Quotes About Beauty And God

“Do I believe in an old man in the clouds with a white beard judging us mortals with a moral code from one to ten? Good Lord no, my sweet Elly, I do not! I would have been cast out from this life years ago with my tatty history. Do I believe in a mystery; the unexplained phenomenon that is life itself? The greater something that illuminates inconsequence in our lives; that gives us something to strive for as well as the humility to brush ourselves down and start all over again? Then yes, I do. It is the source of art, of beauty, of love, and proffers the ultimate goodness to mankind. That to me is God. That to me is life. That is what I believe in.”

— Sarah Winman

“A community is only being created when its members accept that they are not going to achieve great things, that they are not going to be heroes, but simply live each day with new hope, like children, in wonderment as the sun rises and in thanksgiving as it sets. Community is only being created when they have recognized that the greatness of man is to accept his insignificance, his human condition and his earth, and to thank God for having put in a finite body the seeds of eternity which are visible in small and daily gestures of love and forgiveness. The beauty of man is in this fidelity to the wonder of each day.”

— Jean Vanier

“Let's sit here in hard truth and easy beauty, in the tensions of the Now and the Not Yet of the Kingdom of God, and let us discover how we can disagree beautifully.”

— Sarah Bessey

“In the midst of all of this perfect beauty, timeless since the days of Eve, it's the touch of God creating miracles, if in your heart you just believe.”

— Lisa Mischelle Wood

“God sees nothing but beauty in you.”

— Kate Wicker

“I've often thought of the forest as a living cathedral, but this might diminish what it truly is. If I have understood Koyukon teachings, the forest is not merely an expression or representation of sacredness, nor a place to invoke the sacred; the forest is sacredness itself. Nature is not merely created by God; nature is God. Whoever moves within the forest can partake directly of sacredness, experience sacredness with his entire body, breathe sacredness and contain it within himself, drink the sacred water as a living communion, bury his feet in sacredness, touch the living branch and feel the sacredness, open his eyes and witness the burning beauty of sacredness”

— Richard Nelson

“But, if we want our churches to thrive and our devotional lives to flourish, we absolutely must let God be God. We cannot settle for warm, fuzzy, "feel good movie of the year" versions of God. We cannot settle for a God who exists only to meet our needs and make us happy. We cannot settle for a God who is boring and irrelevant. We cannot settle for a God of our own imagination. We must know the ferocious, untamable God. We must let God out of the boxes we have created. We must come face to face with God as he really is, with all his sharp edges and blazing glory and heart-rending beauty. We must encounter the God who makes mountains melt like wax and the angels cover their eyes and the rivers leap for joy. If we are going to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we must truly know God. We must know him as he truly is, not as we imagine him to be. We must come to grips with the God who has revealed himself in scripture.”

— Stephen Altrogge

“God in His infinite wisdom blessed humans with redundant tongues: one to outfit the mouth for speech. And a mother tongue to give it meaning ... Though it wags out such inconceivable beauty, attached to the mother tongue lies one much maligned woman.”

— David B. Lentz

“I'd convinced myself it would have been different if he'd been as ugly on the outside as he was on the inside, but he wasn't. He was cruel beauty, a sculpture, a god, and I couldn't tear my eyes from him. I'd seen his expression soften in the dungeon with the whip. I'd do anything to have him look at me like that again, no matter how insane he was.”

— Kitty Thomas

“Drugs rob every person, man, woman, and child of their beauty. Drugs turn people into animals who can only respond to instincts. Drugs are so powerful they eradicate the God in both the taker and the giver.”

— Sister Souljah

“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

“No man will love you, though you gave your life for him, unless you have a pretty face. So (might it not be?), the gods will not love you (however you try to pleasure them, and whatever you suffer) unless you have that beauty of soul. In either race. for the love of men or the love of a god, the winners and losers are marked out from birth. We bring our ugliness, in both kinds, with us into the world, with it our destiny.”

— C.S. Lewis

“How awful to be a perfect beauty! How confusing! God. Can you imagine?”

— Erin O'Connor

“That which God said to the rose, and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty, He said to my heart, and made it a hundred times more beautiful.”

— Rumi

“Ah, the harbour bells of Cambridge! Whose fountains in moonlight and closed courts and cloisters, whose enduring beauty in its virtuous remote self-assurance, seemed part, less of the loud mosaic of one's stupid life there, though maintained perhaps by the countless deceitful memories of such lives, than the strange dream of some old monk, eight hundred years dead, whose forbidding house, reared upon piles and stakes driven into the marshy ground, had once shone like a beacon out of the mysterious silence, and solitude of the fens. A dream jealously guarded: Keep off the Grass. And yet whose unearthly beauty compelled one to say: God forgive me.”

— Malcolm Lowry

“What are the tales?" Adrienne asked wryly.
"His exploits are legendary!"
"His conquests are legion. 'Tis rumored he's traveled the world accompanied by only the most beautiful lasses."
"'Tis said there isna a comely lass in all of Scotia he hasna tumbled"
"in England, too!"
"and he canna recall any of their names."
"He is said to have godlike beauty, and a practiced hand in the fine art of seduction."
"He is fabulously wealthy and rumors say his castle is luxurious beyond compare."
Adrienne blinked. "Wonderful. A materialistic, unfaithfill, beautiful playboy of a self-indulged, inconsiderate man with a bad memory. And he's all mine. Dear sweet God, what have I done to deserve this?" she wondered aloud. Twice, she brooded privately.”

— Karen Marie Moning

“If I have a hope, it's that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story, and put us in with the sunset and the rainstorm as though to say, enjoy your place in my story. The beauty of it means you matter, and you can create within it even as I have created you.”

— Donald Miller

“All our time spent making lists would be better spent painting, or writing, Or singing, or learning to speak stories. Sometimes I feel as though the Church has a kind of pity for Scripture, Always having to come behind it and explain everything, put everything into actionable steps, acronyms and hidden secrets, as though the original writers, and for that matter the Holy Spirit Who worked in the lives of the original writers, were a bunch of you literate hillbillies. I think the methodology God used to explain His Truth is quite superior. My life is a story, more than a list. I don't feel that a list could ever explain the complexity of all this beauty.”

— Donald Miller

“The message of Christ's love is found in Isaiah, chapter sixty-one," the man was saying. "God himself will restore the crumbling foundations of your life. He will give you beauty for ashes. He'll provide redemption, no matter who you are, where you are. . . .”

— Karen Kingsbury

“How great God is! He has given us eyes to see the beauty of the world, hands to touch it, a nose to experience all its fragrance, and a heart to appreciate it all. But we don't realize how miraculous our senses are until we lose one.”

— Malala Yousafzai

“A child does not notice the greatness and the beauty of nature and the splendor of God in his works.”

— Rudolf Otto

“Anne is God. I am God. The happy grass are God, Jill groks in beauty always. Jill is God. All shaping and making and creating together.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

“Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man's emotions by external signs; it is not the production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity.”

— Leo Tolstoy

“It is shallow people who think beauty is frivolous or excessive. If you are bringing beauty and god, you are enriching the country. Rice feeds the body, books feed the mind, beauty feeds the soul. It is one thing I can really be proud of and stand tall in the world.”

— Imelda Marcos

“Every disciple of Jesus has been called, loved, created, and saved to make disciples of Jesus who make disciples of Jesus who make disciples of Jesus until the grace of God is enjoyed and the glory of God is exalted among every people group on the planet. And on that day, every disciple of Jesus-every follower of Christ and fisher of men-will see the Savior's face and behold the Father's splendor in a scene of indescribable beauty and everlasting bliss that will never, ever fade away. This is a call worth dying for. This is a King worth living for.”

— David Platt

“Obviously, to be in the fear of the Lord is not to be scared of the Lord, even though the Hebrew word has overtones of respect and awe. "Fear" in the Bible means to be overwhelmed, to be controlled by something. To fear the Lord is to be overwhelmed with wonder before the greatness of God and his love. It means that, because of his bright holiness and magnificent love, you find him "fearfully beautiful." That is why the more we experience God's grace and forgiveness, the more we experience a trembling awe and wonder before the greatness of all that he is and has done for us. Fearing him means bowing before him out of amazement at his glory and beauty.”

— Timothy Keller

“Thus, when Paul says, "Praise the Lord all you nations, and let all the peoples extol him" (Rom. 15:11), he is saying that there is something about God that is so universally praiseworthy and so profoundly beautiful and so comprehensively worth and so deeply satisfying that God will find passionate admirers in every diverse people group in the world. His true greatness will be manifest in the breadth of the diversity of those who perceive and cherish his beauty. His excellence will be shown to be higher and deeper than the parochial preferences that make us happy most of the time. His appeal will be to the deepest, highest, largest capacities of the human soul. Thus, the diversity of the source of admiration will testify to his incomparable glory.”

— John Piper

“She felt a little better about Leonard out here in the country. It was just being close to nature, she supposed. In the country you felt as you never could in town the return of spring after winter. You felt a sort of pulse in the earth which proved that nothing dies, that everything comes back in beauty. Leonard was coming back ... in some place beautiful enough to pay him for leaving the world. God knew all about his music, too. He would use that music someplace.”

— Maud Hart Lovelace

“(speaking of insecurity)
"It's broken greater spirits than ours, and robbed the world of God knows how much beauty. I've seen it happen more times than I like to think about."
"$10,000 A Year, Easy”

— Kurt Vonnegut

“Beauty is in being who God made you to be with confidence.”

— Joel Osteen

“God has given us our talents, not to copy the talents of others, but rather to use our brains and imagination in order to obtain the revelation of true beauty.”

— Louis Comfort Tiffany

“If we can know the beauty God is forming in us, we can bear the pain He allows in our lives.”

— James Robison

“Spirituality is natural goodness. God is not a person; God is a presence personified in us. Spirituality is not a thing; it is the atmosphere of God's Presence, goodness, truth, and beauty.”

— Ernest Holmes

“Beauty, the smile of God, Music, His voice.”

— Robert Underwood Johnson

“What matters is not your outward appearance ... but your inner disposition. Cultivate inner beauty, the gentle gracious kind that God delights in.”

— Saint Peter

“The American Beauty Rose can be produced in the splendor and fragrance which bring cheer to its beholder only by sacrificing the early buds which grow up around it. This is not an evil tendency in business. It is merely the working-out of a law of nature and a law of God.”

— John D. Rockefeller

“Thy Banners gleam a little, and are furled; Against thy turrets surge His phantom tow'rs; Drugged with his Opiates the nations nod, Refusing still the beauty of thine hours; And fragile is thy tenure of this world Still haunted by the monstrous ghost of God.”

— George Sterling

“Beauty is and always is. You are absent. Why are you absent? Again your robot mind is the problem. It will not stay still and you cannot make it stay still. It is your master and it separates you from beauty and God.”

— Barry Long

“God, we thank you for this earth, our homes; for the wide sky and the blessed sun, for the salt sea and the running water, for the everlasting hills and the never resting winds, for trees and the common grass underfoot. We thank you for our senses by which we hear the songs of birds, and see the splendor of the summer fields, and taste of the autumn fruits, and rejoice in the feel of the snow, and smell the breath of the spring. Grant us a heart wide open to all this beauty; and save our souls from being so blind that we pass unseeing when even the common thorn bush is aflame with your glory.”

— Walter Rauschenbusch

“What is sin? It is the glory of God not honored. The holiness of God not reverenced. The greatness of God not admired. The power of God not praised. The truth of God not sought. The wisdom of God not esteemed. The beauty of God not treasured. The goodness of God not savored. The faithfulness of God not trusted. The commandments of God not obeyed. The justice of God not respected. The wrath of God not feared. The grace of God not cherished. The presence of God not prized. The person of God not loved. That is sin.”

— John Piper

“How could you feel worthless when God has honoured you by creating you and choosing you to be with Him, in this life and the next? You are worthy. You are worthy of love. You are worthy of respect. You haven't failed. You're beautiful. Only the beautiful can see beauty. Never doubt your beauty. Never doubt your worth. It's not about how much you make, your grades, what people say or think. It's about you and God. It's about your heart. The blinding beauty of your heart.”

— Yasmin Mogahed

“Hard-earned achievement brings a sense of self-worth. Work builds and refines character, creates beauty, and is the instrument of our service to one another and to God. A consecrated life is filled with work, sometimes repetitive, sometimes menial, sometimes unappreciated but always work that improves, orders, sustains, lifts, ministers, aspires.”

— D. Todd Christofferson

“If we want to know the Glory of God, if we want to experience the beauty of God, and if we want to be used by the hand of God, then we must LIVE in the WORD of God.”

— David Platt

“Poltinus the Platonist proves by means of the blossoms and leaves that from the Supreme God, whose beauty is invisible and ineffable, Providence reaches down to the things of earth here below. He points out that these frail and mortal objects could not be endowed with a beauty so immaculate and so exquisitely wrought, did they not issue from the Divinity which endlessly prevades with its invisible and unchanging beauty all things.”

— Saint Augustine

“You [God] are a fire that takes away the coldness, illuminates the mind with its light, and causes me to know your truth and I know that you are beauty and wisdom itself. The food of angels, you give yourself to man in this fire of your love”

— St. Catherine Of Siena

“We live by faith; but Faith is not the slave Of text and legend. Reason's voice and God's, Nature's and Duty's, never are at odds. What asks our Father of His children, save Justice and mercy and humility, A reasonable service of good deeds, Pure living, tenderness to human needs, Reverence and trust, and prayer for light to see The Master's footprints in our daily ways? No knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife, But the calm beauty of an ordered life Whose very breathing is unworded praise! - A life that stands as all true lives have stood Firm-rooted in the faith that God is Good.”

— John Greenleaf Whittier

“What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dullness of communication, compared with the simple altar-like structure and silent heart-language of the old sundials! It stood as the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is it almost everywhere vanished? If its business-use be superseded by more elaborate inventions, its moral uses, its beauty, might have pleaded for its continuance.”

— Charles Lamb

“O world, as God has made it! All is beauty.”

— Robert Browning