"Omnipotence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... up your nest? Has he flung you out until you feel lost in an element that is new and strange? Look at him. He is not lost in that element. He spreads out the wings of omnipotence to teach us how to soar. What then? He comes beneath us and catches us on his wings. We thought when he flung us out of the nest it was unkind. No; he was teaching us to fly that we might enter into the ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr
... from the trees, as the light breeze stirs from an apparent sleep; a golden tint spreads over the sea of mist below; the rays dart lightning-like upon the eastern sky; the mighty orb rises in all the fullness of his majesty, recalling the words of Omnipotence: "Let ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... older they see more and more clearly that love—the love between man and woman—is the great power that shapes character, and makes life a blessing, a burden, or a curse. More and more deeply did Mrs. Jackson feel the omnipotence of perfect, patient love, the only power that is sure of final victory, and to show this did she tell the story of Zeph. Before the story was finished, Mrs. Jackson became too ill to work any more; but the life of Zeph was very near her heart; she wanted to make ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... empire of speech, and its perpetuating characters, embrace this prodigious range; but their comprehension is exclusively limited to the human race. When words can represent all that is evident and all that is conjectural—the works of Omnipotence, and the fabrications of man—we need to seek no further for the necessary materials of thought. The difficulty that has perplexed many persons respecting the compactness and unity of intelligence that a sentence contains, principally arises from their ignorance of the precise meaning ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... Church never canonises any human being, of whatever eminence his piety may have been, if it is not proved to its satisfaction that he had the power of altering the laws of nature, and availed himself of divine omnipotence in order to serve his friends, and even to satisfy their caprice. For example: one saint has been able to traverse the seas with no better vessel for his use than his own cloak; another used to bring down rain from heaven in times of drought; almost ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... But he could not actively resent the slight. He glanced round at the walls; he was in a prison. He was at the mercy of a tyrant invested with omnipotence. ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... universal stage, at which only two other religions have arrived at all. The progress which Christianity took centuries to accomplish, Islam accomplished in so many decades. The title of a universal religion cannot be denied to it. The truth which it declared—the doctrine of the unity and the omnipotence of God, and of the responsibility of every human being to his Creator and Judge—is one which does not belong to any particular race of men, but to all men. The attitude of soul which is called Islam—that ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... threatened them with the arm of the law, a much more effective weapon in Japan than elsewhere. He proposed, in fine, to walk three ri down the valley to the nearest police station and fetch a policeman who should compel them to move on. It is perhaps open to doubt whether even a Japanese policeman's omnipotence would have extended so far. But the threat, though not conclusive, had some effect. This strategic stroke I only learnt of later, and I laughed heartily when I did. That night, however, it was no laughing matter, and I began to have doubts ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... and similar arguments that, in spite of all the tokens of intelligence and beneficence in the creation, there is so much of the contrary character. How much there is of apparently needless pain and waste! And John Stuart Mill has urged that either we must suppose the Creator wanting in omnipotence or wanting in kindness to have left His creation so imperfect. The answer usually given is that our knowledge is partial, and, could we see the whole, the objection would probably disappear. But what force and ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... shame, the domestic traitors deny their lord this poor chance for his life. These things thought themselves the superior of a man like me! and you, foolish wench, think so meanly of your Deity as to suppose wretches like them are the work of Omnipotence!" ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... are you?" 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... State, is in writing, and compacted into definite propositions. We draw, that is to say, a far sharper distinction than it is possible to do in England between what is constitutional and what is simply statutory. There is no function of our General Convention that answers to the "omnipotence of Parliament." This creative faculty was vacated once for all at the adoption ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... chessmen. The player willingly enters into definite relations with each particular piece and realises the joy of his power by these very restrictions. It is not that he cannot move the chessmen just as he pleases, but if he does so then there can be no play. If God assumes his role of omnipotence, then his creation is at an end and his power loses all its meaning. For power to be a power must act within limits. God's water must be water, his earth can never be other than earth. The law that has made them water and earth is his ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... 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
... daughter, who is the daughter also of Frances Wright. Mr. Owen was of course present, and spoke quite at length in reiteration and enforcement of the leading ideas wherewith he has so long endeavored to impress the world respecting the absolute omnipotence of circumstances in shaping the Human Character, the impossibility of believing or disbelieving save as one must, &c. &c. Mr. Owen has scarcely looked younger or heartier at any time these ten years; he did not seem a shade older than ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... the Grand Lama. In China he is incarnate in Quanyen, the goddess of mercy. With sailors she is the goddess of the sea. In many temples she is invoked by the sick, the halt, the blind, the impoverished. Her images are sometimes represented with a hundred arms to symbolize her omnipotence to save. Beal says of this, as Banergea says of the faith element of the Krishna cult, that it is wholly alien to the religion whose name it bears: it is not Buddhism. He thinks that it has been greatly affected by ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... Deity in the second person, he says "the Mountains saw Thee, and they trembled, the Overflowing of the waters passed by, the Deep uttered his voice, and lift up his hands on high[84]." In another place, the Deluge is nobly animated, in order to display the Omnipotence of God. "The waters (says the Psalmist) stood above the mountains. At thy rebuke they fled, at the voice of ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... the teachings of the German masters, sought to make war psychologically as well as militarily, economically as well as geographically. Hence his dramatic step in the overthrow of the idol in person, and the care with which he planned to impress each chief and native with his omnipotence and magic. This system of the application of political science as well as of military science, of course, was sound, save for a temperamental error: the lack of sufficient imagination to realize the unknown quantity of chance, the inevitable mistake of military ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... into the toils of the Government, that is, into the toils of popular electioneering and party politics, when all the abuses which I have enumerated can and do arise. To be fair I had of course to point out that we had tried to invent some slight barriers against the omnipotence of incompetence, which ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... and more, and more. It is so strong that all that can be put before it is devoured in a moment. Left to itself it will not be satisfied with an invisible idol any more than with a wooden one. An idol whose attributes are omnipresence, omnipotence, and so on, is no greater than light or electricity, which are present everywhere and all-powerful, and from which perhaps the thought arose. Prayer which receives no reply must be pronounced in vain. The mind goes on and requires more than these, ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... superhuman person who calls us to co-operate in His purposes, and who furthers ours if they are worthy. He works in an external environment, has limits, and has enemies. When John Mill said that the notion of God's omnipotence must be given up, if God is to be kept as a religious object, he was surely accurately right; yet, so prevalent is the lazy Monism that idly haunts the regions of God's name, that so simple and truthful ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... were more pronounced than those of other children I cannot say, but certainly, as a child, I was in the habit of appealing to Omnipotence ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... Griffith," 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 not be said that old George Howard neglected ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... sprang up, saying in his homely fashion, "Ah! nom d'un pipe! I would follow you to the devil;" and without seeming astonished by it, he walked on the water. The worn-out sinner, believing in the omnipotence of God, also followed ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... positive fundamental powers, posse, cognoscere, and velle, or potentia, sapientia, and amor, and by transferring them to him, who is pure affirmation, ens entirely without non-ens. Thus I reach as the three pro-principles or primalities of the existent or the Godhead, omnipotence, omniscience, and infinite love. But the infrahuman world may also be judged after the analogy of our fundamental faculties. The universe and all its parts possess souls; there is naught without sensation; consciousness, it is true, is lacking in the lower creatures, but ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... called, but treated as the lower order of society, and drives thousands of them to the intoxicating cup, as a relief from the mortifications of poverty, and drives other thousands into crime, as the only means to obtain that wealth by the omnipotence of which, they alone can rise to eminence, respectability, and influence among men. Preachers of the gospel, as well as others, give sanction by their conduct to these false notions of respectability and greatness. They will seek the society, and court the favor of the rich in ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... dimmer manifestation of His strength than the work that is done in the hell of a human heart that has wandered and is brought back, that is stricken with the weakness of the fever of sin, and is healed into the strength of obedience and the omnipotence of dependence. It is much to say 'for that He is strong in might, not one of these faileth;' it is more to say 'He giveth power to them that have failed; and to them that have no might He increaseth strength.' The Gospel is the gift of pardon for holiness, and its inmost and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... feeling several inches higher than when he came in. Such is the power of a good address, and such is the omnipotence of the great organ. Mr. Jerry Hollowell sat down and began to fan himself. It was very hot ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... much, and when I expatiated on the Omniscience, Omnipotence, Omnipresence, and so on, of our God, and of the loving kindness taught by his Son, she ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... constitutional amendment is therefore vested absolutely in the parliamentary chambers, under the requirement simply that (p. 328) it be exercised in joint session. The only limitation that has been imposed on parliamentary omnipotence in this direction is a clause adopted in an amendment of August 13, 1884, to the effect that "the republican form of government shall not be made the subject of a proposed revision."[490] As in the British system, constituent ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... long imprisonment to so popular a nobleman." This assurance, assisted by the consolations of a firm trust in God, caused her to raise her head with a meek smile. He continued to speak of the impregnable hopes of the Christian who founds his confidence on Omnipotence; and while his words spread a serenity through her soul, that seemed the ministration of a descended saint, she closed her hands over her breast, and silently invoked the protection of the Almighty Jehovah for ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... LETTER ALPHA}) The Book of Wisdom, after extolling God's omnipotence, says of His mercy: "But thou hast mercy upon all, because thou canst do all things, and overlookest the sins of men for the sake of repentance. For thou lovest all things that are, and hatest none of the things which thou hast made.... Thou sparest all, because they are thine, O Lord, ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... deity, now grovelling in the mire, then borne aloft to the skies,—the football of the eternal powers of good and evil, enslaved and yet to be emancipated, as we may hope, in the last and final struggle, when the soul is rescued by Omnipotence. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... 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 upon the ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... snail's, seems to me not merely baseless, but impertinent. Without stepping beyond the analogy of that which is known, it is easy to people the cosmos with entities, in ascending scale, until we reach something practically indistinguishable from omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience. If our intelligence can, in some matters, surely reproduce the past of thousands of years ago and anticipate the future thousands of years hence, it is clearly within the limits of possibility ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... its progeny, it is but fair to surmise that it just enjoys life as much as any other animal, and that its extraordinary formation and singular habits are but further proofs to engage us to admire the wonderful works of Omnipotence. ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... increases his knowledge multiplies the uses to which he is enabled to turn the gift of his Creator to his own benefit, and partakes in some degree of that goodness which is the highest attribute of Omnipotence itself." ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... done now. The blindness of the preacher consisted in deferring to the base estimate of the market of what constitutes a manly success, instead of confronting and convicting the world from the truth; announcing the presence of the soul; the omnipotence of the will: and so establishing the standard of good and ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... that religion alone inspires true constancy and heroism, and affords solid comfort and joy amidst the most terrifying dangers, calamities, and torments. It spreads a calm throughout a man's whole life, and consoles at all times. He that is united to God, rests in omnipotence, and in wisdom and goodness; he is reconciled with the world whether it frowns or flatters, and with himself. The interior peace which he enjoys, is the foundation of happiness, and the delights which innocence ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... himself and to solicit his pay, Alberoni would very easily have been able to dishonour him, because he had no commission after having roundly asserted that he was charged with one of great importance. But omnipotence says and does with ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... I cannot give you up as incorrigibly wicked, nor my country as sealed over to destruction. My confidence remains, like the oak—like the Alps—unshaken, storm-proof. I am not discouraged—I am not distrustful. I still place an unwavering reliance upon the omnipotence of truth. I still believe that the demands of justice will be satisfied; that the voice of bleeding humanity will melt the most obdurate hearts; and that the land will be redeemed and regenerated by an enlightened ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... hand for a change, there would have been a general clamour for the leader of the Boxers—Huntington, undeniably the popular man of the State. And so they concocted a beautiful sentiment about "rounding out the veteran's career," and letting him "die with his boots on"; and through the omnipotence ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... suppose such an agent to be created, and placed beyond all liability to sin, is to suppose it to be what it is, and not what it is, at one and the same time; it is to suppose a creature to be endowed with a power to do wrong, and yet destitute of such a power, which is a plain contradiction. Hence Omnipotence cannot create such a being, and deny to it a power to do evil, or secure it against the possibility ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... and loves him more than ever! See the Divine Sufferer in the terminating scenes of His own ignominy and woe. How patient!—"As a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth." In these awful moments, outraged Omnipotence might have summoned twelve legions of angels and put into the hand of each a vial of wrath. But He submits in meek, majestic silence. Verily, in Him "patience ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... 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
... That Omnipotence which has called the world with all its living creatures into one animated being, especially reveals Himself in the desolation of great pestilences. The powers of creation come into violent collision; the sultry dryness of the atmosphere; the subterraneous ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... who have denied the infinitude of God's knowledge, notably Dr. Adam Clarke. He held that God, although possessed of omnipotence, yet as He chooses not to do all things, so also although He possesses the power of knowing all things, yet He chooses to be ignorant of some things. In refuting this notion, Dr. Hodge remarks, "But this is to suppose ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... its broad expanse, in the dim distance, like huge clouds, were the misty blue Laurentian hills, grand, eternal, steadfast, an emblem of Omnipotence itself. ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... object so desirable by your friends. But Malvina, an arm of flesh is not to be relied upon; no human ken can reach the mysterious windings and wonderful intricacies of a mother's love for her offspring. That is, as yet, the unrevealed handiwork of Omnipotence, who in wisdom conceived the beautiful mechanism, and brought to perfection the refinements of our nature; and to his almighty fiat are we indebted, both for the boon of death and the glorious hope of the resurrection. How ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... and rather high up, but Rawson-Clew was a man of fair height; he was also usually considered an honourable one, but when he heard the voice, saying something which was plainly only meant for the hearing of Omnipotence, he did not go away. He put his hands on the flintwork of the window-sill and in a moment found himself in the twilight of ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... barren being do we reap? Our senses narrow, and our reason frail, Life short, and truth a gem which loves the deep, And all things weighed in custom's falsest scale; Opinion an omnipotence, whose veil Mantles the earth with darkness, until right And wrong are accidents, and men grow pale Lest their own judgments should become too bright, And their free thoughts be crimes, and earth have ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... guardian walls of 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
... adopted by the Conference. And yet it was the motive for several, for although no allusion was made to the hegemony of Anglo-Saxondom, it was ever operative in the subconsciousness of the two plenipotentiaries. And in view of the omnipotence of these two nations, they temporarily sacrificed consistency to tactics, probably without conscientious qualms, and certainly without political misgivings. That would seem to be a partial explanation of the lengths to which the Conference went in the direction ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... 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 ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... It has been the boast of some swelling moralists, that every man's fortune was in his own power, that prudence supplied the place of all other divinities, and that happiness is the unfailing consequence of virtue. But, surely, the quiver of Omnipotence is stored with arrows, against which the shield of human virtue, however adamantine it has been boasted, is held up in vain: we do not always suffer by our crimes; we are not ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... of all gifts upon the faithful, a bestower of very terrible gifts upon those that flout him; and I who speak to you have seen my own contentment blighted, by just such flippant jesting with Love's omnipotence, before the edge of my first razor had been dulled. 'Tis true, I have lived since in indifferent comfort; yet it is but a dreary banquet where there is no platter laid for Love, and within the chambers of my heart—dust-gathering now, my dear!—he ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... of beauty suggests the vision of immortality and of omnipotence, and stimulates the effort in man to realise it in some idea of permanence. The highest reality has actively to be achieved. The gain of truth is not in the end; it reveals itself through the endless length of achievement. But what is there to guide ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... 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, and their ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... she laughed every time she saw me, for she was quite certain that this business was only meant to put the curious off the scent and to preserve my incognito: so persuaded was she of my omnipotence. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... 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 ...
— Rudimental Divine Science • Mary Baker Eddy
... and Josephine were back at the Tuileries. Prince Eugene's marriage put a happy ending to the campaign just finished. To create a king and to give to his step-son the hand of this king's daughter was a stroke of imagination on Napoleon's part that did honor to his omnipotence. The accounts of the triumphal festivities in Munich, Stuttgart, and Carlsruhe followed close upon the bulletins announcing the victories of the Grand Army, and produced a great impression in ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... Knowledge, and can contain such a Variety of Ideas without Perplexity or Confusion. How reasonable is it from hence to infer its Divine Original? And whilst we find unthinking Matter endued with a Natural Power to last for ever, unless annihilated by Omnipotence, how absurd would it be to imagine, that a Being so much Superior to it should ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... there is an intelligent creation, and the desire to communicate, guide and bless, is responded to by man, who loves, obeys, and enjoys. Nothing is gained by attributing to nature vicegerent forces. Is it not preferable to say that she responds to intelligent, loving Omnipotence? Our finiteness is illustrated by our initiation into organized being. Emerging from a rayless atom, too diminutive for the sight, we gradually develop and advance to the maturity of those conscious ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... omnipotence looked as if he had left most of these things to his subordinates; he passed a hand over his wrinkling brow and said in a voice much saner than any he ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... as he spoke he took the eldest sister by the 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, only cruel when affronted. We are true to those who trust us; and we have heard ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... relapse to spiritual infancy resulted. It was what he sought. He wanted to be a god himself and he became one. His power and, after him, that of his successors, had no earthly limit, no restraint human or divine. It was the same omnipotence ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... instead of not believing anything, you firmly believe in the presence and power of evil. It is just those very people who boast that they do not believe in anything who believe most thoroughly in evil and its omnipotence ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the Church," is certainly to be qualified by the evident points of difference in the subjects spoken of. It certainly does not mean that any man shall be invested with the rights of omnipotence and omniscience, but simply that in the family state he is the head and protector, even as in the Church is the Saviour. It is merely the announcement of a great natural law of society which obtains through all the tribes and races of men,—a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... then permit us Life and Thought? Are we deceiv'd in its Omnipotence? Is it reduc'd to find its Pleasure ...
— Representation of the Impiety and Immorality of the English Stage (1704); Some Thoughts Concerning the Stage in a Letter to a Lady (1704) • Anonymous
... judgment. No one can mistake what passes within him; like one transfixed in adoration, his uplifted eyes seem to ray out his soul, as if in recognition of the divine tribunal. But the overpowering thought of Omnipotence is now tempered by the human sympathy of his companion, whose open hands, connecting the past with the present, seem almost to articulate, "Alas, my brother!" By this exquisite turn, we are next brought to John, the gentle almoner of the Church, who is dealing out their ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... center of all time and space for the moment it is I that stand. Great is Eternity, but it is made up of time. Could we blot out one day in the midst of time, Eternity could be no more. The feebleness of man has its place within the infinite Omnipotence. ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan
... doctrine, for example, of the unity, the eternity, the omnipotence, the omniscience, the omnipresence, the wisdom, and the goodness of God; in their opinions concerning providence, and the creation, preservation, and government of the world." Campbell on Mir. p. 207. To which we may add, in the acts of ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... are Thy servants blest, O Lord, How sure is their defence! Eternal Wisdom is their guide, Their help, Omnipotence! ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... came at length to venture in ships over the trackless deep in pursuit of commerce and its gains, the mariner grew important in [195] public estimation. The pursuit of commerce and its gains led naturally to the possession of wealth. This, from the quasi-omnipotence with which it invests men—enabling them not only to command the best energies, but also, in many cases, to subvert the very principles of their fellows—has, in the vast majority of cases, an overpowering sway on human opinion: a sway that will endure till the Millennium shall have ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... 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 ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... of light!) I see, on an empyreal flying throne Sublimely rais'd, heaven's everlasting Son; Crown'd with that majesty which form'd the world, And the grand rebel flaming downward hurl'd. Virtue, dominion, praise, omnipotence, Support the train of their triumphant prince. A zone, beyond the thought of angels bright, Around him, like the zodiac, winds its light. Night shades the solemn arches of his brows, And in his cheek ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... the pessimistic believer in the omnipotence of vice and in the helpless suffering of virtue, who drags to light what is horrible from among the dregs of the people, seems to have nothing in common with the charming, playful figure of "le vieux Bilboquet," who gave Madame Hanska's daughter and her son-in-law ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... comforted me much, and 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, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... arrived penniless and unknown in Crowheart had been due to her brains and efforts. She raised her chin arrogantly. She had never been thwarted and the person was not born who could defeat her ultimately in any ambition! Her mental elation gave her a feeling akin to omnipotence. ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... God has the gentle and philanthropic qualities of Jesus of Nazareth, with omnipotence added. Religious emotion comes out in his prayers, sermons, and lectures, as the vegetative power of the earth in the manifold ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... its 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
... 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 man to egotism, nature has supplied a corrective to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... first day of the faggot-laying, even in the midst of my sense of omnipotence, by one thing, which made me give some kicks to the motor: for it was only crawling, so that a good part of the way I was stalking by its side; and when I came to that hill near the Old Dover Road, the whole thing stopped, and refused to move, the weight ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... man, shorn of his omnipotence, who had outlived his fame and his worshippers, was dying in his great palace at Versailles; his only solace the austere woman who had inspired the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and who upon the death of his unhappy queen he had privately ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... of the earth. Conscience speaks in a still small voice, but it is no impotent voice; it can summon the thunder to give it resonance; the power which we sometimes speak of as if it were purely spiritual is a power which clothes itself spontaneously and of right in all the majesty and omnipotence of nature. It is the same truth, again, in another aspect of it, which is expressed in ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... ever since dreamed of accomplishing. Under the fingers of Athene grew up pictures so real and so perfect that the watchers knew not whether the goddess was indeed creating life. And each picture was one that told of the omnipotence of the gods and of the doom that came upon those mortals who had dared in their blasphemous presumption to struggle as equals with the immortal dwellers in Olympus. Arachne glanced up from her web and looked with eyes that glowed with the love of beautiful things at the creations ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... God, the Great, the Mighty, the Tremendous, the Merciful, the Gracious, the Benign, the Wise, the Faithful, the Just, and the Virtuous; Omniscience, Omnipresence, Omnipotence, are His alone, whose Being knew no beginning, and can know no end.—The ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... 'In the beginning God created,' but a more literal and spiritual rendering would make the pivotal statement, 'God creates.' Now we know there can be no beginning or end to Omnipotence, hence there must be a continuous creating, and thus the term 'beginning' could only refer to the manifestation of what had already been created. How was the creation manifested? By the Word. 'God said, let there be light, and it was ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... connection with this sad affair, Mr. Wirt—who was untiring in his efforts to effect a reconciliation—has left the record of a conversation with Decatur in which the latter declared his hostility to the practice of duelling, but that he was "controlled by the omnipotence of public sentiment." "Fighting," said he, "is my profession, and it would be impossible for me to keep my station and preserve my respectability without showing myself ready at all times to answer the call of any one who ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... therefore I deny the birth, The Virgin's motherhood, the resurrection, Who know not how mine own soul came to earth, Nor what shall follow death. Man's imperfection May bound not even in thought the height and girth Of God's omnipotence; neath his direction We may approach his essence, but that He Should dwarf Himself to us—it ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... this thought made visible, the destiny of humanity?—whence it came, whither to goeth? Continue steadfast in the Path. Reaching the end of thy journey thou shalt hear the clarions of omnipotence sounding the cries of victory in chords of which a single one would shake the earth, but which are lost in the spaces of a world that hath ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... on; carry her on to her people at Chunda. Then he would realise that this was cowardice, a desire flooding his sense of nobility into a chasm of possible disaster; not fair to the girl; the animal mastery of male over female, the domination of sex. Beyond doubt, wrapped in his arms, not even the omnipotence of the gods would take her away from him. If there were less innate nobility in his avatar, if he were like men that were called red-blooded men, yet lacking the finer sensibility, this might be; not a villainous ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... bow before these curls. His lisping is their law. A sign from him suffices. If he cries in the night, no fatigue is of account, the whole household must be roused. The new-comer is not long in discovering his omnipotence, and before he can walk he is drunken with it. As he grows older all this deepens and broadens. Parents, grandparents, servants, teachers, everybody is at his command. He accepts the homage and even the immolation of his neighbor: he treats like a rebellious ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... a little more money they may expect to join the first class and with a little less they may be forced into the second. Money seems the one thing of power. Newspapers, street discussions, and public opinion, for the most part, encourage the belief in the omnipotence of money. Only in rare instances, as for example when there is a death in the family, does the city person from his own experience discover that money, which has so much of power among men, cannot fully usurp Nature's control over the desires of men. ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... clouds, pierced and riven by jagged lightnings, followed by deafening bellowings and crashings of thunder, and then cast their eyes up to the sun shining in full-orbed splendor over all, they realized as never before the presence and majesty of Omnipotence. ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... of joy—overflowing, unsullied, serene, a day of hope, a day of faith. It is a day of courage and of cheer, and to the world it speaks a gospel of freedom and fellowship. It proclaims the dawn of a higher life for all, the sanctity and omnipotence of love. It asserts the elemental rights of man. These friends of ours announce to-day ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... which side is that supreme arbiter, sure to be backed by nine-tenths of the physical forces of society. He underrates, if he does not altogether ignore, the much wider and deeper influence of the Royal name; its power over passion as well as over ignorance. The omnipotence of Parliament, even when, in the belief of half the nation, a Parliamentary majority represents a minority of the people, is due less to traditional respect for the House of Commons, or superstitious reverence for a majority vote, such as prevails in ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... we rode through a crowd, murmuring hymns, pouring from the chapel, where, no doubt, they had heard some edifying discourse about the "sweet Jesus," and "sweet experiences," and "new birth," the omnipotence of faith to salvation, and all and every topic but a man's just indignation, and a religious man's most solemn denunciation against the bloody and felonious outrages just committed by those very villagers—against ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... thing with regard to "X" is that he is all along assuming this fundamental fact himself; though he utterly fails to put two and two together, and see how this fact conflicts with the omnipotence which he ascribes to legislation. Let us go back to the assertion, which embodies his whole practical argument, that the majority of the voters in New York State could, without interfering with the activity of any one of its citizens, limit incomes in any manner ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... damned, friend Martin, you're falling into heresy! Cave ne cadas! I'm not going to play monte with you any more, and we'll not set up a bank together. You deny the omnipotence of God, peccatum mortale! You deny the existence of the Holy Trinity— three are one and one is three! Take care! You indirectly deny that two natures, two understandings, and two wills can have only one memory! Be careful! Quicumque non ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... speak and live lyrically. While the author and the victims alike treated the whole matter as a silly public charade, this one man, by taking it seriously, sprang suddenly into a throne of artistic omnipotence. Armour, music, standards, watch-fires, the noise of drums, all the theatrical properties were thrown before him. This one poor rhymster, having burnt his own rhymes, began to live that life of open air and acted poetry of which all the poets ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... same time retained all his present mental infirmities, it would be difficult to say of what extravagances he would be guilty. It is proverbially affirmed that power has a tendency to corrupt the best dispositions. Then what would not omnipotence effect? ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... in nature is so inconsistent with the facts at hand, that most theists have abandoned this attitude, and the retreat from this position has been turned into a veritable rout by the steady advance of scientific knowledge. God could by exercising His omnipotence reveal His existence with overpowering conviction at any moment; yet, men have been searching for centuries for just the ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... in the hand of Divine Omnipotence, a two-edged sword. It wounds the rebellious, it sanctifies him ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... him as he replied, "Not for the sake of their fleshly arm do we disturb your knights and barons in their prosecution of barbarous festivities, and murderous feuds, which you call enjoying their homes and protecting their domains, —not that Omnipotence requires their arm of flesh to execute the great predestined work of liberation—but for the weal of their immortal souls." These last words he pronounced ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... not worse—a rabbi. I, for my part, want to be startled out of my conceits; I want to be put to shame in my own eyes; I want to feel the bridle in my mouth, and be continually reminded of my own weakness and the omnipotence of circumstances. (5) If I from my spy-hole, looking with purblind eyes upon the least part of a fraction of the universe, yet perceive in my own destiny some broken evidences of a plan and some signals of an overruling goodness; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... farmer to the flesh, making there what living soil it pleases, seems not so strange as that other conceit—that science is now-a-days so expert that, in consumptive cases, as yours, it can, by prescription of the inhalation of certain vapors, achieve the sublimest act of omnipotence, breathing into all but lifeless dust the breath of life. For did you not tell me, my poor sir, that by order of the great chemist in Baltimore, for three weeks you were never driven out without a respirator, and for a given time of every day sat bolstered ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... the soul's mysterious seat, The voice of reason, and inherent sense, Admits Thy Sovereign Power, and doth entreat The guidance of a Just Omnipotence; Thus doth the human essence e'er depend On that ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... flash that blinded Hughes. He seemed to think that he was the man who was running the cataract. He had a wholesome contempt for Kaiserism in Germany. He tried to express it by an imitation of Kaiserism in Canada. He had a sense of relative omnipotence. He put editors in jail, went over the heads of District commanders, inexcusably humiliated General Lessard in command of the most important military district in Canada, openly browbeat officers in front of their ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... 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 ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... consent. To maintain this principle is the common cause of the Whigs on the 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 ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... not work arbitrarily, but by laws of progression. Nor does His omnipotence include the working of contradictions. He cannot both cause a thing to be and not to be at the same time. If it is a law that that which has grown by struggle and effort shall be most noble, God will not arbitrarily ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... have never been struck by the thought that the majesty of God, if really felt, calls for a profusion of gifts on the part of those who have superabundant means. Not that man can by his feeble exertions in that regard give adequate honor to the divine Omnipotence, but that love and gratitude are naturally profuse in their demonstrations, and whoever loves ardently is ever ready to give all he has for the object of his love, even to the sacrifice of himself. The reflection that God is too great, and that it is useless, even presumptuous, to offer to him ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... should not be separated from that of the Entente Powers in the conflict. For on the issue of this conflict depends the state-system of Europe and also the future of Roumania. If the Germans are triumphant, he added, force and falsehood will triumph with them, the State will acquire omnipotence, the individual sink into serfdom. Neutrality during a war with such issues is, therefore, the ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... of our God, in its fury, controls And stills the wild waves of the tempest-swoll'n deep; When borne on the thunder as slowly it rolls, We hear midst its terrors Omnipotence speak. ...
— The Little Quaker - or, the Triumph of Virtue. A Tale for the Instruction of Youth • Susan Moodie
... received a terrible account of the wickedness of London; and that the weight upon her pious spirit was owing to that cause. He, therefore, accompanied her home, and administered all the consolation he was able to give; assuring her, that it was in the power of Omnipotence to convert the stony heart into one of flesh and tenderness, and to raise the British metropolis out of the miry clay, and place it on a hill, as a city that could not be hid; which Mrs. Glibbans was so thankful to hear, that, as soon as he had left her, she took ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... supreme. It is to know nothing of the nice division of jurisdiction set up by the American constitution and by the British North America Act. There are, of course, limits to its power. In the strict sense of legal theory, the omnipotence of the British Parliament, as in the case of Canada, remains unimpaired. Nor can it alter certain things,—for example, the native franchise of the Cape, and the equal status of the two languages,—without a special majority vote. But in all the ordinary conduct of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... created by supreme Intelligence, who is eternal and immutable. From this truth that God must be from all eternity, he advances to deny all multiplicity. A plurality of gods is impossible. With these sublime views,—the unity and eternity and omnipotence of God,—Xenophanes boldly attacked the popular errors of his day. He denounced the transference to the deity of the human form; he inveighed against Homer and Hesiod; he ridiculed the doctrine of migration ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... mendacious! Certainly he would suffer nobody to be poisoned, not even Cardinal Boccanera, though the latter's life was of little account to him personally. But had not that little basket, ever since leaving Frascati, been like Destiny on the march? And was it not enjoyment, the enjoyment of omnipotence, to be able to say to himself that he was the master who could stay that basket's course, or allow it to go onward and accomplish its deadly purpose? Moreover, he yielded to the dimmest of mental struggles, ceasing to reason, unable to raise his hand, and yet convinced that he would drop ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the disciplinary value of pain and sorrow. But these considerations do not help us to see why the immense multitude of irresponsible sentient beings, which cannot profit by such discipline, should suffer; nor why, among the endless possibilities open to omnipotence—that of sinless, happy existence among the rest—the actuality in which sin and misery ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... great," he writes, "as it taught the English that the fancied security of their coasts was a myth, and thereby compelled their government to take expensive measures for the defense of numerous ports hitherto relying for protection wholly on the vigilance and supposed omnipotence of their navy. It also doubled or more the rates of insurance, which in the long run proved the most ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... invidious branch of taxation that will be resisted, but that no other given part of legislative rights can be exercised, without regard to the general opinion of those who are to be governed. That general opinion is the vehicle and organ of legislative omnipotence. Without this, it may be a theory to entertain the mind, but it is nothing in the direction of affairs. The completeness of the legislative authority of Parliament over this kingdom is not questioned; and yet many things ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... thwarted plans, 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
... might. Few of those "who go down to the great deep in ships," and who escape the more brutalizing effects of lives so rude, are altogether without religious impressions. Living so much, as it were, in the immediate presence of the power of God, the sailor is much disposed to reverence his omnipotence, even while he transgresses his laws; but in nearly all those instances in which nature has implanted a temperament inclining to deep feeling, as was the case with Bluewater, not even the harsh examples, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... thundering cataract's roar once worshipped the roaming sons of the forest in all their primitive freedom. They recognized in its thunder the voice, in its mad waves the wrath, and in its crashing whirlpool the Omnipotence of the Great Spirit—the Manitou ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah
... his study; and there, in his deep though not always useful labors, he soon forgot whatever of disagreeable nature pertained to his situation. This small and dark apartment was the only portion of the house to which, since one firmly repelled invasion, Mrs. Melmoth's omnipotence did not extend. Here (to reverse the words of Queen Elizabeth) there was "but one master and no mistress"; and that man has little right to complain who possesses so much as one corner in the world where he may be happy or miserable, as best suits ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... feet, and felt that that was God's masonry, and my soul had expanded in gazing on its sublimity. I have seen the ocean singing its wild chorus of sounding waves, and ecstacy has thrilled upon the living chords of my heart. I have since then seen the rainbow-crowned Niagara chanting the choral hymn of Omnipotence, girdled with grandeur, and robed with glory; but none of these things have melted me as the first sight of Free Land. Towering mountains lifting their hoary summits to catch the first faint flush of day when the sunbeams kiss the shadows ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... year of their wedded life will determine whether they are able to share bed and board through the lengthening years. For this first year—often the first months of it—marks the transition from love to conjugal affection, or witnesses a rupture which nothing less than omnipotence can ever mend. In the first year a serious readjustment must take place. Unreason, as a basis for the relation, must give way to reason; blind, ignorant, selfish little love must flutter away, so that friendship, clear-eyed ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... who had believed in the world in instantaneous salvation by direct mercy became spirits, they wanted their infernal enjoyment or enjoyment of evil changed by both divine omnipotence and divine mercy into heavenly enjoyment or enjoyment in the good. As they ardently desired this, permission was given for it to be done by angels, who proceeded to remove their infernal enjoyment. But ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... sentiments failed to charm her. She did not love him and sometimes his refined irony even irritated her. His perpetual doubts hurt her, for he believed in nothing, and she believed in everything. She believed in divine providence, in the omnipotence of evil spirits, in spells, exorcisms, and eternal justice; she believed in Jesus Christ, and in the goddess of good of the Syrians; she believed also that bitches barked when black Hecate passed through ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... world that a man who dwells three hundred miles from London should have some interest, however slight, in international politics, and some knowledge, however fragmentary, of natural forces, rather than a slipshod belief in ghosts, witches, and the omnipotence of "squire." It is not from such minds that empire is made or deserved, and if with the increase of cheap schooling, cheap printing, and cheap travelling much that is beautiful in language or in legend ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... category as a landscape painter, a portrait painter, a painter of history, of sea pieces, or of genre, by a public consisting of artists, connoisseurs, and simpletons, who, out of envy, or critical omnipotence, or prejudice, fence in his intellect, assuming, one and all, that there are ganglions in every brain—a narrow judgment which the world applies to writers, to statesmen, to everybody who begins with some specialty before being hailed as omniscient; ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... he could not do anything or everything in a moment 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 to redeem the world! ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... Egyptian statues, paintings, and seals, which are the product of that early thought for which there was no essential difference between man and beast. The festival in which the gods carouse is of a piece with the divine Ethiopian feasts of Homer. On the other hand, the idea of the omnipotence of the divine word, when Marduk makes the garment disappear and reappear, is scarcely a primitive one. It is substantially identical with the Biblical "Let it be, and it was." It is probable that the poem had a long career, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... throne of living fire The Fiend was seated; in his eye there shone The look that dared Omnipotence; the light Of sateless vengeance, and sublime despair.— He sat amid a burning world, and saw Tormented myriads, whose blaspheming shrieks Were mingled with the howl of hidden floods, And Acherontine ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various
... can have no passion, nor appetite to any thing, of which appetite Gods will is not the cause. And did not his will assure the Necessity of mans will, and consequently of all that on mans will dependeth, the Liberty of men would be a contradiction, and impediment to the omnipotence and Liberty of God. And this shall suffice, (as to the matter in hand) of that naturall Liberty, which only is properly ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... define 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 of speech, and to-day, as ever, eloquence is universal queen. We need feel no surprise ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... grave a pitch that not 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 ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan |
