Spiritual Disciplines Quotes

Fasting turns each moment of craving into a prayer of intense dependence. ~ Gary Rohrmayer

Spirituality is about being ready. All the spiritual disciplines of your life - prayer, study, meditation or ritual, religious vows - are there so you can break through to the eternal. Spirituality is about awakening the eyes, the ears, the heart so you can see what's always happening right in front of you. ~ Richard Rohr

But I am beginning to understand about the dignity and the art of wigs and the makeup. This small, everyday attentiveness of eyebrow pencils is perhaps a picture of the very sort of bodily care our embodied God would have us cultivate, weather in illness or wellness, whether our bodies are in the throes of ecstasy or the throes of pain. ~ Lauren F. Winner

In the afternoon the digestion of the meal deprives me of the incomparable lightness which characterizes the fast days. ~ Adalbert De Vogue

Spiritual Disciplines involve doing what we can do to receive from God the power to do what we cannot. ~ Richard J. Foster

It is essential to practice spiritual disciplines along with academic studies. ~ Sai Baba

...we have chosen to speak of spirituality ultimately as the way in which we live out our response to God. Unless we find this personal, transformational meaning in its fullest sense, the struggle for wholeness will remain unresolved. As Augustine put it in the first paragraph of his Confessions, 'God created us for a relationship with him and our hearts are restless until we find our rest in God. ~ Janet O. Hagberg

Being "ordinary" means that we reject the idolatry of pursuing excellence for selfish reasons. We aren't digging wells in Africa to prove our worth or value. We aren't serving in the soup kitchen or engaging in spiritual disciplines because we long to be unique, radical, and different. When we do these things for selfish reasons, God becomes a tool for winning our lifetime achievement award. Our neighbors become instruments in the crafting of our sense of meaning, impact, and identity. What we do for God is really for ourselves. ~ Michael S. Horton

The second cause whence these rebellions sometimes proceed is the devil, who, in order to disquiet and disturb the soul, at times when it is at prayer or is striving to pray, contrives to stir up these motions of impurity in its nature; and if the soul gives heed to any of these, they cause it great harm. For through fear of these not only do persons become lax in prayer - which is the aim of the devil when he begins to strive with them - but some give up prayer altogether, because they think that these things attack them more during that exercise than apart from it, which is true, since the devil attacks them then more than at other times, so that they may give up spiritual exercises. ~ San Juan De La Cruz

The secret to extraordinary faith is fully engaging our MINDS, as well as our hearts, because DYNAMIC FAITH REQUIRES A HEALTHY BALANCE OF BOTH. ~ Patty Houser

Not everyone can have the same devotion. One exactly suits this person, another that. Different exercises, likewise, are suitable for different times, some for feast days and some again for weekdays. In time of temptation we need certain devotions. For days of rest and peace we need others. Some are suitable when we are sad, others when we are joyful in the Lord. ~ Thomas A Kempis

Some people find the experience and practice of compassion as a spiritual discipline to be a more direct route to the transformation of the heart than prayer. It is not that prayer does not or should not play a role in their lives, but their way to the opening of the heart lies through deeds of compassion. "Just do it" summarizes this path of transformation. ~ Marcus Borg

Christians often equate holiness with activism and spiritual disciplines. And while it's true that activism is often the outgrowth of holiness and spiritual disciplines are necessary for the cultivation of holiness, the pattern of piety in the Scripture is more explicitly about our character. We put off sin and put on righteousness. We put to death the deeds of the flesh and put on Christ. To use the older language, we pursue mortification of the old man and the vivification of the new. ~ Kevin DeYoung

Through the ages, countless spiritual disciplines have urged us to look within ourselves and seek the truth. Part of that truth resides in a small, dark room
one we are afraid to enter ~ Matthew J. Pallamary

As we mature in faith, our willingness is tested, expanded, and refined. We become more conscious of our limitations and turn to God. The necessity of God's grace becomes clearer as we become more attuned and accurate in our recognition of our dependence on God and less sure of anything that causes us to describe ourselves self-righteously. At times, when confronted by the less-than-ideal behavior of others, we may recognize that we are capable of similar actions and give thankds to God for helping us avoid unwelcome pitfalls. Scripture instructs us to be holy as God is holy, yet we increasingly realize the impossibility of holy behavior unless it is brought about by the Spirit's empowerment and our willing responsiveness and cooperation. Many people use spiritual direction as a window through which to notice and attend to their own expectations of willingness and willfulness. ~ Jeannette A. Bakke

The organized churches must become schools of spiritual discipline where Christians are taught how to own without treasuring (Matt. 6:21); how to possess without, like the "rich young ruler," being possessed (Mark 10:22); how to live simply, even frugally, though controlling great wealth and power. ~ Dallas Willard

Fasting is an act of humility that spotlights our weaknesses and reveals dependence on things rather than on God. ~ Gary Rohrmayer

True contemplation is not a psychological trick but a theological grace. It can come to us ONLY as a gift, and not as a result of our own clever use of spiritual techniques. ~ Thomas Merton

Like a child exploring the attic of an old house on a rainy day, discovering a trunk full of treasure and then calling all his brothers and sisters to share the find, Richard J. 'Foster has 'found' the spiritual disciplines that the modern world has stored away and forgot, and has excitedly called us to celebrate them. For they are, as he shows us, the instruments of joy, the way into mature Christian spirituality and abundant life. ~ Eugene H. Peterson

From matters as crucial as the death of Jesus, to those as mundane as eating and drinking, the Bible presents the glo ry of God as the ultimate priority and the definitive criterion by which we should evaluate everything. ~ Donald S. Whitney

A man who would interpret the scriptures must have the spiritual discipline. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

The rewards of fasting ultimately lead to a more intimate and satisfying experience with the God who made me. ~ Gary Rohrmayer

Journaling is one of the most overlooked and undervalued spiritual disciplines. In my estimation, it's on a par with praying, fasting, and meditating. It's the way we document what God is doing in our lives. ~ Mark Batterson

We live in the world with you. We do not forsake forum or bath or workshop, or inn, or market, or any other place of commerce. We sail with you, fight with you, farm with you. ~ Tertullian

When we try to express communion with God in words, we rapidly reach the end of our capacities. But in the depths of our being Christ is praying for more than we imagine. Compared to the immensity of that hidden prayer of Christ in us, our explicit praying dwindles to almost nothing. That is why silence is so essential in discovery the heart of prayer.
Although God never stops trying to communicate with us, God never stops trying to communicate with us, God never wants to impose anything on us. Often God's voice comes in a whisper, in a breath of silence. Remaining in silence in God's presence, open to the Spirit, is already prayer.
It is not a matter of trying to obtain inner silence at all costs by following some method that creates a kind of emptiness within. The important thing is a childlike attitude of trust by which we allow Christ to pray within us silently, and then one day, we will discover that the depths of our being ar inhabited by a Presence. ~ Taize

The Christian life is Christ - a truth that deeply reassures our souls, focuses our hearts, and simplifies our spiritual lives. But it's a calling that we perpetually fumble. The veil removed from our eyes in conversion gives way to clouds over our eyes in trials and sleepiness in our steps with the spiritual disciplines. The greatest challenges we face are Christ-clouding distractions. ~ Tony Reinke

Together with worldly education, you have to cultivate the human values and undertake spiritual discipline. ~ Sathya Sai Baba

Spiritual disciplines answer the shallow world. ~ Richard J. Foster

Every time I have fasted I have found my worship experience sweeter, the illumination of God's Spirit brighter and the hunger for God's Word stronger. ~ Gary Rohrmayer

Fasting is more about replacing than it is about abstaining - replacing normal activities with focused times of prayer and feeding on the Word of God. ~ Gary Rohrmayer

It is a self-evident truth that those who persist in spiritual disciplines grow in grace, and those who don't persist, don't grow. I have never met a mature believer who is not faithful in private devotions. Like the cumulative, compounding effect of military training, the daily work of prayer, Bible reading, and meditation will shape us more and more into the likeness of Christ. And when we are thinking in terms of contentment, this likeness is the mark we are after, because Christ remains the most content man who ever lived. ~ Erik Raymond

The flesh resists this daily humiliation, first by a frontal attack, and later by hiding itself under the words of the spirit (i.e. in the name of 'evangelical liberty'). We claim liberty from all legal compulsion, from self-martyrdom and mortification, and play this off against the proper evangelical use of discipline and asceticism; we thus excuse our self-indulgence and irregularity in prayer, in meditation and in our bodily life. But the contrast between our behavior and the word of Jesus is all too painfully evident. We forget that discipleship means estrangement from the world, and we forget the real joy and freedom which are the outcome of a devout rule of life. As soon as a Christian recognizes that he has failed in his service, that his readiness has become feeble, and that he has sinned against another's life and become guilty of another's guilt, that all his joy in God has vanished and that his capacity for prayer has quite gone, it is high time for him to launch an assault upon the flesh, and prepare for better service by fasting and prayer (Luke 2:37; 4:2: Mark 9:29; 1 Cor. 7:5). ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's Creation gives usa model for making and sharing homes with people, but the reality of God's Trinitarian life suggests that Christian hospitality goes farther than that. We are not meant simply to invite people into our homes, but also to invite them into our lives. Having guests and visitors, if we do it right, is not an imposition, because we are not meant to rearrange our lives for our guests - we are meant to invite our guests to enter into our lives as they are. It is this forging of relationships that transforms entertianment ... into hospitality ... As writer Karen Burton Mains puts it, Visitors may be more than guests in our home. if they like, they may be friends. ~ Lauren F. Winner

Let us be among those who believe that the inner transformation of our lives is a goal worthy of our best effort. -P. 11 ~ Richard J. Foster

The prescription for spiritual transformation has often been too individualistically oriented. We are encouraged to engage in spiritual disciplines so that we might have the power to do what we can't do by will power alone. But what happens when people don't have the "will power" to engage spiritual disciples on a consistent basis? Our character is left untended. "In a wild world like ours, your character, left untended, will become a stale room, an obnoxious child, a vacant lot filled with thorns, weeds, broken bottles, raggedy grocery bags, and dog droppings. Your deepest channels will silt in, and you will feel yourself shallowing. You'll become a presence neither you nor others will enjoy, and you and they will spend more and more time and energy trying to be anywhere else."[1] So what are we to do? ~ J.R. Woodward

Writing for me is a form of spiritual discipline and creative vision, a means of being in the world and giving one's love to it without compromise or dilution. ~ Aberjhani

The story is told of Mother Theresa that when an interviewer asked her. "What do you say when you pray?" she answered, "I listen." The reporters paused a moment, then asked, "Then what does God say?" and she replied, "He listens." It is hard to imagine a more succinct way to get at the intimacy of contemplative prayer. ~ Marilyn Chandler McEntyre

The purpose of the Disciplines is freedom. Our aim is the freedom, not the Discipline. The moment we make the Discipline our central focus we will turn it into law and lose the corresponding freedom ... Let us forever center on Christ and view the Spiritual Disciplines as a way of drawing us closer to His heart. ~ Richard J. Foster

When we speak with others about our experience in Christ, it sharpens our attentiveness to the voice and will of the Father. Sharing our stories helps us clarify the intentions of our hearts toward the fulfillment of his divine will. A small circle of friends also reminds us of the presence, power and protection of the Holy Spirit. Confiding in one another instills a sense of hope for the future as children who are dearly loved by their Father. ~ Stephen A. Macchia

Service is the highest spiritual discipline. Prayer and meditation, or knowledge of scripture and Vedanta (holy scriptures of India), cannot help you reach the goal as quickly as service can. Service has a double effect, it extinguishes the ego and gives bliss. ~ Sathya Sai Baba

It's too bad prayer comes bundled in a package of 'spiritual disciplines.' Really, we should see prayer as a spiritual privilege. We don't do it as a callisthenic exercise to gain points with God; we do it, because it is good for us in every way. ~ Philip Yancey

The pain of regret is far worse than the pain of discipline.

We will never have the anointing, the ministry or the revivals of our heroes if we don't become as disciplined as they were. They went to bed early to get up early to pray, and they fasted for days on end.

We shouldn't just pray to mark it off of our lists or read a few chapters of our Bible each day to keep up with the church Bible reading chart. We must have a deeper purpose for doing these tasks.

Discipline without direction is drudgery. In other words, discipline has to have a purpose to drive it each and every day.

The price for spiritual change is expensive, but the rewards are far greater.

The world's ways, ideologies, and influence cannot be present in a life dedicated to Jesus because consecration's purpose is for us to be different from the world. And, for that matter, if we are separate from the world, then sin must not be a part of our lives either. Sin ruins a life of consecration.

It would be a shame to believe that holiness is nothing more than rules or guidelines we are to live by. Holiness and consecration flow from a life given to the spiritual disciplines, a life we can only maintain by continuing to seek for Him daily.

Your pursuit will never be greater than your disciplines.

No man is greater than his prayer life.

Even though Jesus requires us to pray, praying is not to be done out of duty, but it ~ Nathan Whitley

Fasting is meant to take you, temporarily, out of the realm of the physical and focus your attention heavenward; as one Jewish guide to fasting puts it, 'at the heart of this practice is a desire to shift our attention away from our immediate needs and to focus on more spiritual concerns. ~ Lauren F. Winner

Christians and Jews hold in common one theological basis for hospitality: Creation. Creation is the ultimate expression of God's hospitality to His creatures. In the words of on rabbi, everything God created is a "manifestation of His kindness. [The] world is one big hospitality inn." As Church historian Amy Oden has put it, "God offers hospitality to all humanity ... by establishing a home.. for all." To invite people into our homes is to respond with gratitude to the God who made a home for us.
In the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, we find another resource for hospitality. The trinity shows God in relationships with Himself. our Three-in-one God has welcomed us into Himself and invited us to participate in divine life. And so the invitation that we as Christians extend to one another is not simply an invitation into our homes or to our tables; what we ask of other people it that hey enter into our lives. ~ Lauren F. Winner

It is quite easy to allow the gospel to become overshadowed by our own efforts to grow spiritually. Spiritual disciplines serve as gateways to cherishing the gospel, not as substitutes for the gospel. ~ Gloria Furman

I must take care above all that I cultivate communion with Christ, for though that can never be the basis of my peace - mark that - yet it will be the channel of it. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

In the words of Jewish liturgical scholar Lawrence Hoffman, 'Jews do offer freely composed prayers ... But overall, it is the fixed order and content of Jewish prayer that gives it its distinctiveness and that demands the personal commitment to prayer as a discipline. ~ Lauren F. Winner

Keeping your body in shape is a spiritual discipline. Its not just about losing a few pounds, wanting to live longer, or trying to look nicer. ~ Rick Warren

Simply beautiful! David Brazzeal takes the hospitality traditions of the French and the Brazilians and stirs in spiritual disciplines and alternative worship practices for a book on prayer unlike anything you've read before. He reminds us that time with God is a rich and delicious banquet that we share together, and not a drive-thru fast food meal we eat alone. Nourishing and indulgent. ~ Michael Frost

Discipline without direction is drudgery. ~ Donald S. Whitney

Holy habits are that: the disciplines, the routines by which we stay alive and focused on Him. At first we choose them and carry them out; after a while they are part of who we are. And they carry us. ~ Mark Buchanan

But should we accept this negative view of power? Is power all bad? Specifically, can Christians share in this devaluation of power and discipline as inherently evil? Can we who claim to be disciples - who are called and predestined to be conformed to the likeness of the Son (Rom. 8:29) - be opposed to discipline and formation as such? Can we who are called to be subject to the Lord of life really agree with the liberal Enlightenment notion of the autonomous self? Are we not above all called to subject ourselves to our Domine and conform to his image? Of course, we are called not to conform to the patterns of 'this world' (Rom. 12:2) or to our previous evil desires (1 Peter 1:14), but that is a call not to nonconformity as such but rather to an alternative conformity through a counterformation in Christ, a transformation and renewal directed toward conformity to his image. By appropriating the liberal Enlightenment notion of negative freedom and participating in its nonconformist resistance to discipline (and hence a resistance to the classical spiritual disciplines), Christians are in fact being conformed to the patterns of this world (contra Rom. 12:2). ~ James K.A. Smith

Discipline, for the Christian, begins with the body. We have only one. It is this body that is the primary material given to us for sacrifice. We cannot give our hearts to God and keep our bodies for ourselves. ~ Elisabeth Elliot

So do not expect always to get an emotional charge or a feeling of quiet peace when you read the Bible. By the grace of God you may expect that to be a frequent experience, but often you will get no emotional response at all. Let the Word break over your heart and mind again and again as the years go by, and imperceptibly there will come great changes in your attitude and outlook and conduct. You will probably be the last to recognize these. Often you will feel very, very small, because when your eyes close for the last time in death, and never again read the Word of God in Scripture you will open them to the Word of God in the flesh, that same Jesus of the Bible whom you have known for so lng, standing before you to take you for ever to His eternal home. ~ Geoffrey Thomas

It is precisely in times of spiritual dryness that we must hold on to our spiritual discipline so that we can grow into new intimacy with God. ~ Henri Nouwen

Perhaps nothing helps us make the movement from our little selves to a larger world than remembering God in gratitude. Such a perspective puts God in view in all of life, not just in the moments we set aside for worship or spiritual disciplines. Not just in the moments when life seems easy. ~ Henri Nouwen

God cares about our dietary choices. This should come as no surprise; you only have to read the first two chapters of Genesis to see God's concern for food. Humanity's first sin was disobedience manifested in a choice about eating. Adam and Eve were allowed to eat anything they wanted, except the one fruit they chose. And the New Testament makes clear that God cares about the most basic quotidian aspect of our lives. (Our God, after all, is the God who provides for the sparrows and numbers the hairs on our heads.) This God who is interested in how we speak, how we handle our money, how we carry our bodies - He is also interested in how we live with food. ~ Lauren F. Winner

Ask and you shall receive; everyone that asks receives. This is the fixed eternal law of the kingdom: If you ask and receive not, it must be because there is something amiss or wanting in the prayer. Hold on; let the Word and Spirit teach you to prat aright, but do not let go the confidence he seeks to waken: Everyone who asks receives ... Let every learner in the school of Christ therefore take the Master's word in all simplicity ... Let us beware of weakening the word with our human wisdom. ~ Andrew Murray

To make the mind obey you is a spiritual discipline. ~ Sivananda

It's hard to write about this mask because the spiritual disciplines are good things. The problem is not the fact that we do them; it is our good-girl interpretation of what doing these things means. For many years, I lived as a believer in God but I did not live *from* God. I was a child of the God of grace but I was looking for life in the law. ~ Emily P. Freeman

The rise of the buffered identity has been accompanied by an interiorization; that is, not only the Inner/Outer distinction, that between Mind and World as separate loci, which is central to the buffer itself; and not only the development of this Inner/Outer distinction in a whole range of epistemological theories of a mediational type from Descartes to Rorty;' but also the growth of a rich vocabulary of interiority, an inner realm of thought and feeling to be explored. This frontier of self-exploration has grown, through various spiritual disciplines of self-examination, through Montaigne, the development of the modern novel, the rise of Romanticism, the ethic of authenticity, to the point where we now conceive of ourselves as
having inner depths. ~ Charles Taylor

A Spiritual Discipline is an intentionally directed action which places us in a position to receive from God the power to do what we cannot accomplish on our own ...
The deep waters of God's life are already flowing. We simply learn the strokes that will enable us more and more to be at home in them ...
The human body is our power-pack of mind-body-spirit
we discipline it in order to practice cooperation with God. (Life with God, p. 135-137) ~ Richard Foster

I have long profited from Adele Ahlberg Calhoun's gifts in the field of spiritual development, and I am delighted that she has compiled her experience with spiritual disciplines into book form. I highly recommend it and I look forward to using it as a resource at our church. ~ Timothy Keller

Prayer in Benedictine spirituality is not an interruption of our busy lives nor is it a higher act. Prayer is the filter through which we learn, if we listen hard enough, to see our world aright and anew and without which we live life with souls that are deaf and dumb and blind. ~ Joan Chittister

Routines are normal, natural, healthy things. Most of us take a shower and brush our teeth every day. That is a good routine. Spiritual disciplines are routines. That is a good thing. But once routines become routine you need to change your routine. ~ Mark Batterson

we keep company with Jesus by making space for him through a spiritual discipline. Our part is to offer ourselves lovingly and obediently to God. God then works within us doing what he alone can do. Our desires don't obligate the holy One. God is free to come to us in spiritual disciplines as he wills, not as we demand. But unless we open ourselves to him through spiritual practices, we will miss his coming altogether. ~ Adele Ahlberg Calhoun

It is widely unknown, but nonetheless true that Catholicism fervently promotes the 'spiritual disciplines' whereas Protestantism has largely neglected them altogether. Does 'volunteerism' facilitate the formation of Christ's character in us or rather does it reveal our level of Christ-like maturity through the work of the Holy Spirit in us? Jesus modeled son-ship and gave all of His time, shared his talents,and invested all of His treasure while affirming others as He proclaimed through demonstrations the Kingdom of God.'Christ-likeness cannot be self-efforted' (Woods, 2007)."


~R. Alan Woods [2013] ~ R. Alan Woods

Richard Rohr states in one of my favorite books The Naked Now: Wisdom is not the gathering of more facts and information, as if that would eventually coalesce into truth. Wisdom is precisely a different way of seeing and knowing those ten thousand things. I suggest that wisdom is precisely the freedom to be present. Wise people always know how to be present, but it is much more then that. Presence is wisdom! People who are fully present know how to see fully, rightfully, and truthfully. Presence is the one thing necessary, and in many ways, the hardest thing of all. Just try to keep your heart open, your mind without division or resistance, and your body not somewhere else. Presence is the practical, daily task of all mature religion and all spiritual disciplines.47 ~ Mark Votava

But if roteness is a danger, it is also the way liturgy works. When you don't have to think all the time about what words you are going to say next, you are free to fully enter into the act of praying; you are free to participate in the life of God. ~ Lauren F. Winner

Within the moment of now, there is presence of ever there, As It is;, Invisible; Nothingness; of Still and silent awareness; in substratum; witnessing itself which U in real R ...
It has nothing to do with Your mind, Your body appearance and Your world ...
Wisdom is to let it recognize and and realize itself ...
Often in Ignorance of IT, ignorant start believing "In the Moment", "As It Is" words, which point towards IT (awareness), ignorantly for the appearing body, appearing mind and appearing creation ...
Be Happy and Keep Smiling ... ~ Satish Kumar

Writers allow us to see ourselves more clearly, they express spiritual signposts that assist us find ourselves. Writers' self-revelations allow us to grasp personal reflections that remain unrealized and indistinct within ourselves. Nuggets of personal perception remain veiled, until we read carefully chosen words sharing the author's crystallized perceptions. Provocative authors resolutely tap into that robust vein of common yearning and assiduously engineer their way through humankind's rampant library of collective neurosis. Reading a master's scintillating prose allows our own inchoate thoughts to shape up under the splendid beam of sunlight that they cast onto pages bearing their soul's freshly minted words. Their astutely crafted pages conveying everlasting imagery immunizes their work from the harshness of time's relentless march forward. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Spiritual relationship is far more precious than physical. Physical relationship divorced from spiritual is body without soul. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

I'm not a chauvinist. I'm a universalist. I think that God imploded, like a spiritual big bang, to launch the eight civilizations that make up recorded history and the religions in those civilizations. ~ Huston Smith

Death is like tiger Richard Parker in the film 'Life Of Pie', it
keeps you alive, if you are awake, attentive and keep a watch
on it. It kills you, if you ignore it ~ Soman Gouda

See it, learn it, do it ALL. ~ Jamie McCall

We hope to receive what we long for. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

When you understand that [in reality] the bitter fruit [unfavourable result] is sweet and the sweet fruit [favourable result] is bitter, then you will go to moksha [the ultimate liberation]! ~ Dada Bhagwan

Your own soul is nourished when you are kind; it is destroyed when you are cruel. ~ King Solomon

Life is so much better when your passion and calling line up. You understand the gift of your spiritual inheritance, assume responsibility for right and just choices, and you pour your signature presence into serving others. ~ Gloria Burgess

Within the desert setting, women faced an additional challenge because they had to manage not only their own spiritual progress but also the constant tension caused by men's reactions to them. A story about an anonymous leader of virgins demonstrates the need to deal gracefully with men who often treated them as a source of temptation rather than as fellow seekers. When some monks made a detour to avoid encountering her and her sisters, she commented, 'If you were a perfect monk, you would not have seen us as women. ~ Kate Cooper

You can be sure that your deepest desires reveal important truths about your spiritual condition. ~ Tullian Tchividjian

Pray: O Lord, make my eyes see only the good in everyone. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi

An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are. He has to tell, because nobody else in the world can tell, what it is like to be alive. All I've ever wanted to do is tell that, I'm not trying to solve anybody's problems, not even my own. I'm just trying to outline what the problems are.

I want to be stretched, shook up, to overreach myself, and to make you feel that way too. ~ James Baldwin

The chaste severity of the fathers in whatever related to the commerce of the two sexes flowed from the same principle
their abhorrence of every enjoyment which might gratify the sensual and degrade the spiritual nature of man. It was their favourite opinion, that if Adam had preserved his obedience to the Creator, he would have lived for ever in a state of virgin purity, and that some harmless mode of vegetation might have peopled paradise with a race of innocent and immortal beings. ~ Edward Gibbon

What polluters do is raise the standards of living for themselves, while lowering the quality of living for everybody else, and they do that by escaping the disciplines of the free market. ~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Be of good cheer, your visions will be fulfilled in their own time. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

How can the thoughts be stopped? Tell the thoughts, 'You take care of your own issues; I am not on your side.' That way you will sit on God's side. ~ Dada Bhagwan

Just as light brightens darkness, discovering inner fulfillment can eliminate any disorder or discomfort. This is truly the key to creating balance and harmony in everything you do ~ Deepak Chopra

It must never be forgotten that nothing that is really great in this world has ever been achieved by coalitions, but that it has always been the success of a single victor. Coalition successes bear by the very nature of their origin the germ of future crumbling, in fact of the loss of what has already been achieved. Great, truly world-shaking revolutions of a spiritual nature are not even conceivable and realizable except as the titanic struggles of individual formations, never as enterprises of coalitions. ~ Adolf Hitler

I am a man with an open mind. I really don't know anything, but I'm very interested in the spiritual and the material. ~ Eva Mendes

When we respect our blood ancestors and our spiritual ancestors, we feel rooted. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

It is good to laugh. Laughter is spiritual relaxation. ~ Abdu'l- Baha

Let us say, in a word, that the correlation between the laws of mathematics and of physics is the evidence of the rational character of nature. Nature may be reduced to motions; and motions can be understood only as force, activity. But the laws which connect motions are fundamentally mathematical laws,- laws of reason. Hence force, activity, can be understood only as rational, as spiritual. Nature is thus seen to mean Activity, and Activity is seen to mean Intelligence ~ John Dewey

If we give priority to the outer life, our inner life will be dark and scary. We will not know what to do with solitude. We will be deeply uncomfortable with self-examination, and we will have an increasingly short attention span for any kind of reflection. Even more seriously, our lives will lack integrity. Outwardly, we will need to project confidence, spiritual and emotional health and wholeness, while inwardly we may be filled with self-doubts, anxieties, self-pity, and old grudges. ~ Timothy J. Keller

What is the justice of this world like? It is that the world will call him as God (Bhagwan), the one who has no thoughts about money (wealth), no thoughts of sensual pleasures and one who remains separate from his body at all times. ~ Dada Bhagwan

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 thing I learned on my sporadic spiritual journey was that mainstream culture's disdain and disrespect for the intellectual integrity of Christianity is unwarranted, and its conceited assumption that Christian beliefs are a product of blind faith, bereft of reason and intellect, is completely false. ~ David Limbaugh

I looked anxiously around me: the present, nothing but the present. Furniture light and solid, rooted in its present, a table, a bed, a closet with a mirror-and me. the true nature of the present revealed itself: it was what exists, and all that was not present did not exist. The past did not exist. Not at all. Not in things, not even in my thoughts. It is true that I had realized a long time ago that mine had escaped me. But until then I had believed that it had simply gone out of my range. For me the past was only a pensioning off: it was another way of existing, a state of vacation and inaction; each event, when it had played its part, put itself politely into a box and became an honorary event: we have so much difficulty imagining nothingness. Now I knew: things are entirely what they appear to be-and behind them ... there is nothing. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Spiritual matters should be private. ~ Sherman Alexie

If you focus on not having your SoulMate, you delay their manifestation. When you surrender and hold the spiritual belief of unity – that you are already deeply connected to your SoulMate – you speed their manifestation. ~ Annette Vaillancourt