"Deist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... teachings of Bossuet and Fenelon represented the out-worn creeds of an age that was dead. It was Voltaire who gave the tone, and even Voltaire was not radical enough for many of these iconoclasts. "He is a bigot and a deist," exclaimed a feminine disciple of d'Holbach's atheism. The gay, witty, pleasure-loving abbe, who derided piety, defied morality, was the pet of the salon, and figured in the worst scandals, was a fair representative of the fashionable clergy who had no attribute of priesthood ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... before and since his death, what were his religious opinions, and while every man's religious opinions are his own, and no one has the right to question them, I will say he was a Deist something after the manner of Thomas Paine, and for the benefit of some of our professors and preachers, who do not know the difference between an Atheist and a Deist, I will say that a Deist is one who believes in one God, and rejects all forms of so-called ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... his distinguished contemporaries he was a Deist. On his deathbed he received the usual rites of the Church in the presence of his household, and then told the priest that he did not believe a word of all that. His real views are transparent in some of his works through the conventional disguises in ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... the divine nature, in favour of an actual revelation. It seems to me that, notwithstanding all the objections that are made to a supernatural and objective revelation, there is nothing half so monstrous as it would be to believe, with the pure deist or theist, that God, being what He is, righteous and loving, had never rent His heavens to say one word to man to lead him in the paths of righteousness. I can understand Atheism, and I can understand a revealing God, but not a God that dwells in the thick darkness, and is yet Love ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... startling revelation he owed to Robespierre's wisdom was that of the crimes and infamies of atheism. Gamelin had never denied the existence of God; he was a deist and believed in a Providence that watches over mankind; but, admitting that he could form only a very vague conception of the Supreme Being and deeply attached to the principle of freedom of conscience, he was quite ready to allow that right-thinking men might follow the example of Lamettrie, ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... into the secret of objections which might be made to it, and set me to scrutinizing the articles of my faith;" and she states that "this was the first step toward a skepticism at which I was destined to arrive after having been successively Jansenist, Cartesian, Stoic, and Deist." By this skepticism she doubtless meant merely skepticism as to creeds, for in her memoirs, written in daily expectation of death, and in most intense self-communion, she writes upon the great subjects of immortality, Deity, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... God, said the eighteenth century Deist, it would be necessary to invent Him. Now this XVIII century god was deus ex machina, the god who helped those who could not help themselves, the god of the lazy and incapable. The nineteenth century decided that there is indeed ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... the Spectator, and formed his style upon Addison, whose manner he afterward imitated in his Busy-Body papers in the Philadelphia Weekly Mercury. He also read Locke and the English deistical writers, Collins and Shaftesbury, and became himself a deist and free-thinker; and subsequently when practicing his trade in London, in 1724-26, he made the acquaintance of Dr. Mandeville, author of the Fable of the Bees, at a pale-ale house in Cheapside, called "The Horns," ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... than contrasted, with the faith of the best and wisest of Deists. The ascendancy of the heavenly over the earthly will then be apparent—as apparent as the superior lustre of a star to that of a lighted-up window in the night. For above all other things in which the Christian is happier than the Deist—with the latter, the life beyond the grave is but a dark hope—to the former, "immortality has been brought to light by the Gospel." That difference embraces the whole spirit. It may be less felt—less seen when life is quick and strong; for this ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... idea? This is now the question. In answering it I shall assume no ground but that which all parties say is true. The Christian, the Deist and Atheist will admit that we have learned all we know, and that we have learned only through the aid of the five senses: seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting and smelling are the porters of the mind. One or another ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... In a Dialogue between Philalothes, a Christian Deist, and Theophanes, a Christian Jew, in which the Grounds of Religion are considered, ...
— The Annual Catalogue: Numb. II. (1738) • Various
... him. During his vigorous state of health, while his blood was warm and his spirits high, a contempt and disregard to all religion held possession of his mind; and he might more properly be denominated a deist than a Catholic. But in those revolutions of temper, when the love of raillery gave place to reflection, and his penetrating, but negligent understanding was clouded with fears and apprehensions, he had starts of mere sincere ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... would have been a great orator. He wrote voluminously, on many subjects, and was devoted to a literary life. He rejected the superstitions of his country, and looked upon the ritualism of religion as a mere fashion. In his own belief he was a deist; but though he wrote fine ethical treatises, he dishonored his own virtues by a compliance with the vices of others. He saw much of life, and died at fifty-three. What is remarkable in Seneca's writings, which are clear but labored, is that under Pagan influences and imperial ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... This brother used to present offerings to the church, hoping to make amends for the unbelief of his brother. So far as we know none of his ancestors were literary people. The Arouets had never written a line. The Abbe le Chaulieu was his godfather, and, although an abbe, was a deist who cared nothing about his religion except in connection with his salary. Voltaire's father wanted to make a lawyer of him, but he had no taste for law. At the age of 10 he entered the college of Louis le Grand. This was a Jesuit school, and here he remained for seven years, leaving ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... that one Herryott, of Sir Walter Rawleigh his house, had brought the Godhead in question, and the whole course of the Scriptures, but of whom he so heard it he did not remember. (Thomas Harriot was an acknowledged deist, and Raleigh had taken him into his house to study mathematics with him.] He heard his brother, Dr. Jesopp, say that Mr. Carew Rawleigh, reasoning with Mr. Parry and Mr. Archdeacon about the Godhead [as he conjectureth], his said brother, thinking that Mr. Archdeacon and Mr. Parry would take offence ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... sheet, Hamilton's death called forth "the voice of deep lament" save from "the rancorous Jacobin, the scoffing deist, the snivelling fanatic, and the imported scoundrel." "Were I asked," said an apologist, "whether General Hamilton had vices, in the face of the world, in the presence of my ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... thee frome death, deid for thee, and changed thy perpetuall death in his awin death. For thow madest the falt, and he suffered the pane, and that for the luif he had to thee, befoir ever thow wast borne, when thow haddest done neither good nor evill. Now, since he hath payed thy debt, thow deist nott: no, thow canst nott, bot shouldest have bene damned, yf his death war not.[67] Bot since he was punished for thee, thow shalt not be punished. Fynallie, he hath delivered thee from thye condemnatioun, and desyrith nought of thee, but that thow shouldest acknowledge ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... doctrine," replied Kennedy, "and I presume the author to be a Socinian, who, if consistent at all with his opinions, will sooner or later reject the Bible entirely, and avow himself to be what he really is already, namely, a Deist. Where did ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli |
