quotations about spirituality
Man is a spirit, and spiritual things are not foreign and strange to him, but he runs away from his own light, he darkens his own windows, he denies himself that he may deny God, he scoffs at what he really fears and knows to be sacred and true. He tries to believe in the world and its ways and to sell himself for its pottage.
HENRY WHITNEY BELLOWS
Twenty-Four Sermons Preached in All Souls Church, New York
The contemplation of celestial things will make a man both speak and think more sublimely and magnificently when he descends to human affairs.
CICERO
attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
Intimacy is a core belief that deep within me lives an essence that not even a Madison Avenue marketing firm or political pollster can reach. Spirituality recognizes the link between the two. The depth of spiritual expression within our religious life is the opening of our life to the beyond and a hunger from the within. Growing in our faith isn't about making our life a little bit better. It is the audacious belief that God can make us anew!
DANIEL CHRISTIAN
"The Journey: Spiritual not religious", Ukiah Daily Journal, July 27, 2017
Spirituality is a brave search for the truth about existence, fearlessly peering into the mysterious nature of life.
ELIZABETH LESSER
The New American Spirituality
You can read books without ever stepping into a library; and practice spirituality without ever going to a temple.
ANTHONY DE MELLO
One Minute Wisdom
How abundantly do spiritual beings display the powers that belong to them!
CONFUCIUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Spirituality without morality is rootless.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
If a man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit.
THOMAS MERTON
Thoughts in Solitude
Spirituality manifests in countless outer forms ... underneath these outward forms, there is a common longing for the sacred, a universal desire to touch and celebrate the mystery of life. It is in the depths of the soul that one discovers the essential and universal dimensions of spirituality.
DAVID N. ELKINS
Beyond Religion
If, then, you would lead the spiritual life, go downwards as well as upwards. Feel your unity with the sinner as well as with the saint. For the only thing that makes you divine is the Spirit that lives in every human heart alike, in all equally dwelling, and there is no difference in the divinity of the Spirit, but only in the stage of its manifestation.
ANNIE BESANT
lecture delivered in the smaller Queen's Hall, London, "Psychism and Spirituality", June 16, 1907
Logic is about looking at the grooves. Spirituality is about hearing the music.
GLEB TSIPURSKY
"Is Spirituality Irrational", Patheos, July 11, 2017
Spirituality is a consciousness of God's presence within us. A consciousness that God is right here. Now.
GLORIA WADE-GAYLES
My Soul Is a Witness
On the spiritual path, all the dreck and misery is transformed, maybe not that same day, but still transformed into spiritual fuel or insight.
ANNE LAMOTT
interview, beliefnet
I don't understand why people insist on pitting concepts of evolution and creation against each other. Why can't they see that spiritualism and science are one? That bodies evolve and souls evolve and the universe is a fluid package that marries them both in a wonderful package called a human being. What's wrong with that idea?
GARTH STEIN
The Art of Racing in the Rain
Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
journal entry, July 21, 1836
Spirituality practiced in the state of activity is incomparably superior to that practiced in a state of withdrawal.
ANTHONY DE MELLO
One Minute Wisdom
If spirituality is like a swimming pool, then getting wet is required. Not everyone has to jump in the deep-end. We first start by sticking our toe in, then our foot, then we run back, then next time we are up to our knees.
DANIEL CHRISTIAN
"The Journey: Spiritual not religious", Ukiah Daily Journal, July 27, 2017
God generally gives spiritual blessings and deliverances as He does temporal.
ROBERT SOUTH
"Watchfulness and Prayer, a Security from Temptation", Sermons Preached Upon Several Occasions
Spirituality is much wider than any particular religion, and in the larger ideas of it that are now coming on us even the greatest religion becomes no more than a broad sect or branch of the one universal religion, by which we shall understand in the future man's seeking for the eternal, the divine, the greater self, the source of unity and his attempt to arrive at some equation, some increasing approximation of the values of human life with the eternal and the divine values.
SRI AUROBINDO
The Renaissance in India
Spirituality is a broad concept, transcending religious boundaries. By virtue of being human, all people are spiritual, regardless of whether or how they participate in religious observance.
MARGARET A. BURKHARDT
Spirituality: Living Our Connectedness