“The Tao never does anything, yet through it all things are done. If powerful men and women could venter themselves in it, the whole world would be transformed by itself, in its natural rhythms. People would be content with their simple, everyday lives, in harmony, and free of desire. When there is no desire, all things are at peace.”
Spiritual feeling
Spiritual Quotes — page 94 of 1176
“The Wild still lingered in him and the wolf in him merely slept.”
“The Foxy character and Inga Marchand are two different people. My fiance calls me Inga. No one around me calls me Foxy. I go to church every Sunday. I go to Bible study every Friday night. I'm saved.”
“It is only persons of firmness that can have real gentleness. Those who appear gentle are, in general, only a weak character, which easily changes into asperity.”
“After 9/11, there were a lot of things being said about how the God of Islam and the God of the Christian faith were one and the same, but that's simply not true ... The God that I worship does not require me to kill other people. The God that I worship tells me I am to love my enemy, to give him food when he's hungry and water when he's thirsty.”
“I don’t know if I have any particular views about women in positions of power, though I do think it’s more difficult for women, particularly in a Medieval setting. They have the additional problem that they’re a woman and people don’t want them in a position of power in an essentially patriarchal society.”
“All my life I have risen regularly at four o'clock and have gone into the woods and talked to God. There He gives me my orders for the day.”
“I call that church free which enters into the covenant with the ultimate source of existence. It binds together families and generations, protecting against the idolatry of any human claim to absolute truth or authority.”
“Since Copernicus, man seems to have got himself on an inclined plane-now he is slipping faster and faster away from the center into-what? into nothingness? into a 'penetrating sense of his nothingness?' ... all science, natural as well as unnatural-which is what I call the self-critique of knowledge-has at present the object of dissuading man from his former respect for himself, as if this had been but a piece of bizarre conceit.”
“Yes, there is a Nirvanah; it is leading your sheep to a green pasture, and in putting your child to sleep, and in writing the last line of your poem”
“You can have fantasies about having control over the world, but I know I can barely control my kitchen sink. That is the grace I'm given. Because when one can control things, one is limited to one's own vision.”
“Ignorance is always afraid of change.”
“Removal of an organ is difficult and dangerous. There have been several deaths of healthy donors. I think myself, I would be hesitant to participate as a liver donor. It's a very tricky operation.”
“Because there is liberating power in each and every truth, the one who walks in the truth in all his ways will be set free. A lie, no matter how "little," gives the powers of darkness an opening for attack, but the truth chases them far away.”
“I know there is a God - I see the storm coming and I see his hand in it - if he has a place then I am ready - we see the hand.”
“Until you see the cross as that which is done _by_ you, you will never appreciate that it is done _for_ you.”
“In some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round him--all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men. There's no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is detestable. And it has a fascination, too, which goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination--you know. Imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate.”
“Nowadays, we never allow ourselves the convenience of being temporarily unavailable, even to strangers. With telephone and beeper, people subject themselves to being instantly accessible to everyone at all times, and it is the person who refuses to be on call, rather than the importunate caller, who is considered rude.”
“I learned to be with myself rather than avoiding myself with limiting habits; I started to be aware of my feelings more, rather than numb them.”
“In one of the Upanishads it says, when the glow of a sunset holds you and you say 'Aha,' that is the recognition of the divinity. And when you say 'Aha' to an art object, that is a recognition of divinity. And what divinity is it? It is your divinity, which is the only divinity there is. We are all phenomenal manifestations of a divine will to live, and that will and the consciousness of life is one in all of us, and that is what artwork expresses.”