„In heav'n, the saint nor pity feels, nor care,
For those thus sentenced - pity might disturb
The delicate sense and most divine repose
Of spiritus angelical
Blessed be God,
The measure of his judgments is not fixed
By man's erroneous standard. He discerns
No such inordinate difference and vast
Betwixt the sinner and the saint, to doom
Such disproportion'd fates.
Compared with him,
No man on earth is holy called: they best
Stand in his sight approved, who at his feet
Their little crowns of virtue cast, and yield,
To him of his own works the praise, his due.“

„A great man is the unbelieving man; he is without spiritual sight or spiritual hearing; his glory is in understanding his own understanding. It is he who subdues the forest, tames the beasts of the field to service. He goes alone in the dark, unafraid. He follows no man’s course, but, searches for himself; the priests cannot make him believe, nor the angels of heaven; none can subdue his judgment. He says: why permit others even priests, to think for you? Stand on your own feet – be a man. Through his arm are tyrants and evil kings overthrown. Through him are doctrines and religions sifted to the bottom and the falsehood and evil in them cast aside. Who but the Creator could have created so great a man as the unbeliever?“

—  Kenneth Arnold American aviator and businessman 1915 - 1984

Paraphrasing a section from Oahspe: A New Bible by John Ballou Newbrough (1828–1891), p. 361, which he handed out as his " philosophy card http://www.blueblurrylines.com/2017/03/ufos-kenneth-arnold-and-american-bible.html".

„But God, who is able to prevail, wrestled with him, as the Angel did with Jacob, and marked him; marked him for his own; marked him with a blessing, a blessing of obedience to the motions of his blessed Spirit.“

—  Izaak Walton English author and biographer 1593 - 1683

Life of Donne (1640).

„Men in general are neither very good nor very bad, but mediocre… Man with his vices, his weaknesses, his virtues, this confused medley of good and ill, high and low, goodness and depravity, is yet, take him all in all, the object on earth most worthy of study, of interest, of pity, of attachment and of admiration. And since we haven't got angels, we can attach ourselves to nothing greater and more worthy of our devotion than our own kind.“

—  Alexis De Tocqueville French political thinker and historian 1805 - 1859

Letter to Eugene Stoffels (Jan. 3, 1845) as quoted by Thomas Molnar, The Decline of the Intellectual (1961) Ch. 11 "Intellectual and Philosopher"
Original text:
Les hommes ne sont en général ni très-bons, ni très-mauvais : ils sont médiocres. [...] L'homme avec ses vices, ses faiblesses, ses vertus, ce mélange confus de bien et de mal, de bas et de haut, d'honnête et de dépravé, est encore, à tout prendre, l'objet le plus digne d'examen, d'intérêt, de pitié, d'attachement et d'admiration qui se trouve sur la terre; et puisque les anges nous manquent, nous ne saurions nous attacher à rien qui soit plus grand et plus digne de notre dévouement que nos semblables.
1840s

„But let the individual man lay claim to ever so many rights because Man or the concept man ‘entitles’ him to them, because his being man does it: what do I care for his right and his claim? If he has his right only from Man and does not have it from me, then for me he has no right. His life, for example, counts to me only for what it is worth to me. I respect neither a so-called right of property (or his claim to tangible goods) nor yet his right to the ‘sanctuary of his inner nature’ (or his right to have the spiritual goods and divinities, his gods, remain un-aggrieved). His goods, the sensuous as well as the spiritual, are mine, and I dispose of them as proprietor, in the measure of my — might.“

—  Max Stirner, libro El único y su propiedad

Cambridge 1995, p. 219
The Ego and Its Own (1845)

„A truly humble man is sensible of his natural distance from God; of his dependence on Him; of the insufficiency of his own power and wisdom; and that it is by God's power that he is upheld and provided for, and that he needs God's wisdom to lead and guide him, and His might to enable him to do what he ought to do for Him.“

—  Jonathan Edwards Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian 1703 - 1758

„He feared neither God, nor devil, nor man, nor wind, nor sea, nor his own conscience. And I believe he hated everybody and everything. But I think he was afraid to die. I believe I am the only man who ever stood up to him.“

—  Joseph Conrad, libro The Shadow Line

Referring to Mr. Burns. Compare to Heart of Darkness' manager: "He was becoming confidential now, but I fancy my unresponsive attitude must have exasperated him at last, for he judged it necessary to inform me he feared neither God nor devil, let alone any mere man. I said I could see that very well..."
The Shadow Line (1915)

„God changes his appearance every second. Blessed is the man who can recognize him in all his disguises.“

—  Nikos Kazantzakis, libro Zorba, el griego

Fuente: Zorba the Greek

„It pleased the great Creator of the world to make three sorts of living creatures. Angels he made pure spirits, without flesh, and therefore he made them only for heaven and not to dwell on earth. Beasts were made flesh, without immortal souls, and therefore they were made only for the earth and not for heaven: Man is of a middle nature between both, as partaking of both flesh and spirit, so is he made for earth, but as his passage or way to heaven, and not that this should be his home or happiness. The blessed state that man was made for was to behold the glorious majesty of the Lord and to praise him among his holy angels; and to love him, and to be filled with his love forever.“

—  Richard Baxter, libro A Call to the Unconverted to Turn and Live

A Call to the Unconverted to Turn and Live, Sermon 1

„I never know whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses.“

—  William Makepeace Thackeray, libro The Virginians

Fuente: The Virginians (1857-1859), Ch. 56.

„The worldly-minded … were unable to see why God should not give men their due if men, on their part, fulfilled their obligations. … A new man had emerged. He was demanding his rights; he was conscious of his importance. As he was before men, so would he be before God. What he had acquired materially or morally was his own, his very own, and neither king nor God might dispute his possession with him. He loved his God as he loved his king, but on condition that both respected his rights.“

—  Bernard Groethuysen French literary historian, translator and writer 1880 - 1946

Fuente: The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927), p. 89

„For M. Maurras the practical is the divine, and his “atheism” consists less in denying God than in shifting him to man and his political work. … It is the divinizing of politics.“

—  Julien Benda French essayist 1867 - 1956

Fuente: Treason of the Intellectuals (1927), p. 108

„In its widest possible sense, however, a man's Self is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account. All these things give him the same emotions. If they wax and prosper, he feels triumphant; if they dwindle and die away, he feels cast down.“

—  William James American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist 1842 - 1910

Fuente: 1890s, The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 10

„God did not create woman from man’s head, that he should command her, nor from his feet, that she should be his slave, but rather from his side, that she should be near his heart.“

—  Myles Munroe Bahamian Evangelical Christian minister 1954 - 2014

Fuente: The Purpose and Power of Love & Marriage

„Who stands fast? Only the man whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all this when he is called to obedient and responsible action in faith and in exclusive allegiance to God — the responsible man, who tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God. Where are these responsible people?“

—  Dietrich Bonhoeffer German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi 1906 - 1945

Fuente: Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), Who Stands Fast?, p. 5.

„Man provides his own goods and his own evils, neither God nor the Devil has anything to do with it.“

—  Diana Norman British author and journalist 1933 - 2011

„And blessed is he man who stands
Before his God in pain
And on his back a cross of woe
His wounds a gaping shame.
For this man is a son of God
And hallowed be thy name.“

—  Bobby Sands Irish volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army 1954 - 1981

Trilogy, pt. 3 "Torture at H Block"
Poetry, Miscellaneous poems

„To complain that man measures God by his own experience is a waste of time; man measures everything by his own experience; he has no other yardstick.“

—  Dorothy L. Sayers, libro The Mind of the Maker

Fuente: The Mind of the Maker

„What man calls Absolute Being, his God, is his own being. The power of the object over him is therefore the power of his own being. Thus, the power of the object of feeling is the power of feeling itself; the power of the object of reason is the power of reason itself; and the power of the object of will is the power of will itself.“

—  Ludwig Feuerbach, libro La Esencia del Cristianismo

Introduction, Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 102
The Essence of Christianity (1841)

„That Jesus Christ was not God is evident from his own words, where, speaking of the day of judgment, he says, "Of that day and hour knoweth no man, no not the angels which are in Heaven, neither the Son, but the Father." This is giving up all pretention to divinity, acknowledging in the most explicit manner, that he did not know all things, but compares his understanding to that of man and angels; "of that day and hour knoweth no man, no not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son."“

—  Ethan Allen American general 1738 - 1789

Thus he ranks himself with finite beings, and with them acknowledges, that he did not know the day and hour of judgment, and at the same time ascribes a superiority of knowledge to the father, for that he knew the day and hour of judgment.
Fuente: Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man (1784), Ch. IX Section III - The Imperfection of Knowledge in the Person of Jesus Christ, incompatible with his Divinity