Religion Spirituality Quotes

We are the Gods, who create Gods, and then we turn into worshipers seeking comfort and solace from those Gods that we create. And we do all this, in order to have as much soothing existence as possible. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Resurrection" does not mean resumption of previous existence but entry into a different kind of existence. ~ Marcus J. Borg

There is another reason also why the soul has traveled safely in this obscurity; it has suffered: for the way of suffering is safer, and also more profitable, than that of rejoicing and of action. In suffering God gives strength, but in action and in joy the soul does but show its own weakness and imperfections. And in suffering, the soul practices and acquires virtue, and becomes pure, wiser, and more cautious. ~ San Juan De La Cruz

One must die to an old way of being in order to enter a new way of being... salvation is resurrection to a new way of being here and now. ~ Marcus J. Borg

Challenge everything for the Truth. Only those who challenge everything for the Truth are the blessed ones. ~ Osho

In this walk to freedom, we must, without question obtain hearts of honesty and a tongue of truthfulness. ~ The Tru Sum

...atheism leaves no room for excuses... ~ Travis Culliton

They say in time all things will pass. But before they do, they last . . . for just a little while. ~ Jess Fulton

What I want to tell you as you read these stories is that I both found and lost God a hundred times over. In fact, maybe I've never actually found God at all, but imagining that I have indeed found something so much larger and more beautiful than I can explain is more often enough for me. ~ Ashley Mae Hoiland

I will never cut it as a Quaker - I cannot find it in me to renounce all violence, not with two daughters under my protection - but I do love their silent hour, which in my case invariably evolved into a self-scouring meditation on the idea that the busy life is not the full life. ~ Michael Perry

Faith for her was habit and family loyalty, a reverence for the Bible which was also literary, admiration for her mother and father. And then that thrilling quiet of which she had never felt any need to speak. ~ Marilynne Robinson

We were the church. As the New Testament instructed. When it was time for Sunday morning meeting, we convened in private homes. To raise a structure and call it a church was the worldly way. A church made of hands was soon cluttered with altars and crucifixes, and was thereupon idolatrous. These false churches, they were not walking in Truth. They were whistling off to Hades. This was a shame, because I knew some real nice Lutherans. ~ Michael Perry

Gratitude is an overflowing joy. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

A priest once quoted to me the Roman saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh at each other across the altar. I always laugh at the altar, be it Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist, because real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter. ~ Alan W. Watts

Just because I'm choosy about what I want - in this case, enlightenment, or peace, instead of money or prestige or fame or any of those things - doesn't mean I'm not as egotistical and self-seeking as everybody else. ~ J.D. Salinger

Spirituality, for someone like me who doesn't believe in God, in the existence of soul, in something after-death, is the capacity to love and to understand others – humans, and animals – is the capacity to not do to others what you don't want other people to do to you. ~ Margherita Hack

I considered not getting up, but recognized the pain of staying down was worse than the pain of attempting to stand. ~ Reba Riley

Let us not project our own spiritual limitations onto the modern world, for it is not the world which prevents us from being religious. The kind of world we live in shapes the manner and mode of our religiousness ~ Harvey Cox

Be brave. Be free from philosophies, prophets and holy lies. Go deep into your feelings and explore the mystery of your body, mind and soul. You will find the truth. ~ Amit Ray

Time and time again, technology, along with advances in neuroscience and even genetics, seems to be validating things our ancestors knew all along by revealing exactly what happens physiologically during meditation and how regular practice can improve our bodies and minds. ~ Benjamin W Decker

Follow both: the call of the mountain of enlightenment and the temptation of the valley of experience. No mountain without valley, no valley without mountain. ~ Stefan Emunds

We are members of God's family. One faith, one hope and one baptism. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I want a God that makes me twirl.' I jumped off the couch. I untucked and unbuttoned my shirt so it would flow like a robe. 'Like this. I can do this for God.' I held my hands out. I twirled and twirled and twirled. 'Look,' I said. 'Look. ~ Rabih Alameddine

Men are not gentle and graceful beings solely oriented towards good. They are physical, coarse, contradictory, stretched between desires and temptations. In an unnatural wish to make them sinless and infallible, we suddenly realize that we have obtained bloodless, sentimental and false personalities incapable of both good and evil. Separating them from mother Earth, we separate them from life, and where is no life, there is no virtue either. ~ Alija Izetbegovic

Once the wounded child awakens to its human self, a primal scream emerges from the depths of denial like the Kraken released from its underwater prison. ~ Christopher Zzenn Loren

God may sometimes laugh at our plans. But if they are based on a Heavenly and eternal perspective, He will always support us. On His timetable, not ours. ~ Paul Turk

There can never be a conflict between science and religion, once you understand the spiritual knack of the human brain circuits. ~ Abhijit Naskar

I believe in God, who controls every sacred-event. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The best religion or practice is the one that makes us better. (42) ~ Jean-Yves Leloup

A basket of ripe fruit is holier than any prayer book. ~ Marty Rubin

Meditating on the nature and dignity of prayer can cause saying at least one thing to God: Lord, teach us to pray! ~ Karl Rahner

The Sovereign LORD is a mighty KING. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Orthodoxy as right belief will cost us little; indeed, it will allow us to sit back with our Pharisaic doctrines, guarding the 'truth' with the purity of our interpretations. But orthodoxy, as believing in the right way, as bringing love to the world around us and within us … that will cost us everything. For to live by that sword, as we all know, is to die by it. ~ Peter Rollins

The castle's chapel has been remade. The glass-and-gold chandelier still floats in the center of the room, the wires holding it up too thin to be seen by candlelight. All these electric miracles. The windows depicting the angels praising Our Lady have remained intact, as have the panels to Saint Theresa and Saint Jerome. The others - and the enameled paintings in the cupola - have been replaced and reimagined according to the New Scripture. There is the Almighty speaking to the Matriarch Rebecca in the form of a dove. There is the Prophet Deborah proclaiming the Holy Word to the disbelieving people. There - although she protested - is Mother Eve, the symbolic tree behind her, receiving the message from the Heavens and extending her hand filled with lightning. In the center of the cupola is the hand with the all-seeing eye at its heart. That is the symbol of God, Who watches over each of us, and Whose mighty hand is outstretched to both the powerful and the enslaved. ~ Naomi Alderman

In God's providence we have four gospels! For Jesus Christ is too great and glorious a person to be captured by one author or one perspective. ~ John R.W. Stott

I know that you are wise. When you hear a true story, there is a part of you that responds to it regardless of art, regardless of evidence ... You believe that the story is true, because you responded to it from that sense of truth deep within you. But that sense of truth does not respond to a story's factuality ... [rather] to a story's causality - whether it faithfully shows the way the universe functions. ~ Orson Scott Card

Those who might be tempted to give way to despair should realize that nothing accomplished in this order can ever be lost, that confusion, error and darkness can win the day only apparently and in a purely ephemeral way, that all partial and transitory disequilibrium must perforce contribute towards the greater equilibrium of the whole, and that nothing can ultimately prevail against the power of truth. ~ Rene Guenon

If you love someone, you will want to understand them and accept them as they grow and change; similarly, loving yourself involves a never-ending process of self-understanding and self-acceptance through life's ups and downs...we are finally coming to understand that love for neighbor and love for self naturally lead to love for the earth...if you love your neighbor as yourself, you want both them and you to be able to breathe, so you need to love clean fresh air...you want them and you to be able to drink, so you need to love pure water in all its forms...you want them and you to be be able to eat, so you need to care about the climate...." (p. 59-60) ~ Brian McLaren

When we look closely, not only at what Jesus taught but at how he went about disseminating his message, time and again we find that what he was preaching was the gospel of a partnership society. He rejected the dogma that high-ranking men - in Jesus' day, priests, nobles, rich men, and kings - are the favorites of God. He mingled freely with women, thus openly rejecting the male-supremacist norms of his time. And in sharp contrast to the views of later Christian sages, who actually debated whether woman has an immortal soul, Jesus did not preach the ultimate dominator message: that women are spiritually inferior to men. ~ Riane Eisler

Beware of a man who can clear their conscience of any immoral act by simply confessing and asking forgiveness from their imaginary friend. ~ Sam Eriakha

If a religious book makes you harbor ill thoughts about those with differing faith, then, you're reading the wrong crap of late. ~ Fakeer Ishavardas

I do not judge the individual based on their belief. If I were to, then I would, undoubtedly, be no better than the (religious) system that I frown upon. ~ Travis Culliton

In Eckankar, we teach Soul Travel. This is one of the aspects of the teachings of the Holy Spirit. Soul Travel simply means the ability to travel as Soul. ~ Harold Klemp

Currently spirituality is at an ebb in the more advanced technological societies. This in part because memes that validate spiritual order tend to lose their credibility with time, and need to be recast in new forms again and again. At present we are living in an era when many of the basic tenents of Christianity, which has supported Western spiritual values for almost two thousand yearsm have come into conflict with the conclusions of science and philosophy. While religions have lost much of their power, science and technology have not been able to generate convincing value systems to replace them. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

If anything or anyone removes peace from you or inflicts confusion and judgment on you, this thing or person is not of God regardless of whether or not that person or thing has wrapped itself/himself in the wrapping paper with God's face printed all over it. Don't stop believing in God but stop believing in that person, in that thing. The wrapping paper with God's face stamped all over it isn't really God. ~ C. JoyBell C.

One thoughtful Evangelical pastor said he approved of using the massacre for recruitment, as long as it was truly done for God. He bristled at "spiritual headhunters, just racking up another scalp. The Bible was never meant to be a club," he said. "If I'm using it as a weapon, that's really sad. ~ Dave Cullen

A glorious life is a spark of divinity. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

We put our hope and trust in the living God. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The jamaat was an almost silly mish-mash of people: Rude Dawud's pork-pie hat poking up here, a jalab-and-turban there, Jehangir's big Mohawk rising from a sea of kufis, Amazing Ayyub still with no shirt, girls scattered throughout – some in hejab, some not and Rabeya in punk-patched burqa doing her thing. But in its randomness it was gorgeous, reflecting an Islam I felt could not happen anywhere else ... If Islam was to be saved, it would be saved by the crazy ones: Jehangir and Rabeya and Fasiq and Dawud and Ayyub and even Umar. ~ Michael Muhammad Knight

You must never deprive the people of their belief in
the power of the gods, and you must never deprive yourself of it either. ~ Karen Essex

If you stay on this path as long as I have, you'll soon learn that the road to providence leads right through perdition. And along that road, the devil's waiting to collect his pound of flesh. ~ Jay Grewal

I am more afraid that this people have so much confidence in their leaders that they will not inquire for themselves of God whether they are led by him. I am fearful they settle down in a state of blind self security. Let every man and woman know, by the whispering of the Spirit of God to themselves, whether their leaders are walking in the path the Lord dictates, or not. ~ Brigham Young

The sooner the jihadis go up to their imagined #heaven, the sooner our earth would be a heaven. ~ Fakeer Ishavardas

There are thousands of dialects and hundreds of languages spoken in religious countries. Do you
think God is a human who understands all that?
It's your intentions which make your prayers successful.
Do you pray out of fear, lack, or despair - or
out of positive expectations, gratitude, and love? ~ Maddy Malhotra

The call to the creative life is a call to dignity, to a life of vulnerability and adventure and the call to a life that exquisite excitement and indeed ecstasy will often visit. ~ John O'Donohue

Man created religion in order to avoid god. ~ Avaah Rayner

To understand Jesus when he stated that he was the way, the truth and the life, one must first recognize his manner of a walk and believe firmly that his manner is true. ~ The Tru Sum

A soul in a state of grace need fear nothing from devils, for they are so cowardly that they feel from the gaze of a child ~ St-Therese De Lisieux

Christianity is a way of life - not a dogma! ~ Stefan Emunds

If you are religious, pray. If you are philosophical, contemplate. If you are spiritual, meditate. ~ John K. Brown

What is the difference between my view and the classical Christian perspective? I am convinced that there are not multiple comings and multiple returns of Christ, but only one decisive coming at the end of the world, which includes the resurrection, the rapture, and his appearance in the sky! ~ Eli Of Kittim

Any type of violence is against God, against religion, against spirituality, against humanity, and against nature. Maturity comes only through non-violence, love, and all-inclusiveness. ~ Amit Ray

I wanted tolerance. I wanted everybody to leave everybody else alone, regardless of their religious beliefs, regardless of their political affiliation. I wanted people to like each other. Hatred seemed, to me, the product of ignorance. I was tired of biblical ethic being used as a tool with which to judge people rather than heal them. I was tired of Christian leaders using biblical principles to protect their power, to draw a line in the sand separating the good army from the bad one. The truth is I had met the enemy in the woods and discovered they were not the enemy. I wondered whether any human being could be an enemy of God. ~ Donald Miller

Women are understood to have an advantage when it comes to embodiment as by their very nature they are considered to be closer to their bodies, more available to them. So here we have a turning of the tides: rather than the attunement to the body being an obstacle and a curse, it now becomes a spiritual advantage and a way of advancement. ~ Meghan Don

Our species is angry on a deep level. We know something has been wrong for a long time. We are tired of being thrown the scraps. This is primal, guttural; the scream of an exhausted humanity who will not take no for an answer. ~ Christopher Zzenn Loren

imagine the desert
mothers, with hair tangled
tighter than their theology
and breasts that flowed milk
and mystic wisdom. they
knew how to draw the singing
sigils in the sand, how to dig
rough and bitten fingers
into desiccated dirt for water
to wet the lips of their young.

women of hips and heft, who
learned how to burn
beneath the wild and searing
sun, who made loud love
against the star-flecked threat
of night, who knew that strength
is not always a matter of muscle.

imagine your ancestresses,
the prophetesses of the arid
lands, before these starched
traditions and pews too hard
to pray from, who bled true
ritual and birthed their own fierce
souls at creation's crowning -- ~ Beth Morey

How many races have been dehumanized in the name of evolution and scientific race theories? Is a bomb a religious or a scientific invention? ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

To be a human being is to be a child of God ~ M. Bartolo-Abela

I cannot now evaluate the events that, at the end of those thirty years, made me discover the necessity of religious belief. I was not reasoned into my disposition. Though I admire the structured thought of theology, it is to religion no more than counterpoint exercises are to music. ~ Igor Stravinsky

You know, it's a sad and unfortunate state of affairs that you have to live in a world where eight-year-olds refuse to believe in anything that they cannot touch or measure, and anyone who happens to see a thing that is invisible to most people is immediately branded a lunatic. ~ Caitlin R. Kiernan

For a lot of people, God lives in their Bibles and they open it when they feel He has something to say. ~ Stanley Victor Paskavich

Don't try to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist; use it to be a better whatever-you-already-are. ~ Sukhraj S. Dhillon

Total Enlightenment is 'Vision without Purpose'. ~ Stanley Victor Paskavich

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

I believe in something transcendent, but I've yet to meet someone with a convincing label for it. ~ Alex Mar

Love makes you feel at home in existence. ~ Swami Dhyan Giten

The mechanism by which spirituality becomes passionate is metaphor. An ineffable God requires metaphor not only to be imagined but to be approached, exhorted, evaded, confronted, struggled with, and loved. Through metaphor, the vividness, intensity, and meaningfulness of ordinary experiences becomes the basis of a passionate spirituality. An ineffable God becomes vital through metaphor: The Supreme Being. The Prime Mover. The Creator. The Almighty. The Father. The King of Kings. Shepherd. Potter. Lawgiver. Judge. Mother. Lover. Breath.
The vehicle by which we are moved in passionate spirituality is metaphor. The mechanism of such metaphor is bodily. It is a neural mechanism that recruits our abilities to perceive, to move, to feel, and to envision in the service not only of theoretical and philosophical thought, but of spiritual experience. ~ George Lakoff

The way is a great mother, empty yet inexhaustible. She gives birth to worlds unending. Ever present within you, manifest her as you will. ~ Stifyn Emrys

Grace is giving yourself a free pass and realizing that it isn't free at all. ~ Erin Loechner

My religious beliefs also defied convention, leaning towards agnosticism and pandeism. ~ Alfred Tennyson

To know much and taste nothing-of what use is that? ~ Bonaventure

Religions are founded by what mystics say when they come back;
but what the mystics say is not the same as what happened to them. ~ Ram Dass

The wicked ones make us better persons for those that deserve our attention. Nothing is really lost and wasted in this alchemical dance of life. ~ Robin Sacredfire

Whether it's the waitress who brings steaming hot food to a table of hungry people or the janitor who keeps an office clean and free of germs, each of us have the power to deliver joy and happiness to the people around us through the work we do. ~ Alex Kakuyo

God holds the key to every door. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Faith is a belief in divine God. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Let's squeeze the cloud of thoughts and drink the water of wisdom to quench the thirst of enlightenment. Come, let's meditate. ~ Sw. Chidananda Tirtha

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

Don't let religion blindfold you ~ Sunday Adelaja

It is suspected, by some, that spiritual beings are extremely jealous of the natural world because they are nothing more than a figment of the imagination. This might explain their compulsive and obsessive behavior in trying to convince others they are real, and that the natural world is an illusion. The end of the world scenarios they conjure up reveal their Napoleon whit and superiority complex. ~ Christopher Zzenn Loren

Religion isn't bad, it's our consciousness relativity to religion.

There's a reason Mahatma Ghandi said "I like your Christ, I don't like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

The principle is that religion doesn't make 'you'. 'You' make your 'religion'. ~ Matthew Donnelly

I have had much experience with the unclean and uncivilized in the recent past. Shall I tell you what I discovered? I am not the state of my feet. I am not the dirt on my hands or the hygiene of my private parts. If I were these things, I would not have been at liberty to pray at any time since my arrest. But I did pray, because I am not these things. In the end, I am not even myself. I am a string of bones speaking the word God. ~ G. Willow Wilson

Mysteries are the evidence to errors in our religious and historical precepts. ~ Matthew A. Petti

We live in the age of Noah (a.s.) in the sense that a flood of distraction accosts us. It is a slow and subtle drowning. For those who notice it, they engage in the remembrance of God. The rites of worship and devotion to God's remembrance (dhikr) are planks of the ark. When Noah (a.s.) started to build his ark, his people mocked him and considered him a fool. But he kept building. He knew what was coming. And we know too. ~ Hamza Yusuf

It takes three to make love, not two: you, your spouse, and God. Without God people only succeed in bringing out the worst in one another. Lovers who have nothing else to do but love each other soon find there is nothing else. Without a central loyalty life is unfinished. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

Our creator is one. However you name him. Whatever you call him. He is the only one having 99 names ... ~ Munia Khan

I do not belong to any spiritual group or tradition. I am just interested in exploring what it means to live with open eyes.
People in spiritual organizations also tend to get caught in ideas of how it should be, and in the need of the ego to create hierachies of power, status, roles, ambition and obidience.
Spiritual Masters teach on many different levels at the same time. Some people take what they can, and some take something deeper. ~ Swami Dhyan Giten

Sure Man was born to meditate on things, And to contemplate the eternal springs Of God and Nature, glory, bliss and pleasure: That life and love might be his eternal treasure. ~ Thomas Traherne

In the end idealism annoyed Bouvard. 'I don't want any more of it: the famous cogito is a bore. The ideas of things are taken for the things themselves. What we barely understand is explained by means of words that we do not understand at all! Substance, extension, force, matter and soul, are all so many abstractions, figments of the imagination. As for God, it is impossible to know how he is, or even if he is! Once he was the cause of wind, thunder, revolutions. Now he is getting smaller. Besides, I don't see what use he is. ~ Gustave Flaubert

When we lose our spiritual vocabulary, we lose much more than words. We lose the power of speaking grace, forgiveness, love, and justice over others. ~ Jonathan Merritt