Quotes on Gods

The gods look in pleasure on penitent sinners.

Author: Theodor Adorno

For this is the mark of a wise and upright man, not to rail against the gods in misfortune.

Author: Aeschylus

Who apart from the gods is without pain for his whole lifetime's length?

Author: Aeschylus

The gods help them that help themselves.

Author: Aesop

When I investigate and when I discover that the forces of the heavens and the planets are within ourselves, then truly I seem to be living among the gods.

Author: Leon Alberti

From this entertainment industry, may the gods of language protect us.

Author: David Antin

Shrines! Shrines! Surely you don't believe in the gods. What's your argument? Where's your proof?

Author: Aristophanes

The gods too are fond of a joke.

Author: Aristotle

Plant diseases, drought, desolation, despair were recurrent catastrophes during the ages - and the ancient remedies: supplications to supernatural spirits or gods.

Author: Norman Borlaug

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.

Author: Anita Brookner

Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.

Author: Gilbert Chesterton

Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.

Author: Gilbert Chesterton

He greatly valued his possessions, chiefly because they were his, and derived genuine pleasure from contemplating a painting, a statuette, a rare lace curtain - no matter what - after he had bought it and placed it among his household gods.

Author: Kate Chopin

Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what's known as infinity.

Author: Jean Cocteau

Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.

Author: Cyril Connolly

The gods are watching, but idly, yawning.

Author: Mason Cooley

To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all.

Author: Aleister Crowley

No man who is not willing to help himself has any right to apply to his friends, or to the gods.

Author: Demosthenes

I do not know whether there are gods, but there ought to be.

Author: Diogenes

I want to know all Gods thoughts; all the rest are just details.

Author: Albert Einstein

Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.

Author: Ralph Emerson

Happy is he who has gained the wealth of divine thoughts, wretched is he whose beliefs about the gods are dark.

Author: Empedocles

American Gods is about 200,000 words long, and I'm sure there are words that are simply in there 'cause I like them. I know I couldn't justify each and every one of them.

Author: Neil Gaiman

Silver and gold the Gods have denied them, whether in mercy or in wrath, I am unable to determine.

Author: Germanicus

To witness two lovers is a spectacle for the gods.

Author: Johann Goethe

There is such a thing as tempting the gods. Talking too much, too soon and with too much self-satisfaction has always seemed to me a sure way to court disaster. The forces of retribution are always listening. They never sleep.

Author: Meg Greenfield

Nearer the gods no mortal may approach.

Author: Edmund Halley

If you believe, as the Greeks did, that man is at the mercy of the gods, then you write tragedy. The end is inevitable from the beginning. But if you believe that man can solve his own problems and is at nobody's mercy, then you will probably write melodrama.

Author: Lillian Hellman

Badness you can get easily, in quantity; the road is smooth, and it lies close by, But in front of excellence the immortal gods have put sweat, and long and steep is the way to it.

Author: Hesiod

Prayer indeed is good, but while calling on the gods a man should himself lend a hand.

Author: Hippocrates

Leave the rest to the gods.

Author: Horace

The ineffable joy of forgiving and being forgiven forms an ecstasy that might well arouse the envy of the gods.

Author: Elbert Hubbard

Anybody depending on somebody else's gods is depending on a fox not to eat chickens.

Author: Zora Hurston

Mankind is like dogs, not gods - as long as you don't get mad they'll bite you - but stay mad and you'll never be bitten. Dogs don't respect humility and sorrow.

Author: Jack Kerouac

For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.

Author: John Keynes

Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings.

Author: Soren Kierkegaard

The poets, therefore, however much they adorned the gods in their poems, and amplified their exploits with the highest praises, yet very frequently confess that all things are held together and governed by one spirit or mind.

Author: Lactantius

The day of the absolute is over, and we're in for the strange gods once more.

Author: David Lawrence

And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods?

Author: Thomas Macaulay

Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision. The more a man can achieve, the more he may be certain that the devil will inhabit a part of his creation.

Author: Norman Mailer

Some gods may cross your path, but why should gods be beautiful? They could also be frightening.

Author: Jeanne Moreau

The latest page I've been working is about the organization of the pantheon of the gods. Who's indebted to whom, how they are related, who screwed whose uncle or grandmother, all of that.

Author: Ben Nicholson

There is in general good reason to suppose that in several respects the gods could all benefit from instruction by us human beings. We humans are - more humane.

Author: Friedrich Nietzsche

Where no gods are, spectres rule.

Author: Novalis

I should be soaring away with my head tilted slightly toward the gods, feeding on the caviar of Shakespeare. An actor must act.

Author: Laurence Olivier

It is convenient that there be gods, and, as it is convenient, let us believe there are.

Author: Ovid

The gods behold all righteous actions.

Author: Ovid

The gods' service is tolerable, man's intolerable.

Author: Plato

Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts.

Author: Plotinus

Since, therefore, individuals as well as the public are so indebted to these writers for the benefits they enjoy, I think them not only entitled to the honour of palms and crowns, but even to be numbered among the gods.

Author: Marcus Pollio

In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.

Author: Terry Pratchett

He was the sort of person who stood on mountaintops during thunderstorms in wet copper armour shouting "All the Gods are bastards."

Author: Terry Pratchett

Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don't find out til too late that he's been playing with two queens all along.

Author: Terry Pratchett

As to gods, I have no way of knowing either that they exist or do not exist, or what they are like.

Author: Protagoras

With stupidity the gods themselves struggle in vain.

Author: Friedrich Schiller

Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain.

Author: Friedrich Schiller

After months of want and hunger, we suddenly found ourselves able to have meals fit for the gods, and with appetites the gods might have envied.

Author: Ernest Shackleton

Exceeds man's might: that dwells with the gods above.

Author: William Shakespeare

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.

Author: William Shakespeare

The weather is perfect. The gods are shining on us.

Author: Frank Shorter

We are making gods out of global celebrities.

Author: Elizabeth Smith

The poets are only the interpreters of the Gods.

Author: Socrates

The gods plant reason in mankind, of all good gifts the highest.

Author: Sophocles

To live without evil belongs only to the gods.

Author: Sophocles

If the timing's right and the gods are with you, something special happens.

Author: Rick Springfield

Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics. Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can.

Author: Richard Stallman

The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts.

Author: Alfred Tennyson

I have with me two gods, Persuasion and Compulsion.

Author: Themistocles

I do not concern myself with gods and spirits either good or evil nor do I serve any.

Author: Lao Tzu

Cease to think that the decrees of the gods can be changed by prayers.

Author: Virgil

From my example learn to be just, and not to despise the gods.

Author: Virgil

When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.

Author: Oscar Wilde

The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology.

Author: E. Wilson

I saw my parents as gods whose every wish must be obeyed or I would suffer the penalty of anguish and guilt.

Author: Natalie Wood

Our lives are not in the lap of the gods, but in the lap of our cooks.

Author: Lin Yutang

Fate is never too generous even to its favorites. Rarely do the gods grant a mortal more than one immortal deed.

Author: Stefan Zweig