"Theist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... intrinsically of exceeding moment. They constitute the only basis on which any rational religion, any that appeals to the intellect as well as to the feelings, can rest securely. Whoever accepts them, by whatever other name he prefer to call himself, is essentially a theist. He only who denies or ignores them can justly be stigmatised as an atheist. Yet, although an inquiry into their soundness is thus plainly second in interest to none, it is not that in which I propose to engage at present, unless indirectly. My immediate concern is not with the strength ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... anthropomorphism to explain satisfactorily not only the swan maiden, and the other feathered ladies [526] of the Nights, but also angel and devil. Both Arbuthnot and Payne regarded him as a Mohammedan. Another friend described him as a "combination of an Agnostic, a Theist and an Oriental mystic." Over and over again he said to his cousin, St. George Burton, "The only real religion in the world is that of Mohammed. Religions are climatic. The Protestant faith suits England." Once he said "I should not care to ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... therefore, is justifiable. It is the prepossession of the rational theist, who does not believe in a God who changes his mind and improves with practice—the prentice maker of the world; it is the prepossession of the pantheist, in whose theory of the perfect government of an immanent ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... critic indulges, I certainly doubt whether he would justify me. So too, when a Pantheist objects (erringly, as I hold) that a Person is necessarily something finite, so that God cannot be a Person; if, against this, a Theist contend that God is at once a Person and a Principle, and invent a use of the word Personality to overlap both ideas; we may reject his nomenclature as too arbitrary, but what rightful place ridicule has here, I do not see. Nevertheless, it had wholly escaped ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... capricious, inconstant, sometimes good, sometimes wicked, and in this way, instead of exciting our love, He must produce suspicion, fear, and uncertainty in our hearts. There is no real difference between natural religion and the most sombre and servile superstition. If the Theist sees God but on the beautiful side, the superstitious man looks upon Him from the most hideous side. The folly of the one is gay of the other is lugubrious; but both are ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... is a masterly discussion of political science, based on a diligent examination of the various systems of government. In truth, in all departments of research he exhibits the same capacity for scientific observation and discussion. In religion he was a theist; but he is less spiritual in his vein of thought, and more reserved in his utterances on this theme, than Plato. The names of these two philosophers have been very frequently coupled. Their influence, like their fame, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... to the Universe, to make it conscious and personal, that has brought us to believe in God, to wish that God may exist, to create God, in a word. To create Him, yes! This saying ought not to scandalize even the most devout theist. For to believe in God is, in a certain sense, to create Him, although He first creates us.[37] It is He who in us ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... shine," but the truth pours itself "upon the new sense it now trusts with all its plenitude of power". It is the will, not the mind, which discloses the full revelation to Immanuel Kant, and makes him the deeply-reverent, religious man he ever was, the convinced theist, the believer in his power to control his acts by the independence of his will, and in the possibility, or rather the certainty, of his being one day morally perfect—not indeed within the limits of the life which now is, but in a future life of unlimited ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... character, that, when a single breach is made in it, the whole edifice must tumble. If the intervention of an extraneous cause be absolutely necessary at any one stage or process in the creation, it may as well be admitted in all; the principle must be given up, and the whole purpose of the theist is answered. We shall endeavour to show that this hypothetical history of creation is not only faulty in every point, when viewed from the author's own ground, but, when examined in the proper direction, is absolutely unintelligible, or is in fact ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... contents of the world to be once for all irrevocably given. Imagine it to end this very moment, and to have no future; and then let a theist and a materialist apply their rival explanations to its history. The theist shows how a God made it; the materialist shows, and we will suppose with equal success, how it resulted from blind physical forces. Then let the pragmatist be asked to choose between their theories. How can ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... a theist: I think it is unworthy of the Eternal to make our obedience to his will, depend on what M. Coue calls a trick or mechanical ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue |
