Famous Quotes & Sayings

Jonathan Lethem

It's impossible to overstate how my relationship to music forms a preserve for the esoteric or even spiritual aspect of my relationship to cultural stuff, to human expressivity... it's a safe enclosure.

Jonathan Lethem

The book is openly a kind of spiritual autobiography, but the trick is that on any other level it's a kind of insane collage of fragments of memory.

Jonathan Franzen

Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart’s revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are. And this is why love, as I understand it, is always specific. Trying to love all of humanity may be a worthy endeavor, but, in a funny way, it keeps the focus on the self, on the self’s own moral or spiritual well-being. Whereas, to love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self.

Jonathan Cain

God has provided true musical and spiritual restoration.

Jonathan Cain

My father was a deeply spiritual, prophetic man, [who] I adored. I watched him pray as a boy and wanted to know the "Jesus" he shed tears for.

Jonathan Edwards

As it is with spiritual discoveries and affections given at first conversion, so it is in all subsequent illuminations and affections of that kind; they are all transforming. There is a like divine power and energy in them as in the first discoveries; they still reach the bottom of the heart, and affect and alter the very nature of the soul, in proportion to the degree in which they are given. And a transformation of nature is continued and carried on by them to the end of life, until it is brought to perfection in glory.

Jonathan Edwards

The deceitfulness of the heart of man appears in no one thing so much as this of spiritual pride and self-righteousness. The subtlety of Satan appears in its height, in his managing persons with respect to this sin. And perhaps one reason may be that here he has most experience; he knows the way of its coming in; he is acquainted with the secret springs of it: it was his own sin. Experience gives vast advantage in leading souls, either in good or evil.

Jonathan Edwards

Spiritual delight in God arises chiefly from his beauty and perfection, not from the blessings he gives us.

Jonas Salk

I have come to recognize evolution not only as an active process that I am experiencing at the time, but as something I can guide by the choices I make.

Joyce Carol Oates

I can't imagine a mental life, a spiritual existence, not inextricably bound up with language of a formal, mediated nature. Telling stories, choosing an appropriate language with which to tell the story: This seems to me quintessentially human, one of the great adventures of our species.

Joyce Carol Oates

The written word, obviously, is very inward, and when we're reading, we're thinking. It's a sort of spiritual, meditative activity. When we're looking at visual objects, I think our eyes are obviously directed outward, so there's not as much reflective time. And it's the reflectiveness and the spiritual inwardness about reading that appeals to me.

Justin Vernon

I think subconsciously or selfishly I knew that I was supposed to do something. It was like a thumping or a throbbing saying, "Yes, this what you've been waiting for." But you're a little dim to those spiritual thoughts when you're dumb like me. So I did have to get a little bit of a kick. I played it for a bunch of people and I think their reactions were warm and deep enough that they gave me the courage to get [the record] out there.

Julie Burchill

I don't have a spiritual bone in my body; but what I am, is religious.

Judith Orloff

Spirituality isn't static. It's an evolving optimism that won't let hardship get the best of you.

Josh Gad

Religion is interesting because it brings out the best and the worst in humanity. It can be a source of good deeds, whether it's people from different spiritual backgrounds coming together to help other people in need after a crisis. But it's also a cause for war and bloodshed.

Josh Gad

I really love the traditional aspects of Judaism. My wife is born and raised a Catholic and I enjoy celebrating those rituals as well. I am very spiritual but not in any way religious, no.

Josh Groban

Even with our differences There is a place we're all connected Each of us can find each other's light, There's so much to be thankful for.

Joseph Mitchell

All information of a spiritual or personal nature will have to come from our father, who art in heaven, and I think he's in New York right now.

Joseph Murphy

If you really want peace of mind and inner calm, you will get it. Regardless of how unjustly you have been treated, or how unfair the boss has been, or what a mean scoundrel someone has proved to be, all this makes no difference to you when you awaken to your mental and spiritual powers.

Joseph Hall

Infidelity and faith look both through the perspective glass, but at contrary ends. Infidelity looks through the wrong end of the glass; and, therefore, sees those objects near which are afar off, and makes great things little,-diminishing the greatest spiritual blessings, and removing far from us threatened evils. Faith looks at the right end, and brings the blessings that are far off in time close to our eye, and multiplies God's mercies, which, in a distance, lost their greatness.

James Martineau

All spiritual strength for ourselves, all noble ties to one another, have their real source in that inner sanctuary where God denies His lonely audience to none. Its secrets are holy; its asylum, inviolate; its consolations, sure; and all are open to the simple heart-word, "Thou art my hiding-place.

James Madison

No distinction seems to be more obvious than that between spiritual and temporal matters. Yet whenever they have been made objects of Legislation, they have clashed and contended with each other, till one or the other has gained the supremacy.

Joe Frazier

You can map out a light plan or a life plan, but when the action starts, it may not go the way you planned, and you're down to the reflexes you developed in training. That's where roadwork shows - the training you did in the dark of the mornin' will show when you're under the bright lights.

Joan Halifax

Yes, creation is moving toward us; life is moving toward us all the time. We back away, but it keeps pushing toward us. Why not step forward and greet it.

Joan Halifax

Catastrophe is the essence of the spiritual path, a series of breakdowns allowing us to discover the threads that weave all of life into a whole cloth.

Joan Jett

When you write songs you're commenting on love, you're commenting on sex, relationships, whatever it is that you decide to write about it. And I've wanted to write about politics or spiritual ideas for years.

Jimi Hendrix

Definitely, and it's getting more spiritual. Pretty soon I believe people will have to rely on music to get some kind of peace of mind, or satisfaction, or direction, actually. More so than politics, the big ego scene. You know it's an art of words... Meaning nothing. Therefore you will have to get an earthier substance, like music or the arts.

Eric Whitacre

I don't know if it is a spiritual, physiological or psychological phenomenon, but I believe now more than ever that singing is a universal, built-in mechanism designed to cultivate empathy and compassion.

Eric Liddell

Obedience to God's will is the secret of spiritual knowledge and insight.

Eric Liddell

Obedience to God's will is the secret of spiritual knowledge and insight. It is not willingness to know, but willingness to DO (obey) God's will that brings certainty.

Eric Fischl

Personally, I never believe an artist saying "I do it for myself" is saying the truth, because why would you go through the trouble of making something that goes out into the world if you didn't care about somebody else seeing it? It's like the difference between those who choose "more comfortably termed entertainment" versus what people think of as the "art life," which is supposedly more monastic or spiritual. I don't believe in those distinctions.

Eric Davis

Blessings can come in a number of ways. The Lord doesn't give you what you want, the Lord gives you what you need.

Emma Goldman

So-called Individualism is the social and economic laissez-faire: the exploitation of the masses by the classes by means of legal trickery, spiritual debasement and systematic indoctrination of the servile spirit, which process is known as 'education'.