BAUDELAIRE, CHARLES

     “Grant me the grace, Lord God Almighty, to compose a few beautiful verses which will prove to me that I am not the least of all men.” (Starkie, 1958, 535)

     “Lord, my God! You the Creator, You the Master; You who has made law and liberty; You the Sovereign who lets things be; You the Judge who forgives; You who is full of motives and causes, and whom, perhaps, has placed within my spirit the taste of horror to convert my heart, like healing at the point of a knife; Lord, have mercy, have mercy of fools and foolishness! O Creator! Can there be monsters in the eyes of Him who knows why they exist, how they are made, and how they could not have been made?” (Ibid., 547)

See Bibliography at bottom of page for references.

BRONTE, EMILY

NO COWARD SOUL IS MINE

No coward soul is mine,

No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere:

I see Heaven’s glory shine,

And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

O God within my breast,

Almighty, ever-present Deity!

Life, that in me has rest,

As I, undying life, have power in Thee!

Vain are the thousand creeds

That move man’s hearts: unutterably vain;

Worthless as withered weeds,

Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,

To waken doubt in one

Holding so fast by Thy infinity,

So surely anchored on

The steadfast rock of immortality.

With wide-embracing love

Thy Spirit animates eternal years,

Pervades and broods above,

Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.

Though earth and moon were gone,

And suns and universes ceased to be,

And Thou wert left alone,

Every existence would exist in Thee.

There is not room for Death,

Nor atom that His might could render void:

Thou -- THOU art Being and Breath,

And what THOU art may never be destroyed.

(Bronte, 1998)

See Bibliography page for references.

BROWNING ROBERT

From >Christmas-Eve@

                V                    

From the heart beneath, as if, God speeding me,

I entered His church door, nature leading me

In youth I looked to these very skies,

and probing their immensities ,

I found God there, His visible power;

---------

VII

Thou art the love of God -- above

His power, didst hear me place His love,

And that was leaving the world for Thee.

Therefore Thou must not turn from me

As I had chosen the other part!

Folly and pride o=ercame my heart.

Our best is bad, nor bear Thy test;

Still, it should be our very best.

I thought it best that Thou, the spirit,

Be worshiped in spirit and in truth,

And in beauty, as even we require it---

Not in the forms burlesque, uncouth, 

I left but now, as scarcely fitted

For Thee: I knew not what I pitied.

Bu, all I felt there, right or wrong,

What is it to Thee, who curest sinning?

Am I not weak as Thou art strong?

I have looked to Thee from the beginning,

Straight up to Thee through all the world

Which, like an idle scroll, lay furled

To nothingness on either side:

And since the time Thou wast descried,

Spite of the weak heart, so have I

Lived ever, and so fain would die,

Living and dying, Thee before!

Bu if Thou leavest me-----

XVII

Supreme in Christ as we all confess,

Why need we prove would avail no jot

To make Him God, if God he were not?

(Browning, 1912, 11-42)

CHEKHOV, ANTON

“May God guard you.”

(Koteliansky, 1965, 155)

“All is in the hands of God.”

(Ibid., 196)

“Glory be to God.”

(Ibid., 264)

“The gospels . . . are indeed truth.”

(Ibid., 273)

“I consider his (Tolstoy’s) faith to be nearest and most akin to mine.”

(Ibid., 273)

“Modern culture is but the beginning of a work for a great future, a work which will go on, perhaps, for ten of thousands of years, in order that mankind may, even in the remote future, come to know the truth of a real God -- that is, not by guessing, not by seeking in Dostoevsky, but by perceiving clearly, as one perceives that twice two is four.”

(Ibid., 282)

DANTE ALIGHIERI

I believe in one God sole and eternal, who

Moves the whole universe

With love and with desire;

And for such belief I have proofs

Physical and metaphysical, and

Also the truth that rains

From Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.

(Dante, Paradiso, Canto XXIV, 125-132)

 The glory of Him who moves all

Penetrates the universe, and is resplendent

in one part more and less in another.

(Ibid, Canto I, 1-3)

“We should know, in this regard, that God and nature create nothing in vain, and that whatever is createdserves some purpose.”

(Dante, On World Government, I, iii)

“God who is the absolute world government.”

(Ibid, I, vii)

‘Mankind resembles God most when it is most unified, for the true ground of unity exists in Him alone.”

(Ibid, I, viii)

“Mankind is best when it follows the footsteps of Heaven as far as its nature permits.”

(Ibid, I, ix)

“The whole heaven is governed in all its parts , motions, and movers by a single motion, the Primum Mobile,and by a single mover, God.”

(Ibid, I, ix)

“Whatever in human society God really wills must be regarded as truly and genuinely right.”

(Ibid, II, ii)

“Since God achieves the highest perfection, and since his instruments, the heavens, are without fault, only one alternative is left: any fault in things here below must be due to a fault in God’s raw material, and must be external to the plans of the God of creation and of Heaven.”

(Ibid, II, ii)

“Christ ... is the door of our eternal dwelling.”

(Ibid, II, vii)

“God alone elevates. He alone establishes governments.”

(Ibid, III, viii)

“Him alone, who is the master, of all things spiritual and temporal.”

(Ibid, III, viii)

“Him alone is the ruler of all things spiritual and temporal”

(Ibid III, xvi)

DICKENS, CHARLES

     “Remember! It is Christianity TO DO GOOD always - even to those who do evil to us. It is Christianity to love our neighbour as ourself, and to do to all men as we would have them DO to us. It is Christianity to be gentle, merciful and forgiving, and to keep those qualities quiet in our own hearts, and never make a boast of them, or of our prayers or our love of God, but always to show that we love Him by humbly trying to do right in everything. If we do this, and remember the life and lessons of our Lord Jesus Christ, and try to act up to them, we may confidently hope that God will forgive us our sins and mistakes, and enable us to live and die in peace.”

(Walder, 1981, 13)

     “The Divine teacher was as gentle and considerate as He was powerful and wise. You all know He could still the raging of the sea, and could hush a little child. As the utmost results of the wisdom of men can only be at last to raise this earth to that condition to which His doctrine, untainted by the blindnesses and passions of men

would have exalted it long ago; so let us always remember that He has set us the example of blending the understanding and the imagination, and that, following it ourselves, we tread on His steps, and help our race onto its better and best days.”

(Ibid, 175)

     “Nothing is discovered without God’s intention and assistance, and I suppose every new knowledge of His works that is conceded to man to be distinctly a revelation by which men are to guide themselves.

(Ibid, 175)

     “I now most solemnly impress upon you the truth and beauty of the Christian religion, as it came from Christ Himself, and the impossibility of your going far wrong if you humbly but heartily respect it.”

(Ibid, 195)

     “ I have always striven in my writings to express veneration for the life and lessons of Our Saviour; because I feel i t . . . But I have never made proclamation ofthis from the house tops.”

(Ibid, 195)

DONNE, JOHN

   HOLY SONNETS

Thou has made me, and shall Thy works decay?

Repair me now, for now my hand doth haste,

I runne to death, and death meets me as fast,

And all my pleasures are like yesterday;

(Donne, 236)

                                  II

As due by many titles I resigne

My selfe to Thee, O God, first I was made

By Thee, and for Thee, and when I was decay’d

Thy blood bought that, the which was Thine;

I am Thy sonne, made with Thy selfe to shine.

(Ibid, 236)

IX

But who am I, that dare dispute with Thee

Oh God? Oh! Of thine onely worthy blood,

And drowne in it my sinnes black memorie;

That Thou remember them, some claime as debt,

I thinke it mercy if Thou wilt forget.

(Ibid, 239)

DOSTOEVSKY, FYODOR

     “I have often and repeatedly prayed on my knees for a pure heart, and for a pure, sinless, calm, dispassionate style.”

(Lowe, 1991, 290)

     “People here are trying with all their might to wipe me off the face of the earth for the fact that I preach God and national roots.”

(Ibid., 302)

     “The beautiful is the ideal; with us as in civilized Europe, have long been wavering. There is in the world only one figure of absolute beauty: Christ. That infinitely lovely figure is, as a matter of course, an infinite marvel.”

(Sandoz, 1971, 42)

     “I have formulated my creed,  wherein all is clear and holy to me . . . I believe that there is nothing holier, deeper, more sympathetic, more rational, more manly, and more perfect than the Saviour; I say to myself with jealous love that not only is there no one else like Him, but there could be no one.”

(Ibid., 46)

     “No religion has brought the mystery of the need for atonement or expiation to so complete, so profound, or so powerful expression as Christianity.”

(Ibid., 57)

     “That God none the less admits access to Himself and intimacy with Himself is not a mere matter of course; it is a grace beyond our mere power to apprehend, a prodigious paradox.”

(Ibid., 59)

“What weight of ancient witness can prevail

If private reason hold the public scale?

But, gracious God, how well dost Thou provide

For erring judgements an unerring guide!

Thy throne is darkness in th’abyss of light,

A blaze of glory that forbids the sight.

O teach me to believe Thee thus conceal’d,

And search no further than Thyself reveal’d.”

(Untermeyer, 1959, 205)

ELIOT, T.S.

ALord, shall we not bring these gifts to Your service?

Shall we not bring to Your service all our powers

For life, for dignity, grace and order,

And intellectual pleasures of the senses?

The Lord who created must wish us to create

And employ our creation again in His service

Which is already His service in creating.@

(Smidt, 1961, 55)

AWe build in vain unless the Lord build with us.@

(Buxton, 520)

AO weariness of men who turn from God

To the grandeur of your mind and the glory of your action,

To arts and inventions and daring enterprises,

To the schemes of human greatness thoroughly discredited,

Binding the earth and the water to your service,

Exploiting the seas and developing the mountains,

Dividing the stars into common and preferred,

Engaged in devising the perfect refrigerator,

Engaged in working out a rational morality,

Engaged in printing as many books as possible,

Plotting of happiness and flinging empty bottles,

Turning from your vacancy to fevered enthusiasm

For nation or race or what you call humanity;

Though You forget the way to the Temple,

There is one who remembers the way to your door:

Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.

You shall not deny the stranger.@

(Ibid., 520-521)

EMERSON, RALPH WALDO

     “How dear, how soothing to man, arises the idea of God, peopling the lonely place, effacing the scars of our mistakes and disappointments!

When we have broken our god of tradition, and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with His presence.”

(Emerson, 74)

     “If he (man) would know what the great God speaketh, he must ‘go into his closet and shut the door,’ as Jesus said.”

(Ibid, 74)

     “Our globe seen by God is a transparent law, not a mass of facts.”

(Ibid, 75)

     “It now shows itself ethical and practical. We learn that God IS;

that He is in me; and that all things are shadows of him.”

(Ibid, 77)

     “In God every end is converted into a new means.”

(Ibid, 319)

     “As a plant upon the earth, so a man rests upon the bosom of God; he is nourished by unfailing fountains and draws, at his need, inexhaustible power.”

(Ibid, 325)

GOETHE, JOHANN

       "General, natural religion, properly speaking, requires no faith, for the persuasion that a great producing, regulating and conducting Being conceals himself, as it were, behind nature, to make himself comprehensible to us. Such a conviction forces itself upon every one. Nay, if we for a moment let drop this thread, which conducts us through life, it may be immediately and everywhere resumed."

(Goethe, 1882, 114)

         "God, the only, Eternal, Infinite, to whom all the splendid yet limited creatures owe their existence."

(Ibid., 204 )

        "Nothing, therefore, remained to me but to part from this society; and as for my love for the Holy Scriptures, as well as of the founder of Christianity and its early professors, could not be taken from me."

(Ibid., 208)

       "English, French, and Germans had attacked the Bible with more or less violence, acuteness, audacity, and wantonness, and just as often had it been taken under the protection of earnest, sound-thinking men of each nation. As for myself, I loved and valued it; for almost to it alone did I owe my moral culture: and the events, the doctrines, the symbols. the similes, had all impressed themselves deeply upon me and had influenced me in one way or another. These unjust, scoffing, and perverting attacks, therefore, disgusted me."      

(Ibid.,  227)

GOGOL, NIKOLAI VASILYEVICH

     “The higher truths are, the more cautious one must be with them; otherwise they are converted into common things, and common things are not believed . . . The word must be treated honestly. It is the highest gift of God to man.”

(Zeldin, 1969, 23)

     “The Christian will show his humility before everyone, it is the first sign by which he may be recognized as a Christian.”

(Ibid., 82)

     “Leaf through the Old Testament: there you will find each of our present events, you will see more clearly than day how the present has sinned before God, and the terrible judgement of God upon it so manifestly presented that the present will shake with trembling.”

(Ibid., 86)

     “Go on your knees before God and beg His wrath and His love! Wrath against what ruins man, love for the poor soul of the man who has been ruined and who ruins himself.”

(Ibid., 88)

HEINE, HEINRICH

     "God's satire weighs on me. The great author of the universe, the Aristophanes of Heaven, was bent on demonstrating, with crushing force, to me, the little, earthly, German Aristophanes, how my wittiest sarcasm are only pitiful attempts at jesting in comparison with His, and how miserably I am beneath Him in humour, in colossal mockery."

(Pinney, 1963)

God has made our eyes a pair,

So we’d see clear everywhere

To believe all that we read

Just one eye would fill the need.

Two eyes did God give likewise

So we’d look and gape and stare

At the world He made so fair

As a feast for all man’s eyes;

(Draper, 1982, 799)

Faulting the Creator’s not a

Thing befitting, as if clay

Would be wiser than the potter!

(Ibid, 801)

HUGO, VICTOR

God places in His breath and God blends with His voice

All the flowers of the field, and the birds of the forest.

(Hugo, 1972, 553)

Cathedrals are beautiful

And rise high into the blue sky

But the nests of the swallows

Are the building of God

(Hugo, 1967, P. 565)

“Let us love! That’s all. This is God’s will.”

(Ibid., 566)

“The soul exists

And the proof

Is the fact that we contemplate creation

And that we contemplate the Creator.

...

God promises everything he manifests

Showing us the heavens is like promising it to us

And having shown it to us is having promised it to us.”

(Ibid., 839)

“God I suffer too much

I cannot tell you how much

And what goes on inside of me.

I cannot hide from you the dark battles

The deep despair

When God breathes on man, He acts on his inner being

And sees deep within it.”

(Ibid., 840)

My Lord, my whole being is, since my childhood,

A hymn to the beauty of creation. (Ibid., 841)

LAWRENCE, D. H.

GOD

Where sanity is

There God is.

And the sane can still recognise sanity

So they can still recognise God.

(De Sola Pinto,  516)

ABSOLUTE REVERENCE

I feel absolute reverence to nobody and to nothing human

Neither to persons nor things nor ideas, ideals nor religion

Nor institutions,

To those things I feel only respect, and a tinge of reverence

When I see the fluttering of pure life in them.

But to something unseen, unknown, creative

From which I feel I am a derivative

I feel absolute reverence. Say no more!

(Ibid, 622)

LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH

Wondrous truths, and manifold as

Wondrous,

God has written in those stars above;

But not less in the bright flowerets

Under us

Stands the revelation of His love.

Bright and glorious is that revelation,

Written all over this great world of

Ours;

(Longfellow, 1871, 5)

MILTON, JOHN

From AParadise Lost@

                                      I

Hail holy light, ofspring of Heav=n first-born,

Or of  th=Eternal  Coeternal beam

May I express thee unblam=d since God is light,

And never but in unapproached light

Dwelt from eternitie, dwelt then in thee,

Bright effluence of bright essence increate

Or hear=st Thou rather pure Ethereal stream,

Whose Fountain who shall tell? before the sun,

Before the Heavens Thou wert, and at the voice

Of God, as with a Mantle didst invest

The rising world of waters dark and deep,

Won from the void and formless infinite.  

(Ibid, Book III, 1-12)

O Son, in whom my souls has chief delight,

Son of my bosom, Son who art alone

My word, my wisdom, and effectual might,

all hast thou spok=n as my thoughts are, all

As my Eternal purpose hath decreed:

Man shall not quite be lost, but sav=d who will,

Yet not of will in him, but grace in me

Freely voutsaft; once more I will renew

His lapsed powers, though forfeit and enthrall=d

By sin to foul exorbitant desires;

Upheld by me, yet once more he shall stand

On even ground against his mortal foe,

By me upheld , that he may know how how frail

His fall=n is, and to me ow

All his deliv=rance, and to none but me.

(Ibid, Book III, 168-182)

    ALet us require no better authority than God Himself

for determining what is worthy or unworthy of Him.@

(Robins, 1963, 67)

     AIf after the work of six days it be said of God that >he rested and was refreshed= . . . let us believe that it is not beneath the dignity of God  . . . to be refreshed in that which refreshed Him . . . For however we may attempt to soften down  such expressions by a latitude of interpretation, when applied to the Deity, it comes in the end to precisely the same.@

(Ibid., 67)

     AOur safest way is to form in our minds such a conception of God, as shall correspond with His own delineation and representation of Himself in the sacred writings.@

(Ibid., 67)

     AWe may be sure that sufficient care has been taken that the Holy Scriptures should contain nothing unsuitable to the character or dignity of God, and that God should say nothing of Himself which could derogate from His own majesty.@

(Ibid., 67)

PIRANDELLO, LUIGI

From “I BELIEVE”

If God wants me to believe that He is

Everywhere,

And that

He watches over all and, therefore,

On me as well;

That He dispenses one justice

Which we with our measuring stick

Cannot measure nor understand.

Should I displease Him?

I will believe in Him.

(Pirandello, 1960)

Come back, I pray you, to us, come back, Messiah,

To preach love;

Come back with a pure hand

To knock on undeserving doors again,

Where a dark people

Dies of hunger and cold!  

Others wrapped with your red mantle,

With hatred nurturing your gentle word,

Knock on the dark houses, and abounds the visage

Of misery. Fly

Already the noise of war . . .

Peace you are, Jesus, you are mercy:

Come back to restore on earth

Love to charity.

(Ibid., 807)

ALEXANDER PUSHKIN

PURE MEN AND WOMEN TOO

Pure men and women too, all the world unspotted,

That they might fortify the heart against life's stress,

Composed such prayers as still comfort us and bless.

But none has stirred in me such deep emotions

As that the priest recites at Lententide devotions,

The words which mark for us that saddest season rise

Most often to my lips, and in that prayer lies

Support ineffable when I, a sinner, hear it:

"Thou Lord my life, avert Thou from my spirit

both idle melancholy and ambitious sting,

That hidden snake, and joy in  foolish gossiping.

But let me see, O God, my sins, and make confession,

So that my brother be not dammed by my transgression,

And quicken Thou in me the breath and being of

Both fortitude and meekness, chastity and love."

(Yarmolinski, 1964, 86)

RABELAIS, FRANCOIS

     “The Father who directs all that is and that is made according to His free will and His pleasure.”

(Febvre, 1962, 260)

     “ When you say the word God, what does it mean to you? To me it means an Eternal Spirit who has no beginning, who has no end, such as no greater, no wiser or better can be conceived; By one act of His omnipotence  He created all things, visible and invisible. His admirable wisdom regulates and governs the whole universe; His goodness nourishes and preserves all of His creation.

(Ibid., 262)

     “Without (God’s) sustenance and government all things, in a moment, would become nothing, just as they had been created for nothing.”

(Ibid., 263)

     “What takes place is not what we wish or ask for, but what pleases Jesus Christ, our Lord whom God had established before the heavens were made . . . ”

(Ibid., 263)

     “Almighty God, who has created all things.”

(Ibid., 264)

     “There is no other ruler besides God the Creator.”

(Ibid., 264)

      WILLIAM   SHAKESPEARE

   In the name of God, I William Shakespeare...God be praised, do make and ordain this, my last will and testament in manner and form following. That is to say, first I commend my soul into the hands of God my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through the merits of Jesus Christ, my savior, to be made partaker of eternal life, and my body to the earth whereof it is made.  (Rouse,  1985,  P. 182)