Worshipping Quotes

For suddenly it was clear to me that virtue in the creator is not the same as virtue in the creature. For the creator, if he should love his creature, would be loving only a part of himself; but the creature, praising the creator, praises an infinity beyond himself. I saw that the virtue of the creature was to love and to worship, but the virtue of the creator was to create, and to be the infinite, the unrealizable and incomprehensible goal of worshipping creatures. ~ Olaf Stapledon

People that encounter me cannot understand why I refuse to worship, either it is a religion, a prophet or a writer. They don't understand that I was born to be worshipped, and not worship, As me, many others have been here before and face the same. People disdain, ignore and ridicule the living while worshipping the dead. And once I'm gone, the cycle will repeat, with someone better than me facing what I face now. I'm great now, not 300 years from now, when everyone will agree with this statement but I won't be here to disagree wit it and show a better path. ~ Robin Sacredfire

Jacob smiled from ear to ear when he shook the man's hand on stage. The man then handed him a trophy. "Tell the audience about your book."
My little brother confidently walked up to a microphone his height and beamed to the crowd. "I wrote about the person I love the most, my older brother, Noah. We don't live together so I wrote what I imagine he does when we're not together."
"And what is that?" prodded the stout man.
"He's a superhero who saves people in danger, because he saved me and my brother from dying in a fire a couple of years ago. Noah is better than Batman." The crowd chuckled.
"I love you, too, lil' bro." I couldn't help it. To see him standing there, still worshipping me like he did when he was five … it was too much.
Jacob's smile reached a whole new level of excitement. "Noah!" He pointed right to me. "That's Noah. That's my brother, Noah!" Ignoring his foster parents, Jacob flew off the stage and ran down the middle aisle.
Joe lowered his head and Carrie rubbed her eyes. Jacob raced into my arms and the crowd erupted into applause.
"I've missed you, Noah." Jacob's voice broke, bringing tears to my eyes. I couldn't cry. Not in front of Jacob and not in front of Mrs. Collins. I needed to be a man and stay strong.
"I've missed you, too, bro. I'm so proud of you." ~ Katie McGarry

Those of us raised in the Christian tradition need to choose to either see God in Jesus or to continue to let the Bible define God. Our tradition says that Jesus is God. Maybe we should act as if we think he is instead of worshipping a book. Maybe we should be brave enough to admit that we are compelled to either become blinded ideologues or we need to forthrightly pick and choose what we follow in the Bible. Most Christians do that anyway, many just don't admit it. ~ Frank Schaeffer

I hate when people act like music is nothing but wild creativity," Logan said. "That's bullshit. It's also about counting and measuring and calibrating. If you do it right." He passed his hand over my MP3 player sitting on the bed between us. It was playing Mozart to help my concentration. "And if you do it really right, no one can tell how hard it is for you. You can let them believe it's magic, because that means you must be magic. You're worth worshipping. ~ Jeri Smith-Ready

He who has spent billions on churches, on mosques and on every kind of sanctuaries is guilty of not giving that money to the science! The path of sanctuary does not lead to God; the path of the faith does not lead to God; only the path of science leads to God! The bridge between man and the unknown God is not worshipping but it is science, only the science! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Don't tell the guys at Trinity Broadcast Network, but financial prosperity is not the primary indicator of God's blessing. Think back to the garden. What was the greatest blessing that God gave to Adam and Eve? The greatest blessing was living in God's very presence, knowing him, and worshipping him. ~ Chris Bruno

O most sacred, most loving heart of Jesus, thou art concealed in the Holy Eucharist, and thou beatest for us still ... Thou art the heart of the Most High made man ... Thy Sacred Heart is the instrument and organ of Thy love. It did beat for us. It yearned for us. It ached for our salvation. It was on fire through zeal, that the glory of God might be manifested in and by us ... In worshipping thee I worship my incarnate God, my Emmanuel ~ John Henry Newman

'Worshipping in private,' as Obama does, comes off as just another form of annoying elitism. ~ Tina Brown

I happen to be a Christian, but I know that there is one God. People worshipping goodness and love and kindness and truth are worshipping the same God. ~ Anne Lamott

If you [can realise Brahman] by standing on your head, or on one foot, or by worshipping five thousand gods with three heads each - welcome to it! ... Do it any way you can! Nobody has any right to say anything. Therefore, Krishna says, if your method is better and higher, you have no business to say that another man's method is bad, however wicked you may think it. ~ Swami Vivekananda

There are several sorts of religions, not only in different parts of the island, but even in every town; some worshipping the sun, others the moon or one of the planets. ~ Thomas More

When we find that God's ways always coincide with our own ways, it's time to question who we're really worshipping, God or ourselves. The latter moves the nature of godliness from the King to our servant to a slave, a deduction into the realm of selfhood and then the lower, slavehood. It's a spiritual mathematics in that men who need God in his godhood are humble yet strong and spiritually ambitious while men who need a slave in their selfhood are ultimately paralyzed and will remain paralyzed. ~ Criss Jami

Sometimes she'd just walk around the city alone. Watch the people, smell the food, the bus exhaust, the smoke coming up through the grating. She'd feel protected somehow, found a sense of belonging in the hectic sprawl. And the next minute she'd feel like the one who couldn't break the code, hit the right stride, catch the wave. Potholes and traffic and bums, oh my. With all the honking and the hum of movement, the living, breathing blur of noise gently pressing in on her, the great purr of the Metropolitan Cat turning into a dull roar. She'd feel so silent on the inside, her head as quiet as a stretch of sand, a cathedral silently worshipping the life that was all around her, storing it up for later when she needed some 'too much' to draw upon. ~ Carrie Fisher

Any naturally self-aware self-defining entity capable of independent moral judgment is a human."

Eveningstar said, "Entities not yet self-aware, but who, in the natural and orderly course of events shall become so, fall into a special protected class, and must be cared for as babies, or medical patients, or suspended Compositions."

Rhadamanthus said, "Children below the age of reason lack the experience for independent moral judgment, and can rightly be forced to conform to the judgment of their parents and creators until emancipated. Criminals who abuse that judgment lose their right to the independence which flows therefrom."

(...) "You mentioned the ultimate purpose of Sophotechnology. Is that that self-worshipping super-god-thing you guys are always talking about? And what does that have to do with this?"

Rhadamanthus: "Entropy cannot be reversed. Within the useful energy-life of the macrocosmic universe, there is at least one maximum state of efficient operations or entities that could be created, able to manipulate all meaningful objects of thoughts and perception within the limits of efficient cost-benefit expenditures."

Eveningstar: "Such an entity would embrace all-in-all, and all things would participate within that Unity to the degree of their understanding and consent. The Unity itself would think slow, grave, vast thought, light-years wide, from Galactic mind to Galactic mind. Full understanding of that great ~ John C. Wright

You are my brother and I love you. I love you worshipping in your church, kneeling in your temple, and praying in your mosque. You and I and all are children of one religion, for the varied paths of religion are but the fingers of the loving hand of the Supreme Being, extended to all, offering completeness of spirit to all, anxious to receive all. ~ Kahlil Gibran

Because you can't brainwash us into worshipping you like everybody else? ~ Marissa Meyer

When he mentioned family, I could only think of my father, my real father, the Long Island janitor with the impenetrable accent and true-to-life smells. My mind returned away from what Joshie was saying and I pondered my father's humiliation. The humiliation of growing up a Jew in the Soviet Union, of cleaning piss-stained bathrooms in the States, of worshipping a country that would collapse as simply and inelegantly as the one he had abandoned. ~ Gary Shteyngart

I had always served beauty. Davy and I together had loved beauty. Now, maybe, I was worshipping beauty in the Christian God while Davy was worshipping God. There may be danger in the love of beauty, though it seems treason to say it. Perhaps it can be a snare. ~ Sheldon Vanauken

You're my world, Gracelyn Mae," he told me, moving in closer. [...] Jackson took my hands into his. "You're my faith. You're my hope. You're my true religion. I'm a better man because you exist. I'm me because of you. And if you'd allow it, I'd love to spend the rest of my life worshipping your heartbeats."
I held his hands in mine and moved in close. My head tilted up, and I released a small breath as my eyes locked with his. A small, tiny, breath. My mouth grazed across his, and I whisperedagainst his lips.
"Worship me, and I'll worship you. ~ Brittainy C. Cherry

Anyone who values truth should stop worshipping reason. ~ Jonathan Haidt

Veneration. It's as if he's worshipping me. He teases me ~ E.L. James

When something becomes so important to you that it drives your behavior and commands your emotions, you are worshipping it. ~ J.D. Greear

We give them the fire insurance salvation pitch, and they buy into it, and then we protect them in here so that none of us has to see what's going on outside the gates. We're in here worshipping a Jesus we've made up, while most of the souls out there, right out there, are crying out for a Jesus that really exists. ~ Nancy N. Rue

The Independent or Congregational theory includes two principles; first, that the governing and executive power in the Church is in the brotherhood; and secondly, that the Church organization is complete in each worshipping assembly, which is independent of every other. ~ Charles Hodge

What does somebody like you want? More power? More toys? More sex?"
"All of the above. All the time."
"Greedy bugger."
"Kid, let me tell you something. Most people spend their short time in this world less than half alive. They wander through their days in a haze of responsibility and resentment. Something happens to them not long after they're born. They get conflicted about what they want and start worshipping the wrong gods. Should. Mercy. Equality. Altruism. There's nothing you should do. Do what you want. Mercy isn't Nature's way. She's an equal opportunity killer. We aren't born the same. Some are stronger, smarter, faster. Never apologize for it. Altruism is an impossible concept. There's no action you can make that doesn't spring from how you want to feel about yourself. Not greedy, Dani. Alive. And happy about it every single fucking day. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Worship is much more than just singing songs. In fact, true worship is first and foremost a condition of heart and a state of mind. We can be worshipping passionately without singing a single note. Worship is born in our hearts; it fills our thoughts and then it is expressed through our mouths and through our bodies. If our hearts are filled with awe for God, we may want to sing, dance, clap, or lift up our hands in worship. We may also be reverently silent and still before God. We may desire to give offerings or offer other forms of outward expression of love for God. But any of these actions done without a right heart are simply formalism and meaningless to God. ~ Joyce Meyer

Either I'm right," he continued, "and he doesn't exist, or you're right, and he's the kind of God who watches children die. The kind of God who sits around while men like Herod build palaces and good people starve. Either way, he's not worth worshipping. ~ Seth Grahame-Smith

Knowing God supersedes everything else because it is the supreme cause. Everything else - being, doing, loving, believing, hoping, praising, worshipping, evangelizing, glorifying, enjoying - is an effect. ~ Larry Alan Thompson

What Can Be Learned From a Thief

The saintly Rabi Zusya was originally a disciple of the tsaddik Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezritsh. Once he asked his master to teach him the secret of worshipping the Creator. "There's no need for me to teach you," replied Rabbi Dov Baer, "because you can learn it from any child or thief."
"Why, how can I learn it from a child?" asked the astounded disciple.
"In three ways," replied his master. "First, a child needs no reason to be happy. Second, a child always keeps busy. And third, when a child wants something, it screams until it gets it."
"And what," asked Rabbi Zusya, "can I learn from a thief?"
"From a thief," answered Rabbi Dov Baer, "you can learn seven things. First, to apply yourself by night and not just by day. Second, to try again if at first you don't succeed. Third, to love your comrades. Fourth, to be ready to risk your life, even for a small thing. Fifth, to attach so little value to what you have that you will sell it for a pittance. Sixth, not to be put off by hardship and blows. And seventh, to be glad you are what you are instead of wanting to be something else. ~ Pinhas Sadeh

The majority of colored men do not yet think it worth while that women aspire to higher education ... The three R's, a littlemusic and a good deal of dancing, a first rate dress-maker and a bottle of magnolia balm, are quite enough generally to render charming any woman possessed of tact and the capacity for worshipping masculinity. ~ Anna Julia Cooper

He wants to see, he wants to know, only to see and know. I'm aware that it is this mentality, this curiosity, which is responsible for the hydrogen bomb and the imminent demise of civilization and that we would all be better off if we were still at the stone-worshipping stage. Though surely it is not this affable inquisitiveness that should be blamed. ~ Margaret Atwood

Despite the many iniquities that have found entrance into the practices of image-worship as it is in vogue now, I do not condemn it. Ay, where would I have been if I had not been blessed with the dust of the holy feet of that orthodox, image-worshipping Brahmin! ~ Swami Vivekananda

If you pretend, that God rewarded Ahab or the Ninevites for worshipping their idols, you must prove that God is so far from being highly displeased with idolatry, as himself often declares, Deut. xxxii. 16, 17, 21, - 26. Judges ii. 14. 2 Kings xvii. 10, - 18. Psalm cvi. 19, - 40 Jer. xviii. 7, 35, l. 38, &c. - that he is ready to accept and reward the worship of idols, devils, bulls, dogs, cats, saints, leeks, onions, consecrated wafers, &c. if men be sincere in it. Rare doctrine this, for a Presbyterian clergyman, of this enlightened age! ~ John Brown Of Haddington

How long do small girls play with their dolls? As long as they are not married and do not live with their husbands. After marriage they put the dolls away in a box. What further need is there of worshipping the image after the vision of God? ~ Ramakrishna

We can see the process of deification taking place in the Indians' perception of Mahatma Gandhi. Here we had as great a man as any the world has seen, but also full of human frailties. Not one of his four sons got on with him; one even embraced Islam to spite him. He was vain, took offence at the slightest remark against him, and a fad-ist who made nubile girls lie naked next to him to make sure that he had overcome his libidinous desires. All these failings which make him human and down to earth and yet hold him up as a shining example of a human being for all of mankind are being lost thanks to our putting him on a pedestal and worshipping him. It is time we learnt to give avatars and prophets their proper places as important historical personalities who did good to humanity. No more than that. ~ Khushwant Singh

The world shown us in books, whether the books be confessed epics or professed gospels, or in codes, or in political orations, or in philosophic systems, is not the main world at all: it is only the self-consciousness of certain abnormal people who have the specific artistic talent and temperament. A serious matter this for you and me, because the man whose consciousness does not correspond to that of the majority is a madman; and the old habit of worshipping madmen is giving way to the new habit of locking them up. And since what we call education and culture is for the most part nothing but the substitution of reading for experience, of literature for life, of the absolete fictitious for the contemporary real, education, as you no doubt observed at Oxford, destroys, by supplantation, every mind that is not strong enough to see through the imposture and to use the great Masters of Arts as what they really are and no more: that is, patentees of highly questionable methods of thinking, and manufacturers of highly questionable, and for the majority but half valid representations of life. The school boy who uses his Homer to throw at his fellow's head makes perhaps the safest and most rational use of him; and I observe with reassurance that you occasionally do the same, in your prime, with your Aristotle. ~ George Bernard Shaw

It is a kind of church, back in these last cores. It may not be your church -- this last one percent of the West – but it is mine, and I am asking unashamedly to be allowed to continue worshipping the miracle of the planet, and the worship of a natural system not yet touched, never touched by the machines of man. A place with the residue of God – the scent, feel, sight, taste, and sound of God – forever fresh upon it ~ Rick Bass

The music that I have learned and want to give is like worshipping God. It's absolutely like a prayer. ~ Ravi Shankar

Still, there's no harm in putting a full stop to one's disagreeable thoughts by looking at a mark on the wall ... Here is something definite, something real. thus, waking from a midnight dream of horror, one hastily turns on the light and lies quiescent, worshipping the chest of drawers, worshipping solidity, worshipping reality, worshipping the impersonal world which is proof of some existence other than ours. ~ Virginia Woolf

If your god never disagrees with you, you might just be worshipping an idealized version of yourself. ~ Timothy Keller

The worship of God is in our attitude to people ~ Sunday Adelaja

The God worth worshipping is the one who pays us the compliment of self - regulation, and we might return it by minding our own business. ~ Roger Rosenblatt

Please never forget that the sun rises and sets with your smile. At least to me it does. You're the only thing on this planet worth worshipping. ~ Taylor Jenkins Reid

While all men within our territories are protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of their consciences; it is rationally to be expected from them in return, that they will [demonstrate] the innocence of their lives and the beneficence of their actions; for no man, who is profligate in his morals, or a bad member of the civil community, can possibly be a true Christian, or a credit to his own religious society. ~ George Washington

Often, during times when I am in a state of absolute bliss and gratitude, those are the times that people will ask me, "Are you happy or are you sad?" It's funny, because when you are happy in a way that most people are happy in, that is, when you are jumping up and down and laughing and smiling and giggling, people will recognize that as happiness. But when you go beyond that state and on into the state of blissfulness - nirvana - only a very few number of people are going to be able to recognize and understand that. Why? Because only very few people have gone beyond the level of obvious happiness, to experience actual nirvaana. Nirvana is what I describe as being in a state of worship; you see, you go beyond just feeling happy and grateful, and you enter into a state of mind that allows you to worship what you have been given or what you have attained or achieved, or whatever circumstance you are in that is making you happy. You stop and you worship the person, the place, the thing, the feeling. I'm easily flung into that state, so, I often find it strange that I can be in an absolute state of bliss, meanwhile, the other person can be asking me if I am either happy or sad. But I am worshipping. ~ C. JoyBell C.

Our nature is the mind. and the mind is our nature.this nature is the same as the mind of all buddhas. buddhas of the past and future only transmit this mind. beyond this mind there's no buddha anywhere.but deluded people don't realize that their own mind is the buddha.they keep searching outside.they never stop invoking buddhas or worshipping buddhas and wondering where is the buddha? don't indulge in such illusions. just know your mind. beyond your mind there's no other buddha.the sutras say, "everything that has form is an illusion."they also say, "wherever you are, there's a buddha." your mind is the buddha. don't use a buddha to worship a buddha. ~ Bodhidharma

As explained above, those who believe in the theory of
evolution think that a few atoms and molecules thrown into
a huge vat could produce thinking, reasoning professors
and university students; such scientists as Einstein and
Galileo; such artists as Humphrey Bogart, Frank Sinatra
and Luciano Pavarotti; as well as antelopes, lemon trees,
and carnations. Moreover, as the scientists and professors
who believe in this nonsense are educated people, it is
quite justifiable to speak of this theory as "the most potent
spell in history." Never before has any other belief or idea
so taken away peoples' powers of reason, refused to allow
them to think intelligently and logically, and hidden the
truth from them as if they had been blindfolded. This is an
even worse and unbelievable blindness than the totem
worship in some parts of Africa, the people of Saba worshipping
the Sun, the tribe of Prophet Ibrahim (as) worshipping
idols they had made with their own hands, or the
people of Prophet Musa (as) worshipping the Golden Calf.

In fact, Allah has pointed to this lack of reason in the
Qur'an. In many verses, He reveals that some peoples'
minds will be closed and that they will be powerless to see
the truth. Some of these verses are as follows:
As for those who do not believe, it makes no difference
to them whether you warn them or do not warn them,
they will not ~ Harun Yahya

So what have you guys been up to?"
"Nothing, worshipping Satan. ~ Daniel Clowes

When exhaling this air, we announced Jesus Christ risen by the same Spirit. No one can live without breathing. It is the same for the Christian: without praise and mission there is not Christian life. And with praise, worship. We rarely speak about worship. What do we do when we pray? We ask things of God, we give thanks. But worshipping and adoring God is part of breathing - praise and worship. ~ Pope Francis

Communities are not built of friends, or of groups of people with similar
styles and tastes, or even of people who like and understand each other.
They are built of people who feel they are part of something that is
bigger than themselves: a shared goal or enterprise, like righting a wrong,
or building a road, or raising children, or living honorably, or worshipping
a god. To build community requires only the ability to see value in others:
to look at them and see a potential partner in one's enterprise. ~ Suzanne Goldsmith

This usually happens in the white-collar classes: These people take to worshipping pointlessness. Examples are Twin Peaks, Christo's artwork, and academic liberal politics. But a strange thing happens; these people view their ultra pointlessness as a way of being like God. ~ Noah Cicero

Idolatry is worshipping anything that ought to be used, or using anything that is meant to be worshipped. ~ Saint Augustine

When God hears us worshipping Him, that alone makes Him feel worthwhile to be God! ~ Raphael Ben Levi

I do not think I should care to go on worshipping a Madonna even if she did wink. One cannot make much out of a wink. We want something more than that from the object of our adoration. ~ Charles Spurgeon

Even if the devil worshipper is simply 'worshipping one's self,' as their heretical chronicles proclaim, it does nothing to quail my disdain for their kind. The fact that a single evil one whom most of us cannot see or hear in this world, is replaced by an entire army of greedy, heartless and soulless human beings stripped of their conscience and performing human sacrifice, in effigy or otherwise, is indeed far more sinister than the existence of one actual 'devil. ~ Yehuda HaLevi

People] find - both in themselves and outside themselves - many means that are very helpful in seeking their own advantage, e.g., eyes for seeing, teeth for chewing, plants and animals for food, the sun for light, the sea for supporting fish … Hence, they consider all natural things as means to their own advantage. And knowing that they had found these means, not provided them for themselves, they had reason to believe that there was someone else who had prepared those means for their use. For after they considered things as means, they could not believe that the things had made themselves; but from the means they were accustomed to prepare for themselves, they had to infer that there was a ruler, or a number of rulers of nature, endowed with human freedom, who had taken care of all things for them, and made all things for their use.

And since they had never heard anything about the temperament of these rulers, they had to judge it from their own. Hence, they maintained that the Gods direct all things for the use of men in order to bind men to them and be held by men in the highest honor. So it has happened that each of them has thought up from his own temperament different ways of worshipping God, so that God might love them above all the rest, and direct the whole of Nature according to the needs of their blind desire and insatiable greed. Thus this prejudice was changed into superstition, and struck deep roots in their minds. ~ Baruch Spinoza

The descent to hell is easy and those who begin by worshipping power, soon worship evil. ~ C.S. Lewis

What I find disturbing in America is the consuming desire for leisure, convenience, and fun. It seems we, as a nation, have traded God for gadgets. We have traded eternal truth for momentary self-gratification - worshipping false gods of materialism and humanism instead of the Creator of all things. ~ Billy Graham

We are all born idolaters, and idolatry is good, because it is in the nature of man. Who can get beyond it? Only the perfect man, the God-man. The rest are all idolaters. So long as we see this universe before us, with its forms and shapes, we are all idolaters. This is a gigantic symbol we are worshipping. He who says he is the body is a born idolater. ~ Swami Vivekananda

Gods are addicted to the pleasures and the demons are blindly worshipping power. ~ Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar

I spent a lot of time developing in books why worshipping separately actually impacts inequality, economic, social, on and on. So I really do believe there are huge advantages to being together even though it's difficult, even though we have a lot to learn. ~ Michael Emerson

America's critics can be heard everywhere. It is too much in love with money - worshipping the god of the marketplace, the golden calf. It has too much money, seven of the top 10 banks, eight of the top 10 companies etc. It is too stingy, giving away less of its wealth than other countries. It is vulgar, a rich barbarian. ~ Maurice Saatchi

To oppose, to refute, to deny is not to know the truth. Whatever good may come in the destroying of the false, the best hammer of the critic will not serve to carve the celestial form of the real; and when the iconoclast becomes the bigot of negation and declares the non-existence of any form worthy of worship because he has destroyed so many unworthy forms, he becomes a fool. That he has never conceived a deity worth worshipping is poor ground for saying such cannot exist. ~ George MacDonald

The Tezumen were happy. When no amount of worshipping caused the Luggage to come back and trample their enemies they poisoned all their priests and tried enlightened atheism instead, which still meant they could kill as many people as they liked but didn't have to get up so early to do it. ~ Terry Pratchett

The worship of God shouldn't be done in church alone, but in all our actions and our attitude towards His creation ~ Sunday Adelaja

From the Earl of Hellgate's Memoirs, Chapter the Twenty-Sixth
I realized then that I had mistaken the nature of love. Love has nothing to do with desire; it's the quest for the divine, found on earth. It's finding a woman whose soul preserves a shard of heaven, and worshipping her ... worshipping at her feet. I was a new man. ~ Eloisa James

The price to be paid for distrusting power is always smaller than the price to be paid for worshipping it. ~ Jim Hoagland

These are pious, clean-living men, worshipping at the temple of their own bodies."
"Hmm. Sounds distinctly erotic. ~ Richard K. Morgan

I'm tired of people calling me a devil worshipper. It's kind of pointless you know. Because if the Devil did exist, he'd be worshipping me, because I'm more successful than he is. ~ Marilyn Manson

The only time that I do not mind to look as stupid is when I am worshipping God and when I am expressing love to my wife through gifts. ~ Khuliso Mamathoni

[L]ife is a phenomenon in need of criticism, for we are, as fallen creatures, in permanent danger of worshipping false gods, of failing to understand ourselves and misinterpreting the behaviour of others, of growing unproductively anxious or desirous, and of losing ourselves to vanity and error. Surreptitiously and beguilingly, then, with humour or gravity, works of art
novels, poems, plays, paintings or films
can function as vehicles to explain our condition to us. They may act as guides to a truer, more judicious, more intelligent understanding of the world. ~ Alain De Botton

It is obvious that the aspects of mystery which gather round the word "election" are not confined to it alone. An important class of words, such as "calling," "predestination" "foreknowledge," "purpose," "gift," bears this same character; asserting or connoting, in appropriate contexts, the element of the inscrutable and sovereign in the action of the Divine will upon man, and particularly upon man's will and affection toward God. And it will be felt by careful students of the Bible in its larger and more general teachings that one deep characteristic of the Book, which with all its boundless multiplicity is yet one, is to emphasize on the side of man everything that can humble, convict, reduce to worshipping silence (see for typical passages Job 40:3, 1; Ro 3:19), and on the side of God everything which can bring home to man the transcendence and sovereign claims of his almighty Maker. ~ James Orr

My mother always used to say, 'Well, if you had been born a little girl growing up in Egypt, you would go to church or go to worship Allah, but surely if those people are worshipping a God, it must be the same God' - that's what she always said. The same God with different names. ~ Jane Goodall

Right now someone is worshipping you from afar while someone else is ignoring you from close. ~ Nitya Prakash

If you are worshipping God without depending on the Spirit of God, you are serving a god you do not know. ~ T. B. Joshua

Young man, if God gives me four years more to rule this country, I believe it will become what it ought to be-what its Divine Author intended it to be-no longer one vast plantation for breeding human beings for the purpose of lust and bondage. But it will become a new Valley of Jehoshaphat, where all the nations of the earth will assemble together under one flag, worshipping a common God, and they will celebrate the resurrection of human freedom. ~ Abraham Lincoln

All the lot. Their spunk is gone dead. Motor-cars and cinemas and aeroplanes suck that last bit out of them. I tell you, every generation breeds a more rabbity generation, with India rubber tubing for guts and tin legs and tin faces. Tin people! It's all a steady sort of bolshevism just killing off the human thing, and worshipping the mechanical thing. Money, money, money! All the modern lot get their real kick out of killing the old human feeling out of man, making mincemeat of the old Adam and the old Eve. They're all alike. The world is all alike: kill off the human reality, a quid for every foreskin, two quid for each pair of balls. What is cunt but machine-fucking! - It's all alike. Pay 'em money to cut off the world's cock. Pay money, money, money to them that will take spunk out of mankind, and leave 'em all little twiddling machines. ~ D.H. Lawrence

Where there is a believing community whose life is centered in the biblical story through its worshipping, teaching, and sacramental and apostolic life, there will certainly be differences of opinion on specific issues, certainly mistakes, certainly false starts. But it is part of my faith in the authenticity of the story itself that this community will not be finally betrayed. ~ Lesslie Newbigin

Tea ceremony is a way of worshipping the beautiful and the simple. All one's efforts are concentrated on trying to achieve perfection through the imperfect gestures of daily life. Its beauty consists in the respect with which it is performed. If a mere cup of tea can bring us closer to God, we should watch out for all the other dozens of opportunities that each ordinary day offers us. ~ Paulo Coelho

Being, belief and reason are pure relations, which cannot be dealt with absolutely, and are not things but pure scholastic concepts, signs for understanding, not for worshipping, aids to awaken our attention, not to fetter it. ~ Johann Georg Hamann

Catarina hooked her hand around Magnus's elbow and hauled him away, like a schoolteacher with a misbehaving student. They entered a narrow alcove around the corner, where the music and noise of the party was muffled. She rounded on him.
"I recently treated Tessa for wounds she said were inflicted on her by members of a demon-worshipping cult," Catarina said. "She told me you were, and I quote, 'handling' the cult. What's going on? Explain."
Magnus made a face. "I may have had a hand in founding it."
"How much of a hand?"
"Well, both."
Catarina bristled. "I specifically told you not to do that!"
"You did?" Magnus said. A bubble of hope grew within him. "You remember what happened?"
She gave him a look of distress. "You don't?"
"Someone took all my memories around the subject of this cult," said Magnus. "I don't know who, or why."
He sounded more desperate than he would've liked, more desperate than he wanted to be. His old friend's face was full of sympathy.
"I don't know anything about it," she said. "I met up with you and Ragnor for a brief vacation. You seemed troubled, but you were trying to laugh it off, the way you always do. You and Ragnor said you had a brilliant idea to start a joke cult. I told you not to do it. That's it."
He, Catarina, and Ragnor had taken many trips together, over the centuries. One memorable trip had gotten Magnus banished from Peru. He had always enjoyed those adventures more than any others ~ Cassandra Clare

Why do we insist on building the largest and most impressive structures in our city when people on the other side of town are hungry, jobless and worshipping in storefronts? ~ K.P. Yohannan

She made up prayers and said them,
Worshipping unknown gods with unknown singing,
Her customary magic, which would cover
The white moon's face and darken the sun with cloud. ~ Ovid

My wakeup call wasn't some light switch of empowerment. From as early as preschool I feared that if I didn't grow up to be the pretty princess men fawned over, I was a failure. That mentality was my disease. It got me raped. It made me feel dirty and devalued because my cherry wasn't popped on a bed of rose petals. It fueled an adolescence juggling starvation and vomiting until my throat bled out and my stomach acid burned through the plumbing. It made me snort coke, smoke meth, and routinely gulp down narcotic petri dishes in hopes of obtaining hallucinogenic intimacy with junkie boyfriends. But most of all, it made me waste my youth chasing, obsessing over, fighting for, worshipping, clinging to, and crying over one after another loser. At some point, I just quit giving a fuck. ~ Maggie Young

Your way of life is sinful and wrong, he said fiercely.
Thus says a man who admits to worshipping a God who vilifies pleasure, relegates women to roles that are little more than servants and broodmares, though they are the backbone of your church, and seeks to control his worshippers through guilt and fear. ~ P.C. Cast

Oh, I am no friend of present-day Christianity, though its founder was sublime- I have seen through present-day Christianity only too well. That icy coldness mesmerized even me, in my youth- but I have taken my revenge since then. How? By worshipping the love which they, the theologians, call sin, by respecting a whore, etc, To some, woman is heresy and diabolical. To me she is the opposite.ov ~ Vincent Van Gogh

The lie of the ideal has till now been the curse on reality; on its account humanity itself has become fake and false right down to its deepest instincts - to the point of worshipping values opposite to the only ones which would guarantee it a flourishing, a future, the exaled right to a future. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Subtract everything inessential from America and what's left? Geography and political philosophy, V says. The Declaration of Independence and Constitution. The Federalist Papers. --I'd say geography and mythology, James says. Our legends. He gives examples, talks about Columbus sailing past the edge of the world, John Smith at Jamestown and Puritans at Plymouth Rock, conquering the howling wilderness. Benjamin Franklin going from rags to riches with the help of a little slave trading, Frederick Douglass escaping to freedom, the assassination of Lincoln, annexing the West, All those stories that tell us who we are---stories of exploration, freedom, slavery, and always violence. We keep clutching those things, or at least worn-out images of them, like idols we can't quit worshipping. ~ Charles Frazier

What seems wrong to you is right for him
What is poison to one is honey to someone else.
Purity and impurity, sloth and diligence in worship,
These mean nothing to Me.
I am apart from all that.
Ways of worshipping are not to be ranked as better
or worse than one another.
Hindus do Hindu things.
The Dravidian Muslims in India do what they do.
It's all praise, and it's all right.
It's not I that's glorified in acts of worship.
It's the worshippers! I don't hear
the words they say. I look inside at the humility.
That broken-open lowliness is the Reality,
not the language! Forget phraseology.
I want burning, burning.
Be Friends
with your burning. Burn up your thinking
and your forms of expression! ~ Karen Armstrong

The Jews emerge into history, not a nation of keen spiritual aspirations and altruistic ethics, but that pagan people, worshipping rocks, sheep and cattle, and spirits of caves and wells, of whom the Old Testament, tending towards its higher ideal, gives fragmentary but convincing evidence. ~ James T. Shotwell

Yes, cower! If you simpletons truly understood what you have just seen, you would be down on your knees worshipping me! HA! HA HA HA HA HA! ~ Richard Roberts

So we didn't get the denominations and the separate congregations really till about into Civil War time. What's happened then, of course, is now that we've had well over 100 years of this history to establish separate cultures, different ways of worshipping, and different ways of understanding theology so that when people try to come together makes it very difficult. And then, of course, social networks, you know, how do we find a place to worship? ~ Michael Emerson

Let me love you," he says hoarsely.
"Yes," I answer, and turning, he hauls me into his arms, his lips seeking mine, beseeching me, worshipping me, cherishing me ... loving me. ~ E.L. James

Every atheist is an idolater- unless he is worshipping the true God in his impersonal aspect. The majority of the pious are idolaters. ~ Simone Weil

We are not worshipping anyone or anything, we are simply communing with creation. ~ Paulo Coelho

You grow up trying to interpret, worshipping, visual symbols. It's a body-soaked imagery that you're looking at. ~ Robert Gober

While believing strongly, without evidence, is considered a mark of madness or stupidity in any other area of our lives, faith in God still holds immense prestige in our society. Religion is the one area of our discourse where it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about. It is telling that this aura of nobility extends only to those faiths that still have many subscribers. Anyone caught worshipping Poseidon, even at sea, will be thought insane. ~ Sam Harris

Shopkeepers - the great landed and commercial interests - regularly sat and slept, and where the two publicans occupied pews, but seldom made even the pretence of worshipping. ~ Thomas Hughes

A worshipper perceives that he is near to God because he is awake all night worshipping God. But after worship, your prayers are for health, long life, wealth, and for the damsels and slaves of the Paradise. Ponder! Did you ever pray to God, 'O' God, I desire from Thee nothing but Thee'? ~ Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi