Quotes About Spirituality

Every moment and every event of every man's life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men. Most of these unnumbered seeds perish and are lost, because men are not prepared to receive them: for such seeds as these cannot spring up anywhere except in the good soil of freedom, spontaneity, and love.

Every moment and every event of every man's life on earth plants something in his soul.

What every man looks for in life is his own salvation and the salvation of the men he lives with. By salvation I mean first of all the full discovery of who he himself really is.

The peculiar grace of a shaker chair is due to the fact that it was made by someone capable of believing that an angel might come and sit on it.

It is not merely our own desire but the desire of Christ in His Spirit that drives us to grow in love. Those who seldom or never feel in their hearts the desire for the love of God and other men, and who do not thirst for the pure waters of desire which are poured out in us by the strong, living God, are usually those who have drunk from other rivers or have dug for themselves broken cisterns.

What I wear is pants. What I do is live. How I pray is breathe.

There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.

The first step toward finding God--who is truth--is to discover the truth about myself; and if I have been in error, this first step to truth is the discovery of my error

People have no idea what one saint can do: for sanctity is stronger than the whole of hell.

I seek to speak to you, in some way, as your own self. Who can tell what this may mean? I myself do not know, but if you listen, things will be said that are perhaps not written in this book. And this will be due not to me but to the One who lives and speaks in both.

It is by desiring to grow in love that we receive the Holy Spirit, and the thirst for more charity is the effect of this more abundant reception.

Contemplation in the age of Auschwitz and Dachau, Solovky and Karaganda is something darker and more fearsome than contemplation in the age of the Church Fathers. For that very reason, the urge to seek a path of spiritual light can be a subtle temptation to sin. It certainly is sin if it means a frank rejection of the burden of our age, an escape into unreality and spiritual illusion, so as not to share the misery of other men.

True contemplation is not a psychological trick but a theological grace. It can come to us ONLY as a gift, and not as a result of our own clever use of spiritual techniques.

In the end, no one can seek God unless he has already begun to find him.

The secret of my full identity is hidden in Him. He alone can make me who I am, or rather who I will be when at last I fully begin to be. But unless I desire this identity and work to find it with Him and in Him, the work will never be done

The Holy Spirit is the most perfect gift of the Father to men, and yet He is the one gift which the Father gives most easily.

the humble man takes whatever there is in the world that helps him to find God and leaves the rest aside. He

Laziness and cowardice are two of the greatest enemies of the spiritual life.

Nu putem fi în relaÈ›ii de pace cu alÅ£ii pentru c? nu suntem în relaÅ£ii de pace cu noi înÅŸine, ÅŸi nu putem fi în relaÅ£ii de pace cu noi înÅŸine pentru c? nu avem pace cu Dumnezeu.

The point where you become free not to kill, not to exploit, not to destroy, not to compete, because you are no longer afraid of death or the devil or poverty or failure. If you discover this nakedness, you'd better keep it private. People don't like it.

The God of peace is never glorified by human violence.

We are united to Him in darkness, because we have to hope.

As a child, and since then too, I have always tended to resist any kind of a possessive affection on the part of any other human being—there has always been this profound instinct to keep clear, to keep free. And only with truly supernatural people have I ever felt really at my ease, really at peace.

Our happiness consists in sharing the happiness of God, the perfection of His unlimited freedom, the perfection of His love.