Spiritual Values Quotes

Il bel far niente means 'the beauty of doing nothing' ... [it] has always been a cherished Italian ideal. The beauty of doing nothing is the goal of all your work, the final accomplishment for which you are most highly congratulated. The more exquisitely and delightfully you can do nothing, the higher your life's achievement. You don't necessarily need to be rich in order to experience this, either. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Such immaturity will manifest itself in a lack of integrity. This lack will critically affect the child's spiritual development; the less able a child is to deal with anger well, the more antagonistic will be his attitude toward authority, including the authority of God. A child's immature handling of anger is a primary reason the child will reject the parent's spiritual values. ~ Gary Chapman

The birth and growth of modern antisemitism has been accompanied by and interconnected with Jewish assimilation, the secularization and withering away of the old religious and spiritual values of Judaism. What actually happened was that great parts of the Jewish people were at the same time threatened by physical extinction from without and dissolution from within. In this situation, Jews concerned with the survival of their people would, in a curious and desperate misinterpretation, hit on the consoling idea that antisemitism, after all, might be an excellent means for keeping the people together so that the assumption of external antisemitism would even imply an external guarantee of Jewish existence. This superstition, a secularized travesty of the idea of eternity inherent in a faith in chosenness and a Messianic hope, has been strengthened through the fact that for many centuries the Jews experienced the Christian brand of hostility which was indeed a powerful agent of preservation, spiritually as well as politically. The Jews mistook modern anti-Christian antisemitism for the old religious Jew-hatred - and this all the more innocently because their assimilation had by-passed Christianity in its religious and cultural aspect. Confronted with an obvious symptom of the decline of Christianity, they could therefore imagine in all ignorance that this was some revival of the so-called "Dark Ages." Ignorance or misunderstanding of their own past were partly responsible for the ~ Hannah Arendt

For those who seek to understand it, death is a highly creative force. The highest spiritual values of life can originate from the thought and study of death. ~ Elisabeth Kubler Ross

The life sciences contain spiritual values which can never be explained by the materialistic attitude of present day science ~ Sherwin B. Nuland

It seems that scientific research reaches deeper and deeper. But it also seems that more and more people, at least scientists, are beginning to realize that the spiritual factor is important. I say 'spiritual' without meaning any particular religion or faith, just simple warmhearted compassion, human affection, and gentleness. It is as if such warmhearted people are a bit more humble, a little bit more content. I consider spiritual values primary, and religion secondary. As I see it, the various religions strengthen these basic human qualities. As a practitioner of Buddhism, my practice of compassion and my practice of Buddhism are actually one and the same. But the practice of compassion does not require religious devotion or religious faith; it can be independent from the practice of religion. Therefore, the ultimate source of happiness for human society very much depends on the human spirit, on spiritual values. If we do not combine science and these basic human values, then scientific knowledge may sometimes create troubles, even disaster.... ~ Dalai Lama XIV

It was with the Industrial Revolution, as society plunged ever more eagerly into the conquest of material riches and bent all its energies to the accumulation of goods, that material poverty became a major problem. Obviously, this meant abandonment or downgrading of spiritual values, virtue, etc. To share or not to share in the increase of the collective wealth-this was the Number One question. It was the desire to acquire wealth that prompted the poor to start fighting. ~ Jacques Ellul

The gospel proclaims human freedom and dignity more than human enslavement and depravity. What is needed is a balance of biblical values and emphasis on the empowering quality of the gospel. The spiritual values of humility, long suffering, endurance, and obedience are to be affirmed alongside self-reliance, freedom, proclamation, mission, and authority. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

I've learned to do without a lot of things. If you have a lot of things, said Aunt Lydia, you get too attached to this material world and you forget about spiritual values. ~ Margaret Atwood

What's next is the manipulation of spiritual values and tendencies. It is no accident that in the last few years we have seen a new religious thought. The religion of acquiescence and passivity: trusting in the process; whatever happens is what needs to happen; everyone is right where they need to be; you don't resist; you acquiesce; to resist is to be negative, is to be fearful, is to be unconscious. A great prescription for convincing the natives to give over the keys to the kingdom, a very good, clever form of manipulation. ~ M.V. Summers

Stabilizing the euro is one thing, healing the culture that surrounds it is another. A world in which material values are everything and spiritual values nothing is neither a stable state nor a good society. The time has come for us to recover the Judeo-Christian ethic of human dignity in the image of God. ~ Jonathan Sacks

You should remember that though another may have more money, beauty, and brains than you, when it comes to the rarer spiritual values such as charity, self-sacrifice, honor, nobility of heart, you have an equal chance with everyone to be the most beloved and honored of all people. ~ Archibald Rutledge

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

Wilderness has been characterized as barren and unproductive; little can be grown in its sand and rock. But the crops of wilderness have always been its spiritual values - silence and solitude, a sense of awe and gratitude - able to be harvested by any traveler who visits. ~ David Douglas

If a child hasn't been given spiritual values within the family setting, they have no familiarity with the values that are necessary for the just and peaceful functioning in society. ~ Eunice Baumann-Nelson Ph.D PENOBSCOT

I believe that architects should design gardens to be used, as much as the houses they build, to develop a sense of beauty and the taste and inclination toward the fine arts and other spiritual values. ~ Luis Barragan

abandonment of spiritual values which makes us stand aghast.' The Mir answered: 'Neither could you provide entertainment for your people, nor could you bind them to your person. To call them "my people ~ Idries Shah

What seems most important is that Dostoevsky's near-death experience changed a typically vain and trendy young writer-a very talented writer, true, but still one whose basic concerns were for his own literary glory-into a person who believed deeply in moral/spiritual values ... more, into someone who believed that a life lived without moral/spiritual values was not just incomplete but depraved. ~ David Foster Wallace

To the desert go prophets and hermits; through deserts go pilgrims and exiles. Here the leaders of the great religions have sought the therapeutic and spiritual values of retreat, not to escape but to find reality. ~ Jon Krakauer

The factor stringing together individuals, society and nature is missing from today's educational system. That factor is spiritual values. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi

Perhaps the best reason for regarding mathematics as an art is not so much that it affords an outlet for creative activity as that it provides spiritual values. It puts man in touch with the highest aspirations and lofiest goals. It offers intellectual delight and the exultation of resolving the mysteries of the universe. ~ Morris Kline

Human beings can attain a worthy and harmonious life only if they are able to rid themselves, within the limits of human nature, of the striving for the wish fulfillment of material kinds. The goal is to raise the spiritual values of society. ~ Albert Einstein

We must take the abiding spiritual values which inhere in the deep experiences of religion in all ages and give them new expression in terms of the framework which our new knowledge gives us. Science forces religion to deal with new ideas in the theoretical realm and new forces in the practical realm. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick

The vast majority of us don't want to face the fact that we're in the middle of a sweeping social revolution. In sex. In spiritual values. In opposition to wars no one wants. In opposition to government big-brotherhood. In civil rights. In basic human goals. They're all facets of a general upheaval. ~ Johnny Carson

The direction we are going in at this moment is the negation of material goods as being important and the great importance of spiritual values and sensations. Permissiveness, if you will. There is tremendous talk of sex and bi-sexuality. ~ Emilio Pucci

His sculpture would have joy in it, try to capture the sense of fertility of Dionysus, the nature god, the power of the intoxicating drink that enabled a man to laugh and sing and forget for a while the sorrow of his earthly miseries. And then, perhaps, at the same time he could portray the decay that came with too much forgetfulness, that he saw all around him, when man surrendered his moral and spiritual values for the pleasures of the
flesh. The Bacchus would be the central figure of his theme, a human being rather than a demigod; then there would be a child of about seven, sweet-
faced, lovable, nibbling from a bunch of grapes. His composition would have death in it too; the tiger, who liked wine and was loved by Bacchus, with the deadest, dead skin and head conceivable ~ Irving Stone

Our first duty to liberty is to keep our own. But it is also our duty - as Europeans - to keep alive in the Eastern as well as the Western half of our continent those ideas of human dignity which Europe gave to the world. Let us therefore resolve to keep the lamps of freedom burning bright so that all who look to the West from the shadows of the East need not doubt that we remain true to those human and spiritual values that lie at the heart of European civilization. ~ Margaret Thatcher

The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State
a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values
interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people. ~ Benito Mussolini

You might have thought that a world such as ours, so hard-nosed and cynical and brash, would have very little time for transcendence, spiritual values of goodness and compassion, gentleness, and caring, but we actually do experience them. ~ Desmond Tutu

People are aware that they cannot continue in the same old way but are immobilized because they cannot imagine an alternative. We need a vision that recognizes that we are at one of the great turning points in human history when the survival of our planet and the restoration of our humanity require a great sea change in our ecological, economic, political, and spiritual values. ~ Grace Lee Boggs

Any county's moral strength, or its moral weakness, is quickly measurable by the street attire and attitude of its women - especially its young women. Wherever ... spiritual values have been submerged, if not destroyed, by an emphasis upon ... material things, invariably the women reflect it. ~ Malcolm X

The individual needs the return to spiritual values, for he can survive in the present human situation only by reaffirming that man is not just a biological and psychological being but also a spiritual being, that is creature, and existing for the purposes of his Creator and subject to Him. ~ Peter Drucker

To the ideal of high consumption and the downgrading of spiritual values corresponds a conception of injustice that centers exclusively on the problem of consumption; and equality in consumption cannot be achieved except by violence. ~ Jacques Ellul

It gradually became clear that the Green Belt Movement's work with communities to repair the degraded environment could not be done effectively without participants embracing a set of core spiritual values. ~ Wangari Maathai

The law of chastity is not a negative proposition, but a positive one because in its observance there are spiritual values that far outweigh the physical dangers that we often emphasize. I believe the chances are that our children will respond to the positive attitude quicker and more thoroughly than they do to the negative. Let's show them the values that there are in that law. ~ Antoine R. Ivins

If the spiritual values of human existence at its highest term of development and achievement do not endure, amidst all the changes and chances of this mortal universe, there seems to be no stable or coherent meaning in existence. Then the universe is irrational
indeed it is no universe at all. ~ Joseph Alexander Leighton

Organized religion is a very bad way of passing on spiritual values because it becomes so corrupted with political and repressive agendas which don't help anybody to develop their spirituality. ~ Jeanette Winterson

May the deepest spiritual values of the Filipino people continue to find expression in your efforts to provide your fellow citizens with an integral human development. In this way, each person will be able to fulfill his or her potential, and thus contribute wisely and well to the future of this country. ~ Pope Francis

Anthropologists have often described what happens to a primitive society when its spiritual values are exposed to the impact of modern civilisation. Its people lose the meaning of their lives, their social organisation disintegrates, and they themselves morally decay. We are now in the same condition. But we have never really understood what we have lost, for our spiritual leaders unfortunately were more interested in protecting their institutions than in understanding the mystery that symbols present. ~ Carl Jung

The way to improve our schools is not more money, but the reintroduction of moral and spiritual values, as well as the four R's: reading, 'riting, 'rithmatic, and Rush. ~ Rush Limbaugh

I fear we are too much concerned with material things to remember that our real strength lies in spiritual values. ~ Harry Truman

History and the task of the future no longer signify the struggle of class against class or the conflict between one church dogma and another, but the settlement between blood and blood, race and race, Folk and Folk. And that means: the struggle of spiritual values against each other. ~ Alfred Rosenberg

There seems in most countries to be either one extreme or the other. Truly a paradise could exist wherever material progress and spiritual values could be properly balanced. ~ Malcolm X

All faith consists essentially in the recognition of a world of spiritual values behind, yet not apart from, the world of natural phenomena. ~ Dean Inge

Modern man does not understand how much his "rationalism" (which has destroyed his capacity to respond to numinous symbols and ideas) has put him at the mercy of the psychic "underworld." He has freed himself from "superstition" (or so he believes), but in the process he has lost his spiritual values to a positively dangerous degree. His moral and spiritual tradition has disintegrated, and he is now paying the price for this break-up in worldwide disorientation and dissociation. Anthropologists ~ C. G. Jung

Good taste ruins certain true spiritual values: such as taste itself. ~ Coco Chanel

Modern art did not just happen. It came as a result of a deep reversal of spiritual values in the Age of Reason, a movement that in the course of a little more than two centuries changed the world. ~ Hans Rookmaaker

Certainly, I approve of it. Our culture has sunk into a bog of materialism. Men have lost all spiritual values in their pursuit of material production and technological trickery. They're too comfortable. They will return to a nobler life if we teach them to bear privations. So we ought to place a limit upon their material greed. ~ Ayn Rand

Emotions are like water, turning opaque when disturbed, yet transparent when still. As mindfulness calms our emotions, we can peer into their depths and see our overshadowing spiritual values reflected on the surface. ~ Michael Benner

Love and spiritual values received from parents are the strongest assets for a child to face the various trials of adulthood. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi

I have discovered in a lifetime of traveling in primitive regions, a lifetime of seeing people living in the wilderness and using it, that there is a hard core of wilderness need in everyone, a core that makes its spiritual values a basic human necessity. There is no hiding it ... Unless we can preserve places where the endless spiritual needs of man can be fulfilled and nourished, we will destroy our culture and ourselves. ~ Sigurd F. Olson

Painting is, I think, inevitably an archaic activity and one that depends on spiritual values. ~ Bridget Riley

Circumstances dictate your set of values, your set of morals. ~ Vince Staples

Fascination with the psychic - or the psychological - can be a dangerous sidetrack on any spiritual path. ~ Starhawk

I talk to our kids now that they are grown up, and I ask them about the experiences that had growing up that really had a powerful influence on the way they view the purpose of life. The experiences that really shaped their values - my wife and I have no memory of those experiences! ~ Clayton Christensen

The word of wisdom is missing," he continued. "We need the gift of discernment again in our pulpits. It is not ability to predict that we need, but the anointed eye, the power of spiritual penetration and interpretation, the ability to appraise the religious scene as viewed from God's position, and to tell us what is actually going on ~ A.W. Tozer

And America has done much good. And there's no shortage of nations far exceeding any of its faults or sins. But no nation in the modern world has ever been given so much. None has been so blessed. To whom much is given, much is required. If a nation so blessed by God should turn away from Him, what then? It's blessing will be replaced with curses? Yes. And has America turned away from God? I asked. It has turned and is turning. How? In the same way Israel turned. It started with a spiritual complacency, then spiritual confusion, then the merging of God with idols and then, ultimately, the rejection of his ways. Just as with ancient Israel, America began ruling God out of its life, turning, step by step, against His ways, at first subtly and then more and more brazenly. ~ Jonathan Cahn

The shape of her head and the turn of her neck and bust were peculiarly noble, and the long golden-brown hair that floated like a cloud around it, the deep spiritual gravity of her violet blue eyes, shaded by heavy fringes of golden brown ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

The churches should be responsible for the faulty value system we now see in our society. ~ Sunday Adelaja

Hitherto we have been permitted to seek beauty only in the morally good - a fact which sufficiently accounts for our having found so little of it and having had to seek about for imaginary beauties without backbone! - As surely as the wicked enjoy a hundred kinds of happiness of which the virtuous have no inkling, so too they possess a hundred kinds of beauty; and many of them have not yet been discovered. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Have a spiritual basis which guides you in life. Have a philosophy of life to live by. ~ Tom Osborne

Part of the treasure in heaven that Jesus talks about is the feeling of purpose and satisfaction a person has when they know they are performing the will of God. Those who put themselves and money first often complain about life feeling empty and meaningless. Jesus pays those who serve him with meaning and spiritual abundance in their lives and hearts instead of money. ~ Tim Crawshaw

Apart from the National Film Awards, I don't see any other award ceremony that I should give value
to. My personal experience about these award ceremonies is that I don't trust them. I have no faith
in them so I would prefer to stay away. ~ Aamir Khan

Don't believe what the spiritual sharks and clever carnival hustlers tell you about fearless living - they lie. ~ Guy Finley

Better to die in the pursuit of civilized values, we believed, than in a flight underground. We were offering a value system couched in the language of science. ~ John Charles Polanyi

There is a real connection between culture and climate change. We all have a part to play and if you engage with life, you will get a new set of values, get off the consumer treadmill, and start to think, and it is these great thinkers who will rescue the planet. ~ Vivienne Westwood

The idea of a spiritual heart transplant is a vivid image to me; once you have the heart of somebody else inside you, then that heart is there. Jesus' heart is inside me, and my heart is gone. So if God were to place a stethoscope against my chest, he would hear the heart of Jesus Christ beating. ~ Max Lucado

If a man speculates on what 'society' should do for the poor, he accepts thereby the collectivist premise that men's lives belong to society and that he, as a member of society, has the right to dispose of them ... that psychological confession reveals the enormity of the extent to which altruism erodes men's capacity to grasp the concept of rights or the value of an individual life. ~ Ayn Rand

The critique of the highest values hitherto does not simply refute them or declare them invalid. It is rather a matter of displaying their origins as impositions which must affirm precisely what ought to be negated by the values established. ~ Martin Heidegger

Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it's no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing. ~ Eckhart Tolle

An authentic faith-which is never comfortable or completely personal-always involves a deep desire to change the world, to transmit values, to leave this earth somehow better than we found it. ~ Pope Francis

The crossing of space ... may do much to turn men's minds outwards and away from their present tribal squabbles. In this sense, the rocket, far from being one of the destroyers of civilisation, may provide the safety-value that is needed to preserve it. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice - and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man - by choice; he has to hold his life as a value - by choice; he has to learn to sustain it - by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues - by choice.
A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality. ~ Ayn Rand

The church has been brought into the same value system as the world: fame, success, materialism and celebrity. We watch the leading churches and the leading Christians for our cues. We want to emulate the best known preachers with the biggest sanctuaries and the grandest edifices. Preoccupation with these values has perverted the church's message. ~ Charles Colson

God says there is a direct relationship between how I use my money and the quality of my spiritual life. How I manage my money ("worldly wealth") determines how much God can trust me with spiritual blessings ("true riches"). ~ Rick Warren

Just suppose that the dead do revisit the living. That something approximately to be described as Jim can return to see how George is making out. Would this be at all satisfactory? Would it even be worthwhile? At best, surely, it would be like the brief visit of an observer from another country who is permitted to peep in for a moment from the vast outdoors of his freedom and see, at a distance, through glass, this figure who sits solitary at the small table in the narrow room, eating his poached eggs humbly and dully, a prisoner for life. ~ Christopher Isherwood

Health is not an objective condition which can be understood by the methods of natural science alone. It is rather a condition related to the mental attitude by which the individual has to value what is essential for his life. ~ Ivan Illich

One enjoyed the mental pleasures through ignorance (of the Self), and that is cause of the worldly life. Only the bliss of the 'Knowledge' [of the Soul, one's True Self] is to be enjoyed. ~ Dada Bhagwan

Wonder blasts the soul - that is, the spiritual - and the skeleton, the body - the material. Wonder interprets life through the eyes of eternity while enjoying the moment, but never lets the moment's revision exhaust the eternal. ~ Ravi Zacharias

If I want Callie to grow up to be a smart, strong woman, someone who values family and friends, and respects herself, I have to show her. If I want her to know the satisfaction of making something of herself with effort and work, I have to show her. ~ Nora Roberts

The rule is that when one's mind is controlled in a specific subject, he can control the other person's mind in that subject. ~ Dada Bhagwan

Only those who spend much time in HIs presence will ever become like Him. ~ Oswald J. Smith

We need to take away the government's money power. The banking industry needs its welfare check ended. The dollar's soundness depends on its being untied from the machine that can make an infinite number of copies of dollars and reduce their value to zero. ~ Ron Paul

But this part of my dream, the most lovely of all, I can find no words to describe; nor can I even recall to my own mind the half of what I felt. I only know that something was given me then, some spiritual apprehension, to be again withdrawn, but to be given to us all, I believe, some day, out of his infinite love, and withdrawn no more. Every heart that had ever ached, or longed, or wandered, I knew was there, folded warm and soft, safe and glad. And it seemed in my dream that to know this was the crown of all my bliss - yes, even more than to be myself in my Father's arms. Awake, the thought of multitude had always oppressed my mind; it did not then. From the comfort and joy it gave me to see them there, I seemed then first to know how my own heart had ached for them. ~ George MacDonald

Isn't it important for your friends close by and far away to know the high cost of these insights? Wouldn't they find it a source of consolation to see that light and darkness, hope and despair, love and fear are never very far from each other, and that spiritual freedom often requires a fierce spiritual battle? ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

For conservatives, the issue is that for generations now, they have failed to make the case for their values. They haven't even conveyed conservative values to many of their children. And when they have, the university has often succeeded in undoing them. ~ Dennis Prager

When I say be creative I don't mean that you should all go and become great painters and great poets. I simply mean let your life be a painting, let your life be a poem. ~ Osho

Do not gossip about monks and speak ill of spiritual teachers ~ Radhe Maa

I know that if I ever become truly alive, truly spiritual, truly one with God, the CIA will kill me ... ~ Anonymous

Healing is anything that restores your inner sense that all is well, and that returns you to a healthy state of empowerment. ~ Susan Barbara Apollon

Never underestimate your power to change yourself; never overestimate your power to change others. ~ Wayne W. Dyer

I think one of the most important differences between us is that you are excellent at living in a way that is commensurate with your values, whereas I am not. For instance, I didn't recycle until I watched An Inconvenient Truth and I'm still sort of iffy on it. And also, I didn't vote in 2000, even though I could have voted in Florida *hits self on head repeatedly* Ahh George Bush! It's all my fault! God! So stupid! *sigh* Let's change the subject. Also, we have vastly different happy dances. ~ John Green

How abundantly do spiritual beings display the powers that belong to them! We look for them, but do not see them; we listen to, but do not hear them; yet they enter into all things, and there is nothing without them. ~ Confucius