Top 100 Quotes About The Spiritual Life
#1. There are no planes in the spiritual life; we are either going uphill or coming down.
Fulton J. Sheen
#2. Reading is at the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it. It does not constitute it ... There are certain cases of spiritual depression in which reading can become a sort of curative discipline ... reintroducing a lazy mind into the life of the Spirit.
Marcel Proust
#3. The point of the spiritual life is to realize Truth. But you will never understand the spiritual life, or realize Truth, if you measure it by your own yardstick.
Dainin Katagiri
#4. Prayer is the pulse of the renewed soul; and the constancy of its beat is the test and measure of the spiritual life.
Octavius Winslow
#5. The interior life is the spiritual life. It focuses on truth and the good. It
Pope John Paul II
#6. Of one hundred persons who take up the spiritual life, eighty turn out to be charlatans, fifteen insane, and only five, maybe, get a glimpse of the real truth. Therefore beware.
Swami Vivekananda
#7. The spiritual life is always about letting go. It is never about holding on.
Jesse Lee Peterson
#8. Ahead! Courage! In the spiritual life he who does not advance goes backward. It happens as with a boat which always must go ahead. If it stands still the wind will blow it back.
Pio Of Pietrelcina
#9. The joy which answers to prayer give, cannot be described; and the impetus which they afford to the spiritual life is exceedingly great.
George Muller
#10. Without solitude it is virtually impossible to live a spiritual life ... We do not take the spiritual life seriously if we do not set aside some time to be with God and listen to him.
Henri Nouwen
#11. Prayer is the natural and joyous breathing of the spiritual life by which the heavenly atmosphere is inhaled and then exhaled in prayer.
Andy Murray
#12. Discipline means to prevent everything in your life from being filled up. Discipline means that somewhere you're not occupied, and certainly not preoccupied. In the spiritual life, discipline means to create that space in which something can happen that you hadn't planned or counted on.
Henri Nouwen
#14. [Angels] guide us to become spiritual people for the pleasure of it ... because the spiritual life itself has a great deal of beauty and real satisfaction, even pleasure. And this is what the soul needs.
Thomas Moore
#15. God be thanked for books! they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.
W.e. Channing
#16. Misplaced effort in the spiritual life often consists in stubbornly insisting upon compulsive routines which seem to us to be necessary because they accord with our own short-sighted notions.
Thomas Merton
#17. Certainty is the mark of the commonsense life-gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life.
Oswald Chambers
#18. In the spiritual life only one thing produces genuine joy and that is obedience.
Richard J. Foster
#19. The inner attitude of the heart is far more crucial than the mechanics for coming into the reality of the spiritual life.
Richard J. Foster
#20. If we are called to attention by God's Life and Holy Spirit, then the 'spiritual life' is not a pleasant option we might like to pursue when we have space and time; it is that which is now creating its own space and time within us, and to neglect it is to lose ourselves.
Luke Timothy Johnson
#21. The history of prevailing status quos shows decay and decadence infecting the opulent materialism of the Haves. The spiritual life of the Haves is a ritualistic justification of their possessions.
Saul D. Alinsky
#22. The spiritual life is indeed a life of struggle; but it is also a life of well grounded hope. Hope is grounded in freedom, and freedom is grounded in all the high purposes and powers of spirit, human and divine. The last word of spirit is Victory.
Edgar S. Brightman
#23. The spiritual life does not remove us from the world but leads us deeper into it
Henri J.M. Nouwen
#24. If it be true that our people represent a high percentage of mental vigor, the distinction is probably due, in some measure, to the extremely important part which Talmud studies have played in the spiritual life of the race.
Abraham Cahan
#25. It is a law of the spiritual life that every act of trust makes the next act less difficult. Trusting becomes like breathing, the natural unconciousness of the redeemed soul.
Hannah Whitall Smith
#26. Something was badly amiss with the spiritual life of the planet ... Too many demons inside people claiming to believe in God.
Salman Rushdie
#27. Be brave! Be strong! Be fearless! Once you have taken up the spiritual life, fight as long as there is any life in you. Even though you know you are going to be killed, fight till you "are killed." Don't die of fright. Die fighting. Don't go down till you are knocked down.
Swami Vivekananda
#28. The only trouble is that in the spiritual life there are no tricks and no shortcuts. Those who imagine that they can discover spiritual gimmicks and put them to work for themselves usually ignore God's will and his grace.
Thomas Merton
#29. In intellectual honesty, we should be willing to study and explore the spiritual life with all the rigor and determination we would give to any field of research.
Richard J. Foster
#30. Getting answers to my questions is not the goal of the spiritual life. Living in the presence of God is the greater call.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
#31. Breathing is made up of two stages: inhaling, the intake of air, and exhaling, the letting out of air. The spiritual life is fed, nourished, by prayer and is expressed outwardly through mission: inhaling and exhaling. When we inhale, by prayer, we receive the fresh air of the Holy Spirit.
Pope Francis
#32. Heroism, generally, is totally out of place in the spiritual life, until we grow to the point at which it would never be thought of as heroism anyway.
Dallas Willard
#33. In the spiritual life there is no such thing as an indifference to love or hate.
Thomas Merton
#34. In the life of the body a man is sometimes sick, and unless he takes medicine, he will die. Even so in the spiritual life a man is sick on account of sin. For that reason he needs medicine so that he may be restored to health; and this grace is bestowed in the Sacrament of Penance.
Thomas Aquinas
#36. This is the ultimate end of man, to find the One which is in him; which is his truth, which is his soul; the key with which he opens the gate of the spiritual life, the heavenly kingdom.
Rabindranath Tagore
#37. To be a light to others you will need a good dose of the spiritual life. Because as my mother used to say, if you are in a good place, then you can help others; but if you're not well, then go look for somebody who is in a good place who can help you.
Rigoberta Menchu
#38. Those who speak ill of the spiritual life, although they come and go by day, are like the smith's bellows: they take breath but are not alive.
William Hazlitt
#39. At the deepest level, pride is the choice to exclude both God and other people from their rightful place in our hearts. Jesus said the essence of the spiritual life is to love God and to love people. Pride destroys our capacity to love.
John Ortberg
#40. There have been many instances of people combining the political life with the spiritual life, a life of constant self-examination. Gandhi was a great example of that.
Pankaj Mishra
#41. It's not what you do - it's the intensity of your feeling that determines how far you go in the spiritual life.
Frederick Lenz
#42. The great movement of the spiritual life is from a deaf, nonhearing life to a life of listening.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
#43. Spiritual direction is an interpersonal relationship in which we learn how to grow, live, and love in the spiritual life.
Richard Foster
#44. The spiritual life is a call to action. But it is a call to ... action without any selfish attachment to the results.
Eknath Easwaran
#45. If the spiritual life be healthy, under the full power of the Holy Spirit, praying without ceasing will be natural.
Andy Murray
#46. Discipline in the spiritual life is the concentrated effort to create the space and time where God can become our master and where we can respond freely to God's guidance.
Henri Nouwen
#47. There is no better means of attainment to the spiritual life Than by continually beginning again ...
Saint Francis De Sales
#48. One of the disconcerting facts about the spiritual life is that God takes you at your word.
Dorothy Day
#49. Instead of seeing the spiritual life as one that can exist only if it is enclosed by the walls of a monastery, Ignatius asks you to see the world as your monastery.
James Martin
#50. We must, nevertheless, always work at it, because not to advance in the spiritual life is to go back.
Brother Lawrence
#51. In a strange way the spiritual life isn't "useful" or "successful." But it is meant to be fruitful. And fruitfulness comes out of brokenness.
Henri Nouwen
#52. Abandon the secret chamber and the spiritual life will decay.
Isaac Watts
#53. Religious people love to hide behind religion. They love the rules of religion more than they love Jesus. With practice, Condemners let rules become more important than the spiritual life.
Mike Yaconelli
#54. There is ... a tendency to think of the spiritual life as primarily introspective, divorced from the concerns of everyday life ... Faith that does not translate into actions is no faith at all.
Dalai Lama
#55. No circumstances can ever make or mar the unfolding of the spiritual life. Spirituality does not depend upon the environment; it depends upon one's attitude towards life.
Annie Besant
#56. The spiritual life is a reaching out to our innermost self, to our fellow human and to our God.
Henri Nouwen
#57. As the body cannot be sustained without corporeal food, nor continue in natural life, so without this life-giving food the soul cannot persist in the spiritual life of grace.
Denis The Carthusian
#58. [On art:] I believe that it not only enriches the spiritual life, but that it makes one more sane and sympathetic, more observant and understanding, regardless of whatever age it springs from, whatever subjects it represents.
Abby Aldrich Rockefeller
#59. The nature of the spiritual life is that we are certain in our uncertainty.
Oswald Chambers
#60. The onslaught of scruples is a problem well attested in the spiritual life, especially among the young, where religious observances must be done perfectly to achieve a certain result.
Philip Zaleski
#61. There is no deeper pathos in the spiritual life of man than the cruelty of righteous people. If any one idea dominates the teachings of Jesus, it is his opposition to the self-righteousness of the righteous.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#62. Dependence, humility, simplicity, cooperation, and a sense of abandon are qualities greatly prized in the spiritual life, but extremely elusive for people who live in comfort.
Philip Yancey
#63. Love is the secret you unmask yourself to find; it is the foundation of the spiritual life, the destination where all roads of the journey lead.
Elizabeth Lesser
#64. In the prayer time, the battle of the spiritual life is lost or won.
E. Stanley Jones
#65. In the spiritual life, you must take one step forward each day in a vertical line, from the bottom up.
Pio Of Pietrelcina
#66. In the spiritual life nowhere do our ideals meet the actual more truly than in how we relate to each other, in how we make, sustain and are friends.
James Ishmael Ford
#67. The spiritual life is about becoming more at home in your own skin.
Parker J. Palmer
#68. Half the spiritual life consists of remembering what we are up against and where we are going.
Ayya Khema
#69. Prayer is to the spiritual life what the beating of the pulse and the drawing of the breath are to the life of the body.
John Henry Newman
#70. By the word genuine I mean biblical, for only in the Bible do we have truth that is indisputably reliable. For this reason, the Bible must be the guide and test for all of our experiences in the spiritual life, for biblical spirituality is the only genuine spirituality.
Charles C. Ryrie
#71. A man is never so truly and intensely himself as when he is most possessed by God. It is impossible to say where, in the spiritual life, the human will leaves off and divine grace begins.
William Ralph Inge
#72. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the Beloved.
Henri Nouwen
#73. Because, my dear, in the spiritual life opposites meet. It's not the cold passionless ones who become great ascetics, but the most hot-blooded, people with something worth renouncing. That's why the church won't allow eunuchs to become priests.
Antal Szerb
#74. The spiritual life is a life beyond moods. It is a life in which we choose joy and do not allow ourselves to become victims of passing feelings of happiness or depression.
Henri Nouwen
#75. Christ cannot be seen except in the spiritual life which the world does not possess. No
John Calvin
#76. The truth is that there are no "masters" in the spiritual life. Mature and wise teachers, yes. But fundamentally we are all beginners receiving and giving on our knees before God and with open hands before one another. In this business no one "lords it over" another. Pay
Richard J. Foster
#77. In the spiritual life, as in all organic processes, everyone has their optimum and it is just as harmful to go beyond it as not to attain it.
Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
#78. He who believes himself to be far advanced in the spiritual life has not even made a good beginning.
Jean-Pierre Camus
#79. In this life, your so-called ordinary life, you must be rooted; and in your inner space, in the spiritual life, you must be weightless and flying and flowing, floating.
Rajneesh
#80. Humility is the most important quality in the spiritual life. When it is lacking spiritual growth stops.
Frederick Lenz
#81. Accepting the reality of our broken, flawed lives is the beginning of spirituality not because the spiritual life will remove our flaws but because we let go of seeking perfection and, instead, seek God, the one who is present in the tangledness of our lives.
Mike Yaconelli
#82. What happens to the spiritual life of a young girl who is made to understand, consciously or subconsciously, that she has no place in the spiritual domain except as a consumer of someone else's God?
Joan D. Chittister
#83. In the spiritual life every person is his or her own discoverer, and you need not grieve if your discoveries are not believed in by others. It is your business to push on find more and increase individual happiness
Prentice Mulford
#84. A priest's life is spent between question and answer
or between a question and the attempt to answer it. The question is the summary of the spiritual life.
Naguib Mahfouz
#85. In the spiritual life you must practice. And the only way to practice is by trying to solve your problems with prayer. This develops your spiritual power and it also trains you to use that spiritual power in the most effective way.
Emmet Fox
#86. The spiritual life is not a life before, after, or beyond our everyday existence. No, the spiritual life can only be real when it is lived in the midst of the pains and joys of the here and now.
Henri Nouwen
#87. One of the greatest challenges of the spiritual life is to receive God's forgiveness.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
#88. There is no failure in the spiritual life, as long as we do not give up the fight.
Swami Prabhavananda
#89. The spiritual life is first of all a life. It is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to be lived.
Thomas Merton
#90. Holiness consists in doing God's will joyfully. Faithfulness makes saints. The spiritual life is a union with Jesus: the divine and the human giving themselves to each other. The only thing Jesus asks of us is to give ourselves to him, in total poverty and total self-forgetfulness.
Mother Teresa
#91. The spiritual life, in other words, is not achieved by denying one part of life for the sake of another. The spiritual life is achieved only by listening to all of life and learning to respond to each of its dimensions wholly and with integrity.
Joan D. Chittister
#92. In the spiritual life one becomes just like a little child, without resentment, without attachment, full of life and joy.
Paramahansa Yogananda
#93. It takes something of a poet to apprehend and get into the depth, the lusciousness, the spiritual life of a great poem. And so we must be in some way like God in order that we may see God as He is.
Edwin Hubbel Chapin
#94. The spiritual life is a stern choice. It is not a consoling retreat from the difficulties of existence; but an invitation to enter fully into that difficult existence, and there apply the Charity of God and bear the cost.
Evelyn Underhill
#95. Prayer is the breath of the new man, drawing in the air of mercy in petitions, and returning it in praises; it proves and maintains the spiritual life.
Matthew Henry
#96. To make it into a discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it: it does not constitute it.
Alain De Botton
#97. Too often in the west we fail to realize that even in eastern disciplines the spiritual life is not meant as an escape from the worldly life. There is karma to be fulfilled on earth, within the dharma of necessity.
James Hillman
#98. Nothing is so fundamental to the spiritual life as learning to give thanks.
Gordon T. Smith
#99. A primary goal of the spiritual life is to learn to quiet the mind through prayer and meditation, through spiritual practice, so that we can hear what in both Judaism and Christianity, is called the small, still voice within.
Marianne Williamson
#100. I realized I could only play-act at the spiritual life as long as my appetites were stronger than my empathy.
Victoria Moran
