Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. ~ Mark

Love of God can mean either love for God or love by God. Love for God (philotheia) is associated with the concepts of worship, and devotions towards God.

Saintliness, fear and love of God, and purity of heart are not so deeply rooted within a person as to obviate the necessity of his employing certain devices in order to acquire them. ~ Moshe Chaim Luzzatto

Quotes

  • One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

    “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”


  • Though the beginnings and foundations of saintliness are implanted in every person's heart, if he does not occupy himself with them, he will witness details of saintliness without recognizing them and he will trespass upon them without feeling or perceiving that he is doing so. For sentiments of saintliness, fear and love of God, and purity of heart are not so deeply rooted within a person as to obviate the necessity of his employing certain devices in order to acquire them.


  • If we do not look into and analyze the question of what constitutes true fear of God and what its ramifications are, how will we acquire it and how will we escape wordly vanity which renders our hearts forgetful of it? Will it not be forgotten and go lost even though we recognize its necessity? Love of God, too—if we do not make an effort to implant it in our hearts, utilizing all of the means which direct us towards it, how will it exist within us?


  • Knowledge and love of God are ultimately one and the same. There is no difference between pure knowledge and pure love.
    • Ramakrishna, Râmakrishna: His Life and Sayings (1898), p. ix


  • A person who understands the law but who is far from the love of God is like a bank official who has the keys for the inside of the building but not the key for the front door.


  • The commandments of God should be followed because of love of God, not because of fear of God.


  • If you love a person without loving God, which is the goodness inside of him, then you plant the seeds for future disappointments and sufferings with this love.
    • Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), June 15


  • School children and students who love God should never say: “For my part I like mathematics”; “I like French”; “I like Greek.” They should learn to like all these subjects, because all of them develop that faculty of attention which, directed toward God, is the very substance of prayer.


See also

This article is issued from Wikiquote. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.