Spirituality quotes

Spirituality is what you have left when you strip religion of its politics and look at the questions that remain: what is worth your attention, how to live in a body, how to die well, what to do with a mind that will not quiet down. The quotes here come from many traditions and no tradition — from monks, rabbis, teachers, poets, and skeptics who took the questions seriously without pretending to know the answers. They are meant for slow reading.

• The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.

  Marcus Aurelius · Meditations

• Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.

  Siddhartha Gautama

• The wound is the place where the Light enters you.

  Rumi

• The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.

  Augustine of Hippo · Confessions

• To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.

  Thomas Aquinas · Summa Theologica

• The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.

  Hildegard of Bingen

• Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there.

  Rumi · Masnavi

• Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom.

  Lao Tzu · Tao Te Ching

• Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.

  Augustine of Hippo · Confessions

• Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.

  Siddhartha Gautama

• When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. When the student is truly ready, the teacher will disappear.

  Lao Tzu · Tao Te Ching

• Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.

  Augustine of Hippo · Sermons

• What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action.

  Meister Eckhart

• If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.

  Meister Eckhart · Sermons

• The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

  Lao Tzu · Tao Te Ching