[Fwd: Query about God]

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Carrol wrote:
>I suspect the following query from milton-l can be better
>answered by secularists than religionists -- i.e. that the "god"
>in the quoted statement is more metaphorical than literal, and
>the author is talking about strictly secular concerns.
<snip>
>>Can anyone give me the context and original of "God is in the details,"
>>please?
>>
>>Roy Flannagan

I don't know if the following is true, but the attribution to Flaubert
sounds plausible.

***(1) "God is in the details."

It seems generally accepted that this was something said by the German-born
architect
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) although almost certainly it was not
invented by
him. His obituary in The New York Times (1969) attributed the saying to him
but it also
appears to have been a favourite of the German art historian Aby Warburg
(though E.M.
Gombrich, his biographer, is not certain that it originated with him). In
the form Le bon Dieu
est dans le détail, it has also been attributed to Gustave Flaubert
(1821-80). Subsequently,
there has arisen the saying `The devil is in the detail' which has been
described as a maxim
of the German pop musician, Blixa Bargeld. He probably did not invent it
himself as it is
mentioned in Lutz Röhrich's Lexikon der sprichwörtlichen Redensarten (1994)
- as `Der
Teufel steckt im Detail'.*** (from
http://www1c.btwebworld.com/quote-unquote/p0000063.htm)

Yoshie