Quotes & Sayings About God's Beautiful World

ATIONS. Life after death was one thing, life coming into the world was another. Georgia was calm. Beautiful. An old pro, as she put it. But I had missed the first time around, and I was afraid to blink for fear of missing something. And I was not calm.
Tag was not calm either. He had to wait outside. He was my best friend, but even best friends did not share some things. Plus, I didn't think Georgia could give birth and keep us both from passing out.
It was all I could do to hold Georgia's hand and stay at her bedside, praying to God, to Gi, to Eli, to anyone who would listen, to give me strength and self-control. Strength to be the man Georgia needed and self-control to resist covering the walls of Georgia's hospital room in a frenzied mural — Amy Harmon

The moon is so beautiful. It's a big silver dollar, flipped by God. And it landed scarred side up, see? So He made the world. — Grant Morrison

The world is wonderful and beautiful and good beyond one's wildest imagination. Never, never, never could one conceive what love is, beforehand, never. Life can be great-quite god-like. It can be so. God be thanked I have proved it. — D.H. Lawrence

We live in a world in which people can do unbelievably beautiful or unbelievably horrible things to other people. And if those horrible acts argue against the existence of God, then the beautify acts must argue for God's existence. — Dennis Prager

It was as if she had spoken slightingly of a woman he loved. For he dreamed of peace by day and night. Once in sleep it had appeared to him as the great glowing shoulder of the moon heaving across his window like an iceberg, arctic and destructive in the moment before the world was struck: by day he tried to win a few moments of its company, crouched under the rusting handcuffs in the locked office, reading the reports from the sub-stations. Peace seemed to him the most beautiful word in the language: My peace I give to you, my peace I leave with you: O Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, grant us thy peace. In the Mass he pressed his fingers against his eyes to keep the tears of longing in. — Graham Greene

If I could take a bite of the whole world
And feel it on my palate
I'd be more happy for a minute or so...
But I don't always want to be happy.
Sometimes you have to be
Unhappy to be natural...

Not every day is sunny.
When there's been no rain for a while, you pray for it to come.
So I take unhappiness with happiness
Naturally, like someone who doesn't find it strange
That there are mountains and plains
And that there are cliffs and grass...

What you need is to be natural and calm
In happiness and in unhappiness,
To feel like someone seeing,
To think like someone walking,
And when it's time to die, remember the day dies,
And the sunset is beautiful, and the endless night is beautiful...
That's how it is and that's how it should be... — Alberto Caeiro

He who believes in Me ... out of his heart will flow ... " John 7:38 Jesus did not say, "He who believes in Me will realize all the blessings of the fullness of God," but, in essence, "He who believes in Me will have everything he receives escape out of him." Our Lord's teaching was always anti-self-realization. His purpose is not the development of a person - His purpose is to make a person exactly like Himself, and the Son of God is characterized by self-expenditure. If we believe in Jesus, it is not what we gain but what He pours through us that really counts. God's purpose is not simply to make us beautiful, plump grapes, but to make us grapes so that He may squeeze the sweetness out of us. Our spiritual life cannot be measured by success as the world measures it, but only by what God pours through us - and we cannot measure that at all. — Oswald Chambers

Finally, a twenty-two old girl was dazzled by the world's brightness and kept her eyes shut for two weeks. When at the end of that time she opened her eyes again, she did not recognize any objects, but, the more she now directed her gaze upon everything about her, the more it could be seen as an expression of gratification and astonishment overspread her features; she repeatedly exclaimed, 'Oh God! How beautiful! — Ann Dillard

We are here because we are made by God, we will return to God. So people who think that they are something, they are totally wrong. And this is the most beautiful thing in life, it is that we don't own anything. So, everything is ours in the sense that we have the world to explore and not things to carry, a burden to carry. — Paulo Coelho

But God decided to create a world where free will was more important than no one ever getting hurt. There must be something stunningly beautiful and remarkable about free will that only God can truly grasp, because God hates, literally abhors, evil, yet He created a world where evil could happen if people chose it. — Dee Henderson

Festivals and fasts are unhinged, traveling backward at a rate of ten days per year, attached to no season. Even Laylat ul Qadr, the holiest night in Ramadan, drifts
its precise date is unknown. The iconclasm laid down by Muhammed was absolute: you must resist attachment not only to painted images, but to natural ones. Ramadan, Muharram, the Eids; you associate no religious event with the tang of snow in the air, or spring thaw, or the advent of summer. God permeates these things
as the saying goes, Allah is beautiful, and He loves beauty
but they are transient. Forced to concentrate on the eternal, you begin to see, or think you see, the bones and sinews of the world beneath its seasonal flesh. The sun and moon become formidable clockwork. They are transient also, but hint at the dark planes that stretch beyond the earth in every direction, full of stars and dust, toward a retreating, incomprehensible edge — G. Willow Wilson

What a beautiful world God, in His loving kindness to His creatures, has given us! What a shame that men endowed with reason and knowledge of right should mar His gifts ... — Robert E.Lee

Sometimes, your future is already set, and there is nothing you can about it. there are somethings you just can't change, no matter how hard you work. Unfair, don't you think? It isn't an easy fact to accept, and I'm not telling you to, but that's just how life is. Unfair
But no matter how hard i think about it, i just believe everything in this world is beautiful. The sky, birds, bugs,frogs,flowers and even rocks. Nature is really awesome, because, if God created this world, could there really be anything dirty and ugly in it? — Opoku Oduro Emmanuel

We are loved. Born out of love, into love, to know love, and to be loved. Yes, we were born into a fallen, sorry world, which is at the same time more lovely than any fairy tale. It is both. And in this beautiful, heartbreaking world, God - the eternal, omniscient, amazing One - loves human beings. Including you. Especially you. — Stasi Eldredge

How silly of us to think we can hide from God. How insane of us to think our thoughts are private, don't you know that nothing is hidden? And what is it that you are hiding from anyway, your light, the love that you are? Are you afraid of remembering that you are a Child of God? That you are whole and holy, what a beautiful golden being of Light you are my child. There is nothing you see in this world that is as beautiful and brilliant as you, the most beautiful sunset, or sunrise is nothing in comparison to you. I have one thought and that is for you to remember who you are, where you are and how much you are LOVED. -God — Sharon Kay Casey

What she had unexpectedly met there in the village church was not God; it was beauty. She knew perfectly well that neither the church nor the litany was beautiful in and of itself, but they were beautiful compared to the construction site, where she spent her days amid the racket of the songs. The mass was beautiful because it appeared to her in a sudden, mysterious revelation as a world betrayed.

From that time on she had known that beauty is a world betrayed. The only way we can encounter it is if its persecutors have overlooked it somewhere. Beauty hides behind the scenes of the May Day parade. If we want to find it, we must demolish the scenary. — Milan Kundera

We love a saint, though he has many personal failings. There is no perfection here. In some, rash anger prevails; in some, inconstancy; in some, too much love of the world. A saint in this life is like gold in the ore, much dross of infirmity cleaves to him, yet we love him for the grace that is in him. A saint is like a fair face with a scar: we love the beautiful face of holiness, though there be a scar in it. The best emerald has its blemishes, the brightest stars their twinklings, and the best of the saints have their failings. You that cannot love another because of his infirmities, how would you have God love you? — Thomas Watson

For most of Western civilization there was no real division between the realms of science, divinity, and artistic endeavor - they were just three strands of the same braid, all of them pulling toward the same beautiful desire: to try to understand the workings of this curious and beautiful world. There were many people who would have called themselves all three things at once: men of god, men of science, men of the arts. — Elizabeth Gilbert

when we've lost a friend, when a dream has failed, when we seem to have nothing left in the world to make life beautiful - that's when God says, You're richer than you think. Elizabeth — Corrie Ten Boom

I Am Primate

I was once taught, that I am a soul in a body.
I once believed I was separate from the earth.
A stranger in a strange land,
a sinner in need of a Savior.
But, isn't this my home? This beautiful world?
Isn't this my form?
These hands, these eyes, this touch?
Am I to believe I have violated a rule,
just by being born?
Who claims this right to judge,
and on what authority do you stand?
The truth screams out from my cells.
I am not the imagination of a God,
I am a voice in the earth,
I am that which you deny!
The earth is my home and the stars my destiny.
I will touch the planets through
the hands of my children
. . . not the will of your ghost!
I am a voice in the evolutionary continuum
and I claim the right to be alive,
without your story.
For I Am Human, I Am Proud,
and I AM . . . PRIMATE! — Christopher Zzenn Loren

If God had sufficient wisdom and power to construct such a beautiful world as this, then we must admit that his wisdom and power are immeasurably greater than that of man, and hence he is qualified to reign as king. — Orson Pratt

The perfect orchestration of the symphony of life is one of the Creator's greatest and most beautiful miracles. — Suzy Kassem

Ginny Cupper took me in her car out to the spread fields of Indiana. Parking near the edge of woods and walking out into the sunny rows of corn, waving seeds to a yellow horizon. She wore a white blouse and a gray patch of sweat under her arms and the shadow of her nipples was gray. We were rich. So rich we could never die. Ginny laughed and laughed, white saliva on her teeth lighting up the deep red of her mouth, fed the finest food in the world. Ginny was afraid of nothing. She was young and old. Her brown arms and legs swinging in wild optimism, beautiful in all their parts. She danced on the long hood of her crimson Cadillac, and watching her, I thought that God must be female. She leaped into my arms and knocked me to the ground and screamed into my mouth. — J.P. Donleavy

Spirituality is not just about religion, or church attendance, or fidelity to one or other legal requirement. Spirituality is understood to be an innate wisdom of the human heart that enlivens a zest for life, a search for meaning and purpose, a love for all that is good and beautiful, a passion to create a better world, a sensitivity to the life-energy (God, if you wish) that permeates the entire cosmos. — Diarmuid O'Murchu

They learned to have a very high opinion of God and a very low opinion of His works - although they could tell you that this world had been made by God Himself. What they didn't see was that it is beautiful, and that some of the greatest beauties are the briefest. — Wendell Berry

In the center of all rests the sun. For who would place this lamp of a very beautiful temple in another or better place that this wherefrom it can illuminate everything at the same time? As a matter of fact, not unhappily do some call it the lantern; others, the mind and still others, the pilot of the world. Trismegistus calls it a "visible God"; Sophocles' Electra, "that which gazes upon all things." And so the sun, as if resting on a kingly throne, governs the family of stars which wheel around. — Nicolaus Copernicus

I am not trying to change the world. I am just offering my gift that God gave me, and if somebody is moved by it, that's beautiful. — Lenny Kravitz

As American Christians, we celebrate the idea that "all men are created equal." This statement from our Declaration of Indepenence is grounded in the biblical teaching that every person in the world has been formed in the image of God and therefore has instrinsic worth. it's a beautiful idea.
Subtly, however, this equality of persons shifts into an equality of ideas. Just as every person is equally valued, so every idea is equally valid. Applied to faith, this means that in a world where different people have different religious views, all such views should be treated as fundamntally equal.
In this system of thinking, faith is a matter of taste, not of truth ...
Then I implore you to consider the urgent need before us to forsake the American dream now in favor of radical abandonment to the person and purpose of Christ. — David Platt

Together, on his back porch, his cigarette smoke rising like incense to the heavens, we spoke to the God of grace we both are so grateful to know up close and personal. It may be the most beautiful prayer I've ever heard. Jesus, for some reason you've given us another day, and you've set us in Narnia. There are people who still think it's frozen, and there are people who are longing to be thawed but don't know it. God, I pray that what you've called us to do would be the subversive work of the kingdom, that we would help participate in the melting of Narnia, and that people would come alive and would drink and dance and sing and just celebrate life in ways that are so marvelous that the world would press its face against the glass and see the redeemed celebrate life. Amen. — Cathleen Falsani

Hana, everything that God made valuable in the world is covered and hard to get to. Where do you find diamonds? Deep down in the ground, covered and protected. Where do you find pearls? Deep down at the bottom of the ocean, covered up and protected in a beautiful shell. Where do you find gold? Way down in the mine, covered over with layers and layers of rock. You've got to work hard to get to them. — Muhammad Ali

It is not expensive to be beautiful. It takes only a little effort to be presentable and beautiful. But it takes some effort. And unfortunately people think of beauty as luxury, beauty as frivolity, ... or extravagance. Beauty is a discipline, beauty is art, is harmony, in the ideological sense and in the theological sense, beauty is God and love made real. And the ultimate reach in this world is beauty. — Imelda Marcos

A stagecoach passed by on the road and went on;
And the road didn't become more beautiful or even more ugly.
That's human action on the outside world.
We take nothing away and we put nothing back, we pass by and we forget;
And the sun is always punctual every day.

(5/7/14) — Alberto Caeiro

How do I talk to the flower?
Through it I walk to the Infinite.
And what is the infinite?
It is that silent, small force.
It isn't the outer physical contact. No, it isn't that.
The infinite is not confirmed in the visible world.
It is not in the earthquake, the wind or the fire.
It is that still small voice that calls up the fairies.
Yet when you look out upon God's beautiful world- there it is.
When you look onto the heart of a rose there you experience it- but you can't explain it.

There are certain things, often very little things, like the peanut, the little piece of clay, the little flower that cause you to look within-
and then you see the soul of things. — George Washington Carver

Echo's breathing hitches when I slide my thumb along a smaller scar. She likes that spot. I've memorized it. A centimeter below the crook of her elbow. Her skin is sensitive there, and when I kiss it, Echo normally falls apart and nearly shatters.
I gently press my lips behind her ear, and Echo nudges closer to me. "Why, Echo?"
"Because."
I nip at her earlobe, and she shivers. "Because why?"
Her shoulder moves under my body. A half shrug maybe. "It makes me feel better."
Fuck that. "Why?"
A kiss on her neck. A long one. A lingering one. God damn, Echo tastes so good. Her skin is soft and tempting. But I want answers.
"Because sometimes I want to blend in."
I raise my head and stare straight into her eyes, spotting the plain honesty. What she doesn't understand is that she could never blend in. Blazing red hair. Bright emerald eyes. The most beautiful girl in the world. She'd turn heads regardless of a sweater. — Katie McGarry

Flowers belong to Fairyland: the flowers and the birds and the butterflies are all that the world has kept of its golden age
the only perfectly beautiful things on earth
joyous, innocent, half divine
useless, say they who are wiser than God. — Ouida

Once again we mark the arrival of Advent. This holy season trumpets God's extravagant love for us, a love beyond reckoning. Into our beautiful yet wounded world comes Emmanuel, God-with-us, carrying the promise of fresh hope to enliven our hearts. No matter how broken or seemingly hopeless our world may sometimes seem, the Advent messages are rich with joyous expectation and longing, insisting that God can and does bring forth life where none seems possible. — Sr. Chris Koellhoffer IHM

Why are we here?'
'To make more love.'
'All right, fair enough. But how do we best love this world Allah gave us? We do it by learning it! [ ... ] If you try to understand things, if you look at the world and say, why does this happen, why do things fall, why does the sun come up every morning and shine on us, and warm the air and fill the leaves with green
how does all this happen? What rules has Allah used to make this beautiful world?
Then it is all transformed. God sees that you appreciate it. And even if He doesn't, even if you never know anything in the end, even if it's impossible to know, you can still try. [ ... ] This is God's real work. — Kim Stanley Robinson

One of the purest souls ever to live on this fallen planet was Nicholas Herman, known as Brother Lawrence. He wrote very little, but what he wrote has seemed to several generations of Christians to be so rare and so beautiful as to deserve a place near the top among the world's great books of devotion. The writings of Brother Lawrence are the ultimate in simplicity; ideas woven like costly threads to make a pattern of great beauty. — A.W. Tozer

This is the thing that troubles me, for I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask. I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with its beautiful stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth
a world which now trembles before the King In Yellow. — Robert W. Chambers

This is a beautiful time of year with spring beginning to burst forth in many parts of the world, bringing all of its colors, scents, and cheerful sounds. The miracle of the changing seasons, with the reawakening and rebirth in nature, inspires feelings of love and reverence within us for God's marvelous, creative handiwork. — M. Russell Ballard

It started as a beautiful, sunny Saturday, with the air so clear and crisp, one couldn't help but inhale deep breaths of the cleansing freshness, and feel as if a multitude of God's benevolent blessings must be shining down upon the entire world. Terrorism, disease, poverty and hunger, grief and despair were distant threads of reality, too dim to possibly exist. — Catherine Spangler

The account in the gospel of John says three times that Jesus was angry. One of the words used is the Greek term for "furious indignation" - the word used by Aeschylus to describe war horses rearing up on their hind legs, snorting through their nostrils, and charging into battle. This was the reaction of Jesus of Nazareth when face to face with a loved one's death. The world that God created good and beautiful and whole was now broken and in ruins. In moments Jesus was going to do something, but his first response was outrage - instinctive, blazing outrage. Clearly, death was even worse in his eyes than in ours. — Os Guinness

In his person, life, death and resurrection, Jesus Christ is the 'form of God'. As presented in the New Testament writings, the words, actions and sufferings of Jesus form an aesthetic unity, held together by the 'style' of unconditional love. Love is always beautiful, because it expresses the self-diffusiveness of being, and so is touched by being's radiance, the pulchrum. But the unconditional, gracious, sacrificial love of Jesus Christ expresses not just the mystery of being - finite being - but the mystery of the Source of being, the transcendent communion of love which we call the Trinity.25 Thus through the Gestalt Christi, the love which God is shines through to the world. This is Balthasar's basic intuition. — Hans Urs Von Balthasar

The love for equals is a human thing
of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles. The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing
the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world. The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing
to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints. And then there is the love for the enemy
love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured's love for the torturer. This is God's love. It conquers the world. — Frederick Buechner

God! I hated this business of being grown-up. I hated having to make decisions where I didn't know what was behind the door. I wanted a world where heroes and villains were clearly labeled. Where ominous music comes on-screen so you can't possibly mistake him. Where someone asks you to choose between playing with the beautiful princess in the fragrant garden and being eaten by the hideous monster in the foul-smelling pit. Not exactly a difficult one, now is it? Not something that you would agonize over, or that would make you lose a night's sleep? — Marian Keyes

[There is a] kind of all-embracing universality evident in Mother Teresa's prayer: "May God break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in." Not just fellow nuns, Catholics, Calcuttans, Indians. The whole world. It gives me pause to realize that, were such a prayer said by me and answered by God, I would afterward possess a heart so open that even hate-driven zealots would fall inside ... [My] sense of the world as a gift, my sense of a grace operative in this world despite its terrors, propels me to allow the world to open my heart still wider, even if the openness comes by breaking - for I have seen the whole world fall into a few hearts, and nothing has ever struck me as more beautiful. — David James Duncan

What are the tales?" Adrienne asked wryly.
"His exploits are legendary!"
"His conquests are legion. 'Tis rumored he's traveled the world accompanied by only the most beautiful lasses."
"'Tis said there isna a comely lass in all of Scotia he hasna tumbled"
"in England, too!"
"and he canna recall any of their names."
"He is said to have godlike beauty, and a practiced hand in the fine art of seduction."
"He is fabulously wealthy and rumors say his castle is luxurious beyond compare."
Adrienne blinked. "Wonderful. A materialistic, unfaithfill, beautiful playboy of a self-indulged, inconsiderate man with a bad memory. And he's all mine. Dear sweet God, what have I done to deserve this?" she wondered aloud. Twice, she brooded privately. — Karen Marie Moning

We will not think noble because we are not noble. We will not live in beautiful harmony because there is no such thing in this world, nor should there be. We promise only to do our best and to live out our lives. Dear God, that's all we can promise in truth. — Lillian Hellman

Love is beautiful. A gift from God. I think it's sad, how easily we throw around the word without actually understanding the sacrifice behind its meaning. Love in its definition isn't about a strong feeling towards someone, but an action. If people truly understood what it was - our world would be changed. Love is sacrifice, it's holding someone's hand even though you know they can't feel it — Rachel Van Dyken

I erupt from the dark, crushing tunnel into a flash of light and noise. A new kind of air surrounds me, dry and cold, as they wipe the last smears of home off my skin. I feel a sharp pain as they snip something, and suddenly I am less. I am no one but myself, tiny and feeble and utterly alone. I am lifted and swungthrough great heights across yawning distances, and given to Her. She wraps around me, so much bigger and softer than I ever imagined from inside,and I strain my eyes open. I see Her. She is immense, cosmic. She is the world. The world smiles down on me, and when She speaks it's the voice of God, vast and resonant with meaning, but words unknowable, ringing gibberish in my blank white mind. — Isaac Marion

Your cold mornings are filled with the heartache about the fact that although we are not at ease in this world, it is all we have, that it is ours but that it is full of strife, so that all we can call our own is strife; but even that is better than nothing at all, isn't it? And as you split frost-laced wood with numb hands, rejoice that your uncertainty is God's will and His grace toward you and that that is beautiful, and part of a greater certainty, as your own father always said in his sermons and to you at home. And as the ax bites into the wood, be comforted in the fact that the ache in your heart and the confusion in your soul means that you are still alive, still human, and still open to the beauty of the world, even though you have done nothing to deserve it. And when you resent the ache in your heart, remember: You will be dead and buried soon enough. — Paul Harding

It is so beautiful to be loved as Laurie loves me; he isn't sentimental, doesn't say much about it, but I see and feel it in all he says and does, and it makes me so happy and so humble that I don't seem to be the same girl I was. I never knew how good and generous and tender he was till now, for he lets me read his heart, and I find it full of noble hopes and impulses and purposes, and am so proud to know it's mine. He says he feels as if he 'could make a prosperous voyage now with me aboard as mate, and lots of love for ballast.' I pray he may, and try to be all he believes me, for I love my gallant captain with all my heart and soul and might, and never will desert him while God lets us be together. Oh, Mother, I never knew how much like heaven this world could be when two people love and live for one another! — Louisa May Alcott

I think that the trademark of the Devil in this world, is the awful rift between women. Women backbiting other women, women envying other women and so on and so forth. And then there is the telltale sign of God in this world, which is the intoxicating potion of joy that is concocted when a woman reaches out to another woman, when women will take an extra step, go an extra mile, or just go out of their way an inch for their fellow woman, regardless of the varying degrees of things we hold important such as beauty, intelligence, status and so on and so forth. Beautiful acts of God are seen in the kindness of women towards other women. And when I say this, I am also thinking about gay men in the same light. — C. JoyBell C.

Because one thing God gave us- and I'm afraid it's at times a little too much- is freewill. Freedom to choose. I believe he gave us everything needed to build a beautiful world, if we choose wisely. — Mitch Albom

God's grace is not defined as God being forgiving to us even though we sin. Grace is when God is a source of wholeness, which makes up for my failings. My failings hurt me and others and even the planet, and God's grace to me is that my brokenness is not the final word ... it's that God makes beautiful things out of even my own shit. Grace isn't about God creating humans and flawed beings and then acting all hurt when we inevitably fail and then stepping in like the hero to grant us grace - like saying, "Oh, it's OK, I'll be the good guy and forgive you." It's God saying, "I love the world too much to let your sin define you and be the final word. I am a God who makes all things new. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

I think that a lot of the time, people are generous towards those whom they pity; but only find fault in those whom they see as better than themselves. There is a fake kind of goodness; and that is the goodness that is only good towards other people that make the givers feel better about themselves. Would you be good to someone you think is so much better than you are? Or who has so much more than you have? Or is your goodness only reserved for those who make you feel like a god because you give to them? Too often, there are shining, beautiful people, who suffer so much in this world, because there would be so many others willing to snuff out their flames! Goodness of a person is not measured by sympathy or compassion; rather, goodness is measured by empathy. Empathy goes beyond all the physical things you see with your two eyes. It's easy to be good to those you pity; much harder to be good to those whom you envy! — C. JoyBell C.

Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include tooth decay in His divine system of creation? Why in the world did He ever create pain?'
'Pain?' Lieutenant Shiesskopf's wife pounced upon the word victoriously. 'Pain is a warning to us of bodily dangers.'
'And who created the dangers?' Yossarian demanded. 'Why couldn't He have used a doorbell to notify us, or one of His celestial choirs? Or a system of blue-and-red neon tubes right in the middle of each person's forehead?'
'People would certainly look silly walking around with red neon tubes right in the middle of their foreheads.'
'They certainly look beautiful now writhing in agony, don't they? — Joseph Heller

Let's show up to life. Let's prove how beautiful it can really be. Let's face the conflict, redeem it, conquer it, and allow it to mold our
character. Let's participate in what God is doing in the world. — Donald Miller

All the wild world is beautiful, and it matters but little where we go, to highlands or lowlands, woods or plains, on the sea or land or down among the crystals of waves or high in a balloon in the sky; through all the climates, hot or cold, storms and calms, everywhere and always we are in God's eternal beauty and love. So universally true is this, the spot where we chance to be always seems the best. — John Muir

How can God be happy and decree calamity? Consider that he has the capacity to view the world through two lenses. Through the narrow one he is grieved and angered at sin and pain. Through the wide one he sees evil in relation to its eternal purposes. Reality is like a mosaic. The parts may be ugly in themselves, but the whole is beautiful. — Jonathan Edwards

God blessed us with so many beautiful things around us 'NATURE' and then gave us the precious gift 'LIFE' to enjoy. So, why worried about future, Start 'To Live' because God chose you to experience the adventure of his own made world. — Manik Ghawri

I'm beautiful

I'm beautiful

I'm beautiful

I'm beautiful

I'm gorgeous

God is for me, who can be against me

I'm beautiful

I'm a new person now

Beautiful, knowing the secrets and determined with fire to move mountains in all I do. Molding my own world

I'm beautiful

the old me is behind

I will march ahead anew — Michael James Jackson

He is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen and it's not about his face, but the life force I can see in him. It's the smile and the pure promise of everything he has to offer. Like he's saying, 'Here I am world, are you ready for so much passion and beauty and goodness and love and every other word that should be in the dictionary under the word life?' Except this boy is dead, and the unnaturalness of it makes me want to pull my hair out with Tate and Narnie and Fitz and Jude's grief all combined. It makes me want to yell at the God that I wish I didn't believe in. For hogging him all to himself. I want to say, 'You greedy God. Give him back. I needed him here. — Melina Marchetta

I like manning the trolley and cooking the bake goods. And I like walking into town before the sun rises because I get to see sunset as it moves over the lake at the edge of town. Just then, all alone, it's me and my lovely-smelling biscuits and cookies and God in the quiet as He paints brilliant swirls of color across the sky. It's as if all that's beautiful and peaceful and good is filling up my world, and all the ugliness is set aside for a while. — Eden Butler

Is your life beautiful? Do you live in surroundings that you have made beautiful through your own unique, creative ideas? To expect and lovingly require beauty to be apparent in all areas of your life is to be deeply loving to yourself, your soul, your world, and shows reverence to God and all of life. There is always something beautiful to be found, right where you are, if you will look for it. Concentrate your thoughts on the good, the beautiful, and the true things in life. — John Templeton

From Lee's extensive quotes of Edwards on page 152 we can gather that the reason some reject good thoughts that might order their minds aright is because of a disposition of the heart, or a "taste" for evil. The habit of a person's mind is in accordance with his spiritual appetite, a good man's mind will always suggest and supply good and holy thoughts to connect ideas and information to create a beautiful picture in one's mind of God's orderly universe (Himself at the helm) but the evil man's mind is habitually disorganizing the things of this world or rather dis-integrating them from the knowledge of God, and so Edwards might say that his mind is not a cosmos but a chaos, or a conductor-less cacophony rather than a grand symphony. — Erick John Blore

Music will still be a big part of our environment. The Bible talks about choirs of angels and how there is singing in Heaven. We're going to have the greatest choirs, the greatest bands and symphony orchestras, the greatest music that the world has ever known. The world has never even heard music yet compared to what we're going to have there! If humans can make the beautiful music they have learned to make with these hand-made instruments, think what God can do supernaturally! — David Berg

We are made for goodness. We are made for love. We are made for friendliness. We are made for togetherness. We are made for all of the beautiful things that you and I know. We are made to tell the world that there are no outsiders. All are welcome: black, white, red, yellow, rich, poor, educated, not educated, male, female, gay, straight, all, all, all. We all belong to this family, this human family, God's family. — Desmond Tutu

Be ever gentle with the children God has given you; watch over them constantly; reprove them earnestly, but not in anger. In the forcible language of Scripture, "Be not bitter against them." "Yes, they are good boys," I once heard a kind father say. "I talk to them very much, but do not like to beat my, children
the world will beat them." It was a beautiful thought not elegantly expressed. — Elihu Burritt

You have to be a bit of a dreamer to imagine a world where love trumps hate--but I don't think being a dreamer is all that bad. Joel prophesied that God would "pour out [His] Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions" (Joel 2:28). I'm an old man, and this is one of my dreams: that my descendants will one day live in a land where people are quick to confess their wrongdoing and forgive the wrongdoing of others and are eager to build something beautiful together. — John M. Perkins

lmost everything looked more beautiful from a distance, the earth becoming more perfect as one ascended and came closer to seeing the world from God's eyes, man's hovels and palaces disappearing, the peaks and valleys of geography fading to become strokes of a paintbrush on a divine sphere. — Viet Thanh Nguyen

The world' is man's experience as it appears to, and is moulded by, his ego. It is that less abundant life, which is lived according to the dictates of the insulated self. It is nature denatured by the distorting spectacles of our appetites and revulsions. It is the finite divorced from the Eternal. It is multiplicity in isolation from its non-dual Ground. It is time apprehended as one damned thing after another. It is a system of verbal categories taking the place of the fathomlessly beautiful and mysterious particulars which constitute reality. It is a notion labelled 'God'. It is the Universe equated with the words of our utilitarian vocabulary. — Aldous Huxley

Our love affairs with sin are not just a matter of morality, though, but of joy. This is not just about faithfulness to God, but about finding our deepest, most satisfying fulfillment. Many people think following Jesus means surrendering our happiness. You can either enjoy a fun, passionate, and exciting life here for a short time or live a bland, boring, but safe life forever with God. That lie is a quiet, but violent concentration camp, fencing men and women in, keeping them away from God, and torturing them with lesser pleasures that only lead to a swift and yet never-ending death. If you want to be truly happy - even in this life, surrounded by everything beautiful, fun, and exciting in this world - you want to be found with Jesus. — Marshall Segal

Rivulet, seek a better place for your limpid waters to reflect the brightness of the sun, for the desert will one day dry you up," the god of waters would have said, if perchance one existed. "Crows, there is more food in the forests than among rocks and sand," the god of the birds would have said. "Plants, spread your seeds far from here, because the world is full of humid, fertile ground, and you will grow more beautiful," the god of flowers would have said. — Anonymous

You are most beautiful in your purest form. You are a manifestation of God himself. Open your eyes and let the light flow right through to your core. All it takes is for you to notice a flicker of leaves, a momentary glance from a loved one, or for a wave to hit your toes and freeze you in that timeless place where you know with every cell in your body that God, indeed is real. — Soroosh Shahrivar

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

So I wrote. I wrote as though God thought my voice mattered. I wrote because I believed a human story was beautiful, no matter how small the human was. I wrote because I didn't make myself, God did. And I wrote like he'd invited me to share my true "self" with the world. — Donald Miller

I found Him in the shining of the stars,
I marked Him in the flowering of His fields,
But in His ways with men I find Him not.
I waged His wars, and now I pass and die.
O me! for why is all around us here
As if some lesser god had made the world,
But had not force to shape it as he would,
Till the High God behold it from beyond,
And enter it, and make it beautiful? — Alfred Tennyson

Militant atheists seek to discredit religion based on a highly selective reading of history. There was a time not long ago - just a couple of centuries - when the Western world was saturated by religion. Militant atheists are quick to attribute many of the most unfortunate aspects of history to religion, yet rarely concede the immense debt that civilization owes to various monotheist religions, which created some of the world's greatest literature, art, and architecture; led the movement to abolish slavery; and fostered the development of science and technology. One should not invalidate these achievements merely because they were developed for religious purposes. If much of science was originally a religious endeavor, does that mean science is not valuable? Is religiously motivated charity not genuine? Is art any less beautiful because it was created to express devotion to God? To regret religion is to regret our civilization and its achievements. — Bruce Sheiman

The world was made by God's Word ... make your own world with your words. — Jaachynma N.E. Agu

And Kate Hepburn-God, she's beautiful, God, she plays golf well, God, she can get anyone in the world on the phone, God, she knows what to do all the time, God, she wears clothes well. — Joseph L. Mankiewicz

We are not free to love God insofar as we are enslaved to creatures. And we all are. We are addicted to whatever we cannot part with that is less than God, our true good. And that includes ourselves
especially ourselves and our own will. So we must renounce this too, this especially. God's world is not the problem; our attitude is. God does not want us to renounce the unspeakably beautiful world he gave us as creation, as gift, as it really is. He wants us to renounce it as creator, as our god, as it really is not. This wonderful world is our God-given house to live in and to live the love of God in. But God's bride must learn not to love her house as if it were her husband. — Peter Kreeft

It's like God is trying to tell us something when the most beautiful people in the world are racially mixed. — Wen Spencer

My dear young friends, I want to invite you to "dare to love". Do not desire anything less for your life than a love that is strong and beautiful and that is capable of making the whole of your existence a joyful undertaking of giving yourselves as a gift to God and your brothers and sisters, in imitation of the One who vanquished hatred and death for ever through love (cf. Rev 5:13).
Love is the only force capable of changing the heart of the human person and of all humanity, by making fruitful the relations between men and women, between rich and poor, between cultures and civilizations. (Message for the 22nd World Youth Day: Palm Sunday, 1 April 2007) — Pope Benedict XVI

Suppose a person entering a house were to feel heat on the porch, and going further, were to feel the heat increasing, the more they penetrated within. Doubtless, such a person would believe there was a fire in the house, even though they did not see the fire that must be causing all this heat. A similar thing will happen to anyone who considers this world in detail: one will observe that all things are arranged according to their degrees of beauty and excellence, and that the nearer they are to God, the more beautiful and better they are. — Thomas Aquinas

This is to the world and how god damn beautiful it is. — Andrew McMahon

God is the most beautiful, and beauty is the expression of God. If you can't appreciate beauty in the world how can you understand God? — Amit Ray

For when you looked into my mother's eyes you knew, as if He had told you, why God sent her into the world - it was to open then minds of all who looked to beautiful thoughts. And that is the beginning and end of literature. — J.M. Barrie

I feel grateful for the slight sprain which has introduced this mysterious and fascinating division between one of my feet and the other. The way to love anything is to realise that it might be lost. In one of my feet I can feel how strong and splendid a foot is; in the other I can realise how very much otherwise it might have been. The moral of the thing is wholly exhilarating. This world and all our powers in it are far more awful and beautiful than even we know until some accident reminds us. If you wish to perceive that limitless felicity, limit yourself if only for a moment. If you wish to realise how fearfully and wonderfully God's image is made, stand on one leg. If you want to realise the splendid vision of all visible things
wink the other eye. — G.K. Chesterton

Jesus is building his Church, not only by constitutions and codes, but by shaping hearts and minds to his way of life. We are a family, not a firm, scattered and yet gathered. Biblical equality is not the endgame; it is one of the means to God's big ending: all things redeemed, all things restored. Jesus feminism is only one thread in God's beautiful woven story of redemption. Begin here: right at the feet of Jesus. Look to Love, and yes, our Jesus - he will guide you in your steps, one after another, in these small ways until you come at last to love the whole world. — Sarah Bessey

Going to church is a beautiful act of humility. You are saying to the world, "I need God and His family. — Carlos A. Rodriguez

The weather was cheerful, the breath of spring animating. She watched the swelling of the buds - the peeping heads of the crocuses - the opening of the anemones and wild wind-flowers, and at last, the sweet odour of the new-born violets, with all the interest created by novelty; not that she had not observed and watched these things before, with transitory pleasure, but now the operations of nature filled all her world; the earth was no longer merely the dwelling place of her acquaintance, the stage on which the business of society was carried on, but the mother of life - the temple of God - the beautiful and varied store-house of bounteous nature. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

If you believe that everyone born of God overcomes the world, your country will see the beautiful morning of a new life — Sunday Adelaja

True living is not found in one's self or in things. It is found in Someone else, in the One who created everything that is good, true, and beautiful in the world. True living is found in God and you discover God in the person of Jesus Christ. — Pope John Paul II

Honestly, I couldn't remember the last time I asked God to fill me with joy. Or to create a joyful spirit in my children. Goodness knows I've asked for peace and sanity and obedience. I've prayed for healing and wisdom. I've worshiped the Lord and studied His Word. But joy? How in the world did I forget about the beautiful, good, and pleasing gift of joy? — Angela Thomas

I'd rather be beautiful on thee inside where it is never seen by the world but always seen by the one true living God — Samone Sherrell

Nature study will show you how full of beautiful and wonderful things God has made the world for you to enjoy. Be contented with what you have got and make the best of it. Look on the bright side of things instead of the gloomy one. — Robert Baden-Powell

We must never confuse the positive things that America does with the kingdom of God, for the kingdom of God is not centered on being morally, politically, or socially positive *relative* to other versions of the kingdom of the world. Rather, the kingdom of God is centered on being *beautiful*, as defined by Jesus Christ dying on a cross for those who crucified him. — Gregory A. Boyd

If God hath made this world so fair,
Where sin and death abound,
How beautiful beyond compare
Will paradise be found! — James Montgomery

And in this beautiful, heartbreaking world, God - the eternal, omniscient, amazing One - loves human beings. Including you. Especially you. You are amazing. — Stasi Eldredge