Spiritual quotes
9.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside spiritual — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"I am but a poor struggling soul yearning to be wholly good, wholly truthful and wholly non-violent in thought, word and deed, but ever failing to reach the ideal which I know to be true. It is a painful climb, but each step upwards makes me feel stronger and fit for the next."
"One fast move or I'm gone,' I realize, gone the way of the last three years of drunken hopelessness which is a physical and spiritual and metaphysical hopelessness you can't learn in school no matter how many books on existentialism or pessimisn you read, or how many jugs of vision-producing Ayahuasca drink, or Mescaline take, or Peyote goop up with -"
"Freedom will destroy itself if it is not exercised within some sort of moral framework, some body of shared beliefs, some spiritual heritage transmitted through the Church, the family, and the school."
"The sense of an entailed disadvantage - the deformed foot doubtfully hidden by the shoe, makes a restlessly active spiritual yeast, and easily turns a self-centered, unloving nature into an Ishmaelite."
"The teacher’s first duty is to watch over the environment, and this takes precedence over all the rest. It’s influence is indirect, but unless it be well done there will be no effective and permanent results of any kind, physical, intellectual or spiritual."
"Religious people fear hell -- Spiritual people have walked thru it."
"At the back of our brains is a blaze of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life is to dig for this sunrise of wonder."
"Love always seeks for betterment, for ways of making life more workable, joyful, whole, and beautiful. Love examines every option available to bring about an improvement in life. This kind of discernment is an act of decency, not an act of judgment. Rigid philosophies of judgment will seek to establish structure as a substitute for decency, control as a substitute for trust, and the mind as a substitute for higher awareness."
"We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another, and no sunrise finds us where left by sunset. Even while the earth sleeps we travel. We are the seeds of that tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind to be scattered."
"When the mind sees itself in the mirror of relationship, from that perception there is self-knowledge."
"The vast majority of us don't want to face the fact that we're in the middle of a sweeping social revolution. In sex. In spiritual values. In opposition to wars no one wants. In opposition to government big-brotherhood. In civil rights. In basic human goals. They're all facets of a general upheaval."
"God is with you, and He'll help you make spiritual progress-strengthening and encouraging you to keep on keeping on during rough times. It's easy to quit, but it takes faith to press on to victory."
"There is nothing so much like God in all the universe as silence."
"To get at the core of God at his greatest, one must first get to the core of himself at his least, for no one can know God who has not first known himself. This core is a simple stillness, which is unmoved itself but by whose immobility all things are moved and all receive life."
"The knower and the known are one. Simple people imagine that they should see God as if he stood there and they here. This is not so. God and I, we are one in knowledge."
"If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change. In my view, science and Buddhism share a search for the truth and for understanding reality. By learning from science about aspects of reality where its understanding may be more advanced, I believe that Buddhism enriches its own worldview."
"Irrespective of whether we are believers or agnostics, whether we believe in God or karma, moral ethics is a code which everyone is able to pursue."
"The message of love and compassion will travel far and wide if all who follow a spiritual path work together in harmony and mutual respect."
"You must continue to go back to the beginning, to the foundation, and question the foundation. Even once you‘ve reached Samadhi you must go back so you can create it at will. Samadhi is the beginning of spiritual growth, not the end. You must always be questioning. Enlightenment comes as an accident at first, then you have to learn to recreate it."
"One's spiritual realization lies in none other than how one walks among and interacts with one's fellow beings."
