Idolatry~Charles Spurgeon

http://www.spurgeon.us/mind_and_heart/quotes/i.htm

When some men come to die, the religion which they themselves have thought out and invented will yield them no more confidence than the religion of the Roman Catholic sculptor who, on his death-bed, was visited by his priest. The priest said, “You are now departing out of this life;” and holding up a beautiful crucifix, he cried, “Behold your God, who died for you.” “Alas!” said the sculptor, “I made it.” There was no comfort for him in the work of his own hands; and there will be no comfort in a religion of one’s own devising. That which was created in the brain cannot yield comfort to the heart. AM333
The heathen bows to a false deity, but the true God he has never known; we commit two evils, inasmuch as we forsake the living God and turn unto idols. ME250
If you delight more in God’s gifts than in God Himself, you are practically setting up another God above Him, and this you must never do. PM35
No nation has ever yet risen above the character of its so-called gods. 640.399
We marvel not that licentiousness abounded, for “like gods—like people:” “A people are never better than their religion,” it has often been said, and in most cases they are rather worse. 640.400
Whatever a man depends upon, whatever rules his mind, whatever governs his affections, whatever is the chief object of his delight, is his god. 723.185
Further observe, that it is a gospel of hearing and not of doing. See the second verse, “Hearken diligently.” Notice the third verse, “Incline your ear;” and yet again, “Hear and your soul shall live.” Death came to us first through the eye, but salvation comes through the ear. Our first parent, Eve, looked at the fruit; she “saw that it was good,” and so she plucked, and so we fell. But no man rises to eternal life by signs and symbols appealing to the eye; it is by the use of the ear that the joyful news is communicated. 833.543
This is the one easily besetting sin of our nature—to turn aside from the living God and to make unto ourselves idols in some fashion or another; for the essence of  idolatry is this—to love anything better than God, to trust anything more than God,  to wish to have a God other than we have, or to have some signs and wonders by  which we may see him, some outward symbol or manifestation that can be seen with  the eye or heard with the ear rather than to rest in an invisible God and believe the faithful promise of Him whom eye hath not seen nor ear heard. 1339.97
If you love anything better than God you are idolaters: if there is anything you would not give up for God it is your idol: if there is anything that you seek with greater fervour than you seek the glory of God, that is your idol, and conversion means a turning from every idol. 1806.581
That is your god which rules your nature—that which is your motive power—that for which you live. 1819.39
The leaning of our evil heart is towards some form, symbol, or imagery which we judge may help our thought and intensify our worship. All this comes of evil, and leads to evil. 1976.434 
If you want to lose that which is the object of your comfort and delight, love it too much. 2099.442
A lawless man fashions for himself a lawless god. 2117.652 
If you worship a god of gold, you will perish as much as if you worshipped a god of mud. 2220.463
Jonah had a gourd, but when he made a god of his gourd, it was very soon withered.
2225.519
“Little children, keep yourselves from idols,” was the injunction of the loving apostle John, and he wrote thus in love, because he knew that, if God sees us making idols of anything, he will either break our idols or break us. 3025.65
In its grosser manifestations, idolatry is the desire of man to see God with his eyes, to have some outward representation of him who cannot be represented; who is too great, too spiritual, ever to be described by human language, much less to be set forth by images of wood, and stone, however elaborately carved and cunningly overlaid with gold. There is a great God who filleth all space, and yet is greater than space, whose existence is without beginning and without end, who is everywhere present, and universally self-existent; but man is so unspiritual that he will not worship this great invisible One in spirit and in truth, but craves after outward similitudes, symbols, and signs. 3034.169
Man is such an idolator that, if he cannot idolise anything else, he will idolise himself, and set himself up, and bow down and worship himself. 3516.286