Philosopher Quotes on God

“Her reverence for the divine, her generosity, her inability not only to do wrong but even to conceive of doing it. And the simple way she lived—not in the least like the rich. (Hays translation)”

I, 3

“How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.”

Meditations, Book IV | IV, 18

“In your actions, don't procrastinate. In your conversations, don't confuse. In your thoughts, don't wander. In your soul, don't be passive or aggressive. In your life, don't be all about business.”

Quotes from different translations | VIII. 51

“What is divine is full of Providence. Even chance is not divorced from nature, from the inweaving and enfolding of things governed by Providence. Everything proceeds from it.”

Meditations, Book II | All that is from the gods is full of Providence. II, 3

“You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life? If you can manage this, that's all even the gods can ask of you.”

Meditations, Book II | Thou seest how few be the things, the which if a man has at his command his life flows gently on and is divine. II, 5

“The painful secret of Gods and kings; it is that men are free. They are free, Aegisthus. You know it and they don't.”

The Flies(1943) | As quoted in Sartre : A Philosophic Study (1966), by Anthony Manser, p. 227

“For those who want 'to change life", 'to reinvent love,' God is nothing but a hindrance.”

Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr(1952) | p. 500

“What do I care about Jupiter? Justice is a human issue, and I do not need a god to teach it to me.”

The Flies(1943) | Orestes, Act 2

“He chooses the most feared, most hated man in order to worship him as a god, feeling sure that he is alone in perceiving the god's secret virtues.”

Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr(1952) | p. 165

“The consciousness of being betrayed is to the collective consciousness of a sacred group what a certain form of schizophrenia is to the individual...it is a form of madness.”

Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr(1952) | p. 193

“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”

Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer.

“Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy, the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.”

1760s | "Whether it is useful to maintain the people in superstition," Treatise on Toleration (1763)

“I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition.”

1770s | Déclaration de Voltaire, note to his secretary, Jean-Louis Wagnière (28 February 1778)

“If there were only one religion in England there would be danger of despotism, if there were two they would cut each other's throats, but there are thirty, and they live in peace and happiness.”

1730s | Letters on England , letter 6, "On the Presbyterians", trans. Leonard Tancock (Penguin Books, 1980) p. 41, published first in English in 1733

“Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy: a very stupid daughter of a very wise mother.”

A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness(1902) | p. 111

“Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked.”

XV, 22

“De actis cum Felice Manicheo {AD 404), translated as A Debate with Felix the Manichean , ¶1709, in The Faith of the Early Fathers Vol 3 : St. Augustine to the End of the Patristic Age by W.A. Jurgens, p. 88”

Nowhere in the Gospel do we read that the Lord said: "I am sending you a Paraclete who will teach you about the course of the sun and moon ." For He wanted to make Christians , not mathematicians .

“We were ensnared by the wisdom of the serpent; we are set free by the foolishness of God .”

De doctrina christiana | 1:14 Latin: Serpentis sapientia decepti sumus, Dei stultitia liberamur.

“Shut out the evil love of the world, that you may be filled with the love of God. You are a vessel that was already full: you must pour away what you have, that you may take in what you have not.”

Ten Homilies on the First Epistle of John(414) | Second Homily, as translated by John Burnaby (1955), p. 274

“Beauty grows in you to the extent that love grows, because charity itself is the soul 's beauty.”

Ten Homilies on the First Epistle of John(414) | Ninth Homily, Paragraph 9, as translated by Boniface Ramsey (2008) Augustinian Heritage Institute

“Self-reliance, the height and perfection of man, is reliance on God.”

The Fugitive Slave Law , a lecture in NYC (March 7, 1854)

“Character is higher than intellect...A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think.”

The American Scholar(1837) | par. 27

“Life is too short to waste The critic bite or cynic bark, Quarrel, or reprimand; 'Twill soon be dark; Up! mind thine own aim, and God speed the mark!”

Poems(1847) | To J. W. , st. 4

“It costs a beautiful person no exertion to paint her image on our eyes; yet how splendid is that benefit! It costs no more for a wise soul to convey his quality to other men.”

Representative Men(1850) | Uses of Great Men

“It is time to be old, To take in sail: — The god of bounds, Who sets to seas a shore, Came to me in his fatal rounds, And said: 'No more!”

May-Day and Other Pieces(1867) | Terminus

“Justice was in all countries originally administered by the priesthood; nor indeed could laws in their first feeble state have either authority or sanction, so as to compel men to relinquish their natural independence, had they not appeared to come down to them enforced by beings of more than human power. The first openings of civility have been everywhere made by religion. Amongst the Romans, the custody and interpretation of the laws continued solely in the college of the pontiffs for above a century.”

An Essay towards an Abridgment of English History (1757– c . 1763), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI (1856), p. 196

“The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.”

Preface

“I take toleration to be a part of religion . I do not know which I would sacrifice; I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either.”

1770s | Speech on the Bill for the Relief of Protestant Dissenters (7 March 1773)

“There is nothing that God has judged good for us that He has not given us the means to accomplish, both in the natural and the moral world.”

Undated | Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 261

“Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy for superstition.”

Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

“The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth.”

Sevastopol in May (1855), Ch. 16

“My Religion (1884), Ch. 8 В чем моя вера?”

...никогда Христос ... ни одним словом не утверждал личное воскресение и бессмертие личности за гробом...

“My Religion (1884), Ch. 12”

Error is the force that welds men together; truth is communicated to men only by deeds of truth. Only deeds of truth, by introducing light into the conscience of each individual, can dissolve the cohesion of error, and detach men one by one from the mass united together by the cohesion of error.

“My Religion (1884), as translated in The Human Experience : Contemporary American and Soviet Fiction and Poetry (1989) by the Quaker US/USSR Committee”

I know that my unity with all people cannot be destroyed by national boundaries and government orders.

“Martin's soul grew very very glad. He crossed himself put on his spectacles, and began reading the Gospel just where it had opened; and at the top of the page he read: I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in. And at the bottom of the page he read: Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren even these least, ye did it unto me (Matt. xxv). And Martin understood that his dream had come true; and that the Saviour had really come to him that day, and he had welcomed him.”

Where Love Is, God Is " (1885), also translated as "Where Love is, There God is Also" - (full text online)

“Plato says, "'Tis to no purpose for a sober man to knock at the door of the Muses;" and Aristotle says "that no excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of folly."”

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919) | Book II, Ch. 2. Of Drunkenness

“The mariner of old said to Neptune in a great tempest, "O God! thou mayest save me if thou wilt, and if thou wilt thou mayest destroy me; but whether or no, I will steer my rudder true."”

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919) | Book II, Ch. 16. Of Glory

“We are no nearer heaven on the top of Mount Cenis than at the bottom of the sea; take the distance with your astrolabe. They debase God even to the carnal knowledge of women, to so many times, and so many generations.”

Book II | Ch. 12

“Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm , and yet he will be making gods by dozens.”

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919) | Book II, Ch. 12. Apology for Raimond Sebond

“We are born to inquire after truth; it belongs to a greater power to possess it. It is not, as Democritus said, hid in the bottom of the deeps, but rather elevated to an infinite height in the divine knowledge.”

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919) | Book III, Ch. 8. Of the Art of Conversation

“The fault is in the one who blames. Spirit sees nothing to criticize.”

Timothy Freke, Rumi Wisdom: Daily Teachings from the Great Sufi Master (2000)

“For love of our Almighty God, the Lord of all, Who would not die; a stock, a block, we needs must call.”

A Dictionary of Oriental Quotations(1911) | p. 26 (Redhouse)

“Alas for this life so light, beware of this slumber so heavy, O soul seek the Beloved, O friend seek the Friend O watchman be wakeful; it behoves not a watchman to sleep.”

A Dictionary of Oriental Quotations(1911) | p. 88, Diwan-i-Shams-i-Tabriz (Nicholson)

“Every moment the voice of Love is coming from left and right We are bound for heaven; who has a mind to sight-seeing?”

A Dictionary of Oriental Quotations(1911) | p. 118, Diwan-i-Shams-i-Tabriz (Nicholson)

“Ah! O crow, give up this life and live anew! In view of God’s changes cast away your life! Choose the new, give up the old, For each single present year is better than three past.”

A Dictionary of Oriental Quotations(1911) | p. 122 (Whinfield)

“Dear Habicht, / Such a solemn air of silence has descended between us that I almost feel as if I am committing a sacrilege when I break it now with some inconsequential babble... / What are you up to, you frozen whale, you smoked, dried, canned piece of soul...?”

Lieber Habicht! / Es herrscht ein weihevolles Stillschweigen zwischen uns, so daß es mir fast wie eine sündige Entweihung vorkommt, wenn ich es jetzt durch ein wenig bedeutsames Gepappel unterbreche... / Was machen Sie denn, Sie eingefrorener Walfisch, Sie getrocknetes, eingebüchstes Stück Seele...?

“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods .”

Essay to Leo Baeck(1953) | Ideas and Opinions

“Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living.”

Einstein and the Poet(1983) | p. 142

“I want to know how God created this world. I'm not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details.”

Einstein and Religion(1999) | As quoted in "A Talk with Einstein" in The Listener 54 (1955) p. 123

“It seems hard to sneak a look at God's cards. But that He plays dice and uses "telepathic" methods... is something that I cannot believe for a single moment.”

Albert Einstein: The Human Side(1979) | Letter to Cornel Lanczos (21 March 1942), p. 68

“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Revelations of Divine Love, Chapter 27

“Love was His meaning.”

Revelations of Divine Love, Chapter 86

“He said not, 'Thou shalt not be tempested, thou shalt not be travailed, thou shalt not be afflicted'; but He said, 'Thou shalt not be overcome.'”

Revelations of Divine Love, Chapter 68

“This is a Revelation of Love that Jesus Christ , our endless bliss, made in Sixteen Shewings, or Revelations particular. Of the which the First is of His precious crowning with thorns; and therewith was comprehended and specified the Trinity, with the Incarnation, and unity betwixt God and man's soul ; with many fair shewings of endless wisdom and teachings of love: in which all the Shewings that follow be grounded and oned.”

First lines

“Our Lord God, Allmighty Wisdom, All-Love, right as verily as He hath made everything that is, all-so verily He doeth and worketh all-thing that is done.”

Wikiquote

“If God had looked into our minds he would not have been able to see there whom we were speaking of.”

Philosophical Investigations(1953) | Pt II, p. 217

“Religion is, as it were, the calm bottom of the sea at its deepest point, which remains calm however high the waves on the surface may be.”

Culture and Value(1980) | p. 53e

“"I never believed in God before." — that I understand. But not: "I never really believed in Him before."”

Culture and Value(1980) | p. 53e

“To believe in a God means to understand the question about the meaning of life. To believe in a God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter. To believe in God means to see that life has a meaning.”

Notebooks 1914-1916 | Journal entry (8 July 1916), p. 74e

“Frazer's account of the magical and religious views of mankind is unsatisfactory; it makes these views look like errors .”

Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951(1993) | Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough , p. 119

“You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself.”

Lectures from Colombo to Almora

“The highest truth is this: God is present in all beings. They are His multiple forms. There is no other God to seek. . . . It is a man-making religion that we want. . . . Give up these weakening mysticisms, and be strong. . . . For the next fifty years. ... let all other gods disappear from our minds. This is the only God that is awake, our own race, everywhere His hands, everywhere His feet, everywhere His ears; He covers everything. . . . The first of all worships is the worship of those all around us. ... He alone serves God who serves all other beings.”

Quoted from Will Durant , Our Oriental Heritage.

“To succeed, you must have tremendous perseverance, tremendous will. “I will drink the ocean ”, says the persevering soul ; “at my will mountains will crumble up”. Have that sort of energy , that sort of will; work hard, and you will reach the goal.”

Vedânta philosophy : Lectures by the Swâmi Vivekânanda on Râja Yoga (1899), Ch. VI : Pratyâhâra and Dhâraṇâm

“India is immortal if she persists in her search for God . But if she goes in for politics and social conflict, she will die.”

A few hours before his death, as quoted in Bulletin of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture , Volume 14 (1963), p. 469

“To devote your life to the good of all and to the happiness of all is religion. Whatever you do for your own sake is not religion.”

Pearls of Wisdom

“I'm a lover of my own liberty, and so I would do nothing to restrict yours. I simply want to please my own conscience, which is God.”

1920s | Young India (21 January 1927)

“Disobedience is a right that belongs to every human being, and it becomes a sacred duty when it springs from civility.”

1920s | Young India (4 January 1926)

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?”

1940s | Non-Violence in Peace and War , 1942, Vol. 1, Ch. 142

“If India adopted the doctrine of love as an active part of her religion and introduced it in her politics. Swaraj would descend upon India from heaven. But I am painfully aware that that event is far off as yet.”

1920s | "A Word of Explanation" in Young India (January 1921)

“Satan 's successes are the greatest when he appears with the name of God on his lips.”

1920s | "The Inwardness of Non-Co-operation". Quoted in Freedom's Battle: Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches (1922), p. 144 .

“Speech is human , silence is divine , yet also brutish and dead : therefore we must learn both arts .”

Notebooks (1830).

“Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness on the confines of two everlasting hostile empires, — Necessity and Free Will .”

Critical and Miscellaneous Essays(1827–1855) | Essays , Goethe's Works.

“Great men are the inspired (speaking and acting) texts of that divine Book of Revelations, wherof a chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named History.”

Sartor Resartus(1833–1834) | Bk. II, ch. 8.

“All work, even cotton spinning, is noble; work is alone noble ... A life of ease is not for any man, nor for any god.”

Past and Present(1843) | Bk. III, ch. 4.

“The three great elements of modern civilization, gunpowder, printing, and the Protestant religion.”

Critical and Miscellaneous Essays(1827–1855) | The State of German Literature (1827).

“I hold to faith in the divine love — which, so many years ago for a brief moment in a little corner of the earth, walked about as a man bearing the name of Jesus Christ — as the foundation on which alone my happiness rests.”

(1773), translated by Albert Schweizer in Goethe: Five Studies (1961), Beacon Press, p. 53

“Tell me you stones, O speak, you towering palaces ! Streets, say a word! Spirit of this place, are you dumb? All things are alive in your sacred walls Eternal Rome, it's only for me all is still.”

Roman Elegies(1789) | Elegy 1

“The folly! Every man in turn would still His own peculiar notions magnify! If Islam mean submission to God’s will, May we all live in Islam, and all die.”

West–östlicher Divan(West–Eastern Diwan)(1819/1827) | The West–Eastern Divan , translated by Edward Dowden, VI. Book of Maxims, p. 86.

“Wer Wissenschaft und Kunst besitzt, / Hat auch Religion / Wer jene beiden nicht besitzt / Der habe Religion”

Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre(Apprenticeship)(1786–1830) | Who science has and art He has religion too Who neither of them owns Religion is his due. As quoted in Jost Lemmerich's "Science and Conscience: The Life of James Franck" (2011), p. 261. Variant trans

“Is it so big a mystery what god and man and world are? No! but nobody knows how to solve it so the mystery hangs on.”

Venetian Epigrams(1790) | As translated by Jerome Rothenberg

“Faith is a living, daring confidence in God's grace.”

An Introduction to St. Paul's Letter to the Romans from Dr. Martin Luthers Vermischte Deutsche Schriften . Johann K. Irmischer, ed. Vol. 63(Erlangen: Heyder and Zimmer, 1854), pp. 124-125. (EA 63:124-125)

“Pray, and let God worry.”

In, I Am a Christian: The Nun, the Devil, and Martin Luther , Carolyn M. Schneider, Fortress Press 2010, ISBN 0800697324 ISBN 978-0800697327 p . 49. (citing in Notes (p. 148), WA , Tr 2:131–32). | Expurgated version in, What Luther Says , Ewald M. Plass, vol. 1, pp. 403-404, (citing WA , Tr 2, No. 1557). 1191 How Luther Handled the Devil, May 20, 1532. "When the devil comes during the night to pla

“The heathen really make their self-invented notions and dreams of God and idol. Ultimately, they put their trust in that which is nothing. So it is with all idolatry. For it happens not merely by erecting an image and worshipping it, but rather it happens in the heart. For the heart seeks help and consolation from creatures, saints, or devils. It neither cares for God, nor looks to Him for anything better than to believe that He is willing to help.”

On Infant Baptism," Large Catechism (1529)

“Some will object that the Law is divine and holy. Let it be divine and holy. The Law has no right to tell me that I must be justified by it.”

Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians(1535) | Chapter 2

“The Mass is the greatest blasphemy of God, and the highest idolatry upon earth, an abomination the like of which has never been in Christendom since the time of the Apostles.”

Table Talk(1569) | 171

“My soul is occupied, And all my substance in His service; Now I guard no flock, Nor have I any other employment: My sole occupation is love . ~ 28”

Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom

“There thou wilt show me That which my soul desired; And there Thou wilt give at once, O Thou, my life! That which Thou gavest me the other day. ~ 38”

Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom

“Deny your desires and you will find what your heart longs for. For how do you know if any desire of yours is according to God?”

The Sayings of Light and Love

“One human thought alone is worth more than the entire world, hence God alone is worthy of it.”

The Sayings of Light and Love

“If you wish to attain holy recollection, you will do so not by receiving but by denying.”

The Sayings of Light and Love

“Love is the active, working principle in all true faith. It is its very soul, without which it is dead. "Faith works by love."”

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers(1895) | p. 396.

“Every Christian that goes before us from this world is a ransomed spirit waiting to welcome us in heaven.”

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers(1895) | p. 304.

“Resolved, to confess frankly to myself all that which I find in myself, either infirmity or sin; and, if it be what concerns religion, also to confess the whole case to God, and implore needed help.”

Seventy Resolutions(1722-1723) | No. 68.

“Holy practice is the most decisive evidence of the reality of our repentance. "Bring forth fruits meet for repentance."”

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers(1895) | p. 509.

“A little, wretched, despicable creature; a worm, a mere nothing, and less than nothing; a vile insect that has risen up in contempt against the majesty of Heaven and earth.”

The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners (1734).

“In so far as we are individuals, each of us is a fragment of a species, a part of this universe, a single dot in the immense network of forces and influences, cosmic, ethnic, historic, whose laws we obey. We are subject to the determination of the physical world. But each man is also a person, he is not subject to the stars and atoms; for he subsists entirely with the very subsistence of his spiritual soul, and the latter is in him a principle of creative unity, of independence and of freedom.”

Scholasticism and Politics (1940)

“Whereas the intelligence of God is both the cause and the measure of the truth of things, things are both the cause and the measure of the truth of our intelligence.”

Theonas: Conversations of a Sage(1921) [Sheed & Ward, 1933] | p. 9.

“The philosopher says that God's knowledge is the measure of things, and that things are the measure of man's knowledge.”

Theonas: Conversations of a Sage(1921) [Sheed & Ward, 1933] | p. 77.

“Western humanism has religious and transcendent sources without which it is incomprehensible to itself.”

Integral Humanism, (1936, Notre Dame Edition) | p. 154.

“To philosophize man must put his whole soul into play, in much the same manner that to run he must use his heart and lungs.”

An Essay on Christian Philosophy(1955) | p. 17.

“It is the highest service to submit the evil impulse to God through the power of love.”

For The Sake of Heaven(1945) | p. 45

“God ... demands everything, in order to give everything anew to him who loves Him, after that loving has truly given up all.”

For The Sake of Heaven(1945) | p. 45

“In the presence of God himself man stands always like a solitary tree in the wilderness.”

For The Sake of Heaven(1945) | p. 95

“When we desire to lead men to God, we must not simply overthrow their idols. In each of these images we must seek to discover what divine quality he who carved it sought.”

For The Sake of Heaven(1945) | p. 117

“Whoever abhors the name and fancies that he is godless — when he addresses with his whole devoted being the Thou of his life that cannot be restricted by any other, he addresses God.”

I and Thou(1923)

“It is you, O God, who is being sought in various religions in various ways, and named with various names. For you remain as you are, to all incomprehensible and inexpressible. When you will graciously grant it then sword, jealous hatred and evil will cease and all will come to know that there is but one religion in the variety of religious rites.”

Great Thoughts Treasury

“God, therefore, is the one most simple essence of the entire universe.”

ibid.

“Within itself the soul sees all things more truly than as they exist in different things outside itself. And the more it goes out unto other things in order to know them, the more it enters into itself in order to know itself.”

Nicholas of Cusa and Jasper Hopkins (Translator). On Equality. 1459.

“Life, as it exists on Earth in the form of men, animals and plants, is to be found, let us suppose in a high form in the solar and stellar regions. Rather than think that so many stars and parts of the heavens are uninhabited and that this earth of ours alone is peopled – and that with beings perhaps of an inferior type – we will suppose that in every region there are inhabitants, differing in nature by rank and all owing their origin to God, who is the center and circumference of all stellar regions”

De docta ignorantia

“The universe has no circumference , for if it had a center and a circumference there would be some and some thing beyond the world, suppositions which are wholly lacking in truth. Since, therefore, it is impossible that the universe should be enclosed within a corporeal center and corporeal boundary, it is not within our power to understand the universe, whose center and circumference are God . And though the universe cannot be infinite, nevertheless it cannot be conceived as finite since there are no limits within which it could be confined.”

ibid.

“It would be a sign of great simplicity to think that the world was created in six days, or indeed at all in time; [...] Time is a thing posterior to the world. Therefore it would be correctly said that the world was not created in time, but that time had its existence in consequence of the world. For it is the motion of the heaven that has displayed the nature of time.”

Allegories of the Sacred Laws ( Legum allegoriae ), Book I, §2; tr. C. D. Yonge, The works of Philo Judaeus (1854), Vol. 1, pp. 52–53.

“Moses … denied to the members of the sacred commonwealth unrestricted liberty to use and partake of the other kinds of food. All the animals of land, sea or air whose flesh is the finest and fattest, thus titillating and exciting the malignant foe pleasure, he sternly forbade them to eat, knowing that they set a trap for the most slavish of the senses, the taste, and produce gluttony, an evil very dangerous both to soul and body.”

69.

“The holy Moses … discarded passion in general and detesting it, as most vile in itself and in its effects, denounced especially desire as a battery of destruction to the soul, which must be done away with or brought into obedience to the governance of reason, and then all things will be permeated through and through with peace and good order, those perfect forms of the good which bring the full perfection of happy living.”

75-77.

“There is no sweeter delight than that the soul should be charged through and through with justice, exercising itself in her eternal principles and doctrines and leaving no vacant place into which injustice can make its way.”

On the Special Laws | 97.

“The legislator of the Jews in a bolder spirit went to a further extreme and in the practice of his “naked” philosophy, as they call it, ventured to speak of him who was possessed by love of the divine.”

Every Good Man is Free | 43.

“Evil will come to nought and will be completely destroyed. The divine, pure goodness will contain in itself every nature endowed with reason; nothing made by God is excluded from his kingdom once everything mixed with some elements of base material has been consumed by refinement in fire.”

A Treatise on 1 Corinthians 15.28

“Dialogue on the Soul and the Resurrection , Patrologia Graeca 46.101-105”

As virtue is a thing that has no master, that is, is free, everything that is free will be united with virtue.

“Indeed, it was for this that intelligent beings came into existence; namely, that the riches of the Divine blessings should not lie idle. The All-creating Wisdom fashioned these souls, these receptacles with free wills, as vessels as it were, for this very purpose, that there should be some capacities able to receive His blessings and become continually larger with the inpouring of the stream.”

Dialogue on the Soul and the Resurrection

“Dialogue on the Soul and the Resurrection”

Indeed, it was for this that intelligent beings came into existence; namely, that the riches of the Divine blessings should not lie idle. The All-creating Wisdom fashioned these souls, these receptacles with free wills, as vessels as it were, for this very purpose, that there should be some capacities able to receive His blessings and become continually larger with the inpouring of the stream.

“Every concept that comes from some comprehensible image, by an approximate understanding and by guessing at the Divine nature, constitutes an idol of God and does not proclaim God.”

The Life of Moses ; translation, introd. and notes by Abraham J. Malherbe and Everett Ferguson ; pref. by John Meyendorff Page 96 (1978 ed).

“Compare yourself, for wealth, status and health to those lower than you. For faith, science, and virtue, compare yourself to those who are higher than you.”

Kitab al-Akhlaq wa’l Siyar ; Trsltd by N. Tomiche under the title: Epitre Morale , Collection UNESCO, Beyrouth, 1961, p. 21.

“I have come across most people- with the exception of those that God most High has protected-they rush into misery, worry, the exhaustion of this world, and amassing terrible sins, that will earn them hell-fire, gaining nothing in pursuing their evil deeds… And they know that their evil intentions will neither fulfill their wishes, nor bring any gains; and that with purer intentions they will obtain great rest for their souls.”

Kitab al-Akhlaq wa’l Siyar p: 17

“Blame from a man with a corrupt soul in opposing him, and refraining from evil deeds is better for you than his esteem if you did evil.”

ibid, 22

“May God make us amongst those he allows to do good, and to practice it, and those who see the right path as none of us is without weakness; whosoever sees his weakness will forget those of others. May God make us die in the faith of Muhammad. Amen, Oh Master of the Universes.”

ibn Hazm's style of ending a work, in Salim al-Hassani, Ibn Hazm’s Philosophy and Thoughts on Science

“If you pride yourself with your science, then you must realize that you have no merit; science is a gift that God has granted you. Thus do not acknowledge it in a way that angers the Highest, because he could erase it from your head through an illness of some sort.”

ibid, 83-4