Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
All -isms end up in schisms.
We are a blend of dust and divinity.
The faith I was born into formed me.
The most powerful moral influence is example.
Sex is the divine in its most available epiphany.
God is defined by Jesus but not confined to Jesus.
It would be good if we bore one another's burdens.
The self is too small an object for perpetual enthusiasm.
Swallow your pride and admit that we all need help at times.
In order to live man must believe in that for which he lives.
Religion is the call to confront reality; to master the self.
I am profoundly moved and persuaded by the near-death experience.
We are born in mystery, we live in mystery, and we die in mystery.
Beware of the differences that blind us to the unity that binds us.
In nature, the emphasis is in what is rather than what ought to be.
...the only thing that continues is the consequences of our action.
Most of the book deals with things we already know yet never learn.
The goal of spiritual life is not altered states, but altered traits
Science can prove nothing about God, because God lies outside its province.
You subtract Christianity from Huston Smith, and there is no Huston Smith left.
Swami Ashokananda was a brilliant and accomplished spiritual teacher in the West.
Religion teaches us that our lives here on earth are to be used for transformation.
God enters our lives when through our creative interchanges we make history more just.
I grew up taking it for granted that missionaries were what American boys grew up to be.
If you are drilling for water, it's better to drill one 60-foot well than 10 6-foot wells.
Practice giving things away, not just things you don't care about, but things you do like.
What is sickness? What is health? Both are distractions. Put them both aside and go forward.
...the single destination of sanctity could admit of so many different avenues leading to it.
Daily the world grows smaller, leaving understanding the only place where peace can find a home.
When there are miles to go before we sleep, altered traits are more important than altered states.
Rationalism and Newtonian science has lured us into dark woods, but a new metaphysics can rescue us.
...but with my clamoring ego solidly in place, I considered the title, 'Memories of a Failed Nobody'.
Built into human makeup is a longing for a 'more' that the world of everyday experience cannot requite.
It has been estimated that one third of our Western civilization bears the mark of its Jewish ancestry.
It's often difficult for us to act compassionately, but sacred art eases the difficulty by ennobling us.
The proper response to a great work of art is to enter it as though there were nothing else in the world.
As human beings we are made to surpass ourselves and are truly ourselves only when transcending ourselves.
The Sufis say there are three ways to know fire - by hearing it described, by seeing it, or by being burned.
Pure science - this vision of the universe as 15 billion light years across - I am bedazzled and awed by it.
If we take the world’s enduring religions at their best, we discover the distilled wisdom of the human race.
Imagine a man besottedly in love: he won't waste time speculating whether other women equally merit his affection.
...primal people see the objects of this world not (or not only) as solid but as open windows to their divine source.
I am very orthodox in thinking that Jesus acted in his life the way God would have acted if God had assumed human form.
Exclusively oral cultures are unencumbered by dead knowledge, dead facts. Libraries, on the other hand, are full of them.
No one in human history has given as much thought to the interweaving of altered states of consciousness and religion as I have.
The first koan do not have rational answers. They are techniques devised over the millennia for triggering an actual experience.
As known unknowns become known; unknown unknowns proliferate; the larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.
We all carry it within us: supreme strength, the fullness of wisdom, unquenchable joy. It is never thwarted, and cannot be destroyed.
I have a body and I have a soul. And my body belongs to the faith - in fact, the church - into which it was born, the Methodist Church.
When I read the Upanishads, which are part of Vedanta, I found a profundity of worldview that made my Christianity seem like third grade.