Quotes About Spirituality

I cannot come nearer to God and Heaven Than I live to Walden even. I am its stony shore, And the breeze that passes o'er; In the hollow of my hand Are its water and its sand, And its deepest resort Lies high in my thought.

My life flows with a deeper current, no longer as a shallow and brawling stream, parched and shrunken by the summer heats. My heart leaps into my mouth at the sound of the wind in the woods. I, whose life was but yesterday so desultory and shallow, suddenly recover my spirits, my spirituality, through my hearing. For joy I could embrace the earth ... I have occasion to be grateful for the flood of life that is flowing over me. I am not so poor.

That man who does not believe that each day contains an earlier, more sacred, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has despaired of life, and is pursuing a descending and darkening way. All memorable events ... transpire in morning time and in a morning atmosphere. The Vedas say All intelligences awake in the morning. Poetry and art, and the fairest and most memorable of the actions of men, date from such an hour. Walden

The unconsciousness of man is the consciousness of God.

But alone in distant woods or fields, I come to myself, I once more feel myself grandly related, and that cold and solitude are friends of mine. I suppose that this value, in my case, is equivalent to what others get by churchgoing and prayer.

Men see God in the ripple, but not in miles of still water. Of all the two thousand miles that the St. Lawrence flows, pilgrims go only to Niagara.

I walk out into a nature such as the old prophets and poets, Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in.

Let men cultivate the moral affections, lead manly independent lives; let them make riches the means and not the end of existence, and we shall hear no more of the commercial spirit. . . . This curious world which we inhabit is more wonderful than it is convenient; more beautiful than it is useful; it is more to be admired and enjoyed than used.

We are more of the earth, Farther from heaven these days.

We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven. We have adopted Christianity merely as an improved method of agri-culture. We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb. The best works of art are the expression of man's struggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and that higher state to be forgotten.

My profession is to be always on the alert to find God in nature, to know his lurking-places, to attend all the oratorios, the operas in nature.

Blessed are they who never read a newspaper, for they shall see Nature and, through her, God.

The soul grows by subtraction, not addition.

Y quizá sería bueno que pasáramos más de nuestros días y noches sin que mediara obstáculo alguno entre nosotros y los cuerpos celestes, y que el poeta no hablara tanto bajo techado o que el santo no se acogiera con tanta frecuencia a su protección.

Und wirklich, je mehr er sich zu erniedrigen schien, desto mehr schien er erhöht zu werden.

Why has man rooted himself thus firmly in the earth, but that he may rise in the same proportion into the heavens above?—for the nobler plants are valued for the fruit they bear at last in the air and light, far from the ground

Seria ótimo, quem sabe, se pudéssemos passar um pouco mais dos dias e das noites sem nenhum obstáculo entre nós e os corpos celestes, se o poeta não falasse tanto à sombra de um telhado ou o santo não morasse entre quatro paredes por tanto tempo. As aves não cantam dentro das grutas, nem as pombas cuidam de sua inocência nos pombais.

The oldest Egyptian or Hindu philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of divinity; and still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as he did, since it was I in him that was then so bold, and it is he in me that reviews the vision. No dust has settled on that robe; no time has elapsed since that divinity was revealed.

It is no dream of mine, To ornament a line; I cannot come nearer to God and Heaven Than I live to Walden even. I am its stony shore, And the breeze that passes o'er; In the hollow of my hand Are its water and its sand, And its deepest resort Lies high in my thought.

Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians. I have more of God, they more of the road.

The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures.

This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and where a goddess might trail her garments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth every where.

Talk of heaven! ye disgrace earth.

I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.