Inspirational Quotes on Spirituality

“Just as Jesus performed what in his culture was the work of a slave, so we in our cultures must regard no task too menial or degrading to undertake.”

“Only if we share Christ's death on earth will we share his life in heaven.”

“We are not under law as a way of salvation but as a guide to conduct. ”

“[The Jews did not kill Me.] First, no one could have taken My life if I had not willingly laid it down. Also, this is a fraudulent charge that is repeatedly reinvented. They alone did not kill Me--Romans, Greeks, people from everywhere in the world were gathered in Jerusalem on that day and participated in the events that took place. All of humanity must bear the blame for what happened.”

“[Hitler wasn't] the first one to claim that God was on [his] side. But claiming it and keeping with His character are two different things. Jesus walked with the weak of this world--the sick, the lame, the blind. [Hitler] called them weaklings, the refuse of society, and said they had to be done away with. [God] talked of humility; [Hitler] talked of pride. [God] talked of submission; [Hitler] talked of conquering. [God] talked of love; [Hitler] talked of hate. [God] even allowed those who opposed Him to speak; [Hitler] silenced even those who just wanted to ask questions. [God] allowed those who despised Him the freedom to make their choice. For [Hitler], the only freedom possible was to implement [his] plan for world domination.”

“...the spiritual life is the life of man's real self, the life of that interior self whose flame is so often allowed to be smothered under the ashes of anxiety and futile concern. The spiritual life is oriented toward God, rather than toward the immediate satisfaction of the material needs of life, but it is not, for all that, a life of unreality or a life of dreams. On the contrary, without a life of the spirit, our whole existence becomes unsubstantial and illusory. The life of the spirit, by integrating us in the real order established by God, puts us in the fullest possible contact with reality--not as we imagine it, but as it really is. It does so by making us aware of our own real selves, and placing them in the presence of God.”

“The fact that our being necessarily demands to be expressed in action should not lead us to believe that as soon as we stop acting we cease to exist. We do not live merely to “do something” – no matter what. We do not live more fully merely by doing something more, seeing more, tasting more and experiencing more than we ever have before. Everything depends on the quality of our acts and experiences. A multitude of badly performed actions and experiences only half-lived exhausts and depletes our being. By doing things badly we make ourselves less real. This growing unreality cannot help but make us unhappy and fill us with a sense of guilt. There are times then when in order to keep ourselves in existence at all, we simply have to sit back awhile and do nothing. And for a man who has let himself be drawn completely out of himself by his activity, nothing is more difficult than to sit still and rest, doing nothing at all. We must first recover the possession of our own being before we can act or taste or experience reality.”

“There are times, and those times many, when the cares of this world-with no right to any part in our thought, seeing that they are either unreasonable or God imperfect- so blind the eyes of the soul to the radiance of the eternally true, that they see it only as if it ought to be true, not as if it must be true; as if it it might be true in the region of thought, but could not be true in the region of fact.”

“What God is after is not what we are after. The work of God is spiritual, not physical. What God is after is our spirituality not our activity.”

“The greatest and the best Christians when they are physically weak are more prone to an attack of spiritual depression than at any other time and there are great illustrations of this in the Scriptures.”

“A fé não constitui, portanto, um impulso de ordem estética; é de outra ordem muito mais elevada, justamente porque pressupõe a resignação. Não é o instinto imediato do coração, mas o paradoxo da vida.”

“Quem alcançou neste mundo grandeza igual à dessa bendita mulher, a mãe de Deus, a virgem Maria? No entanto, como se fala dela? A sua grandeza não provém do fato de ter sido bendita entre as mulheres, e se uma estranha coincidência não levasse a assembléia a pensar com a mesma desumanidade do predicador, qualquer jovem devia, seguramente, perguntar: Por que não fui eu também bendita entre as mulheres? Se se não possuísse outra resposta, de forma alguma acharia ter de rejeitar esta pergunta, pretextando a sua falta de senso; porque, no abstrato, em presença de um favor, todos temos mesmos direitos. São esquecidos a tribulação, a angústia, o paradoxo. Meu pensamento é tão puro como o de qualquer outro; e ele purifica-se, exercendo-se sobre as coisas. E se não se enobrecer pode-se então esperar pelo espanto; porque se essas imagens foram alguma vez evocadas jamais poderão ser esquecidas. E se contra elasse peca, extraem da sua muda cólera uma terrível vingança, mais terrível do que os rugidos de dez ferozes críticos. Maria,indubitavelmente, deu à luz o filho graças a um milagre, mas no decorrer de tal acontecimento foi como todas as outras mulheres, e esse tempo é o da angústia, da tribulação e do paradoxo. O anjo foi,sem dúvida, um espírito caritativo, mas não foi complacente porque não foi dizer a todas as outras virgens de Israel: Não desprezeis Maria, porque lhe sucedeu o extraordinário. Apresentou-se perante ela só e ninguém a pôde compreender. No entanto, que outra mulher foi mais ofendida do que Maria? Pois não é também verdade que aquele a quem Deus abençoa é também amaldiçoado com o mesmo sopro do seu espírito? É desta forma que se torna necessário, espiritualmente,compreender Maria. Ela não é, de maneira alguma, uma formosa dama que brinca com um deus menino, e até me sinto revoltado ao dizer isto e muito mais ao pensar na afetação e ligeireza de tal concepção. Apesar disso, quando diz: sou a serva do Senhor, ela é grande e imagino que não deve ser difícil explicar por que razão se tornou mãe de Deus. Não precisa, absolutamente nada, da admiração do mundo, tal como Abraão não necessita de lágrimas,porque nem ela foi uma heroína, nem ele foi um herói. E não se tornaram grandes por terem escapado à tribulação, ao desespero e ao paradoxo, mas precisamente porque sofreram tudo isso. Há grandeza em ouvir dizer ao poeta, quando apresenta o seu herói trágico à admiração dos homens: chorai por ele; merece-o; porque é grandioso merecer as lágrimas dos que são dignos de as derramar;há grandeza em ver o poeta conter a multidão, corrigir os homens e analisá-los um por um para verificar se são dignos de chorar pelo herói, porque as lágrimas dos vulgares chorões profanam o sagrado.Contudo ainda é mais grandioso que o cavaleiro da fé possa dizer ao nobre caráter que quer chorar por ele: não chores por mim, chora antes por ti próprio.”

“What is a valley of tears? He was scourged, covered with spittle, crowned with thorns, nailed to the cross. From this valley of tears you must ascend. But ascend where? ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God‘ (Jn 1:1). For He Himself, the ‘Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.’ Abiding in Himself, He descended to you. He descended to you so as to become for you a valley of tears; He abode in Himself so as to be for you a mountain of ascent. And ‘In the days to come,’ said Isaiah, ‘the mountain of the Lord shall tower above the hills’ (Is 2:2). It is there we must ascend.”

“The prodigal son of the Scriptures went to live in a distant land to waste in dissipation all the wealth which his father had given him when he set out. But, to reach that land, he did not hire horses, carriages, or ships; he did not take to the air on real wings or set one foot before the other. For you were the Father who gave him riches. You loved him when he set out and you loved him still more when he came home without a penny. But he set his heart on pleasure and his soul was blinded, and this blindness was the measure of the distance he travelled away from you, so that he could not see your face.”

“Christian faith is not an irrational leap.Examined objectively, the claims of the Bible are rational propositions well supported by reason and evidence.”