City Of God Quotes & Sayings

I saw the destruction of Dresden. I saw the city before and then came out of an air-raid shelter and saw it afterward, and certainly one response was laughter. God knows, that's the soul seeking some relief. — Kurt Vonnegut

In her, as an Alexandrian, licence was in a curious way a form of self-abnegation, a travesty of freedom; and if I saw her as an exemplar of the city it was not of Alexandria, or Plotinus that I was forced to think, but of the sad thirtieth child of Valentinus who fell, 'not like Lucifer by rebelling against God, but by desiring too ardently to be united to him'.* — Lawrence Durrell

At times I think the truest image of God today is a black inner-city grandmother in the United States or a mother of the disappeared in Argentina or the women who wake up early to make tortillas in refugee camps. They all weep for their children, and in their compassionate tears arises the political action that changes the world. The mothers show us that it is the experience of touching the pain of others that is the key to change. — Jim Wallis

When I say that I am convinced of these things I speak with too much pride. Far off, like a perfect pearl, one can see the city of God. It is so wonderful that it seems as if a child could reach it in a summer's day. And so a child could. But with me and such as me it is different. One can realise a thing in a single moment, but one loses it in the long hours that follow with leaden feet. It is so difficult to keep 'heights that the soul is competent to gain.' We think in eternity, but we move slowly through time; and how slowly time goes with us who lie in prison I need not tell again, nor of the weariness and despair that creep back into one's cell, and into the cell of one's heart, with such strange insistence that one has, as it were, to garnish and sweep one's house for their coming, as for an unwelcome guest, or a bitter master, or a slave whose slave it is one's chance or choice to be. — Oscar Wilde

Great men stand like solitary towers in the city of God. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The whole of history since the ascension of Jesus into heaven is concerned with one work only: the building and perfecting of this City of God. — Augustine Of Hippo

I am a bomb but I mean you no harm. That I still am here to tell this, is a miracle: I was deployed on May 15, 1957, but I didn't go off because a British nuclear engineer, a young father, developed qualms after seeing pictures of native children marveling at the mushrooms in the sky, and sabotaged me. I could see why during that short drop before I hit the atoll: the island looks like god's knuckles in a bathtub, the ocean is beautifully translucent, corals glow underwater, a dead city of bones, allowing a glimpse into a white netherworld. I met the water and fell a few feet into a chromatic cemetery. The longer I lie here, listening to my still functioning electronic innards, the more afraid I grow of detonating after all this time. I don't share your gods, but I pray I shall die a silent death. — Marcus Speh

I do not know how to love God except by loving the poor. I do not know how to serve God except by serving the poor ... Here, within this great city of nine million people, we must, in this neighborhood, on this street, in this parish, regain a sense of community which is the basis for peace in the world. — Dorothy Day

All our work in the field, in the garden, in the city, in the home, in struggle, in government-to what does it all amount before God except child's play, by means of which God is pleased to give his gifts in the field, at home, and everywhere? These are the masks of our Lord God, behind which he wants to be hidden and to do all things. — Martin Luther

God is a racist! He has a special elite race of supermen who are going to live above all others in the Holy City, the magical, mystical, marvelous, mysterious Space City! — David Berg

To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire above any realm, nation, or city, is repugnant to nature; contumely to God, a thing most contrary to his revealed will and approved ordinance; and finally, it is the subversion of good order, of all equity and justice. — John Knox

Tim Keller's ministry in New York City is leading a generation of seekers and skeptics toward belief in God. I thank God for him. — Billy Graham

It is possible that the city of London was initially named for ravens or a raven-deity. According to the Oxford Companion to the English Language, the designation comes from "Londinium," a Romanized version of an earlier Celtic name. But the word closely resembles "Lugdunum," the Roman name for both the city of Lyon in France and Leiden in the Netherlands. That Roman name, in turn, was derived from the Celtic "Lugdon," which meant, literally, "hill, or town, of the god Lugh" or, alternatively, " ... of ravens." The site of Lyon was initially chosen for a town when a flock of ravens, avatars of the god, settled there. Whether or not "Lugdunum" was the origin of "London," ravens were important for inhabitants of Britain for both practical and religious reasons. — Boria Sax

For as a city which has been once besieged and not sacked will ever after be more strong to hold out if it be assaulted by the like danger ... so those who are besieged and assaulted by their spiritual enemies will ever after more carefully arm themselves against them with the graces of God's Spirit, that they may not be overcome nor foiled by them. — George Downame

From depression to ceiling fans, I've been through it all. I've taken almost every step that life has to offer and invariably I've found several different endings to my Choose Your Own Adventure stories. I've lived, loved, sacrificed and scraped for this existence, this paltry little city state I call my time so far. And by God, I wouldn't change a single frame of this movie. — Corey Taylor

You were small, but far-famed. We were in Oldtown at your birth, and all the city talked of was the monster that had been born to the King's Hand, and what such an omen might foretell for the realm."
"Famine, plague, and war, no doubt." Tyrion gave a sour smile. "It's always famine, plague, and war. Oh, and winter, and the long night that never ends."
"All that," said Prince Oberyn, "and your father's fall as well. Lord Tywin had made himself greater than King Aerys, I heard one begging brother preach, but only a god is meant to stand above a king. You were his curse, a punishment sent by the gods to teach him that he was no better than any other man."
"I try, but he refuses to learn." Tyrion gave a sigh. "But do go on, I pray you. I love a good tale."
"And well you might, since you were said to have one, a stiff curly tail like a swine's. — George R R Martin

Human cruelty took the form of a pact with the deity. A solemn oath was made to kill everything, in which people forbade themselves any display of reason or compassion. A city or a land was devoted to destruction and it was believed an insult to God if one did not observe the abominable oath. — Ernest Renan

Shalom is the medicine I'd prescribe for Jerusalem - a deep, God-breathed indwelling of peace and prosperity and blessing. An end to the unrest and a sense of wholeness is what the Holy City needs. It's what the Middle East needs. It's what I need. — Jared Brock

I took her in my arms and kissed her.
And thus in the midst of a city of wild conflict, filled with the alarms of war; with death and destruction reaping their terrible harvest around her, did Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, true daughter of Mars, the God of War, promise herself in marriage to John Carter, Gentleman of Virginia. — Edgar Rice Burroughs

Why have such scores of lovely, gifted girls
Married impossible men?
Simple self-sacrifice may be ruled out,
And missionary endeavour, nine times out of ten.
Repeat 'impossible men': not merely rustic,
Foul-tempered or depraved
(Dramatic foils chosen to show the world
How well women behave, and always have behaved).
Impossible men: idle, illiterate,
Self-pitying, dirty, sly,
For whose appearance even in City parks
Excuses must be made to casual passers-by.
Has God's supply of tolerable husbands
Fallen, in fact, so low?
Or do I always over-value woman
At the expense of man?
Do I?
It might be so. — Robert Graves

God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you - even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers, and triumphs over all opposition. — Neil Gaiman

As for me, I believe that if there's a God - and I am as neutral on the subject as is possible - then the most basic proof of His existence is black humor. What else explains it, that odd, reliable comfort that billows up at the worst moments, like a beautiful sunset woven out of the smoke over a bombed city. — Elizabeth McCracken

I sought Him where my logic led.
"This friend is always sure and right;
His lantern is sufficient light.
I need no Star," I said.

I sought Him in the city square.
Logic and I went up and down
The marketplace of many a town,
But He was never there.

I tracked Him to the mind's far rim.
The valiant intellect went forth
To east and west and south and north,
But found no trace of Him.

We walked the world from sun to sun,
Logic and I, with Little Faith,
But never came to Nazareth,
Nor met the Holy One.

We sought in vain. And finally,
Back to the heart's small house I crept,
And fell upon my knees, and wept;
And Lo! He came to me! — Sara Henderson Hay

Far to our left I could see a commercial airliner on final approach to Soekarno-Hatta. Far to our right I could see the outline of tall city buildings. The imagery was hard to ignore. In the midst was an impoverished world filled with dangerous radicals. Some believed it was God's will to crash airplanes into buildings. Some recruited children to self-detonate on buses and in coffee shops. It must be incredibly difficult to hold fast to hope when you live in such a world. It's also hard to keep faith with humanity when religious ideology is used as an impetus for war. But I also believe that for every war there is a hero ... and for me, Jakarta will always be Indira's city. — Tucker Elliot

I believe that George Washington knew the City of Man cannot survive without the City of God; that the Visible City will perish without the Invisible City. — Ronald Reagan

That which man builds man destroys, but the city of God is built by God and cannot be destroyed by man. AUGUSTINE — Charles W. Colson

Today I prayed for Boston, for America, my home away from home. Today, I realized how lucky we Sri Lankans are to have peace in our country. How I feel today, hearing of the bombs going off in the city brings back memories of how I used to feel four years ago in Sri Lanka when the LTTE was setting off bombs all around Colombo. That feeling I used to get when I hear about a bomb blast, the goosebumps, the school evacuation drills, the breaking news footage, and most of all, that fear we Sri Lankans used to feel, every second of everyday, it all came back to me today. Thank you God for bringing peace to my country, look after America the way you did Sri Lanka. — Thisuri Wanniarachchi

This fucking city is full of nothing but thugs, money grubbing porn-bitches, and hustlers. I'm calling the police." Ex fumed as he struggled to pull his cell from his pocket.

If Syn weren't so damn angry it would've been funny as shit the way the man's jaw dropped when God and Day both pulled their gold badges out from under their shirts. Day smiled that sinister grin and kneeled in front of them, speaking in an official tone, "911, what is your emergency? — A.E. Via

We danced our youth in a dreamed of city, Venice, paradise, proud and pretty, We lived for love and lust and beauty, Pleasure then our only duty. Floating them twixt heaven and Earth And drank on plenties blessed mirth We thought ourselves eternal then, Our glory sealed by God's own pen. But paradise, we found is always frail, Against man's fear will always fail. — Veronica Franco

The church of the elect, which is partly militant on earth, and partly triumphant in heaven, resembles a city built on both sides of a river. There is but the stream of death between grace and glory. Death, to God's people, is but a ferry-boat. — Augustus Toplady

If not for the rats you could crawl beneath a bush. A bush. A bench. The alliterative universe. Rats too can pass through that needle's eye to enter heaven ... This box held a refrigerator, the refrigerator is an apartment, a man is in the box ... Wake up on the grass, soaking wet. Dew is the piss of God. 'Another bullshit night in suck city, my father mutters. — Nick Flynn

Vance took the news of their "big-city fellows" status better than Philip. Probably because it turned out that he was actually gay.
"You're what?"
"Well, I'm not entirely sure," said Vance, "but I'd say it's seventy-thirty for it."
"But I've seen you with women."
"That would be the thirty part of the equation," said Vance as he sipped his coffee.
"Oh my God. That's why you agreed to do this with me. You think I'm gay, too!"
Vance chuckled. "Dude you're not gay."
"I know I'm not, but do you know I'm not?"
"I'd say ninety-two-eight on the straight side," said Vance.
"How the hell-"
"They've made some terrific advances in gaydar, dude. — A. Lee Martinez

Christ want to point this out and to warn His followers that in the world everyone should live as though he were alone and should consider His Word and preaching as the very greatest thing on earth, thinking this way to himself: I see my neighbor and the whole city, and yes the whole world, living differently. All those who are great or noble or rich, the princes and the lords, are allied with it. Nevertheless I have an ally who is greater than all of them, namely, Christ and His Word. When I am all alone, therefore, I am still not alone. Because I have the Word of God, I have Christ with me, together with all the dear angels and all the saints since the beginning of the world. Actually there is a bigger crowd and a more glorious procession surrounding me than there could be in the whole world now. Only I cannot see it with my eyes, and I have to watch and bear the offense of having so many people forsake me or live and act in opposition to me. — Martin Luther

I always give all the glory to God, but I do not forget that He gave me the privilege of ministering from the first to a praying people. We had prayer meetings that moved our very souls, each one appeared determined to storm the Celestial City by the might of intercession. — Charles Spurgeon

Everything in modern city life is calculated to keep man from entering into himself and thinking about spiritual things. Even with the best of intentions a spiritual man finds himself exhausted and deadened and debased by the constant noise of machines and loudspeakers, the dead air and the glaring lights of offices and shops, the everlasting suggestion of advertising and propaganda.
The whole mechanism of modern life is geared for a flight from God and from the spirit into the wilderness of neurosis. — Thomas Merton

This is a life you do not understand. Yes, your home is in the city, and you have furnished it with vanities, with pictures and books; but you have a wife and a servant and a hundred expenses. Asleep or awake you must keep pace with the world and are never at peace. I have peace. You are welcome to your intellectual pastimes and books and art and newspapers; welcome, too, to your bars and your whisky that only makes me ill. Here am I in the forest, quite content. If you ask me intellectual questions and try to trip me up, then I will reply, for example, that God is the origin of all things and that truly men are mere specks and atoms in the universe. You are no wiser than I. But if you should go so far as to ask me what is eternity, then I know quite as much in this matter, too, and reply thus: Eternity is merely unborn time, nothing but unborn time. — Knut Hamsun

Haiku Christmas Story

New light in the sky
announces a sacred birth.
Shine brightly young star.

Hallelujah song
carries on a gentle wind,
heralding a king.

Shepherds lift their heads,
not to gaze at a new light
but to hear angels.

"Unto you is born
in the city of David
a Savior for all."

Born on straw at night
under low stable rafters,
Baby Jesus cried.

Sheep and goats and cows
gather 'round a manger bed
to awe at a babe.

Wise men come to see
a child of greater wisdom
and honor divine.

Rare and precious gifts,
gold and myrrh and frankincense,
to offer a king.

Mary and Joseph
huddle snugly together.
They cradle God's son.

On this wise He came,
the Son of God to the earth.
A humble wonder. — Richelle E. Goodrich

We what? Walk around the city seven times in seven days and blow our trumpets? Forgive me, my Commander, but what is that going to do, kill them with laughter?" The other commanders snickered. Joshua chose not to be angry. He thought it was rather silly himself. "Our god has quite a sense of humor, does he not? But nevertheless, he did tell me that is what we should do. So, unless you have a better idea than Yahweh, Salmon, I suggest we obey him and see his salvation." Salmon was duly chastised. "Forgive my offense, commander." Joshua said with a smile, "You are forgiven, Salmon. You are too good of a spy." Caleb was impressed with Joshua's temperament. His sense of holiness would normally be offended at remarks like that. Perhaps he was beginning to appreciate Yahweh's sense of humor after all. Joshua ended his remarks, "And remember, Commanders, avoid the home with the scarlet rope. Caleb and Salmon, you will be responsible for Rahab's deliverance. — Brian Godawa

It was when my children were 5, 3 and 10 months old that I just felt the desperate need to get to know God through the pages of my Bible. And as a result, I started a Bible class in my city for the primary purpose of being in it. — Anne Graham Lotz

In the time between the two wars, a British colonial officer said that with the invention of the airplane the world has no secrets left. However, he said, there is one last mystery. There is a large country on the Roof of the World, where strange things happen. There are monks who have the ability to separate mind from body, shamans and oracles who make government decisions, and a God-King who lives in a skyscraper-like palace in the Forbidden City of Llhasa. — Heinrich Harrer

Heaven is the most beautiful thing God has ever made, outside of women, God bless them!-And in fact He even uses you women to symbolise the City and He calls that City His Bride, the New Heaven, the New Jerusalem! How about that? He couldn't think of anything more beautiful to symbolise that City than you, you beautiful girls, so He called it His Bride! Why? Because His Bride's going to live there! — David Berg

I turn away from him and step into the vastness of New Crobuzon, this towering edifice of architecture and history, this complexitude of money and slum, this profane steam-powered god. I turn and walk into the city my home, not bird or garuda, not miserable crossbreed.
I turn and walk into my home, the city, a man. — China Mieville

New York! I say New York, let black blood flow into your blood.
Let it wash the rust from your steel joints, like an oil of life
Let it give your bridges the curve of hips and supple vines.
Now the ancient age returns, unity is restored,
The recociliation of the Lion and Bull and Tree
Idea links to action, the ear to the heart, sign to meaning.
See your rivers stirring with musk alligators
And sea cows with mirage eyes. No need to invent the Sirens.
Just open your eyes to the April rainbow
And your eyes, especially your ears, to God
Who in one burst of saxophone laughter
Created heaven and earth in six days,
And on the seventh slept a deep Negro sleep. — Leopold Sedar Senghor

Faith should be pulled into the public arena when it affects how we live. If it doesn't, it does no earthly good. What does my faith say about the fact that a girl can't be a nuclear physicist because she's black and from the inner city? My faith says, no, that's not what God intended. It pulls it back into the public arena the idea that there's got to be something fair for all of us. — Jeremiah Wright

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end. There is not a piece of science, but its flank may be turned to-morrow; there is not any literary reputation, not the so-called eternal names of fame, that may not be revised and condemned. The very hopes of man, the thoughts of his heart, the religion of nations, the manner and morals of mankind, are all at the mercy of a new generalization. Generalization is always a new influx of the divinity into the mind. Hence the thrill that attends it. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The angel of God, having secretly
Betrothed us one winter day,
Watches over our carefree lives
With fixed, darkening eyes
Because of this we love the sky,
Keen air, the fresh wind
And the blackening branches
Behind the iron fence.
Because of this we love the stern
Dark city with its many waterways.
And we love our partings,
And our brief meetings. — Anna Akhmatova

Christians recognize that all social organizations exist as parodies of eschatological hope. And so it is that the city is a poor imitation of heavenly community;13 the modern state, a deformed version of the ecclesia;14 the market, a distortion of consummation; modern entertainment, a caricature of joy; schooling, a misrepresentation of true formation; liberalism, a crass simulacrum of freedom; and the sovereignty we accord to the self, a parody of God himself. As these institutions and ideals become ends in themselves, they become the objects of idolatry. The shalom of God - which is to say, the presence of God himself - is the antithesis to all such imitations. — James Davison Hunter

I wanted a boyfriend who was a Christian but who wasn't uptight about it, who was good-looking and intelligent and had an interesting job and a sense of humor, who said "fuck" when the situation warranted it, who had attempted to but been unable to finish St. Augustine's City of God, who could argue politics with my mother and talk business with my father, who liked Indian food and had nice friends and knew how to dress and would like someday to live abroad. — Sarah Dunn

God knows," Charpentier said, "I like the present scheme of things very little, but I dread to think what will happen if the conduct of reform falls into hands like yours."
"Reform?" Camille said. "I'm not talking about reform. The city will explode this summer. — Hilary Mantel

Augustine recast how people should view history, that history was not the story of the rise and fall of empires because those are human things. Those are the city of man. Rather, true history should be the history of salvation, of man moving toward God. It's a focus that takes the light off of this world and shines it much more brightly on the next world. — Thomas F. Madden

Love for perishing souls inspired Abraham's prayer. While he loathed the sins of that corrupt city, he desired that the sinners might be saved. His deep interest for Sodom shows the anxiety that we should feel for the impenitent. We should cherish hatred of sin, but pity and love for the sinner. All around us are souls going down to ruin as hopeless, as terrible, as that which befell Sodom. Every day the probation of some is closing. Every hour some are passing beyond the reach of mercy. And where are the voices of warning and entreaty to bid the sinner flee from this fearful doom? Where are the hands stretched out to draw him back from death? Where are those who with humility and persevering faith are pleading with God for him? — Ellen G. White

You had a smile like the Mona Lisa...
I had a pocket full of drugs
and nothing much to do that day.

And that night I rode my bike
back downtown from Hells Kitchen
and let go of the handlebars...
And I opened the buttons on my shirt
and it flapped around me like wings...
And the city flew away behind me
in a blur of neon, sirens and shattered glass...

And I swear to God every traffic light turned green for me... — S. Pierce

Let us recognize that a large fraction of our suffering and that of our fellow human beings is brought about by what we do to one another. It is humankind, not God, that had invented knives, arrows, guns, bombs, and all manner of other instruments of torture used through the ages. The tragedy of the young child killed by a drunk driver, of the innocent young man dying on the battlefield, or of the young girl cut down by a stray bullet in a crime-ridden section of a modern city can hardly be blamed on God. After all, we have somehow been given free will, the ability to do as we please. We use this ability frequently to disobey the Moral Law. And when we do so, we shouldn't then blame God for the consequences. — Francis S. Collins

People had huddled back into the old core of the city; and once the suburbs had been looted, they burned. Like Moscow in 1812, acts of God or vandalism: they were no longer wanted, and they burned. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Totality is, in effect, nothing other than the ancient dream of unity common to both believers and rebels,
but projected horizontally onto an earth deprived of God. To renounce every value, therefore, amounts to
renouncing rebellion in order to accept the Empire and slavery. Criticism of formal values cannot pass
over the concept of freedom. Once the impossibility has been recognized of creating, by means of the
forces of rebellion alone, the free individual of whom the romantics dreamed, freedom itself has also been
incorporated in the movement of history. It has become freedom fighting for existence, which, in order to
exist, must create itself. Identified with the dynamism of history, it cannot play its proper role until
history comes to a stop, in the realization of the Universal City. Until then, every one of its victories will
lead to an antithesis that will render it pointless — Albert Camus

When Marre was two, I was in line at a crowded New York City grocery store, and I gave her a sippy cup of juice in a futile attempt to stop a meltdown. She bellowed at the top of her lungs, "I don't like jews!" Thank God, we live in New York City and my family looks like Hitler's fantasy. Otherwise, that would've been pretty awkward. Jeannie — Jim Gaffigan

I want to declare my Citizenship in the Kingdom of God and my allegiance to His Kingdom and His City! — David Berg

Just because you call an electric eel a rubber duck doesn't make it a rubber duck, does it? And God help the poor bastard who decides they want to take a bath with the duckie. (Jace Wayland) — Cassandra Clare

Carol and I have found that unless God baptizes us with fresh outpourings of love, we would leave New York City yesterday! We don't live in this crowded, ill-mannered, violent city because we like it. Whenever I meet or read about a guy who has sexually abused a little girl, I'm tempted in my flesh to throw him out a fifth-story window. This isn't an easy place for love to flourish. But Christ died for that man. What could ever change him? What could ever replace the lust and violence in his heart? He isn't likely to read the theological commentaries on my bookshelves. He desperately needs to be surprised by the power of a loving, almighty God. If the Spirit is not keeping my heart in line with my doctrine, something crucial is missing. I can affirm the existence of Jesus Christ all I want, but in order to be effective, he must come alive in my life in a way that even the pedophile, the prostitute, and the pusher can see. — Jim Cymbala

I was attached to this city by the god - though it seems a ridiculous thing to say - as upon a great and noble horse which was somewhat sluggish because of its size and needed to be stirred up by a kind of gadfly. It is to fulfill some such function that I believe the god has placed me in the city. I never cease to rouse each and every one of you, to persuade and reproach you
all day long and everywhere I find myself in your company. — Socrates

As the floods of God
Wash away sin city
They say it was written
In the page of the Lord
But I was looking
For that great jazz note
That destroyed
The walls of Jericho
The winds of fear
Whip away the sickness
The messages on the tablet
Was valium
As the planets form
That golden cross Lord
I'll see you on
The holy cross roads
After all this time
To believe in Jesus
After all those drugs
I thought I was Him
After all my lying
And a-crying
And my suffering
I ain't good enough
I ain't clean enough
To be Him
The tribal wars
Burning up the homeland
The fuel of evil
Is raining from the sky
The sea of lava
Flowing down the mountain
The time will sleep
Us sinners by
Holy rollers roll
Give generously now
Pass the hubcap please
Thank you Lord — Joe Strummer

We discovered, like infants opening their eyes for the first time, that God's coming upon earth out of love for us had radically changed the world, because he had remained with us. As we walked about the city, or traveled to different cities and countries, it was not the beautiful and interesting things around us that attracted us. Not even Rome's wonderful monuments and precious relics seemed so important. Rather, what gave a sense of continuity to our journeying through the world for Jesus, was His Eucharistic presence in the tabernacles we found wherever we went. — Chiara Lubich

the legend of Adapa. He called up that tale now to examine it in his mind. The story went that Adapa had been a sage of Eridu, city of the god Enki. He had been taken into heaven and offered the bread and water of immortality by Anu. But he turned them down because his patron deity, Enki, had advised him against it, claiming they were the bread and water of death. So Adapa missed out on the opportunity of immortality. He was clothed with new garments and returned to Eridu to die. — Brian Godawa

As expected, the church lady grumbled something incoherent and put Bridget's call on hold. A peppy rendition of "City of God" blared as hold music just long enough for Bridget to start to sing along with the chorus. Catholic brainwashing at its best. — Gretchen McNeil

What is the good of faith if this is the result? A city full of people misinterpreting their god's commands? A world of ash and pain and death and sorrow? — Brandon Sanderson

It was to Noah that God gave instructions to make an ark in which he was to be rescued from the devastation of the Flood, together with his family, that is, his wife, his sons and daughters-in-law, and also the animals that went into the ark in accordance with God's directions. Without doubt this is a symbol of the City of God on pilgrimage in this world, of the Church which is saved through the wood on which was suspended 'the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus'. — Augustine Of Hippo

( ... ) I let go, crying and unable to stop because God was such a dirty crook, contemptible skunk, that's what he was for doing that thing to that woman. Come down out of the skies, you God, come on down and I'll hammer your face all over the city of Los Angeles, you miserable unpardonable prankster. If it wasn't for you, this woman would not have been so maimed, and neither would the world, ( ... ) — John Fante

I'd love to go and visit the Mosque in Mecca again, just for the sheer beauty of it, not for God - much the way a non-Catholic might go to Vatican City because of the beauty of the buildings and the artifacts. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

That the human condition was so obviously exposed to the blind fury of chance that to trust in a God, a Jesus, the Holy Spirit - this last a completely superfluous entity, it was there only to make up a trinity, notoriously nobler than the mere binomial father-son - was the same thing as collecting trading cards while the city burns in the fires of hell. — Elena Ferrante

Old Dublin City there is no doubtin'
Bates every city upon the say.
'Tis there you'd hear O'Connell spoutin'
And Lady Morgan making tay.
For 'tis the capital of the finest nation,
With charmin' pisintry upon a fruitful sod,
Fightin' like devils for conciliation,
And hatin' each other for the Love of God. — Charles Lever

And yet viewing several depictions of even an imaginary city, is enlightening in a way," Leibniz said. "Each painter can view the city from only one standpoint at a time, so he will move about the place, and paint it from a hilltop on one side, then a tower on the other, then from a grand intersection in the middle
all in the same canvas. When we look at the canvas, then, we glimpse in a small way how God understands the universe
for he sees it from every point of view at once. By populating the world with so many different minds, each with its own point of view, God gives us a suggestion of what it means to be omniscient. — Neal Stephenson

I'll give you the moon and the stars, and a city to go along with it. — Con Template

God, you mean I lost my virginity to the apocalypse?"
Morgan sighed again. "The whole thing was really embarrassing; my parents sent me to Brooklyn when they found out." She shrugged. "I thought I'd be safe in a gay bar, okay? What were you doing in there anyway?"
Lace looked at me sidelong. "You were where?"
I took a sip of beer, swallowed it. "I, uh, hadn't been in the city ... very long. I didn't know. — Scott Westerfeld

the moment when the kingdom of God overcomes the kingdoms of the world. It is the moment when a great old door, locked and barred since our first disobedience, swings open suddenly to reveal not just the garden, opened once more to our delight, but the coming city, the garden city that God had always planned and is now inviting us to go through the door and build with him. The dark power that stood in the way of this kingdom vision has been defeated, overthrown, rendered null and void. Its — N. T. Wright

The honour of Jesus Christ is at stake in your bodily life. Are you remaining loyal to the Son of God in the things which beset His life in you? Do you continue to go with Jesus? The way lies through Gethsemane, through the city gate, outside the camp; the way lies alone, and the way lies until there is no trace of a footstep left, only the voice, 'Follow Me.' — Oswald Chambers

I believe it was God's will that we should come back, so that men might know the things that are in the world, since, as we have said in the first chapter of this book, no other man, Christian or Saracen, Mongol or pagan, has explored so much of the world as Messer Marco, son of Messer Niccolo Polo, great and noble citizen of the city of Venice. — Marco Polo

I think I like you just fine, Red. Half the men in this city would be god-awful horrified at the thought of a woman working alongside 'em, much less a woman of my years. But you didn't even think twice about it - just assumed I was along for the working. I like that." Huey sighed. "He's not noble. He's lazy." "Lazy, noble, I don't care. — Cherie Priest

III
But may I, when alone again I have the city's crush
and tangled noise-skein and the furor
of its traffic all around me,
may I above the mindless swirl
recall sky and the gentle mountain rim
on which the far-off herd curved homeward.
May my spirit be hard as rock
and the shepherd's life to me seem possible-
the way he drifts and turns brown in the sun and with a practiced
stone-throw mends his flock, whenever it frays.
Steps slow, not light, his body pensive,
but in his standing there, majestic. Even now a god
might enter this form and not be lessened.
He lingers for a while, then moves on, like the day itself,
and shadows of the clouds
pass through him, as though space were slowly
thinking thoughts for him. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Mammon, n. The god of the world's leading religion. His chief temple is in the city of New York — Ambrose Bierce

It was as though all the most fundamentalist people of all three religions had descended upon the Old City, leaving no room for even simple things like politeness and common courtesy. There was no love in the city of God. — Jared Brock

Not the least of the hardships to which the dying are subject is the visitation of their loved ones. The poor darlings, God bless them, may feel every impulse to condole and console, but their primary sensation is nonetheless one of embarrassment in the presence of the unspeakable and a guilty gratitude that it is not yet their fate. — Louis Auchincloss

Isabelle!" he called again. "Let down your raven hair!'
"Oh my God," Clary muttered. "There was something in that blood Raphael gave you, wasn't there? I'm going to kill him. — Cassandra Clare

The wisdom of God exceeds that of the wisest man, more than his wisdom exceeds that of a child. If a child were to conjecture how an army is to be formed in the day of battle
how a city is to be fortified, or a state governed
what chance has he to guess right? As little chance has the wisest man when he pretends to conjecture how the planets move in their courses, how the sea ebbs and flows, and how our minds act upon our bodies. — Thomas Reid

And just as it is common to hear how, when one is in love, anything one sees reminds one of that love - our feelings remake the world in a secular equivalent of the faith that sees the hand of God in everything - so I began to find that when one is thinking on a theme, everything seems to reflect on it. Suddenly, everything I saw or read, in this girlish city of temples, seemed to take me back to the theme of the lady and the monk. — Pico Iyer

Only my people can receive my glory and dwell with me in the holy city. Only those who are holy can be my people, and they may inherit eternal life. Only those who obey my commands can be holy, and they may be watched over by me. Only those who understand my word can obey my commands, and they may have the splendor of wisdom. — Zhang Yun

New York City is a tinderbox. The Sons of the Serpent - a white supremacist group with a twisted history, deep pockets, and long reach - declared it a combat zone. As they have many times before, they're unashamedly ginning bigotry and hatred into violence and bloodshed. But this time, they've gotten smart about it. Instead of parading through the streets in hoods and robes ... they've gone undercover. Dozens upon dozens of them, hiding inside the New York justice system so they can control the law. Control the people. And as God is my witness, I will drive them out and strike them down ... no matter what the cost. — Mark Waid

City of God interprets all of the human story, from Creation to the Last Judgment, as the drama of divine providence and human free choice, especially the choice between the two most fundamental options of membership in one or the other of the "two cities." The City of God is the invisible community of all who love God; the City of the World is all those who love the world and themselves as their God. — Peter Kreeft

Ministry. Sadly, there has never been a city on earth that is not saturated with human sin and corruption. Indeed, to paraphrase a Woody Allen joke, cities are just like everywhere else, only much more so. They are both better and worse, both easier and harder to live in, both more inspiring and oppressive, than other places. As redemptive history unfolds, we begin to see how the tension of the city will be resolved. The turn in the relationship between the people of God and the pagan city becomes a key aspect of God's plan to bless the nations and redeem the world. In the New Testament, we find cities playing an important role in the rapid growth of the early church and in spreading the gospel message of God's salvation. — Timothy Keller

Have your name put in the Lamb's Book of Life in Heaven so you'll be sure you've got your reservation confirmed for one of those mansions in God's golden Space City! — David Berg

Thunderstorms were common in Sarantium on midsummer nights, sufficiently so to make plausible the oft-repeated tale that the Emperor Apius passed to the god in the midst of a towering storm, with lightning flashing and rolls of thunder besieging the Holy City. Even Pertennius of Eubulus, writing only twenty years after, told the story this way, adding a statue of the Emperor toppling before the bronze gates to the Imperial Precinct and an oak tree split asunder just outside the landward walls. Writers of history often seek the dramatic over the truth. It is a failing of the profession. — Guy Gavriel Kay

The earthly [city] has made for herself, according to her heart's desire, false gods out of any sources at all, even out of human beings, that she might adore them with sacrifices. The heavenly one, on the other hand, living like a wayfarer in this world, makes no false gods for herself. On the contrary, she herself is made by the true God that she may be herself a true sacrifice to Him. — Augustine Of Hippo

Not that the man needed clothes. God meant for that piece of perfection to have nothing masking the luscious, tanned flesh stretched taut over beautiful muscles. — Rena Marks

It has taken time and the blundering wisdom and anarchic greed of our ancestry to construct the modern city of consolidated institutions. It is a great historically amassed communal creation. If you fly above it at night, it is a jeweled wonder of the universe, floating like a giant liner on the sea of darkness. It is smart, accomplished, sophisticated, and breathtakingly beautiful. And it glimmers and sparkles as all things breakable glimmer and sparkle. You wonder how much God had to do with this, how much of the splendor and insolence of the modern city creatively built from the disparate intentions of generations of men comes of the inspiration of God. Because it is the city of the unremarked God, the sometime-thing God, the God of history. — E.L. Doctorow

At one time I was praying for the salvation of sinners, and the Saviour appeared on the cross by me, and talked with me; I laid my hand on his mangled body, and looked up in his smiling face. Another time I was meditating upon the love of God in giving his only Son to die for sinners, and of the beautiful home he was preparing for those who love him, and I seemed to float away, and was set down in the Beautiful City. Oh, the glorious sight that met my view can never be expressed by mortal tongue — Maria Woodworth-Etter

The city will challenge us to discover the power of the gospel in new ways. We will find people who seem spiritually and morally hopeless to us. We will think, "Those people will never believe in Christ." But a comment such as this is revealing in itself. If salvation is truly by grace, not by virtue and merit, why should we think that anyone is less likely than ourselves to be a Christian? Why would anyone's conversion be any greater miracle than our own? The city may force us to discover that we don't really believe in sheer grace, that we really believe God mainly saves nice people - people like us. — Timothy J. Keller

It be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it. Say not that thousands are gone, turn out your tens of thousands; throw not the burden of the day upon Providence, but "show your faith by your works," that God may bless you. — Thomas Paine

There does not exist any more a holy mountain or a holy city or holy land which can be marked on a map. The reason is not that God's holiness in space has suddenly become unworthy of Him or has changed into a heathen ubiquity. The reason is that all prophecy is now fulfilled in Jesus, and God's holiness in space, like all God's holiness, is now called and is Jesus of Nazareth. — Karl Barth

You know how it is when some great king enters a large city and dwells in one of its houses; because of his dwelling in that single house, the whole city is honored, and enemies and robbers cease to molest it. Even so is it with the King of all; He has come into our country and dwelt in one body amidst the many, and in consequence the designs of the enemy against mankind have been foiled and the corruption of death, which formerly held them in its power, has simply ceased to be. For the human race would have perished utterly had not the Lord and Savior of all the Son of God, come among us to put an end to death. — Athanasius Of Alexandria

Since by the ordination of God I both am called and am Emperor of the Romans, in nothing but name shall I appear to be ruler if the control of the Roman city be wrested from my hands. — Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor

Sometimes the messages I put out are somewhat of that [street] nature, but the thing is, that's not the person, it's just like an actor or something, It's just like when Wesley Snipes is not [the character he played in] 'New Jack City,' but a lot of people get it twisted. They think, 'That's that guy. That's that dude. That's how he roll.' But man, that's definitely not how I roll. I believe in God. I'm a Christian ... People always trying to stereotype people because of their job. — Project Pat