Quotes About Spirituality

This is my essential reason for writing, not for fame, not to be celebrated after death, but to heighten and create life all around me... I also write because when I am writing I reach the high moment of fusion sought by the mystics, the poets, the lovers, a sense of communion with the universe.

Perhaps I have loved the artist because creation is the nearest we come to divinity.

Read the Golden Ass of Apuleius and Les Diaboliques in French." . . . "Go to Russian Church on Rue Crimée for the music." . . . "Get back the first volume of Albertine and make annotations . . . write copiously, there is time for everything" . . . "Read Jacques Maritain.

Poetry is the description of an intangible state.

Elena) Poderia o amor tornar-se um fogo que não queima, como as chamas dos homens santos da Índia? Estaria ela aprendendo a caminhar de modo mágico sobre carvões em brasa?

While there may have lived an individual teacher who gave the ancient wisdom its peculiarly "Buddhist" coloring, his personality is completely overshadowed, as he must have wished it should be, by the eternal substance with which he identified himself. In other words, "the Buddha is only anthropomorphic, not a man".

Mountains are not Stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve, they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion.

Mountains are not stadiums where I statisfy my ambition to achieve, they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion.... I go to them as humans go to worship. From their lofty summits I view my past, dream of the future and, with an unusual acuity, am allowed to experience the present moment.... my vision cleared, my strength renewed. In the mountains I celebrate creation. On each journey I am reborn

At the very least, when we die we will be as if asleep, in the same place we were before birth, so why fear death? Scattered on the wind, unaware as we were before we came into this world, with no memory of any of it.

L'esprit saura se priver de puissance, disait Alain, de toute espèce de puissance ; tel est le plus haut règne » et la leçon du calvaire2312. Et Simone Weil : « Quiconque prend l'épée périra par l'épée. Et quiconque ne prend pas l'épée (ou la lâche) périra sur la croix

Sin is whatever obscures the soul.

The deeper the soul plunges into religious devotion, the more it loses all sense of reality, all need, all desire, all love for reality.

When one gets up there, out of sight of all culture, of all vegetation, of everything that reminds one of the avarice and stupidity of men, one feels inclined to shout, to sing, to laugh, to cry, to fly, to dive head foremost into the sky, or to fall on one's knees.

If I were to cry to Thee, my God, with the impulsive faith of a child and with the heavenly tongues of angels...

I have been scarcely been able to pray since I have been here: I have the childish feeling that God is no longer in the same place.

There are more answers in heaven than questions on the lips of men.

Commandements de Dieu, vous avez rendu malade mon âme, / Vous avez entouré de murs les seuls eaux pour me désaltérer.

I am the soul in limbo.

Japichinu era picciotto religioso, come sosteneva il nonno Balduccio, tant'è vero che aveva persino un Patre spirituale. Solo che tanto il picciotto quanto il parrino scangiavano superstizione per religione.

The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as an example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.

It is obvious to everyone that man's material aggrandisement has not been synchronous with spiritual progress. The point has been reached where we seem to have a fatal incapacity for mastering our material achievements in order to use them for our own good. We have created a civilisation which threatens to annihilate mankind.

Despite everything, a balanced, independent, lonely way of life can give the peace that is vital. I must look for peace. I must start to do meditation seriously—there I go, thinking again in Italian terms —and Buddhism.

Heard the St. Matthew Passion at the Cathedral. Marvellous.

If God is given to be misunderstood then he is also given to be re-understood.