Emanuel Swedenborg Quotes & Sayings

Goodness shapes our will, and truth shapes our understanding. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Every man is received in heaven who receives heaven in himself while in the world, and he is excluded who does not. — Emanuel Swedenborg

He who assists a poor or needy villain does evil to his neighbor ... for through the assistance which he renders he ... supplies him with the means of doing evil to others. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Conscience is God's presence in humans. — Emanuel Swedenborg

The activity of love and faith is what makes heaven. — Emanuel Swedenborg

For those who trust in the Divine all things are moving towards an everlasting state of happiness, and no matter what happens at any time to them, it contributes to that state. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Man knows that there is love, but he does not know what love is. — Emanuel Swedenborg

People are unaware that spirits even exist, let alone that angels are present with them. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Charity alone, or love and compassion, is what joins [the Lord and a person] together. — Emanuel Swedenborg

First of all it must be known who the God of heaven is, since upon that all the other things depend. — Emanuel Swedenborg

True charity is the desire to be useful to others with no thought of recompense. — Emanuel Swedenborg

I have often talked with angels on this subject, and they have invariably declared that in heaven they are unable to divide the Divine into three, because they know and perceive that the Divine is One and this One is in the Lord. — Emanuel Swedenborg

True wisdom is seeing what is beneficial to your eternal life, and managing your life according to that. You do this when you not only know these things and grasp them with your understanding, but also will and do them. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Sacred scripture is like a mirror in which we see God, although each in a different way. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Others work among the spirits that have just arrived in the world of spirits. Again others raise the children who have died in infancy. Swedenborg ensures the parents of these infants that 'All children whether born within or outside of the church, are adopted by the Lord and become Angels'. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Man, before he is being regenerated, does not even know that any internal man exists, much
less is he acquainted with its nature and quality. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Charity is like warmth in springtime or summer that causes grass, plants, and trees to grow. Without charity, or spiritual warmth, nothing grows. — Emanuel Swedenborg

I am well aware that many will say that no one can possibly speak with spirits and angels so long as he lives in the body; and many will say that it is all fancy, others that I relate such things in order to gain credence, and others will make other objections. — Emanuel Swedenborg

The human race is the basis on which heaven is founded, is because man was last created, and that which is last created is the basis of all that precedes. — Emanuel Swedenborg

The Divine of the Lord in heaven is love, for the reason that love is receptive of all things of heaven, such as peace, intelligence, wisdom and happiness. — Emanuel Swedenborg

This I can declare: things that are in heaven are more real than things that are in the world. — Emanuel Swedenborg

For the judgment was accomplished not only upon all the men of the Christian church, but also upon all who are called Mohammedans, and, moreover, upon all the Gentiles in the whole world. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Wherefore the brain must be looked upon as the universal and general sensory and at the same time as the universal and general motory organ of the body and finally as the universal and general laboratory of the animal spirits and the blood or of the essential juices of life. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Man is so created that as to his internal he cannot die; for he is capable of believing in God, and thus of being conjoined to God by faith and love, and to be conjoined to God is to live to eternity. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Charity is to will and do what is just and right in every transaction. — Emanuel Swedenborg

It can in no sense be said that heaven is outside of any one; it is within ... and a man, also, so far as he receives heaven, is a recipient, a heaven, and an angel. — Emanuel Swedenborg

So far any one shuns evils, so far as he does good. — Emanuel Swedenborg

A man after death, is not a natural but a spiritual man; nevertheless he still appears in all respects like himself. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Heaven is not located on high, but where the good of love is, and this resides within a person, wherever he or she might be. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Adultery is an image of hell. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Man was so created by the Lord as to be able while living in the body to speak with spirits and angels, as in fact was done in the most ancient times; for, being a spirit clothed with a body, he is one with them. — Emanuel Swedenborg

The divine essence itself is love and wisdom. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Love comes into being through useful service to others. — Emanuel Swedenborg

In the spiritual body moreover, man appears such as he is with respect to love and faith, for everyone in the spiritual world is the effigy of his own love, not only as to the face and the body, but also as to the speech and the actions — Emanuel Swedenborg

Faith is knowing and thinking truths. Charity is willing and doing them. — Emanuel Swedenborg

The essence of love is that what is ours should belong to someone else. Feeling the joy of someone else as joy within ourselves-that is loving. — Emanuel Swedenborg

If love is not married to wisdom (or if goodness is not married to truth), it cannot accomplish anything. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Two consorts in heaven are not two, but one angel. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Everything good or true that the angels inspire in us is God's, so God is constantly talking to us. He talks very differently, though, to one person than to another. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Love consists in desiring to give what is our own to another and feeling his delight as our own — Emanuel Swedenborg

Our love is our life itself. What our love is like determines how we live and therefore everything about what we are as human beings. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Without such a Life, the Word as to the letter is dead. — Emanuel Swedenborg

But by all this I am not deterred, for I have seen, I have heard, I have felt. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Justice is following the divine design in all that one does, and bringing back into the divine design things that have fallen away from that design. Justice is the divine design itself. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Self-love and the love of the world constitute hell. — Emanuel Swedenborg

I have seen a thousand times that Angels are human form, or men, for I have conversed with them as man to man, sometimes with one alone, sometimes with many in company. — Emanuel Swedenborg

God loves every one of us but cannot directly benefit us; he can benefit us only indirectly through each other. For this reason he inspires us with his love — Emanuel Swedenborg

The Lord casts no one down in Hell, but the spirit casts himself hither. — Emanuel Swedenborg

All religion relates to life, and the life of religion is to do good — Emanuel Swedenborg

To have dominion by religion, is to have dominion over men's souls, thus over their very spiritual life, and to use the Divine things, which are in their religion, as the means. — Emanuel Swedenborg

This Divine truth flows into heaven from the Lord from His Divine love. — Emanuel Swedenborg

The end of creation is that all things may return to the Creator and be united with Him. — Emanuel Swedenborg

And as the Divine that goes forth from the Lord is the good of love and the truth of faith, the angels are angels and are heaven in the measure in which they receive good and truth from the Lord. — Emanuel Swedenborg

People who have intended and loved what is evil in the world intend and love what is evil in the other life, and then they no longer allow themselves to be led away from it. This is why people who are absorbed in evil are connected to hell and actually are there in spirit; and after death they crave above all to be where their evil is. So after death, it is we, not the Lord, who cast ourselves into hell. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Charity itself consists in acting justly and faithfully in whatever office, business and employment a person is engaged in. — Emanuel Swedenborg

We are all spirits inwardly. This is what's alive in the body, not the body on its own. — Emanuel Swedenborg

The church of the Lord is spread over all the globe, and is thus universal; and all those are in it who have lived in the good of charity in accordance with their religion ... — Emanuel Swedenborg

Marriages on earth
because they are the seminaries of the human race and of the angels of heaven also; because, likewise, they proceed from a spiritual origin, that is, from the marriage of good and truth; and since, in addition, the Lord's divine proceeding principally flows into conjugal love
are most holy in the estimation of the angels. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Every one may know that to will and not to do, when there is opportunity, is in reality not to will; and that to love what is good and not to do it, when it is possible, is in reality not to love it. Will, which stops short of action, and love, which does not do the good that is loved, is a mere thought separate from will and love, which vanishes and comes to nothing. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Man is an organ of life, and God alone is life. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Angelic happiness is in service, from service, and according to service. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Seen in its own right, a loving person's inner spirit is an angel of heaven, and while we are living in the body we are also in the company of angels, even though we are not aware of it; and once we are released from the body we join them. — Emanuel Swedenborg

For in every particular of the Word there is an internal sense which treats of things spiritual and heavenly, not of things natural and worldly, such as are treated of in the sense of the letter. — Emanuel Swedenborg

It is no proof of a man's understanding to be able to affirm whatever he pleases; but to be able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is false, this is the mark and character of intelligence. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Men live a moral life, either from regard to the Diving Being, or from regard to the opinion of the people in the world; and when a moral life is practised out of regard to the Divine Being, it is a spiritual life. Both appear alike in their outward form; but in their inward, they are completely different. The one saves a man, but the other does not; for he that leads a moral life out of regard to the Divine Being is led by him, but he who does so from regard to the opinion of people in the world is led by himself. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Times of happiness, bliss, and sheer delight intensify as the higher levels of our minds are opened within us One our life on earth is over, these levels keep rising forever. — Emanuel Swedenborg

All the ancient churches were churches representative of spiritual things; the rites, and also the statutes, according to which their worship was established, consisted of pure correspondence. — Emanuel Swedenborg

If we would accept heaven's life, we need by all means to live in the world and to participate in its duties and affairs. In this way, we accept a spiritual life by means of our moral and civic life; and there is no other way a spiritual life can be formed within us, no other way our spirits can be prepared for heaven. This is because living an inner life and not an outer life at the same time is like living in a house that has no foundation, that gradually either settles or develops gaping cracks or totters until it collapses. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Every single moment of a person's life, both of the understanding and of the will, is a new beginning. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Angels never attack, as infernal spirits do. Angels only ward off and defend. — Emanuel Swedenborg

The angels taken collectively are called heaven, for they constitute heaven; and yet that which makes heaven in general and in particular is the Divine that goes forth from the Lord and flows into the angels and is received by them. — Emanuel Swedenborg

A life of faith without love is like sunlight without warmth - the type of light that occurs in winter, when nothing grows and everything droops and dies. Faith rising out of love, on the contrary, is like light from the sun in spring, when everything grows and flourishes. Warmth from the sun is the fertile agent. The same is true in spiritual and heavenly affairs, which are typically represented in the Word by objects found in nature and human culture. — Emanuel Swedenborg

In the Christian world ... it is believed that angels were created at the beginning, and that heaven was formed of them; and that the Devil or Satan was an angel of light, who, becoming rebellions, was cast down with his crew, and that this was the origin of hell. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Man knows that love is, but not what it is. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Kindness is an inner desire that makes us want to do good things even if we do not get anything in return. It is the joy of our life to do them. When we do good things from this inner desire, there is kindness in everything we think, say, want, and do. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Angels can recognize the nature of our unique essence on the basis of nothing more than a brief conversation with us. From hearing the tone of our voice angels sense what we love; and from hearing what we say, angels sense our level of understanding. — Emanuel Swedenborg

To will and not to do when there is opportunity is in reality not to will; and to love what is good and not to do it, when it is possible, is in reality not to love it — Emanuel Swedenborg

All in heaven take joy in sharing their delights and blessings with others. — Emanuel Swedenborg

We are, because God is. — Emanuel Swedenborg

A person's life from infancy to old age is nothing else than an advance from the world towards heaven, the last stage of which is death; the actual transition from one life to the next. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Charity means love towards the neighbor and compassion, for anyone who loves his neighbor as himself also has as much compassion for him in his suffering as he does for himself in his own. — Emanuel Swedenborg

That every man after the life in the world lives to eternity, is evident from this, that man is then spiritual, and no longer natural, and that the spiritual man, separated from the natural, remains such as he is to eternity, for man's state cannot be changed after death. — Emanuel Swedenborg

All union is effected by love, and love is not love without trust. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Peace has in it trust in the Lord, that He governs all things, provides all things, and leads to a good end. — Emanuel Swedenborg

He who is in evil, is also in the punishment of evil. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Hell and Heaven are near man, yes, in him; and every man after death goes to that Hell or heaven in which he was, or to his spirit, during his abode in the world. — Emanuel Swedenborg

The inner self is as distinct from the outer self as heaven is from earth. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Love means setting aside walls, fences, and unlocking doors and saying 'Yes.' One can be in paradise by simply saying 'yes' to this moment. — Emanuel Swedenborg

In a word, to grow old in heaven is to grow young. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Anyone can see that intending and not acting when we can is not really intending, and loving and not doing good when we can is not really loving. — Emanuel Swedenborg

The more one is absorbed in so-called philosophy, the greater one's delusion and blindness. — Emanuel Swedenborg

For the spiritual sense of the Word treats everywhere of the spiritual world, that is, of the state of the church in the heavens, as well as in the earth; hence the Word is spiritual and Divine. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Destruction was effected after visitation, for visitation always precedes. — Emanuel Swedenborg

There are angels that receive more interiorly the Divine that goes forth from the Lord, and others that receive it less interiorly; the former are called celestial angels, and the latter spiritual angels. — Emanuel Swedenborg

One's distance from Heaven is in proportion to the measure of one's self-love. — Emanuel Swedenborg

The quality of the Lord's church on earth, cannot be seen by any man, so long as he lives in the world, still less how the church in process of time has turned aside from good to evil. — Emanuel Swedenborg

So far as the Angels are recipients of that spiritual heat and light they are loves and wisdoms, not loves and wisdoms for themselves, but from the Lord. — Emanuel Swedenborg

A person who knows all that is good and all that is true
as much as can be known
but does not resist evils, knows nothing. — Emanuel Swedenborg

The life of any one can by no means be changed after death; an evil life can in no wise be converted into a good life, or an infernal into an angelic life: because every spirit, from head to foot, is of the character of his love, and therefore, of his life; and to convert this life into its opposite, would be to destroy the spirit utterly. — Emanuel Swedenborg

What a man thinks in his spirit in the world, that he does after his departure from the world when he becomes a spirit. — Emanuel Swedenborg