Quotes about divine

A collection of quotes on the topic of divine, god, human, humanity.

Quotes about divine

“The gift of mental power comes from God, Divine Being, and if we concentrate our minds on that truth, we become in tune with this great power. My Mother had taught me to seek all truth in the Bible.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

God, Truth

“People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Life, God, People, History

“Most Holy Father, there are many who, on bringing their feeble judgment to bear on what is written concerning the great achievements of the Romans — the feats of arms, the city of Rome and the wondrous skill shown in the opulence, ornamentation and grandeur of their buildings — have come to the conclusion that these achievements are more likely to be fables than facts. I, however, have always seen — and still do see —things differently. For, bearing in mind the divine quality of the ancients' minds as revealed in the remains still to be seen among the ruins of Rome, I do not find it unreasonable to believe that much of what we consider impossible seemed, to them, exceedingly simple.”

Raphael (1483–1520) Italian painter and architect

Quote from a letter of Raphael Sanzio to pope Leo X (c. 1519); Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, cod. it. 37b; translated as 'The Letter to Leo X by Raphael and Baldassare Castiglione, c.1519', by Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks, Palladio's Rome: A Translation of Andrea Palladio's Two Guidebooks to Rome; Yale University Press, New Haven, 2006, pp. 179-92

“God is the source of my supply. His riches flow to me freely, copiously, and abundantly. All my financial and other needs are met at every moment of time and point of space; there is always a divine surplus.”

Joseph Murphy (1898–1981) American writer

God, Time

“Few mortals know that the kingdom of God includes the kingdom of mundane fulfillments. … The divine realm extends to the earthly; but the later, illusory in nature, does not contain the essence of Reality.”

Mahavatar Babaji Hindu Yogi

Source: Autobiography of a Yogi (1946), Ch. 34 : Materializing a Palace in the Himalayas

God, Nature, Reality

“Since the prophets have full confidence in the divine One, you must put full energy on the improvement of your soul.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Soul, Confidence

“The entire universe is God's cosmic motion picture, and that individuals are merely actors in the divine play who change roles through reincarnation; mankind's deep suffering is rooted in identifying too closely with one's current role, rather than with the movie's director, or God.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

God, Suffering, Universe, Change

“The divine is not something high above us. It is in heaven, it is in earth, it is inside us”

Morihei Ueshiba (1883–1969) founder of aikido

“The highest powers in our nature are our sense of moral excellence, the principple of reason and reflection, benevolence to our creatures and our love of the Divine Being.”

Edward Jenner (1749–1823) English physician, scientist and pioneer of vaccination

The Life of Edward Jenner M.D. Vol. 2 (1838) by John Baron, p. 447

Love, Nature, Sense

“We have Divine Wisdom in the mortal body. Whatever does harm to the body, ruins the House of the Eternal.”

Paracelsus (1493–1541) Swiss physician and alchemist

Paracelsus - Doctor of our Time (1992)

Wisdom, Housing

“I was very young at that time, and always I used to tell myself that if ever I could do it, I would try to create a little world — Oh! quite a small one, but still — a small world where people would be able to live without having to be preoccupied by problems of food and lodging and clothing and the imperious necessities of life, to see if all the energies freed by this certainty of an assured material living would spontaneously be turned towards the divine life and inner realization.”

The Mother (1878–1973) spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo

In "Auroville — The City Of Dawn in South India" (27 February 2009)
Sayings

Life, People, World, Food

“I started with an impulse of my heart, with that instinct of defense which even the least of the worms has, not with the instinct of personal self-preservation, but of defense of the race to which I belong. This is why I have always had the feeling that the whole race rests on our shoulders, the living, and those who died for the Fatherland, and our entire future, and that the race struggles and speaks through us, that the hostile flock, however huge, in relation to this historical entity, is only a handful of human detritus which we will disperse and defeat… The individual in the framework and in the service of his race, the race in the framework and in the service of God and of the laws of the divinity: those who will understand these things will win even though they are alone. Those who will not understand will be defeated.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Nation and Culture

God, Hostility, Law, Feeling

“When we understand this we see clearly that the subject round which the alternative senses play must be twofold. And we must therefore consider the subject of this work [the Divine Comedy] as literally understood, and then its subject as allegorically intended. The subject of the whole work, then, taken in the literal sense only is "the state of souls after death" without qualification, for the whole progress of the work hinges on it and about it. Whereas if the work be taken allegorically, the subject is "man as by good or ill deserts, in the exercise of the freedom of his choice, he becomes liable to rewarding or punishing justice."”
Hiis visis, manifestum est quod duplex oportet esse subiectum circa quod currant alterni sensus. Et ideo videndum est de subiecto huius operis, prout ad litteram accipitur; deinde de subiecto, prout allegorice sententiatur. Est ergo subiectum totius operis, litteraliter tantum accepti, status animarum post mortem simpliciter sumptus. Nam de illo et circa illum totius operis versatur processus. Si vero accipiatur opus allegorice, subiectum est homo, prout merendo et demerendo per arbitrii libertatem iustitie premiandi et puniendi obnoxius est.

Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) Italian poet

Letter to Can Grande (Epistle XIII, 23–25), as translated by Charles Singleton in his essay "Two Kinds of Allegory" published in Dante Studies 1 (Harvard University Press, 1954), p. 87.
Epistolae (Letters)

Death, Justice, Exercises, Soul

“I should be judged as a captain who went from Spain to the Indies to conquer a people numerous and warlike, whose manners and religion are very different from ours, who live in sierras and mountains, without fixed settlements, and where by divine will I have placed under the sovereignty of the King and Queen our Lords, an Other World, whereby Spain, which was reckoned poor, is become the richest of countries.”

Cristoforo Colombo (1451–1506) Explorer, navigator, and colonizer

Letter to Doña Juana de Torres (October 2015)

People, World, Religion, Mountain

“Our race is the Master Race. We are divine gods on this planet. We are as different from the inferior races as they are from insects. In fact, compared to our race, other races are beasts and animals, cattle at best. Other races are considered as human excrement. Our destiny is to rule over the inferior races. Our earthly kingdom will be ruled by our leader with a rod of iron. The masses will lick our feet and serve us as our slaves.”

Texe Marrs (1944–2019) American writer

The text by Texe Marrs titled "All Hail the Jewish Master Race" was published before 2004 https://web.archive.org/web/20031217191553/http://texemarrs.com/112003/jewish_master_race.htm (allegedly 25 November 2003 https://web.archive.org/web/20031205052353/http://www.rense.com/general45/master.htm) and claimed "In his memoirs of his years in the White House, former President Jimmy Carter wrote that there could have been peace between the Arabs and the Israelis had it not been for the bigoted, Nazi-like racial views of Israeli's Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Begin, Carter recalled, believed the Jews were a Master Race, a holy people superior to Egyptians and Arabs." No source is provided regarding the Jimmy Carter claim. Misattributed to Menachem Begin. Attributed in page 208 of Oil Crisis by Colin John Campbell in 2005 https://books.google.ca/books?id=VaGCbpbzjRwC&pg=PA208

God, Animals

“My maker was divine authority.”
Fecemi la divina potestate.

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto III, line 5 (tr. Mandelbaum).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

“On Monday the 9th of the first Jumada, we got out of the suburbs of Agra, on our journey (safar) for the Holy War, and dismounted in the open country, where we remained three or four days to collect our army and be its rallying-point…On this occasion I received a secret inspiration and heard an infallible voice say: 'Is not the time yet come unto those who believe, that their hearts should humbly submit to the admonition of Allah, and that truth which hath been revealed? Thereupon we set ourselves to extirpate the things of wickedness…
Above all, adequate thanks cannot be rendered for a benefit than which none is greater in the world and nothing is more blessed, in the world to come, to wit, victory over most powerful infidels and dominion over wealthiest heretics, these are the unbelievers, the wicked.'In the eyes of the judicious, no blessing can be greater than this…. Previous to the rising in Hindustan of the Sun of dominion and the emergence there of the light of the Shahansha's (i. e. Babur's) Khalifate the authority of that execrated pagan (Sanga) - at the Judgment Day he shall have no friend - was such that not one of all the exalted sovereigns of this wide realm, such as the Sultan of Delhi, the Sultan of Gujarat and the Sultan of Mandu, could cope with this evil-dispositioned one, without the help of other pagans…
Ten powerful chiefs, each the leader of a pagan host, uprose in rebellion, as smoke rises, and linked themselves, as though enchained, to that perverse one (Sanga); and this infidel decade who, unlike the blessed ten, uplifted misery-freighted standards which denounce unto them excruciating punishment, had many dependents, and troops, and wide-extended lands…. The protagonists of the royal forces fell, like divine destiny, on that one-eyed Dajjal who to understanding men, shewed the truth of the saying, When Fate arrives, the eye becomes blind, and setting before their eyes the scripture which saith, whosoever striveth to promote the true religion, striveth for the good of his own soul, they acted on the precept to which obedience is due, Fight against infidels and hypocrites…
The pagan right wing made repeated and desperate attack on the left wing of the army of Islam, falling furiously on the holy warriors, possessors of salvation, but each time was made to turn back or, smitten with the arrows of victory, was made to descend into Hell, the house of perdition: they shall be thrown to bum therein, and an unhappy dwelling shall it be. Then the trusty amongst the nobles, Mumin Ataka and Rustam Turkman betook themselves to the rear of the host of darkened pagans…
At the moment when the holy warriors were heedlessly flinging away their lives, they heard a secret voice say, Be not dismayed, neither be grieved, for, if ye believe, ye shall be exalted above the unbelievers, and from the infallible Informer heard the joyful words, Assistance is from Allah, and a speedy victory! And do thou bear glad tiding to true believers. Then they fought with such delight that the plaudits of the saints of the Holy Assembly reached them and the angels from near the Throne, fluttered round their heads like moths.”

Babur (1483–1530) 1st Mughal Emperor

Babur writing about the battle against the Rajput Confederacy led by Maharana Sangram Singh of Mewar. In Babur-Nama, translated into English by A.S. Beveridge, New Delhi reprint, 1979, pp. 547-572.

Men, Fate, War, Truth

“When Adam and Eve realize they're naked is that same moment they realize the difference between good and evil. What's the relationship between consciousness, knowledge of nakedness, and knowledge of good and evil? When you know that you're vulnerable, and they also developed a knowledge of death so there's deep knowledge of vulnerability, and they get embarrassed about that and they cover themselves up. So that's culture. So it's a very profound shock when they come to recognize that they're naked. It even causes Adam to run and hide from God. Then they develop the knowledge of good and evil. This is about how human beings have this peculiar capacity that no other creatures have. I know how I can be hurt, because I am aware of my own limitations – painfully aware. And now, because I know how I can be hurt, I know how you can be hurt. And I can take advantage of that. And that's how evil enters the world. It gives people another attribute of divinity, knowing the difference between good and evil. The cosmos switches when that self-consciousness manifests itself, and that's when the possibility of evil enters the world.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

Death, God, People, World

“You will know that the divine is so great and of such a nature that it sees and hears everything at once, is present everywhere, and is concerned with everything.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Memorabilia I.4.18
Xenophon

Nature

“I'm not a god or the God, but we're all God and we're all potentially divine — and potentially evil. We all have everything within us and the Kingdom of Heaven is nigh and within us, and if you look hard enough you'll see it.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Source: The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 226
Context: I don't need to go to church. I respect churches because of the sacredness that's been put on them over the years by people who do believe. But I think a lot of bad things have happened in the name of the church and in the name of Christ. Therefore I shy away from church, and as Donovan once said, "I go to my own church in my own temple once a day." And I think people who need a church should go. And the others who know the church is in your own head should visit that temple because that's where the source is. We're all God. Christ said, "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you." And the Indians say that and the Zen people say that. We're all God. I'm not a god or the God, but we're all God and we're all potentially divine — and potentially evil. We all have everything within us and the Kingdom of Heaven is nigh and within us, and if you look hard enough you'll see it.

God, Evil

“Please, don't talk to me about 'Pure Awareness' or 'Dwelling in the Absolute'.
I want to see how you treat your partner,
your kids, your parents, your precious body.
Please, don't lecture me about 'the illusion of the separate self' or how you achieved permanent bliss in just 7 days.
I want to feel a genuine warmth radiating from your heart.
I want to hear how well you listen,
take in information that doesn't fit your personal philosophy.
I want to see how you deal with people who disagree with you.
Don't tell me how awakened you are, how free you are from ego.
I want to know you beneath the words.
I want to know what you're like when troubles befall you.
If you can fully allow your pain and not pretend to be invulnerable.
If you can feel your anger yet not step into violence.
If you can grant safe passage to your sorrow yet not be its slave.
If you can feel your shame and not shame others:
If you can fuck up, and admit it.
If you can say 'sorry', and really mean it.
If you can be fully human in your glorious divinity.
Don't talk to me about your spirituality, friend.
I'm really not that interested.
I only want to meet YOU.
Know your precious heart.
Know the beautiful human struggling for the light.
Before 'the spiritual one'.
Before all the clever words.”

Jeff Foster (1980) Spiritual teacher

Source: https://www.facebook.com/LifeWithoutACentre/posts/1523252961105640

“: You ought to go beyond the corporeal things and explore the divinity that is residing within you.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“Je ne regrette rien…

If it was good…it was divine.

If it was bad…it was an experience.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

“Sometimes, divine revelation simply means adjusting your brain to hear what your heart already knows."
Angels and Demons p. 484”

Dan Brown (1964) American author

Angels, Heart

“Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved, as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in dying to self that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.”

Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) Catholic saint and founder of the Franciscan Order

Widely known as The Prayer of St. Francis, it is not found in Esser's authoritative collection of Francis's writings. [Fr. Kajetan, Esser, OFM, ed., Opuscula Sancti Patris Francisci Assisiensis, Rome, Grottaferrata, 1978]. Additionally there is no record of this prayer before the twentieth century. [Fr. Regis J., Armstrong, OFM, Francis and Clare: The Complete Works, New York, Paulist Press, 1982, 10, 0-8091-2446-7]. Dr. Christian Renoux of the University of Orleans in France traces the origin of the prayer to an anonymous 1912 contributor to La Clochette, a publication of the Holy Mass League in Paris. It was not until 1927 that it was attributed to St. Francis. The Origin of the Peace Prayer of St. Francis, 2013-06-28, Renoux, Christian http://www.franciscan-archive.org/franciscana/peace.html,. [Christian, Renoux, La prière pour la paix attribuée à saint François: une énigme à résoudre, Paris, Editions franciscaines, 2001, 2-85020-096-4]. Misattributed

Love, Life, Sadness, Peace

“J. M. W. Turner's Poem dedicated to Ivan Aivazovsky (1842)

Like a curtain slowly drawn
It stops suddenly half open,
Or, like grief itself, filled with gentle hope,
It becomes lighter in the shore-less dark,
Thus the moon barely wanes
Winding her way above the storm-tossed sea.
Stand upon this hill and behold endlessly
This scene of a formidable sea,
And it will seem to thee a waking dream.
That secret mind flowing in thee
Which even the day cannot scatter,
The serenity of thinking and the beating of the heart
Will enchain thee in this vision;
This golden-silver moon
Standing lonely over the sea,
All curtain the grief of even the hopeless.
And it appears that through the tempest
Moves a light caressing wind,
While the sea swells up with a roar,
Sometimes, like a battlefield it looks to me
The tempestuous sea,
Where the moon itself is a brilliant golden crown
Of a great king.
But even that moon is always beneath thee
Oh Master most high,
Oh forgive thou me
If even this master was frightened for a moment
Oh, noble moment, by art betrayed…
And how may one not delight in thee,
Oh thou young boy, but forgive thou me,
If I shall bend my white head
Before thy art divine
Thy bliss-wrought genius…”

J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) British Romantic landscape painter, water-colourist, and printmaker

Source: J.M.W. Turner

Secret, Dreams, Hope, Art

“Do not merely practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; it deserves that, for only art and science can exalt man to divinity.”

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Romantic composer

Fahre fort, übe nicht allein die Kunst, sondern dringe auch in ihr Inneres; sie verdient es, denn nur die Kunst und die Wissenschaft erhöhen den Menschen bis zur Gottheit.
Letter to Emilie, July 17, 1812.
Quoted in Musical news, Vol. 3 (1892), p. 627

Secret, Art, Way, Science

“Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has: it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but--more frequently than not--struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.”

Martin Luther book Table Talk

353
Table Talk (1569)

God, Faith

“Nature is part our humanity, and without some awareness and experience of that divine mystery man ceases to be man. When the Pleiades and the wind in the grass are no longer a part of the human spirit, a part of very flesh and bone, man becomes, as it were, a kind of cosmic outlaw, having neither the completeness and integrity of the animal nor the birthright of a true humanity.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

Nature, Grass, Animals, Parting

“Some will object that the Law is divine and holy. Let it be divine and holy. The Law has no right to tell me that I must be justified by it.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Source: Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1535), Chapter 2

Law

“The liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been externally imposed upon him by any extrinsic will whatever, divine or human, collective or individual.”

Mikhail Bakunin book God and the State

God and the State (1871; publ. 1882)

Law, Nature

“I know that a Christian should be humble, but against the Pope I am going to be proud and say to him: “You, Pope, I will not have you for my boss, for I am sure that my doctrine is divine.””

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Source: Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1535), Chapter 2, Verse 6

“On that day all the gods looked down from heaven upon the ship and the might of the heroes, half-divine, the bravest of men then sailing the sea.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book I. Preparation and Departure, Lines 547–549 (tr. R. C. Seaton)

Men, God, Sea

“The vast power of money, mighty when you have it and even mightier when you don't, with its divine gift of freedom and the demonic fury it unleashes on those forced to do without it — they felt this as never before and were filled with bitter rage when, in the dark of the early morning, they saw the brightly lit windows and knew that those glowing gold curtains gave shelter and freedom to hundreds of thousands of people, men with women they desired, while they themselves were homeless, plodding blindly through the streets, through the rain; it was cruel as only the sea could be cruel — the sea in which a person can die of thirst.”

Stefan Zweig book The Post Office Girl

The Post Office Girl (published posthumously in 1982)

Women, Men, Money, People

“On account of this personal union and communion of the natures, Mary, the most blessed virgin, did not conceive a mere, ordinary human being, but a human being who is truly the Son of the most high God, as the angel testifies. He demonstrated his divine majesty even in his mother's womb in that he was born of a virgin without violating her virginity. Therefore she is truly the mother of God and yet remained a virgin.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Martin Luther as quoted in Tappert, Theodore G. (1959). The Book of Concord: the Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, p. 595

God, Angels, Nature, Personality

“If you see a man dedicated to his stomach, crawling on the ground, you see a plant and not a man; or if you see a man bedazzled by the empty forms of the imagination, as by the wiles of Calypso, and through their alluring solicitations made a slave to his own senses, you see a brute and not a man. If, however, you see a philosopher, judging and distinguishing all things according to the rule of reason, him shall you hold in veneration, for he is a creature of heaven and not of earth; if, finally, a pure contemplator, unmindful of the body, wholly withdrawn into the inner chambers of the mind, here indeed is neither a creature of earth nor a heavenly creature, but some higher divinity, clothed in human flesh.”
Si quem enim videris deditum ventri, humi serpentem hominem, frutex est, non homo, quem vides; si quem in fantasiae quasi Calipsus vanis praestigiis cecucientem et subscalpenti delinitum illecebra sensibus mancipatum, brutum est, non homo, quem vides. Si recta philosophum ratione omnia discernentem, hunc venereris; caeleste est animal, non terrenum. Si purum contemplatorem corporis nescium, in penetralia mentis relegatum, hic non terrenum, non caeleste animal: hic augustius est numen humana carne circumvestitum.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola book Oration on the Dignity of Man

8. 40-42; translation by A. Robert Caponigri
Oration on the Dignity of Man (1496)

Imagination, Sense, Clothes

“Now I say this to keep the conscience free from mischievous laws and fictitious sins, and not because I would defend images. Nor would I condemn those who have destroyed them, especially those who destroy divine and idolatrous images. But images for memorial and witness, such as crucifixes and images of saints, are to be tolerated.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Source: Against the Heavenly Prophets in the Matter of Images and Sacraments (1525), p. 91

Law, Memory

“All religions are cruel, all founded on blood; for all rest principally on the idea of sacrifice — that is, on the perpetual immolation of humanity to the insatiable vengeance of divinity.”

Mikhail Bakunin book God and the State

God and the State (1871; publ. 1882)

Religion, Idea

“Though I have always made it my practice to be pleasant to everybody, I have not once actually experienced friendship. I have only the most painful recollections of my various acquaintances with the exception of such companions in pleasure as Horiki. I have frantically played the clown in order to disentangle myself from these painful relationships, only to wear myself out as a result. Even now it comes as a shock if by chance I notice in the street a face resembling someone I know however slightly, and I am at once seized by a shivering violent enough to make me dizzy. I know that I am liked by other people, but I seem to be deficient in the faculty to love others. (I should add that I have very strong doubts as to whether even human beings really possess this faculty.) It was hardly to be expected that someone like myself could ever develop any close friends—besides, I lacked even the ability to pay visits. The front door of another person’s house terrified me more than the gate of Inferno in the Divine Comedy, and I am not exaggerating when I say that I really felt I could detect within the door the presence of a horrible dragon-like monster writhing there with a dank, raw smell.”

Osamu Dazai book No Longer Human

The Third Notebook: Part One
No Longer Human

Love, Pain, Friendship, People

“A God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice, and invented hell — mouths mercy, and invented hell — mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people, and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites his poor abused slave to worship him!”

Mark Twain book The Mysterious Stranger

The Mysterious Stranger (1916)

Life, God, Children, People

“If you desire to discover peace and consolation for your soul and to serve God truly, do not find your satisfaction in what you have left behind, because in that which now concerns you you may be as impeded as you were before, or even more. But leave as well all these other things and attend to one thing alone that brings all these with it (namely, holy solitude, together with prayer and spiritual and divine reading), and persevere there in forgetfulness of all things.”

John of the Cross (1542–1591) Spanish mystic and Roman Catholic saint

The Sayings of Light and Love

God, Peace, Soul, Solitude

“You want to have proven to you that the soul is imperishable and immortal, and you think that the philosopher who is confident in death has but a vain and foolish confidence, if he thinks that he will fare better than one who has led another sort of life, in the world below, unless he can prove this; and you say that the strength and divinity of the soul, and of her existence prior to our becoming men, does not necessarily imply her immortality. …For any man, who is not devoid of natural feeling, has reason to fear, if he has no knowledge or proof of the soul's immortality. That is what I suppose you to say, Cebes, which I designedly repeat, in order that nothing may escape us…”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Life, Death, Men, World

“Divine incarnations do not come to bring a new or exclusive religion, but to restore the One Religion of God-realization.
Many are the churches and temples founded in his name, often prosperous and powerful, but where is the communion that he stressed — actual contact with God? Jesus wants temples to be established in human souls, first and foremost; then established outwardly in physical places of worship. Instead, there are countless huge edifices with vast congregations being indoctrinated in churchianity, but few souls who are really in touch with Christ through deep prayer and meditation.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

The Second Coming of Christ: The Resurrection of the Christ Within You, (2004) by Yogananda

God, Religion, Soul, Christ

“I loved Fred so, and I mean that in the nicest, warmest way: I had such affection for him artistically. I think that experience with Fred was a divine blessing. It blessed me, I know, and I don't think blessings are one sided.”

Ginger Rogers (1911–1995) American actress and dancer

Reported by Dick Richards in "Ginger: Salute to a Star", quoting Rogers from Francis Wyndham's story about Ginger Rogers, in London's "Sunday Times Magazine".

Love, Way, Thinking

“I am not part of the human race. Humanity has rejected me. The females of the human species have never wanted to mate with me, so how could I possibly consider myself part of humanity? Humanity has never accepted me among them, and now I know why. I am more than human. I am superior to them all. I am Elliot Rodger… Magnificent, glorious, supreme, eminent… Divine! I am the closest thing there is to a living god. Humanity is a disgusting, depraved, and evil species. It is my purpose to punish them all. I will purify the world of everything that is wrong with it. On the Day of Retribution, I will truly be a powerful god, punishing everyone I deem to be impure and depraved.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), Final Days

God, World, Evil, Parting

“So long as any one can speak of divine things, enjoy and understand them, remember and desire them, he has not yet arrived in port; yet there are ways and means to guide him thither. But the creature can know nothing but what God gives him to know from day to day”

Catherine of Genoa (1447–1510) Italian author and nurse

Life and Doctrine

God, Way, Understanding

“All religions, with their gods, their demigods, and their prophets, their messiahs and their saints, were created by the credulous fancy of men who had not attained the full development and full possession of their faculties. Consequently, the religious heaven is nothing but a mirage in which man, exalted by ignorance and faith, discovers his own image, but enlarged and reversed — that is, divinized. The history of religion, of the birth, grandeur, and decline of the gods who have succeeded one another in human belief, is nothing, therefore, but the development of the collective intelligence and conscience of mankind.”

Mikhail Bakunin book God and the State

God and the State (1871; publ. 1882)

Men, God, Faith, Religion

“Ashoka’s emblem of the Amlaki will be seen on the cornices of the Institute, and towering above all is the symbol of thunderbolt. It was the RishiDadhichi, the pure and blameless, who offered his life that the divine weapon, the thunderbolt, might be fashioned out of his bones to smite evil and exalt righteousness. It is but half of the Amlaki that we can offer now. But the past shall be reborn in a yet nobler future. We stand here today and resume work tomorrow, so that by the efforts of our lives and our unshaken faith in the future we may all help to build the greater India yet to be.”

Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858–1937) Bengali polymath, physicist, biologist, botanist and archaeologist

Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose in Vijayaprasara

Life, Faith, Fashion, Effort

“The master made it his task to systematically destroy every doctrine, every belief, every concept of the divine, for these things, which were originally intended as pointers, were now taken as descriptions. He loved to quote the Eastern saying: "When the sage points at the moon, all that the idiot sees is the finger."”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 132

Love, Quotes

“Someone will say: Yes, Socrates, but cannot you hold your tongue, and then you may go into a foreign city, and no one will interfere with you? Now I have great difficulty in making you understand my answer to this. For if I tell you that this would be a disobedience to a divine command, and therefore that I cannot hold my tongue, you will not believe that I am serious; and if I say that the greatest good of a man is daily to converse about virtue, and all that concerning which you hear me examining myself and others, and that the life which is unexamined is not worth living — that you are still less likely to believe.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

37e–38a
Plato, Apology

Life, Understanding

“Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet; as if the way to God was not open to every man alike. Each of those churches show certain books, which they call revelation, or the word of God. The Jews say, that their word of God was given by God to Moses, face to face; the Christians say, that their word of God came by divine inspiration: and the Turks say, that their word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from Heaven. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.”

Thomas Paine book The Age of Reason

1790s, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794)

God, Books, Religion, Angels

“I tell you all, with my Divine Authority, that you and I are not “WE,” but “ONE.””

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

Meher Baba’s Call (1954)
Context: I tell you all, with my Divine Authority, that you and I are not “WE,” but “ONE.” You unconsciously feel my Avatarhood within you; I consciously feel in you what each of you feel. Thus every one of us is Avatar, in the sense that everyone and everything is everyone and everything, at the same time, and for all time.
There is nothing but God. He is the only Reality, and we all are one in the indivisible Oneness of this absolute Reality. When the One who has realized God says, “I am God. You are God, and we are all one,” and also awakens this feeling of Oneness in his illusion-bound selves, then the question of the lowly and the great, the poor and the rich, the humble and the modest, the good and the bad, simply vanishes. It is his false awareness of duality that misleads man into making illusory distinctions and filing them into separate categories.

“Nations are the wealth of mankind, its collective personalities; the very least of them wears its own special colours and bears within itself a special facet of divine intention.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Nobel lecture (1970)
Context: In recent times it has been fashionable to talk of the levelling of nations, of the disappearance of different races in the melting-pot of contemporary civilization. I do not agree with this opinion, but its discussion remains another question. Here it is merely fitting to say that the disappearance of nations would have impoverished us no less than if all men had become alike, with one personality and one face. Nations are the wealth of mankind, its collective personalities; the very least of them wears its own special colours and bears within itself a special facet of divine intention.

Personality, Wealth

“What is all that men have done and thought over thousands of years, compared with one moment of love. But in all Nature, too, it is what is nearest to perfection, what is most divinely beautiful!”

Friedrich Hölderlin book Hyperion

Hyperion
Context: What is all that men have done and thought over thousands of years, compared with one moment of love. But in all Nature, too, it is what is nearest to perfection, what is most divinely beautiful! There all stairs lead from the threshold of life. From there we come, to there we go.

Love, Men, Beauty, Nature

“Divinity reveals herself in all things… everything has Divinity latent within itself.”

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) Italian philosopher, mathematician and astronomer

As translated by Arthur Imerti (1964)
The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast (1584)
Context: Divinity reveals herself in all things... everything has Divinity latent within itself. For she enfolds and imparts herself even unto the smallest beings, and from the smallest beings, according to their capacity. Without her presence nothing would have being, because she is the essence of the existence of the first unto the last being.

“My inspiration has been drawn from trees, from waves, from clouds, from the sympathies that exist between passion and the storm, between gentleness and the soft breeze, and the like, and I always endeavour to put into my movements a little of that divine continuity which gives to the whole of nature its beauty and its life.”

Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) American dancer and choreographer

As quoted in Modern Dancing and Dancers (1912) by John Ernest Crawford Flitch, p. 105.
Context: To seek in nature the fairest forms and to find the movement which expresses the soul of these forms — this is the art of the dancer. It is from nature alone that the dancer must draw his inspirations, in the same manner as the sculptor, with whom he has so many affinities. Rodin has said: "To produce good sculpture it is not necessary to copy the works of antiquity; it is necessary first of all to regard the works of nature, and to see in those of the classics only the method by which they have interpreted nature." Rodin is right; and in my art I have by no means copied, as has been supposed, the figures of Greek vases, friezes and paintings. From them I have learned to regard nature, and when certain of my movements recall the gestures that are seen in works of art, it is only because, like them, they are drawn from the grand natural source.
My inspiration has been drawn from trees, from waves, from clouds, from the sympathies that exist between passion and the storm, between gentleness and the soft breeze, and the like, and I always endeavour to put into my movements a little of that divine continuity which gives to the whole of nature its beauty and its life.

Life, Beauty, Nature, Tree

“Doutbless, revenge is not always sweet, once it is consummated we feel inferior to our victim, or else we are tangled in the subtleties of remorse; so vengeance too has its venom, though it comes closer to what we are, to what we feel, to the very law of the self; it is also healthier than magnanimity. The Furies were held to antedate the gods, Zeus included. Vengeance before Divinity! This is the Major intuition of ancient mythology.”

Emil M. Cioran book History and Utopia

p. 70. https://books.google.com/books?id=5DuCDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT70 History and Utopia (1960)

God, Law, Revenge, Self-confidence

“The Logos, in truth, is the light of God, but the ignorant soul is darkness. On this account, if it continues solitary, it tends downward towards matter, and dies with the flesh; but, if it enters into union with the Divine Spirit, it is no longer helpless, but ascends to the regions whither the Spirit guides it: for the dwelling-place of the spirit is above, but the origin of the soul is from beneath. Now, in the beginning the spirit was a constant companion of the soul, but the spirit forsook it because it was not willing to follow.”

Tatian (120–180) Syrian writer

Source: Address to the Greeks, Chapter XIII

Light, Truth, God, Soul

“Cruelty has a human heart,
And Jealousy a human face;
Terror the human form divine,
And Secrecy the human dress.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

A Divine Image, st. 1
1790s, Songs of Experience (1794)

Heart, Jealousy

“All men's souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Soul, Men

“The fastest way, the most powerful way, the most effective way to experience the characteristics of divinity is to be a cause of another person experiencing the characteristics of divinity.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

Personality, Way

“I was always going to the bookcase for another sip of the divine specific.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Source: The Waves

“A man should live his life a certain way not because of some divine authority, but because of a personal moral obligation to himself and others.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Life, Way, Personality

“If there is anything that links the human to the divine, it is the courage to stand by a principle when everybody else rejects it.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Courage

“There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.”

William Shakespeare Hamlet

Source: Hamlet

“Adiyogi’s legacy offers you the licence to believe in the god of your choice, or not to believe at all. And if you do not find a god to your taste, it allows you the freedom to create one. That is how the Indian subcontinent arrived at an exuberant 330 million gods and goddesses at last count! To see the divine in a tree, rock or elephant is not considered absurd because every speck of creation is seen as a portal to the ultimate reality. These”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Adiyogi: The Source of Yoga

God, Reality, Tree, Freedom

“Show me your hands. Do they have scars from giving? Show me your feet. Are they wounded in service? Show me your heart. Have you left a place for divine love?”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Love, Heart

“Oh, Fortuna, blind, heedless goddess, I am strapped to your wheel,' Ignatius belched, 'Do not crush me beneath your spokes. Raise me on high, divinity.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

“Bible in Life Walking With God GENESIS 1:27–31 Genesis describes the unique nature of our relationship with God our Creator. In John 4:24, Jesus says that “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” Christ was completely human and also completely divine. Humans, created in God’s image, are spiritual creatures. We have the potential for a complete spiritual relationship with God through”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Source: NIV Lessons from Life Bible: Personal Reflections with Jimmy Carter

Life, God, Truth, Nature

“The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) Suffragist and Women's Rights activist

Peaceful, Life, Truth, Fear

“You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold. That is how important you are!”

Eckhart Tolle book The Power of Now

The Power of Now (1997)

Universe

“It is a better world. A place where we ate responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and becauseit is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.”

Christopher Paolini book Eldest

Source: Eldest

World

“It is through your body that you realize you are a spark of divinity.”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Capricorn

A fragment of Miller's unfinished book on D. H. Lawrence, originally published in the London literary journal Purpose.
Source: Tropic of Capricorn (1939) "Creative Death", p. 2

Life, Life

“For most of us, for almost all of us, truth can be attained, if at all, only in silence. It is in silence that the human spirit touches the divine.”

Iris Murdoch book Under the Net

Source: Under the Net

Truth, Silence

“Thoughts are divine.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

“I have my own soul. My own spark of divine fire.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Source: Pygmalion & My Fair Lady

Soul

“Divine love always has met and always will meet every human need.”

Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910) religious leader

Love

“Words are only painted fire, a look is the fire itself. She gave that look, and carried it away to the treasury of heaven, where all things that are divine belong.”

Mark Twain book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Source: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Painting

“Mystery is the essence of divinity”

Zora Neale Hurston book Dust Tracks on a Road

Source: Dust Tracks on a Road

“A true symbol appears only when there is a need to express what thought cannot think or what is only divined or felt.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Thinking, Appearance

“We take spiritual initiation when we become conscious of the Divine within us, and thereby contact the Divine without us.”

Dion Fortune (1890–1946) British occultist and author

Source: Esoteric Orders and Their Work and The Training and Work of the Initiate

“Empathy during agony is a portion of divinity.”

Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) Mormon leader

“Nature is a part of our humanity, and without some awareness and experience of that divine mystery man ceases to be man.”

Henry Beston book The Outermost House

Source: The Outermost House

Nature, Parting

“Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart..”

Pablo Casals (1876–1973) Catalan cellist and conductor

Beauty, Music, Way, Heart

“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. In this state of god-like awareness one sings; in this realm the world exists as poem.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Source: Wisdom of the Heart

Life, God, World, Singing

“I've come to believe that how we choose to live with pain, or injustice, or death…. is the true measure of the Divine within us.”

Alan Brennert (1954) American writer

Source: Moloka'i

Death, Pain

“Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.
Immanuel Kant”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

“The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.”

Stephen Hawking book A Brief History of Time

Source: A Brief History of Time (1988), Ch. 8

History, Science

“Divination is a means of telling ourselves what we already know.”

Joanne Harris book Chocolat

Source: Chocolat

“But I am not perfect in my way of putting things
Because I lack the divine simplicity
Of being only what I appear to be.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Source: Poems of Fernando Pessoa

Way, Appearance, Perfection

“Little children play with dolls in the outer room just as they like, without any care of fear or restraint; but as soon as their mother comes in, they throw aside their dolls and run to her crying, "Mamma, mamma." You too, are now playing in this material world, infatuated with the dolls of wealth, honour, fame, etc., If however, you once see your Divine Mother, you will not afterwards find pleasure in all these. Throwing them all aside, you will run to her.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960), p. 12

Children, Pleasure, World, Fear

“Nothing is more indispensable to true religiosity than a mediator that links us with divinity.”

Novalis book Blüthenstaub

Fragment No. 74
Blüthenstaub (1798)

“…when I had gone through the whole, and saw what a plain, simple, reason able thing Christianity was, suited to all conditions and capacities; and in the morality of it now, with divine authority, established into a legible law, so far surpassing all that philosophy and human reason had attained to, or could possibly make effectual to all degrees of man kind; I was flattered to think it might be of some use in the world; especially to those, who thought either that there was no need of revelation at all, or that the revelation of our Saviour required the belief of such articles for salvation, which the settled notions, and their way of reasoning in some, and want of understanding in others, made impossible to them. Upon these two topics the objections seemed to turn, which were with most assurance made by deists, against Christianity; but against Christianity misunderstood. It seemed to me, that there needed no more to show them the weakness of their exceptions, but to lay plainly before them the doctrine of our Saviour and his apostles, as delivered in the scriptures, and not as taught by the several sects of Christians.”

John Locke (1632–1704) English philosopher and physician

Preface to the Reader
The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695)

World, Law, Way, Understanding

“Neither human wisdom nor divine inspiration can confer upon man any greater blessing than this [live a life of happiness and harmony here on earth].”

Plato book Phaedrus

256b
Phaedrus

Life, Wisdom, Happiness

“As one reads the scriptures of Christianity and Islam with a morally alert mind, one starts getting sick of the very sound of word ‘god’ which word is littered all over this literature like dead leaves in autumn. The deeds which are ascribed to or approved of by this God are quite often so cruel and obnoxious as to leave one wondering that if these are the doings of the Divine, what else is there which is left for the Devil to do.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Defence of Hindu Society (1983)

God, Literature, Autumn, Reading

“God is the light that illuminates the darkness, even if it does not dissolve it, and a spark of divine light is within each of us.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

In the letter I wrote to you, you will remember I said that our species will end but the light of God will not end and at that point it will invade all souls and it will all be in everyone.
2010s, 2013, Interview in La Repubblica

God, Light

“O the idea was childish, but divinely beautiful.”

Friedrich Schiller Don Carlos

Act I, sc. ii
Don Carlos (1787)

Beauty, Idea

“All perishes. A thing of flesh and pore
Am I. Divine impatience also dies.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Allez! Tout fuit! Ma présence est poreuse,
La sainte impatience meurt aussi!
As translated by by C. Day Lewis
Charmes ou poèmes (1922)

“Right from the beginning of my ministry in St. Peter’s See in Rome, I consider this message [of divine mercy] my special task. Providence has assigned it to me in the present situation of man, the Church and the world. It could be said that precisely this situation assigned that message to me as my task before God.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

November 22, 1981 at the Shrine of Merciful Love in Todi-Collevalenza, Italy Source: The Divine Mercy http://thedivinemercy.org/message/johnpaul/quotes.php

God, World