Famous Quotes & Sayings

Judith Wright

When we learn new behaviors and break through to higher levels of consciousness and love, we can fulfill the deeper spiritual hunger within.

George MacDonald

Truth is a very different thing from fact; it is the loving contact of the soul with spiritual fact, vital and potent. It does not work in the soul independently of all faculty or qualification there for setting it forth or defending it. Truth in the inward parts is a power, not an opinion.

George MacDonald

One thing is clear to me, that no indulgence of passion destroys the spiritual nature so much as respectable selfishness.

Emanuel Swedenborg

The Lord casts no one down in Hell, but the spirit casts himself hither.

Emanuel Swedenborg

One's distance from Heaven is in proportion to the measure of one's self-love.

Emanuel Swedenborg

For in every particular of the Word there is an internal sense which treats of things spiritual and heavenly, not of things natural and worldly, such as are treated of in the sense of the letter.

Emanuel Swedenborg

Moreover, no one is judged from the natural man, thus not so long as he lives in the natural world, for man is then in a natural body; but everyone is judged in the spiritual man, and therefore when he comes into the spiritual world, for man is then in a spiritual body.

Emanuel Swedenborg

There are angels that receive more interiorly the Divine that goes forth from the Lord, and others that receive it less interiorly; the former are called celestial angels, and the latter spiritual angels

Emanuel Swedenborg

To have dominion by religion, is to have dominion over men's souls, thus over their very spiritual life, and to use the Divine things, which are in their religion, as the means

Emanuel Swedenborg

Marriages on earth--because they are the seminaries of the human race and of the angels of heaven also; because, likewise, they proceed from a spiritual origin, that is, from the marriage of good and truth; and since, in addition, the Lord's divine proceeding principally flows into conjugal love--are most holy in the estimation of the angels.

Emanuel Swedenborg

God created us in such a way that our inner self is in the spiritual world and our outer self is in the physical world. This was so that the spiritual part of us, which belongs in heaven, could be planted in the physical part the way a seed is planted in the ground.

Emanuel Swedenborg

If we would accept heaven's life, we need by all means to live in the world and to participate in its duties and affairs. In this way, we accept a spiritual life by means of our moral and civic life; and there is no other way a spiritual life can be formed within us, no other way our spirits can be prepared for heaven. This is because living an inner life and not an outer life at the same time is like living in a house that has no foundation, that gradually either settles or develops gaping cracks or totters until it collapses.

Ellen Willis

The concept of emotional or spiritual survival has an honorable history, but it does invite self-indulgence. In my own case, the worst I ever survived was severe personal and political confusion, the temptation to various sorts of craziness and a couple of bad acid trips. It felt pretty horrendous at the time, and some of it was even dangerous, but Auschwitz it wasn't.

Elizabeth Goudge

All we are asked to bear we can bear. That is a law of the spiritual life. The only hindrance to the working of this law, as of all benign laws, is fear.

Elizabeth Goudge

If one's intellectual equipment was not great, one's spiritual experience not deep, the result of doing one's very best could only seem very lightweight in comparison with the effort involved. But perhaps that was not important. The mysterious power that commanded men appeared to him to ask of them only obedience and the maximum of effort and to remain curiously indifferent as to the results.

Elizabeth George

The degree of our spiritual strength will be in direct proportion to the time we spend in God's Word.

Elizabeth George

Apathy is a spiritual numbness that creeps in and corrupts the good that God intends for our life and the good that He wants us to accomplish for Him and His kingdom.

Elizabeth Gilbert

My heart skipped a beat and then flat-out tripped over itself and fell on its face. Then my heart stood up, brushed itself off, took a deep breath and announced: "I want a spiritual teacher.

Elizabeth Gilbert

God isn't interested in watching you enact some performance of personality in order to comply with some crackpot notion you have about how a spiritual person looks or behaves. We all seem to get this idea that, in order to be sacred, we have to make some massive, dramatic change of character, that we have to renounce our individuality.

Elizabeth Gilbert

I've always thought of my writing as a spiritual practice. But I think that fiction is the most supernatural kind of writing that you can do because of the ways that the real and the unreal weave together to create something that feels more true than anything.

Elizabeth Gilbert

This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don't have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. We all need such places of ritual safekeeping. And I do believe that if your culture or tradition doesn't have the specific ritual you are craving, then you are absolutely permitted to make up a ceremony of your own devising, fixing your own broken-down emotional systems with all the do-it-yourself resourcefulness of a generous plumber/poet.

Elizabeth Gilbert

The Hopi Indians thought that the world’s religions each contained one spiritual thread, and that these threads are always seeking each other, wanting to join. When all the threads are finally woven together they will form a rope that will pull us out of this dark cycle of history and into the next realm.

Elizabeth Gilbert

I had a great teacher in India who said to me, 'If you think you're spiritual and evolved and enlightened, go home for Christmas.'

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

It is my conviction that it is the intuitive, spiritual aspects of us humans-the inner voice-that gives us the 'knowing,' the peace, and the direction to go through the windstorms of life, not shattered but whole, joining in love and understanding.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

In the so-called civilized world, children are physically, sexually and/or emotionally abused; they are the leaders of our future. When children are raised in such a hostile and violent environment, how can we hope for a harmonious future for all people of this world? In this light, the purpose of human life is to achieve our own spiritual evolution, to get rid of negativity, to establish harmony among our physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual quadrants, to learn to live in harmony within the family, community, nation, ..treating all of mankind as brothers and sisters.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

The world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles...only by a spiritual journey...by which we arrive at the ground at our feet, and learn to be at home. The ultimate lesson all of us have to learn is unconditional love, which includes not only others but ourselves as well.

Eknath Easwaran

In the spiritual lore of India there is a story that the Lord whispered only one word in our ears when he sent us into the world: 'Give.' Give freely of your time, your talent, your resources; give without asking for anything in return. This is the secret of living in joy and security.

Eknath Easwaran

The Sufis advise us to speak only after our words have managed to pass through three gates. At the first gate, we ask ourselves, 'Are these words true?' If so, we let them pass on; if not, back they go. At the second gate, we ask, 'Are the necessary?' At the last gate, we ask, 'Are they kind?'

Eknath Easwaran

Like Gandhi, like the Buddha, like all great spiritual teachers, Easwaran had no use for beliefs unless they generated actions. Doing, not saying, is what counts.

Eknath Easwaran

The spiritual life is a call to action. But it is a call to ... action without any selfish attachment to the results.

Eknath Easwaran

Wherever people gather for selfless ends, there is a vast augmentation of their individual capacities. Something wonderful, something momentous happens. An irresistible force begins to move, which, though we may not see it, is going to change our world. In this lies the power and the meaning of spiritual companionship.

Eknath Easwaran

Meditation may require a lifetime to master, but it will have been a lifetime well spent. ... If you want to judge your progress, ask yourself these questions: Am I more loving? Is my judgment sounder? Do I have more energy? Can my mind remain calm under provocation? Am I free from the conditioning of anger, fear, and greed? Spiritual awareness reveals itself as eloquently in character development and selfless action as in mystical states.

Eknath Easwaran

When mystics use the word love, they use it very carefully - in the deeply spiritual sense, where to love is to know; to love is to act. If you really love, from the depths of your Consciousness, that love gives you a native wisdom. You perceive the needs of others intuitively and clearly, with detachment from any personal desires; and you know how to act creatively to meet those needs, dexterously surmounting any obstacle that comes in the way. Such is the immense, driving power of love.