#devotion

This was how it was with travel: one city gives you gifts, another robs you. One gives you the heart’s affections, the other destroys your soul. Cities and countries are as alive and feeling, as fickle and uncertain as people. Their degrees of love and devotion are as varying as with any human relation. Just as one is good, another is bad. ↗

— Roman Payne

#cities-and-countries #devotion #fickle #fortune #heart

The spiritual life is a gift. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit, who lifts us up into the kingdom of God's love. But to say that being lifted up into the kingdom of love is a divine gift does not mean that we wait passively until the gift is offered to us. ↗

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

#life

You’re the one thing I want the most in the world yet the one thing I cannot have. Because to have you completely would be impossible. You can’t go where I walk. ↗

— Abbi Glines

#devotion #impossible #love #love

You are the reality. The sense of of worship, love, devotion and loyalty. You are the purpose of life and existence. That is why I am still alive. ↗

— M.F. Moonzajer

#devotion #existence #love #loyalty #purpose

Every organized religion holds that certain behaviors, rituals, personalities, places, and/or books are sacred. These organized teachings are proper in their own place, but they are mere options for the one infused with devotion. To such a one, God is direct and spontaneous, providing him with an immediate source of guidance and direction. His relationship with God is not mediated through anyone or anything. (104) ↗

— Prem Prakash

#devotion #god #personality #religion #rituals

The one great advantage of Bhakti is that it is the easiest and most natural way to reach the great divine end in view; it's great disadvantage is that in its lower forms it oftentimes degenerates into hideous fanaticism. The fanatical crew in Hinduism, Mohammedanism, or Christianity, have always been almost exclusively recruited from these worshippers [sic] on the lower planes of Bhakti. That singleness of attachment (Nishthâ) to a loved object, without which no genuine love can grow, is very often also the cause of the denunciation of everything else. All the weak and undeveloped minds in every religion or country have only one way of loving their own ideal, i.e., by hating every other ideal. Herein is the explanation of why the same man who is so lovingly attached to his own ideal of God, so devoted to his own ideal of religion, becomes a howling fanatic as soon as he sees or hears anything of any other ideal. ↗

— Swami Vivekananda

#devotion #fanaticism #hate #love #love

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side. ↗

— Aristotle

#appearance #apprehensive #believing #consider #devotion

You are only willing to suffer the cost of your dream when you understand the value of your dream. ↗

— Deborah Brodie

#inspirational #dreams

Love is years of devotion, sacrifice, commitment, loyalty, trust, faith, and friendship all wrapped up in one. True love does more than cause your heart to flutter. It upholds your heart when the infatuation no longer makes it flutter. ↗

— Richelle E. Goodrich

#devotion #eena #heart #infatuation #love

There’s a name for devout people who worship reverence. Heretics. ↗

— Bauvard

#funny #heretics #humor #funny