"Omnipotence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... proportion'd full." Next turning round to me with milder lip He spake: "This of the seven kings was one, Who girt the Theban walls with siege, and held, As still he seems to hold, God in disdain, And sets his high omnipotence at nought. But, as I told him, his despiteful mood Is ornament well suits the breast that wears it. Follow me now; and look thou set not yet Thy foot in the hot sand, but to the wood Keep ever close." Silently on we pass'd To where there gushes ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... upon the just and vile; His attribute is love; and shall ye dare To take the life mercy and love would spare? Shall ye destroy what he has formed to live, And take away what ye can never give? Shall puny mortal claim the right his own Belonging to Omnipotence alone? Rash man, forbear! and stay the ready dart That seeks to lodge within thy brother's heart. But, no; for mercy's voice, now hushed and still, No longer may the steel-clad bosom thrill; And hearts that ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... achievement, is no help. Moreover, the commonplaces which even the most freethinking of Unitarians seem to consider as axiomatic, are to me far from certain, and even unthinkable. For example, they are always talking about the omnipotence of God. But power even of the supremest kind necessarily implies an object—that is to say, resistance. Without an object which resists it, it would be a blank, and what, then, is the meaning of omnipotence? It is not that it is merely ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... of that latter fact had dimmed; the omnipotence of money had dwindled: for instance, any conceivable sum would be powerless to still that cry from within. In a way it had risen from the very fact of Pompey Hollidew's fortune—Meta Beggs would never have considered him aside from it. He endeavored to curse the old man's successful ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Here she accumulated a thousand various gratifications; here she wantoned in all the secret and licentious desires of her heart. But her castle was not merely a scene of thoughtless pleasure. Within its circle she held crouds of degenerate shepherds, groveling through the omnipotence of her incantations in every brutal form. Even the spectres and the elves that disobeyed her authority, she held in the severest durance. She compressed their tender forms in the narrowest prison, or gave them to the ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... Throne is Christ Himself, with power as God to take possession of me. Oh, do not think you cannot get that realization. And do not think of it as now only within your reach; but cultivate the habit of faith. "Jesus, I believe in Thy glory; I believe in Thine omnipotence; I believe in Thy power working within me. I believe in Thy living, loving presence with me, revealing ...
— 'Jesus Himself' • Andrew Murray
... sailor has experienced most signal proofs of the omnipotence of God. Throughout the daily dangers they are exposed to is the underlying, as well as the overruling, sense of the Almighty Power that holds the heavens in the hollow ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... has been very extensively practiced since the beginning of the world, and it is well known to what omnipotence the Egyptian priests ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... reckless life of borderers and adventurers, or the semi-barbarism of a civilization resolved into its primitive elements. Real republicanism is stern and severe; its essence is not in forms of government, but in the omnipotence of public opinion which grows out of it. This public opinion cannot prevent gambling with dice or stocks, but it can and does compel it to keep comparatively quiet. But horse-racing is the most public way of gambling; and with all its ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... largely a theory of collisions: that is, a theory of the innocence of much apparently designed devilry. In this way Darwin brought intense relief as well as an enlarged knowledge of facts to the humanitarians. He destroyed the omnipotence of God for them; but he also exonerated God from a hideous charge of cruelty. Granted that the comfort was shallow, and that deeper reflection was bound to shew that worse than all conceivable devil-deities ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... grandeur, testifies To His omnipotence who placed it there; The rushing, mighty torrent verifies His ceaseless working; and His constant care And kindliness is proven by the still And growing meadow, ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... successive incarnations of the Divine ideas, and by a principle which, in its universality and omnipotence in the frame of Nature, seems itself an attribute of the Divine, the principle of conflict, these ideas realize their ends in and through conflict. The scientific form which it assumes in the hypothesis of evolution is but the pragmatic ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... mankind were bitter; upon Orestes the hand of heaven was laid too heavily to bear; yet in the not utterly infinite or everlasting distance we see beyond them the promise of the morning on which mystery and justice shall be made one; when righteousness and omnipotence at last shall kiss each other. But on the horizon of Shakespeare's tragic fatalism we see no such twilight of atonement, such pledge of reconciliation as this. Requital, redemption, amends, equity, explanation, pity and mercy, are words ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... Master taught the omnipotence of God, whose ways he declared as high above the blind grovelings of man as the dome of heaven swings above earth. But how long, gentle Master, shall such as this be declared thy Father's ways? How long shall superstition and idolatry retain the power to fetter the souls of men? Is ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Bring loss to us and ours. Our ways are not as Thine. Thou lovest men, we—swine. Oh, get you hence, Omnipotence, And take this fool of Thine! His soul? What care we for his soul? What good to us that Thou hast made him whole, Since we have ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham
... priests are good conservators of the public happiness, send him here. It is the best school in the universe to cure him of that folly. He will see here, with his own eyes, that these descriptions of men are an abandoned confederacy against the happiness of the mass of the people. The omnipotence of their effect cannot be better proved, than in this country particularly, where, notwithstanding the finest soil upon earth, the finest climate under heaven, and a people of the most benevolent, the most gay and amiable character of which the human form ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... interrupted the colonel, waving his hand feebly for silence; "it seemeth to be the will of God that this rebellion should triumph, and it is not for vain man to impeach the acts of Omnipotence. To my erring faculties, it wears an appearance of mystery, but doubtless it Is to answer the purpose of his own inscrutable providence. I have sent for you, Edward, on a business that I would fain see accomplished before I die, that it may ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... matter and force is deeply enwrapped in mystery. Orthodox Christianity has been content to affirm the facts of creation without asking any questions at all as to its methods. It has affirmed the omnipotence of the Creator and has found in His omnipotence a satisfactory resting place. God is great enough to do what has been done and the detail of it is rather an affair for God than man. Scientific speculation generally has gone back as far as it can go in the resolution of its ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... instruments for special designs, but 'elect' ordinarily meant 'beloved.' In any other sense the evil nature only in every man is reprobated, and that which is divine in him elected.[568] 'The goodness and love of God,' he asserted, 'have no limits or bounds, but such as His omnipotence hath.'[569] It was indeed conceivable that there may be spirits of men or fallen angels that have so totally lost every spark of the heavenly nature, and have become so essentially evil, that restoration is no more consistent with their innermost nature than for a circle to have ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... power to receive and appropriate them. Conscious unity of man in spirit and purpose with the Father, born out of his supreme desire and trust, opens his soul through this inner sense to immediate aspiration and enlightenment from the divine omniscience, and the co-operative energy of the divine omnipotence, under which he becomes a seer and a master. On this higher plane of realised spiritual life in the flesh the mind acts with unfettered freedom and unbiassed vision, grasping truth at first hand, independent of all external sources of information. Approaching ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... refashion the unconscious universe, so to transmute it in the crucible of imagination, that a new image of shining gold replaces the old idol of clay. In all the multiform facts of the world—in the visual shapes of trees and mountains and clouds, in the events of the life of man, even in the very omnipotence of Death—the insight of creative idealism can find the reflection of a beauty which its own thoughts first made. In this way mind asserts its subtle mastery over the thoughtless forces of Nature. The more evil the material with which it deals, the more thwarting to untrained ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... dependance, and with the danger of entire destruction; to stay upon him was to stay upon their destroyer, Is. x. 20. Such an alliance was a de facto denial of the God of Israel, an insult to His omnipotence and grace. If Ahaz had obeyed Him; if he had limited himself to the use of the human means granted to him by the Lord without trusting in them, and had placed all his confidence in the Lord, He would have delivered him in the same manner as He afterwards delivered Hezekiah, in the first instance ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... sacrifice, before his shrine for ever 310 In adoration bend, or Erebus With all its banded fiends shall not uprise To overwhelm in envy and revenge The dauntless and the good, who dare to hurl Defiance at his throne, girt tho' it be 315 With Death's omnipotence. Thou hast beheld His empire, o'er the present and the past; It was a desolate sight—now gaze on mine, Futurity. Thou hoary giant Time, Render thou up thy half-devoured babes,— 320 And from the cradles of eternity, Where millions ...
— The Daemon of the World • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... only were Mr O'Brien's own friends to be attacked by the "Board of Erin," which was now in complete control of the machinery of the national organisation, but that every other Member of Parliament who had not bent the knee to its occult omnipotence was to be run out of public life without cause assigned. All this while there was rumour and counter-rumour about Mr O'Brien's return. The Dillonites up to the last moment believed we were playing a game of bluff and went on right ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... might, cogency, efficacy, force; armipotence, omnipotence; influence, sway, command, domination, authority; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... power; not at the time of his resurrection, but at the time of his ascension, he was seated "on the right hand of the Majesty on high." This indicates divine omnipotence. It is the continual representation of the New Testament that Jesus Christ has all authority in heaven and on earth. The ascension should therefore remind us of the limitless power ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... Externally, there is nothing to give rise to a contradiction, for a thing cannot be necessary externally; nor internally, for, by the annihilation or suppression of the thing itself, its internal properties are also annihilated. God is omnipotent—that is a necessary judgement. His omnipotence cannot be denied, if the existence of a Deity is posited—the existence, that is, of an infinite being, the two conceptions being identical. But when you say, God does not exist, neither omnipotence nor any other predicate ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... is manifested the skill and omnipotence of the Great Architect; for no machine of human invention supplies to itself, by its own operations, the necessary lubricating fluid. But, in the animal frame, it is supplied in proper quantities, and applied in the proper place, and at the ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... already pushed into the centre with their ponderous omnipotence, and even as they did so, Rupert Grant sprang forward with his ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... evil, and to draw us in to do so too; and the poor creature puzzled me once in such a manner, by a question merely natural and innocent, that I scarce knew what to say to him. I had been talking a great deal to him of the power of God, His omnipotence, His aversion to sin, His being a consuming fire to the workers of iniquity; how, as He had made us all, He could destroy us and all the world in a moment; and he listened with great seriousness to me all the while. After this I had been telling him how the devil was God's enemy in the hearts ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... ground for not trying to apply to experience such categories, for instance, as that of personal omnipotence, as if everything were necessarily arranged as we may command or require. On this principle children often seem to conceive a world in which they are astonished not to find themselves living. Or we may try aesthetic categories and allow our reproductive imagination—by which memory is ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... created the heaven and the earth." Some say that the Hebrew word bara, which is translated "create," means "made out of nothing." I venture to object to that rendering, not on the ground of scholarship, but of common sense. Omnipotence itself can surely no more make something "out of" nothing than it can make a triangular circle. What is intended by "made out of nothing" appears to be "caused to come into existence," with the implication that nothing of the same kind previously existed. It ...
— Mr. Gladstone and Genesis - Essay #5 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... but few friends to the reformers, and these were of little strength. Their enemies were every where strong, proud, arrogant. But Luther relied on his God, and at this moment, with his favorite hymn in his heart, "A strong fortress is our God," he went to the Lord in prayer, and prayed that omnipotence would come to the help of their weakness. Long he wrestled alone with God in his closet, till like Jacob he prevailed. Then he went into the room, where his family had assembled, with joyous heart and shining face, and raising ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... ready in its gush of joy, to fling All trammels off, that would in aught control Its wild pulsation. O'er it feelings roll Too mighty for expression; and each sense Appears to be commingled in one whole; Whose sum of ecstacy is so intense, It finds no home to garner it, but in omnipotence. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... it is the decree of the entire race. And as far as it can be seen, all those wilful fierce creatures bow themselves to it. The current boils past him in one direction. He lets it go till he thinks fit to stop it. He sounds his whistle, and raises his arm again in that inimitable gesture of omnipotence. And again they bow themselves. Now that the priest before the altar no longer sways humanity as he did, is there anywhere else, any other such visible embodiment of might, majesty, and power as . ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... in this world. On the contrary their ideas were just the reverse. FATE, superior to the decrees of Jove himself, was the supreme power which they discerned in all the changes of time; and it was the crushing of a human soul beneath its chariot-wheels that they principally delighted to portray. The omnipotence of Fate, in their opinion, was more shown in the destruction than the rewards of the good. Success in life they were willing enough to ascribe to the able conduct of the persons concerned; they only began, like the French, to speak about destiny when they were unfortunate. Their ignorance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... great many excellent people in the world who are strongly prejudiced against what they designate "isms," but who are always glad of any opportunity of serving God, as they express it. I ask what can finite beings do to serve Omnipotence unless it be to exert all their powers for the good of humanity, for the uplifting of man, which, if aught of ours could do, must rejoice our Creator. When we see more than one-half of the adult human family—reasonably industrious ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... phase, the mediaeval Moslem mind displays, like the ancient Egyptian, a most exalted moral idea, the deepest reverence for all things connected with his religion and a sublime conception of the Unity and Omnipotence of the Deity. Noteworthy too is a proud resignation to the decrees of Fate and Fortune (Kaza wa Kadar), of Destiny and Predestination—a feature which ennobles the low aspect of Al-Islam even in these her days of comparative degeneration and local decay. Hence his moderation in prosperity, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... is that the Creator has made a world with as little of evil in it as the nature of things,—that is, as the laws of nature and matter—allowed him; which is nonsense, if those laws were made by him, and leaves the question where it was, or rather solves it by giving up the omnipotence of the Creator, if these laws were binding ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... chivalry that brings as its reward the love of the beautiful princess in the tower; they tell of dangers overcome by courage and perseverance; they suggest a contact with nature which otherwise might never be developed. Where angels and archangels overawe by their omnipotence, the microscopic fairies who can sit singing upon a mushroom and dangle from the swaying stem of a bluebell, carry the thoughts down the scale of life to the little and really important things. A sleepy child will rather believe that the Queen of the Fairies is acting sentry ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... of the restless and the longing, Providence often appears to be worse than inscrutable: an unreliable Omnipotence given to haphazard whimsies in dealing with its own creatures, choosing at random some among them to be rent with tragic deprivations and others to be ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... trouble himself with a personal answer. His reply was given vicariously, through one P. T. Mallencroft, his secretary, on flawless paper, three sentences in bold clear type and a Spencerian signature closing it. It was a bloodless thing. It spoke the commands of omnipotence as though ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... precipices on each side. This is the Notch of the White Hills. Shame on me that I have attempted to describe it by so mean an image, feeling, as I do, that it is one of those symbolic scenes which lead the mind to the sentiment, though not to the conception, of Omnipotence. ...
— Sketches From Memory (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... other side of the Atlantic, and on this. It is the alliance of God and Nature, immutable, eternal, fixed as the firmament of heaven. Resistance to your acts was necessary as it was just; and your vain declarations of the omnipotence of parliament, and your imperious doctrines of the necessity of submission will be found equally impotent to convince or enslave your fellow-subjects ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... not matter to me," said Triplet, with some hauteur, and assuming poetic omnipotence. "Only, when one knows the subject, one can sometimes ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... without personal participation therein, without effort and toil on his part; above all, he will not be reduced to a state of nothingness. He will again have a life of toil; he will participate, to the extent God has permitted him, in the endless creations produced by divine omnipotence; he will again love, he will never cease to love; he will continue his eternal progress, because the distance between himself and God ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... as it pleased him, but would not have been shocked at all at the idea that he might not please to give this or that man any help. In their eyes power was a grander thing than love, though it is nowhere said in the Book that God is omnipotence. Such, because they are told that he is omnipotent, call him Omnipotence; when told that he is Love, do not care to argue that he must then be loving? But as to doing what he wills with a word—see what it cost him ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... negro, a slave; and all his impassioned detestation of the latter term possessed him. The essence of the Meikeljohns was a necessity for freedom, an almost bitter pride in the independence of their bodies. Their souls they held to be under the domination of a relentless Omnipotence, evolved, it might have been, from the obdurate and resplendent granite masses of the highland where they had first survived. These qualities gave to Elim Meikeljohn's political enmity for the South a fervor closely resembling fanaticism. Even now when, following ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... it iron. Having possessed nothing, they became rich, having become rich they became richer, having founded their fortunes on small schemes, they increased them by enormous ones. In time they attained that omnipotence of wealth which it would seem no circumstance can control or limit. The first Reuben Vanderpoel could not spell, the second could, the third was as well educated as a man could be whose sole profession is money-making. His children ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... rock and snow, and far to the east, beyond the billowing ranges, white, gray, and green, stretch the limitless plains, vanishing in the hazy distance. In such surroundings one's breast throbs and swells with the thought of Nature's omnipotence. ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... insuperable barrier that divides England from Germany has grown out of circumstance and habit and thought. For many hundreds of years the German peoples have stood to arms in their own defence against the encroachments of successive empires; and modern Germany learned the doctrine of the omnipotence of force by prolonged suffering at the hands of the greatest master of that immoral school—the Emperor Napoleon. No German can understand the attitude of disinterested patronage which the English mind quite naturally assumes when it is brought into contact with foreigners. The best example ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... that ship; and in its depths concealed Lies all the wealth of this vast universe - Yea, lies some part of God's omnipotence, The legacy divine of every soul. Thy will, O man, thy will is that great ship, And yet behold it drifting here and there - One moment lying motionless in port, Then on high seas by sudden impulse flung, Then drying ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... invoke the aid of that Almighty Ruler of the Universe in whose hands are the destinies of nations and of men to guard this Heaven-favored land against the mischiefs which without His guidance might arise from an unwise public policy. With a firm reliance upon the wisdom of Omnipotence to sustain and direct me in the path of duty which I am appointed to pursue, I stand in the presence of this assembled multitude of my countrymen to take upon myself the solemn obligation "to ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... Son; or, if prayers were addressed to inferior beings, and the glorified spirits of his saints, at least they terminated in the Most High, were a deprecation of his wrath, a soliciting his favour, and a homage to his omnipotence. On the other hand sorcery and witchcraft were sins of the blackest dye. In opposition to the one only God, the creator of heaven and earth, was the "prince of darkness," the "prince of the power of the air," who contended perpetually against the Almighty, and sought to seduce his creatures ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... of the Godhead is accepted in the literal fulness of scriptural declaration—that the three are one in purpose, plan and method, alike in all their Godly attributes; one in their divine omniscience and omnipotence; yet as separate and distinct in their personality as are any three inhabitants of earth. "Mormonism" claims that scriptures declaring the oneness of the Trinity admit of this interpretation; that such ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... question. It is to God only that we can apply in cases of this kind. In the midst of our prosperities, which often tempt us to forget him, he is pleased to mortify us in some instance, that we may address our thoughts to him, acknowledge his omnipotence, and ask of him what we ought to expect from him alone. Your majesty has subjects," proceeded he "who make a profession of honouring and serving God, and suffering great hardships for his sake; to them I would advise you to have recourse, and engage them, by alms, to join ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... taken in their literal and absolute sense, as any Protestant would naturally take them, and as the writers doubtless did not use them), such sentences and phrases as these:—that the mercy of Mary is infinite, that God has resigned into her hands His omnipotence, that (unconditionally) it is safer to seek her than her Son, that the Blessed Virgin is superior to God, that He is (simply) subject to her command, that our Lord is now of the same disposition as His Father towards sinners—viz. ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... stab her eyes with red-hot thrusts; and shivering from head to foot, she slowly realized the suspicious significance of the disappearance of the will, which was the sole obstacle that debarred her from her grandfather's wealth. Although sustained by an unfaltering trust in the omnipotence of innocence, she was tormented by a dread spectre that would not "down" at her bidding; how could she prove that the money and jewels had been given to her? Would the shock of the tidings of her arrest kill her mother? Was there any possible ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... down to power in his savage state, can seldom divest himself of this barbarous prejudice even when civilization determines how much superior mental is to bodily strength; and his reason is clouded by these crude opinions, even when he thinks of the Deity. His omnipotence is made to swallow up, or preside over his other attributes, and those mortals are supposed to limit his power irreverently, who think that it must be regulated by ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... for all that, she fingers her thirty thousand francs a year, and her faithful friend is a peer of France, very influential in the Chamber. And see! there's a danseuse of the third order, who, as a dancer, exists only through the omnipotence of a newspaper. If her engagement were not renewed the ministry would have one more journalistic enemy on its back. The corps de ballet is a great power; consequently it is considered better form in the upper ranks ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... so, Boy, that she sometimes seems to live again in you. Like her, you believe so thoroughly in the goodness and greatness of a God—in the beauty and glory of the world fraught with lessons of life and death—in the omnipotence of Fate—in the truth and power and grandeur of overmastering love. You believe in the past, in all the dreams and legends of the Long Ago still relived in the Now, in the capabilities of the human mind, the kingship of the soul. Your voice ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... every-day miracle is none. But that they are either impossible or so improbable that, if they were wrought, no evidence could establish them, is another matter. The first allegation involves a curious limitation of omnipotence; and the second affirms in effect, that, if God were to work a miracle, it would be our ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... conclusive deliverance from the dominion and tyranny of Self is to be found in the words 'For My sake.' Ah! brethren, I suppose there are none of us so poor in earthly love, possessed or remembered, but that we know the omnipotence of these words when whispered by beloved lips, 'For My sake'; and Jesus Christ is saying them to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... of the practitioner should be imbued with a clear conviction of the omnipotence and omnipresence of God; that He is All, and that there can be none beside Him; that God is good, and the producer only of good; and hence, that whatever militates against health, harmony, or holiness, is an unjust usurper of the throne of the controller of all mankind. Note this, ...
— Rudimental Divine Science • Mary Baker Eddy
... of the little I know to prove the foolishness of idolatry. I do not argue against knowledge; I argue against knowledge-worship. For here, I see in your Essay, that you are not contented with raising human knowledge into something like divine omnipotence,—you must also confound her with virtue. According to you, it is but to diffuse the intelligence of the few among the many, and all at which we preachers aim is accomplished. Nay, more; for, whereas we humble preachers have never presumed to say, with the heathen Stoic, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... concord of their administration, and the essential agreement of their will. A faint resemblance of this unity of action may be discovered in the societies of men, and even of animals. The causes which disturb their harmony, proceed only from the imperfection and inequality of their faculties; but the omnipotence which is guided by infinite wisdom and goodness, cannot fail of choosing the same means for the accomplishment of the same ends. III. Three beings, who, by the self-derived necessity of their existence, possess all the divine attributes in ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... the will of a legitimate prince. A nod or a word, from such a king, can consign the greatest noble to hopeless impotence. And he can do this from the mighty and mysterious force of ideas alone. Neither king nor parliament can ever resist the omnipotence of popular ideas. When ideas establish despots on their thrones, they are safe. When ideas demand their dethronement, no forces can long sustain them. The age of Queen Mary was the period of the most unchecked absolutism in ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... he does Christ an honour in going to visit Him. He goes in the full pride of a personality which sees in itself all the great events of the past, gathered together as in an historic procession. He goes, with all the pomp and circumstance of a glorious omnipotence, he, whose diplomacy has made a protege of the Khalif and a footstool of the Crescent—he goes, I say, to manifest himself as ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... Anarchist philosophy in ancient Greece was Zeno (342-267 or 270 B.C.), from Crete, the founder of the Stoic philosophy, who distinctly opposed his conception of a free community without government to the state-Utopia of Plato. He repudiated the omnipotence of the state, its intervention and regimentation, and proclaimed the sovereignty of the moral law of the individual—remarking already that, while the necessary instinct of self-preservation leads ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... preaching of Ours in the islands of Calamianes has been already related in volume II; [51] as has also the conversion of their inhabitants, until then heathens; the marvels which divine Omnipotence worked there; the convents which were established for the extension of the Catholic faith; and the hardships endured by the missionaries in spreading it. Now, then, it must be noted that eight religious were well employed in all the islands of that jurisdiction, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... omnipotence in the cause that changed the views of a man like Carwin. The divinity that shielded me from his attempts will take suitable care of my future safety. Thus to yield to my fears is to deserve that ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... themselves; as was done by the act of union, and the several statutes for triennial and septennial elections. It can, in short, do every thing that is not naturally impossible; and therefore some have not scrupled to call it's power, by a figure rather too bold, the omnipotence of parliament. True it is, that what they do, no authority upon earth can undo. So that it is a matter most essential to the liberties of this kingdom, that such members be delegated to this important trust, as are most eminent for their probity, their fortitude, ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... hand, and his voice was soft, low, and melancholy—'I am Cothrob, king of the subterranean world, and supreme chief of Ginnistan. I and my brethren are of those who, created out of the pure elementary fire, disdained, even at the command of Omnipotence, to do homage to a clod of earth, because it was called Man. Thou mayest have heard of us as cruel, unrelenting, and persecuting. It is false. We are by nature kind and generous; only vengeful when insulted, ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... logical. With the exception of these crimes he has produced nothing. Absolute power, no initiative! He has taken France and does not know what to do with it. In truth, we are tempted to pity this eunuch struggling with omnipotence. ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... before giving the medicine, otherwise he will not know whether it ought to be an anodyne or a stimulant. Every Christian ought to have something to say. Every man is a walking eternity. The plainest man has Omnipotence to defend him, Omniscience to watch him, infinite Goodness to provide for him. The tamest religious experience has in it poems, tragedies, histories, Iliads, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Ought not such a one have ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... Manichean, by referring evil to an independent cause, denies the existence of an absolute first principle at all; the Leibnitzian, with his hypothesis of the best possible world, virtually sets bounds to the Divine omnipotence: the Pantheist identifies God with all actual existence, and either denies the real existence of evil at all, or merges the distinction between evil and good in some higher indifference. All these conclusions may be alike untenable, but all alike testify to the existence of the problem, ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... from some transgression of universal law. The scriptures point out that man must satisfy the laws of nature, while not discrediting the divine omnipotence. He should say: 'Lord, I trust in Thee, and know Thou canst help me, but I too will do my best to undo any wrong I have done.' By a number of means-by prayer, by will power, by yoga meditation, by consultation with saints, ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... obedience and commercial restraints as from taxation of revenue, being unrepresented here, I pronounce them futile, frivolous, and groundless. Resistance to your acts was necessary as it was just; and your vain declaration of the omnipotence of parliament, and your imperious doctrines of the necessity of submission, will be found equally impotent to convince or enslave your fellow-subjects in America, who feel that tyranny, whether ambitioned by an individual part, of the legislature or by the bodies who ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... everything which he actually understands, for they think that they would thus destroy God's power. If, they contend, God had created everything which is in his intellect, he would not be able to create anything more, and this, they think, would clash with God's omnipotence; therefore, they prefer to asset that God is indifferent to all things, and that he creates nothing except that which he has decided, by some absolute exercise of will, to create. However, I think I have shown sufficiently clearly ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... I have much to be grateful for; for after the rash attempt I made to secure my freedom, I have reason to be thankful for the mercy shown to me. Death—dreadful death of soul and body—would have been my portion; but, by the mercy of Omnipotence, I have been spared to repentance—John iii. I have now come to bitterness. The chaplain, a pious gentleman, says it never really pays to steal. "Lay up for yourselves treasures in Heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt." Honesty is the best policy, I am convinced, and I would not for ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... from conviction of robbing the mail; and I will not deny that I made a considerable handle of the fortunate discovery of the letter which had saved an innocent girl, on the day before, in my appeal to the jury; and if I made them feel that the finger of Omnipotence was in the work, I did it because I sincerely believe my client was innocent of all crime; and I am ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... long ruled there; it is to be vitalized and purified from all iniquity. It is an Augean stable we have to clean, but Hercules was one, and we are many. The People are at last sovereign. Every man who works for humanity has God upon his side; he cannot fail, for the might of Omnipotence is with his puny arm. This is the task now set before us: it lies directly in our onward path—we cannot take a step really in advance until it is achieved. If we fail now, all is lost. Our dead heroes will ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... exhausted by the might of their own despair, they fell to rise no more. A long, tearful silence ensued. Here and there a faint moan struggled for utterance, and a defiant arm was raised as though to threaten Omnipotence; then the poor, puny creatures, whom hunger had bereft of reason, shivered, dropped their hands, and ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... saw irradiated the young, open, still Mary's-brow, and the delicate proportions, which, like the white attire, seemed to exalt the form. Thou too fortunate man!—to whom the only visible goddess, Beauty, appears so suddenly, in her omnipotence! ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... are right, poor countless workmen of the battles, you who have made with your bands all of the Great War, you whose omnipotence is not yet used for well-doing, you human host whose every face is a world of sorrows, you who dream bowed under the yoke of a thought beneath that sky where long black clouds rend themselves and expand in disheveled lengths like evil angels—yes, you are right. There are all those things ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... freedmen; whoever ceased to be a slave, obtained, without reserve or delay, the station of a citizen; and at length the dignity of an ingenuous birth, which nature had refused, was created, or supposed, by the omnipotence of the emperor. Whatever restraints of age, or forms, or numbers, had been formerly introduced to check the abuse of manumissions, and the too rapid increase of vile and indigent Romans, he finally abolished; and the spirit of his laws promoted ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... of affable omnipotence about the wise youth After five years of marriage, and twelve of friendship Among boys there are laws of honour and chivalrous codes An edge to his smile that cuts much like a sneer Complacent languor of the wise youth Huntress with few scruples ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... avalanche or the shrill voice of the restless crow, was so evident and so powerful, and combined so impressively with the marvellous beauty of the surroundings, that the heart could not fail to recognise the sublimity of Nature and the omnipotence ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... Maker in his Heav'nly Breast Design'd a Creature to command the rest, Of all th' Erected Progeny of Clay His Noblest Labour was his First Essay. There shone th' Eternal Brightness, and a Mind Proportion'd for the Father of Mankind. The Vigor of Omnipotence was seen In his high Actions, and Imperial Mien. Inrich'd with Arts, unstudy'd and untaught, With loftiness of Soul, and dignity of Thought To Rule the World, and what he Rul'd to Sing, And be at once the Poet ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb
... conception the measure of the universe, or even of other men's intellects; or say—"Because I cannot conceive a thing, therefore no man can conceive it, and therefore it does not exist." But pray, O philosopher, if you cannot think and conceive of the omnipresence and omnipotence of God, what can you think ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... His endless disappointments, His innumerable failures, His grievous sufferings. It would be easy to love God if He were like that—yet who dares to say it or to teach it? It is the dreadful doctrine of His Omnipotence that ruins everything. I cannot hold any communication with Omnipotence—it is a consuming fire; but if I could know that God was strong and patient and diligent, but not all-powerful or all-knowing, then I could commune with Him. If, when some evil mishap overtakes me, I could say to Him, ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the deeper ignorance of mankind, with all its jealousies, and its narrow-mindedness, and its superstitions, and its penury of enjoyments, poor amid the intellectual and moral riches of the universe; blind in this splendid temple which God has lighted up, and famishing amid the profusions of Omnipotence?" And, parents, let me ask you, if you thus neglect the proper education of your children, and as a consequence, such pauperism of estate, of mind, and of morals, come upon them, will you not have to answer for all this ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... said Frederick amazed. "You who know what passes in my heart—you whose glances chill me with horror—you, who promise me a miracle which only omnipotence can accomplish. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... The beggar-garbed or over-bent with snows, Each mortal, long defeated, disallowed, Feeling her touch, grows stronger limbed, and knows The purple on his shoulders and is proud. The Spring returns! O madness beyond sense, Breed in our bones thine own omnipotence! ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... omnipotence of Imperial sovereignty, it is, of course, impossible to say now what the exact constitutional position of Ireland will be under any form of Home Rule. No Bill can state it fully in set terms. Time, custom, and judicial decisions will build up a body of doctrine. It is so with ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... the first forms, this constitutes a break in the sufficiency of natural causes alone to produce life. If a special fiat was necessary at this point, why may it not have been at others? If by divine omnipotence, life is believed to have been originated, why shall we not believe that by divine omnipotence the various species of plants and animals were brought forth as related in the first chapter of the Bible? "If the Creator could breathe life into a few forms or into one, as Darwin thinks he did, ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... first and second step in the rejection of the highest intelligence and omnipotence as the final cause of the world, are once made, it is easy for us to comprehend still other supports which this view of the world draws to itself. However large the number of things in the world for ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... afterwards learned, had come from Versailles especially to investigate the matter that was bothering us. She possessed no mediumistic properties of her own but was a staunch proponent of spiritualism, believing firmly in immortality and the omnipotence of "translated" souls. ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... the omnipotence of speech? With a few brief words God called the universe from nothingness; speech falling from the glowing lips of the Apostles, has changed the face of the earth. The current of opinion follows the prestige ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... death of Christ are the glory of God! Not in the awful attributes which separate that inconceivable Nature from us, not in the eternity of His existence, nor in the Infinitude of His Being, not in the Omnipotence of His unwearied arm, nor in fire-eyed Omniscience, but in the pity and graciousness which bend lovingly over us, is the true glory of God. These pompous 'attributes' are but the fringes of the brightness, the living white heart of which is love. God's glory is God's grace, and the purest ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... have sinned, and that th' offence Of man is made against Omnipotence, Some price that bears proportion must be paid, And infinite with infinite be weighed. See then the Deist lost; remorse for vice Not paid; or, paid, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... and size given them, both prophets and sibyls, as compared to their usual relation to the subjects they environ. They sit here on twelve throne-like niches, more like presiding deities, each wrapt in self-contemplation, than as tributary witnesses to the truth and omnipotence of Him they are intended to announce. Thus they form a gigantic frame-work round the subjects of the Creation, of which the birth of Eve, as the type of the Nativity, is the intentional centre. For some reason, ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... sheds at the back of our old convictions more than one unexpected door, which sheds upon the life and habits of our secret being sufficient light to puzzle us for many a long day. This brings us back once more to the omniscience and perhaps the omnipotence of our hidden guest, to the brink of the mysterious reservoir of every manner of knowledge which we shall meet with again when we come to speak of the future, of the talking horses, of the divining-rod, of materializations and miracles, in short, in every ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck |
