"Omnipotence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Crowheart had been due to her brains and efforts. She raised her chin arrogantly. She had never been thwarted and the person was not born who could defeat her ultimately in any ambition! Her mental elation gave her a feeling akin to omnipotence. ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... refused a civil answer to persons much above him. All were condemned, absent and unheard, in arbitrary fines and forfeitures, which swept away the greatest part of their substance. Such bold oppression can scarcely be shielded by the omnipotence of parliament; and yet it maybe seriously questioned, whether the judges of the South Sea Directors were the true and legal representatives of their country. The first parliament of George the First had been chosen (1715) for three years: ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... that we have an illusion of liberty, an illusion that we are free, which suffices for us to acquire merit if we do right and demerit if we do wrong, and that this illusion of liberty is a relative liberty, which leaves the prescience of God, and therefore His omnipotence, absolute. Man is also extremely weak, debilitated, and incapable of good on account of original sin, the sin of our first parents, which is transmitted to us through heredity and paralyses us. But God ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... overplus is 'exceeding abundant,' not only 'above what we ask or think,' but far more than our need. 'Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient that every one may take a little,' says Sense. Omnipotence says, 'Bring the few small loaves and fishes unto Me'; and Faith dispensed them amongst the crowd; and Experience 'gathered up of the fragments that remained' more than there had been when the multiplication began. So the grace utilised increases; the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... weep for us, the fatherland sighs, and Glory is in mourning. We struggle here against the oppression of the gods, and the longings of the nations are for us.... Adversity was wanting to my career. If I had died on the throne amidst the clouds of my omnipotence, I should have remained a problem for many men: to-day, thanks to misfortune, they can judge of me ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... at once sanctioned, were measures which promised a more legal and constitutional system of government. The question of the divorce presented to More no serious difficulty. Untenable as Henry's claim seemed to the new Chancellor, his faith in the omnipotence of parliament would have enabled him to submit to any statute which named a new spouse as queen and her children as heirs to the crown. But as Cromwell's policy unfolded itself he saw that more than ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... go farther back still: Who knows what indelible constitution may be, is, fixed upon the individual organism, for better, for worse, by the authors of its life, that, if evil, no training, no education, no work of grace, not even omnipotence, can expunge or alter? This motherhood of woman, in its awful sanctity and mystery, in its bearings upon the immortality of personal identity, is a fearful dignity. Therein consists the first and chief claim of Woman to honor and reverence. She who has been a mother has measured ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... sight to the blind, firmness and flexibility to relaxed or contracted nerves, calling the dead to life, changing the properties of the elements, and others of the same kind, are testimonies of the omnipotence of the creator of the world, and demonstrate the presence of God; who alone commands all nature, and at his pleasure changes and inverts the order of things established by himself. Wherefore it cannot be doubted, that He, who has perform'd these things, had the devils ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... said. "I'm a fool, an awful fool. Hang Morabita and her voice and the golden houses of the gods, and beastly, showy omnipotence to which her voice carries one away! To talk sense—mother—just brutal common sense. My fate is fixed, you know. There's no earthly use in wriggling. I am condemned to live a cow's life and die a cow's death. The pride ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... the harmony of the moral world, as you have been long accustomed to do upon the order of the physical universe, and you will see the scheme of the eternal intelligence developing itself alike in both. Think of the goodness and mercy of omnipotence, and aid your contemplation by devotional feelings and mental prayer and aspirations to the source of all knowledge, and wait with humility for the light which I doubt not will be so produced ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... man is free! The beggar-garbed or over-bent with snows, Each mortal, long defeated, disallowed, Feeling her touch, grows stronger limbed, and knows The purple on his shoulders and is proud. The Spring returns! O madness beyond sense, Breed in our bones thine own omnipotence! ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... marvelling at his valour and prowess,[FN48] and thanked him for his deed and gave him joy of his safety, saying, "O Hasan thou hast done a deed, whereby thou hast healed the burning of him that thirsteth for vengeance and pleased the King of Omnipotence!" Then they returned to the palace, and he abode with them, eating and drinking and laughing and making merry; and indeed his sojourn with them was joyous to him and he forgot his mother;[FN49] but while he led with them this goodly life one day, behold, there ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... Addison, famed as a clear thinker and writer, thus wrote of justice: "There is no virtue so truly great and godlike as justice.... Omniscience and omnipotence are requisites for the full exercise of it." Almost in our own time Daniel Webster, called in his day the great expounder and even now reckoned among the greatest of men intellectually, in his eulogy upon Justice Story thus apostrophized justice: "Justice is the ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... should grow worse. The man of very regular conduct is too often a prig, if he be not worse—a rabbi. I, for my part, want to be startled out of my conceits; I want to be put to shame in my own eyes; I want to feel the bridle in my mouth, and be continually reminded of my own weakness and the omnipotence of circumstances. (5) If I from my spy-hole, looking with purblind eyes upon the least part of a fraction of the universe, yet perceive in my own destiny some broken evidences of a plan and some signals of an overruling goodness; shall ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... remarkable preservation of those little children. Who could deny the finger of God, with such wonderful instances of his Omnipotence before their eyes? Surely such events must shake the tottering foundations of infidelity, and cause the most disbelieving to confess 'The Lord He is God.' Jersey is the next island for consideration; but I know so little of it, that I ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... with such means at her disposal? She can do all except either create matter or destroy it. These two extremes of power the deity has reserved for himself only; creation and destruction are the attributes of his omnipotence. To alter and undo, to develop and to renew—these are powers which he has handed over to ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... elevates and purifies as they do not. And aside from mere pleasure, there is in such a study a practicability—taking the word in a broader and nobler sense—which puts to the blush man's busy schemes for wealth and honor. The beauties and sublimity of nature may indeed fill us with awe at the omnipotence of the mighty Architect, and with love and gratitude for His goodness, but it is only in the presence of the soul—His greatest work—that we realize the awful power of the Creator; it is only when threading ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... is possible, and has very likely been altogether incapable of its achievement, is no help. Moreover, the commonplaces which even the most freethinking of Unitarians seem to consider as axiomatic, are to me far from certain, and even unthinkable. For example, they are always talking about the omnipotence of God. But power even of the supremest kind necessarily implies an object—that is to say, resistance. Without an object which resists it, it would be a blank, and what, then, is the meaning of omnipotence? It is not that it is merely inconceivable; it is nonsense, ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... hush, hush! Peter Mortensgaard is Lord and Chieftain of the Future. I have never stood in a more august presence. Peter Mortensgaard has the power of omnipotence in him. He ...
— Rosmerholm • Henrik Ibsen
... round the Palais- Royal; one night the queen was obliged to let the people into her chamber; the king was asleep; and two officers of the town-guard watched for some hours at his pillow. The yoke of Richelieu and the omnipotence of Mazarin were less hard for royalty to bear than the capricious and jealous ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the One Deity, manifested as—, 205-u. Omega and Alpha are the last and first letters of the Greek alphabet, 701-u. Omith, or Amida, the Japanese God, without beginning or ending, 616-u. Omnific letter of the Kabalah: Creation effected by the, 14-u. Omnipotence is the most absolute liberty, 736-l. Omniscience symbolized by the Blazing Star and All Seeing Eye, 506-u. Omschim, a book giving the arrangements of the Sephiroth, 757-m. Omschim, the Kabalistic book, meaning "Introduction to ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... at its head. On his arrival he had established in the Duchy of Mecklenburg, in Swedish Pomerania, and in Stralsund, the capital of that province, military posts and custom-houses, and that in a time of profound peace with those countries, and without any previous declaration. The omnipotence of Napoleon, and the terror inspired by the name of Davoust, overcame all obstacles which might have opposed those iniquitous usurpations. The weak were forced to yield ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... above all, he will not be reduced to a state of nothingness. He will again have a life of toil; he will participate, to the extent God has permitted him, in the endless creations produced by divine omnipotence; he will again love, he will never cease to love; he will continue his eternal progress, because the distance between ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... neither Christian nor Bridgenorth held it sound policy to practise openly, even under parliamentary authority, against a lady so little liable to hesitate upon the measures most likely to secure her feudal sovereignty; wisely considering that even the omnipotence, as it has been somewhat too largely styled, of Parliament, might fail to relieve them from the ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... on the matter, feels himself to be like a baby, whom he has seen the nurse to take from its cradle, pat on the back, feed, and then return to its little couch, all without undue violence or tyranny, but still with a certain consciousness of omnipotence as far as that child was concerned. The vitality of the man is gone from him, and he, in his prostrate condition, debarred by all the features of his condition from spontaneous exertion, feels himself to be more a woman than the woman ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... is no impotent voice; it can summon the thunder to give it resonance; the power which we sometimes speak of as if it were purely spiritual is a power which clothes itself spontaneously and of right in all the majesty and omnipotence of nature. It is the same truth, again, in another aspect of it, which is expressed in Wordsworth's ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... failure, and if mankind are now what they have always been, such will be the fate of free government in the United States, in the event of war. Shall we bring such a catastrophe upon us to vindicate the Chicago Platform? No! the American people will rise in their omnipotence and trample into dust the man who dared to put in jeopardy this Union, in order to maintain such demagogism. Away with parties and platforms and every thing else which would obstruct the free and patriotic efforts now making for the salvation of the Union. ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... is iron law and order all over Russia, neither anarchy nor chaos being visible.... With the recent abolition of the death penalty the Red terror, long since bleached to pale pink, came to a definite end. Such is the omnipotence of the Soviets that it is no longer necessary for them to terrorize ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... Lavender dreamily, "how Joe always does the right thing in the wrong place. He is very English." The hammering continued, and the dog, who traced it to the omnipotence of her master, got up on the seat where she could lick his face. Mr. Lavender was ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... January 26, Napoleon and Josephine were back at the Tuileries. Prince Eugene's marriage put a happy ending to the campaign just finished. To create a king and to give to his step-son the hand of this king's daughter was a stroke of imagination on Napoleon's part that did honor to his omnipotence. The accounts of the triumphal festivities in Munich, Stuttgart, and Carlsruhe followed close upon the bulletins announcing the victories of the Grand Army, and produced a great impression in both ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... English sort, and treated her within the hut as white ladies were invariably treated in Queensland; but she considered that at Boupari one must do as Boupari does, and it never for a moment occurred to her simple mind to doubt the omnipotence of Tu-Kila-Kila in his island realm any more than she had doubted the omnipotence of the white man and his local religion in their proper place (as she ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... utter three or four words, but they faint away. Therefore, to comprehend much in a few words, the Voice is an Emanation from that very Spirit, which God breathed inth Man's Nostrils, when he Created him a living Soul. Hence also, The Word of God, the Son of God, the Omnipotence of God, &c. are in Holy Scripture oftentimes homonymous, or of the like, ...
— The Talking Deaf Man - A Method Proposed, Whereby He Who is Born Deaf, May Learn to Speak, 1692 • John Conrade Amman
... knew anything I would know that God made this world out of His omnipotence. He might just as well made it out of His memory. What is omnipotence? Is it a raw material? The weakest man in the world can lift as much nothing as God. Yet He made this world out of His omnipotence. It is so stated by a doctor of divinity, and I should ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... seen by anybody, even in a dream, since his beauty did not in the least resemble that of other men, but hovered as it were half-way between one sex and the other, as if the Creator when he made him, unable to decide, whether to make of him a man or a woman, had combined, by some miracle of omnipotence and skill, the fascinations of the two. For though he was tall, and strong, yet strange! his body and his limbs were rounded, and delicately shaped, and slender, with soft and tender hands and feet that were almost too small, even for a girl: and as he moved, ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... is not directly concerned with modern theories of heredity, or variation, or with the "omnipotence" or secondary importance of natural selection. And yet Naegeli, and especially Weismann, have had so marked an influence on modern thought that we cannot afford to neglect their theories. We will briefly notice ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... yet, in practice, completely obligatory. It would declare that, if the legislature shall do what is expressly forbidden, such act, notwithstanding the express prohibition, is, in reality, effectual. It would be giving to the legislature a practical and real omnipotence with the same breath which professes to restrict their powers within narrow limits. It is prescribing limits, and declaring that those limits may be passed at pleasure." (Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch, 177.) More weighty words than these ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... a heaven turning pale in the contemplation of some act that was piteous and terrible. And under this blanching heaven the desert, and all things and people of the oasis of Beni-Mora, assumed an aspect of apprehension, as if they felt themselves to be in the thrall of some power whose omnipotence they could not question and whose purpose they feared. This whiteness was shot, at the hour of sunset, with streaks of sulphur yellow and dappled with small, ribbed clouds tinged with yellow-green, a bitter and cruel shade ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... would behove the author to write a tale of the pestilence; and then another, a tale of the exodus. These three wonderful events, following each other, were the blessings coming from Omniscience and Omnipotence by which the black clouds were driven from the Irish firmament. If one through it all could have dared to hope, and have had from the first that wisdom which has learned to acknowledge that His mercy endureth for ever! And then the ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... the omnipotence of Jovius and Herculius was insufficient to sustain the weight of the public administration. The prudence of Diocletian discovered that the empire, assailed on every side by the barbarians, required on every side the presence ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... hence forcibly appears that theatres of life must have remained unserviceable, or in the possession of a tenantry inferior to what might have enjoyed them, for many ages: there surely would have been no such waste allowed in a system where Omnipotence was working upon the plan of minute attention to specialities. The fact seems to denote that the actual procedure of the peopling of the earth was one of a natural kind, requiring a long space of time for its evolution. In this supposition the long existence of land ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... arm around her. "Very well. What more can we wish to be sure of than Omnipotence and Omnipresence. You know that it is only good that is constructive. Evil is destructive, and in the end even destroys itself. So long as you want only good you are safe in the everlasting arms and are blessed." The speaker changed his ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... on the other hand, it come into a man's possession accompanied by a pure unselfish motive that controls, it comes the nearest to omnipotence of anything we handle. Gold of itself seems to have the puckering quality of a green persimmon. The green fruit will contract the mouth to its smallest proportions. And unmellowed gold acts in the same way upon the ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... is accepted in the literal fulness of scriptural declaration—that the three are one in purpose, plan and method, alike in all their Godly attributes; one in their divine omniscience and omnipotence; yet as separate and distinct in their personality as are any three inhabitants of earth. "Mormonism" claims that scriptures declaring the oneness of the Trinity admit of this interpretation; that such indeed is ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... strength of the human spirit and to belittle the Love of God. It denies the truth that God, if He chose, could show the darkest soul the beauty of holiness in so constraining a way that the frail nature must yield to the appeal. To deny this, is to deny the omnipotence of the Creator. No man would deliberately reject peace and joy, if he could see how to find them, in favour of feverish evil and ceaseless suffering. If we believe that God is perfect love, it is inconceivable that He should make a creature capable of defying His utmost tenderness, ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... taxation that will be resisted, but that no other given part of legislative rights can be exercised, without regard to the general opinion of those who are to be governed. That general opinion is the vehicle and organ of legislative omnipotence. Without this, it may be a theory to entertain the mind, but it is nothing in the direction of affairs. The completeness of the legislative authority of Parliament over this kingdom is not questioned; and yet many things indubitably ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a great mistake to put before young children ideas which are really beyond the conception of an adult. There are many stories told of how children receive teaching about the Omniscience or Omnipotence of God. The stories sound irreverent, and are often repeated as highly amusing, but they are really more pathetic. Miss Shinn tells of one poor mite who resented being constantly watched and said, "I will not be so tagged," and another said, "Then I think He's ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... and purified from all iniquity. It is an Augean stable we have to clean, but Hercules was one, and we are many. The People are at last sovereign. Every man who works for humanity has God upon his side; he cannot fail, for the might of Omnipotence is with his puny arm. This is the task now set before us: it lies directly in our onward path—we cannot take a step really in advance until it is achieved. If we fail now, all is lost. Our dead heroes ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Defiance, but only Defence, Hold we forth for humanity's sake,— And, with the help of Omnipotence, We shall stand when the mountains quake: Only in Him our hearts are stout; ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... of Omnipotence! I'll save a pair o' pups from turning wolves. And I'm a weak mortal man, that 's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... does not matter to me," said Triplet, with some hauteur, and assuming poetic omnipotence. "Only, when one knows the subject, one can sometimes make the verses ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... impossible for the Creator to shorten the process, to help man in his painful and often unsuccessful search after truth, and to make known that which exists in the Divine mind and purpose? To say that he cannot, is in fact to depose him from the throne of omnipotence, and to bring us back either to two eternal independent principles, incapable of all communication, or to drive us to Pantheism. If there ever was a period in duration in which God could act upon matter, or endue infinite intelligences with the means and capability of knowledge, ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... religious proclivities were more pronounced than those of other children I cannot say, but certainly, as a child, I was in the habit of appealing to Omnipotence ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... thought you were cleverer than that, youngster," said Blondet. "No. Upon my word, as I looked at that forehead of yours, I credited you with the omnipotence of the great mind—the power of seeing both sides of everything. In literature, my boy, every idea is reversible, and no man can take upon himself to decide which is the right or wrong side. Everything is bi-lateral in the domain of thought. Ideas are binary. ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... flesh?" I asked. Not in horror, however, for since my recently acquired knowledge of the Holy Therns I was prepared for anything in this still less accessible heaven, where all was evidently dictated by a single omnipotence; where ages of narrow fanaticism and self-worship had eradicated all the broader humanitarian instincts that the race ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... had already sailed far away towards the plains of Germany, and the moon had climbed so high above the ragged Dent de Jaman as to its rays to stream into, the basin of the Leman. A thousand pensive stars spangled the vauk images of the benign omnipotence which unceasingly pervades and governs the universe, whatever may be the local derangements or accidental struggles of the inferior agents. The foaming and rushing waves had gone down nearly as fast as they had ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... it as the nature of things,—that is, as the laws of nature and matter—allowed him; which is nonsense, if those laws were made by him, and leaves the question where it was, or rather solves it by giving up the omnipotence of the Creator, if these laws were ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... So spacious, and his line stretched out so far, That Man may know he dwells not in his own— An edifice too large for him to fill, Lodged in a small partition; and the rest Ordained for uses to his Lord best known, The swiftness of those Circles attribute, Though numberless, to his Omnipotence, That to corporeal substances could add Speed almost spiritual. Me thou think'st not slow, Who since the morning-hour set out from Heaven Where God resides, and ere midday arrived In Eden—distance inexpressible By numbers that ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... example of a nation without a God, and succeeding generations will only add a new lustre to our present resplendent glory, bound together by the most sacred ties of goodwill; independent, yet acknowledging the sovereignty of Omnipotence, and it was fraught with vital interest to every ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... the monuments that sprang up in his footsteps! Never since the world began has there been a traveller in the grandiose style of Hadrian; he perambulated his world like a god, crowned with a halo of benevolence and omnipotence. ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... worlds, taking a survey of the universe, comprehending its arrangement, and entering into the scheme of that wonderful connection and correspondence of things so remote, and which it seems the utmost exertion of Omnipotence to have established? What a volume of wisdom, what a noble theology do these discoveries open to us! While some superior geniuses have soared to these sublime subjects, other sagacious and diligent minds have been inquiring into the most minute works of the Infinite Artificer; ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... put that honour and respect upon prayer in all ages, that it might be a demonstration to all ages and generations, how ready and propense(516) God was to hear prayer. Nay, to speak with reverence, God will submit his own omnipotence to prayer. Command, ask of me, and command me, says the high and holy One, Isa. xlv. 11. O but "the effectual fervent prayer" of the righteous avails much, 1 James v. 16. It does a man's business, and upon less ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... power of a Supreme Lord, limited in knowledge and so on; the quality of being an effect therefore supplies a reason for inferring an intelligent agent of the kind described only, and thus is opposed to the inference of attributes of a contrary nature, viz. omniscience, omnipotence, and those other attributes that belong—to the highest Soul, whose existence you wish to establish.—Nor does this (as might be objected) imply an abandonment of all inference. Where the thing to be inferred ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... of suns and planets.—In viewing the beautiful process of Nature, presented by a majestic river, we cease to wonder that priestcraft has often succeeded in teaching nations to consider rivers as of divine origin, and as living emblems of Omnipotence. Ignorance, whose constant error it is to look only to the last term of every series of causes, and which charges Impiety on all who venture to ascend one term higher, and Atheism on all who dare to explore several ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... she go back to the Broadway-Fifth Avenue district. But however vague other impressions from the life about her might have been, there had been branded into her a deep and terrible fear of the police an omnipotence as cruel as destiny itself—indeed, the visible form of that sinister god at present. Once in the pariah class, once with a "police record," and a man or woman would have to scale the steeps of respectability up to a far loftier height than Susan ever ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... me much, and I have much to be grateful for; for after the rash attempt I made to secure my freedom, I have reason to be thankful for the mercy shown to me. Death—dreadful death of soul and body—would have been my portion; but, by the mercy of Omnipotence, I have been spared to repentance—John iii. I have now come to bitterness. The chaplain, a pious gentleman, says it never really pays to steal. "Lay up for yourselves treasures in Heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt." Honesty is the best policy, I am convinced, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... shook the realms above, The undaunted guard of cloud-compelling Jove: When the bright partner of his awful reign, The warlike maid, and monarch of the main, The traitor-gods, by mad ambition driven, Durst threat with chains the omnipotence of Heaven. Then, call'd by thee, the monster Titan came (Whom gods Briareus, men AEgeon name), Through wondering skies enormous stalk'd along; Not he that shakes the solid earth so strong: With giant-pride at Jove's high throne he stands, And brandish'd ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... true glory of the divine nature is its tenderness. The lowliness and death of Christ are the glory of God! Not in the awful attributes which separate that inconceivable Nature from us, not in the eternity of His existence, nor in the Infinitude of His Being, not in the Omnipotence of His unwearied arm, nor in fire-eyed Omniscience, but in the pity and graciousness which bend lovingly over us, is the true glory of God. These pompous 'attributes' are but the fringes of the brightness, the living white heart of which is love. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... have denied the infinitude of God's knowledge, notably Dr. Adam Clarke. He held that God, although possessed of omnipotence, yet as He chooses not to do all things, so also although He possesses the power of knowing all things, yet He chooses to be ignorant of some things. In refuting this notion, Dr. Hodge remarks, "But this is to suppose that God wills not to be God, that the Infinite wills to be finite. ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... said to make exceedingly light of it, and asserts that he can clear himself of all the imputations Mr. Urquhart seeks to cast upon him. He has, however, committed a great blunder in entering into a paper war at all. In his letter he correctly lays down the principle of the irresponsibility and omnipotence of a Secretary of State in relation to his agents, and there he ought to have stopped, and, acting on that principle, have declined any controversy; but he entered into it, and descended from his pedestal; and, though his letter is clever and well written, there ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... the world on a great Spirit or Angel." It was his belief, or an assumed belief (for the thing to him was really a day-dream), that in this way the great antinomy between free- will and that predestination which is implicit in omnipotence, could be got rid of. Townsend thought that this matter had never been discussed as fully as it ought to have been. I am not theologian enough to know how far this is true, but I suspect that this is just the sort of point upon which Townsend ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... the power of hating what I once loved, of unlearning what I once knew, nay, of even forgetting what once I was? Who has made you and me to differ, but He who can, when He will, make us to agree? It is His same Omnipotence which will transform you, if you will ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... and knowledge fall far short of your question. It is to God only that we can apply in cases of this kind. In the midst of our prosperities, which often tempt us to forget him, he is pleased to mortify us in some instance, that we may address our thoughts to him, acknowledge his omnipotence, and ask of him what we ought to expect from him alone. Your majesty has subjects," proceeded he "who make a profession of honouring and serving God, and suffering great hardships for his sake; to them I would advise you ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... two trials that the interested parties raised rapidly on anything I desired. I used to send Gusta and John, nicknamed very properly "Omniscience and Omnipotence," which names did equally well when reversed (like a paper cuff), and they, less verdant than their mistress, would return with an amazing array of stuff. We now have everything but a second-hand pulpit, a wooden leg, and a coffin plate. We utilized a cradle and antique churn ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... in these days had not a good time, nor, indeed, had the Boltons generally. Mrs. Bolton, though prone to grasp at power on every side, was apt, like some other women who are equally grasping, to expect almost omnipotence from the men around her when she was desirous that something should be done by them in accordance with her own bidding. Knowing her husband to be weak from age and sorrow, she could still jeer at him because he was not abnormally strong; and though her intercourse with his sons and their families ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... regulated by our own conduct. It has been the boast of some swelling moralists, that every man's fortune was in his own power, that prudence supplied the place of all other divinities, and that happiness is the unfailing consequence of virtue. But, surely, the quiver of Omnipotence is stored with arrows, against which the shield of human virtue, however adamantine it has been boasted, is held up in vain: we do not always suffer by our crimes; we are not always protected by ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... vicariously, through one P. T. Mallencroft, his secretary, on flawless paper, three sentences in bold clear type and a Spencerian signature closing it. It was a bloodless thing. It spoke the commands of omnipotence as though ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... summers have flown over your young head—eighty winters have sown their snows on mine. You have yet to learn. Years have brought wrinkles—they have brought wisdom likewise. To struggle with Fate, I tell you, is to wrestle with Omnipotence. We may foresee, but not avert our destiny. What will be, shall be. This is your eighteenth birthday, Sybil: it is a day of fate to you; in it occurs your planetary hour—an hour of good or ill, according ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... out walking, and use my winter head as well as I can, which is not very well. I do not blame the winter, nor do I blame anything. But where are the red-hot irons and the youth of omnipotence? For hours sometimes I walk along a path in the woods with my hands folded on my back, an old man, my mind gilded for a moment by an occasional memory; I stop, and raise my eyebrows in surprise. Can this be an iron in the fire? It is not, ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... here reiterate and re-affirm that denial; and as I expect shortly to appear before my God, to answer for the conduct of my whole life, should these charges have found their way to the throne of eternal justice, I WILL in the presence of OMNIPOTENCE pronounce them FALSE." ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... insist, upon what authority must be best known to themselves, "that God cannot communicate to his works that perfection which he himself possesses;" at the same moment they do not fail to announce his omnipotence. Will it require any capacity, more than is the common lot of a child, to comprehend the absurd contradiction of the two assertions? As beings possessing but five senses, we must then, of necessity, regulate our judgment by the information they are capable of affording ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... making there what living soil it pleases, seems not so strange as that other conceit—that science is now-a-days so expert that, in consumptive cases, as yours, it can, by prescription of the inhalation of certain vapors, achieve the sublimest act of omnipotence, breathing into all but lifeless dust the breath of life. For did you not tell me, my poor sir, that by order of the great chemist in Baltimore, for three weeks you were never driven out without a respirator, and for a given time of every day sat bolstered up in a ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... we have accorded to the Eighteenth Amendment almost exactly the status then reserved for Omnipotence. You found yourself confronted by occasionally enforced if obviously unreasonable supernal statutory decrees, which every one broke now and then as a matter of convenience: and every now and then, also, somebody was caught and punished, either in this world or in the next, ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... of organized being. Yet it is true that when a certain point is reached a change and dissolution of the molecules always takes place, and this change is the sure introduction of death. Hence, nothing short of union with God, through his own appointed means, by which he brings his own omnipotence to bear for the purpose of controlling the essential condition of organic existence, could ever be an antidote of death. Man in his original innocence enjoyed such means in the fruit of the tree of life. Being removed from this he dies by the essential laws of his ...
— The Christian Foundation, March, 1880
... superstition, annihilated all belief in a God. The ignorant part of our nation, which, as everywhere else, constitutes the majority, witnessing the impunity and prosperity of crime, and bestowing on the Almighty the passions of mortals, first doubted of His omnipotence in not crushing guilt, and afterwards of His existence in not exterminating the blasphemous from among the living. Feeling, however, the want of consolation in their misfortunes here, and hope of a reward hereafter for unmerited sufferings upon earth, they all hailed ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... theological virtue may be twofold. One is taken from the very nature of virtue, and thus the measure and rule of theological virtue is God Himself: because our faith is ruled according to Divine truth; charity, according to His goodness; hope, according to the immensity of His omnipotence and loving kindness. This measure surpasses all human power: so that never can we love God as much as He ought to be loved, nor believe and hope in Him as much as we should. Much less therefore can there ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... believed literally, and, if I may say so, with a harshness of realisation which left little scope for imagination or mystery. Her ideas concerning heaven and her solutions of life's enigmas were clear and simple, but they could only be reconciled with certain obvious facts—such as the omnipotence and all-goodness of God—by leaving many things absolutely out of sight. And this my mother succeeded effectually in doing. She never doubted that her opinions comprised the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; she therefore made haste to sow ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... his Lord and King. Much of his present perplexity would be relieved if he could but realize that he is temporarily tenting where an enemy rules, and where he is the object of that enemy's fiery darts, yet hedged about by the omnipotence of God; called to bear the one message of redemption by the Cross, in the capacity and hidden dignity of an ambassador from the throne of the Most High; even now possessing a glory which shall soon be unveiled in the presence of his Lord; waiting that morning ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... Creation must be reproved, and in the midst of the successes by which patient insight will be surprised, the fact of the confirmation of species in plants and animals must remain always a miraculous one. What outstretched sign of constant Omnipotence can be more awful, than that the susceptibility to {204} external influences, with the reciprocal power of transformation, in the organs of the plant; and the infinite powers of moral training and mental conception over the nativity of animals, should ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... absolute Principle of Scientific Mind-healing, the sovereign Omnipotence which delivers the children of men from pain, disease, decay, and every ill that flesh ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with whom I have to do, even with Him who sowed the vault of Heaven so thick with stars, each one of which may be not a sun but a system[107];—when, I say, I attend to the emphatic nature of the inspired record, on the one hand, and to GOD'S Omnipotence on the other,—I have no difficulty in supposing that He embraced the Sun in a veil, for just so long a period as it seemed Him good, and when He willed that it should re-appear, that He withdrew the veil again. The name for the operation just now ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... caring for the sparrow and lily; as waiting upon each beetle, bird and beast, and caring for each detail of man's life. Slowly the word God increased in richness. Having found through his telescope worlds so distant as to involve infinite power, man emptied the idea of omnipotence into the word GOD; finding an infinite wisdom in the wealth of the summers and winters, man added the idea of omniscience; noting a certain upward tendency in society, man added the word, "Providence;" gladdened by God's mercy, man added ideas of forgiveness and love. ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... atoms at the outset with certain properties and energies, the gradual evolution of which in after ages would produce all the phenomena of nature, without the necessity of his incessant presence, agency, and control. Certainly, we may not put bounds to omnipotence; though we may assert of a given hypothesis respecting its exercise, that it is inconceivable, or involves wholly incongruous ideas. The necessary attributes of matter, according to our conception of it, are extension, figure, ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... Miracles!)—Butler's unanswerable arguments, (for the allusion is evidently to him,) are spoken of as "a few trite and commonplace generalities as to the moral government of the World and the belief in the Divine Omnipotence; or as to the validity of human testimony; or the limits of human experience." (p. 133.) And yet the author is for ever informing us that his hostility to Miracles "is essentially built upon those grander ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... will loudly proclaiming its omnipotence were excited by the very appearance of resistance. The King of Holland had sought to defend the interests of his subjects; the captive chief of the Catholic Church sometimes allowed the remains of his broken ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... from this barren being do we reap?[473] Our senses narrow, and our reason frail, Life short, and truth a gem which loves the deep, And all things weighed in Custom's falsest scale;[474] Opinion an Omnipotence,—whose veil Mantles the earth with darkness, until right And wrong are accidents, and Men grow pale Lest their own judgments should become too bright, And their free thoughts be crimes, and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... ask why we have thus lost democracy, I say from two causes; (a) The omnipotence of an unelected body, the Cabinet; (b) the party system, which turns all politics into a game like the Boat Race. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... man who dwells three hundred miles from London should have some interest, however slight, in international politics, and some knowledge, however fragmentary, of natural forces, rather than a slipshod belief in ghosts, witches, and the omnipotence of "squire." It is not from such minds that empire is made or deserved, and if with the increase of cheap schooling, cheap printing, and cheap travelling much that is beautiful in language or in legend is swept aside and forgotten, we who have, by the fortune of training, been allowed ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... not this somehow the face of an old familiar, slyly peeping? Of what use, then, were clubs? When were things ever settled, if she could be conscious of a little cloud no larger than a man's hand even now, with the living guarantee of her omnipotence at her side?... ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... much as you imagine," said he, smiling. "The conditions of their theories, so far as even omniscience can comprehend or omnipotence realize them, are indeed exactly complied with; but nevertheless, they often baffle both. Sometimes the reproof, thus implied, obliquely strikes more than its immediate objects; it alights even on some of the profoundest philosophers, who never ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... While the Pharisaic theologian of the Southern pulpit is expounding his Bible-doctrine in justification of kidnapping, and appealing to Heaven for assistance, the colored man turns in disgust at the impiety, and turns into secret places to beseech Omnipotence to favor the success of the national arms. Perhaps there is an interfering Providence already manifest in results. If the plagues of Egypt had been visited on the rebellious States by an overruling Power, they ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... says (Tom. in Matth. xiii. 569), is not the absolutely unlimited; for then He could not have self-consciousness: His omnipotence is limited by His goodness and wisdom ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... in the course of after-dinner talk in which nothing, not even the point which the speaker wished to carry, was sacred from epigram; nothing taken for granted, nothing built up except on ruins, nothing reverenced save the sceptic's adopted article of belief—the omnipotence, omniscience, and ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... on him as he replied, "Not for the sake of their fleshly arm do we disturb your knights and barons in their prosecution of barbarous festivities, and murderous feuds, which you call enjoying their homes and protecting their domains, —not that Omnipotence requires their arm of flesh to execute the great predestined work of liberation—but for the weal of their immortal souls." These last words he pronounced ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... Arthur, "but when you come to look into it it comes out clear enough. It is one of the instances of the omnipotence of capital. Parliament can do such a thing, not because it has any creative power of its own, but because it has the command of unlimited capital." Mr. Wharton looked at him, sighing inwardly as he reflected that unrequited ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... complacency of the public, the writer says: "The assumption is that the 'registered doctor' or surgeon knows everything that is known, and can do everything that is to be done. This means that the dogmas of omniscience, omnipotence and infallibility, and something very like the theory of the apostolic succession and kingship by anointment, have recovered in medicine the grip they have lost in theology and politics. This would not matter if the 'legally qualified doctor' was a completely ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... precedents for raising supplies in the manner which Charles had adopted. Selden, whose learned industry was as vast as the amplitude of his mind, had to seek for the freedom of the subject in the dust of the records of the Tower—and the omnipotence of parliaments, if any human assembly may be invested with such supernatural greatness, had not yet awakened the hoar antiquity ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... who fells the wood, And travelling often in the cut he makes, Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not, And all their botany is Latin names. The old men studied magic in the flowers, And human fortunes in astronomy, And an omnipotence in chemistry, Preferring things to names, for these were men, Were unitarians of the united world, And, wheresoever their clear eye-beams fell, They caught the footsteps of the SAME. Our eyes Are armed, but we are strangers to the stars, And strangers to the mystic beast and bird, And strangers ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... mire, then borne aloft to the skies,—the football of the eternal powers of good and evil, enslaved and yet to be emancipated, as we may hope, in the last and final struggle, when the soul is rescued by Omnipotence. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... however ample, sorrowful or tender, is worth the "De Profundis" chanted in unison, the solemnity of the "Magnificat," the splendid warmth of the "Lauda Sion," the enthusiasm of the "Salve Regina," the sorrow of the "Miserere," and the "Stabat Mater," the majestic omnipotence of the "Te Deum"? Artists of genius have set themselves to translate the sacred texts: Vittoria, Josquin de Pres, Palestrina, Orlando Lasso, Handel, Bach, Haydn, have written wonderful pages; often indeed they have been ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... dominion and valour; the Brahmanic cosmogony, and the epithet of apes, given to all other races in the epic of Valmiki, bear witness to the same fact; it is shown in the slavery imposed on conquered peoples, in the hatred of foreigners felt by all the Hellenic tribes; in the omnipotence of Rome, the haughtiness of the Germanic orders; in the feudal system, in the Crusades; and finally, in the modern sense of our superiority to all other existing races. The quickness of perception, and the facile projection of human ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... moon. The blest youth saw irradiated the young, open, still Mary's-brow, and the delicate proportions, which, like the white attire, seemed to exalt the form. Thou too fortunate man!—to whom the only visible goddess, Beauty, appears so suddenly, in her omnipotence! ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... such nobility as heartens us through life. He is kindly, but implacable; beneficent, a bestower of all gifts upon the faithful, a bestower of very terrible gifts upon those that flout him; and I who speak to you have seen my own contentment blighted, by just such flippant jesting with Love's omnipotence, before the edge of my first razor had been dulled. 'Tis true, I have lived since in indifferent comfort; yet it is but a dreary banquet where there is no platter laid for Love, and within the chambers of my heart—dust-gathering now, my dear!—he has gone unfed ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... goddess of mercy. With sailors she is the goddess of the sea. In many temples she is invoked by the sick, the halt, the blind, the impoverished. Her images are sometimes represented with a hundred arms to symbolize her omnipotence to save. Beal says of this, as Banergea says of the faith element of the Krishna cult, that it is wholly alien to the religion whose name it bears: it is not Buddhism. He thinks that it has been greatly affected ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... thousands, headed by their priests, and prostrated themselves before the altars. The melancholy chant of the penitent alone was heard; enemies were reconciled; men and women vied with each other in splendid works of charity, as if they dreaded that divine omnipotence would pronounce on ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... load-stone draws towards it iron. Having possessed nothing, they became rich, having become rich they became richer, having founded their fortunes on small schemes, they increased them by enormous ones. In time they attained that omnipotence of wealth which it would seem no circumstance can control or limit. The first Reuben Vanderpoel could not spell, the second could, the third was as well educated as a man could be whose sole profession is money-making. His children were taught all that expensive teachers and expensive opportunities ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of the thundering cataract's roar once worshipped the roaming sons of the forest in all their primitive freedom. They recognized in its thunder the voice, in its mad waves the wrath, and in its crashing whirlpool the Omnipotence of the Great Spirit—the Manitou of their ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah
... believed that the Elect of her dreams was within the church, hiding, perhaps out of delicacy, behind one of the pillars, round all of which she dragged Madame Latournelle on a tour of inspection. After this failure, she deposed the Deity from omnipotence. Many were her conversations with the imaginary lover, for whom she invented questions and answers, bestowing upon him a great deal of wit ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... sera,[19] What will be, shall be? Divinity, adieu! These metaphysics of magicians, And necromantic books are heavenly; Lines, circles, scenes,[20] letters, and characters; Ay, these are those that Faustus most desires. O, what a world of profit and delight, Of power, of honour, of omnipotence, Is promis'd to the studious artizan! All things that move between the quiet poles Shall be at my command: emperors and kings Are but obeyed in their several provinces, Nor can they raise the wind, or rend the clouds; But his dominion that exceeds in this, ...
— The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... before the shrine. The Madonna looked gravely upon her. The holy Babe gazed with omniscient eyes, holding forth tiny hands of omnipotence. ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... and the reckless life of borderers and adventurers, or the semi-barbarism of a civilization resolved into its primitive elements. Real republicanism is stern and severe; its essence is not in forms of government, but in the omnipotence of public opinion which grows out of it. This public opinion cannot prevent gambling with dice or stocks, but it can and does compel it to keep comparatively quiet. But horse-racing is the most public way ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... is a priest in his way—or no, perhaps I should rather call him a descendant of old Prometheus. Quite a respectable ancestry, too, don't you think? But has it ever struck you that with every victory over nature won by the human spirit, a fragment of their omnipotence is wrested from the hands of the gods? I always feel as if we were using fire and steel, mechanical energy and human thought, as weapons of revolt against the Heavenly tyranny. The day will come when we shall no longer need to pray. The hour ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... Yet Kismet, in whose omnipotence he more than half believed, had ordained otherwise; for man is merely an instrument in the hand ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer |
