present. Help me to find
the heft of these days. That the nights
will be full enough and my heart feral. ~ Jack Gilbert

If the universe does consist of a battle between the devil and God, the final analysis should conclude that religion would have been the devil's most brilliant move and science, God's. ~ Steve Maraboli

Marriage is more than your love for each other. It has a higher dignity and power, for it is God's holy ordinance, through which He wills to perpetuate the human race till the end of time. In your love you see only your two selves in the world, but in marriage you are a link in the chain of the generations, which God causes to come and to pass away to His glory, and calls into His kingdom. In your love, you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsability towards the world and mankind. Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal - it is a status, an office. Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the king, so it is marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sight of God and man. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

In the midst of my skeptical, cynical, often pessimistic nature exists a slender capacity to believe, if only temporarily, in a guiding, unseen power, and whenever this happens, I go with it. That's what inspiration is. You don't get it from the gods. You make it. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

Persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should be adopted to influence the conduct of men. The opposite course would be a reversal of human nature, which is God's decree and can never be reversed. ~ Abraham Lincoln

God, I thank thee, I am not as the rest of men, or even as this publican. It is in that which is just cause for thanksgiving, it is in the very thanksgiving which we render to God, it may be in the very confession that God has done it all, that self finds its cause of complacency. Yes, even when in the temple the language of penitence and trust in God's mercy alone is heard, the Pharisee may take up the note of praise, and in thanking God be congratulating himself. ~ Andrew Murray

Better and safer is an assured peace than a victory hoped for. The one is in your own power, the other is in the hands of the gods. ~ Livy

The Stetson passage is an allusion to Frazer theory in The Golden Bough that religion originated as agricultural engineering. Through a grotesque process of literalization, all of the dying gods and heroes in The Golden Bough, along with Christ and the Fisher King, are transferred from mythic to modern consciousness ( Frazer himself was an unabashed positivist) to be made explicable in scientific terms as fertilizer. ~ Jewel Spears Brooker