Frithjof Schuon Quotes

Frithjof Schuon , also known as "Īsā Nūr al-Dīn" was an author of German ancestry born in Basel, Switzerland. He was a philosopher and metaphysician inspired by the Hindu philosophy of Advaita Vedanta and the author of numerous books on religion and spirituality. He was also a poet and a painter.

In his prose and poetic writings, Schuon focuses on metaphysical doctrine and spiritual method. He is considered one of the main representatives and an exponent of the religio perennis and one of the chief representatives of the Traditionalist School. In his writings, Schuon expresses his faith in an absolute principle, God, who governs the universe and to whom our souls would return after death. For Schuon the great revelations are the link between this absolute principle—God—and mankind. He wrote the main bulk of his work in French. In the later years of his life Schuon composed some volumes of poetry in his mother tongue, German. His articles in French were collected in about 20 titles in French which were later translated into English as well as many other languages. The main subjects of his prose and poetic compositions are spirituality and various essential realms of the human life coming from God and returning to God.

✵ 18. June 1907 – 5. May 1998  •  Other names フリッチョフ・シュオン
Frithjof Schuon photo

Works

Frithjof Schuon: 82 quotes2 likes

Famous Frithjof Schuon Quotes

“The beauty of the sacred is a symbol or a foretaste of, and sometimes a means for, the joy that God alone procures.”

Frithjof Schuon

[2012, Echoes of Perennial Wisdom, World Wisdom, 38, 978-1-93659700-0]
God, Beauty

Frithjof Schuon Quotes about God

“Sacred art helps man find his own center, that kernel whose nature is to love God.”

Frithjof Schuon

[2007, Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts, World Wisdom, 28, 978-1-933316-42-0]
Spiritual life, Sacred art

“To accept a trial is to thank God for it, with the understanding that it permits us a victory, a detachment with regard to the world and with regard to the ego.”

Frithjof Schuon

[2012, Echoes of Perennial Wisdom, World Wisdom, 44, 978-1-93659700-0]
Spiritual life, Trials

“Every injustice that we suffer at the hands of men is at the same time a trial that comes to us from God.”

Frithjof Schuon

[2019, Esoterism as Principle and as Way, World Wisdom, 139, 978-1-93659765-9]
Spiritual life, Trials

Frithjof Schuon Quotes about love

“Will for the Good and love of the Beautiful are the necessary concomitants of knowledge of the True, and their repercussions are incalculable.”

Frithjof Schuon book The Transcendent Unity of Religions

[1993, The Transcendent Unity of Religions, Quest Books, 152, 978-0-8356-0587-8]
Spiritual path, Knowledge

“Love of the sacred implies love of God, and inversely, the sacred is the perfume of Heaven.”

Frithjof Schuon

[2016, La conscience de l’Absolu, Hozhoni, 60, 978-2-37241-020-5]
Spiritual life, Sense of the sacred

“Truth and Holiness: all values are in these two terms; all that we must love and all that we must be.”

Frithjof Schuon

[2003, Survey of Metaphysics and Esoterism, World Wisdom, 224, 978-0-94153227-3]
Spiritual life, Truth

“The beautiful is not that which we love and because we love it, but that which by its objective value obliges us to love it.”

Frithjof Schuon

[2006, Sufism: Veil and Quintessence, World Wisdom, 96, 978-1-933316-28-4]
God, Beauty

“One cannot love God without fearing him, any more than one can love one's neighbor without respecting him; not to fear God is to prevent Him showing mercy.”

Frithjof Schuon

[2005, Stations of Wisdom, World Wisdom, 102, 978-0-94153218-1]
God, Reverential fear and love

Frithjof Schuon: Trending quotes

Frithjof Schuon Quotes

“What most men do not know - and if they could know it, why could they be called on to believe it?”

Frithjof Schuon book Understanding Islam

Is that this blue sky, though illusory as an optical error and belied by the vision of interplanetary space, is nonetheless an adequate reflection of the Heaven of the Angels and the Blessed and that therefore, despite everything, it is this blue mirage, flecked with silver clouds, that is right and will have the final say; to be astonished at this amounts to admitting that it is by chance that we are here on earth and see the sky as we do.
Understanding Islam (1963)

“It is easy to criticize the "fanaticism" of our ancestors when one has lost the very notion of saving truth, or to be "tolerant" when one derides religion.”

Frithjof Schuon

[2006, Light on the Ancient Worlds, World Wisdom, 9, 978-0-941532-72-3]
Miscellaneous, Modernity

“It ought to be possible to restore to the word "philosophy" its original meaning: philosophy − the "love of wisdom" − is the science of all the fundamental principles; this science operates with intuition, which "perceives," and not with reason alone, which "concludes."”

Frithjof Schuon book The Transfiguration of Man

Subjectively speaking, the essence of philosophy is certitude; for the moderns, on the contrary, the essence of philosophy is doubt: the philosopher is supposed to reason without any premise (voraussetzungsloses Denken), as if this condition were not itself a preconceived idea; this is the classical contradiction of all relativism. Everything is doubted except for doubt. The solution to the problem of knowledge − if there is a problem − could not possibly be this intellectual suicide that is the promotion of doubt; on the contrary, it lies in having recourse to a source of certitude that transcends the mental mechanism, and this source − the only one there is − is the pure Intellect, or Intelligence as such.
[2005, The Transfiguration of Man, World Wisdom, 3, 978-0-94153219-8]
Miscellaneous, Philosophy

“Without religion − or without authentic religion − a human collectivity cannot survive in the long run; that is, it cannot remain human.”

Frithjof Schuon

[2003, The Play of Masks, World Wisdom, 12, 978-0-94153214-3]
Miscellaneous, Religion

“There is no access to the Heart without the virtues.”

Frithjof Schuon

[2012, Echoes of Perennial Wisdom, World Wisdom, 16, 978-1-93659700-0]
Spiritual path, Virtue

“Every virtue is a participation in the Beauty of the One and a response to His Love.”

Frithjof Schuon

[2012, Echoes of Perennial Wisdom, World Wisdom, 20, 978-1-93659700-0]
Spiritual path, Virtue

“Virtue is a ray of the divine Beauty, in which we participate through our nature or through our will, with ease or with difficulty, but always by the grace of God.”

Frithjof Schuon

[2012, Echoes of Perennial Wisdom, World Wisdom, 16, 978-1-93659700-0]
Spiritual path, Virtue

“Humanly, no one escapes the obligation to "believe in order to be able to understand"”

Frithjof Schuon

credo ut intelligam
[2013, From the Divine to the Human, World Wisdom, 33, 978-1-936597-32-1]
Spiritual life, Faith

“The double mission of man: to know the Absolute from the standpoint of the contingent, and to manifest the Absolute within the contingent.”

Frithjof Schuon

[2014, In the Face of the Absolute, World Wisdom, xii, 978-1-936597-41-3]
Human being, Specificities

“There is no valid virtue without piety, and there is no authentic piety without virtue.”

Frithjof Schuon

[2013, From the Divine to the Human, World Wisdom, 70, 978-1-936597-32-1]
Spiritual path, Virtue

“Virtue consists in allowing free passage, in the soul, to the Beauty of God.”

Frithjof Schuon

[2019, Esoterism as Principle and as Way, World Wisdom, 87, 978-1-93659765-9]
Spiritual path, Virtue

“First of all one has to answer the question of why the painful experiences that man must undergo are called "trials."”

Frithjof Schuon

We would reply that these experiences are trials in relation to our faith, which indicates that with regard to troubling or painful experiences we have duties resulting from our human vocation; in other words, we must prove our faith in relation to God and in relation to ourselves. In relation to God, by our intelligence, our sense of the absolute, and thus our sense of relativities and proportions; and in relation to ourselves, by our character, our resignation to destiny, our gratitude. There are in fact two ways to overcome the traces that evil, or more precisely suffering, leaves in the soul: these are, firstly, our awareness of the Sovereign Good, which coincides with our hope to the extent that this awareness penetrates us; and secondly, our acceptance of what, in religious language, is called the "will of God"; and assuredly it is a great victory over oneself to accept a destiny because it is God's will and for no other reason.
[2003, Survey of Metaphysics and Esoterism, World Wisdom, 215, 978-0-94153227-3]
Spiritual life, Trials

“The sacred introduces a quality of the absolute into relativities and confers on perishable things a texture of eternity.”

Frithjof Schuon book Understanding Islam

[1998, Understanding Islam, World Wisdom, 45, 0-941532-24-0]
Spiritual life, Sense of the sacred

“Only the science of the Absolute gives meaning and discipline to the science of the relative.”

Frithjof Schuon

[2013, From the Divine to the Human, World Wisdom, 119, 978-1-936597-32-1]
Spiritual path, Knowledge

“Metaphysics is the science of the Absolute or the true nature of things.”

Frithjof Schuon book Logic and Transcendence

[2009, Logic and Transcendence, World Wisdom, 29, 978-1-933316-73-4]
Spiritual path, Metaphysics

“To have a sense of the sacred is to be aware that all qualities or values not only proceed from the Infinite but also attract towards It.”

Frithjof Schuon

[2003, The Play of Masks, World Wisdom, 4, 978-0-94153214-3]
Spiritual life, Sense of the sacred

“The sacred is an apparition of the Center, it immobilizes the soul and turns it towards the Inward.”

Frithjof Schuon

[2012, Echoes of Perennial Wisdom, World Wisdom, 37, 978-1-93659700-0]
Spiritual life, Sense of the sacred

“Truth is the raison d’être for man’s existence; it constitutes our grandeur and reveals to us our smallness.”

Frithjof Schuon

[2012, Echoes of Perennial Wisdom, World Wisdom, 34, 978-1-93659700-0]
Spiritual life, Truth

“The chief difficulty of the spiritual life is to maintain a simple, qualitative, heavenly position in a complex, quantitative, earthly setting.”

Frithjof Schuon

[2016, La conscience de l’Absolu, Hozhoni, 20, 978-2-37241-020-5]
Spiritual life, Outline

“The interiorization of beauty presupposes nobility of soul and at the same time produces it.”

Frithjof Schuon

[2016, La conscience de l’Absolu, Hozhoni, 59, 978-2-37241-020-5]
God, Beauty

“Beauty is a reflection of divine beatitude; and since God is Truth, the reflection of His beatitude will be that blend of happiness and truth found in all beauty.”

Frithjof Schuon

[2007, Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts, World Wisdom, 24, 978-1-933316-42-0]
God, Beauty

“Beauty, whatever use man may make of it, belongs fundamentally to its Creator, who through it projects into the world of appearances something of His being.”

Frithjof Schuon

[2019, Esoterism as Principle and as Way, World Wisdom, 190, 978-1-93659765-9]
God, Beauty

“Without fear of God as a basis, nothing is possible spiritually, for the absence of fear is a lack of self-knowledge.”

Frithjof Schuon

[2012, Echoes of Perennial Wisdom, World Wisdom, 30, 978-1-93659700-0]
God, Reverential fear and love

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