Quotes About Inner life

Being requires no measurement; it is its own justification. Being is grounded in an inner life that grows in richness. "The kingdom of heaven is within," says the Scripture. Toxic shame looks to the outside for happiness and validation, since the inside is flawed and defective. Toxic shame is spiritual bankruptcy.

I used to think it was possible for an artist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory.

Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory. They make raids on human consciousness. What writers used to do before we were all incorporated.

In a world of tension and breakdown it is necessary for there to be those who seek to integrate their inner lives not by avoiding anguish and running away from problems, but by facing them in their naked reality and in their ordinariness. —Thomas Merton

You ask, can changing your inner life make a difference in the troubles of the world? Nothing else can! No amount of technology, computers, internet, artificial intelligence, biotech, nanotechnology, or space technology is going to stop continuing racism, warfare, environmental destruction, and tribalism. These all have their source in the human heart.

Man must have results, real results, in his inner and outer life. I do not mean the results which modern people strive after in their attempts at self-development. These are not results, but only rearrangements of psychic material, a process the Buddhists call 'samsara' and which our Holy Bible calls 'dust'.

It was such a relief to realize someone else had a weird vivid inner life like my own!

Notre vie n'est pas derrière nous, ni avant, ni maintenant, elle est dedans.

The only life that matters is in your mind. The only truth is the one that live invisibly, that waits even after you close the book. Silence, too, is a kind of music. Silence will last.

Do you think that I want to live in a communal society with people like that Battaglia acquaintance of yours, sweeping streets and breaking up rocks or whatever it is people are always doing in those blighted countries? What I want is a good, strong monarchy with a tasteful and decent king who has some knowledge of theology and geometry and to cultivate a Rich Inner Life.

What I want is a good, strong monarchy with a tasteful and decent king who has some knowledge of theology and geometry and to cultivate a Rich Inner Life.

Young Adam was always an obedient child. Something in him shrank from violence, from contention, from the silent shrieking tensions that can rip at a house. He contributed to the quiet he wished for by offering no violence, no contention, and to do this he had to retire into secretness, since there is some violence in everyone. He covered his life with a veil of vagueness, while behind his quiet eyes a rich full life went on. This did not protect him from assault but it allowed him an immunity.

What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.

Reading is at the threshold of our inner life; it can lead us into that life but cannot constitute it.

Slowly he had learned that there is a world beneath the visible one, and that people, some people at least, have a different life, that they carry inside them.

She came to feel that too much had been required of her. She would have her revenge. She would insist on an inner life regulated by despair.

Children always find ways to subvert while they're busy complying. This child's method of subversion? She would achieve success, but she would treat it like a concession she'd been forced to make. For unto whomsoever much is given, of her shall be much required. She came to feel that too much had been required of her. She would have her revenge. She would insist on an inner life regulated by despair.

Do not erase the designs the child makes in the soft wax of his inner life.

What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.

What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.

The heart is a small closed space, a symbol or souvenir of the inner life, the secret life, the silent life. It is liable to come apart if you touch it.

We all have an inner life. This consists of our thoughts and feelings, our hopes and dreams, our character and our relationship with God. We all have an outer life, which consists of the things we do, places we go, and things we build or own. We tend to focus on the outer life, but it is only a tiny fraction of our life. Much more takes place as part of the inner life. The outer life is an overflow of the inner life.

In order to enter that zone we must finally let go of the embodied distances that place grants. But what does this do to what we commonly think of as the past? I think of cyberspace, which is no place at all, as akin to the dark imaginary out of which poems come, their rhythms, their discrete music punctuating the inner life.

Waiting on God is hard when you are dispirited by illness. But part of waiting on God, learning to be passive in a way creative for your inner life, is not a question of thinking about God, but of growing in stillness. It has to do with prayer, and with music or from the simple contemplation of the world about you.