Top 87 Spiritual Discipline Quotes
#1. All that we can do with any spiritual discipline is produce within ourselves something of the silence, the humility, the detachment, the purity of heart and the indifference which are required if the inner self is to make some shy, unpredictable manifestation of his presence.11
James Finley
#2. We can all see God in exceptional things, but it requires the culture of spiritual discipline to see God in every detail.
Oswald Chambers
#3. A spiritual life without discipline is impossible. Discipline is the other side of discipleship. The practice of a spiritual discipline makes us more sensitive to the small, gentle voice of God.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
#5. The purpose of a spiritual discipline is to give us a way to stop the war, not by our force of will, but organically, through understanding an gradual training.
Jack Kornfield
#6. A man who would interpret the scriptures must have the spiritual discipline.
Mahatma Gandhi
#7. Service is the highest spiritual discipline. Prayer and meditation, or knowledge of scripture and Vedanta (holy scriptures of India), cannot help you reach the goal as quickly as service can. Service has a double effect, it extinguishes the ego and gives bliss.
Sathya Sai Baba
#8. This is the greatest stumbling block in our spiritual discipline, which, in actuality, consists not in getting rid of the self but in realizing the fact that there is no such existence from the first.
Thomas Merton
#9. A lot of people talk about the spirituality of Buddhism, and it is a spiritual discipline. But in Shambhala there also is a notion that you have to be synchronized with both heaven and earth.
Sakyong Mipham
#10. Tolerance, a term which we sometimes use in place of the words respect, mercy, generosity, or forbearance, is the most essential element of moral systems; it is a very important source of spiritual discipline and a celestial virtue of perfected people.
Fethullah Gulen
#11. Spiritual discipline: any activity I do by direct effort that will help me do what I cannot now do by direct effort.
Mark Buchanan
#12. God insists that we ask, not because He needs to know our situation, but because we need the spiritual discipline of asking.
Catherine Marshall
#13. To make the mind obey you is a spiritual discipline.
Sivananda
#14. Meaningful local church involvement is not an optional spiritual discipline; it is the essential context within which believers are intended to find Christ and grow in him.
Erik Thoennes
#15. I find when most people are honest about their spiritual pilgrimage, they admit to the difficulty of maintaining the habit of a spiritual discipline. What attracks me most about the Anglican spiritual tradition is that it provides purposeful spiritual direction in the life of Christ.
Robert E. Webber
#16. Soul is the central point of spiritual discipline.
Mahavira
#17. When people start to meditate or to work with any kind of spiritual discipline, they often think that somehow they're going to improve, which is a sort of subtle aggression against who they really are.
Pema Chodron
#18. It is precisely in times of spiritual dryness that we must hold on to our spiritual discipline so that we can grow into new intimacy with God.
Henri Nouwen
#19. Keeping your body in shape is a spiritual discipline. Its not just about losing a few pounds, wanting to live longer, or trying to look nicer.
Rick Warren
#20. Asceticism, also called ascesis, is the practice of rigorous self-denial and active self-restraint and is performed as a spiritual discipline. Like
Randi Fredricks, Ph.D.
#21. The spiritual discipline of simplicity is not a lost dream, but a recurrent version throughout history. It can be recaptured today. It must be.
Richard J. Foster
#22. Together with worldly education, you have to cultivate the human values and undertake spiritual discipline.
Sathya Sai Baba
#23. Knowledge is an intellectual art.
Wisdom is a spiritual discipline.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#24. Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth.
Mahatma Gandhi
#25. The organized churches must become schools of spiritual discipline where Christians are taught how to own without treasuring (Matt. 6:21); how to possess without, like the "rich young ruler," being possessed (Mark 10:22); how to live simply, even frugally, though controlling great wealth and power.
Dallas Willard
#26. Spiritual discipline is the cultivation of Love. Be full of Love. taste the exhilaration that Love can confer. Let everyone see your exuberant with light and joy.
Sathya Sai Baba
#27. Writing for me is a form of spiritual discipline and creative vision, a means of being in the world and giving one's love to it without compromise or dilution.
Aberjhani
#28. WOMEN preserve the culture of this country with greater tenacity and faith. They keep men on the moral path and inspire them to follow spiritual discipline. Their hearts are tender and full of compassion for the hungry and the distressed. That is why in this land, women are adored and revered.
Sathya Sai Baba
#29. You speak of doing good to the world. Is the world such a small thing? And who are you, pray, to do good to the world? First realise God, see Him by means of spiritual discipline. If He imparts power you can do good to others; otherwise not.
Ramakrishna
#30. He who has conquered his own coward spirit has conquered the whole outward world;
Thomas Hughes
#31. Prayer is the key discipline whereby all spiritual work is done.
Chuck Pierce
#32. We can become the masters of our own destinies by practicing self-discipline and by setting worthy goals that will lead to higher ground so that we can become what our heavenly father wants us to become.
M. Russell Ballard
#33. In the heir's world, where everything was available, the unattainable had a wild allure.
Geraldine Brooks
#34. Rebuilding relationship requires a lifelong discipline and commitment.
Sri Amma Bhagwan.
#35. Common sense is the fundamental factor in all spiritual disciplines. No rule is an eternal rule. Rules change from place to place, time to time and from one condition to another condition.
Sivananda
#36. Every man has a feminine side, and every woman a masculine side. It is important to use discipline with intuition, and to use intuition with objectivity.
Paulo Coelho
#37. 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
#38. What are we doing to keep the light shining in our own eyes and countenances; Much of that light comes from our discipline dedication and consecration.
James E. Faust
#39. There is a discipline, a spiritual code that you should adhere to, that you do not hurt anyone in any way shape or form either mentally or physically.
Derek Acorah
#40. Spiritual education is not a distinct and separate discipline; it is part and parcel of all types and levels of education, In fact, it is the very foundation on which a lasting edifice can be built.
Sathya Sai Baba
#41. When we are alone with God, the Spirit prays in us. The challenge is to develop a simple discipline or spiritual practice to embrace some empty time and empty space every day.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
#42. To become spiritual, you must die to self, and come alive in the Lord. Only then will the mysteries of God fall from your lips. To die to self through self-discipline causes suffering but brings you everlasting life.
Rumi
#43. When I say 'practice' I don't mean
repeating an act until you get it right. In this use, it means to instill regular discipline to accomplish a specific task, ritual without which we feel incomplete, or that our experience of each day is less.
S. Kelley Harrell
#44. Without discipline in spiritual pursuits, the central nervous system doesn't have a chance to adjust and grow with the increased demand. It would be like putting a high voltage into a small bulb - it is bound to explode.
Sivananda Radha Saraswati
#45. The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.
Augustine Of Hippo
#46. It would be of course a low voltage spiritual life in which prayer was chiefly undertaken as a discipline, rather than as a way of co-labouring with God to accomplish good things and advancing his Kingdom purposes.
Dallas Willard
#47. Your discipline or lack of discipline will protect you from or expose you to disaster. Practice discipline. Be consistent.
Bobby F. Kimbrough Jr.
#48. And in my own pastoral and personal Christian experience, I can say that I've never known a man or woman who came to spiritual maturity except through discipline. Godliness comes through discipline.
Donald S. Whitney
#49. It is only in a very quiet mind that great things are born; and a quiet mind does not come about through effort, through control, through discipline.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#50. The human soul is on its journey from the law to love, from discipline to liberation, from the moral plane to the spiritual.
Rabindranath Tagore
#51. 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
#52. Tantra is the hot blood of spiritual practice. It smashes the taboo against unreasonable happiness; a thunderbolt path, swift, joyful, and fierce. There is no authentic Tantra without profound commitment, discipline, courage, and a sense of wild, foolhardy, fearless abandon.
Chogyam Trungpa
#53. Some form of self-discipline is necessary to transmute material desires into spiritual aspirations.
Paramahansa Yogananda
#54. It is often the simple daily practices that influence our lives in dramatic ways.
Alaric Hutchinson
#55. The discipline of the Gospel is coming to God on His terms.
Barbara Hughes
#56. 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
#57. God, according to all the great spiritual traditions, cannot be comprehended by the finite mind but can nevertheless be known in an intimate encounter with his presence - one that requires considerable discipline of the mind and will to achieve, but one also implicit in all ordinary experience
David Bentley Hart
#58. If you wish to live in peace and harmony with others, you must learn to discipline yourself in many ways.
Thomas A Kempis
#59. Discipline, it has been suggested, is the means of human spiritual evolution. This
M. Scott Peck
#60. Mastery of impulse is achieved through taking pauses during life's contrasting situations. Mastery of impulse is about developing strong willpower that can be used to redirect the flow of energy in any situation. Mastery of impulse is about responding to the world with a sense of reason and peace.
Alaric Hutchinson
#61. The power of God tenderizes and changes us, not spiritual disciplines. Spiritual disciplines only position us to receive.
Mike Bickle
#62. Love is spiritual. It's about self-sacrifice and commitment. And discipline. You cannot have true love without discipline and respect. When you lose the respect of your spouse, you've lost everything.
Candace Bushnell
#63. Only when the mind is tranquil-through self-knowledge and not through imposed self-discipline-only then, in that tranquillity, in that silence, can reality come into being. It is only then that there can be bliss, that there can be creative action.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#64. My writing practice taught me the important thing is steadfastness. It's not necessarily discipline. Discipline can become a prison. When your spiritual practices become another thing for you to be anxious about, they've lost their usefulness.
Elizabeth Gilbert
#65. In the search for reality, energy creates its own discipline. But mere discipline, without full comprehension of all this, has no meaning, it is a most destructive thing.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#66. How do you achieve excellence? 1. Mindset 2. Discipline 3. Commitment 4. Consistency
Bobby F. Kimbrough Jr.
#67. The joyful news that He is risen does not change the contemporary world. Still before us lie work, discipline, sacrifice. But the fact of Easter gives us the spiritual power to do the work, accept the discipline, and make the sacrifice.
Henry Knox Sherrill
#68. Of all spiritual disciplines prayer is the most central because it ushers us into perpetual communion with the Father.
Richard J. Foster
#69. Know this also to be one of the spiritual practices, a discipline for God - realisation. Its aim also is Self - realisation.
Swami Vivekananda
#70. It takes intelligence and training, self-discipline and fine-sensibility, to gain renewed life through leisure occupation. America now suffers spiritual poverty, and art must become more fully American life before her leisure can become culture.
Hans Hofmann
#71. To discipline ourselves through fasting brings us in tune with God, and fast day provides an occasion to set aside the temporal so that we might enjoy the higher qualities of the spiritual. As we fast on that day we learn and better understand the needs of those who are less fortunate.
Howard W. Hunter
#72. Nothing has done more damage to the Christian view of life than the hideous notion that those who are truly spiritual have lost all interest in the world and its beauties.
Elisabeth Elliot
#73. In the words of Jewish liturgical scholar Lawrence Hoffman, 'Jews do offer freely composed prayers ... But overall, it is the fixed order and content of Jewish prayer that gives it its distinctiveness and that demands the personal commitment to prayer as a discipline.
Lauren F. Winner
#74. The best measure of a spiritual life is not its ecstasies but its obedience.
Oswald Chambers
#75. 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
#76. To gain the spiritual ascendancy over ourselves, and the influences with which we are surrounded, through a rigid course of self-discipline, is our first consideration, it is our first labor, before we can pave the way for our children to grow up without sin unto salvation.
Brigham Young
#77. 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
#78. I have long profited from Adele Ahlberg Calhoun's gifts in the field of spiritual development, and I am delighted that she has compiled her experience with spiritual disciplines into book form. I highly recommend it and I look forward to using it as a resource at our church.
Timothy Keller
#79. The Spiritual disciplines are wisdom and not righteousness.
Dallas Willard
#80. Yoga is a generic name for any discipline by which one attempts to pass out of the limits of one's ordinary mental consciousness into a greater spiritual consciousness.
Sri Aurobindo
#81. When I walk in the forest just before the meal, while reciting the scriptural phrase that I "meditate" for that day, spiritual joy comes over me as if by appointment.
Adalbert De Vogue
#82. Fasting is not just a physical discipline; it can be a spiritual feast.
Jentezen Franklin
#84. It is not that the university as such is against spiritual formation. It is just that often the university does not know how to integrate spiritual formation within its academic disciplines.
Henri Nouwen
#85. I think it's very difficult, and it requires a tremendous amount of spiritual integrity and discipline, to not be a narcissist in a culture that encourages it every step of the way.
Alan Ball
#86. God's discipline has nothing to do with rejection but more to do with refinement.
Gary Rohrmayer
#87. Self-discipline leads to higher spiritual states only if practiced with under- standing. The clearer the goal, the greater the result.
Ming-Dao Deng
