Quotes by Canadian Authors - Page 168

Bernie believed in God. He believed that God wanted people to enjoy life to the fullest, not drench themselves in aversion and prejudice.
Rebecca McNutt
Life is suffering Love is the desire to see unnecessary suffering amelioratedTruth is the handmaiden of loveDialogue is the pathway to truth Humility is recognition of personal insufficiency and the willingness to learn To learn is to die voluntarily and be born again, in great ways and smallSo speech must be untrammeled So that dialogue can take placeSo that we can all humbly learn So that truth can serve loveSo that suffering can be amelioratedSo that we can all stumble forward to the Kingdom of God
Jordan B Peterson
What is the first anesthetic?Wealth.And if I take your wealth?Necessities.And if I demolish your home, burn your fields?Acknowledgement.And if I make it taboo to sympathize with your plight?Family.And if I kill your family?God.And God......Hasn't said a word in two thousand years. (136)
Omar El Akkad
Gods are but greater demons," the Cishaurim said, "hungers across the surface of eternity, wanting only to taste the clarity of our souls. Can you not see this?
R. Scott Bakker
LIII.What is the holiness of conversation? It isto master death.
Anne Carson
The glory of God is as destructive of evil as it is creative of good.
John G. Lake
There’s faith that knows itself as faith, Proyas, and there’s faith that confuses itself for knowledge. The first embraces uncertainty, acknowledges the mysteriousness of the God. It begets compassion and tolerance. Who can entirely condemn when they’re not entirely certain they’re in the right? But the second, Proyas, the second embraces certainty and only pays lip service to the God’s mystery. It begets intolerance, hatred, violence.
R. Scott Bakker
What is less often noticed is that it is precisely the kind of moral instruction that parents are constantly trying to give their children — concrete, imaginative, teaching general principles from particular instances, and seeking all the time to bring the children to appreciate and share the parent's own attitudes and view of life… The all-embracing principles of conduct
J.I. Packer
Only when it is seen that what decides each individual's destiny is whether or not God decides to save him from his sins, and that this is a decision that God need not make in any individual case, can one begin to grasp the biblical view of grace.
J.I. Packer
Saying that you are moral because you believe in a god is like saying you are an economist because you play monopoly.
Robert W. Cox
One reason might be that if I hadn't tripped, I'd have been hamburger.When this sort of thing occurs, people often say that there was some power greater than themselves at work. This sounds reasonable. I am just suggesting that it is not necessary to equate "greater than ourselves" with "stretched across the heavenly vault." It could mean "just slightly greater." A cocoon of energy that we carry with us, that is capable, under some conditions, of affecting physicality. Furthermore, I conjecture that the totality of all these souls is what constitutes the Godhead. I mean this in the same sense as the "Leviathan" of Thomas Hobbes, whereby man, that is everyone together, creates "that great Leviathan called a Commonwealth or State, which is but an artificial man, though of greater statute and strength than the natural, for whose protection and defense it was created."And that leads me to my Insight: God was not there at the beginning of evolution; God is what lies at the end of it.
Paul Quarrington
Lift up your heads, ye people,lift up your faces, too,open your mouths to sing His praise,and the rain will fall on you.
Aimee Semple McPherson
oh my soul...be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions
William Paul Young
You might even provide a Heaven for them. We need You for that. Hell we can make for ourselves.
Margaret Atwood
He doesn’t stop a lot of things that cause him pain. Your world is severely broken. You demanded your independence, and now you are angry with the one who loved you enough to give it to you. Nothing is as it should be, as Papa desires it to be, and as it will be one day. Right now your world is lost in darkness and chaos, and horrible things happen to those that he is especially fond of… Papa has never needed evil to accomplish his good purposes. It is you humans who have embraced evil and Papa has responded with goodness. What happened to Missy was the work of evil and no one in your world is immune from it.”~Sophia
William Paul Young
Different states of consciousness project different images of God–loving or vengeful or jealous, energetic or terrifying, and different images of God affect the nature and quality of our response to God. . . . The image or idea of God as wrathful and jealous will have a different effect than the image or the idea of God as loving. Similarly, whether God is regarded as male or female will have a significant impact on the culture. (29)
Ravi Ravindra
Children understood at a very young age that doing nothing was an expression of power. Doing nothing was a choice swollen with omnipotence. It was, in fact, godly.And this, she now realized, was the reason why the gods did nothing. Proof of their omniscience. After all, to act was to announce awful limitations, for it revealed that chance acted first, the accidents were just that--events beyond the will of the gods--and all they could do in answer was to attempt to remedy the consequences, to alter natural ends. To act, then, was an admission of fallibility.
Steven Erikson
The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defense, not God's, that the self-righteous should rush.
Yann Martel
So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?' Mr. Okamoto: 'That's an interesting question?' Mr. Chiba: 'The story with animals.' Mr. Okamoto: 'Yes. The story with animals is the better story.' Pi Patel: 'Thank you. And so it goes with God.
Yann Martel
Her faith in a loving and forgiving God is strong, but she worships laughter.
Miriam Toews
If I were omnipotent and omnibenevolent I wouldn't be so damn ineffable.
Jo Walton
My spiritual high naturally dissipated. At some point you've got to come out of the clouds and live real life. Again, it's just like falling in love. The feeling of euphoria is only temporary.
Pattie Mallette
I am a hunter of beauty and I move slow and I keep the eyes wide, every fiber of every muscle sensing all wonder and this is the thrill of the hunt and I could be an expert on the life full, the beauty meat that lurks in every moment.I hunger to taste life.God.
Ann Voskamp
Inasmuch as I am a spiritual man, I do believe in God - I think that He created anorder for the world; I believe that, in constantly bombarding Him with requests for miracles,we're also asking that He unravel the fabric of the world. A world of continuous miracleswould be a cartoon, not a world.
Douglas Coupland
Oh my God ... YOU are real.Oh my God ... You ARE real.OH MY GOD ... You are REAL!Oh my God ... You're really real!
Pattie Mallette
There's a major fault in Western society. It makes room for only one god, and in only one gender. There's no balance, no co-existence, no partnership.
Tomson Highway
From all of our beginnings, we keep reliving the Garden story.
Ann Voskamp
I want to encourage you by letting you know that there’s hope for you and your situation whatever you are dealing with. God is intimately involved with every detail of your future and His desire is for you to be an overcomer.
Sue Augustine
Afterwards, when it's all over, you meet God. What do you say to God?
Yann Martel
I won't put my ignorance on an altar and call it God. It feels like idolatry, like the worst kind of idolatry.
Robert Charles Wilson
Our intellect is not intended to be an end in itself, but only a means to the very mind of God.
Ravi Zacharias
The world looks like something God had just imaged for his own pleasure, doesn't it?
L.M. Montgomery
...the sorrows God sent us brought comfort and strength with them, while the sorrows we brought on ourselves, through folly or wickedness, were by far the hardest to bear.
L.M. Montgomery
Sometimes doubting is not a lack of faith, but an expression of it. Sometimes to doubt is to merely insist that God be taken seriously not frivolously, to insist that our faith is placed in and upheld by something other than seeming conjuring tricks.
Mark Buchanan
Christianity was not meant to be a weapon or an argument or a show of force or a political tool. Or an act of aggression or coercion. It was never meant to be a cause or a prop for a cause. Or something to pacify and make thousands go to bed happy and unthinking. It was meant to be a challenge, yes, but that challenge to a second life was meant to be laced with kindness. If someone forces you to choose between God is holy and God is love choose God is love because holiness without love translates into tyranny.
Murray Pura
I know there is a God because in Rwanda I shook hands with the devil. I have seen him, I have smelled him and I have touched him. I know the devil exists and therefore I know there is a God.
Roméo Dallaire
God wants to rescue us, not destroy us. You don't have to be afraid of being happy, thinking that he wants to take that happiness away from you That's not who he is." "How can you be sure?" "Because when you've had a taste of goodness, it helps you recognize the difference between good and evil. I believe that people like Grace and St. Francis and a whole host of other kind, loving people show us what God is like. He isn't waiting to punish you and he doesn't give you blessings just to strip them away.
Sylvain Reynard
Optimism hopes for the best without any guarantee of its arriving and is often no more than whistling in the dark. Christian hope, by contrast, is faith looking ahead to the fulfillment of the promises of God, as when the Anglican burial service inters the corpse 'in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ.' Optimism is a wish without warrant; Christian hope is a certainty, guaranteed by God himself. Optimism reflects ignorance as to whether good things will ever actually come. Christian hope expresses knowledge that every day of his life, and every moment beyond it, the believer can say with truth, on the basis of God's own commitment, that the best is yet to come.
J.I. Packer
As fallible humans, we usually slip too far over one edge or the other - all wrath and judgment or all grace and love.
Eric Wilson
those who are afraid of freedom are those who cannot trust us to live in them. Trying to keep the law is actually a declaration of independence, a way of keeping control
William Paul Young
Remember, that choosing to stay on the ground is a choice to facilitate a relationship, to honor it. You don't play a game or color a picture with a child to show your superiority. Rather, you choose to limit yourself so as to facilitate and honor that relationship... It is not about winning and losing, but about love and respect.
William Paul Young
I don't think it is a good mental health practice to fantasize that you know the infinite thoughts of imaginary entities.
Stefan Molyneux
Even though you can't finally grasp me, guess what? I still want to be known.
William Paul Young
Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love - but sometimes it was so hard to love.
Yann Martel
—¿Por qué sigues creyendo en Dios? ¿No estás enfadada con Él por todas las cosas malas que te han pasado?Ella interrumpió lo que estaba haciendo y se volvió hacia él. Gabriel parecía muy infeliz.—A todo el mundo le pasan cosas malas. ¿Por qué iba a ser yo distinta a los demás?—Porque eres buena.Ella se miró las manos.—El universo no se basa en la magia. No hay unas reglas para las personas buenas y otras para las personas malas. Todo el mundo sufre en un momento u otro. Lo importante es lo que haces con tu dolor, ¿no crees?
Sylvain Reynard
I swear to God . . .”“God doesn’t come to this part of the house, so swear to me.” -Liam C
J.J. McAvoy
It (trying to keep the law) grants you the power to judge others and feel superior to them. You believe you are living to a higher standard than those you judge. Enforcing rules, especially in its more subtle expressions like responsibility and expectation, is a vain attempt to create certainly out of uncertainty. And contrary to what you might think, I have a great fondness for uncertainty. Rules cannot bring freedom; they only have the power to accuse.
William Paul Young
If you are able to judge God so easily, you certainly can judge the world. You must choose two of your children to spend eternity in God's new heavens and new earth....And you must choose three of your children to spend eternity in hell.....I am only asking you to do something that you believe God does. He knows every person ever conceived, and he knows them so much more deeply and clearly than you will ever know your own children...You believe he will condemn most to an eternity of torment, away from his presence and apart from his love."Mack: "I don't want to be the judge...I can't do this." You suppose then that God does this so easily, but you cannot?"This couldn't be real. How could God ask him to choose among his own children? Even if Katie or Josh, or Jon or Tyler committed some heinous crime, he still wouldn't do it. He couldn't! For him, it wasn't about their performance; it was about his love for them. Mack: "I can't, I can't....Could I go instead?....I'll go in their place...Could I do that?" He fell at her feet crying and begging now. "Please let me go for my children..I am begging you. Please...Please..."-"Now you sound like Jesus.....That is how Jesus loves.
William Paul Young
There is no logical reason to believe in God. There are emotional reasons, certainly, but I cannot have faith that nothing is something simply because it would be reassuring. I can no more believe in God than I can believe an invisible monkey lives in my ass; however, I would believe in both if they could be scientifically proven.
Andrew Davidson
Our heaven is their hell, said God. I like a balanced universe.
Margaret Atwood
…God is a giant quiltmaker. With an infinite variety of designs. And the quilt is grown so big and confusing, the pattern is impossible to see, the squares and diamonds and triangles don’t fit well together anymore, it’s all become meaningless. So He has abandoned it.
Rohinton Mistry
I think the reason we sometimes have the false sense that God is so far away is because that is where we have put him. We have kept him at a distance, and then when we are in need and call on him in prayer, we wonder where he is. He is exactly where we left him.
Ravi Zacharias
Even when God seemed to have abandoned me, he was watching. Even when he seemed indifferent to my suffering, he was watching. And when I was beyond all hope of saving, he gave me rest. Then he gave me a sign to continue my journey.
Yann Martel
The scriptures present a God who delights in genocide, rape, slavery, and the execution of nonconformists, and for millennia those writings were used to rationalize the massacre of infidels, the ownership of women, the beating of children, dominion over animals, and the persecution of heretics and homosexuals. Humanitarian reforms such as the elimination of cruel punishment, the dissemination of empathy-inducing novels, and the abolition of slavery were met with fierce opposition in their time by ecclesiastical authorities and their apologists. The elevation of parochial values to the realm of the sacred is a license to dismiss other people’s interests, and an imperative to reject the possibility of compromise.
Steven Pinker
Did I hear God call me an idiot?
William Paul Young
There were a lot of gods. Gods always come in handy, they justify almost anything.
Margaret Atwood
These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy...walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, 'Business as usual.' But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening.
Yann Martel
Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible God and destroys a visible Nature. Unaware that this Nature he’s destroying is this God he’s worshiping.
Hubert Reeves
In seeking absolute truth we aim at the unattainable and must be content with broken portions.
William Osler
The world was in truth made of jackstraws. The world was very combustible, the human body was partible in ways heretofore unimagined. What held the civilized world together was the thinnest tissue of nothing but human will. Civilization was not in the natural order but was some wort of willed invention held taut like a fabric or a sail against the chaos of the winds. And why we had invented it, or how we knew to invent it, was beyond him.Newmann had seen some truth that was completely out of his power to put into words. But he had come away knowing that even though the world of civilization was made of straw and lantern slides, he must live in it as if it were solid. Even when the heat of the lantern itself burnt away the illusions and a black hole appeared in the middle of the slide.
Paulette Jiles