Divine Representation Quotes

and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear?

… mortals suppose that the gods are born (as they themselves are), and that they wear man's clothing and have human voice and body. But if cattle or lions had hands, so as to paint with their hands and produce works of art as men do, they would paint their gods and give them bodies in form like their own—horses like horses, cattle like cattle.

A God made by man undoubtedly has need of man to make himself known to man.

I like doves. They look so beautiful, like a woman. For me they represent peace and love and purity. And sometimes they're seen as the messengers of God, so they're important to me because I'm a Christian.

The idol is the expression of religion.

Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you - even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers, and triumphs over all opposition.

In all religions, the quickening spirit has been symbolically represented as a bird. At the baptism, when Jesus' body was in the water, the Spirit of Christ descended into it as a dove.

An angel of God never has wings.

If cattle and horses, or lions, had hands, or were able to draw with their feet and produce the works which men do, horses would draw the forms of gods like horses, and cattle like cattle, and they would make the gods' bodies the same shape as their own.

The universe is but one vast Symbol of God.

For me, the great problem growing up in England was that I had a very narrow concept of what God can be, and it was damn close to an old man with a beard.

No religion makes more use of color than Hinduism, with its blue-skinned gods and peony-lipped goddesses, and even the spring festival of Holi is focused on color: Boys squirt arcs of dyed water on passersby or dump powder, all violently hued, on their marks.

False gods must be repudiated, but that is not all: The reasons for their existence must be sought beneath their masks.

It is proper to take photographs or other kinds of pictures of persons to put them before us for sight or remembrance. But it is improper to make pictures and images of God and to take his likenesses therefrom to his great distortion.

Man is a dog's idea of what God should be.

Each man creates god in his own image.

If we do no mean that God is male when we use masculine pronouns and imagery, then why should there be any objections to using female imagery and pronouns as well?

They wanted them to look like the Gods. God doesn't look like this.

When a buddha is painted, not only a clay altar or lump of earth is used, but the thirty-two marks, a blade of grass, and the cultivation of wisdom for incalculable eons are used. As a Buddha has been painted on a single scroll in this way, all buddhas are painted buddhas, and all painted buddhas are actual buddhas.

I discovered I was a monotheist... That rules out polytheism. I have also had a problem with authority, which rules out any religion with a priesthood or leader who claims to be God's representative on Earth.

... in the end, Goddess is just a word. It simply means the divine in female form.

...I wondered if it was blasphemous to tell God that rainbows are kitsch.

The God of the Hebrews is a God that human language, we're not even supposed to speak the holy name. We were told in the Second Commandment we could make no images of this God, and I don't think that means just building idols, I think that means also trying to believe you've captured God in your words, in the Creeds, in the Scriptures.

The scriptures are in print what Christ is in person.

What you have to understand, is your father was your model for God.