“Happiness is … the grace of being permitted to unfold … all the spiritual powers planted within us.”

Source: The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World

Sayings of Swami Sivanada (1947)

from: Years of Struggle 1902-14' Autobiography Berlin 1934
1921 - 1956

Source: The Soul of a Butterfly (2004), p. xvi
Context: Over the years my religion has changed and my spirituality has evolved. Religion and spirituality are very different, but people often confuse the two. Some things cannot be taught, but they can be awakened in the heart. Spirituality is recognizing the divine light that is within us all. It doesn't belong to any particular religion; it belongs to everyone.

Source: Bernard Shaw in Twilight (1943), IV
Context: For Shaw as for Goethe, the obligation to strive is a primary feeling: reason initiates nothing and would stop everything. Its use is to come after the fact and devise helpful justification of action. Culture, humaneness, spiritual grace, are not forced upon us by logic: they either are self-evident or pointless. There is, Shaw reminds us, no argument in behalf of moral conduct which would not equally well support immoral. But it is clearly impossible (and immoral) to exact moral conduct, cultivation, and grace from those whom circumstances force to lead sub-human lives. Therefore society must be reformed.

Source: Out of the East, Books and Habits, p. 70.

Memoirs of Aga Khan: World Enough & Time (1954)

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 270