Pastoral Resources

Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.

The gods' service is tolerable, man's intolerable.

He whom the gods love dies young, while he is in health, has his senses and his judgments sound.

Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts.

Since, therefore, individuals as well as the public are so indebted to these writers for the benefits they enjoy, I think them not only entitled to the honour of palms and crowns, but even to be numbered among the gods.

Pride is still aiming at the best houses: Men would be angels, angels would be gods. Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell; aspiring to be angels men rebel.

Men would be angels, angels would be gods.

The modern artist must live by craft and violence. His gods are violent gods. Those artists, so called, whose work does not show this strife, are uninteresting.

In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.

He was the sort of person who stood on mountaintops during thunderstorms in wet copper armour shouting 'All the Gods are bastards."

Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don't find out til too late that he's been playing with two queens all along.

As to gods, I have no way of knowing either that they exist or do not exist, or what they are like.

Most religions live from a narrative that shapes their relationship with the divine other, God or the gods, and with the human other, the stranger.

The lover is a monotheist who knows that other people worship different gods but cannot himself imagine that there could be other gods.

Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals.

Why do you think the old stories tell of men who set out on great journeys to impress the gods? Because trying to impress people just isn't worth the time and effort.

Science has made us gods even before we are worthy of being men.

My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests.

That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject.

Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain.