"Supreme Being" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... storms of past years had ravished from her—he wanted to give the republic a God! On the tribune of the Convention, on this tribune which was his throne, rose Robespierre, to tell with grave dignity to the republic that there was a Supreme Being, that the soul of man was immortal. Then, accompanied by the Convention, he proceeded to the Champ de Mars, to inaugurate the celebration of the worship of a Supreme Being as his high-priest. But amid this triumph, on his way to the Champ de Mars, ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... chewing betel nut until the chicken, just killed, and the other food has been prepared for eating. Old dishes are placed in the center of the floor and in them food is offered for all the spirits, but in the exact center of all is a large plate of white food for the supreme being. A second large dish of food is placed in a tambara at the corner of the room as an offering to the warrior deities "so that they will not eat anyone during the fiesta." Again the spirits are besought to ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... tenet of the Mystics, advocated by Madame de Guyon, and adopted by the amiable and eloquent Fenelon, was, that the love of the Supreme Being must be pure and disinterested; that is, exempt from all views of interest, and all hope of reward. See the ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... consists in a just conformity of our actions to the relations, in which we stand to the supreme being and to our fellow-creatures, where shall we find a man who has been, or endeavoured to be, more diligent in the discharge of those essential duties? His first prayer was composed in 1738; he continued those fervent ejaculations of piety to the end ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... of having to do with invisibles, with angels, good or bad, yea, with the highest and supreme Being, even the holy God of heaven. I told you before that God sought the soul of man to have it for his companion; and now I tell you that the soul is capable of communion with him, when the darkness that sin hath spread over its face is removed. The soul is an intelligent power, ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... objects of fidelity, are founded. We must inquire after that duty in which all others find their several degrees and dignities, and from which they derive their obligative force. We are to find a superior, whose rights, including our duties, are presented to the mind in the very idea of that Supreme Being, whose sovereign prerogatives are predicates implied in the subjects, as the essential properties of a circle are co-assumed in the first assumption of a circle, consequently underived, unconditional, and as rationally unsusceptible, so probably prohibitive, ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of religion ends with the doctrine that man is the supreme being for mankind, and therefore with the categorical imperative to overthrow all conditions in which man is a degraded, servile, neglected, contemptible being, conditions which cannot be better described than by the exclamation of a Frenchman on the occasion of a projected dog tax: "Poor dogs; ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... currently related of them, in which the effects of their former tuition are apparent. The king once gravely told a visitor, with an idea of impressing him with his importance, that a short time previously to his arrival, he had held a conference with the supreme being, from whom he had learnt the cause of a recent sickness which had visited them, and also that he had approved of his being the king of the island. Other stories, equally nonsensical, are told of them, such as might be expected from people in this half-informed condition. But ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... interesting as the first play that we had seen. Her Majesty sat on her long couch in the bedroom and the eunuch brought her some tea and she ordered some brought for us. My reader can imagine how delighted I was to be treated in this way. In China the people think their sovereign is the supreme being and that her word is law. One must never raise their eyes when talking to her. This is a sign of great respect. I thought these extreme favors must be most unusual. I had been told that Her Majesty had a very ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... God is supposed to be the Christian conception of God as a Heavenly Father. This conception credits the Supreme Being with supernal tenderness and mercy—"God is Love." That is a very lofty, poetical, and gratifying conception, but it is open to one fatal objection—it is ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... resources. As the human Pharaoh showed himself entitled to homage from the lords of the earth, the priests came at length to the conclusion that Amon had a right to the allegiance of the lords of heaven, and that he was the Supreme Being, in respect of whom the others were of little or no account, and as he was the only god who was everywhere victorious, he came at length to be regarded by them as the only god in existence. It was impossible that the kings could see ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... there is a first. There is no solution of natural effects to which he was not ready to listen, provided it would assist him in getting rid of what he considered an unnecessary intervention of the Supreme Being. A fibre capable of irritability was with him enough to account, not only for the origin of animal life, but for its progress through all its stages. He had thus involved himself in the grossest materialism; but, being ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... all things and who demands reverence from his subjects. He is the Author and Finisher of the faith as well as the sole Cause of the universe itself. Much of this element is directly derived from Judaism, the progenitor of Christianity; but a difference consists in the triple nature of the supreme being according to the newer creed. As the original and supreme being, God is not only the Creator, but the watchful Judge as well, demanding reverent obedience to the laws of the world in which he has placed man, and imposing sacrifices and penitential observances ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... to men to select a sign whereby they should know that a message came from the Supreme Being, probably the man of science would select for the sign the communication of some scientific fact beyond the knowledge of the day, but admitting of being readily put to the test. The evidence thus obtained in favour of a revelation would correspond in ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... works, which it contemplates, reminded of Him as the Almighty Ruler by his providence, the aspects of which it reverently studies, and taught to call Him the Father by Christ, to whose instructions it yields a joyful obedience, it revolves around the Supreme Being as its light and security, through its relation to whom it is safe amidst the world's commotions ...
— The Religion of Politics • Ezra S. Gannett
... by which I mean a disbelief of a Supreme Being, and consequently of a future state, under whatsoever title it shelters itself, may likewise very reasonably deprive a man of this cheerfulness of temper. There is something so particularly gloomy and offensive to human nature in the prospect of non-existence, ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... parts of the Infinite forming one living melody; and each time that the accord made itself felt like a mighty respiration, the Worlds drawn by the concordant movement inclined themselves toward the Supreme Being who, from His impenetrable centre, issued all things and recalled ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... incapable of improvement, if they had owed their origin to ignorance and sin.[503] Irenaeus and Tertullian employ lengthy arguments to show that a God who has created nothing is inconceivable, and that a Demiurge occupying a position alongside of or below the Supreme Being is self-contradictory, inasmuch as he sometimes appears higher than this Supreme Being, and sometimes so weak and limited that one can no longer look on him as a God.[504] The Fathers everywhere argue on behalf of the Gnostic Demiurge and against the Gnostic ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... chronicler. He says there that Issa was a man blessed by God and the best of all; that it was he in whom the great Brahma had elected to incarnate when, at a period fixed by destiny, his spirit was required to, for a time, separate from the Supreme Being. ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... to yield our God of the future. There is no place in the future for an eternally perfect being and no need—society, democratic from end to end, can brook no such radical class distinction as that between a supreme being, favored with eternal and absolute perfection, and the mass of beings doomed to the lower ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... parts of the creative work, and of these were St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Augustine. Ready as they were to accept the literal text of Scripture, they revolted against the conception of an actual creation of the universe by the hands and fingers of a Supreme Being, and in this they were followed by Bede and a few others; but the more material conceptions prevailed, and we find these taking shape not only in the sculptures and mosaics and stained glass of cathedrals, and in the illuminations of missals and psalters, but later, at the close ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... several hundred years, attached to the Egyptian nation, and adopting many phases of the Egyptian civilization. When he turned his back upon his people in Babylon, he left polytheism behind. He obtained conception of one supreme being, ruler and creator of the universe, who could not be shown in the form of an ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... flowers, and no more. He is always the spectator, but a spectator who can exercise every faculty of the human mind and every passion in contemplation; he is the nearest that any man has ever come to Aristotle's Supreme Being. ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... development of the Peruvians was very high. They worshipped an unknown Supreme Being and they worshipped him, it is conclusively demonstrated, without human sacrifice. Objectively they paid their chief adoration to the sun, moon and stars, and to the Inca as the child or earthly representative ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... he was proud of his acquisitions, and, supposing himself master of great secrets, was in haste to teach what he had not learned. Thus he tells us, in the first Epistle, that from the nature of the Supreme Being may be deduced an order of beings such as mankind, because infinite excellence can do only what is best. He finds out that these beings must be "somewhere;" and that "all the question is, whether man be in a wrong place." Surely if, according to the ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... against prayer? Surely not. For, in the first place, the incontestable fact that belief does produce these effects is for us an ultimate fact as little capable of explanation as any physical law whatever; and may, therefore, for aught we know, or ever can know, be ordained by a Supreme Being. Secondly, all the beneficial effects, including happiness, are as real in themselves as if the ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... music, the rising tide of the St. Lawrence beating with refreshing waves at their feet, and a cloudless azure sky over head, from which the rosy tints of early morn had hardly disappeared, and if his soul be not ready to overflow with gratitude to the Supreme Being who has made everything so beautiful and good, I do not know what to think of him. I would not be such a man, 'I'd rather be a dog and ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... Sanchoniathon, Mercury excited against Saturn, and who were called Elohim. It may be farther asked why the plural substantive Elohim is made to agree with the singular verb bara (the Elohim creates). The reason is that after the Babylonish captivity the unity of the Supreme Being was the prevailing opinion of the Jews; it was therefore thought proper to introduce a pious solecism in language, which it is evident had no existence before Moses; thus in the names of the children of Jacob many of them are compounded of a plural verb, to which Elohim is the ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... great letters, is to begin every name of the Supreme Being, as God, Lord, Almighty, Father, Son, &c. All proper names of men and things, titles of distinction, as King, Duke, Lord, Knight, &c. must also begin with a capital. So ought every book, chapter, verse, paragraph, and sentence after a period. A saying, ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... it is of no little importance to destroy the popular errors which attack the unalterable attributes of the Supreme Being, as if he had laid it down as a law to himself that he would condescend to all the impious and fantastic wishes of malignant spirits, and of the madman who had recourse to them, by seconding them, and permitting ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... I made these enquiries, as well as some others, took some pains to explain the whole of this custom to us; but we were not masters enough of their language to understand them. I have since learnt from Omai, that they offer human sacrifices to the Supreme Being. According to his account, what men shall be so sacrificed, depends on the caprice of the high priest, who, when they are assembled on any solemn occasion, retires alone into the house of God, and stays there some time. When he comes out, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... meantime we must not be discouraged, but pray to God. This reference to God, which the Bunjo never failed to make when he examined us, always gave us pleasure, for by it we recognized with joy, that the people into whose power we were fallen, had at least some notion of a Supreme being who ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... believe that they attached importance to the ceremony of going thrice round their sacred circle, from east to west, following the course of the sun, by which it is supposed they intended to express their entire conformity to the will and order of the Supreme Being, and their desire that all might go well with them according to that order. It may be noticed, as an illustration of the tenacity of popular usages and religious rites, how they abide with a people, generation after generation, in spite of changes of the most ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various
... of the Antediluvian apostasy was the worship of God as Creator and Benefactor, and not as the Jehovah-God of Covenant and Mercy. And surely that is what we find everywhere to-day. People acknowledge a Supreme Being, and accept Christ as a model man, but they flatly deny the Fall, Hereditary Sin, the need of an Atonement, and all else that is connected with the Great Evangel. The Second cause of Antediluvian apostasy was the disregard of the original law of marriage, and the increased prominence ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... is worthy of remark that this was the first time in Helwyse's career—at least since his arrival at years of discretion—that he had thanked God for anything. This was not owing to his being of a specially ungrateful disposition, but to peculiar ideas upon the subject of a Supreme Being. God, he believed, was no more than the highest phase of man; and in any man of sufficient natural endowment, he saw a possible God; just as every American citizen is a possible President! What is of moment at present, however, is the fact that the young man's first inconsistency of word with ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... preserve, repent, God pardon all." Here I was run down again by him to the last degree; and it was a testimony to me, how the mere notions of nature, though they will guide reasonable creatures to the knowledge of a God, and of a worship or homage due to the supreme being of God, as the consequence of our nature, yet nothing but divine revelation can form the knowledge of Jesus Christ, and of redemption purchased for us, of a Mediator of the new covenant, and of an Intercessor at the footstool of God's throne; I say, nothing but a revelation from Heaven ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... devotion to a person who claimed to be the regenerator of society. These hero-worshipers were for a time victorious. Danton, like Hebert, was foully murdered, and Robespierre remained alone, virtually dictator. But his theatrical conduct in decreeing by law the existence of a Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul, and in organizing tawdry festivals to supply the place of worship, utterly embittered against him both atheists and pious people. In disappointed rage at his failure, he laid ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... received that doctrine through the corrupted channels of Rome, it carried along with it a great mixture of credulity and superstition, equally destructive to the understanding and to morals. The reverence toward saints and relics seems to have almost supplanted the adoration of the Supreme Being; monastic observances were esteemed more meritorious than the active virtues; the knowledge of natural causes was neglected, from the universal belief of miraculous interpositions and judgments; bounty to the Church atoned ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... went on, as good friends as ever. Her religious opinions were of the most catholic stamp, and in one respect they were peculiar. The Friends' idea of the "inward light" seemed to have become with her coincident with the idea of the Author of all light; and when speaking of the Supreme Being, she would never say "God," but "that Influence." That Influence was constantly with her; and she carried the idea so far as to believe that it prompted her daily action, and decided for her every ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... that, "by the knowledge we derive from astronomy, our faculties are enlarged, our minds exalted, and our understandings clearly convinced, and affected with the conviction, of the existence, wisdom, power, goodness, immutability and superintendency of the supreme being; so that, without an hyperbole, 'an undevout astronomer ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... being," he said; "for that being would be God;" and he adds, "Nature is the system of the laws established by the Creator." The supreme notion of Providence appears to his eyes in all its grandeur, when he writes, "The verities of nature were destined to appear only in course of time, and the Supreme Being kept them to Himself as the surest means of recalling man to Him when his faith, declining in the lapse of ages, should become weak; when, remote from his origin, he might begin to forget it; when, in fine, having become ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... capable of being influenced by a moral law, and its sanctions of threatenings and promises, rewards and punishments as the subject is; tho both may be influenced by a knowledge of moral good and evil. And therefore the moral agency of the Supreme Being, who acts only in the capacity of a ruler toward His creatures, and never as a subject, differs in that respect from the moral agency of created intelligent beings. God's actions, and particularly those which are to be attributed to Him ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... from a picture of the Supreme Being by Raphael. It is, however, remarkable, and somewhat ludicrous, that the beard of Hudibras is also compared to a meteor: and the accompanying observation of Butler almost induces one to think that Gray ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... another a force that is created by cultivation. Although the sublime is the apex of her mathematically-definite program and is a moral quality attained by the few, every human being has his point of sublimity in the idea of a Supreme Being. On the one hand, beauty is a preconceived idea in the human species; on the other it is not preconceived, but developed. Finally, the rules of art are perceptions of moral virtue, yet art which exhibits these ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of - our Ideas of Beauty, etc. • Frances Reynolds
... "Observations Concerning God's Works in Nature" (Betrachtungen uber die Werke Gottes in der Natur), which he recommended to the priests for wide distribution among the people. He saw the hand of God in even the most insignificant natural phenomenon. God was to him the Supreme Being whom he had jubilantly hymned in the choral portion of the Ninth Symphony in the words of Schiller: "Brothers, beyond you starry canopy there must dwell a loving Father!" Beethoven's relationship to God was that of a child toward his ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... full justice. The atheistic scoundrel! You can now see the logical outcome of the opinions of such men. He has vaunted for years that he believed neither in God nor Devil. He admitted no responsibilities to a Supreme Being, and when a man occupies such an attitude, what moral standard can he have? He hated Ned—poor Ned!—and then, having no standard of right before him, having no religion to sustain him, or to rebuke him, he became, in fact, what he was at heart—a ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... here: So many of our greatest statesmen have reminded us that spiritual values alone are essential to our nation's health and vigor. The Congress opens its proceedings each day, as does the Supreme Court, with an acknowledgment of the Supreme Being. Yet we are denied the right to set aside in our schools a moment each day for those who wish to pray. I believe Congress should pass ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... life as a respite from it all. These crazed and miserable wretches, cowardly fools, these beasts in the guise of human beings, deserved no better than to perish; but was it conceivable that the supreme being should destroy the whole of the beautiful and wisely-planned world for the sake of this base ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and he wound up his preface with these words: 'And thus at last we see without astonishment, after this long series of errors, misfortunes, and crimes, the Republic disappear, and France implore the Supreme Being to vouchsafe to her the one great and potent genius who in these difficult circumstances was able to lift her up, to defend her, and to govern her!' The heart of Louis XVIII. would have been touched by the grateful humility of this repentant wretch. But the Emperor simply ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... the bad. In this world our inner consciousness is absorbed by the crowd of eager passions which cheat remorse. The humiliation and disgrace involved in the practice of virtue do not permit us to realise its charm. But when, freed from the illusions of the bodily senses, we behold with joy the supreme Being and the eternal truths which flow from him; when all the powers of our soul are alive to the beauty of order and we are wholly occupied in comparing what we have done with what we ought to have done, then it is that the voice of conscience will regain ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... and that magistrates had no business with them, unless they occasion danger and disturbance to the state. They looked upon religion as a personal affair, which lies between God and a man's conscience, and that it was the prerogative of the Supreme Being to judge of men's hearts, as he alone was capable of forming a right judgment. In such a case, doubtless every man had a right to judge and chuse for himself, as he alone, and not the church, must at last be accountable to God for the choice. In every country this is reasonable; but in Protestant ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... of the human intellect are derived, and which stamps them as true. These religious conceptions are the meeting-ground of the dramatic and the metaphysical activity of his poetic genius. The two are blended in the vision of a Supreme Being not to be invested with human emotions, but only to ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... have a broad spirit of charity which acknowledges every man as a brother who believes in a Supreme Being, shuns evils as sins, and strives to live conscientiously and honestly according to the light ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... form of Christianity, representing the oldest undisturbed evolution of a strictly monotheistic doctrine, is undeniably polytheistic. Apart from the Virgin Mary, there is a whole hierarchy of inferior deities, saints, and angels, subordinate to the One Supreme Being. This may possibly be denied by the authorized expounders of the doctrine of the Church of Rome; but it is nevertheless certain that it is the view taken by the uneducated classes, with whom the saints are much more ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... culture of the field, and in surveying the scenery of external Nature, it is probable that the first rude draughts of Poetry were extemporary effusions, either descriptive of the scenes of pastoral life, or extolling the attributes of the Supreme Being. On this account Plato says that Poetry was originally Entheos Mimesis[8], or an inspired imitation of those objects which produced either pleasure or admiration. To paint those objects which produced pleasure was the business of the pastoral, and to display those which ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... ouk onta ex ouk onton, katabalomenos kai hupostesas sperma ti en echon pasan en heauto tes tou kosmou panspermian.] Like the Neoplatonists, these Basilidians did not teach an emanation from the Godhead, but a dynamic mode of action of the Supreme Being. The same can be asserted of Valentinus who also places an unnamable being above all, and views matter not as a second principle, but as a derived product. The dependence of Basilides and Valentinus on Zeno and Plato is, besides, undoubted. But the method of ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... ask you one question as a test whether or not I am right. If the Supreme Being used His power, as the Roman Caesar used his; if He used His wisdom as the Greek sophist used his, would He be glorious then and worthy of admiration? The old heathen AEschylus answered that question for mankind long ago on the Athenian ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... agreed in theory, that personal attachment to the Supreme Being, is the duty of every human soul; and every parent, with exceptions so few that they are not worth naming, wishes that his children should cherish that affection, and yield their hearts to its influence. He is willing therefore that the teacher, of ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... "Divinity! Supreme Being! Spirit of the Universe! great principle of all that I feel great, or good, or immortal within myself—whose existence I believe in, because I must have emanated from something superior to that by which I am surrounded—I ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... village meet together with their best faces, and in their cleanliest habits, to converse with one another upon indifferent subjects, hear their duties explained to them, and join together in adoration of the Supreme Being. Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week, not only as it refreshes in their minds the notions of religion, but as it puts both the sexes upon appearing[83] in their most agreeable forms, and ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... Africa, [456:4] maintained that there is no foundation for the ordinary distinction of the Persons of the Trinity, and that the terms Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, merely indicate different manifestations of the Supreme Being, or different phases under which the one God reveals Himself. From him the doctrine of those who confound the Persons of the Godhead still bears ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... general appearance and habits of the Cape York natives. A very accurate vocabulary of their language has been published by Mr. M'Gillivary in his account of the voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake. Of their superstitions I am unable to speak with certainty. That they have no belief in the existence of a Supreme Being is, I think, positive. They are, like all the Australian tribes, averse to travelling about at night if dark; this, I believe, chiefly arises from the inconvenience and difficulty of moving about at such times, and not from any superstitious fear. They travel when there is moonlight. They are true ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... weeping and lamentation; to supplicate is to ask, as it were, on bended knees. Crave and request are somewhat formal terms; crave has almost disappeared from conversation; request would seem distant between parent and child. Pray is now used chiefly of address to the Supreme Being; petition is used of written request to persons in authority; as, to petition the legislature to pass an act, or the ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... convictions of a large section of the community. Many individuals, influenced by pantheistic teaching, did not believe in the existence of a personal God distinct from the world; others, while holding fast to the belief in a personal supreme Being, rejected the Trinity and the Incarnation, and a still larger section insisted on the subjection of Christian revelation to the judgment of reason, and as a consequence on the rejection of everything in Christianity that flavoured of the supernatural. The ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... August, in the year 1501, we anchored by the shore of that country, and rendered to the Supreme Being our most sincere thanks, according to the Christian custom. The land we discovered did not appear to be an island, but a continent, as it extended far away in the distance, without any appearance of termination. It was beautifully fertile and very thickly inhabited, while all sorts of ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... kindred; and from institutions he should go on to the sciences, until at last the vision is revealed to him of a single science of universal beauty, and then he will behold the everlasting nature which is the cause of all, and will be near the end. In the contemplation of that supreme being of love he will be purified of earthly leaven, and will behold beauty, not with the bodily eye, but with the eye of the mind, and will bring forth true creations of virtue and wisdom, and be the friend of ...
— Symposium • Plato
... Calvin; but, thinking the doctrine of that great man, with regard to free will, predestination, and grace, too severe, he began to express his doubts concerning them in the year 1591, and, upon further inquiry, adopted the sentiments of those whose religious system extends the love of the Supreme Being and the merits of ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... disunions, would be indifferent; if they were not all improbable, as unworthy of the God. Perpetuity of discord is a thing impossible; every thing short of unity tends to decomposition. Any how then, given the element of eternity to work in, a one great Supreme Being was, in the created beginning, an a priori probability. That all other assumptions than that of His true and eternal Oneness are as false in themselves as they are derogatory to the rational views of deity, we all now see and believe; but the direct ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... other Lords, but simply say that they all are forms of Vasudeva, without any special distinctions. The forms of Vasudeva cannot properly be limited to four, as the whole world, from Brahman down to a blade of grass, is understood to be a manifestation of the supreme Being. ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... Neanderthal man had reached "a comparatively high stage in the evolution of religious ideas "; but the Australians bury their dead, and the highest authorities are not agreed whether they have any idea whatever of a supreme being or of morality. We must also disallow appeals to the use of fire, the taming of animals, pottery, or clothing. None of these things are clearly found in ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... consider that question earnestly. The Psalmist, when he talked of the Lord, did not mean merely what some people call the Deity, or the Supreme Being, or the Creator. You will remark that I said—What. I do not care to say, Whom, of such a notion; that is, of a God who made the world, and set it going once for all, but has never meddled with it; never, so to speak, looked at it since: so that the world would go on just the same, and just as well, ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... upon, who has a right to his obedience, to whom he can be loyal, whom he can address, calling him Father, as we are told that Christ did. But you cannot love a law. True, David says, "O how I love thy law"; but the law that he loved was the will of the Supreme Being, and he loved it because it was His. It was not a mode of action or of evolution that he loved. Nor can you obey such a law, although you may conform to it; nor can you be loyal to it, for you cannot be loyal to an abstraction. As to fatherhood, this law-god of evolution is the father of ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... can move them,—then let them be assured that they deserve to be slaves, and are entitled to nothing but anguish and tribulation.... Let them forget every duty, human and divine, remember not that they have children, and beware how they call to mind the justice of the Supreme Being. ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... steeples—as we would call them in Jonesville—represent, in a sort of way, your cardinal doctrine: they seem to be composed of a multitude of little steeples, all like the big one, just as you might figure your Supreme Being in the act of absorbing a large number of the faithful who had just arrived from the dismal existence below. And then, again, your steeple looks as if it might be the central figure of your theistic scheme, surrounded ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... such a beautiful one that I feel that He can not err. I do not like the expression, "He's aye thinking about his own glory" (I quote from memory); it belittles the real fact, and almost puts the Supreme Being on a level with us poor mortals. The more time we spend upon our knees, in real communion with God, the better we shall comprehend His wonderful nature, and how impossible it is to submit that nature ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or to die. Our own, our country's honor, calls upon us for a vigorous and manly exertion; and, if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us, then, rely on the goodness of our cause and the aid of the Supreme Being, in whose hands victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble actions. The eyes of all our countrymen are now upon us; and we shall have their blessings and praises, if happily we are the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... part is in some degree impregnated with it and therefore every part is in some measure the seat of the Deity; whence local gods and goddesses are everywhere worshipped and consequently multiplied without end. Like the ancient Romans and Greeks they acknowledge a supreme being, the first, the supreme, the intellectual, by which men have been reclaimed from rudeness and barbarism to elegance and refinement, and been taught through privileged men and women not only to live with more comfort but to die with better hope." Such a religion, however it may be described, seems ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... his heathen readers to admire, the power, the wisdom, the providence, the goodness of the "Framer of the animal body,"—if Mr. Boyle, the student of nature, as Addison and that friend of his who had known him for forty years tell us, never uttered the name of the Supreme Being without making a distinct pause in his speech, in token of his devout recognition of its awful meaning,—surely we, who inherit the accumulated wisdom of nearly two hundred years since the time of the British philosopher, and of almost two thousand since the Greek physician, may well lift our ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... things, equality was made the first of the Rights of Man, and Happiness, instead of Liberty, was declared the supreme end of civil society. In point of spiritual quality, nothing was gained by the invocation of the Supreme Being. ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... introduction of fear-thoughts—even to the Almighty. Thousands of us remember being told as a child that "God don't like naughty boys," or, "God will send the bad man to get you if you don't be good." Thus, early in life, an unwholesome fear of the Supreme Being is sown in the mind of the child, and, as time passes, these false fears grow and come so to possess the mind and control the emotions that in adult life this early teaching comes to mold the character and shape the religious beliefs of ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... his new title. In this palace, where had ruled the Committee of Public Safety, where the Convention had sat, whence Robespierre had departed in triumph to preside over the festival in honor of the Supreme Being, nothing was heard but the titles of Emperor, Empress, My Lord, Prince, Princess, Imperial Highness, Most Serene Highness. It was asserted that Bonaparte had cut up the red caps to make the ribbons of the Legions of Honor. The most fanatical Revolutionists had ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... la Tour occasionally read aloud some affecting history of the Old or New Testament. Her auditors reasoned but little upon these sacred volumes, for their theology centred in a feeling of devotion towards the Supreme Being, like that of nature: and their morality was an active principle, like that of the Gospel. These families had no particular days devoted to pleasure, and others to sadness. Every day was to them a holyday, and all that surrounded them one holy temple, in which they ever ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... terror, was almost content, and, curled in her mother's shawl, slept. To her little soul this midnight mystery of boats and muskets had all the flavour of a romance. With Bates, Frere, and her mother so close to her, it was impossible to be afraid; besides, it was obvious that papa—the Supreme Being of the settlement—must at once return and severely punish the impertinent prisoners who had dared to insult his wife and child, and as Sylvia dropped off to sleep, she caught herself, with some indignation, pitying the mutineers for the tremendous scrape ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... revolutionary hymn, there with wreaths of myrtle, and oak, and poplar, and vine, and olive and cypress, and ivy, with violets and roses and daffodils and dandelions in our hands, we will swear respect to childhood and manhood, and old age, and virginity, and womanhood, and widowhood; but above all to the Supreme Being. There we will decree and sanction the immortality of the soul, there pillars and obelisks, and arches, and pyramids will awaken the love of glory and of our country. There painters and statuaries with their chisels and colours, and engravers with their engraving tools will perpetuate ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... conducted in this book. The oriental theory is based upon that basic conception of the eastern philosophies which hold that the beginning, duration, and ending of any particular one of the infinitude of successive universes created by the Supreme Being, is to that Being but as a single moment of time; or, as the celebrated Hindu proverb runs: "The creation, duration, and destruction of a universe is but the time of the twinkling of an eye to Brahman." In other words, that to the ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... root of all nature-worship, from fetishism to the highest pantheistic development. It was more to me in those early days than all the religious teaching I received from my mother. Whatever she told me about our relations with the Supreme Being I believed implicitly, just as I believed everything else she told me, and as I believed that two and two make four and that the world is round in spite of its flat appearance; also that it is travelling through space and revolving round the sun instead of standing still, with the sun going round ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... Baumgarten, had denied beauty to God: Winckelmann, the Neoplatonician, gave it back to Him. He holds that perfect beauty is to be found only in God. "The conception of human beauty becomes the more perfect in proportion as it can be thought as in agreement with the Supreme Being, who is distinguished from matter by His unity and indivisibility." To the other characteristics of supreme beauty, Winckelmann adds "the absence of any sort of signification" (Unbezeichnung). Lines and dots cannot explain beauty, for it is not ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... have heard how frequently children take the name of the Almighty in vain; seldom or ever mentioning it but to confirm some oath. I have seen boys playing at marbles, tops, and other games, and who, on a dispute arising about some frivolous thing, would call upon the Supreme Being to strike them deaf, dumb, or blind, nay, even dead, if what they said were not true; when, nevertheless, I have been satisfied from having observed the origin of the dispute, that the party using the expressions ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... their influences and protection. In all the acts of the government, in the great events that succeeded one another day after day, he saw only an opportunity for speculation. Whether peace or war prevailed; whether the people obeyed the Commune or Convention; whether they worshipped the Supreme Being or the Goddess of Reason; whether the men condemned to death were innocent or guilty mattered little to him. These things interested him only by the effect they might produce on the money-market. So he had allied himself ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... to come before God in prayer, but ignoring this truth, is but to insult, with pollution, Him who is infinitely Holy and pure. Satan, who is aspiring to the place of the Almighty, may answer the prayer of his own subjects, even though that prayer is blindly addressed to the Supreme Being. Surely the Satan-ruled world does not come before God by the blood ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... substituted for Sunday. Religious festivals were replaced by feasts in honour of "Nature" or "Mankind," and most of the churches were closed or transformed into barracks, storehouses or temples devoted to the worship of the "Supreme Being." Finally, in 1795, a proposal was made to the Committee of Public Safety to annex the territory of the Austrian Netherlands. In spite of a few protests, the proposal was adopted, on October 1, 1795, and the country divided ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... God is that He is a great chief. They call Him by the same term as they do their chiefs, only adding the word for above—thus, 'shimanyet' is chief, and 'lakkah' above: and hence the name of God with them is Shimanyet Lakkah. They believe that the Supreme Being never dies: that He takes great notice of what is going on amongst men, and is frequently angry, and punishes offenders. They do not know who is the author of the universe, nor do they expect that God is the author of their own being. They have no fixed ideas about these things, ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... not forbid the exercise of my own free will," argued the Rajput. "The Supreme Being, the presiding power of creation, call him Allah if you will, understanding my heart as he understands all things, knows beforehand what choice of action I shall make at the moment of an emergency. But that still leaves me responsible for the deed which I elect to do. ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... The Supreme Being was believed in, praised and worshipped by all the ancient peoples, and is now believed in, praised and worshipped by the vast majority of the people of the world—it is true under different names, but still it is the same idea—a Being without beginning ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... the doctrine of evolution in an early shape is only mentioned to prove that the idea has been familiar to the human mind from the lowest known stage of culture. Not less familiar has been the theory of creation by a kind of supreme being. The notion of creation, however, up to 1860, held the foremost place in modern European belief. But Lamarck, the elder Darwin, Monboddo, and others had submitted hypotheses of evolution. Now it ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... probably became feebler in their posterity, the vividness of the impressions diminished, and they then became visions or dreams, which with the prophets seem to have constituted inspiration. I do not suppose that the Supreme Being ever made Himself known to man by a real change in the order of Nature, but that the sensations of men were so modified by their instincts as to induce the belief in His presence. That there was a divine intelligence continually acting ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... the sublime, the beautiful, the patriotic, the humourous, the sentimental and religious. Much of the poetry of the Principality consists of the first class, and is specially dedicated to description and praise of the Supreme Being, the universe and man. As the great objects of creation, like the sun and moon, the planetary world and stars first attract the attention of man and always enlist his deepest feelings, so they furnish the great themes for the poetry of all nations, more especially in its ruder ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... of which, by the way, had been gained through his conversations with Arima long before that individual had so much as dreamed of the brilliant destiny that awaited his pleasant-mannered young English master. Thus, for instance, he knew that the Peruvian Indians recognised the existence of a Supreme Being, the Creator and Ruler of the Universe, whom they sometimes named Pachacamac, and at others Viracocha; and he also knew that the attributes of this Being were believed to be of so superlatively divine ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... conditions of human health, of the productions of the earth, of navigation, excited his most ardent anticipations. Turgot also was so moved by the necessity for a new synthesis of life and knowledge as to frame a plan for a great work 'on the human soul, the order of the universe, the Supreme Being, the principles of societies, the rights of men, political constitutions, legislation, administration, physical education, the means of perfecting the human race relatively to the progressive advance and employment of their forces, to the happiness of which they are susceptible, to the extent ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... or Great Master of Life, is the name given by the Crees to their notion of the Supreme Being. Maatche-Mahneto is the Great Spirit ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... heart's core of the wretches in hell, so that filled with hellish fury they curse themselves for their folly and curse the evil companions who have brought them to such ruin and curse the devils who tempted them in life and now mock them in eternity and even revile and curse the Supreme Being Whose goodness and patience they scorned and slighted but Whose justice and power they ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... language, by fixing new meanings to words, entirely different from and contrary to those in common use? If he knows the meaning of the words he uses, and uses them to convey a contrary meaning, he is a deceiver. The name God, used as a proper name, in the English tongue, means "the Supreme Being; Jehovah; the Eternal and Infinite Spirit, the Creator and Sovereign of the Universe."[28] If, then, a man says he believes in God, but when forced to explain what he means by that name, says he means steam, heat, electricity, galvanism, magnetism, mesmeric force, odyle, animal ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... for world-conquest and the din of conflict as army met army; but over all stands Jehovah, protecting his sanctuary and people, supreme in the lives of men and nations. The narrow, nationalistic, messianic hopes have long since been abandoned, and instead Jehovah is recognized as the one supreme being whose kingdom or dominion includes all the nations of the earth. In imagination these disciples of the prophets saw the time when rich and poor, Jew and Gentile, should bow before Jehovah and be united in loyalty to him. Thus ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... Mosaic law, and delivered from the weight of its fetters. An exclusive zeal for the truth of religion, and the unity of God, was as carefully inculcated in the new as in the ancient system: and whatever was now revealed to mankind concerning the nature and designs of the Supreme Being, was fitted to increase their reverence for that mysterious doctrine. The divine authority of Moses and the prophets was admitted, and even established, as the firmest basis of Christianity. From the beginning of the world, an uninterrupted series of predictions had announced ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... chan.a.erep, chan.a.cha.ria, chan.a.te.liu, chan.a.li.mi, chan.a.jar.a.ngud, all inventors and discoverers of foods and the arts. In the religious system of the Andaman Islanders, Pu.luga-, the Supreme Being, by whom were created "the world and all objects, animate and inanimate, excepting only the powers of evil," and of whom it is said, "though his appearance is like fire, yet he is (nowadays) invisible," is "believed to live in a large stone house in the sky with a wife whom he created ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... bathroom, then, prepared for him by a perspiring Lascar, the Major-General stepped. At the time Draycott did not know he was a Major-General: he was just a supreme being resplendent in a green silk dressing-gown. The door closed, only to open again ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... in support of his system of interpretation, shows us, that the Supreme Being is frequently spoken of in the Old Testament, as a King and as a victorious warrior; and therefore infers, because such passages must be understood figuratively, that the passages in the prophets which speak of the Messiah in similar terms, must be ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... any Creatures that had an Appetite to procreate their Species. This puts me in mind of the inconsiderate Zeal of some Men, who even in Metaphysicks, know not how to think abstractly, and cannot forebear mixing their own Meanness and Imbecillities, with the Idea's they form of the Supreme Being. ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... rather to Natural Anthropology: they are a study of human nature. But as human nature points to God, so Ethics are not wholly irrespective of God, considering Him as the object of human happiness and worship,—the Supreme Being without whom all the aspirations of humanity are at fault (pp. 13-26, 191-197). Ethics do not refer to the commandments of God, for this simple reason, that they have nothing to say to commandments, or laws, or obligation, or authority. They are simply a system of moral hygiene, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J. |
