Quotes About Presence

Let there be nothing within thee that is not very beautiful and very gentle, and there will be nothing without thee that is not beautiful and softened by the spell of thy presence.

To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the making of bread.

Tu proponi il tuo sguardo alla realtà. Se non proponi te stessa, proponi una menzogna, un'astrazione.

Allora, come lo si guarda? Lo si guarda guardando il permanere della sua persona nel tempo e nello spazio, cioè la memoria di Lui. Si chiama memoria il contenuto tangibile, sensibile, visibile di una cosa che è incominciata nel passato e rimane anche adesso.

Non è una «cosa» la grazia, la grazia è una presenza;

Only an idiot would fail to see God in a meal!

In the presence of their love I sensed my lonliness, and I understood for a moment, clearly, that deep and basic human desire for companionship at depth.

That's all that faith is, the knowledge that the greater thing is with you. That's all the faith you need. The knowledge that you are not the greater thing.

With her make-up-free complexion and nondescript brown hair gathered in a scrappy up-do, she looks like someone for whom there are more important things than being thought pretty. She might be an academic, or an assistant in the better sort of a bookshop. But there's something about her—a stillness, a fixity of gaze—that tells another story.

You're all murdering life...You're all trying to change yourselves, all trying to change what is, and thus you're never actually living what is. You're killing who you are every day of your lives by not being who you are...where you are.

Religious experience involves an encounter with the holy, the mystery of the totally other that opens like a chasm before humans in unexpected ways, making impossible the denial of its presence.

While we have more scientific knowledge of the universe than any people ever had, it is not the type of knowledge that leads to an intimate presence within a meaningful universe.… The difficulty is that with the rise of the modern sciences we began to think of the universe as a collection of objects rather than as a communion of subjects.

Our hands imbibe like roots, so I place them on what is beautiful in this world. —Francis of Assisi

Contentment does not lie around the next corner. It is not waiting for us on the other side of today's difficulty, nor is it lost with yesterday. Contentment is where God is, and God is with us today.

There was no confusion of our bodies. I knew which arm was his and which mine, and which leg, and which shoulder. I did not lose track and kiss my own arm, or whatever came near my mouth. THe smallest motion did not immediately lead to another motion. It was not endless, I did not go more and more deeply into my body and his body as though to go as far as possible from my mind, and his mind, so conscious, so unrelenting. It did not end while it was still in the middle.

Art is not in some far-off place.

The rooms of his apartment were full with the dog home again, convalescing. He was satisfied to know, even when she was out of sight, that somewhere in the apartment she was sleeping or eating or sitting watchfully. It was family, he guessed, more or less. Did most people want a house of living things at night, to know that in the dark around them other warm bodies slept? Such a house could even be the whole world.

E tranquilidade era aquilo, aquela quietude sob a qual a vida palpitava

Mere philanthropy and humanity ... are not religion. There must also be piety. The soul must live in the divine presence; must inhale the Spirit of God; must utter its contrition, its weaknesses, its wants, and its thanks-givings to its Heavenly Father.

That God is in nature, filling it with himself, as the spirit fills the body with its presence, so that all nature forces are but expressions of the divine will, and all nature laws but habits of divine action -- this is the doctrine of Fatherhood.

Solemn faces do not make sacred hours.

The experience of personal communication with God is as universal as the human race. Appreciation of the divine presence is more common than appreciation of art, music, or literature. Men and women who do not respond to music, see no beauty in pictures, never read, and could not understand literature if it were read to them, yet find comfort in sorrow, strength in temptation, courage in danger, and added joy in their enjoyments from the sense of a Father's presence.

When we feel unworthy in His presence it's because we glimpse His holiness.

Time and a hundred daily distractions can slowly turn us away from God before we even realize it's happening. But I urge you to keep reading your Bible. Jesus said if you seek Him you will find Him, if you search for Him with all your heart. He's with us everywhere we go, Anna. He's not just in a church building.