#s

To find religion itself, you must look inside people and inside yourself. And there, if you find even the tiniest grain of true love, you may be on the right scent. Millions of people have it and don’t know what it is they have. God is their guest, but they haven’t the faintest idea that s/he is in the house. So you mustn’t only look where God is confessed and acknowledged. You must look everywhere to find the real religion... Living with God is not an apparition but a wordless and endless sureness. Like the silence of two friends together. ↗

— Bernard Canter

#inner #quaker #religion #love

Years ago, when I was working on my master's thesis, I went to New York for a semester as an exchange student. What struck me most was the sky. On that side of the world, so far away from the North Pole, the sky is flat and gray, a one-dimensional universe. Here, the sky is arched, and there's almost no pollution. In spring and fall the sky is dark blue or violet, and sunsets last for hours. The sun turns into a dim orange ball that transforms clouds into silver-rimmed red and violet towers. In winter, twenty-four hours a day, uncountable stars outline the vaulted ceiling of the great cathedral we live in. Finnish skies are the reason I believe in God. ↗

— James Thompson

#religion #religion

Nothing is a sin when you obey the orders of a priest ↗

— Alfred de Musset

#religion #sin #religion

Saying spirituality cannot exist without religion is like saying hamburgers cannot exist without McDonald's. ↗

— Steven Barnes

#religion #spirituality #religion

As obvious as it is, then, Jesus is bigger than any one religion. He didn't come to start a new religion, and he continually disrupted whatever conventions or systems or establishments that existed in his day. He will always transcend whatever cages and labels are created to contain him, especially the one called 'Christianity'. ↗

— Rob Bell

#jesus #religion #spirituality #love

In the war of magic and religion, is magic ultimately the victor? Perhaps priest and magician were once one, but the priest, learning humility in the face of God, discarded the spell for prayer. ↗

— Patti Smith

#magic #magician #priest #religion #religion

if you can imagine it, you can achieve it, if you can dream it, you can become it ↗

— William Arthur Ward

#dreams

Be strong. Live honorably and with dignity. When you don't think you can, hold on. ↗

— James Frey

#honor #strength #strength

There's one other thing I'd like to remind you of, my dear. There've been many times when you've sworn to me that after all that life has dealt you, it was no longer possible for you to believe in anything. I replied that both life and my studies had led me to the same conclusion. I asked you, 'What is a person permitted, once he's realized that truth is unattainable and consequently doesn't exist for him?' Do you remember your answer?" "I do, ibn Sabbah. I said something like this: 'If a person realized that everything people call happiness, love and joy was just a miscalculation based on a false premise, he'd feel a horrible emptiness inside. The only thing that could rouse him from his paralysis would be to gamble with his own face and the face of others. The person capable of that would be permitted anything. ↗

— Vladimir Bartol

#emptiness #faith #inspirational #life #religion

In 1054, the patriarch of Constantinople and the pope excommunicated each other. That was the end of holiness for both churches. ↗

— Frank Herbert

#pope #religion #religion