Quotes about spirituality
page 10

“The physical carrier is overshadowed by a relation. The relation creates an overtone. The physical carrier is absorbed by this overtone. The overtone spontaneously transforms the means of creation into a spiritual reality. The mystery of creation is then revealed.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

'Search for the Real in the Visual Arts', p. 49
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Reality

“The nature of this trade, certainly not the most honourable in the world, affords room for much investigation and remark in a moral or humane point of view: in a political or commercial light it is perhaps less conspicuously an object of attention. It consists chiefly of commodities that are considered as holding a first rate place in the animal and the mineral world, for which in return the Africans receive the most rascally articles that the ingenuity of Europeans has found means to produce. In return to our fellow creatures, for gold, and for ivory, we exchange the basest of those articles that are suited to the taste or the fancy of a despicable set of barbarians. Whether the spirituous liquirs or the fire-arms that are sent there are most calculated for the destruction of the purchasers, might become a question not very easy to determine. The noxious quality of the one is at least equalled by the danger of attending the use of the other. There does not seem to be that regard to honour in this trade, which ought to make part of the nice character of the English merchant, unimpeachable, unimpeached, upon the 'Change of London or of Amsterdam. It seems as if we kept our honour for ourselves, and that with those barbarians (who are more our inferiors in address and cunning, than perhaps in any thing else) no honour, humanity, or equity, were at all necessary.”

William Playfair (1758–1824) British mathematician, engineer and political economist

Observations on the Trade to Africa, Chart XVI, page 65.
The Commercial and Political Atlas, 3rd Edition

World, Question, Nature, Light

“In my skeptical days, people who wanted to appear very spiritual were always telling me to forget my questions, to shove them under the rug and go on in "faith." In fact, some of my friends thought my questions were my own devices to dodge the "real issues." They thought I must be morally decadent to voice such questions. -Appalachian Melody.”

Mark Heard (1951–1992) American musician and record producer

Liner Notes

People, Faith, Question, Appearance

“The laws of economic life are subject to the eternal laws of spiritual capital.”

Ted Malloch (1952) American businessman

Source: Doing Virtuous Business (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 36.

Life, Law

“The air is pure and serene, lit by a light Divine, and by it we shall discover, fix, and contemplate the eternal Truth, with purified and illuminated eyes. There, too, all things are transformed, are one only Truth, one only image in the mirror of the Wisdom of God; and God created us that we might find, know, and possess this image in our essence and the Purity of our intelligence. Contemplating, applying our minds to this in the Divine Light, with simple and spiritual eyes, we attain to contemplative life.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

Source: The Seven Steps of the Ladder of Spiritual Love, p. 149

Life, Wisdom, God, Truth

“The Muslim religion is so unreformed since it was created that nowhere in the Muslim world has there been any real advance in science, or art or literature, or technology in the last 500 years…we've leapt ahead in all material terms, but the Muslim world would say we have fallen down in all spiritual and moral terms. We have to accept our share of the blame and they have to accept theirs.”

Norman Tebbit (1931) English politician

http://www.epolitix.com/EN/Interviews/200508/88b20915-9848-4644-8f17-97ca62e4e341.htm

World, Religion, Art, Literature

“Any church which forsakes the regular and uniform for the periodical and spasmodic service of God, is doomed to decay; any church which relies for its spiritual strength and growth entirely upon seasons of "revival," will very soon have no genuine revivals to rely on. Our holy God will not conform His blessings to man's moods and moral caprice. If a church is declining, it may require a "revival" to restore it; but what need was there of its declining?”

Theodore L. Cuyler (1822–1909) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 149.

God, Mood, Season

“One of the unfortunate consequences of the intellectualization of man's spiritual life was that the word "spirit" was lost and replaced by mind or intellect, and that the element of vitality which is present in “spirit” was separated and interpreted as an independent biological force. Man was divided into a bloodless intellect and a meaningless vitality. The middle ground between them, the spiritual soul, in which vitality and intentionality are united, was dropped.”

Paul Tillich book The Courage to Be

Source: The Courage to Be (1952), p. 82

Life, Soul

“Islam chose to unite earth and heaven in a single system, present both in the heart of the individual and the actuality of society, recognizing no separation of practical exertion from religious impulse. … The center of its being and the field of its action is human life in its entirety, spiritual and material, religious and worldly. Such a religion cannot continue to exist in isolation from society, nor can its adherents be true Muslims unless they practice their faith in their social, legal and economic relationships.”

Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966) Egyptian author, educator, Islamic theorist, poet, and politician

Source: Social Justice in Islam (1953), p. 26

Life, Faith, Religion, Heart

“On Aka, god is a word without referent. No capital letters. No creator, only creation. No eternal father to reward and punish, justify injustice, ordain cruelty, offer salvation. Eternity not an endpoint but a continuity. Primal division of being into material and spiritual only as two-as-one, or one in two aspects. […] The Akan system is a spiritual discipline with spiritual goals, but they're exactly the same goals it seeks for bodily and ethical well-being. Right action is its own reward. Dharma without karma.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Telling (2000), Ch. 4, §3 (p. 94)

God

“The Declaration of Independence proclaimed to a world, organized politically and spiritually around the concept of the inequality of man, that the dignity of human personality was inherent in man as a living being. The Emancipation Proclamation was the offspring of the Declaration of Independence. It was a constructive use of the force of law to uproot a social order which sought to separate liberty from a segment of humanity.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Address (1962)

World, Law, Personality

“Rosa Luxemburg is an outstanding example of a type of mind that is often met with in the history of Marxism and appears to be specially attracted by the Marxist outlook. It is characterized by slavish submission to authority, together with a belief that in that submission the values of scientific thought can be preserved. No doctrine was so well suited as Marxism to satisfy both these attitudes, or to provide a mystification combining extreme dogmatism with the cult of "scientific" thinking, in which the disciple could find mental and spiritual peace. Marxism thus played the part of a religion for the intelligentsia, which did not prevent some of them, like Rosa Luxemburg herself, from trying to improve the deposit of faith by reverting to first principles, thus strengthening their own belief that they were independent of dogma.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

Source: Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume II, The Golden Age, pp. 94-5

Peace, Faith, Religion, History

“And lately fashion photographers, bored with Rome or the Acropolis, have ventured farther afield for the frisson of syncretism. Why not Calcutta? Why not the slums of Rio? Cairo? Mexico City? The attempt is for an unearned, casual brush with awe by enlisting untouchable extras. And if the model can be seen to move with idiot stridency through tragedy, then the model is invincible. Luxury is portrayed as protective. Or protected. Austere, somehow—“spiritual.””

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Irony posing as asceticism or as worldly-wise.
Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Fashion

“In fact, the Eastern civilization is mostly concerned with the inner and spiritual aspects of living while the Western civilization includes the outer and external features of life. Therefore, the connection of these two, which results in looking up to one another in order to learn and improve, complements each of them in a different way. It is necessary to point out that the Eastern and Western civilizations are just taken as examples to explain the unification of cultures. This fact extends to the Northern, Southern, or any of the current civilization of the world.”

Elia M. Ramollah (1973) founder and leader of the El Yasin Community

360 Doctrines and Comprehensive Theories, Union of Civilizations

Life, World, Way, Learning

“If I were a man, I would strenuously object to the assumption that women have any moral or spiritual superiority as a class. This is […] female chauvinism.”

Betty Friedan (1921–2006) American activist

It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women's Movement (1998)

Women

“One of the most characteristic new developments since the 1970s has been the rise of a type of religiosity that we usually call “fundamentalism” in most of the major world religions, including the three religions of God. A highly political spirituality, it is literal and intolerant in its vision. In the United States, which has always been prone to extremist and apocalyptic enthusiasm, Christian fundamentalism has attached itself to the New Right. Fundamentalists campaign for the abolition of legal abortion and for a hard line on moral and social decency.”

Karen Armstrong book A History of God

A History of God (1993)

God, World, Religion

“What is missing to our civilisation, is the soul, the spiritual unity, the basis. That is why everything in it is pretence and contrivance ("façade et artifice", Fr.); why also, in spite of the progress and marvellous improvement they have accomplished in the external realm ("domaine extérieur", Fr.) men have, in general, become themselves neither better, nor happier. They have neglected too much the essential; their own perfecting”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

or improvement - "perfectionnement", Fr.
Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 36 -First thought of the book, - the translator.

Men, Soul, Perfection

“Bement [her art teacher] told me things to read. He told me of exhibitions to go and see [c. 1917].... the two books that he told me to get were Jeromy Eddy 'Cubists and Post-impressionism' and Kandinsky 'On the Spiritual of Art'… It was some time before I really begun to use the ideas. I didn't start at until I was down in Carolina — alone — thinking things out for myself.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

1970 - 1986, Some Memories of Drawings (1976)

Books, Art, Idea, Thinking

“Indeed. there is a whole section in the Old Testament which does not square with its dominant ideas. The Proverbs, to my mind the best part of the Bible, represents a non-Mosaic tradition. In its spirit, it is very different from the Pentateuch and the Prophets; its ethics is high; it represents a very different spiritual tradition, the tradition of Self-knowledge. Its teaching is mostly, anonymous; it has also a woman teacher… rather an exception in the Bible…”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Hindu View of Christianity and Islam (1992)

Idea, Knowledge, Teachers, Parting

“It may be relevant here to recall gratefully a fraternal correction I was kindly offered by the Archimandrite Ambrosius of the Greek Orthodox Church. After listening to a lecture I delivered at Oxford University some years ago, he gently chided me (in private, not in public) for not perceiving the difference between the brand of Hellenism affecting Western theology that had absorbed the philosophical thought of ancient Greece, and the Hellenism of Eastern Orthodox theology which had assimilated the spiritual praxis of their non-Christian ancestors. Mulling over this critical observation of his, I came to understand why our scholastic tradition has not given importance to what Greek Orthodox spirituality has named nepsis (vigilance), which is its own technical term for mindfulness.”

Aloysius Pieris (1934) Sri Lankan Jesuit priest

Source: "Spirituality as Mindfulness: Biblical and Buddhist Approaches", p. 39

Understanding, Universe

“Style…is a peculiar recasting and heightening, under a certain condition of spiritual excitement, of what a man has to say, in such a manner as to add dignity and distinction to it.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

" On the Study of Celtic Literature http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/scl/index.htm" (1867), Pt. 6

“The ultimate solution to the problem of spiritual complacency is to create a systematically embedded culture of holy urgency.”

Alan Hirsch (1959) South African missionary

Source: The Faith of Leap (2011), p. 42

Problem

“Islamic revival sought the reunification of the spiritual with the social-political, and of contemporary life with cultural traditions, against the western imperialism that was forcing their separation.”

Richard A. Horsley (1939) Biblical scholar

Source: Religion and Empire: People, Power, and the Life of the Spirit (2003), p. 52

Life

“Spiritually we are at ground zero, sunk, bored to perdition. All our arts prove it. Since the renaissance, so mechanized, we repeat with almost futile variants the same hackneyed sentimentalities (we call them eternal values!) Love! Re-love No Love! More Love!”

Louis-ferdinand Céline (1894–1961) French writer

102
L'Ecole des cadavres (1938)

Love, Art

“Just as vision is inseparable from our spiritual intelligence, our capacity to handle ambiguity, uncertainty, and complexity is bound up with our emotional intelligence.”

Danah Zohar (1945) American writer

Danah Zohar (1997) Using the New Science to Rethink How We Structure and Lead Organizations. p. 14.

Intelligence

“Then the handsome Kunti was united (in intercourse) with the god of justice in his spiritual form and obtained from him a son devoted to the good of all creatures. And she brought his excellent child…. an incorporeal voice (from the skies) said,…And this first child of Pandu shall be known by the name of w:YudhishtiraYudhishthira. Possessed of prowess and honesty of disposition, he shall be a famous king, known throughout the three worlds.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

The Mahabharata/Book 1: Adi Parva/Section CXXIII

God, World, Justice

“What is distinctive in Hinduism is the amount of attention it has devoted to identifying basic spiritual personality types and the disciplines that are most likely to work for each. The result is a recognition, pervading the entire religion, that there are multiple paths to God, each calling for its distinctive mode of travel.”

Huston Smith book The World's Religions

The World's Religions (1991)

God, Religion, Travel, Personality

“The promise of a future life is held to have such prominence in Christ's teaching as to lead Paul to say that the Master "brought life and immortality to light." How did he do this? By filling the life of to-day with the consciousness of eternal things, of truths and principles which would not change if the whole visible universe were to pass away.
No one to-day, I think, will maintain that Christ created the hope which he aroused to an activity before undreamed of. The majority of the Jews believed in a life after death, as is shown by the segregation of the Sadducees from the orthodox of the synagogue. The new teaching vindicated the spiritual rights and interests of man. From the depths of his own heart was evolved the consciousness of a good that could not die. Man, the creature of a day, has a vested interest in things eternal.”

Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910) American abolitionist, social activist, and poet

Beyond the Veil

Life, Death, Truth, Hope

“You know my tendency is always to imagine things in my head and to work from this idea. I am going to explain my theory of blue, yellow and red, which will probably seem as 'Spanish' to you as my face.
Blue is the male principle, astringent and spiritual. Yellow is the female principle, gentle, gay and spiritual. Red is matter, brutal and heavy and always the color to be opposed and overcome by the other two. For example, if you mix serious, spiritual blue with red, you intensify the blue to unbearable sorrow, and yellow the conciliatory, the complementary color to purple, becomes indispensable... If you mix red and yellow to make orange, you turn passive, feminine yellow into a Fury, with sensual force that again makes cool, spiritual blue indispensable, the man..”

Franz Marc (1880–1916) German painter

Quote in Franz Marc's letter to August Macke, Dec. 1910; as cited by de:Wolf-Dieter Dube, in Expressionism; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 129
1905 - 1910

Color, Imagination, Idea

“The unsuspecting fish, who knew nothing but a life in the river, went about its routine like any other day, but in an instant was ripped out of its reality to meet with death. Like that fish, we routinely live our lives hardly aware that, at the least expected moment, the yellow-eyed hawk of fate in the form of crises, tragedy or even death, may wrench us out of our comfortable environment. We regularly hear of it in the news or see it around us but rarely take seriously that it could happen to us. Perhaps the lesson here is to guard against complacency and give a higher priority to our spiritual needs. If the fish swam deeper, the hawk would not be able to reach it. Similarly, if we go deeper into our connection to God, we will find an inner reality so deep and satisfying that it lifts the consciousness to a place where we could deal with the effects of unforeseeable fate with a stable, detached mind.”

Radhanath Swami (1950) Gaudiya Vaishnava guru

?
The Journey Home: Autobiography of an American Swami (Tulsi Books, 2010)

Life, Death, God, Fate

“The Armenian Church should save nothing on Armenian upbringing and spiritual integrity of the young generation.”

Sebouh Chouldjian (1959) Archbishop Sebouh Chouldjian is the primate of the Diocese of Gougark of the Armenian Apostolic Church

Քրիստոնեական http://araratian-tem.am/media/Qristoneakan_verchin%20(2).doc, p. 3 <br class="br">On preserving national values

“As we get rich, the basics of life--food, clothing and shelter--become a very small part of total expenditure. And people have enough money to purchase things that enhance them spiritually and I mean the word spiritual not necessarily in a religious sense but in the sense that it adds to your feeling of well-being.”

Robert Fogel (1926–2013) American economist, historian

Robert Fogel in: " Early Retirees Turn to Volunteer Work http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4970476," at npr.org. October 23, 2005.

Life, Money, People, Food

“A community`s art is its spiritual vision.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

Source: "Quotes", Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), p. 206

Art, Communication

“The importance of the lesson which this Society was formed to teach would be hard to overestimate. Its main purpose is to impress upon the people the necessity for reverence. This is the beginning of a proper conception of ourselves, of our relationship to each other, and our relationship to our Creator. Human nature cannot develop very far without it. The mind does not unfold, the creative faculty does not mature, the spirit does not expand, save under the influence of reverence. It is the chief motive of an obedience. It is only by a correct attitude of mind begun early in youth and carried through maturity that these desired results are likely to be secured. It is along the path of reverence and obedience that the race has reached the goal of freedom, of self-government, of a higher morality, and a more abundant spiritual life.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)

Life, People, Youth, Motivation

“Spirituality is neither the privilege of the poor nor the luxury of the rich. It is the choice of the wise man.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

“A lot of spiritual gains come through pain, hurt, struggle, confusion and disappointment.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

Pain, Disappointment, Hurt

“As you open up spiritually, your subtle body has a particular effulgence which attracts entities from both the divine and negative natures. You become more sensitive and aware of everything. You become more intuitive and have more experiences in the dream state. If there are messages you should receive, the impressions will always be there, even when you are asleep, and you will act on them without consciously being aware of it. If a communication is really meant for your growth, even though you may forget it or may not be able to understand its significance, it will still have an effect on your consciousness. Ultimately, both the positive and negative experiences are “quality tests” to assess your level of sincerity.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 1: Dreams: A State of Reality, p. 21

Dreams, Communication, Understanding, Nature

“I want a world of brave and courageous people. Indeed, those who work hard and are agnostics are more acceptable, for a time, than lazy spiritual hypocrites.”

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

The Teachings of Babaji. (1983, 1984, 1988). Haidakhan, U.P.: Haidakhandi Samaj.
Source: The Teachings of Babaji, 17 August 1982.

People, World, Courage, Time

“(…) Spiritual practice is will asserted and re-asserted. Who has not daring will not accept the real even when offered. Unwillingness born out of fear is the only obstacle.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Sadhana - spiritual practice
Source: I am That, P.172.

Fear

“But what has happened is that the Indian State actively patronizes the exercise aimed at making all religions mean the same things, and persecutes those who defy the exercise. A whole army of 'secularist' scribes in the media and the academia has been employed and paid handsomely for whitewashing Islam and Christianity so that whatever is bigoted in the scriptures and blood-soaked histories of these creeds, is carefully exorcised. On the other hand, whatever is liberal and large-hearted, humane and civilized in the pluralistic spirituality of India is remorseless pruned to the prescribed and proper size. In the process, Christianity has been made to mean only the Sermon on the Mount, and Islam equated with two Quranic sentences torn out of context - "Unto you your religion, and unto me my religion" and "There is no compulsion in religion."”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Freedom of expression - Secular Theocracy Versus Liberal Democracy (1998)

Religion, Exercises, History, Heart

“I’ve been a vegan now since 1995, that would be more than 14 years, and as a result I’ve had tremendous health… great energy, clarity — I’ve had the ability to connect my dietary choices with my health. I had Crohn’s growing up and I had a pretty serious bout with it throughout my thirties and forties. When I changed my diet, the symptoms began to disappear. And I started to understand also how the choice of diet affects the environment, resources, energy — it’s a spiritual choice, as well. And so if I had one day to make an imprint on the nation, I’d look at the choices that we make as respect to food. Also, the matters of compassion towards living creatures who become food. We need to be more thoughtful as a nation about the choices that we make and the food that we consume.”

Dennis Kucinich (1946) Ohio politician

Interview on Reddit, quoted in "Dennis Kucinich Wants To Give Vegan Chocolate Chip Brownies To The World", Ecorazzi (21 December 2009) http://www.ecorazzi.com/2009/12/21/dennis-kucinich-wants-to-give-a-vegan-chocolate-chip-brownie-to-the-world/

Health, Food, Understanding, Change

“Our spirits, like our bodies, have requirements for health and growth. Some people don't want to pay the price of developing good spiritual habits.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

People, Health

“I think that the court has misapplied a great constitutional principle. I cannot see how 'official religion' is established by letting those who want to say a prayer say it. On the contrary, I think that to deny the wish of these school children to join in reciting this prayer is to deny them the opportunity of sharing in the spiritual heritage of the nation.”

Potter Stewart (1915–1985) American judge

Dissenting, Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962).

Children, School, Religion, Thinking

“You ever hear girls say that? "I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual." I like to reply with "I'm not honest, but you're interesting!"”

Daniel Tosh (1975) American stand-up comedian

Comedy Central Presents: Daniel Tosh (2003)

Girl

“After the spiritual powers, there is no thing in the world more unconquerable than the spirit of nationality. … The spirit of nationality in Ireland will persist even though the mightiest of material powers be its neighbor.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

The Economics of Ireland and the Policy of the British Government (1921)

World

“There was an NPR story this morning, about the indigenous peoples of Australia, which might make a good column. Apparently they want to preserve their culture, language, and religion because they're slowly disappearing, which is certainly understandable. But, for some reason, they also want more stuff — better education, housing, etc. — from the Australian government. Isn't it odd that it never occurs to such groups that maybe, just maybe, the reason their cultures are evaporating is that they get too much of that stuff already? Indeed, I'm at a loss as to how mastering algebra and biology will make aboriginal kids more likely to believe — oh, I dunno — that hallucinogenic excretions from a frog have spiritual value. And I'm at a loss as to how better clinics and hospitals will do anything but make the shamans and medicine men look more useless. And now that I think about it, that's the point I was trying to get at a few paragraphs ago, when I was talking about the symbiotic relationship between freedom and the hurly-burly of life. Cultures grow on the vine of tradition. These traditions are based on habits necessary for survival, and day-to-day problem solving. Wealth, technology, and medicine have the power to shatter tradition because they solve problems.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

( August 15, 2001 http://web.archive.org/web/20010105/www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg081501.shtml) <br class="br">2000s, 2001

Life, Men, People, Education

“The ideal Ireland that we would have, the Ireland that we dreamed of, would be the home of a people who valued material wealth only as a basis for right living, of a people who, satisfied with frugal comfort, devoted their leisure to the things of the spirit – a land whose countryside would be bright with cosy homesteads, whose fields and villages would be joyous with the sounds of industry, with the romping of sturdy children, the contest of athletic youths and the laughter of happy maidens, whose firesides would be forums for the wisdom of serene old age. The home, in short, of a people living the life that God desires that men should live. With the tidings that make such an Ireland possible, St. Patrick came to our ancestors fifteen hundred years ago promising happiness here no less than happiness hereafter. It was the pursuit of such an Ireland that later made our country worthy to be called the island of saints and scholars. It was the idea of such an Ireland - happy, vigorous, spiritual - that fired the imagination of our poets; that made successive generations of patriotic men give their lives to win religious and political liberty; and that will urge men in our own and future generations to die, if need be, so that these liberties may be preserved. One hundred years ago, the Young Irelanders, by holding up the vision of such an Ireland before the people, inspired and moved them spiritually as our people had hardly been moved since the Golden Age of Irish civilisation. Fifty years later, the founders of the Gaelic League similarly inspired and moved the people of their day. So, later, did the leaders of the Irish Volunteers. We of this time, if we have the will and active enthusiasm, have the opportunity to inspire and move our generation in like manner. We can do so by keeping this thought of a noble future for our country constantly before our eyes, ever seeking in action to bring that future into being, and ever remembering that it is for our nation as a whole that future must be sought.”

Éamon de Valera (1882–1975) 3rd President of Ireland

Radio broadcast http://www.rte.ie/archives/exhibitions/eamon-de-valera/719124-address-by-mr-de-valera/, "On Language & the Irish Nation" (17 March 1943), often called "The Ireland that we dreamed of" speech

Life, Wisdom, Men, God

“No spiritual teaching is a direct path to enlightenment. In fact, there is no such thing as a path to enlightenment, simply because enlightenment is ever present in all places and at all times. What you can do is to remove any and all illusions, especially the ones you value most and find the most security in, that cloud your perception of Reality. Let go of clinging to your illusions and resisting what is, and Reality will suddenly come into view.”

Adyashanti (1962) Spiritual teacher

The Way of Liberation (2012)

Reality, Time

“Not the external and physical alone is now managed by machinery, but the internal and spiritual also. Here too nothing follows its spontaneous course, nothing is left to be accomplished by old natural methods. Everything has its cunningly devised implements, its preestablished apparatus; it is not done by hand, but by machinery.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

Nature

“Actually we were brought up to ingratitude - a relentless training through which we were taught to find nothing whatever good in ourselves, whether natural or spiritual.. Conquering pride and conceit, they called it, practising humility, self-praise is no praise - all very well…Was pride really crushed by all this snubbing and humiliation? Was it not rather repressed…Worse still, we learnt this way to cultivate the devil's mirror eye of Hans Andersen's Snow Queen, over-vigilant, super-critical sight, sharpened to discover the worm in every bud, even the tiniest plant-louse! For if one practises this sort of discipline on oneself, day and night, it is asking too much - at any rate of a young girl - to judge one's neighbour by another yard-stick. All the time one's lynx-eyed consciousness remained on the alert, quick to pounce on everything negative - in you and in myself…Hans Andersen well knew how near this attitude is to blasphemy.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights Diaries 1953-54.

Way, Girl, Nature, Time

“…The preferred Shofar of Redemption is the Divine call that awakens and inspires the people with holy motivations, through faith in God and the unique mission of the people of Israel. This elevated awakening corresponds to the ram's horn, a horn that recalls Abraham's supreme love of God and dedication in Akeidat Yitzchak, the Binding of Isaac. It was the call of this shofar, with its holy vision of heavenly Jerusalem united with earthly Jerusalem, that inspired Nachmanides, Rabbi Yehuda HaLevy, Rabbi Ovadia of Bartenura, the students of the Vilna Gaon, and the disciples of the Baal Shem Tov to ascend to Eretz Yisrael. It is for this "great shofar," an awakening of spiritual greatness and idealism, that we fervently pray. There exists a second Shofar of Redemption, a less optimal form of awakening. This shofar calls out to the Jewish people to return to their homeland, to the land where our ancestors, our prophets and our kings, once lived. It beckons us to live as a free people, to raise our families in a Jewish country and a Jewish culture. This is a kosher shofar, albeit not a great shofar like the first type of awakening. We may still recite a blessing over this shofar. There is, however, a third type of shofar. The least desirable shofar comes from the horn of an unclean animal. This shofar corresponds to the wake-up call that comes from the persecutions of anti-Semitic nations, warning the Jews to escape while they still can and flee to their own land. Enemies force the Jewish people to be redeemed, blasting the trumpets of war, bombarding them with deafening threats of harassment and torment, giving them no respite. The shofar of unclean beasts is thus transformed into a Shofar of Redemption. Whoever failed to hear the calls of the first two shofars will be forced to listen to the call of this last shofar. Over this shofar, however, no blessing is recited. "One does not recite a blessing over a cup of affliction."”

Abraham Isaac Kook (1865–1935) first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the British Mandatory Palestine

1933 Sermon: The Call of the Great Shofar https://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/13794

Love, God, War, People

“Christ imparts to all believers all the spiritual blessings that He is filled with, and withholds none from any that have union with Him, be these blessings never so great, or they that receive them never so weak and contemptible in outward respects..”

John Flavel (1627–1691) English Presbyterian clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 608.

Christ

“Is learning a venture in spiritual freedom that is humanism, or is it a routine process of animal training?”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926), p. 27

Freedom, Learning, Animals, Training

“However, Man as the appearance of utmost internality, of spirit, does not possess any point in front, at the side or the back, no fixed point at all towards which he could define a dimension. This explains why in expressing the spiritual, in making spirit an artifact, he will be forced to a moto-stereometric form of expression. This moto-stereometric form of expression represents the appearance of a 4-n dimensional world in a world of three dimensions.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

quote by Van Doesburg, as cited in 'Great Masters of Art' in Eenheid no 392, 8 December 1917
1912 – 1919

World, Appearance

“Buddhism today is a dalitist religion and Hinduism is a brahminic religion with oppositional spiritual positions about human equality and man-woman relations.”

Kancha Ilaiah (1952) Indian scholar, activist and writer

"Chinese lesson for RSS" in Deccan Chronicle (05 May 2015) http://www.deccanchronicle.com/150505/commentary-columnists/article/chinese-lesson-rss.

Religion

“Since 1929 I have suffered from an extremely painful disease [arthritis deformans] which gets worse every year. Little by little my arms and hands have become stiff and bent and I have terrible pain. This stiffness in my elbows and wrists has tremendously hindered my painting and I have had to find a new technique. My art in the last period has all been in small format, but my paintings have become even deeper and more spiritual..”

Alexej von Jawlensky (1864–1941) Russian painter

from: 'Lebenserinnerungen', 1938
Source: 1936 - 1941, Life Memories' (1938), p. 23

Pain, Disease, Art, Suffering

“This makes it morally unchristian for any human to legislate spiritual change since God himself does not force his people to do the same.”

Esala Tuibua

Comments on the government's proposed Reconciliation, Tolerance, and Unity Bill, 2 August 2005

God, People, Change

“Spirituality leaps where science cannot yet follow, because science must always test and measure, and much of reality and human experience is immeasurable.”

Starhawk (1951) American author, activist and Neopagan

The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess (1979)

Reality, Science

“I have just read your book [On the Spiritual in Art] from cover to cover, and I will read it once more. I find it pleasing to an extraordinary degree, because we agree on nearly all of the main issues..”

Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) Austrian-American composer

In a letter to Wassily Kandinsky, 18 Dec. 1911; as quoted in Schönberg and Kandinsky: An Historic Encounter, by Klaus Kropfinger; edited by Konrad Boehmer; published by Routledge (imprint of Taylor & Francis, an Informa Group company), 2003, p. 15-16 note 49
1910s

Books, Art, Reading

“The great problem facing modern man is that, that the means by which we live have outdistanced the spiritual ends for which we live. So we find ourselves caught in a messed-up world. The problem is with man himself and man's soul. We haven't learned how to be just and honest and kind and true and loving. And that is the basis of our problem. The real problem is that through our scientific genius we've made of the world a neighborhood, but through our moral and spiritual genius we've failed to make of it a brotherhood.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Rediscovering Lost Values http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/kingpapers/article/rediscovering_lost_values/, Sermon delivered at Detroit's Second Baptist Church (28 February 1954) <br class="br">1950s

Love, World, Soul, Problem

“The Buddhist PAVARANA ceremony at the end of the rainy season retreat was instituted by the Lord Buddha, who did not want human beings to live in silence "like dumb animals." This ceremony, during which monks ask mutual forgiveness for any offence given during the retreat, can be said to be a council of truth and reconciliation. It might also be considered a forerunner of that most democratic of institutions, the parliament, a meeting of peoples gathered together to talk over their shared problems. All the world's great religions are dedicated to the generation of happiness and harmony. This demonstrates the fact that together with the combative instincts of man there co-exists a spiritual aspiration for mutual understanding and peace.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

Opening Keynote Address at NGO Forum on Women, Beijing China (1995)

People, Truth, World, Peace

“I think that I have succeeded in making it clear that this doctrine gives room for explanations of many facts which without it are absolutely and hopelessly inexplicable; and further that it carries along with it the following doctrines: first, a logical realism of the most pronounced type; second, objective idealism; third, tychism, with its consequent thoroughgoing evolutionism. We also notice that the doctrine presents no hindrences to spiritual influences, such as some philosophies are felt to do.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

The Law of Mind (1892)

Thinking

“One of the blunders religious people are particularly fond of making is the attempt to be more spiritual than God.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC (1973)

God, People

“My mother's belief in spiritual healers grew stronger after our family went through a rough patch following my father's death. Sufi saint Karimullah Shah Kadri changed our lives and all of us converted to Sufism. But it wasn't an instantaneous decision — it took us 10 years to convert. The change in religion was like washing away the past.”

A. R. Rahman (1966) Indian singer and composer

A R Rahman: In tune with life

Death, Family, Religion, Decision

“Work, spirituality, family, friendships, health--you can't ignore any of them or it'll get you in the end.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Nicholas Sparks, Chapter 15, p. 268
2000s, Three Weeks with My Brother (2004)

Friendship, Health, Family

“There is a lot of piety among us, but not enough spirituality. Piety consists in the performance of external devotional practices and is measured by one’s fidelity to these practices. Whether or not the faithful performance of these exercises of piety improves the quality of one’s Christian life is a question that is seldom asked. One is at times surprised that priests, sisters and lay people who are obviously pious are manifestly unfair in their dealings with other people. Some of them show so little of the compassion of Christ and are quite unwilling to forgive others.”

Kurien Kunnumpuram (1931–2018) Indian theologian

Kunnumpuram, K. (ed) (2006) Life in Abundance: Indian Christian Reflections on Spirituality. Mumbai: St Pauls
On Spirituality

Life, People, Faith, Exercises

“Music is the outward and audible signification of inward and spiritual realities.”

Peter Warlock

The Sackbut (1920)

Music, Reality

“This book is a spiritual guide for the man who wishes to learn the Way.
My heart has been inclined to the Way of strategy from my youth onwards. I have devoted myself to training my hand, tempering my body, and attaining the many spiritual attitudes of sword fencing. If we watch men of other schools discussing theory, and concentrating on techniques with the hands, even though they seem skilful to watch, they have not the slightest true spirit.
Of course, men who study in this way think they are training the body and spirit, but it is an obstacle to the true Way, and its bad influence remains for ever.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Fire Book

Men, Books, Youth, School

“The tide was running fast when the Reformation began at Wittenberg, and it was to be expected that Luther’s influence would stem the flood of absolutism. For he was confronted everywhere by the compact alliance of the Church with the State; and great part of his country was governed by hostile potentates who were prelates of the court of Rome. He had, indeed, more to fear from temporal than from spiritual foes.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

The History of Freedom in Christianity (1877)

Hostility, Fear, Parting, Country

“Poppycock religion is America's new faith. It is easy. It is quick. It allows a person to feel spiritual, seem intellectual, have a faith to follow, and have something interesting to talk about over coffee. Poppycock is the quick-fix diet of the spiritual industry. It sells. It rarely threatens or confronts the seeker, allowing each to forge his own individual "religion." The poppycock believer changes the rules as he goes. If he misses a basket, he will say that a missd basket is still worth two points. The poppycock believer does not serve his god, rather his god serves him. He has everything to gain and nothing to lose.”

Donald Miller (1971) American writer

Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance (2000, Harvest House Publishers)

God, Faith, Religion, Feeling

“Music allows a person to express their deepest thoughts, thoughts that cannot be expressed with just words. I am often asked how I begin a song or develop a melody from nothing. That is the spiritual aspect of creating. Finding something deep within yourself that can only be created by you.”

Bradley Joseph (1965) Composer, pianist, keyboardist, arranger, producer, recording artist

Interview with Bradley Joseph, The Spiritual Significance Of Music, World Edition http://www.xtrememusic.org/world/joseph_bradley.pdf http://www.xtrememusic.org/new.html (from extrememusic.org) http://xtrememusic.org/world.html

Music, Personality

“Mozart's melodies, Beethoven's symphonies, Schubert's songs, acts two and three of Tristan are symbols in which are revealed the most profound spiritual truths. They are not "invented", but are "given in their dreams"to those privileged to receive them. Whence they come no one knows, not even their creator, the unconscious mouthpiece of the demiurge.”

Richard Strauss (1864–1949) German composer and orchestra director

Recollections and Reflections

Truth, Dreams

“I grew up in a mostly Buddhist environment. My father, when very young, was the first American to be ordained as a Buddhist monk. He now teaches Indo-Tibetan studies at Columbia University and is regarded as this country's foremost authority on Buddhism. When the Dalai Lama comes to America, it's my father who is his host. When asked if I consider myself Buddhist, the answer is, not really. But it's more my religion than any other because I was brought up with it in an intellectual and spiritual environment. I don't practice or preach it, however. But Buddhism has had a major effect on who I am and how I think about the world. What I have learned is that I like all religions, but only parts of them.”

Uma Thurman (1970) American actress and model

Interview with Laura Yorke. Reader's Digest. July 2006

World, Religion, Thinking, Study

“The Raelian Movement is an atheistic religion that perfectly merges science and spirituality, and it includes many female priests. Men and women must rise above their previous cultural conditioning and look to the future with a new awareness encompassing beauty and femininity.”

Raël (1946) Author of Raëlism and founder and current leader of the Raëlian Movement

Spanish Raelian Movement supports Zapatero's female majority cabinet http://raelianews.org/news.php?extend.278, Raelianews.org (May 14, 2008).

Women, Men, Religion, Beauty

“In a revolutionary movement there is always the danger that political exigencies might obscure, or even nullify, essential spiritual aims. A firm insistence on the inviolability and primacy of such aims is not mere idealism but a necessary safeguard against an Animal Farm syndrome where the new order after its first flush of enthusiastic reforms takes on the murky colours of the very system it has replaced.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

In Quest of Democracy (1991)

Animals

“… the cinema and the radio and the effect they have had in weakening the impulse to spiritual effort”

Georges Duhamel (1884–1966) French writer

Source: Défense des Lettres [In Defense of Letters] (1937), p. 24

Effort

“In primitive society the rules of ceremonial purity observed by divine kings, chiefs, and priests agree in many respects with the rules observed by homicides, mourners, women in childbed, girls at puberty, hunters and fishermen, and so on. To us these various classes of persons appear to differ totally in character and condition; some of them we should call holy, others we might pronounce unclean and polluted. But the savage makes no such moral distinction between them; the conceptions of holiness and pollution are not yet differentiated in his mind. To him the common feature of all these persons is that they are dangerous and in danger, and the danger in which they stand and to which they expose others is what we should call spiritual or ghostly, and therefore imaginary. The danger, however, is not less real because it is imaginary; imagination acts upon man as really does gravitation, and may kill him as certainly as a dose of prussic acid.”

James Frazer book The Golden Bough

Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 21, Tabooed Things, § I : The Meaning of Taboo.

Women, Imagination, Girl, Appearance

“We in the Western world have grown to understand matter as imprisoned light, and light as liberated matter, yet this has had no influence on our spiritual thought. In practical terms it only led to the creation of the atom bomb.”

Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999) American violinist and conductor

Source: Sushama Londhe A Tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and Wisdom Spanning Continents and Time about India and Her Culture http://books.google.co.in/books?id=G3AMAQAAMAAJ, Pragun Publications, 2008, p. 341

World, Understanding, Light

“We live in an age of science and abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create the Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all of our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren scepter in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage bequeathed to us, we must be like minded as the Founders who created. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must cultivate the reverence which they had and for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed. We must keep replenished, that they may glow with a more compelling flame, the altar fires before which they worshipped.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

Age, Appearance, Science

“Nor does spirituality mean the moulding of the whole type of the national being to suit the limited dogmas, forms, tenets of a particular religion, as was often enough attempted by the old societies, an idea which still persists in many minds by the power of old mental habit and association; clearly such an attempt would be impossible, even if it were desirable, in a country full of the most diverse religious opinions and harbouring too three such distinct general forms as Hinduism, Islam and Christianity, to say nothing of the numerous special forms to which each of these has given birth.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

The Renaissance in India (1918)

Religion, Idea, Birth, Country

“The spark within is akin to the Divine Ground. By identifying ourselves with the first we can come to unitive knowledge of the second. These empirical facts of the spiritual life have been variously rationalized in terms of the theologies of the various religions. The Hindus categorically affirm that Thou art That — that the indwelling Atman is the same as Brahman. For orthodox Christianity there is not an identity between the spark and God. Union of the human spirit with God takes place — union so complete that the word deification is applied to it; but it is not the union of identical substances. According to Christian theology, the saint is “deified,” not because Atman is Brahman, but because God has assimilated the purified human spirit in to the divine substance by an act of grace. Islamic theology seems to make a similar distinction. The Sufi, Mansur, was executed for giving to the words “union” and “deification” the literal meaning which they bear in the Hindu tradition. For our present purposes, however, the significant fact is that these words are actually used by Christians and Mohammedans to describe the empirical facts of metaphysical realization by means of direct, super-rational intuition.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Introduction to the Bhagavad-Gita (1944)

Life, God, Religion, Art

“The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another.”

Edward O. Wilson (1929) American biologist

Source: Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998), p. 264.

Truth

“How significant is the enormous heightening, under mescalin, of the perception of color! … Man's highly developed color sense is a biological luxury—inestimably precious to him as an intellectual and spiritual being, but unnecessary to his survival as an animal. … Mescalin raises all colors to a higher power and makes the percipient aware of innumerable fine shades of difference, to which, at ordinary times, he is completely blind. It would seem that, for Mind at Large, the so-called secondary characters of things are primary.”

Aldous Huxley book The Doors of Perception

describing his experiment with mescaline, pp. 26-27
The Doors of Perception (1954)

Color, Sense, Time, Animals

“[W]hen someone speaks we ought to get three things out of the message. First and least important (but still very important), we ought to get what is said. Second, and more important, we ought to have a spiritual experience. Third, and most important, we should keep the commitments we make to ourselves”

Henry D. Moyle (1889–1963) Member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles

Paraphrased by w:Vaughn J. Featherstone in Food Storage http://lds.org/portal/site/LDSOrg/menuitem.b12f9d18fae655bb69095bd3e44916a0/?vgnextoid=2354fccf2b7db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=dfa0fd758096b010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&hideNav=1| <br class="br">Paraphrased

“Colour, as the strange and magnificent expression of the inscrutable spectrum of Eternity, is beautiful and important to me as a painter; I use it to enrich the canvas and to probe more deeply into the object. Colour also decided, to a certain extent, my spiritual outlook, but it is subordinated to life, and above all, to the treatment of form. Too much emphasis on colour at the expense of form and space would make a double manifestation of itself on the canvas, and this would verge on craft work.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

Source: 1930s, On my Painting (1938), pp. 18-19

Life, Beauty

“Pat, did you notice yesterday the ACLU, and all the Christ-haters, People For the American Way, NOW, etc. were totally disregarded by the Democrats and the Republicans in both houses of Congress as they went out on the steps and called out on to God in prayer and sang "God Bless America" and said "let the ACLU be hanged"? In other words, when the nation is on its knees, the only normal and natural and spiritual thing to do is what we ought to be doing all the time — calling upon God.”

Jerry Falwell (1933–2007) American evangelical pastor, televangelist, and conservative political commentator

On responses to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, as quoted in AANEWS #958 (14 September 2001)

God, People, Way, Nature

“With the advent of medieval Scholasticism, … we find a clear distinction between theologia and philosophia. Theology became conscious of its autonomy qua supreme science, which philosophy was emptied of its spiritual exercises, which, from now on, were relegated to Christian mysticism and ethics. Reduced to the rank of a “handmaid of theology,” philosophy’s role was henceforth to furnish theology with conceptual—and hence purely theoretical—material. When, in the modern age, philosophy regained its autonomy, it still retained many features inherited from this medieval conception. In particular, it maintained its purely theoretical character, which even evolved in the direction of a more and more thorough systemization. Not until Nietzsche, Bergson, and existentialism does philosophy consciously return to being a concrete attitude, a way of life and of seeing the world.”

Pierre Hadot (1922–2010) French historian and philosopher

trans. Michael Chase (1995), p. 107
La Philosophie comme manière de vivre (2001)

Life, Age, World, Way

“All who wait upon the Lord shall rise higher and higher upon the mighty pinions of strong devotion, and with the unblinking eye of faith, into the regions of heavenly-mindedness; and shall approach nearer and nearer to God, the Sun of our spiritual day.”

John Angell James (1785–1859) British abolitionist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 192.

God, Faith, Strong, Waiting

“Nothing of that which is conducive to help man, collectively or individually, to live — not "happily" — but less unhappily in this world, ought to be indifferent to the Theosophist-Occultist. It is no concern of his whether his help benefits a man in his worldly or spiritual progress; his first duty is to be ever ready to help if he can, without stopping to philosophize.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) occult writer

Source: Collected Writings, vol. XI, p. 465 (October 1889) http://www.katinkahesselink.net/blavatsky/articles/v11/y1889_065.htm

World, Help, Indifference

“Outside the academic establishment, the “far-reaching change in all our habits of thought” is more serious. It serves to coordinate ideas and goals with those exacted by the prevailing system, to enclose them in the system, and to repel those which are irreconcilable with the system. The reign of such a one-dimensional reality does not mean that materialism rules, and that the spiritual, metaphysical, and bohemian occupations are petering out. On the contrary, there is a great deal of “Worship together this week,” “Why not try God,” Zen, existentialism, and beat ways of life, etc. But such modes of protest and transcendence are no longer contradictory to the status quo and no longer negative. They are rather the ceremonial part of practical behaviorism, its harmless negation, and are quickly digested by the status quo as part of its healthy diet.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 13-14

Life, God, Way, Behavior

““When material needs are largely satisfied,” writes Carl Rogers, “as they tend to be for many people in this affluent society, individuals are turning to the psychological world, groping for a greater degree of authenticity and fulfillment.” The clear distinction between material and psychic needs is already the mystification; it capitulates to the ideology of the affluent society which affirms the material structure is sound, conceding only that some psychic and spiritual values might be lacking. Exactly this distinction sets up “authenticity” and “fulfillment” as so many more commodities for the shopper. Rather it is the fissure itself which is the source of the ills—between work and “free” time, material structure and psychological “world,” producers and consumers.”

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), p. 48-49

People, World, Time

“Have you noticed anything strange about him?
Strange? We humans insist on inhabiting a charnel ground - isn't that strange enough for spiritual creatures without splitting hairs?
He seems to be two different men. His personality switches from moment to moment.
Only two? Perhaps there is something wrong with your eyes. Look more closely and you will see he changes with every exhalation. So do I. So do you.”

John Burdett book Bangkok Haunts

Bangkok Haunts, Ch. 22.

Men, Change, Personality

“Humanism is only another name for spiritual laziness, or a vague half-creed adopted by men of science and logicians whose heads are too occupied with the world of mathematics and physics to worry about religious categories.”

Colin Wilson book The Outsider

Source: The Outsider (1956), Chapter Nine, Breaking the Circuit

Men, World, Mathematics, Science

“Everything rhythmically organic is true. Everything, which results from the proper feeling for rhythmically organized spiritual units, is true and alive — alive within itself. When we lose the sense for such true beauty we lose our natural sense for the rich flavor of life, which is the basis for all inspirational work.
Things generally taken for beautiful are nothing other than the product of frozen, stereotyped taste, bound by sterile rules and purely exterior judgment.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

'Painting and Culture' p. 57
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Life, Beauty, Feeling, Nature

“Hopelessness means renunciation of all hopes. Aimlessness means renunciation of all aims. Helplessness means renunciation of all help. No master, no disciple, means renunciation of spirituality. And the New Life I have in mind eventually means absolute renunciation. Therefore, if any one asks you what this New Life is, say, 'Absolute and perfect renunciation.' If they ask, 'Renunciation of what?”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

say, 'Of everything — aims, hopes, help and life itself.
Statement during the New Life period (1949 - 1952), 10:3481
Lord Meher (1986)

Life, Hope, Help, Perfection

“I said, ‘You are now placed in a position to help the Chinese as you have never been before. They see that your being a foreigner is now no protection, but increases your danger. Let them see that you are rejoicing in God... that you do not need any other protection and that you do not go away, although you might; that you put your trust in God, and are prepared either to suffer or be delivered as He sees best, will learn that there is something in the Gospel worth risking life for.’ What was the result? In almost every place where there were native Christians they grew (in spiritual maturity) as never before.”

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

(A.J. Broomhall. Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century, Book Five: Refiner’s Fire. London: Hodder and Stoughton and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1985, 257).

Life, God, Suffering, Learning