DICKINSON

CHAUCER, GEOFFREY

"O thou Eternal, Three and Two and One,
Reigning forever in One, Two and Three,
Boundless, but binding all through Father and Son,
From foes unseen and seen deliver me."
(Chaucer, 155, 1989)

"O thou great God, who innocents hast called
To give Thee praise, now shown is Thy great might!"
(Ibid, 394, 1989)

"That Heaven’s God has dominion, up and down,
Over all realms and everything therein."
(Ibid, 438, 1989)

"God Almighty is all good; and therefore He forgives
all or nothing."
(Ibid, 505, 1989)

"Certainly the mercy of God is always available to every
penitent, and this is the greatest of all God’s works."
(Ibid, 527-528, 1989)

DANTE ALIGHIERI

I believe in one God sole and eternal, who
Unmoved moves all the heavens with love and
With desire; and for such belief I have not
Only proofs physical and metaphysical, but
That truth gives it to me which hence
Rains down through Moses, through prophets
And whatever Psalms, through the Gospels.
(Dante, Paradiso, Canto XXIV, 125-132)

The glory of Him who moves everything
Penetrates through the universe, and is resplendent
in one part more and in another less.
(Ibid, Canto I, 1)

"We should know, in this connection, that God and nature make nothing in vain, and that whatever is produced serves some function."
(Dante, On World Government, 5)

"God who is the absolute world government."
(Ibid, 10)

"Since God achieves the highest perfection, and since his instruments, the heavens, are without defects, only one alternative remains: any defect in things here below must be due to a defect in God’s raw material, and must be external to the intention of the God of creation and of Heaven."
(Ibid, 26)

"God alone elects, He alone establishes governments."
(Ibid, 79)

"Him alone, who is the ruler, of all things spiritual and temporal."
(Ibid, 80)

EMILY DICKINSON

	Poem 1403 "My maker -let me be Enamoured most of Thee-" (Dickinson, 1960, 601)

	Poem 1163 "God made no act without a cause Nor heart without an aim." (Ibid, 518)

	Poem 623 How excellent the heaven- When earth cannot be had- How hospitable-then-the face Of our old neighbor-God-. (ibid, 307)

	Poem 357 God is a distant stately lover Woos as He states us - by His son Verily a vicarious courtship "Miles" and "Priscilla," were such an one. ((Ibid, 169)

	Poem 487 "You love the Lord you cannot see You write Him every day A little note when you awake And further in the day An ample letter-How you miss- And would delight to see- But then His house is but a step- And mine's in Heaven you see." (Ibid, 234)

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

	"Here is my creed. I believe in one God, Creator of the universe. That He governs it by His Providence. That He ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to His children." (Franklin, 1959, 292)

JOHANN GOETHE

"General, natural religion, properly speaking, requires no faith, for the persuasion that a great producing, regulating and conducting Being conceils himself, as it were, behind nature, to make himself comprehensible to us. Such a conviction forces itself upon every one. Nay, if we for a moment let drop this thread, which conducts us through life, it may be immediately and everywhere resumed."
(Goethe, 1882, 114)

"...God, the only, Eternal, Infinite, to whom all the splendid yet limited creatures owe their existence."
(Ibid, 204 )

"Nothing, therefore, remained to me but to part from this society; and as for my love for the Holy Scriptures, as well as of the founder of Christianity and its early professors, could not be taken from me."
(Ibid, 208)

"English, French, and Germans had attacked the Bible with more or less violence, acuteness, audacity, and wantonness, and just as often had it been taken under the protection of earnest, sound-thinking men of each nation. As for myself, I loved and valued it; for almost to it alone did I owe my moral culture: and the events, the doctrines, the symbols. the similes, had all impressed themselves deeply upon me and had influenced me in one way or another. These unjust, scoffing, and perverting attacks, therefore, disgusted me."
(Ibid, 227)

FRANZ KAFKA

"Today the longing for God and the fear of sin are gravely enfeebled. We have sunk into a morass of presumption... Today there is no sin and no longing for God. Everything is completely mundane and utilitarian. God lies outside our existence. And therefore all of us suffer a universal paralysis of conscience. All transcendental conflicts seem to have vanished, and yet all of them defend themselves like the wooden figures of the Jacobskirche. We are immobilized. We are completely transfixed. More than that! Most of us are simply glued to the shaky stool of vulgar common sense by the filth of fear. That is our entire way of life."
(Janouch, 1968, 51)

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

A PRAYER

"God! do not let my loved one die,
But rather wait until the time
That I am grown in purity
Enough to enter Thy pure clime,
Then take me, I will gladly go,
So that my love remain below!

Oh let her stay! She is my birth
What I thought death must learn to be;
We need her more on our poor earth than Thou canst need in Heaven with Thee;
She has her wings already, I
Must burst this earth-she'll ere I fly.

Then, God, take me! We shall be near,
More near than ever, each to each.
Her angel ears will find more clear
My heavenly than my earthly speech;
And still, as I draw nigh to Thee,
Her soul and mine shall closer be.

(Lowell, 1895, 15)

MILTON, JOHN

"God our deliverer."
(Milton, 382, 1952)

"God sure esteems the growth and completing of one virtuous person more than the restraint of ten vicious."
(Ibid, 395, 1952)

"God, who, though He commands us temperance, justice, continence, yet pours out before us, even to profuseness, all desirable things and gives us minds that can wander beyond all limits and satiety."
(Ibid, 395, 1952)

WILLIAM PENN

"Whatever else is done or omitted, be sure to begin and end with God."
(Elliot, 1937, 328)

"Country life is to be preferred, for there we see the works of God; but in cities little else than the works of men."
(Ibid, 342)

"As puppets are to babies, and babies to children, so is man's workmanship to God's; We are the picture, He's the reality."
(Ibid, 342)

"God's works declare His power, wisdom, goodness; but man's works, for the most part, his pride folly and excess. The one is for the use, the otherv chiefly, for ostentation and lust."
(Ibid, 366)

"It is a severe rebuke upon us, that God makes us so many allowances, and we make so few to our neighbor."
(Ibid, 366)

"Religion itself is nothing else but love to God and man."
(Ibid, 366)

"Love is above all, and when it prevails in us all, we shall all be lovely, and in love with God and one another."
(Ibid, 367)

ALEXANDER PUSHKIN

	PURE MEN AND WOMEN TOO Pure men and women too, all the world unspotted, That they might fortify the heart against life's stress, Composed such prayers as still comfort us and bless. But none has stirred in me such deep emotions As that the priest recites at Lententide devotions, The words which mark for us that saddest season rise Most often to my lips, and in that prayer lies Support ineffable when I, a sinner, hear it:
	"Thou Lord my life, avert Thou from my spirit both idle melancholy and ambitious sting, That hidden snake, and joy in foolish gossiping. But let me see,O God, my sins, and make confession, So that my brother be not dammed by my transgression, And quicken Thou in me the breath and being of Both fortitude and meekness, chastity and love". (Yarmolinski, 1964, 87)