Mystery Religions Quotes

The greatest barrier I have met is the almost total absence from the minds of my audience of any sense of sin... The early Christian preachers could assume in their hearers, whether Jews, Metuentes, or Pagans, a sense of guilt. (That this was common among Pagans is shown by the fact that both Epicureanism and the mystery religions both claimed, though in different ways, to assuage it.) Thus the Christian message was in those days unmistakably the Evangelium, the Good News. It promised healing to those who knew they were sick. We have to convince our hearers of the unwelcome diagnosis before we can expect them to welcome the news of the remedy.

The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man, the roles are quite reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge; if God should have a reasonable defense for being the god who permits war, poverty, and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God's acquittal. But the important thing is that man is on the bench and God is in the dock. ~ C.S. Lewis

He [Aristotle] pointed out that people who had become initiates in the various mystery religions were not required to learn any facts 'but to experience certain emotions and to be put in a certain disposition.' Hence his famous literary theory that tragedy effected a purification (katharsis) of the emotions of terror and pity that amounted to an experience of rebirth. ~ Karen Armstrong

The mystery religions were instituted in order to protect the marvels of the commonplace from those who would devalue them. ~ Peter Redgrove

Darwin's theory of evolution is the last of the great nineteenth-century mystery religions. And as we speak it is now following Freudians and Marxism into the Nether regions, and I'm quite sure that Freud, Marx and Darwin are commiserating one with the other in the dark dungeon where discarded gods gather. ~ David Berlinski

The Gnostic's passionate adoration of Sophia was known as philosophia – the love of Sophia – a mystical communication with divine feminine wisdom, having little to do with the strictly intellectual, most often masculine, pursuit currently labeled "philosophy. ~ Zeena Schreck

Transmogrification," Langdon said. "The vestiges of pagan religion in Christian symbology are undeniable. Egyptian sun disks became the halos of Catholic saints. Pictograms of Isis nursing her miraculously conceived son Horus became the blueprint for our modern images of the Virgin Mary nursing Baby Jesus. And virtually all the elements of the Catholic ritual - the miter, the altar, the doxology, and communion, the act of "God-eating" - were taken directly from earlier pagan mystery religions. ~ Dan Brown

Once the spiritual journey begins, we leave the circumference of the circle and begin to travel along the radius of divine wisdom to reach the Center. This is a journey in and through the self of the human being. The End is the experience and knowledge of yourself as infinite eternal spirit. Along the way we leave behind every identification of gender, family, nationality, race, and religion, and understand ourselves as the Universal Human Being, the Child of God. In the past, the Greek mystery religions called this Logos; the Christian Gnostics called it Christos; the Sufis call it Insani Kamil.

Some have experienced the inbreath of Holy Spirit - whether through a murshid, a realized being, a community of lovers of God, a living tradition - and this has initiated a process of transformation that, if nurtured and protected, will lead to the actualization of the divine in the human being. Such a person will relate from the Divine in himself or herself to the Divine in another. ~ Kabir Helminski

Godliness, as well as the doctrine of our faith, is a mystery. ~ William Gurnall

My religion encompasses all religions. I believe in God, I believe in the universe. I believe you are god, I believe I am god; I believe the earth is god and the universe is god. We're all god. ~ Ray Bradbury

What type of flavor do you think I prefer?"
She cocked her head. "The subtle, the delicately made. You're the type of person who wants the mystery inside the flower bud."
I can still appreciate the different nuances of the stronger flavors." He studied the orchid in the center of the table. "With the very delicate, you sculpt something down to such a whisper of form, there's nothing else it can be. It's in strength you find surprises, variation. ~ Joey W. Hill

There is a majesty and mystery in nature, take her as you will. The essence of poetry comes breathing to a mind that feels from every province of her empire. ~ Thomas Carlyle

It's just because I have picked a little about mystics that I have no use for mystagogues. Real mystics don't hide mysteries, they reveal them. They set a thing up in broad daylight, and when you've seen it it's still a mystery. But the mystagogues hide a thing in darkness and secrecy, and when you find it, it's a platitude. ~ G.K. Chesterton

The intelligence displayed by many dumb animals approaches so closely to human intelligence that it is a mystery. The animals see and hear and love and fear and suffer. They use their organs far more faithfully than many human beings use theirs. They manifest sympathy and tenderness toward their companions in suffering. Many animals show an affection for those who have charge of them, far superior to the affection shown by some of the human race. They form attachments for man which are not broken without great suffering to them. ~ Ellen G. White

To find and keep love today, you have to learn the mystery of seduction. ~ Lebo Grand

One of the biggest problems is religion's misuse of the Law. This has done tremendous damage to God's image. ~ Paul Silway

Artists frequently hide the steps that lead to their masterpieces. They want their work and their career to be shrouded in the mystery that it all came out at once. It's called hiding the brushstrokes, and those who do it are doing a disservice to people who admire their work and seek to emulate them. If you don't get to see the notes, the rewrites, and the steps, it's easy to look at a finished product and be under the illusion that it just came pouring out of someone's head like that. People who are young, or still struggling, can get easily discouraged, because they can't do it like they thought it was done. An artwork is a finished product, and it should be, but I always swore to myself that I would not hide my brushstrokes. ~ Matthew Weiner

I long for the old days of Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn, stars who had real glamour and mystique. We only knew so much about their lives; the rest was a mystery. ~ Pixie Lott

It's not just what Christian fiction lacks I appreciate - it's what it offers. The variety is vast: contemporary, historical, suspense, mysteries, adventure, young adult, romance, fantasy, science fiction. ~ Randy Alcorn

Being in a state of mystery seems to be my calling. ~ Luci Shaw

To know objects only through dissecting and cataloguing them is to miss their full reality. It is to fall asleep amidst the mystery and to become numb to the wonder of this great Earth. ~ John Daido Loori

A person without regrets is called a corpse. ~ Lois Greiman

The resurrection is not merely important to the historic Christian faith; without it, there would be no Christianity. It is the singular doctrine that elevates Christianity above all other world religions. ~ Adrian Rogers

The moon, serene and detached in a cloudless sky, did what she could, though so far off, to help them in their quest; till her hour came and she sank earthwards reluctantly, and left them, and mystery once more held field and river. ~ Kenneth Grahame

Human life lay foul before men's eyes, crushed to the dust beneath religion's weight. ~ Lucretius

The story line of Kings is so overcrowded, it's hard to keep track. The narrator complains, there's so much going on, Solomon can't love God "wholeheartedly." This is a crucial word. The new Jerusalem opens up a whole new layer of human problems. We are in a fluid world, full of lush possibilities. Religions, jobs, marriages, all forms of life feel like open questions. In this atmosphere, can anybody be "wholehearted" about anything? Cosmopolitan culture, when it thrives, is scary. But it is also thrilling, and the people love it: "Judah and Israel prospered, as many as the sand on the sea; they ate and drank and were happy. ~ Anonymous

Quoting geneticists, Guy Murcia says we're all family. You have at least a million relatives as close as tenth cousin, and no one on Earth is further removed than your fiftieth cousin. Murcia also describes out kinship though an analysis of how deeply we share the air. With each breath, you take into your body 10 sextillion atoms, and-owing to the wind's ceaseless circulation- over a year's time you have intimate relations with oxygen molecules exhaled by every person alive, as well as everyone who ever lived. (The Seven Mysteries of Life) ~ Rob Brezsny

Since all social orders and hierarchies are imagined, they are all fragile, and the larger the society, the more fragile it is. The crucial historical role of religion has been to give superhuman legitimacy to these fragile structures. Religions assert that our laws are not the result of human caprice, but are ordained by an absolute and supreme authority. This helps place at least some fundamental laws beyond challenge, thereby ensuring social stability. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

My mother believed in all superstitions, plus she made some up. ~ Donald E. Westlake

When you don't crave increase, you become a mystery ~ Sunday Adelaja

Nobody should be a mystery intentionally. Unintentionally is mysterious enough. ~ Saul Bellow

I can relax with bums because I am a bum. I don't like laws, morals, religions, rules. I don't like to be shaped by society. ~ Charles Bukowski

Beware. Those with the least amount of authority exercise it the most often. ~ Peggy Kopman-Owens

I have read all of James Patterson's Books except for the last 5.I have over 80 of his books. ~ Bridget Of Sweden

A city like London is sociable in a sense that there are people gathering in bars and restaurants, concerts and lectures. Yet you can partake of all these experiences and never say hello to anyone new. And one of the things that all religions do is take groups of strangers into a space and say it is OK to talk to each other. ~ Alain De Botton

It seems to me that you have two options: hide the fact that anything happened, or hide the fact that you had anything to do with it. ~ Keigo Higashino

Science fiction transported me in an almost metaphysical way. I had the feeling that I was part of the great contemporary mystery, a human being, part of a global species, a planetary consciousness facing the stars. ~ Jean Giraud

There was never anybody before you," she said. "I just wanted to say that. And when I did what I do, and it opened a crack in me like it did last night, there was nobody there to hold on to me. I didn't want anyone to hold on to me. Until you. And I got through and I got by, and it was okay. But I think, maybe, if I'd just kept getting through and getting by, I'd have come to a point where I couldn't do it anymore. And if I couldn't do it anymore, it'd be the end of me, Roarke. So when you hold on to me, You're helping me stand up, one more time. And the dead, you're standing for them, too. I just wanted to say that." She went out quickly, and left him staring at her. ~ J.D. Robb

You're a real cowboy."
He laughed. "You're just now realizing that? ~ B. J. Daniels

Always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.
quoted by Evan Osnos to describe the rapidly urbanising China ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Sometimes you can't prevent things from happening, and once they're done, you can't change the past. There is a way to deal with the pain, though, because you always control your response. You cry, if you need to. You hurt for a while. But then you look for a way to make a difference. ~ Carlene O'Neil