#sacred

Religious freedom is too sacred a right to be restricted or prohibited in any degree without convincing proof that a legitimate interest of the state is in grave danger. ↗

— Frank Murphy

#convincing #danger #degree #freedom #grave

The only principles of public conduct that are worthy of a gentleman or a man are to sacrifice estate, ease, health, and applause, and even life, to the sacred calls of his country. ↗

— James Otis

#calls #conduct #country #ease #estate

Never violate the sacredness of your individual self-respect. ↗

— Theodore Parker

#never #sacredness #self-respect #violate #your

We've got to be fair. You can't say a place that has strip joints is sacred ground. We've got to be just. We've got to speak the truth. We've got to have justice for everybody. We're a country of justice for all, not justice for non-Muslims only or some groups and not for others. ↗

— Feisal Abdul Rauf

#everybody #fair #got #ground #groups

Without art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without science, we should always worship false gods. ↗

— W.H. Auden

#sacred #science #worship #art

In the broader spiritual realities, no rites or rituals are necessary to know God. NONE. Any religion that insists you can come to intimate knowledge of the Divine by any means other than stillness, self-awareness, and unity with consciousness is deceptive. So-called holy texts are about religion, not necessarily about God. They are really owners manuals for faith traditions. I am not denouncing them altogether, as I love the Bible and have studied it reverently all my life. But I don't view the Bible as the inspired word OF God as much as the inspired word of men ABOUT God, as they perceive God through their often jaded, human perspectives. Again, I respect these so-called sacred writings. I would just like to see them read and placed in their proper, less idolatrous, place. ↗

— Carlton D. Pearson

#faith

Signý knew she would die a thousand deaths upon seeing another woman with him, bearing his children, raising them with him. All the while, Signý, caged in his dungeons, hearing all the painful details of his life with someone else, drowning in her own despair, her love for him turning to hatred. A more tragic life, she could not imagine. ↗

— Farrah Naseem

#despair #farrah-naseem #hatred #sacred #tragic

Whether you accept or reject the idea of God, the sacredness of all life is a goal devoutly to be wished ↗

— Carlton D. Pearson

#sacredness #life

A Christian is never dependent on the response of others to grow spiritually. It's our own heart's decisions that matter ↗

— Gary L. Thomas

#marriage

Directly overhead the Milky Way was as distinct as a highway across the sky. The constellations shown brilliantly, except the north, where they were blurred by the white sheets of the Aurora. Now shimmering like translucent curtains drawn over the windows of heaven, the northern lights suddenly streaked across a million miles of space to burst in silent explosions. Fountains of light, pale greens, reds, and yellows, showered the stars and geysered up to the center of the sky, where they pooled to form a multicolored sphere, a kind of mock sun that gave light but no heat, pulsing, flaring, and casting beams in all directions, horizon to horizon. Below, the wolves howled with midnight madness and the two young men stood in speechless awe. Even after the spectacle ended, the Aurora fading again to faint shimmer, they stood as silent and transfixed as the first human beings ever to behold the wonder of creation. Starkmann felt the diminishment that is not self-depreciation but humility; for what was he and what was Bonnie George? Flickers of consciousness imprisoned in lumps of dust; above them a sky ablaze with the Aurora, around them a wilderness where wolves sang savage arias to a frozen moon. ↗

— Philip Caputo

#nature #sacred #men