Quotes About Spirituality

Father Lenar Hoyt stepped away from the wall where he had been leaning, raised his right hand with thumb and little finger touching, three fingers raised, the gesture somehow including himself as well as those before him, and said softly, 'Ego te absolvo.

Dad," said Rachel, "I'm going to ask you a question I've asked about a million times since I was two. Do you believe in God?" Sol had not smiled. He had no choice but to give her the answer he had given her a million times. "I'm waiting to," he said.

I realized at that instant just how surely the affirmation of demons or the summoning of Satan somehow can affirm the reality of their mystic antithesis—the God of Abraham.

It is at times like this that I have the sense… the slightest sense… of what a sacrifice it must have been for the Son of God to condescend to become the Son of Man.

Father thought that the first stage of human happiness was a 'fellowship with essence

Sort of like the Grim Reaper, but with a penchant for sticking souls on a giant thorn tree Ã¢â'¬Â¦ while the people's souls are still in their bodies." King

As a flame blown out by the wind Goes to rest and cannot be defined So the wise man freed from individuality Goes to rest and cannot be defined. Gone beyond all images— Gone beyond the power of words.

Do you believe in God?' Sol had not smiled. He had no choice but to give her the answer he had given her a million times. 'I'm waiting to,' he said.

You've had your chance, Richard. Scott's a big boy now, and if he wants to spend a few years chanting mantras and giving away his lunch money to some bearded horse's ass with a Jehovah Complex, well, you've had your chance to help him, so what do you say you just get on with your screwed-up life, Richard E. Baedecker

To see and feel one's beloved naked for the first time is one of life's pure, irreducible epiphanies. If there is a true religion in the universe, it must include that truth of contact or be forever hollow.

feels the same about life - that involvement with it is like the Catholic Communion only the World is the Host, and it must be chewed.

One of my favorite things was from the Tattireeya Upanishads. It goes—'I am this world, and I eat this world. Who knows this, knows.

I'm curious how someone...finds God, or solace, or peace or whatever it is he finds out here alone...while he's reciting words. Is it just a matter of believing what you say?

Do you know the three great spiritual questions? he asked...Who am I?...Why am I here?...And how shall I live?

ritual that allows me to enter a contemplative place—a place in which I might come upon something wordless and profound. Maybe the rituals are a doorway to prayer. But I spent most of my life confusing them with prayer itself.

Wherever God erects a house of prayer, The Devil always builds a chapel there; And 'twill be found upon examination The latter has the largest congregation.

Sure we are all made by some secret Power, who formed the earth and sea, the air and sky. 

Thus I liv'd mighty comfortably, my Mind being entirely composed by resigning to the Will of God, and throwing my self wholly upon the Disposal of his Providence. This made my Life better than sociable, for when I began to regret the want of Conversation, I would ask my self whether thus conversing mutually with my own Thoughts, and, as I hope I may say, with even God himself by Ejaculations, was not better than the utmost Enjoyment of humane Society in the World.

Wherever God erects a house of prayer the Devil always builds a chapel there; And t'will be found, upon examination, the latter has the largest congregation. — Defoe's The True-Born Englishman, 1701

Great spiritual teachers, like Buddha and Jesus, have touched their disciples' hearts by speaking in the language of emotion, teaching in parables, fables, and stories. Indeed, religious symbol and ritual makes little sense from the rational point of view; it is couched in the vernacular of the heart.

Lessening the grip of the self, always a major goal of meditation practitioners, has been oddly ignored by meditation researchers, who perhaps understandably focus instead on more popular benefits like relaxation and better health.

If the heart wanders or is distracted," advised Francis de Sales (1567–1622), a Catholic saint, "bring it back to the point quite gently . . . and even if you did nothing during the whole of your hour but bring your heart back . . . though it went away every time, your hour would be very well-employed.

There is much to be said for the constructive contribution of suffering to creative and spiritual life; suffering can temper the soul.

God told Abraham to leave his home and set for journey and to have faith of being taken care of. Not just an external journey, it was also a journey upon into oneself.