Spirituality Quotes

I'm not particularly in favor of doctrine or creed, ordination, the elevation of holy texts, the institution of church, or, for that matter, Christianity. Like most religions, it has irreconcilable shortcomings and an unforgivable history. What I do favor is the attempt to make sense of things by living within a story. The Christian story, for good or ill, is my inheritance.

~ Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

Spiritual literature can be a great aid to an aspirant, or it can be a terrible hindrance. If it is used to inspire practice, motivate compassion, ad nourish devotion, it serves a very valuable purpose. If scriptural study is used for mere intellectual understanding, for pride of accomplishment, or as a substitute for actual practice, then one is taking in too much mental food, which is sure to result in intellectual indigestion. (152)

~ Prem Prakash

What would you say to yourself if you could actually meet a younger you?

~ Doug Dillon

The physical world we live in is just the beginning.

~ Doug Dillon

Nothing will give you emotional laryngitis like living in close proximity to someone who refuses to listen. Having emotions but no voice chokes the life out of relationships.

~ Lysa Terkeurst

A nurse later told me that I was her ‘”One.” Meaning, I was her one story of hope to tell others who are facing similar odds against them.

~ Matthew J. Murphy

Only you can change your own world. No one else.

~ Nina Hrusa

We suddenly arrived in this very lost and strange city. Somewhere in the middle of the mountains. We didn't know where we are. We were just heading back to the sea. When we walked trough the forgotten city in silence, something inside us changed. We lost a bit of ourselves too and gained space for something new.

~ Nina Hrusa

Self care is any action you purposefully take to improve your physical, emotional or spiritual well being. Too often, we do not make time for sufficient self care because we’re too busy taking care of others. Life’s demands at home, in our community and at work can take our lives out of balance. Self care can be getting more rest, eating healthier food, spending more time in thoughtful reflection, being kinder to yourself, smiling more, playing, or engaging in any activity that renews you. By making time for self care, you prepare yourself to be your best so you can share your gifts with the world. You cannot serve from an empty vessel. © 2017 Eleanor Brownn eleanorbrownn.com

~ Eleanor Brownn

Compassion can be roughly defined in terms of a state of mind that is nonviolent, non-harming, and nonaggressive. It is a mental attitude based on the wish for others to be free of their suffering and is associated with a sense of commitment, responsibility, and respect towards others.

~ Dalai Lama

There is no future in a job. The only future is inside oneself. We look inside rather than outside. We become producer rather than consumers of other peoples’ production.

~ Stephen Covey

It was the ultimate celestial orgasm and I felt like a cup overflowing with plenty. The pulse of God moving through me brought such intense pleasure that I felt I might burst like the ripest berry in the sun.

~ Linda Cull

There is not a better time to start being the unique contribution that you are.

~ Monika Zands

What Is A Belief?

~ Maxime Daigle

As I align with the Universal Energy of love I feel fully supported.

~ Renae A. Sauter

The light of our souls is never extinguished, it can never be, as the eternal one abides within each and every heart forever

~ Mimi Novic

Meditators dream of attaining the single-pointed focus that young children experience naturally when they play. Spiritual aspirants long for the rapture that defines moments of pure delight.

~ Victor Shamas

The source and essence of all creation can be found everywhere. It resides equally in you, in me, and in all things. True wisdom is the fullest understanding of this essence--an understanding that can happen only when there is no separation between the knower and the known.

~ Victor Shamas

Knock, And He'll open the doorVanish, And He'll make you shine like the sunFall, And He'll raise you to the heavensBecome nothing, And He'll turn you into everything.

~ Jalaluddin Rumi

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light‐years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.

~ Carl Sagan

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed. The insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.

~ Albert Einstein

What has he found who has lost God?And what has he lost who has found God?

~ Ibn 'Ata'illah Al-Iskandari

Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.

~ John Paul Ii

Religion is for people who're afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who've already been there.

~ Vine Deloria Jr.

It is taboo in our society to criticize a persons religious faith... these taboos are offensive, deeply unreasonable, but worse than that, they are getting people killed. This is really my concern. My concern is that our religions, the diversity of our religious doctrines, is going to get us killed. I'm worried that our religious discourse- our religious beliefs are ultimately incompatible with civilization.

~ Sam Harris

The difference between theism and nontheism is not whether one does or does not believe in God. . . Theism is a deep-seated conviction that there's some hand to hold: if we just do the right things, someone will appreciate us and take care of us. . . Nontheism is relaxing with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the present moment without reaching for anything to protect ourselves.

~ Pema Chödrön

With a truly tragic delusion,” Carl Jung noted, “these theologians fail to see that it is not a matter of proving the existence of the light, but of blind people who do not know that their eyes could see. It is high time we realized that it is pointless to praise the light and preach it if nobody can see it. It is much more needful to teach people the art of seeing.

~ C.g. Jung

What we do in every other area of our lives (other than religion), is, rather than respect somebody's beliefs, we evaluate their reasons.

~ Sam Harris

Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships.

~ Robert M. Pirsig

Religion is for those who don't want to go to hell, and spirituality is for those who have already been there.

~ Elizabeth Gilbert

So what is the difference between someone who willfully indulges in sexual pleasures while ignoring the Bible on moral purity and someone who willfully indulges in the selfish pursuit of more and more material possessions while ignoring the Bible on caring for the poor? The difference is that one involves a social taboo in the church and the other involves the social norm in the church.

~ David Platt

If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, of self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology.

~ Karen Armstrong

He who does not reflect his life back to God in gratitude does not know himself.

~ Albert Schweitzer

Do not use your energy except for a cause more noble than yourself. Such a cause cannot be found except in Almighty God Himself: to preach the truth, to defend womanhood, to repel humiliation which your Creator has not imposed upon you, to help the oppressed. Anyone who uses his energy for the sake of the vanities of the world is like someone who exchanges gemstones for gravel. There is no nobility in anyone who lacks faith. The wise man knows that the only fitting price for his soul is a place in Paradise...

~ Ibn Hazm Al-Andalusi

These fools who haven't the slightest idea how to live the morals they espouse. These fools who proclaim themselves men of God, yet show not the slightest reverance to His word...Is it any different from a drunkard preaching temperance? A whore preaching modesty?

~ Seth Grahame-Smith

What I'm asking you to entertain is that there is nothing we need to believe on insufficient evidence in order to have deeply ethical and spiritual lives.

~ Sam Harris

Christians are usually sincere and well-intentioned people until you get to any real issues of ego, control power, money, pleasure, and security. Then they tend to be pretty much like everybody else. We often given a bogus version of the Gospel, some fast-food religion, without any deep transformation of the self; and the result has been the spiritual disaster of Christian countries that tend to be as consumer-oriented, proud, warlike, racist, class conscious, and addictive as everybody else-and often more so, I'm afraid.

~ Richard Rohr

Isn't this enough? Just this world? Just THIS?

~ Tim Minchin

Religion is, in reality, living. Our religion is not what we profess, or what we say, or what we proclaim; our religion is what we do, what we desire, what we seek, what we dream about, what we fantasize, what we think - all these things - twenty-four hours a day. One's religion, then, is ones life, not merely the ideal life but the life as it is actually lived. Religion is not prayer, it is not a church, it is not theistic, it is not atheistic, it has little to do with what white people call religion. It is our every act. If we tromp on a bug, that is our religion; if we experiment on living animals, that is our religion; if we cheat at cards, that is our religion; if we dream of being famous, that is our religion; if we gossip maliciously, that is our religion; if we are rude and aggressive, that is our religion. All that we do, and are, is our religion.

~ Jack D. Forbes

If faith is what you have to go on, if faith is the link between your beliefs and the world at large, your beliefs are very likely to be wrong. Beliefs can be right or wrong. If you believe you can fly, that belief is only true if indeed you can fly. Somebody who thinks he can fly, and is wrong about it, will eventually discover there's a problem with his view of the world.

~ Sam Harris