Spirituality Religion Quotes & Sayings

Praying is talking to God. Meditating is listening. — Christopher Moore

With every new day come the Lord's great love, grace and mercies. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I strongly feel that it is only when there is a deep understanding of one's own religious beliefs and commitments that progress can be made in achieving true understanding and respect for the religious values and beliefs of others. Engaging in interfaith dialogue does not in any way mean undermining one's own faith or religious tradition. Indeed, interfaith dialogue is constructive only when people become firmly grounded in their own religious traditions and through that process gain a willingness to listen and respect the beliefs of other religions. (by Cilliers, Ch. 3, p. 48-49) — David R. Smock

To those Romans December twenty-fifth was the birthday of the sun. They wrote that in gold letters in their calendar. Every year about that time, the middle of winter, the sun was born once more and it was going to put an end to the darkness and misery of winter. So they had a great feast, with presents and dolls for everybody, and the best day of all was December twenty-fifth. That feast, they would tell you, was thousands of years old- before Christ was ever heard of. — John G. Jackson

We use to think that we'll go to Heaven if we avoid sins or have our pastor remove them. To labor ourselves into paradise is a new and somewhat discouraging perspective. — Stefan Emunds

Religion helps humanity to pass through its darkest times. — Abhijit Naskar

Every religion in the world has had a subset of devotees who seek a direct, transcendent experience with God, excusing themselves from fundamentalist scriptural or dogmatic study in order to personally encounter the divine. — Elizabeth Gilbert

A relax soul is a sacred-being. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Music awaken our soul. — Lailah Gifty Akita

When our institutions lack movement to propel them forward, the Spirit, I believe, simply moves around them, like a current flowing around a rock in a stream...without that soul work that teaches us to open our deepest selves to God and ground our souls in love, no movement will succeed and no institution will stand...it is the linking of action and contemplation, great work and deep spirituality, that keeps goodness, rightness, beauty, and aliveness flowing...as Pope Francis has said, this moment calls for social poets: sincere and creative people who will rise on the wings of faith to catch the wind of the Spirit, the wind of justice, joy, and peace. (p. 180) — Brian McLaren

Spirituality is to Religion, what Love is to Marriage. Spirituality is an emotional state of the mind, just like Love, while Religion on the other hand, is a social construct, quite like Marriage. — Abhijit Naskar

It's important though to distinguish between religion and spirituality. — Paulo Coelho

To withhold our bodies from religion is to exclude religion from our lives. — Dallas Willard

I Am Primate

I was once taught, that I am a soul in a body.
I once believed I was separate from the earth.
A stranger in a strange land,
a sinner in need of a Savior.
But, isn't this my home? This beautiful world?
Isn't this my form?
These hands, these eyes, this touch?
Am I to believe I have violated a rule,
just by being born?
Who claims this right to judge,
and on what authority do you stand?
The truth screams out from my cells.
I am not the imagination of a God,
I am a voice in the earth,
I am that which you deny!
The earth is my home and the stars my destiny.
I will touch the planets through
the hands of my children
. . . not the will of your ghost!
I am a voice in the evolutionary continuum
and I claim the right to be alive,
without your story.
For I Am Human, I Am Proud,
and I AM . . . PRIMATE! — Christopher Zzenn Loren

It's such a frustration when you see in the name of religion, in the name of God, what people are doing is something we never expected. The religion has to be Spirit-oriented, but it is only power-oriented or money-oriented. In the original scriptures, or we can say in the origin of this religion was the truth. And all these religions bloom on the same play of spirituality like beautiful flowers at different times, but people have plucked it and now they are fighting with the dead flowers. — Nirmala Srivastava

All that I seen makes be fear the Lord, for great is wrath. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I have ever judged of the religion of others by their lives. For it is in our lives, and not from our works, that our religion must be read. — Thomas Jefferson

I'm interested in spirituality and in religion and our relationship to the divine. — Giancarlo Esposito

Humble people walk comfortably in every group. No one is either too beneath them or too above them for their own sense of well-being. They are who they are, people with as much to give as to get, and they know it. And because they're at ease with themselves, they can afford to be open with others... Having discovered who we are and having opened ourselves to life and having learned to be comfortable with it, we know that God is working in us. We know, most of all, that whatever happens we have nothing to fear... we are free of the false hopes and false faces and false needs that once held us down. We can fly now. Let all the others scratch and grapple for the plastic copy of life. We have found the real thing. — Joan D. Chittister

I don't know what I believe. I guess that makes me a Christmas Tree Agnostic. — Stephanie Perkins

Only through Absolution will you reach the Absolute. — Toni Petrinovich

Even greater shifts will be needed if we are to finally understand that we cannot continue to live on this planet as if it is nothing more than a collection of resources for us to exploit. A greater shift will be needed if we are to realize that no one religious tradition can lay claim to absolute "truth" and we must instead learn from each other in a mutually enhancing quest for conscious contact with the Sacred. — Albert J. LaChance

Thinking of love in terms of romance is like thinking of God in terms of a priest. — Silvia Hartmann

When you take the time to develop a relationship with your Creator you will discover yourself. — T.T. McClendon

He's the King of all the heavens
And all found here below.
To Him, your hearts are like this lake
Reflecting in His glow. — Alexis York Lumbard

The will of life and death,
never share the same motivation ...
we all know that love is the ultimate motive to die for ...
but let's not kid ourselves ...
... we all know the ultimate motive to rise back from the dead is vengeance. — Non Nomen

She had experimented with Wicca eight years ago, found that her spells did not produce the desired results of making her every bully bald and fat, and threw it in the corner of her soul as effete and impractical, as she had with a series of other theological outfits. — Thomm Quackenbush

And spirituality or what you call "religion" is mainly to understand this: that you don't require anything, you are a part of the totality, or reality. — Nisargadatta Maharaj

The call to the creative life is a call to dignity, to a life of vulnerability and adventure and the call to a life that exquisite excitement and indeed ecstasy will often visit. — John O'Donohue

Who am I? What am I doing here? Who are these others? This trilogy of spiritual conundrums is as practical as it is philosophical. Mindful inquiry devoted to these three questions is as spiritual as it is material and as obvious as it is unanswerable. Knowledge isn't to comfort our souls; it is to enhance awareness - that is what some call an awakening. Some things have to be believed to be seen. Feelings articulate truth in ways that our brains cannot. We may have a sense about who we are, what our purpose is and how we relate to the rest of the world even without the vocabulary to articulate it. Recovery is visceral as much as it is intellectual. The Eleventh Step is our spiritual barometer, feeding back sensations, feelings and thoughts as we observe our life. — Joe C.

The faith of religion is belief on insufficient evidence. — Sam Harris

This is our sacred land, Bharat, a land whose glories are sung by the
Gods, a land visualized by Mahayogi Aurobindo as the living manifestation
of the Divine Mother of the universe, the Jaganmaataa, the Aadishakti,
the Mahaamaayaa, the Mahaadurgaa, Who has assumed concrete form to
enable us to see Her and worship Her,...a land worshipped by all our seers and
sages as Maatrubhoomi, Dharmabhoomi, Karmabhoomi and Punybhoomi, a
veritable Devabhoomi and Mokshabhoomi" - — Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar

What people are really after is, what is my stance on religion or spirituality or God? And I would say, if I find a word that came closest, it would be agnostic. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Great is the mercy of God. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Technology is not in itself opposed to spirituality and to religion. But it presents a great temptation. — Thomas Merton

Religion is a belief with a set of rules, regulations, and rituals created by someone with his thoughts, imaginations, experiences, and wisdom. Most religions bring about positive changes for society. Spirituality is a perception of inner truth, inner beauty, and inner reality. Spirituality involves trusting your own experiences. — Debasish Mridha

Religion, as it is generally taught all over the world, is said to be based upon faith and belief, and, in most cases, consists only of different sets of theories, and that is the reason why we find all religions quarrelling with one another. — Abhijit Naskar

The danger today is in believing there are no sick people, there is only a sick society. — Fulton J. Sheen

Brahma is the Generator, Vishnu the Organizer and Shiva the Destroyer. Together they are G.O.D. or Brahman. All the millions of Hindu gods are just forms of the one Supreme Being. — Sarah Macdonald

Nobody fights over the opinion of which book is better. So why do we fight over which religion is better, if they're all based on books? Let us read and learn from them all and unite in our differences and disagreements too. — Robin Sacredfire

I think there's been a big problem between religion, or organized religion, and spirituality. — Dave Davies

Somehow we American pastors, without really noticing what was happening, got our vocations redefined in the terms of American careerism. We quit thinking of the parish as a location for pastoral spirituality and started thinking of it as an opportunity for advancement. Tarshish, not Nineveh, was the destination. The moment we did that, we started thinking wrongly, for the vocation of pastor has to do with living out the implications of the word of God in community, not sailing off into the exotic seas of religion in search of fame and fortune. — Eugene H. Peterson

God is light and sound, which in scientific terms means energy and frequencies. — Daniel Marques

being attached to any one philosophy or religion
dwelling on moot differences and wanting to fit in
despite the path all are led Home in time
following an alternative pathway is certainly no crime
Krishna, Buddha, Allah or Zohar Kabbalah
devoted nonviolently, one is led to Nirvana
Hindu Sages, Zen Masters or Christian Mystics
many tongues, but identical truth spoken from their lips
mentioning Self or no-self or God is Father or Mother
according to their culture emphasizing one method or another
allness vs. nothingness, meditation vs. prayer
devotion in practice is all you should care
when Truth reveals itself you're beyond all conception
then not a single man-made word will hold any traction — Jarett Sabirsh

What is the difference between my view and the classical Christian perspective? I am convinced that there are not multiple comings and multiple returns of Christ, but only one decisive coming at the end of the world, which includes the resurrection, the rapture, and his appearance in the sky! — Eli Of Kittim

Our unfathomable evolutionary past paints a picture vastly more immense than any spiritual story could ever create because it is raw and real, violent, dirty and beautiful - and because of that - it's spectacular! — Christopher Zzenn Loren

Orthodoxy, however, entails a revolution in our metaphysical conception of the relationship between God and humanity, and therefore between the uncreated Unum and the maior dissimilitudo of the creature before the Unum. Properly understood, the apostolic confession of the unity of Christ does not stand midway between a "too unitive Christology" on the one hand, and a "too differentiating Christology" on the other; rather, it wholly recapitulates the nature of the difference of man before God. — Aaron Riches

How ought we to love God, Father?" he asked in a whisper.
"By loving men, my son"
"And how ought we to love men?"
"By trying to guide them along the right path"
"And what is the right path?"
"The one that rises"
- Nikos Kazanzakis, Christ Recrucified — Nikos Kazantzakis

We are trying to find something to feel the void. It is only God who can fill the void. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Let your days become a fragrant song where heaven and earth continually collide — John Crowder

If a religion cannot help a human wherever he or she stands, it is not of much use. — Abhijit Naskar

I can see God in a daisy. I can see God at night in the wind and rain. I see Creation just about everywhere. The highest form of song is prayer. King David's, Solomon's, the wailing of a coyote, the rumble of the Earth. — Bob Dylan

This body is the house of God. — Kamand Kojouri

I became aware that there was no barrier between what was inside and what was outside. My body was illuminated by a bright light. I heard with my eyes and saw with my ears. I used my nose as mouth and my mouth as nose. I experienced the world with the totality of my senses as my spirit gathered and my form dissolved. There was no distinction between muscles and bones. My body stopped being heavy and I felt like a floating leaf. Without knowing it, I was being carried by the wind. Drifting here and there, I did not know whether I rode on the wind or the wind rode on me. — Liezi

The tender plant of spirituality will die if exposed too early to the action of a constant change of ideas and ideals. Many people, in the name of what may be called religious liberalism, may be seen feeding their idle curiosity with a continuous succession of different ideals. With them, hearing new things grows into a kind of disease, a sort of religious drink-mania. They want to hear new things just by way of getting a temporary nervous excitement, and when one such exciting influence has had its effect on them, they are ready for another. Religion is with these people a sort of intellectual opium-eating, and there it ends. — Swami Vivekananda

Everybody was talking about the religious man who committed suicide.
While no one in the monastery approved of the man's action, some say they admired his faith.
Faith?" said the Master.
He had the courage of his convictions, didn't he?"
That was fanaticism, not faith. Faith demands a greater courage still: to reexamine one's convictions and reject them if they do not fit the facts. — Anthony De Mello

I'm not criticizing how people experience what they might call spirituality. I am interested in looking critically at something else - at how people use their language to articulate theories about something they call religion, to say, for example, that "in Islam religion and politics necessarily go together," or to insist that "violence has no place in religion," to universalize it. — Talal Asad

If you know that I am an unbeliever, then you know me better than I do myself. I may be an unbeliever, but I am an unbeliever who has a nostalgia for a belief. — Pier Paolo Pasolini

Since living is believing, no one can be completely lacking in faith. — Kentetsu Takamori

You only need grace to allow the light and good spirit of your sacred-self to exist. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The Bible is a fountain of life, an instruction on how God want you to live a life on earth. — Lailah Gifty Akita

God Father (the Creator) geometrizes, God Mother (Nature) fractalizes. — Stefan Emunds

Looking behind, I am lifted with gratitude. Looking forward, I am filled with vision. Looking upward, I am filled with strength. Looking within, I discover peace. — Sukhraj S. Dhillon

I am no Patriot for I try to breathe in with the steadfast belief that my country is the Earth and my religion is Humanism. — K. Hari Kumar

Benedict sets up a community, a family. And families, the honest among us will admit, are risky places to be if perfection is what y ou are expecting in life. — Joan D. Chittister

He who does not reflect his life back to God in gratitude does not know himself. — Albert Schweitzer

The important correction needed by worldly religions is the transformation from external religious teaching to truthful internal spiritual reality. — Hua Ching Ni

If you read the Scriptures, you know thy Creator and thy soul. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Spirituality is conversation with God, everything else is just religious custom. — Stefan Emunds

It knows you.Every soul is connected to it in the same way-nobody is closer farther.Doesn't matter what your beliefs were in that life or any of them.Only the soul can create distance between itself and what you call God ... and almost every one of us does,at one time or another.Then we just have to learn how to bridge the distance and find our way home again.There are lots of different ways. — Sheri Meshal

Don't fight a battle that Jesus has already won the victory for! — Kathy McClary

Religion is the secret of life. It teaches us to love, to serve, to forgive, to endure, and to interact with our brothers and sisters with empathy and compassion. Advaita (non-duality) is a purely subjective experience. But in daily life it may be expressed as love and compassion. This is the great lesson taught by the great saints and sages of India, the exponents of Sanatana Dharma. — Mata Amritanandamayi

Never during its pilgrimage is the human spirit completely adrift and alone. From start to finish its nucleus is the Atman, the god-within ... underlying its whirlpool of transient feelings, emotions, and delusions is the self-luminous, abiding point of the transpersonal god. As the sun lights the world even when cloud-covered, "the Immutable is never seen but is the Witness; it is never heard but is the Hearer; it is never thought but is the Thinker; it is never known but is the Knower. There is no other witness but This, no other knower but This." from the Upanishad — Huston Smith

We feel like acting like a Christian, following the steps of Christ, is much more important than following a doctrine. — Isabel Ruiz Lucero

God is the name given by theologians to something they know nothing about. There is no God; the whole existence is made of the stuff called love. — Osho

In this walk to freedom, we must, without question obtain hearts of honesty and a tongue of truthfulness. — The Tru Sum

Philosophy may serve as the bridge between theology and science. All atheism is a philosophy, but not all philosophy is atheism. Philosophy ('love of wisdom') is simply a tool depending on how one uses it, and in some cases, logically understanding the nature of God and existence. — Criss Jami

The problem I want to talk to you about tonight is the problem of belief. What does it mean to believe? We use this word all the time, and I think behind it lurk some really extraordinary taboos and confusions. What I want to argue tonight is that how we talk about belief- how we fail to criticize or criticize the beliefs of others, has more importance to us personally, more consequence to us personally and to civilization than perhaps anything else that is in our power to influence. — Sam Harris

You always have a place to run to, always. The place is GOD. — Armor Of God

Be kinder than necessary
because everyone you meet
is fighting some kind of battle — Sukhraj S. Dhillon

The earth had two children
A son named Adam
and a daughter — Karan Patade

There can never be a conflict between science and religion, once you understand the spiritual knack of the human brain circuits. — Abhijit Naskar

Wonder is the antidote to religion. — Brandan Roberston

When considering the topic of spirituality or religion, I would encourage you to look at Christianity first. It is a testable religion. That is, it is based on evidence. The evidence is philosophical and historical. It can be examined and then we can all make our decision. — Jon Morrison

This universe is shot through with mystery. The very fact of its being, and of our own, is a mystery absolute, and the only miracle worthy of the name. The consciousness that animates us is itself central to this mystery and the ground for any experience we might wish to call 'spiritual.' No myths need be embraced for us to commune with the profundity of our circumstance. No personal God need be worshiped for us to live in awe at the beauty and immensity of creation. No tribal fictions need be rehearsed for us to realize, one fine day, that we do, in fact, love our neighbors, that our happiness is inextricable from their own, and that our interdependence demands that people everywhere be given the opportunity to flourish. — Sam Harris

Joy, humor, and laughter should be part of everyone's spiritual life. They are gifts from God and help us enjoy creation. — James Martin

Let me put it this way: You cannot live in the world without being in pain, spiritual and physical pain. We have developed mechanisms to deal with these pains, to overcome them somehow. Therapy, religion and spirituality, relationships, material success. All this can work, but also become a problem itself.
The pursuit of happiness has even been put into the American constitution a couple centuries ago. Today we're so rich, we own much more than we need, we have liberties unknown before, even though they are endangered in the current political climate in the US - and we forget how wonderful it nevertheless is, compared to most other political and economic systems. We have a saying that goes: Give a man enough rope and he hangs himself. — David Foster Wallace

The only power that can effect transformations of the order (of Jesus) is love. It remained for the 20th century to discover that locked within the atom is the energy of the sun itself. For this energy to be released, the atom must be bombarded from without. So too, locked in every human being is a store of love that partakes of the divine- the imago dei, image of god ... And it too can be activated only through bombardment, in its case, love's bombardment. The process begins in infancy, where a mother's initially unilateral loving smile awakens love in her baby and as coordination develops, elicits its answering smile ... A loving human being is not produced by exhortations, rules and threats. Love can only take root in children when it comes to them- initially and most importantly from nurturing parents. Ontogenetically speaking, love is an answering phenomenon. It is literally a response. — Huston Smith

One of the most freeing discoveries these past few years in my relationship with God is discovering that God is not a belief system or a fixed set of theological propositions. — Jim Palmer

Zeena's first published sermon at 7 years old. From "The Cloven Hoof" periodical, 1970, San Francisco, CA, USA.:
"The question, 'What is the difference between God and Satan?,' was put to Zeena LaVey, seven-year-old daughter of the High Priest. Her answer was ...
'SATAN MADE THE ROSE AND GOD MADE THE THORNS. — Zeena Schreck

Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships. — Robert M. Pirsig

The only thing that guarantees an open-ended collaboration among human beings, the only thing that guarantees that this project is truly open-ended, is a willingness to have our beliefs and behaviors modified by the power of conversation. — Sam Harris

The fact that religions, which usually have at their core a promotion of tolerance and peace, have been exploited to carry out violence clearly indicates that individuals and groups have not discovered the true "peace message" that is inherent in almost every religion. (by Cilliers, Ch. 3, p. 55) — David R. Smock

Yet she belongs, finally and truly, only to God. The hijab is a symbol of freedom from the male regard, but also, in our time, of freedom from subjugation by the iron fist of materialism, deterministic science, and the death of meaning. It denotes softness, otherness, inwardness. She is not only caught in a world of power relations, but she inhabits a world of love and sacrifice. This freedom, which is of the conscience, is hers to exercise as she will. — Abdal Hakim Murad

If the many and the One be indeed the same Reality, then it is not all modes of worship alone, but equally all modes of work, all modes of struggle, all modes of creation, which are paths of realization. No distinction, henceforth, between sacred and secular. To labour is to pray. To conquer is to renounce. Life is itself religion. To have and to hold is as stern a trust as to quit and to avoid. — Nivedita

A desperate plea to the Trinity
is not something you can just
apologize for in the morning
-Drunk Dialing the Divine — Amber Koneval

Believing is not the same as knowing. Believing is second-hand knowledge, whereas knowing is first-hand experience. When your action comes from a level of belief, there is fear, doubt and restlessness behind such action. When your action comes from a level of knowing, there is conviction, certainty and calm behind such action. — Yogi Kanna

When you choose a Guru you become a follower. When your Guru chooses you, you become a disciple — Guruji Naushir

He wished he understood where they come from: all the terrorists, religious revolutionists
and hate-criminals. Did terrorizing entire communities of people help them sleep sound at
night? Did it make them happy? Or are they just in for the attention? Have they nothing to
lose? Or are they simply bored and spit balling issues that have always been there? Can all
global acts of violence and terror be summed up, as just a whole other level of a mixture of
bad parenting, psychological disorders and unattended anger management issues? Can they
be treated, medically or spiritually? Are we waiting for the birth of another great visionary
like Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ or Prophet Muhammad, who will 'make the world a better
place'? Or are we just too soaked in the idea that religion is a dying concept and spirituality
is overrated? Is it too late? Are we too far behind? He wanted to know. — Thisuri Wanniarachchi

Christ is the measure of every age. — Pope John Paul II