Famous Quotes & Sayings

Joseph Campbell

This is an important point about symbols: they do not refer to historical events; they refer through historical events to spiritual or psychological principles and powers that are of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and that are everywhere.

Joseph Campbell

The real important function of the church is to present the symbol, to perform the rite, to let you behold this divine message in such a way that you are capable of experiencing it. What the relationship of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost to each other might be, in technical terms, is not half important as you, the celebrant, feeling the Virgin Birth within you, the birth of the mystic, mythic being that is your own spiritual life.

Joseph Goebbels

Revolutions are spiritual acts. They appear first in people, then in politics and the economy. New people form new structures. The transformation we want is first of all spiritual; that will necessarily change the way things are.

Paul Valery

God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through.

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.

Francois Fenelon

All earthly delights are sweeter in expectation than in enjoyment; but all spiritual pleasures more in fruition than in expectation.

Although technical discussions are interesting to composers, I suspect that the truly magical and spiritual powers of music arise from deeper levels of our psyche.

Lois McMaster Bujold

In mysticism, knowledge cannot be separated from a certain way of life which becomes its living manifestation. To acquire mystical knowledge means to undergo a transformation; one could even say that the knowledge is the transformation. Scientific knowledge, on the other hand, can often stay abstract and theoretical. Thus most of today’s physicists do not seem to realize the philosophical, cultural and spiritual implications of their theories.

Mahatma Gandhi

It is wrong and immoral to seek to escape the consequences of one's acts.

Mahatma Gandhi

I have naturally formed the habit of restraining my thoughts. A thoughtless word hardly ever escaped my tongue or pen. Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth. We find so many people impatient to talk. All this talking can hardly be said to be of any benefit to the world. It is so much waste of time. My shyness has been in reality my shield and buckler. It has allowed me to grow. It has helped me in my discernment of truth.

Mahatma Gandhi

We often confuse spiritual knowledge with spiritual attainment. Spirituality is not a matter of knowing scriptures and engaging in philosophical discussions. It is a matter of heart culture, of unmeasurable strength.

Gaby Hoffmann

I got to college in '99, and I went to study literature and writing, and so within a couple years we had Bush elected, 9/11, we were at war, so I was sort of having my political and spiritual awakening at the same time I was becoming an adult, and that's a lot of stuff at once. I became very focused on the state of the world, and I started studying that stuff more, and I just had a real identity crisis. I couldn't even really just study literature.

Eckhart Tolle

For most people, spiritual awakening is a gradual process. Rarely does it happen all at once. When it does, though, it is usually brought about by intense suffering.

Eckhart Tolle

My main life interest and purpose is to bring spiritual awakening into this world, to be a vehicle for the flowering of consciousness, to help people to live more consciously with less unnecessary suffering and self-generated unhappiness.

Eckhart Tolle

Some form of suffering often brings about a readiness. One can say it cracks open the shell of the egoic mind with which many people identify as "me." Life cracks open that shell, and once that crack is there, then we are reached more easily by spiritual teaching.

Henri Nouwen

To receive spiritual direction is to recognize that God does not solve our problems or answer all our questions, but leads us closer to the mystery of our existence where all questions cease.

Henri Nouwen

I have an increasing sense that the most important crisis of our time is spiritual and that we need places where people can grow stronger in the spirit and be able to integrate the emotional struggles in their spiritual journeys.

Henri Nouwen

Spiritual maturity is not knowing what to do with your whole life, but just knowing what to do next.

Henry Ford

The function of the machine is to liberate man from brute burdens, and release his energies to the building of his intellectual and spiritual powers for conquests in the fields of thought and higher action.

Henry James

Things are always different from what they might be.

Jodie Foster

I make movies about people in spiritual crisis because it's a way for me to spend the time, the energy, the focus and the obsession to come to terms with my own spiritual crisis.

Charles Spurgeon

Who among you today is doing the most for your Master's kingdom? I will tell you. Lend me a spiritual thermometer by which I may try the heat of your heart, and I will tell you the amount of your success.

Edward McKendree Bounds

Other duties become pressing and absorbing and crowd our prayer. "Choked to death" would be the coroner's verdict in many cases of dead praying if an inquest could be secured on this dire, spiritual calamity.

If the divine Mercy grants him the knowledge of himself, then his adoration will be pure; and, for him, paradise and hell, recompense, spiritual degrees and all created things will be as though God had never created them. He will not accord them any importance, nor will he take them into consideration, except to the extent that it is prescribed by the divine Law and Wisdom. For then he will know Who is the sole Agent.

Aberjhani

Overall, my books represent a kind of shared communion and meditation with my fellow human beings... The books are also a part of what I call the great continuum of spiritual literary dialogue that I feel has been in progress since human beings first gave in to the urge to pray to their sense of something greater than themselves and interpreted certain signs or events or silences as responses to those prayers.

Aberjhani

By consciously meditating upon spiritual truths and cultivating personal integrity, one need never fear negative circumstances.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

The hour calls for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.

David Jeremiah

If we don’t have the Word of God as the foundation of what we believe, we will have a faulty footing—it will not stand against the elements that will come against us. God has designed both our physical and spiritual lives to be ordered by one key attribute upon which the fruit of the Spirit is based—that foundation is love.

David A. Bednar

Sturdy gospel roots that go deep into rich spiritual soil strengthen and steady us in times of trial and difficulty.

David Wilcock

Everyone deserves love and appreciation. If there is someone in the world whom we do not love, it is our blessing to work this out within ourselves. A very key spiritual principle, echoed in the Cayce readings as well as mainstream psychology, is that whatever we see in others that makes us angry, sad or jealous is a reflection of an issue we have in ourselves. If we can learn to love, respect and forgive ourselves, then we will not be angered and offended by what we see in others.

Dag Hammarskjold

Unless there is a spiritual renaissance, the world will know no peace.

Billy Graham

Far too many young people today have no spiritual roots. The've been deprived of values by an agnostic, contemporary culture.

Andre Gide

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.