Sacredness Quotes & Sayings

Contemplation is life itself, fully awake, fully active, and fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness, and for being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent, and infinitely abundant Source. — Thomas Merton

Whatever its origins, the psychology of sacredness helps bind individuals into moral communities.42 When someone in a moral community desecrates one of the sacred pillars supporting the community, the reaction is sure to be swift, emotional, collective, and punitive. To — Jonathan Haidt

What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within?" my friend suggested, - "But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what is against it. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

But come to California. Come to these canyons if you want to be driven by sacredness into the air. If you dream of the true, clear silences, if you want those silences to sing - come to California. — Denis Johnson

It's easy to assume that because what we are doing is familiar, we are the least valuable part of the church. But God doesn't see it that way. And we need to remember the sacredness of what we are doing as we mother. — Erin Davis

The sacred dimension is not something that you can know through words and ideas any more than you can learn what an apple pie tastes like by eating the recipe. The modern age has forgotten that facts and information, for all their usefulness, are not the same as truth or wisdom, and certainly not the same as direct experience. — Adyashanti

If there are words for all the pastels in a hue - the lavenders, mauves, fushsias, plums, and lilacs - who will name the tones and tints of a smell? It's as if we were hypnotized en masse and told to selectively forget. It may be, too, that smells move us so profoundly, in part, because we cannot utter their names. In a world sayable and lush, where marvels offer themselves up readily for verbal dissection, smells are often right on the tip of our tongues - but no closer - and it gives them a kind of magical distance, a mystery, a power without a name, a sacredness. — Diane Ackerman

Too often in the past our approach to truth has been to assume that we have it and others do not. Consequently, we have thought that our role is to tell people what to believe. We are being invited instead into a new humility, to serve the holy wisdom that is already stirring in the hearts of people everywhere, the growing awareness of earth's interrelatedness and sacredness. — John Philip Newell

Confidence ... thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

What makes cities great, and what leads to their gradual demise? As this book will argue, three critical factors have determined the overall health of cities - the sacredness of place, the ability to provide security and project power, and last, the animating role of commerce. — Joel Kotkin

Only in the sacredness of inward silence does the soul truly meet the secret, hiding God. The strength of resolve, which afterward shapes life, and mixes itself with action, is the fruit of those sacred, solitary moments. There is a divine depth in silence. We meet God alone. — Frederick William Robertson

In order to validate our Africanness, we hold on to tradition at all cost, banning critical engagement in an attempt to preserve its sacredness — Malebo Sephodi

The Church has a special duty to safeguard and strengthen the sacredness of the Eucharist. In our pluralistic and often deliberately secularized society, the living faith of the Christian community - a faith always aware of its rights vis-a-vis those who do not share the faith - ensures respect for this sacredness — Pope John Paul II

It is the youngest in the family who tends to the elders to learn about the sacredness of life and the beauty of death. — Misty Upham

I get the sense that many in the contemporary biblical womanhood movement feel that the tasks associated with homemaking have been so marginalized in our culture that it's up to them to restore the sacredness of keeping the home. This is a noble goal indeed, and one around which all people of faith can rally. But in our efforts to celebrate and affirm God's presence in the home, we should be wary of elevating the vocation of homemaking above all others by insinuating that for women, God's presence is somehow restricted to that sphere. If God is the God of all pots and pans, then He is also the God of all shovels and computers and paints and assembly lines and executive offices and classrooms. Peace and joy belong not to the woman who finds the right vocation, but to the woman who finds God in any vocation, who looks for the divine around every corner. — Rachel Held Evans

Faced with the sacredness of life and of the human person,
and before the marvels of the universe, wonder is the only appropriate attitude. — Pope John Paul II

In what is now known as Bodh Gaya ... a Buddhist temple stands beside an ancient pipal, descended from that bodhi tree, or "enlightenment tree," and I watched the rising of the morning star and came away no wiser than before. But later I wondered if the Tibetan monks were aware that the Bodhi tree was murmuring with gusts of birds, while another large pipal, so close by that it touched the holy tree with many branches, was without life. I make no claim for the event: I simply declare what I saw at Bodh Gaya. — Peter Matthiessen

But I believe also the rewards of obedience are great, because at the root of real honor is always a sense of the sacredness of the person who is the object... When you love someone to the degree you love her, you see her as God sees her, and that is an instruction in the nature of God and humankind and of Being itself. — Marilynne Robinson

And there is the matter of abortion. We must with calmness and resolve help the vast majority of our fellow Americans understand that the more than 112 million abortions performed in America in 1980 amount to a great moral evil, an assault on the sacredness of human life. — Ronald Reagan

We have really lost in our society the sense of the sacredness of life. — Basil Hume

Stop spending so much time chasing life's big pleasures while you neglect the little ones. Slow things down. Enjoy the beauty and sacredness of all that is around you. — Robin S. Sharma

... We are in a system that doesn't give a rap about sacredness. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

To cultivate the sacredness and sanctity of each day, serve others in some way. — Robin S. Sharma

I've often thought of the forest as a living cathedral, but this might diminish what it truly is. If I have understood Koyukon teachings, the forest is not merely an expression or representation of sacredness, nor a place to invoke the sacred; the forest is sacredness itself. Nature is not merely created by God; nature is God. Whoever moves within the forest can partake directly of sacredness, experience sacredness with his entire body, breathe sacredness and contain it within himself, drink the sacred water as a living communion, bury his feet in sacredness, touch the living branch and feel the sacredness, open his eyes and witness the burning beauty of sacredness — Richard Nelson

It is no coincidence that every civilisation in human history has recognised at its foundation an element of sacredness, to which the civil authority is ultimately bound. The sacred is an awareness of moral boundaries that are not circumscribed by us, of an ultimate reason that cannot be found in us. It is the realisation that what binds us together as a society is something that lies beyond ourselves, and that human beings have an inherent value that cannot be arbitrarily limited or denied by political, economic or social power. — Giorgio Roversi

As a Christian and a feminist, the most important message I can carry and fight for is the sacredness of each human life, and reproductive rights for all women are a crucial part of that. It is a moral necessity that we not be forced to bring children into the world for whom we cannot be responsible and adoring and present. We must not inflict life on children who will be resented; we must not inflict unwanted children on society. — Anne Lamott

Seek the sacredness of life. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Sacredness binds people together, and then blinds them to the arbitrariness of the practice. — Jonathan Haidt

If you study the scriptures continually, you find sacredness of life. — Lailah Gifty Akita

In the mundane, nothing is sacred. In sacredness, nothing is mundane. — Dogen

Modern man creates fancy cars while losing the sacredness of his feet and lungs. — Steve Ilg

In the true Literary Man there is thus ever, acknowledged or not by the world, a sacredness: he is the light of the world; the world's Priest;
guiding it, like a sacred Pillar of Fire, in its dark pilgrimage through the waste of Time. — Thomas Carlyle

But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence... illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Nay, sacredness is held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness. — Ludwig Feuerbach

May we celebrate the sacredness of Christmas with joy, faith and hope. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Don't do that to yourself, Spatzchen, Elsa thought. The world is full of Rowenas, women who could cut you to the quick with their cruel appraisals of what they think you are. You have to know your own sacredness in order to endure them. You have to know that you have been created for a reason that has everything to do with what is good and what is righteous. And no one can ever take that away from you. — Kelly O'Connor McNees

Presence is needed to become aware of the Beauty, the Majesty, the Sacredness of Nature — Eckhart Tolle

The warrior of the night knows the sacredness of warfare. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The Christian theory of the sacredness of the Bible has been at the cost of the world's civilization. — Matilda Joslyn Gage

I think there's a time and place to watch an independent film, or catch up on a French action film on your laptop, or Netflix it, or download it, or watch it on-demand. But I think we also have to maintain the sacredness of the movie theatre as church - especially with event screenings. — Robert Englund

I believe in holiness and sacredness in other people. It doesn't mean that the clouds part and I see God. That's a juvenile way of thinking about it. — Karen Armstrong

Sacredness inspires respect. — Toba Beta

But there's a sacredness which is not of thought, nor of a feeling resuscitated by thought. It is not recognizable by thought nor can it be utilized by thought. Thought cannot formulate it. But there's a sacredness, untouched by any symbol or word. It is not communicable. It is a fact. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

A library was nothing without its people. You say library and there's this iconoclastic image of an old-lady librarian telling people to be quiet and not to run. But the thing was, that lady - that iconoclastic lady - was with us when we cleaned. She wore blue jeans, too. Maybe she was what people thought about when you said library, but she didn't make the library. People made the library. That's what made a library. Without them, all the sacredness was gone. It was just a building with books. — Scott Douglas

When the "sacredness of property" is talked of, it should always be remembered that any such sacredness does not belong in the same degree to landed property. No man made the land. It is the original inheritance of the whole species. — John Stuart Mill

When we sit we recognize the crucial, divine importance of absolutely everything that arises - every thought, every feeling, every breath, every unspeakable, unnameable impulse. But also we recognize the ultimate importance of the others - of the sky, of all the sounds inside and outside the room. As the mind becomes a little more quiet the sacredness of everything within and without becomes clear to us. — Norman Fischer

Silent solitude makes true speech possible and personal. If I am not in touch with my own belovedness, then I cannot touch the sacredness of others. If I am estranged from myself, I am likewise a stranger to others. — Brennan Manning

If you study of scriptures, you find sacredness of life. — Lailah Gifty Akita

As for myself: I had come to the conclusion that there was nothing sacred about myself or any human being, that we were all machines, doomed to collide and collide and collide. For want of anything better to do, we became fans of collisions. Sometimes I wrote well about collisions, which meant I was a writing machine in good repair. Sometimes I wrote badly, which meant I was a writing machine in bad repair. I no more harbored sacredness than did a Pontiac, a mousetrap, or a South Bend Lathe. — Kurt Vonnegut

Walt Whitman defended the sacredness of love, the purity of passion - the passion that builds every home and fills the world with art and song. — Robert Green Ingersoll

There is a sacredness in tears....They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition and of unspeakable love. — Washington Irving

Women's evolution at this time is demanding that we go beneath the obsession about counting calories and losing weight, and reclaim our sacredness as women, our right to our own voices and our ability to make our own choices. Until we can do this with the most fundamental issue of food and body, we will be forever stuck in an obsession that keeps us from our true selves. — Carol Emery Normandi

I remember reading [ Studs Terkel's] "Working" when it first came out and just finding that very powerful. I was going into community organizing. What stuck was to reveal the sacredness of ordinary people's lives. That everybody has a story. And I think Studs is terrific at drawing out that shimmering quality of people's everyday struggles. — Barack Obama

Man is encompassed with a dome of incomprehensible wonders. In him and about him is that which should fill his life with majesty and sacredness. Something of sublimity and sanctity has thus flashed down from heaven into the heart of every one that lives. — Albert Pike

It is contended by many that ours is a Christian government, founded upon the Bible, and that all who look upon the book as false or foolish are destroying the foundation of our country. The truth is, our government is not founded upon the rights of gods, but upon the rights of men. Our Constitution was framed, not to declare and uphold the deity of Christ, but the sacredness of humanity. Ours is the first government made by the people and for the people. It is the only nation with which the gods have had nothing to do. And yet there are some judges dishonest and cowardly enough to solemnly decide that this is a Christian country, and that our free institutions are based upon the infamous laws of Jehovah. — Robert G. Ingersoll

Awakening is waking up from the daytime dream and realizing that who you thought you were is not limited to thought, emotion or form. Beyond the imaginary seeker, beyond concepts and beliefs, there is a field of innocence and purity. We are this deep peace and sacredness, which is absolute and beyond all intellectual understanding. I invite you to recognize this Essence of Being and to directly realize the illusion of all psychological suffering due to misidentification, misperception of separation and attachment to conditioned thought. — Katie Davis

The diabolical work that has taken place since the legalization of abortion is that it has destroyed, in those tragic women who have allowed their child to be murdered, their sense for the sacredness of maternity. Abortion not only murders the innocent; it spiritually murders women ... the wound created in their souls is so great that only God's grace can heal it. The very soul of a woman is meant to be maternal. — Alice Von Hildebrand

If the third dimension and perceptions of sacredness are an important part of human nature, then the scientific community should accept religiosity as a normal and healthy aspect of human nature - an aspect that is as deep, important, and interesting as sexuality or language (which we study intensely). Here's another treasonous thought: If religious people are right in believing that religion is the source of their greatest happiness, then maybe the rest of us who are looking for happiness and meaning can learn something from them, whether or not we believe in God. That's the topic of the final chapter. — Jonathan Haidt

We must restore the sacredness of the family as a bedrock of humane values everywhere, in peace as well as in war. — Kofi Annan

Enchantment is the means through which we may gain access to sacredness. Entertainment is the means through which we distance ourselves from it. — Neil Postman

There's a patter in these Commandments of setting things apart so that their holiness will be perceived. Every day is holy, but the Sabbath is set apart so that the holiness of time can be experienced. Every human being is worthy of honor, but the conscious discipline of honor is learned from this setting apart of the mother and father, who usually labor and are heavy laden, and may be cranky or stingy or ignorant or overbearing. Believe me, I know this can be a hard Commandment to keep. But I believe also that the rewards of obedience are great, because at the root of real honor is always the sense of the sacredness of the person who is its object. — Marilynne Robinson

We are looking for a tongue that speaks with reverence for life, searching for an ecology of mind. Without it, we have no home, no place of our own within the creation. It is not only the vocabulary of science we desire. We want a language of that different yield. A yield rich as the harvests of the earth, a yield that returns us to our own sacredness, to a self-love and resort that will carry out to others. — Linda Hogan

Rather, my research on the moral emotions has led me to conclude that the human mind simply does perceive divinity and sacredness, whether or not God exists. — Jonathan Haidt

A library is a focal point, a sacred place to a community; and its sacredness is its accessibility, its publicness. It's everybody's place". — Ursula K. Le Guin

Ancient poetry and mythology suggest, at least, that husbandry was once a sacred art; but it is pursued with irreverent haste and heedlessness by us, our object being to have large farms and large crops merely. We have no festival, nor procession, nor ceremony, not excepting our cattle-shows and so-called Thanksgivings, by which the farmer expresses a sense of the sacredness of his calling, or is reminded of its sacred origin. It is the premium and the feast which tempt him. He sacrifices not to Ceres and the Terrestrial Jove, but to the infernal Plutus rather. — Henry David Thoreau

Sacredness is spirituality. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Never violate the sacredness of your individual self-respect. — Theodore Parker

The mystical perception (which is only "mystical" if reality is limited to what can be measured by the intellect and senses) is remarkably consistent in all ages and all places. All phenomena are processes, connections, all is in flux ... have the mind screens knocked away to see there is no real edge to anything, that in the endless interpenetration of the universe, a molecular flow, a cosmic energy shimmers in all stone and steel as well as flesh ... — Peter Matthiessen

We try to resist it by making things that will last - forever, we say - things that we don't have to wash, things that we don't have to iron. Somehow, in the process of trying to deny that things are always changing, we lose our sense of the sacredness of life. We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things. — Pema Chodron

We are a continuum. Just as we reach back to our ancestors for our fundamental values, so we, as guardians of that legacy, must reach ahead to our children and their children. And we do so with a sense of sacredness in that reaching. — Paul Tsongas

The sacredness of Christmas: glory to God in the highest holy heavens, peace on earth and goodwill to all people. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Today, look at the blue sky, hear the grass growing beneath your feet, inhale the scent of spring, let the fruits of the earth linger on your tongue, reach out and embrace those you love. Ask Spirit to awaken your awareness to the sacredness of your sensory perceptions. — Sarah Ban Breathnach

Give yourself completely to the act of listening. Beyond the sounds there is something greater, a sacredness that cannot be understood through thought. — Eckhart Tolle

The sacredness of solitude is spiritualty — Lailah Gifty Akita

When faith simplifies things that need to remain complex, instead of giving us strength to live with complexity, when it gives us answers where none exist, instead of helping us appreciate the sacredness of living with questions, when it offers certainty when there needs to be doubt, and when it tells us that we have arrived when we should be searching-then there is a problem with that faith. — Brad Hirschfield

Landscapes are culture before they are nature; constructs of the imagination projected onto wood and water and rock. It is ... difficult to think of a single natural system that has not, for better or worse, been substantially modified by human culture. The cultural habits of humanity have always made room for the sacredness of nature. — Simon Schama

I think all animals have souls. I feel certain that if we have souls, octopuses have souls, too. If you grant something a soul, it demands a certain level of sacredness. Look around us. The world is holy. It is full of souls. — Sy Montgomery

Know that the mirror of the heart is boundless ... Here, opinions become silent, otherwise they will lead you into errors ... for the heart is sacred - even more the heart is sacredness itself. — Rumi

Using the latest in science and technology to shatter today's economic paradigm of 'insatiable individuals competing for scarce resources,' Planetary Citizenship brings us full circle to the ancient wisdom of indigenous peoples and the sacredness of creation. — Rebecca Adamson

I'm still agnostic. But in the words of Elton Richards, I'm now a reverant agnostic. Which isn't an oxymoron, I swear. I now believe that whether or not there's a God, there is such a thing as sacredness. Life is sacred. The Sabbath can be a sacred day. Prayer can be a sacred ritual. There is something transcendent, beyond the everyday. It's possible that humans created this sacredness ourselves, but that doesn't take away from its power or importance. — A. J. Jacobs

O Lord God, we pray that we may be inspired to nobleness of life in the least things. May we dignify all our daily life. May we set such a sacredness upon every part of our life, that nothing shall be trivial, nothing unimportant, and nothing dull, in the daily round. — Henry Ward Beecher

Love is sacred. Beauty is sacred. Flowers are sacred. Birds are sacred. And sacredness brings the perfume of love and compassion. Therefore love and compassion is the perfume of sacredness. It sounds rather poetic, but ... God IS poetry. — Vasant Lad

As human beings we've certainly suffered the loss of awe, the loss of sacredness, and the loss of the fact that we're not here - we're not put on earth - to shape it anyway we want...
You want something to happen with poetry, but it doesn't make anything happen. So then somebody says, "What's the use of poetry?" Then you say, "Well, what's the use of a cloud? What's the use of a river? What's the use of a tree?" They don't make anything happen. — Derek Walcott

Mythology can be defined as the sacred history of humankind. This is different from what we call "history." Mythical stories, when you trace them back to their origin, often have a sacredness, a holy quality that comes from the bedrock of lore from which they emerged. — Gerald Hausman

The interdependency of humankind, the relevance of relationship, the sacredness of creation is ancient, ancient wisdom. — Rebecca Adamson

It is a sacred gladness for us to celebrate the holy birth of Jesus Christ. — Lailah Gifty Akita

In the sacredness of pureness; a spark of divinity manifest. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The five principles of aloha, when practiced together, awaken our awareness of our human potential and the sacredness of our life. — Paul Pearsall

The tendency of organization is to kill out the spirit which gave it birth. Organizations do not protect the sacredness of the individual; their tendency is to sink the individual in the mass, to sacrifice his rights, and to immolate him on the altar of some fancied good. — Angelina Grimke

But it is important to realize we are all trapped in mental constructs, and so we separate ourselves from reality; the whole world loses its aliveness-or, rather, we lose our ability to sense that aliveness, the sacredness of nature. When we approach nature through the conceptualizing mind, we see a forest as a commodity, a concept. We no longer see it for what it truly is, but for what we want to use it as. It is reduced. This is how it becomes possible for humans to destroy the planet without realizing what they are doing. — Eckhart Tolle

The sacred cannot be precisely defined. Each of us perceives it through the lens of a unique personal history. For me, sacredness is an experience of the inner radiance of life, the unseen force that transforms and nourishes the physical world but is never limited by it. There is something more to it, a mystery that is never totally grasped. — Anthony Lawlor

Embrace the sacredness of a new day. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Beyond its practical aspects, gardening - be it of the soil or soul - can lead us on a philosophical and spiritual exploration that is nothing less than a journey into the depths of our own sacredness and the sacredness of all beings. After all, there must be something more mystical beyond the garden gate, something that satisfies the soul's attraction to beauty, peace, solace, and celebration. — Christopher McDowell

Explore the sacredness of existence. — Lailah Gifty Akita

As long as human labor power, and, consequently, life itself, remain articles of sale and purchase, of exploitation and robbery, the principle of the "sacredness of human life" remains a shameful lie, uttered with the object of keeping the oppressed slaves in their chains. — Leon Trotsky

May the sacredness of Christmas gladden your heart. — Lailah Gifty Akita

All is known in the sacredness of silence. — Rumi

I cannot find language of sufficient energy to convey my sense of the sacredness of private integrity. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Embrace the sacredness of existence. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Under the mystichood ofNameless Bride, we grope in Her Sacred Darkness for plasmatic encounter, the fifth ionized state of matter. Our mundane sight of differentation and separation recedes into the magickal Abyss of Blackness where all is touch. We feel each other as tactile presences whose extended dimension stretches to the stars only to coalesce beyond galactic expanses in the white and worm-holes of Her ever spiraling Gown of Worlds beyond Worlds. Let us feel Her concrescence as we stroke each unique form in the unfathomable dimensions of Her perfect formfulness - ever-changing, ever-new, ever-variable in the rainbow myriads of infinite spasms of delight. — Lady Svetlana

A Blessing; May the light of your soul guide you; May the light of your soul bless the work you do with the secret love and warmth of your heart; May you see in what you do the beauty of your own soul; May the sacredness of your work bring healing, light and renewal to those who work with you and to those who see and receive your work; May your work never weary you; May it release within you wellsprings of refreshment, inspiration and excitement; May you be present in what you do. May you never become lost in the bland absences; May the day never burden; May dawn find you awake and alert, approaching your new day with dreams, possibilities and promises; May evening find you gracious and fulfilled; May you go into the night blessed, sheltered and protected; May your soul calm, console and renew you. — John O'Donohue