Quotes About Spirituality

A failure to pray was tantamount to a failure to breathe.

If you think you can walk in holiness without keeping up perpetual fellowship with Christ, you have made a great mistake. If you would be holy, you must live close to Jesus." — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The good devout man first makes inner preparation for the actions he has later to perform. His outward actions do not draw him into lust and vice; rather it is he who bends them into the shape of reason and right judgement. Who has a stiffer battle to fight than the man who is striving to conquer himself.

Learned arguments do not make a man holy and righteous, whereas a good life makes him dear to God.

As iron cast into fire loses its rust and becomes glowing white, so he who turns completely to God is stripped of his sluggishness and changed into a new man.

Go where thou wilt, seek what thou wilt, and thou shalt not find a higher way above, nor a safer way below, than the way of the holy Cross." - Thomas A Kempis (The Following of Christ)

Qui sait le mieux souffrir possédra la plus grande paix. Celui-là est vainqueur de soi et maître du monde, ami de Jésus-Christ et héritier du ciel.

Increase this love in me, that in my innermost being I may taste the sweetness of your love. Melt my heart that I may swim in your love...Let me sing the song of your love and follow you into heaven, my beloved. Let my soul soar in your praise and rejoice in your love. Let me love you more than myself, and love myself only in you.

An humble knowledge of thyself is a surer way to God than a deep search after learning.

Intelligence must follow faith, never precede it, and never destroy it.

Remember, your prerogative is to govern, and not to serve the things of this world.

If God were our one and only desire we would not be so easily upset when our opinions do not find outside acceptance.

The more humble and obedient to God a man is, the more wise and at peace he will be in all that he does.

As long as you live, you will be subject to change, whether you will it or not - now glad, now sorrowful; now pleased, now displeased; now devout, now undevout; now vigorous, now slothful; now gloomy, now merry. But a wise man who is well taught in spiritual labor stands unshaken in all such things, and heeds little what he feels, or from what side the wind of instability blows.

Never be entirely idle; but either be reading, or writing, or praying, or meditating, or endeavoring something for the public good.

By two wings is man lifted above earthly things, even by simplicity and purity. Simplicity ought to be in the intention, purity in the affection.

The Lord bestows his blessings there, where he finds the vessels empty.

Do not let your peace depend on the words of men. Their thinking well or badly of you does not make you different from what you are. Where are true peace and glory? Are they not in Me? He who neither cares to please men nor fears to displease them will enjoy great peace, for all unrest and distraction of the senses arise out of disorderly love and vain fear.

A lowly knowledge of thyself is a surer way to God than the deep searching of a man's learnings. Not that learning is to be blamed, nor the taking account of anything that is good; but a good conscience and a holy life is better than all. And because many seek knowledge rather than good living, therefore they go astray, and bear little or no fruit.

If you cannot recollect yourself continuously, do so once a day at least, in the morning or in the evening. In the morning make a resolution and in the evening examine yourself on what you have said this day, what you have done and thought, for in these things perhaps you have often offended God and those about you.

5. Be ofttimes mindful of the saying,(3) The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing. Strive, therefore, to turn away thy heart from the love of the things that are seen, and to set it upon the things that are not seen. For they who follow after their own fleshly lusts, defile the conscience, and destroy the grace of God.

I would rather feel contrition than know how to define it.

Not everyone can have the same devotion. One exactly suits this person, another that. Different exercises, likewise, are suitable for different times, some for feast days and some again for weekdays. In time of temptation we need certain devotions. For days of rest and peace we need others. Some are suitable when we are sad, others when we are joyful in the Lord.

Look at our fathers in the old days, living masterpieces as they are and shining examples of true religion; and see how feeble our own achievement is, almost nothing. Heaven help us, what is our life in comparison with theirs? Holy people these, true friends of Christ, that could go hungry and thirsty in God's service; cold and ill-clad, worn out with labors and vigils and fasting, with praying and meditating on holy things, with all the persecutions and insults they endured.