Quotes from Emanuel Swedenborg

The sky is an enormous man.

This I can declare: things that are in heaven are more real than things that are in the world.

Love comes into being through useful service to others.

We do need to realize, though, that it is the quality of our love that determines the quality of this life.

The nature of heaven is to provide a place there for all who lead good lives, no matter what their religion may be.

Everything good or true that the angels inspire in us is God's, so God is constantly talking to us. He talks very differently, though, to one person than to another.

Man, before he is being regenerated, does not even know that any internal man exists, much less is he acquainted with its nature and quality.

The inner self is as distinct from the outer self as heaven is from earth.

Such as the love is, such is the wisdom, consequently such is the man (n. 368) (Divine Love and Wisdom, 1763)

Anyone can see that intending and not acting when we can is not really intending, and loving and not doing good when we can is not really loving.

for heaven is within us, and people who have heaven within them come into heaven. The heaven within us is our acknowledgment of the Divine and our being led by the Divine.

Peace has in it trust in the Lord, that He governs all things, provides all things, and leads to a good end.

In the spiritual body moreover, man appears such as he is with respect to love and faith, for everyone in the spiritual world is the effigy of his own love, not only as to the face and the body, but also as to the speech and the actions

People who have intended and loved what is evil in the world intend and love what is evil in the other life, and then they no longer allow themselves to be led away from it. This is why people who are absorbed in evil are connected to hell and actually are there in spirit; and after death they crave above all to be where their evil is. So after death, it is we, not the Lord, who cast ourselves into hell.

A life of faith without love is like sunlight without warmth—the type of light that occurs in winter, when nothing grows and everything droops and dies. Faith rising out of love, on the contrary, is like light from the sun in spring, when everything grows and flourishes. Warmth from the sun is the fertile agent. The same is true in spiritual and heavenly affairs, which are typically represented in the Word by objects found in nature and human culture.

People are unaware that spirits even exist, let alone that angels are present with them.

Man, when he is re-born, passes through the ages as he who is born; and the preceding state is always as an egg in respect to the subsequent one, thus he is continually conceived and born: and this not only when he lives in the world, but also when he comes into another life to eternity: and still when he cannot be further perfected, then to be as an egg to those things which remain to be manifested, which are indefinite.

for every man's soul is in a spiritual body after it has cast off the material coverings which it carried about in the world.

It is amazing but true that it is easy for any of us to rebuke someone else who is intending to do something evil and say, "Don't do that—that's a sin!" And yet it is difficult for us to say the same thing to ourselves. The reason is that saying it to ourselves requires a movement of the will, but saying it to someone else requires only a low level of thought based on things we have heard.

Others work among the spirits that have just arrived in the world of spirits. Again others raise the children who have died in infancy. Swedenborg ensures the parents of these infants that 'All children whether born within or outside of the church, are adopted by the Lord and become Angels'.

There are two loves that have been deeply rooted in the human race for a long time now: love for dominating everyone, and love for possessing everyone's wealth. If the reins are let out on the first type of love, it rushes on until it wants to be the God of all heaven. If the reins are let out on the second type of love, it rushes on until it wants to be the God of the whole world. All other forms of love for evil are ranked below these two and serve as their army.

A spiritual church first becomes a church when it acts as bidden by charity, charity being the true teaching of faith.

What could be sweeter to us than to hear and persuade ourselves that we can be saved, even if we live like a savage beast? Even non-Christians see that this is false, and many of them shudder at Christian teachings when they observe how Christians live.

The spiritual idea of distances of space is the same as of distances of good or distances of truth, which are affinities and likenesses according to states of goodness and truth.