Biblical Quotes

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

—Genesis 1:1–2

So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

—Genesis 1:27 (see also Genesis 5:1–2)

So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.

—Genesis 2:3

O Lord, how manifold are your works!
    In wisdom you have made them all;
    the earth is full of your creatures. …
When you hide your face, they are dismayed;
    when you take away their breath, they die
    and return to their dust.
When you send forth your spirit, they are created;
    and you renew the face of the ground.

—Psalm 104:24, 29–30

The Lord by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding he established the heavens;

—Proverbs 3:19

The Lord created me [Wisdom] at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. … then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.

—Proverbs 8:22–23, … 30–31

Thus says God, the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it…

—Isaiah 42:5

For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens (he is God!), who formed the earth and made it (he established it; he did not create it a chaos, he formed it to be inhabited!): I am the Lord, and there is no other.

—Isaiah 45:18

The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.

—Psalm 19:1

For from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator.

—Wisdom 13:5

Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.

—Romans 1:20

He [Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him.

—Colossians 1:15–16

And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the origin of God’s creation…

—Revelation 3:14

You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.

—Revelation 4:11

So the Lord said, “I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.”

—Genesis 6:7

Do you thus repay the Lord, O foolish and senseless people? Is not he your father, who created you, who made you and established you?

—Deuteronomy 32:6

Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our ancestors?

—Malachi 2:10

Woe to you who strive with your Maker, … earthen vessels with the potter!
Does the clay say to the one who fashions it, “What are you making”? or
“Your work has no handles”?

—Isaiah 45:9

For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.

—Isaiah 65:17–18

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

—Romans 8:19–23

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.

—Psalm 51:10

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!

—2 Corinthians 5:17

For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything!

—Galatians 6:15

For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

—Ephesians 2:10

You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

—Ephesians 4:22–24

For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, provided it is received with thanksgiving;

—I Timothy 4:4

For he created all things so that they might exist; the generative forces of the world are wholesome, and there is no destructive poison in them, and the dominion of Hades is not on earth.

—Wisdom 1:14

for God created us for incorruption,
and made us in the image of his own eternity

—Wisdom 2:23

The Lord created human beings out of earth, and makes them return to it again.

—Sirach 17:1

Wine is very life to human beings if taken in moderation. What is life to one who is without wine? It has been created to make people happy.

—Sirach 31:27

Honor physicians for their services, for the Lord created them; …
The Lord created medicines out of the earth, and the sensible will not despise them. …
And he gave skill to human beings that he might be glorified in his marvelous works.…
God’s works will never be finished; and from him health spreads over all the earth.

—Sirach 38:1,4,6,8

No one can say, ‘What is this?’ or ‘Why is that?’—
    for everything has been created for its own purpose.

—Sirach 39:21

The Lord will take his zeal as his whole armor,
and will arm all creation to repel his enemies;
he will put on righteousness as a breastplate,
and wear impartial justice as a helmet;
he will take holiness as an invincible shield,
and sharpen stern wrath for a sword,
and creation will join with him to fight against his frenzied foes.

—Wisdom 5:17–20

For creation, serving you who made it,
exerts itself to punish the unrighteous,
and in kindness relaxes on behalf of those who trust in you.

—Wisdom 16:24

When the Lord created his works from the beginning,
    and, in making them, determined their boundaries,
    he arranged his works in an eternal order,
    and their dominion for all generations.
They neither hunger nor grow weary,
    and they do not abandon their tasks.

—Sirach 16:26–27

I answered and said, “If I have found favor in your sight, let me speak. If the farmer’s seed does not come up, because it has not received your rain in due season, or if it has been ruined by too much rain, it perishes. But people, who have been formed by your hands and are called your own image because they are made like you, and for whose sake you have formed all things—have you also made them like the farmer’s seed? Surely not, O Lord above! But spare your people and have mercy on your inheritance, for you have mercy on your own creation.” He answered me and said, “Things that are present are for those who live now, and things that are future are for those who will live hereafter. For you come far short of being able to love my creation more than I love it.

—2 Esdras 8:42–47a

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Secular Quotes

Divine Creation

If we admit a thing so extraordinary as the creation of this world, it should seem that we admit something strange, and odd, and new to human apprehension, beyond any other miracle whatsoever.

—George Berkeley (17th–18th century Irish philosopher)

For Christians, who believe they are created in the image of God, it is the Godhead, diversity in unity and the three-in-oneness of God, which we, and all creation, reflect.

—Desmond Tutu (South African leader)

The Biblical world view sees Earth and its ecosystems as the effect of a wise God’s creation and…therefore robust, resilient, and self-regulating, like the product of any good engineer.

—Christopher Monckton (British politician)

From the intrinsic evidence of his creation, the Great Architect of the Universe now begins to appear as a pure mathematician.

—James Jeans (19th–20th century English physicist)

In essence, String Theory describes space and time, matter and energy, gravity and light, indeed all of God’s creation… as music.

—Roy H. Williams (American businessman)

Time was God’s first creation.

—Walter Lang (20th century American director)

What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world.

—Albert Einstein (19th–20th century American physicist)

Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something. Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else. It is really far more logical to start by saying ‘In the beginning God created heaven and earth’ even if you only mean ‘In the beginning some unthinkable power began some unthinkable process.’ For God is by its nature a name of mystery, and nobody ever supposed that man could imagine how a world was created any more than he could create one. But evolution really is mistaken for explanation. It has the fatal quality of leaving on many minds the impression that they do understand it and everything else.

—G.K. Chesterton (19th–20th century British author)

Here is where our real selfhood is rooted, in the divine spark or seed, in the image of God imprinted on the human soul. The True Self is not our creation, but God’s. It is the self we are in our depths. It is our capacity for divinity and transcendence.

—Sue Monk Kidd (American writer)

Part of my journey is to say that the soul of the human being must be a massively intricate, wonderful creation that God has a respect for in ways that we do not and that leaves a huge amount of space to go explore.

—William P. Young (Canadian author)

All the great religions have a place for awe, for ecstatic transport at the wonder and beauty of creation.

—Richard Dawkins (English scientist)

If one could conclude as to the nature of the Creator from a study of his creation it would appear that God has a special fondness for stars and beetles.

—John B. S. Haldane (20th century British scientist)

Relation of Human and Natural Creations

The story of Noah, like other stories in the first 11 chapters of Genesis, are archetypal. Noah’s story tells us that human beings have an inherent tendency towards violence both towards their fellow human beings and towards the creation itself. The story tells us that this violence grieves God.

—Adam Hamilton (American clergyman)

The latest revelation — from no Mount Sinai, Sermon on the Mount or Bo tree — is the outcry of mute things themselves that we must heed by curbing our powers over creation, lest we perish together on a wasteland of what that creation once was.

—Hans Jonas (20th century German philosopher)

Right now, we don’t have a very good relation with creation.

—Pope Francis (Argentinian Catholic leader)

Man, do not pride yourself on your superiority to the animals, for they are without sin, while you, with all your greatness, you defile the earth wherever you appear and leave an ignoble trail behind you — and that is true, alas, for almost every one of us!

—Fyodor Dostoyevsky (19th century Russian author)

I believe God did intend, in giving us intelligence, to give us the opportunity to investigate and appreciate the wonders of His creation. He is not threatened by our scientific adventures.

—Francis Collins (American scientist)

While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God’s creation.

—Maya Angelou (20th–21st century American poet)

We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. … We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and to learn what is good for it. We must learn to cooperate in its processes, and to yield to its limits. But even more important, we must learn to acknowledge that the creation is full of mystery; we will never entirely understand it. We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe. We must recover the sense of the majesty of creation, and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For I do not doubt that it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.

—Wendell Berry (American author)

The irreducible, ultimate element in religious faith is the insistence that we are created things; male and female He created them; without God we are nothing. And yet, when men and women have children and become parents, they unmistakably become creators, incompetent, accidental and partial creators, no doubt, but creators none the less. It is their inescapable duty, and, with luck, their occasional delight to care and watch over their creations; even if this creative power is partly illusory because chromosomes and chance decide the whole business, parents cannot act as if it is illusory; they cannot sincerely believe in their ultimate helplessness. They must behave like shepherds, however clumsy, and not like sheep, however well trained.

—Ferdinand Mount (British author)

Purpose of Creation

Simplicity, clarity, singleness: These are the attributes that give our lives power and vividness and joy as they are also the marks of great art. They seem to be the purpose of God for his whole creation.

—Richard Holloway (Scottish writer)

Like many other scientists who hold the Catholic faith, I see the Creator’s plan and purpose fulfilled in our universe. I see a planet bursting with evolutionary possibilities, a continuing creation in which the Divine providence is manifest in every living thing. I see a science that tells us there is indeed a design to life.

—Kenneth R. Miller (American scientist)

The aim of God in history is the creation of an all-inclusive community of loving persons with God himself at the very heart of this community as its prime Sustainer and most glorious Inhabitant.

—Dallas Willard (American philosopher)

As God has not made anything useless in this world, as all beings fulfill obligations or a role in the sublime drama of Creation, I cannot exempt from this duty, and small though it be, I too have a mission to fill, as for example: alleviating the sufferings of my fellowmen.

—Jose Rizal (19th century Filipino writer)

The Creator, in taking infinite pains to shroud with mystery His presence in every atom of creation, could have had but one motive — a sensitive desire that men seek Him only through free will.

—Paramahansa Yogananda (20th century Indian leader)

If God had made a perfect world, it would be a magic trick, not creation, with no meaning or place for us to learn and create. Mankind is not yet ready for a perfect world. We do not know how to appreciate perfection.

—Bernie Siegel (American writer)

Our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation.

—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (19th–20th century French philosopher)

Human Creative Efforts

Art owes its origin to Nature herself… this beautiful creation, the world, supplied the first model, while the original teacher was that divine intelligence which has not only made us superior to the other animals, but like God Himself, if I may venture to say it.

—Giorgio Vasari (16th century Italian artist)

The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him.

—Gustave Flaubert (19th century French novelist)

The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation.

—Auguste Rodin (19th–20th century French sculptor)

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson (19th century American poet)

Nature uses human imagination to lift her work of creation to even higher levels.

—Luigi Pirandello (19th–20th century Italian playwright)

I like the fact that in ancient Chinese art the great painters always included a deliberate flaw in their work: human creation is never perfect.

—Madeleine L’Engle (20th–21st century American novelist)

All still lifes are actually paintings of the world on the sixth day of creation, when God and the world were alone together, without man!

—Robert Musil (19th – 20th century Austrian writer)

Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.

—Noam Chomsky (American activist)

I seem most instinctively to believe in the human value of creative writing, whether in the form of verse or fiction, as a mode of truth-telling, self-expression and homage to the twin miracles of creation and consciousness.

—John Updike (20th–21st century American novelist)

I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty.

—Edgar Allan Poe (19th century American poet)

Poets create gods, philosophers destroy them.

—Marty Rubin (American author)

In Ireland, novels and plays still have a strange force. The writing of fiction and the creation of theatrical images can affect life there more powerfully and stealthily than speeches, or even legislation. Imagined worlds can lodge deeply in the private sphere, dislodging much else, especially when the public sphere is fragile.

—Colm Toibin (Irish novelist)

How the visual world appears is important to me. I’m always aware of the light. I’m always aware of what I would call the ‘deep composition.’ Photography in the field is a process of creation, of thought and technique. But ultimately, it’s an act of imaginatively seeing from within yourself.

—Sam Abell (American photographer)

The art of pictorial creation is so complicated — it is so astronomical in its possibilities of relation and combination that it would take an act of super-human concentration to explain the final realization.

—Hans Hofmann (19th–20th century German artist)

Without wonder and insight, acting is just a trade. With it, it becomes creation.

—Bette Davis (20th century American actress)

Music is the harmonious voice of creation; an echo of the invisible world.

—Giuseppe Mazzini (19th century Italian activist)

There exists, if I am not mistaken, an entire world which is the totality of mathematical truths, to which we have access only with our mind, just as a world of physical reality exists, the one like the other independent of ourselves, both of divine creation.

—Charles Hermite (19th century French mathematician)

Mathematics is the most beautiful and most powerful creation of the human spirit.

—Stefan Banach (20th century Polish mathematician)

I think this is what hooks one to gardening: it is the closest one can come to being present at creation.

—Phyllis Theroux (American author)

One is not idle because one is absorbed. There is both visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil, to think is to do. The crossed arms work, the clasped hands act. The eyes upturned to Heaven are an act of creation.

—Victor Hugo (19th century French author)

If you keep the Sabbath, you start to see creation not as somewhere to get away from your ordinary life, but a place to frame an attentiveness to your life.

—Eugene H. Peterson (American clergyman)

The Process of Creation

This act [creation], as it is for God, must always remain totally inconceivable to man. For we—even our poets and musicians and inventors—never, in the ultimate sense make. We only build. We always have materials to build from. All we can know about the act of creation must be derived from what we can gather about the relation of the creatures to their Creator.

—C.S. Lewis (20th century British author)

One of the strangest things is the act of creation. You are faced with a blank slate—a page, a canvas, a block of stone or wood, a silent musical instrument. You then look inside yourself. You pull and tug and squeeze and fish around for slippery raw shapeless things that swim like fish made of cloud vapor and fill you with living clamor. You latch onto something. And you bring it forth out of your head like Zeus giving birth to Athena. And as it comes out, it takes shape and tangible form. It drips on the canvas, and slides through your pen, it springs forth and resonates into the musical strings, and slips along the edge of the sculptor’s tool onto the surface of the wood or marble. You have given it cohesion. You have brought forth something ordered and beautiful out of nothing. You have glimpsed the divine.

—Vera Nazarian (Russian author)

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.

—George Bernard Shaw (19th–20th century Irish dramatist)

Back of every creation, supporting it like an arch, is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: it comes and goes. But if one believes, then miracles occur.

—Henry Miller (20th century American author)

To destroy is always the first step in any creation.

—e. e. cummings (20th century American poet)

No chaos, no creation. Evidence: the kitchen at mealtime.

—Mason Cooley (20th century American writer)

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

—Carl Jung (19th–20th century Swiss psychologist)

Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.

—Steve Jobs (20th–21st century American businessman)

A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (18th–19th century German poet)

Geniuses come in many shapes and colors, and they often run in packs. If you can find one, it may lead you to others. Collaborate with geniuses. Send them your spells. Look carefully at theirs. What could you do together? Combination is creation.

—Aaron Koblin (American artist)

Creation is dominated by three absolutely different factors: First, nature, which works upon us by its laws; second, the artist, who creates a spiritual contact with nature and his materials; third, the medium of expression through which the artist translates his inner world.

—Hans Hofmann (19th–20th century German artist)

Tradition can, to be sure, participate in a creation, but it can no longer be creative itself.

—Kenzo Tange (19th century Japanese architect)

The capacity to be puzzled is the premise of all creation, be it in art or in science.

—Erich Fromm (20th century American psychologist)

Think before you speak is criticism’s motto; speak before you think, creation’s.

—E. M. Forster (19th–20th century English novelist)

Despite all of our technological advances, content creation still requires time, inspiration, and a certain amount of sweat. There aren’t any shortcuts. You can’t write an algorithm for it. You can’t predict it. You can’t code it.

—Shawn Amos (American musician)

The way to activate the seeds of your creation is by making choices about the results you want to create. When you make a choice, you activate vast human energies and resources, which otherwise go untapped.

—Robert Fritz (American author)

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.

—Charles Dickens (19th century English novelist)

It is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem—a thought so passionate and alive that like the spirit of a plant or an animal it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing. The thought and the form are equal in the order of time, but in the order of genesis the thought is prior to the form.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson (19th century American poet)

Miscellaneous

Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.

—Edmund Burke (18th century Irish statesman)

The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.

—James A. Baldwin (20th century American author)

Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need.

—Gaston Bachelard (19th–20th century French philosopher)

‘Work and wait’, ‘work and wait’ is what God says to us in creation.

—Josiah Gilbert Holland (19th century American novelist)

Keeping our eyes on journey’s end is what we need — the place where we see at last the world that is greater than the world, the new creation that cannot be contained in present thought or social order or piety.

—Rowan Williams (English theologian)

For good and evil, man is a free creative spirit. This produces the very queer world we live in, a world in continuous creation and therefore continuous change and insecurity.

—Joyce Cary (19th – 20th century Irish novelist)

And I knew that the Spirit that had gone forth to shape the world and make it live was still alive in it. I just had no doubt. I could see that I lived in the created world, and it was still being created. I would be part of it forever. There was no escape. The Spirit that made it was in it, shaping it and reshaping it, sometimes lying at rest, sometimes standing up and shaking itself, like a muddy horse, and letting the pieces fly.

—Wendell Berry (American author)

Or consider a story in the Jewish Talmud left out of the Book of Genesis. (It is in doubtful accord with the account of the apple, the Tree of Knowledge, the Fall, and the expulsion from Eden.) In The Garden, God tells Eve and Adam that He has intentionally left the Universe unfinished. It is the responsibility of humans, over countless generations, to participate with God in a “glorious” experiment — the “completing of the Creation.” The burden of such a responsibility is heavy, especially on so weak and imperfect a species as ours, one with so unhappy a history. Nothing remotely like “completion” can be attempted without vastly more knowledge than we have today. But, perhaps, if our very existence is at stake, we will find ourselves able to rise to this supreme challenge.

—Carl Sagan (20th century American author)

The art of creation is older than the art of killing.

—Ed Koch (20th–21st century American politician)

Taste every fruit of every tree in the garden at least once. It is an insult to creation not to experience it fully. Temperance is wickedness.

—Stephen Fry (British comedian)

It’s easy to attack and destroy an act of creation. It’s a lot more difficult to perform one.

—Chuck Palahniu, (American author)

It comforts me to think that if we are created beings the thing that created us would have to be greater than us, so much greater, in fact, that we would not be able to understand it. It would have to be greater than the facts of our reality and so it would seem to us, looking out from within our reality that it would contradict reason. But reason itself would suggest it would have to be greater than reality or it would not be reasonable.

—Donald Miller (American author)

The whole war between the atheist and the theist comes down to this: the atheist believes a ‘what’ created the universe; the theist believes a ‘who’ created the universe.

—Criss Jami (American author)

Creation stories had never been regarded as historically accurate; their purpose was therapeutic. But once you start reading Genesis as scientifically valid, you have bad science and bad religion.

—Karen Armstrong (British author)