Quotes About Spirituality

God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself.

At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of the morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.

What seem our worst prayers may really be, in God's eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling. For these may come from a deeper level than feeling. God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when he catches us, as it were, off our guard.

For my own part, I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await others. I believe that many who find that "nothing happens" when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.

There have been men before ... who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God himself ... as if the good Lord had nothing to do but to exist. There have been some who were so preoccupied with spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ.

Even the best Christian that ever lived is not acting on his own steam--he is only nourishing or protecting a life he could never have acquired by his own efforts.

God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.

Which of the religions of the world gives to its followers the greatest happiness? While it lasts, the religion of worshipping oneself is the best.

You find out more about God from the Moral Law than from the universe in general just as you find out more about a man by listening to his conversation than by looking at a house he has built.

The passage into mystery always refreshes. If, when we work, we can look once a day upon the face of mystery, then our labor satisfies. We are lightened when our gifts rise from pools we cannot fathom. Then we know they are not a solitary egotism and they are inexhaustible.

The vast material displacements the machine has made in our physical environment are perhaps in the long run less important than its spiritual contributions to our culture.

The technical feat of escaping from the field of gravitation is trivial compared to man's escape from the brute unconsciousness of matter and the closed cycle of organic life.

A Love Supreme' is Coltrane's best-known and best-selling album.

It seems obvious when you think about it. We evolved in nature, and our spiritual feelings of oneness and worship come from nature. All of the world religions were founded in rural settings. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam were born in the desert, where the herding of sheep and the cultivation of grain

Not surprisingly, physical exercise and diet are key to healthy aging; the research proves that beyond any doubt. But serving others, maintaining healthy relationships, being in nature, and having an active spiritual life—topics central to this book—are equally important. Inner and outer aging are close partners. Until we can find the inner enjoyment of which Suzuki spoke, exercise and diet alone will not suffice to make us content.

the experience of aging is itself a doorway to spiritual practice, one that transcends any particular religion or faith.

Spiritual practice is more about questions than answers, more about searching than finding, more about effort than accomplishment.

But why is that so? These days many people feel disconnected from the religion of their childhood. I know many people who think of Sunday morning as an ideal time to surf news sites, update their Facebook page, and catch up on their e-mails. At the same time, the latest Pew religion research polls show that millions of people are interested in spiritual matters, though they are adherents of no particular religion.

Like all ardent agnostics, Martin was a religious man.

The urge to reincarnate while still alive is near universal.

You and I are but specks of that rhythmic urge which is Brahma, which is Allah, which is God.

One does not become an atheist out of a desire for hassle-free Sunday mornings. People come to atheism because they have a problem with organized religion - usually a problem they consider to be of moral urgency.

The best thing of all is God is with us.

Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.