Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
Samuel ButlerRead
To know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him.
Interpretation
Understanding God deepens our awareness of the limits of human comprehension.
Samuel Butler's quote suggests that as we seek to understand God, we come to recognize the immense mystery surrounding this divine figure, making it apparent that our grasp is ultimately limited. He posits that the attempts to either deny or strictly define God may be naively simplistic, as such efforts fail to acknowledge the complexity and vastness of the concept of divinity.
In practice
This quote could be used in a philosophical discussion about the nature of divinity.
Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.
An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.
People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.
Contented saturnine human figures, a dozen or so of them, sitting around a large long table...Perfect equality is to be the rule; no rising or notice taken when anybody enters or leaves. Let the entering man take his place and pipe, without obligatory remarks; if he cannot smoke...let him at least affect to do so, and not ruffle the established stream of things.
None of us can think we are exempt from concerns for the poor and for social justice.
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
The newspaper that obstructs the law on a trivial pretext, for money's sake, is a dangerous enemy to the public weal. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.
What hands are here? ha! they pluck out mine eyes! Will all great Neptuneβs ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red.β βMy hands are of your colour; but I shame to wear a heart so white. A little water clears us of this deed: How easy it is then! Your constancy hath left you unattended.
What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the World.
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