Quotes About Spirituality

the absolute could be enclosed within the last moments of a dying person.

He who has not God in himself cannot feel His absence.

A science which does not bring us nearer to God is worthless.

It seemed to me certain, and I still think so today, that one can never wrestle enough with God if one does so out of pure regard for the truth. Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms.

We cannot take a step toward the heavens. God crosses the universe and comes to us.

Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.

Time's violence rends the soul; by the rent eternity enters.

An imaginary divinity has been given to man so that he may strip himself of it.

There are two atheisms of which one is a purification of the notion of God.

One cannot imagine St. Francis of Assisi talking about rights.

The beauty of this world is Christ's tender smile coming to us through matter.

La beauté séduit la chair pour obtenir la permission de passer jusqu'à l'âme.

The supernatural greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffering but a supernatural use for it.

The beautiful is the experimental proof that the incarnation is possible.

Man's great affliction, which begins with infancy and accompanies him till death, is that looking and eating are two different operations. Eternal beatitude is a state where to look is to eat.

When I think of the Crucifixion, I commit the sin of envy.

Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void.

prayer consists of attention. It is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable towards God. The quality of attention counts for much in the quality of the prayer. Warmth of heart cannot make up for it.

The Cross of Christ is the only gateway to knowledge.

Tant que l'homme tolère d'avoir l'âme emplie de ses propres pensées, de ses pensées personnelles, il est entièrement soumis jusqu'au plus intime de ses pensées à la contrainte des besoins et au jeu mécanique de la force. S'il croit qu'il en est autrement, il est dans l'erreur. Mais tout change quand, par la vertu d'une véritable attention, il vide son âme pour y laisser pénétrer les pensées de la sagesse éternelle.

Man requires, not rice or potatoes, but food; not wood or coal, but heating. In the same way, for the needs of the soul, we must recognize the different, but equivalent, sorts of satisfaction which cater for the same requirements.

God is not present, even if we invoke him, where the afflicted are merely regarded as an occasion for doing good. They may even be loved on this account, but then they are in their natural role, the role of matter and of things. We have to bring to them in their inert, anonymous condition a personal love....In true love it is not we who love the afflicted in God; it is God in us who loves them.

God is rich in mercy. I know this wealth of His with the certainty of experience. I have touched it.

Never, in any case, is any effort of true attention lost. It is always completely effective on the spiritual plane, and therefore also, in addition, on the inferior plane of the intelligence, for all spiritual light enlightens the intelligence.