"Theist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by relieving it of those peculiar doctrines which to the freethinkers of his time were a stumbling-block and an offence. And, in spite of Lessing's own declarations, he endeavours to show that he was an ordinary theist,—a follower of Leibnitz rather than of Spinoza. But I do not think he has made out his case. Lessing's own confession to Jacobi is unequivocal enough, and cannot well be argued away. In that remarkable conversation, held toward the close of his life, he indicates ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... the entire scientific world is agreed that evolution, in some form or other, is the undoubted solution of the mystery of creation. The materialist may think of it as a mechanical process relentlessly working itself out without design or purpose. The theist will accept it as the plan by which Eternal Power steadily works. The devout Christian or Jew will see in it God's method of creation. The idea of development has penetrated every science that has to do with animals or ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... is that which happens without any one's direct intention; a chance that which happens without any known cause. If the direct cause of a railroad accident is known, we can not call it a chance. To the theist there is, in strictness, no chance, all things being by divine causation and control; but chance is spoken of where no special cause is manifest: "By chance there came down a certain priest that way," Luke x, 31. We can speak of a game of chance, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... all German thinkers was the King of Mystics, Jacob Boehme. Theist and pantheist at once, his mind was a ferment of different systems of thought. It is very difficult to unriddle his Aurora, but love of Nature, as well as love of God, is clear ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... up the battle, by confessing frankly that the matter is beyond the light of reason, and that, "if the theist only founds his sentiment on probabilities, the atheist with still less precision only founds his on the alternative possibilities." The objections on both sides are insoluble, because they turn ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... well to remember that Sir Isaac Newton was a Theist of the most pronounced and thorough conviction, although he had a great deal to do with the reduction of the major Cosmos to mechanics, i.e. with its explanation by the elaborated machinery of simple forces; and he conceived it possible that, in the progress of science, this process of reduction ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... I do not think it necessary for a man to be a theist in order to become or to remain a citizen of this country. The various laws, from 1790 up to 1828, provided that the person wishing to be naturalized might make oath or affirmation. The first exception you will ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... therefore, instead of exciting our love, must generate distrust, fear, and uncertainty. There is then no real difference between natural religion, and the most gloomy and servile superstition. If the theist sees God only in a favourable light; the bigot views him in the most hideous light. The folly of the one is cheerful, that of the other is melancholy; but ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... The theist is a man firmly persuaded of the existence of a Supreme Being as good as He is powerful, who has formed all beings with extension, vegetating, sentient and reflecting; who perpetuates their species, who punishes crimes without cruelty, and rewards ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... on some point of morality." In the same connection he thus describes his change and his final attitude: "When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause, having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist. This conclusion was strong in my mind about the time, as far as I can remember, when I wrote the 'Origin of Species'; and it is since that time that it has very gradually, with many fluctuations, become weaker. But then arises the doubt: Can the ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... perfection and aspiration, without worshipping any god, any person, any fetish at all. Therefore I might call myself, if I wished, a kind of Christian (of the Church of Blake and Shelley) but assuredly in no sense a theist." [Footnote: Edmund ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... that pride, which is the fruitful parent of their vain curiosity and bold presumption; which renders them dogmatical in the midst of ignorance, and often sceptical in the midst of knowledge. The man who is puffed up with this philosophical pride, whether divine or theist, or atheist, deserves no more to be respected than one of those trifling creatures who are conscious of little else than their animality, and who stop as far short of the attainable perfections of their nature as ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... intellectual maturity, and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... 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
... been an atheist; neither was he ever quite a Christian; but as between atheism and Christianity he was very much further removed from the former than from the latter. He used to call himself a deist, or theist; and said that a deist was as much like an atheist as chalk is like charcoal. The evidence is abundant that he settled down into a belief in a personal God, who was good, who concerned himself with the affairs of men, who was pleased with ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr. |
