Quotes About Spirituality

To materialists this world is opaque like a curtain; nothing can be seen through it. A mountain is just a mountain, a sunset just a sunset; but to poets, artists, and saints, the world is transparent like a window pane - it tells of something beyond....a mountain tells of the Power of God, the sunset of His Beauty, and the snowflake of His Purity.

Just as I do not know where I came from, so I do not know where I am going. All I know is that when I leave this world I shall fall forever into oblivion, or into the hands of an angry God, without knowing which of the two will be my lot for eternity. Such is my state of mind, full of weakness and uncertainty. The only conclusion I can draw from all this is that I must pass my days without a thought of trying to find out what is going to happen to me.

God instituted prayer to communicate to creatures the dignity of causality.

He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God's providence to lead him aright

God wishes to move the will rather than the mind. Perfect clarity would help the mind and harm the will.

Those who have known God without knowing their own wretchedness have not glorified him but themselves.

Happiness can be found neither in ourselves nor in external things, but in God and in ourselves as united to him.

The two foundations; one inward, the other outward; grace, miracles; both supernatural.

The eternal being exists for ever if he once exists.

Just as all things speak about God to those that know Him, and reveal Him to those that love Him, they also hide Him from all those that neither seek nor know Him.

Do not be astonished to see simple people believing without argument. God makes them love him and hate themselves. He inclines their hearts to believe. We shall never believe, with an effective belief and faith, unless God inclines our hearts.

The Stoics say, Retire within yourselves; it is there you will find your rest. And that is not true. Others say, Go out of yourselves; seek happiness in amusement. And this is not true. Illness comes. Happiness is neither without us nor within us. It is in God, both without us and within us.

God is enough for them.

Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them.

The motions of Grace, the hardness of heart; external circumstances.

Finally, let them recognise that there are two kinds of people one can call reasonable; those who serve God with all their heart because they know Him, and those who seek Him with all their heart because they do not know Him.

Circumcision of the heart, true fasting, true sacrifice, true temple;2 the prophets showed that all this must be spiritual. Not the flesh that perishes, but that which does not perish.3 'Ye shall be free indeed.'4 So the other freedom is just a figurative freedom. 'I am the true bread from heaven.'5

There are some who see clearly that man has no other enemy but concupiscence, which turns him away from God, and not [human] enemies, no other good but God, and not a rich land.

Everything which does not lead to charity is figurative. The sole object of Scripture is charity. Everything that does not lead to this sole good is figurative. For, since there is only one goal, everything that does not lead to it explicitly is figurative.

The Jesuits have tried to combine God and the world, and have only earned the contempt of God and the world.

This religion taught its children what men had managed to know only at their most enlightened.

God being thus hidden, any religion that does not say that God is hidden is not true, and any religion which does not explain why does not instruct. Ours does all thus. Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself.1

Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.

What is wonderful, incomparable and wholly divine is that this religion which has always survived has always been under attack.