Matthew Fox Quotes & Sayings

Do not confuse beauty with beautiful. Beautiful is a human judgment. Beauty is All. The difference is everything. — Matthew Fox

The universe is in the habit of making beauty. There are flowers and songs, snowflakes and smiles, acts of great courage, laughter between friends, a job well done, the smell of fresh baked bread. Beauty is everywhere. — Matthew Fox

I'm not saying I want a film career because I think I'm too good for television. I'm simply saying I want more control over my life. — Matthew Fox

We honor life when we work. The type of work is not important: the fact of work is. All work feeds the soul if it is honest and done to the best of our abilities and if it brings joy to others. — Matthew Fox

We must work on our souls, enlarging and expanding them. We do so by experiencing all of life-the beauty and the joy as well as the grief and pain. Soul work requires paying attention to life, to the laughter and the sorrow, the enlightening and the frightening, the inspiring and the silly. — Matthew Fox

I'll put it to you this way: I never, ever think about the things that I get involved with on a macro means-to-an-ends scale. — Matthew Fox

I turn a lot of stuff down - big, big movies, the kind I wouldn't want to go to the cinema to see. — Matthew Fox

Political movements for justice are part of the fuller development of the cosmos, and nature is the matrix in which humans come to their self-awareness of their power to transform. Liberation movements are a fuller development of the cosmos's sense of harmony, balance, justice, and celebration. This is why true spiritual liberation demands rituals of cosmic celebrating and healing, which will in turn culminate in personal transformation and liberation. — Matthew Fox

Human beings are midway between the size of a living cell and the size of Earth. — Matthew Fox

Having a studio tell you when to jump and how high eight months of the year for six years is not a relationship I want to get into again. — Matthew Fox

I'm really enjoying the process of learning to fly. How it will fit into my life down the road - I'm looking forward to discovering that. — Matthew Fox

From suffering I have learned this: That whoever is sore wounded by love will never be made whole unless she embrace the very same love which wounded her. - Mechtild of Magdeburg — Matthew Fox

But, sooner or later I'd love to do a comedy. I mean I think that, you know, people don't think that that's in my wheelhouse because I've sort of played a lot of dramatic stuff and that's certainly a side of myself that I want at some point in the right context, in the right stuff, that I find really funny. — Matthew Fox

Big-heartednes s is the most essential virtue on the spiritual journey. — Matthew Fox

Creation is all space, all time - all things past, present, and future. — Matthew Fox

Compassion is not pity ... compassion never considers an object as weak or inferior. Compassion, one might say, works from a strength born of awareness of shared weakness, and not from someone else's weakness. And from the awareness of the mutuality of us all. Thus to put down another as in pity is to put down oneself. — Matthew Fox

A job is something we do to get a paycheck and pay our bills. Jobs are legitimate, at times, but work is why we are here in the universe. Work and calling often go together. — Matthew Fox

Creativity as Divine intimacy flows through us and is bigger than we are, urging us to go to the edge and grow larger. And our growth in turn delights God. "God is delighted to watch your soul enlarge," says Eckhart. — Matthew Fox

What is common to all paths that are spiritual is, of course, the Spirit-breath, life energy, that is why all true paths are essentially one path, because there is only one Spirit, one breath, one life, one energy in the universe. It belongs to none of us and all of us. We all share it. Spiritually does not make up otherworldly; it renders us more fully alive. — Matthew Fox

Where does creativity come from?
Creativity comes from the Universe itself.
"There is music and poetry in the Universe itself - surely we hear it on planet earth." And Creativity comes from our joys and sorrows, our deep-hearted experiences. It also comes "from and in the heart of God. All our spiritual traditions the world over agree that creativity follows through the human heart and that it flows from the Divine Heart."
Creativity is seen as a spiritual, inwardly-driven activity, directly influenced by a Higher Power, or God. That is the ultimate in inspiration for me: to know I have "permission" to be creative and to be a creator too. — Matthew Fox

It is precisely the despair of our times that convinces me that a renaissance is right around the corner. — Matthew Fox

A lot of people want to see this idealized version of heroism, all pretty and perfect, and I'm not interested in playing the goody-goody hero at all. — Matthew Fox

I directed an episode of 'Party of Five' toward the very end of that show. It was a great experience. — Matthew Fox

I didn't learn to swim until I was 21 or something because I grew up in the mountains in Wyoming and all the water is glacier runoff and cold. — Matthew Fox

I think you've got to take your time and make sure you're making choices that are smart for you. — Matthew Fox

I am a Westerner. We're not going to change the West by going East. The East has a lot to teach us, but essentially it's like a mirror, saying, hey, can't you see what's here in your own religion, what are you, stupid? — Matthew Fox

Any time I need to be really physical, and a role requires that, you're kind of viscerally activated by being that physical in it. It takes away the thought process, which is fun. — Matthew Fox

The prophets preach ... that pleasure, not will-power and coercion, is how you most deeply transform people. — Matthew Fox

I consider Otto Rank to be one of the great spiritual giants of the twentieth century, a genius as a psychologist and a saint as a human being. Though vilified by his original community of Freudians, he never became bitter. He died a feminist and deeply committed to social justice, in 1939 ... His deep understanding of creativity makes him a mentor for all of us living in a postmodern world ... I believe that Art and Artist, especially chapters 12 to 14, may well emerge as the most valuable psychoanalysis of the spiritual life in our time. — Matthew Fox

To speak of creativity is to speak of profound intimacy. It is also to speak of our connecting to the Divine in us and of our bringing the Divine back to the community. This is true whether we understand our creativity to be begetting and nourishing our children, making music, doing theater, gardening, writing, teaching, running a business, painting, constructing houses, or sharing the healing arts of medicine and therapy. — Matthew Fox

To connect with the great river we all need a path, but when you get down there there's only one river. — Matthew Fox

We all share beauty. It strikes us indiscriminately. There is no end to the beauty for the person who is aware. Even the cracks between the sidewalk contain geometric patterns of amazing beauty. If we take pictures of them and blow up the photographs, we realize we walk on beauty every day, even when things seem ugly around us. — Matthew Fox

To recover a spiritual tradition in which creation, and the study of creation, matters would be to inaugurate new possibilities between spirituality and science that would shape the paradigms for culture, its institution, and its people. — Matthew Fox

What happens to another, whether it be a joy or a sorrow, happens to me. - Meister Eckhart — Matthew Fox

What is of most moment of compassion is not feelings of pity but feelings of togetherness. — Matthew Fox

There is no end to the beauty for the person who is aware. Even the cracks between the sidewalk contain geometric patterns of amazing beauty. — Matthew Fox

Animals teach us about the animals in ourselves. We need their spirits. — Matthew Fox

I've always been into cars. Cars are part of our genetic makeup. It's unavoidable. — Matthew Fox

I'm an actor. I try to play a character in a really cool story, the very best I can. — Matthew Fox

I don't think that fundamentalism has anything to do with Jesus Christ. They call themselves Christians, but if that's Christian, count me out. Fundamentalism is built on fear and greed. They're telling you to give them your money otherwise you're going to hell. — Matthew Fox

Soul is our appetite, driving us to eat from the banquet of life. People filled with the hunger of soul take food from every dish before them, whether it be sweet or bitter. — Matthew Fox

God is voluptuous and delicious. - Meister Eckhart — Matthew Fox

Healthy mysticism praises acts of letting go, of being emptied, of getting in touch with the space inside and expanding this until it merges with the space outside. Space meeting space; empty pouring into empty. Births happen from that encounter with emptiness, nothingness ... Let us not fight emptiness and nothingness, but allow it to penetrate us even as we penetrate it. — Matthew Fox

Creation is all things and us. It is us in relationship with all things. All things, the ones we see and the ones we do not; the whirling galaxies and the wild suns, the black holes and the microorganisms, the trees and the stars, the fish and the whales - the molten lava and the towering snow-capped mountains, the children we give birth to and their children, and theirs, and theirs, and theirs. — Matthew Fox

Animals love. They love their being. They strive to survive, to celebrate, to propagate . So certainly something we learn from animals is love. To survive and to celebrate, propagate and to love life. To be the best we can be - the right to be here and the responsibility to be the best dog or bear or horse that they can be. Humans have the tendency to self pity that other animals don't indulge in. — Matthew Fox

Humor and paradox are often the only ways to respond to life's sorrow with grace. — Matthew Fox

When it comes to wilderness animals we have to make an effort to preserve what areas we can that they can be themselves in. Its come to a point though, clearly, where some species have to be cared for by humans if they are not going to disappear altogether. — Matthew Fox

I enjoy a four-seasonal climate and wide-open spaces, so being on an island 2,500 miles into the South Pacific made me feel a little claustrophobic. — Matthew Fox

Beauty saves. Beauty heals. Beauty motivates. Beauty unites. Beauty returns us to our origins, and here lies the ultimate act of saving, of healing, of overcoming dualism. — Matthew Fox

Faith takes us to deep places, to the ruptures in our self-confidence and our lives. Do not settle for spiritual comfort all the time ... Darkness is divine also. Faith is not about positive thinking so much as about what kicks in when we are weak, sick, and short of self-confidence. The via positiva never stands alone. The via negativa is always with us on our faith journey as well. — Matthew Fox

The only way to learn compassion is through your heart; you have to back up and pass through your own pain. — Matthew Fox

Work should be in order to live. We don't live in order to work. That shift in awareness is necessary. — Matthew Fox

I think that there's a hidden darkness in all of us! — Matthew Fox

The system is not working. That is how a paradigm shift begins: the established way of seeing the world no longer functions. — Matthew Fox

Sustainability is another word for justice, for what is just is sustainable and what is unjust is not. — Matthew Fox

Sometimes people look to others for answers they can find within themselves. I don't really want the responsibility of being the guy they look to. — Matthew Fox

I'm sorry, but I can't make a movie with the blonde from 'ER' who is starring in every single bad romantic comedy. — Matthew Fox

When the Sacred Masculine is combined with the sacred feminine inside each of us, we create the 'sacred marriage' of compassion and passion in ourselves. — Matthew Fox

To create is always to learn, to begin over, to begin at zero. — Matthew Fox

Creativity and imagination are not frosting on a cake: They are integral to our sustainability. They are survival mechanisms. They are of the essence of who we are. They constitute our deepest empowerment. — Matthew Fox

If you look at men's roles for the last thousand years, the desire is fundamental. We want to take care of, provide for, and be of service to ... women. — Matthew Fox

A lot of the time I hate acting. It has a lot to do with the way I was brought up in a world where showing your emotions is frowned upon. It's just not manly. I don't do anything in life because I love doing it. It's because I want to be good at it. — Matthew Fox

Today's Catholic church seems to reward authoritarian personalities who are clearly ill, violent, sexually obsessed and unable to remember the past. — Matthew Fox

And as I've gotten deeper into the process of making films and television and such, I think I have more trust in the fact that you really never know what you're going to find after the twenty-fifth take. — Matthew Fox

I'm either going to have the career I want doing films, or I'll do something else - I'll be gone. — Matthew Fox

Our self-expression is meant to be a manifestation of the silence of our hearts. — Matthew Fox

If you look closely at a tree you'll notice it's knots and dead branches, just like our bodies. What we learn is that beauty and imperfection go together wonderfully. — Matthew Fox

I'm not really a tropical paradise kind of person. — Matthew Fox

i hope i live to be 150 — Matthew Fox

Prayer is essentially about making the heart strong so that fear cannot penetrate there. — Matthew Fox

Men should not be sexing their women in the missionary position because they are facing away from the sky. Instead of looking down, men are to look up. To the vastness of Father Sky — Matthew Fox

Awe is the beginning of wisdom. Awe is the beginning of education. — Matthew Fox

By cutting ourselves off from the rest of creation, we are left bereft of awe and wonder and therefore of reverence and gratitude. We violate our very beings, and we have nothing but trivia to teach our young. — Matthew Fox

The whole purpose of letting pain be pain is this: to let go of pain. By entering into it, we see that we are strong enough and capable enough to move through it. We find out that it ultimately has a gift for us. — Matthew Fox

When our inner self connects to our work and our work to our inner self, the work knows no limit, for the inner self knows no limit. — Matthew Fox

A global awakening can only happen from a spiritual awakening that is of global dimensions. — Matthew Fox

Facing the darkness, admitting the pain, allowing the pain to be pain, is never easy. This is why courage - big-heartedness - is the most essential virtue on the spiritual journey. But if we fail to let pain be pain - and our entire patriarchal culture refuses to let this happen - then pain will haunt us in nightmarish ways. We will become pain's victims instead of the healers we might become. — Matthew Fox

We are in the cosmos and the cosmos is in us. — Matthew Fox

Evil is the shadow of angel. Just as there are angels of light, support, guidance, healing and defense, so we have experiences of shadow angels. And we have names for them: racism, sexism, homophobia are all demons - but they're not out there. — Matthew Fox

After 'Lost', I never need to take a job for the money again. — Matthew Fox

If you don't work on yourself, then much of your politics is merely projections. We have to walk our talk and do the inner work that allows the outer work to be authentic and also effective. — Matthew Fox

I put a lot of pressure on myself and I think I am quite ... well, intense about driving other people. — Matthew Fox

I played football for a huge portion of my life, all the way through college actually. — Matthew Fox

Pain destroys the illusions of false, that is, elitist pleasures. It burns from the inside out. It, therefore, sensitizes us to what is truly beautiful in life. — Matthew Fox

We are not consumers. For most of humanity's existence, we were makers, not consumers: we made our clothes, shelter, and education, we hunted and gathered our food.
We are not addicts. "I propose that most addictions come from our surrendering our real powers, that is, our powers of creativity." We are not passive couch potatoes either. "It is not the essence of humans to be passive. We are players. We are actors on many stages ... . We are curious, we are yearning to wonder, we are longing to be amazed ... to be excited, to be enthusiastic, to be expressive. In short to be alive." We are also not cogs in a machine. To be so would be to give up our personal freedoms so as to not upset The Machine, whatever that machine is. Creativity keeps us creating the life we wish to live and advancing humanity's purpose as well. — Matthew Fox

A civilization built on dualism and war within and between persons, one that puts its most creative minds and its best engineers to sadistic work building more and more destructive weapons, is no civilization at all. It needs a radical transformation from the heart outwards. It needs to outgrow and outlaw war just as in the last century it outlawed slavery. The human race has outgrown war, but it hardly knows it yet. — Matthew Fox