Spiritual Poetry Quotes & Sayings

Zen has a pronounced iconoclastic tendency, and regards the study of texts, doctrines, and dogmas as a potential hindrance to spiritual awakening, relying instead on humour, spontaneity, unconventionality, poetry, and other forms of artistic expression to communicate the idea of enlightenment — Damien Keown

Poetry has its uses for despair. It can carve a shape in which a pain can seem to be; it can give one's loss a form and dimension so that it might be loss and not simply a hopeless haunting. It can do these things for one person, or it can do them for an entire culture. But poetry is for psychological, spiritual, or emotional pain. For physical pain it is, like everything but drugs, useless. — Christian Wiman

WU WEI

flow of Life governed by Tao
flow of change

spontaneous
natural
effortless
acting through non-action

connecting with Earth and Moon and Sun
through
being

not inert or lazy or passive
but swimming swiftly
within the current
merging Life with Tao

quiet and watchful
not-interfering
receptive alert directly connected

acting without action
trusting detached without desire
spontaneous natural effortless
Living — Natasa Nuit Pantovic

If you can change the way you think in time you will notice a change in your heart and also a change in your life and the way you see things. — The Prolific Penman

Poetry can be the bridge, the crossover point in the mind between the physical and the spiritual. A place where the two can meet. — Don Pendleton

I know you're tired but come, this is the way. — Jalaluddin Rumi

--here, now, always-- T.S. Eliot — Sylvia Shaw Judson

Lourdes
Poetry is my Lourdes ~
a spiritual oasis where I come to heal
in the divine power of words. — Beryl Dov

The great error consists in supposing that poetry is an unnatural form of language. We should all like to speak poetry at the moment when we truly live, and if we do not speak it, it is because we have an impediment in our speech. It is not song that is the narrow or artificial thing, it is conversation that is a broken and stammering attempt at song. When we see men in a spiritual extravaganza, like Cyrano de Bergerac, speaking in rhyme, it is not our language disguised or distorted, but our language rounded and made whole. — G.K. Chesterton

To have been where you have been
And to still have joy,
Dazzling in your heart,
Now there's a thing to make the whole world smile. — Scott Hastie

Poetry is the special medium of spiritual crazy wisdom, the form of expression that comes closest to creating a bridge between words and what is wordless. — Wes Nisker

Once spun,
The silken thread of all our aspirations
Remains intact,
It can never be broken. — Scott Hastie

Great peace is found in little busy-ness. Chaucer — Sylvia Shaw Judson

Immersed in surrender and gratitude, celestial pearls of wisdom form rosaries of prayer that entangle with my soul. — Earthschool Harmony

I'm a reader and a storyteller, and God chose literature and story and poetry as the languages of my spiritual text. To me, the Bible is a manifesto, a guide, a love letter, a story. — Shauna Niequist

Limitations are possibilities ...
Opportunities to perceive ourselves
Beyond our present selves ... — Ilchi Lee

Spiritual power and spiritual authority notoriously shade over into both politics and poetry. — Harold Bloom

Poetry interprets in two ways: it interprets by expressing, with magical felicity, the physiognomy and movements of the outward world; and it interprets by expressing, with inspired conviction, the ideas and laws of the inward world of man's moral and spiritual nature. In other words, poetry is interpretative both by having natural magic in it, and by having moral profundity. — Matthew Arnold

This fire that we call Loving is too strong for human minds. But just right for human souls. — Aberjhani

The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual. — John Muir

In Aristotle ... leisure is a far more noble, spiritual goal than work ... leisure is pursued solely for its own sake ... : the pleasures of music and poetry, ... conversation with friends, and ... gratuitous, playful speculation. In Latin, the ultimate good is otium - the opposite is negotium, or gainful work.
We have sought too much counsel in the proto-Calvinist work ethic preached by St Paul ... during the cessation of work we nurture family, educate, nourish friendships ... in loafing, most of our innovations come ... the routine of daily work has too often served as ... sleep ... a refuge from two crucial states - awakedness to the needs of others, and to the transcendent, which only comes ... loitering, dallying, tarrying, goofing off. — Francine Du Plessix Gray

World of harmony and peace
I see it just over there
Right there. — Ilchi Lee

In the sacred connectedness of Love...

My consciousness has evolved enough to comprehend this existence is equivalent to a grasp of a dream, mentally unfathomable, the only potency is the truth of this moment.

Much love, peace and smiles to all~ — Dean Pusell

If you can't focus then how do you expect to make your dreams come true? — The Prolific Penman

In his very rejection of art Walt Whitman is an artist. He tried to produce a certain effect by certain means and he succeeded ... He stands apart, and the chief value of his work is in its prophecy, not in its performance. He has begun a prelude to larger themes. He is the herald to a new era. As a man he is the precursor of a fresh type. He is a factor in the heroic and spiritual evolution of the human being. If Poetry has passed him by, Philosophy will take note of him. — Oscar Wilde

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, wishes. Who looks inside, finds infinite wisdom. — Sereda Aleta Dailey

And then,
There was a love
Shining so bright,
That even the darkest part
Of our hearts
Felt the warmth — Bryonie Wise

Inside your heart
A golden flower blossoms;
Inside of me
And inside of you
Never dying ...
This flower of your soul — Ilchi Lee

Poetry seems to have been eliminated as a literary genre, and installed instead, as a kind of spiritual aerobic exercise - nobody need read it, but anybody can do it. — Marilyn Hacker

Walk a bit further.
There is a different land not far away.
The people in it have the magic to break the icy fingers of the great death.
I heard that you don't even have to pay.
However, you have to find their door.
It is only found by those who pay the other price. — Donna Goddard

HONESTLY ... I believe people are intimidated with truthful/ outspoken people.
HONESTY ... will help you grow and it shows maturity.
HONEST ... people will push you closer towards your destiny. — Takina Cupp

Poetry for me is as much a spiritual practice as sexual ecstasy is. — James Broughton

One eats in holiness and the table becomes an altar. Martin Buber — Sylvia Shaw Judson

With its leaves so rich and heavy with elation and its crimson face made brighter with visions of divinity the shadow of a certain rose looks just like an angel eating light. — Aberjhani

Your spiritual heart imbibes in the primordial light and, as you dance towards infinity, you begin to see all things are held together by the power of love. — Earthschool Harmony

Knowledge is light.
God is light.
God is knowledge. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Many Castles
On
My
Travels
i have been
A guest in
Many castles
Yet the
Monument
Which i
Find
Divine
Is the oasis
Where the heart
And the silence
Intertwine. — Silent Lotus

Often poetry, especially the sort of poetry I write, is concerned with looking at the borders between the sensual and the spiritual and seeing them as divided, equivocal, that mystery somehow can break in to the ordinary. And we read poetry I think in part, to gain a sense of that intimacy with things that we can't understand that are unable to be understood but that buoy up our lives. — Kevin Hart

So when you inhale and exhale, notice your breath and realize God is dwelling in your chest. — Trinka Polite

May you always remember the Beloved is your divine and sacred self. — Earthschool Harmony

We are spirits clad in veils. — Christopher Pearse Cranch

Be still my hand and let the words write themselves upon my heart. Be still my heart and let your pages be filled in silence. — Cristen Rodgers

I'm Noah, and you are the ship coasting along the banks and as long as you are my valentine I will sail between your eyes.. — Adel Abouhana

Glory be to God for dappled things.
("Pied Beauty") — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Cradle of Solitude
For we know not why our tribulations
are given as such
our fragile forms
created from the dust ... — Muse

An aphorism is a mental exercise, psychical, logical, linguistic, spiritual, ritual, emotional and rational, it is a major conceptual and literary activity, a mixture of prose and poetry that conveys, in addition to ideology, sympathy or antipathy. — William C. Brown

I want to be intoxicated by the darkened ether of midnight, running through my fingers as sparkling stardust. I crave the taste of the ocean's salty tears, as her temperamental tides crash and break against the rocks. I yearn for the sweet scent of sun on my skin and the earthy musk of dirt giving way under my bare feet. I want to lay naked in golden fields, as i gaze up at an endless sky, dreaming my dreams, as Mother Nature's love washes over me like spiritual sunshine. — Jaeda DeWalt

The spiritual desire for poetry can be overwhelming, so much do I need it to experience and name my own perilous depths and vast spaces, my own well-being. — Edward Hirsch

may my faith always be
at the end of the day

like a hummingbird...returning
to its favorite flower. — Sanober Khan

Art, if one employs this term in the broad sense that includes poetry within its realm, is an art of creation laden with ideals, located at the very core of the life of a people, defining the spiritual and moral shape of that life. — Ivan Turgenev

he gave an account of the Spenserian world that championed its ethical attitudes as well as their fairy-tale terms, with a rich joy in the defeat of dragons, giants, sorcerers, and sorceresses by the forces of virtue; it was a world he could inhabit and believe in as one inhabits and believes a dream of one's own; its knights, dwarfs, and ladies were real to him...he rejoiced as much in the ugliness of the giants and in the beauty of the ladies as in their spiritual significances, but most of all in the ambience of the faerie forest and plain that, he said, were carpeted with a grass greener than the common stuff of ordinary glades; this was the reality of grass, only to be apprehended in poetry: the world of the imagination was nearer to the truth than the world of the senses, notwithstanding its palpable fictions, and Spenser transcended sensuality by making use of it — Jocelyn Gibb

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

holding
the evening
tremblingly close
to me

i weep
into
the sun

letting
the burden
of hope
lift off my chest

i realize

this is what
it means
to be free. — Sanober Khan

Beloved,
my ears listen for you,
my lips thirst for you,
my eyes search for you,
and darkness brings light,
but light brings truth
to be fed by your sight.
And when the winds of Persia blew,
for a moment in time,
something awakened in my fertile mind;
an awareness boldly standing in
my view, that my heart has always,
and only, bled for you. — V.S. Atbay

Shall I tell you our secret? We are charming thieves who steal hearts and never fail because we are the friends of the One.
Blessed is the poem that comes through me but not of me because the sound of my own music will drown the song of Love. — Rumi

I see poetry as spiritual medicine. — Mahmoud Darwish

Let the wet earth embrace you firmly, soundly.
She needs to be revived, she needs to beat like a heart
full of adrenaline inside a chest. — V.S. Atbay

I believe that Manila can be a reflection of your state of mind. Being a city of extreme contrasts it's easy to see how it can become an intense personal experience. Manila can be chaotic and spiritual, dirty and divine, gritty and gorgeous all at once. If you don't find beauty and poetry here, you will never find it anywhere. — Carlos Celdran

I am just like you,
Destined to play my part.
And leave,
In the nature of my departure at least,
Some kind of sweet message behind
In the fathomless pattern I make. — Scott Hastie

Whatever your life's pursuit
art, poetry, sculpture, music, whatever your occupation may be
you can be as spiritual as clergy, always living a life of praise. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

i have known you
since the beginning
of time

the one
i have loved always
in spirit.

only just discovered
in person. — Sanober Khan

Start with your heart, and only good can follow! — Ocean

Free will is like fallen
leaves agreeing to be
where they are. — Salamanca

He has forgotten how to hope. This hell of the present is his Kingdom at last. All problems recover their sharp edge. Abstract evidence retreats before the poetry of forms and colors. Spiritual conflicts become embodied and return to the abject and magnificent shelter of man's heart. None of them is settled. But all are transfigured. — Albert Camus

And when I was born, I drew in common air, and fell upon the earth, which is of like nature; and the first voice which I uttered was crying, as all others do."

by Solomon Ibn Gabirol — Steven J. Jacobson

The gilded spiral
Of longings within.
Our very own cathedral
That points persistently to heaven. — Scott Hastie

Once we merge with the Core
Trusting the efficiency
Of our Soul's intent
The Flow becomes
The only possible direction — Natasa Nuit Pantovic

I don't write poems
to melt your heart.
I write them,
so our hearts
can melt together. — Subhan Zein

Poetry is the way into a spiritual vision of society and the universe. — Camille Paglia

Somehow something has gone wrong with poetry in our culture. We have lost touch with its purpose and value, and in doing so, we have lost contact with essential aspects of our own emotional and spiritual lives. — Gregory Orr

Poetry and art nourish the soul of the world with the flavor-filled substances of beauty, wisdom and truth. — Aberjhani

Like the number nine
eternity is forever mine — Kenneth G. Ortiz

It is natural to speak of hymns as "poems," indiscriminately, for they have the same structure. But a hymn is not necessarily a poem, while a poem that can be sung as a hymn is something more than a poem. Imagination makes poems; devotion makes hymns. There can be poetry without emotion, but a hymn never. A poem may argue; a hymn must not. In short to be a hymn, what is written must express spiritual feelings and desires. The music of faith, hope and charity will be somewhere in its strain. — Hezekiah Butterworth

The sensual and spiritual are the same energy playing at different speeds, like poetry and dance" Alla Bozarth Campbell. — Alla Bozarth-Campbell

Poetry is the spiritual essence of life; and therefore not a low-calorie diet for the brain. — Kristian Goldmund Aumann

I see You, Every time I look into Buddha's eyes. I give myself to You. Every time I alter one of Your 1,000s names. Honestly & fully I love You. Through Christ and Maria, Shiva and Shakti, Krishna and Radha, With every day that passes and every breath I take. I enter gratitude for receiving Your Love. Obeying Your Laws of Truthfulness and Ahimsa, Weaving Prana With hearts and souls of Gaia. Through mysticism, shamanism, sufism, and ecstatic meditations. I yearn to touch You, to feel You, to be You. Within this amazing Journey of Awareness of Your Consciousness. — Natasa Nuit Pantovic

All I try to do is portray Indians as we are, in creative ways. With imagination and poetry. I think a lot of Native American literature is stuck in one idea: sort of spiritual, environmentalist Indians. And I want to portray everyday lives. I think by doing that, by portraying the ordinary lives of Indians, perhaps people learn something new. — Sherman Alexie

I think no matter how snarky you try to be, poetry will always find a way to make a spiritual goal out of what you're doing. — Mike Young

At times like this you desperately need Art. You seek to reconnect with your spiritual illusions, and you wish fervently that something might rescue you from your biological destiny, so that all poetry and grandeur will not be cast out from the world — Muriel Barbery

For me, the creation of a photograph is experienced as a heightened emotional response, most akin to poetry and music, each image the culmination of a compelling impulse I cannot deny. Whether working with a human figure or a still life, I am deeply aware of my spiritual connection with it. In my life, as in my work, I am motivated by a great yearning for balance and harmony beyond the realm of human experience, reaching for the essence of oneness with the Universe. — Ruth Bernhard

You cannot devote your life to an abstraction. Indeed, life shatters all abstractions in one way or another, including words such as "faith" or "belief". If God is not in the very fabric of existence for you, if you do not find Him (or miss Him!) in the details of your daily life, then religion is just one more way to commit spiritual suicide. — Christian Wiman

The ecstatic beauty and soulful grace of Rumi's poetry inspires human hearts to believe in possibilities beyond the predictably fatal. — Aberjhani

Poetry invades loneliness in a way that nothing else can. I thought that if I changed that people, beautiful people, arrogant people, narcissists, intellectuals, readers, teachers, spiritual gurus would come into my life but they did not. I am still rowing my boat ashore. It still feels like Hiroshima out there. — Abigail George

The spirit, my love,
is stronger than laughter,
stronger than the hungry panting
of reckless lions
that paw and shuffle
underneath the canopy of bowed trees,
stronger than the pace of a dying heart,
that awaits to be pumped to life by episodes mothered by time,
by hands of mankind,
by slivers of hope
hidden in the common mind. — V.S. Atbay

The poet existed among the cave men; he will exist among men of the atomic age, for he is an inherent part of man. Even religions have been born from the need for poetry, which is a spiritual need, and it is through the grace of poetry that the divine spark lives forever in the human flint. — Saint-John Perse

Poetry, music, forests, oceans, solitude
they were what developed enormous spiritual strength. I came to realize that spirit, as much or more than physical conditioning, had to be stored up before a race. — Herb Elliott

The three ingredients of poetry: the mystery of the universe, spiritual curiosity, the energy of language. — Mary Oliver

Through creativity, we are seamlessly connected and sustained as we pull
back the veil, revealing beneath our differences and distinctive characteristics,
human expression and the human experience are universal. It is the greatness
of this experience that connects us together by infinite invisible threads strewn
across the globe. This is my responsibility, passion and desire as an artist - my
soul purpose. — Brian Bowers

It is warmer here. Can you see the light? Trust it. It is safe. It has lived a long time. It has seen much more than you. You fight a demon that you once knew but the demon is already slain. And from the corner of your eye you will see the scattered, sacred fire reform again. Settle, settle. Peace, peace — Donna Goddard

If the religious experience were simply some naive impression of the uninformed it would not have resulted in such intellectual insight, such spiritual exaltation, such spectacular religious ritual, or in the immense volume of song and poetry and literature and dance that humans have produced. — Thomas Berry

We are able to feel and learn very quickly through music, through art, through poetry some spiritual things that we would otherwise learn very slowly. — Boyd K. Packer

Love is who you are. — Earthschool Harmony

Yes, it is true that beauty is only skin deep, and internal loveliness resonates to the outside; but deep down inside every woman secretly longs to possess the allure of a royal queen. — Terry A. O'Neal

Here, illuminated at last,
Nestles the ruddy glint of spiritual certainty;
Sweet moments of passion and healing,
Of sensual release. — Scott Hastie

Surrender your pain, look within and see your perfect and divine self. — Earthschool Harmony

Every day the world subtracts from itself and nothing
is immune. — Luanne Castle

A mystical symphony permeates my senses and a holy lullaby embraces me. — Earthschool Harmony

Poetry is essentially the antithesis of Metaphysics: Metaphysics purge the mind of the senses and cultivate the disembodiment of the spiritual; Poetry is all passionate and feeling and animates the inanimate; Metaphysics are most perfect when concerned with universals; Poetry, when most concerned with particulars. — Samuel Beckett

There can be no law of nature, no science,
No aberrant infliction of human will
That unchained the soul cannot conquer,
Simply sweep away, should it chose to. — Scott Hastie

Such is true joy's absolute certainty,
Its slow lit fuse that burns holes
In the shabby shroud of death forever. — Scott Hastie