The Gods Quotes

Respect the gods, but have as little to do with them as possible. ~ Confucius

The iron hand of necessity commands, and her stern decree is supreme law, to which the gods even must submit. In deep silence rules the uncounselled sister of eternal fate. Whatever she lays upon thee, endure; perform whatever she commands. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I never did think that my own conundrum was a matter either of science or of social convention. I thought it was a matter of the spirit, a kind of divine allegory, and that explanations of it were not very important anyway. What was important was the liberty of us all to live as we wished to live, to love however we wanted to love, and to know ourselves, however peculiar, disconcerting or unclassifiable, at one with the gods and angels. ~ Jan Morris

Every smoker is an embodiment of Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods and bringing it on back home. ~ Tom Robbins

Sometimes, when the gods aren't looking and destiny loses its way, even good people get a taste of good luck in their lives. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

On the Disc the gods dealt severely with atheists. ~ Terry Pratchett

The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature ... [In] the formation of the American governments ... it will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of heaven ... These governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses. ~ John Adams

Ungit tells me things. I hear of terrible doings in this land, mortals aping the gods and stealing the worship due ~ C.S. Lewis

I don't mean to mock the gods,
but Freyja seems to me a bitch.
- Hjalti Skjeggjason ~ Robert Ferguson

Men imitate the gods whom they adore, and to such miserable beings their crimes become their religion. ~ Cyprian

The moon is dark, and the gods dance in the night; there is terror in the sky, for upon the moon hath sunk an eclipse foretold in no books of men or of earth's gods. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

We are the Gods, who create Gods, and then we turn into worshipers seeking comfort and solace from those Gods that we create. And we do all this, in order to have as much soothing existence as possible. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Mankind, in all his lusts, punishes himself. The gods have to do very little. ~ Criss Jami

Perfect worlds do not exist. There are only the funny, strange, weeping, singing, truncated, and imperfect universes created by the gods of paintbrush and musical instruments, the gods who infuse their creations with their own blood, their own soul. When he looks at these worlds, the true Lord of Hosts, the creator of the universe, probably cannot help but smile mockingly ~ Vasily Grossman

Men! She could not understand why so many women feared them. Hadn't the gods made them with the most vulnerable part of their guts hanging right out of their bodies, like a misplaced bit of bowel? Kick them there and they curled up like snails. Caress them there and their brains melted. ~ Stephen King

My darling Prometheus, you failed at being human. It's such a simple thing to be human. You didn't understand that you never had to be any good at it. You simply had to try. The modern Prometheus. I feel your inadequacy under my skin. Crawling like worms. You possessed that love and rage indeed. Entertain away, dear Monster. Frankenstein forced you into humanity. Tried to make you a man. That was his first mistake. You should have aimed for the Gods. ~ F.K. Preston

For the gods, though slow to see, see well, whenever a man casting aside worship turns folly. ~ Sophocles

If you can't feel the touch of the gods on your own, it greatly behooves you to work on that before some lecher tells you his touch is just as good. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Reyna clapped him [Frank] on the back. 'That's right. For hundreds of years, the gods tried to separate us to keep us from fighting. But there's a better kind of peace – cooperation.'
Piper stood up from the audience. 'Are you sure your mom is a war goddess? ~ Rick Riordan

Look well at this, and speak no towering word yourself against the gods, nor walk too grandly because your hand is weightier than another's, 130 or your great wealth deeper founded. One short day inclines the balance of all human things to sink or rise again. Know that the gods love men of steady sense and hate the wicked. ~ Sophocles

The gods want to bring a better day, and you are their messengers. Trust not in all you see. Trust only in your hearts. And in us, who love you both. ~ Janet Morris

Have not all theists painted their Deity as the god of love and goodness? Yet after thousands of years of such preachments the gods remain deaf to the agony of the human race. ~ Emma Goldman

They have feared the gods, as they should, for gods are a bunch of sodden bastards. For a man who does not fear them, does not fear the terrible consequences. If mortals fail, gods fall. ~ Alaric Longward

Go in peace," I said to him; "bear no ill-will to me, for Necessity yields to no man: and do not complain of me to our mother, for her blood is on your head as well as mine.
If the gods had not forbidden it, my brother, I would put you to sleep before I left you, for night comes on; this is an empty place, and the clouds look dark upon the mountains.
But the blood of kindred is not to be washed away; and when a man has once felt the breath of the Honoured Ones upon his neck, he will not bid them across the threshold. So forgive me, and suffer what must be. The clouds are heavy; if the gods love you, before morning there will be snow. ~ Mary Renault

The gods behold all righteous actions. ~ Ovid

In fact, it was the women in our house who were in the saddle. If men are the gods, women are not only the presidents but all the ministers of the government. ~ Pedro Almodovar

You make choices that are good and sound, but the gods have other plans for you. ~ Lisa See

Of course, no one has enough time to see every shop that Mumbai has: That would take more lifetimes than even the gods could offer. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

The gods have their own laws.
[Lat., Sunt superis sua jura.] ~ Ovid

For, thought Ahab, while even the highest earthly felicities ever have a certain unsignifying pettiness lurking in them, but, at bottom, all heartwoes, a mystic significance, and, in some men, an archangelic grandeur; so do their diligent tracings-out not blue the obvious deduction. To trail the genealogies of these high mortal miseries, carries us at last among the sourceless primogenitures of the gods; so that, in the face of all the glad, hay-making suns, and the softcymballing, round the harvest-moons, we must needs give in to this: that the gods themselves are not for ever glad. The ineffaceable, sad birth-mark in the brow of man, is but the stamp of sorrow in the signers. ~ Herman Melville

Nothing that is really good and admirable is granted by the gods to men without some effort and application. ~ Xenophon

Everything in life begins as a dream. That is how the gods speak to us. First the dream and then the reality. Believe that and work for it and then the gods are on your side. ~ Victor Canning

Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun. ~ Alan W. Watts

Ser Loras lusts for glory as real men lust for women, the least the gods can do is grant him a death worthy of a song. ~ George R R Martin

I give everything to my work, and I like complex roles, characters that aren't obvious. I've been very lucky so far, and I'm dreaming of working with directors like Jane Campion, Susanne Bier and the Dardennes. But the gods will decide. ~ Eva Green

When Nero, with a casual quip, declared 'mushrooms to be the food of the gods, since it was by means of a mushroom that Claudius has become a god',66 it ~ Tom Holland

If there is one place on the face of the earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India.For more than 30 centuries, the tree of vision, with all its thousand branches and their millions of twigs, has sprung from this torrid land, the burning womb of the Gods. It renews itself tirelessly showing no signs of decay. ~ Romain Rolland

You ought to realize, you take up very little space in the world as a whole - your body, that is; in reason, however, you yield to no one, not even to the gods, because reason is not measured in size but sense. So why not care for that side of you, where you and the gods are equals? ~ Epictetus

Numa turned his attention to domestic matters. The removal of all danger from without would induce his subjects to luxuriate in idleness, as they would be no longer restrained by the fear of an enemy or by military discipline. To prevent this, he strove to inculcate in their minds the fear of the gods, regarding this as the most powerful influence which could act upon an uncivilised and, in those ages, a barbarous people. ~ Livy

This night shalt thou know the favour of the Gods, and behold on Parnassus those dreams which the Gods have through ages sent to earth to show that they are not dead. For poets are the dreams of Gods, and in each and every age someone hath sung unknowingly the message and the promise from the lotosgardens beyond the sunset. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

We got lots of secrets, Will. You Apollo guys can't have all the fun. Our campers have been excavating the tunnel system under Cabin Nine for almost a century. We still haven't found the end. Anyway, Leo, if you don't mind sleeping in a dead man's bed, it's yours-Jake
Suddenly Leo didn't feel like kicking back. He sat up, careful not to touch any of the buttons. The counselor who died-this was his bed-Leo
Yeah. Charles Beckendorf-Jake
Leo imagined saw blades coming through the mattress, or maybe a grenade sewn inside the pillows. He didn't, like, die IN this bed, did he-Leo
No. In the Titan War, last summer-Jake
The Titan War, which has NOTHING to do with this very fine bed-Leo
"The Titans," Will said, like Leo was an idiot. The big powerful guys that ruled the world before the gods. They tried to make a comeback last summer. Their leader, Kronos, built a new palace on top of Mount Tam in California. Their armies came to New York and almost destoyed Mount Olympus. A lot of demigods died trying to stop them-Will
I'm guessing this wasn't on the news-Leo
It seemed like a fair question, but Will shook his head in disbelief. You didn't hear about Mount St. Helens erupting, or the freak storms across the country, or that building collapsing in St Louis-Will
Leo shrugged. Last summer, he'd been on the run from another foster home. Then a truancy officer caught him in New Mexico, and the court sentenced him to the nearest correction fac ~ Rick Riordan

Grateful for his mistakes, man should be the gods, because by overcoming the faults the stronger force is developed. ~ Rudolf Steiner

We stepped back and looked at the king of the gods, slumped in his chair snoring, and cradling his crook like a teddy bear. I placed the war flail across his lap, hoping it might make a difference - maybe complete his powers or something. No such luck.
"Sick weasels," Ra muttered.
"Behold," Sadie said bitterly. "the glorious Ra. ~ Rick Riordan

There is a Hindu legend that tells us that there was once a time when all men were gods, but they abused their divinity. Brahma, the god of creation, concluded that people had lost the right to their divinity and decided to take it away from them. Wanting to hide it somewhere where they wouldn't be able to find it, he called a council of all the gods to advise him. Some suggested that they bury it deep in the earth, others that they sink it in the ocean, others still suggested it be placed on top of the highest mountain, but Brahma said that mankind was ingenious and would dig down far into the earth, trawl the deepest oceans and climb every mountain in an effort to find it again. 'The gods were on the point of giving up when Brahma said, "I know where we will hide man's divinity, we will hide it inside him. He will search the whole world but never look inside and find what is already within."' Viola ~ Kate Atkinson

Do you see what little is required of a man to live a well-tempered and god-fearing life? Obey these precepts, and the gods will ask nothing more. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make bored. ~ Ian Fleming

Man has been evolved and created the gods. Evolved more and decided to destroy all of them. ~ Emil A. Zafirov

I could be stronger than all the gods in the pantheon, Maia, but without you it means nothing. Nothing. - from Rosanna Leo's For the Love of a God. ~ Rosanna Leo

The worshiper is the father of the gods. ~ H.L. Mencken

In this night too, in this night of his mortal eyes into which he was now descending, love and danger were again waiting ...
a murmur of glory and hexameters, of men defending a temple the gods will not save, and of black vessels searching the sea for a beloved isle;
the murmor of the Odysseys and Iliads it was his destiny to sing and leave echoing concavely in the memory of man.
These things we know, but not those he felt descending into the last shade of all. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

When Zeus[Jupiter]first saw Aphrodite[Venus]& Aphrodite thus first saw Zeus, it was love at first sight.Naturally.
Since Zeus was the King of the Gods, who loved all beautiful Goddesses.And Aphrodite was the Goddess of Love, the most beautiful & lovely of all the Goddesses.But love was all they had in common. ~ Nicholas Chong

One definition occurred to both of them - that he had come out into the light of that lucid and radiant ignorance in which all beliefs had begun. The sky above them was full of mythology. Heaven seemed deep enough to hold all the gods. ~ G.K. Chesterton

The world in many ways would be a much calmer and gentler place if women ruled. There would have been fewer children sacrificed to the gods of greed and power. ~ Wm. Paul Young

That is the power you must one day command. Let them think every breath of theirs is a gift, not from the gods, but from you. Do this, and you will become a god among them. ~ David Dalglish

We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. ~ Richard Dawkins

Her smile grew bitter as desert brine. The gods may forgive Ista all day long. But if Ista does not forgive Ista, the gods may go hang themselves. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold

PLASTIC ANIMALS


The modern day idols and animal gods
Embrace higher platforms in the sky
Than the statues of the gods of the ancients.
They beam through our screens
And we scream for them to be seen
And we cry if they aren't covering the pages.
We care more about a celebrity
Than the man who saved
An island of a million drowning men!
Eliminate these plastic idols and bloated gods
That represent nothing but shame.
And shame on us for allowing them to be seen
In a divine manner.
No man is to ever be put on a pedestal,
If he/she is not a prime example of the right way,
Has nothing to say,
Or simply has the money to buy
A rotating banner. ~ Suzy Kassem

Watchful are the Gods of all Hands with slaughter stained. The black Furies wait, and when a man Has grown by luck, not justice, great, With sudden overturn of chance They wear him to a shade, and, cast Down to perdition, who shall save him? ~ Aeschylus

may the gods be with you ~ Rick Riordan

Girl or boy, we fight our battles. But the God's let us choose our weapons. ~ George R R Martin

The gods are cruel not because they make us work. They are cruel because they allow us to hope. ~ Robert Jackson Bennett

The realms of the gods and demons - heaven, purgatory, hell - are of the substance of dreams. Myth, in this view, is the dream of the world. ~ Joseph Campbell

The designer always has to leave room for the gods. ~ Robert Bringhurst

It was because 'in 1776 our fathers retired the gods from politics.' The basic principle of the American Republic is the freedom of man in society.
The Declaration of Independence was the product of Intellectual Emancipation, and that is why, from thenceforth, our date of existence should be recorded, not from the mythical birth of Jesus Christ, but from the day of our Independence! This should be the year one hundred and seventy-eight in our calendar!
Despite discouraging signs here and there, the seeds of freedom planted by the American Revolution will take root, and throughout the world, if man will learn to zealously guard his freedom, Peace and Progress will come to all the world. ~ Joseph Lewis

As private parts to the gods are we! They play with us for their sport. (Lord Melchett, Blackadder.) ~ Richard Curtis & Ben Elton

The Page awaits the Inspiration even as Inspiration roams the world of man, seeking a Page upon which to unfurl itself, body and soul, bare yet clothed in immortality if not immediacy.
And the gods said, "Let there be a Page, and many a Page," and there was a Book. And we saw that the Book was good. ~ Chila Woychik

We used to make gods, and we used to make sacrifices to them, and they would reward us. We're still doing it and we still makes the sacrifices - I don't know how many cows die every year to keep Burger Clown alive, but I know it's a lot - but we don't know what to do with the gods once we have them. ~ Michael Montoure

I learned the Norse gods came with their own doomsday: Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods, the end of it all. The gods were going to battle the frost giants, and they were all going to die.

Had Ragnarok happened yet? Was it still to happen? I did not know then. I am not certain now. ~ Neil Gaiman

Once apparently the chief concern and masterpiece of the gods, the human race now begins to bear the aspect of an accidental by-product of their vast, inscrutable and probably nonsensical operations. ~ H.L. Mencken

The gods need heroes. They always have. ~ Rick Riordan

The gods are watching, but idly, yawning. ~ Mason Cooley

It is not good to want a thing too much. It sometimes drives the luck away. You must want it just enough, and you must be very tactful with Gods or the gods. ~ John Steinbeck

She had prayed for someone else, anyone else but Den. She'd been hoping for a nice, quiet man like Papa. Instead, the gods had sent her the man who'd scorched the world. ~ C.L. Wilson

In my Pantheon, Pan still reigns in his pristine glory, with his ruddy face, his flowing beard, and his shaggy body, his pipe and his crook, his nymph Echo, and his chosen daughter Iambe; for the great god Pan is not dead, as was rumored. No god ever dies. Perhaps of all the gods of New England and of ancient Greece, I am most constant at his shrine. ~ Henry David Thoreau

the gods seldom
give
but so quickly
take. ~ Charles Bukowski

The Gods have meant
That I should dance
And in some mystic hour
I shall move to unheard rhythms
Of the cosmic orchestra of heaven
And you will know the language
Of my wordless poems
And will come to me
For that is why I dance. ~ Ruth St. Denis

Only a philosopher's mind grows wings, since its memory always keeps it as close as possible to those realities by being close to which the gods are divine. ~ Plato

Friendship is the gift of the gods, and the most precious boon to man. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

Wrecking civilization one story at a time."

"That hardest day in any cancer patient's life is the day after he's cured."

"Some of us aren't made strong. We're extras, made out of the leftovers the gods had after making the good men. "
--Inclinations of the Solar Winds

"Just Foxing along--another day, another song. ~ T. Fox Dunham

Being an artist doesn't take much. Just everything you got. Which means of course that as the process is giving you life, it is also bringing you closer to death. But it's no big deal. They are one in the same and cannot be avoided or denied. So when I totally embrace this process, this life/death, and abandon myself to it completely, I transcend all this gibberish and hang out with the gods. It seems to me that that is worth the price of admission. ~ Hubert Selby, Jr.

Someone pried open his eyelid and rudely flashed a light in his eye that made his headache pound even harder. Groaning, he flinched, moving his head away. Gently, the doctor turned his head back and held it in place while he continued to test the dilation of his eye. Good thing Caillen's arms were strapped down or the man would be bleeding over the intrusion and that light would be shining out of an orifice the gods had never meant to hold it. "He's ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

While the gods remained more human, the men were more divine. ~ Friedrich Schiller

I dreamed ... in the black of night a man asks all the questions he dare not ask by daylight. For me, the past years, only one question has remained. Why would the gods take my eyes and my strength, yet condemn me to linger on so long, frozen and forgotten? What use could they have for an old done man like me? ... I remember, Sam. I still remember.
Remember what?
Dragons, Aemon whispered. ~ George R R Martin

Holy spirits, you walk up there
in the light, on soft earth.
Shining god-like breezes
touch upon you gently,
as a woman's fingers
play music on holy strings.

Like sleeping infants the gods
breathe without any plan;
the spirit flourishes continually
in them, chastely kept,
as in a small bud,
and their holy eyes
look out in still
eternal clearness.

A place to rest
isn't given to us.
Suffering humans
decline and blindly fall
from one hour to the next,
like water thrown
from cliff to cliff,
year after year,
down into the Unknown. ~ Friedrich Holderlin

Pray the gods do not envy your happiness! ~ Euripides

If the gods had intended for people to vote, they would have given us candidates. ~ Howard Zinn

Evolution teaches us the original purpose of language was to ritualize men's threats and curses, his spells to compel the gods; communication came later. ~ Gene Wolfe

I have learned that it is one thing to kill in battle, to send a brave man's soul to the corpse hall of the gods, but quite another to take a helpless man's life ... ~ Bernard Cornwell

If there be any Gods at all, of which I am not even certain, I cannot believe they would stoop to meddle in the affairs of men. Nor will I wait upon the Gods to do what I see clearly must be done - who's to say that the Goddess cannot work through my hand as well as another. ~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

As Dutch, British and French explorers literally put this Great Southern Land on the map it would be ridiculous to say that modern day Australia is anything other than a grand - and successful - outpost of
Euro-colonialism and, more specifically Anglo-Celt British colonialism. It's a fact of life like the Euro-colonization of the Americas etc. If it was an outpost of, let's say, Iranian or Zimbabwean colonialism would so many people still be so desperately trying to get into Australia by any means necessary, legal or otherwise? It's doubtful. Thank the Gods for Euro-colonialism! ~ Douglas Pearce

Entrust yourself in finding purpose when all seems lost and you have no idea on what to do. It was the same for me once, however, it is always the smallest things that got me to find a purpose of why I was sent here by the Gods in the Afterlife. ~ Lunar Brogley

Men should be judged, not by their tint of skin,
the Gods they serve, the Vintage they drink,
nor by the way they fight, or love, or sin,
But by the quality of the thought they think. ~ Laurence Hope

As the Takers see it, the gods gave man the same choice they gave Achilles: a brief life of glory, or a long, uneventful life in obscurity. And the Takers chose a brief life of glory. ~ Daniel Quinn

The gods, after all, are only human, and once their rage has been placated they are perfectly capable of acts of mercy and grace. ~ Thomas M. Disch

It's when we're given choice that we sit with the gods and design ourselves. ~ Dorothy Gilman

All good fortune is a gift of the gods, and you don't win the favor of the ancient gods by being good, but by being bold. ~ Anita Brookner

These facts make the creator of music a being like the gods, and make music itself the supreme mystery of human knowledge. ~ Claude Levi-Strauss

more 27 and 53,'i said. 'Food of the gods,' he said ~ David Almond

What was life has crumbled. What was form, now falls away. Mortal chains unbind and the soul s free. May you find your way to the ancestors. May you find your path to the gods. May your bravery and courage be remembers in song and story, May your parents be proud, and ma our children carry your birthright. Sleep, and wander no more. ~ Yasmine Galenorn

Now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labor, to hitch his wagon to a star, and see his chore done by the gods themselves. That is the way we are strong, by borrowing the might of the elements. The forces of steam, gravity, galvanism, light, magnets, wind, fire, serve us day by day and cost us nothing. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson