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ETHICS
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| 1 |
"Virtue is to the soul what health is to the body." Francois de LaRochefoucauld, 'Maximes Posthumes', No. 541
Encyclopedia of Religious Quotations
(Frank S Mead, editor)
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| 2 |
"I know myself now, and I feel within me a peace above all earthly dignities, a still and quiet conscience." William Shakespeare (1564-1616), English playwright and poet
The Lion Christian Quotation Collection
(Hannah Ward & Jennifer Wild, compilers)
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| 3 |
"When all things are perceived as infinite and holy, what motive can we have for covetousness or self-assertion, for the pursuit of power or the drearier forms of pleasure." Aldous Huxley
Revelations: The Wisdom of the Ages
(Paul Roland)
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| 4 |
"St. Augustine taught that once the soul is noble, harmonious, and ordered, it is capable of seeing the source from which all truth flows." Antoine Faivre
Modern Esoteric Spirituality
(Antoine Faivre and Jacob Needleman, editors)
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| 5 |
"My own inner being actually exists in every living creature as truly and immediately as known to my consciousness only in myself. This realization, for which the standard formula in Sanskrit is 'tat tvam asi', is the ground of that compassion upon which all true, that is to say unselfish, virtue rests and whose expression is in every good deed." Arthur Schopenhauer, 'On The Foundation of Morality'
The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, Metaphor as Myth and as Religion
(Joseph Campbell)
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| 6 |
"Platonist and Neo-Platonist thinkers have traditionally asserted that humans are secretly rooted in Divinity and can realize that fact through the practice of virtue, the pursuit of beauty, and philosophic inquiry (or dialectic). 'God', wrote Plotinus, 'is outside of none.'"
The Future of the Body, Explorations Into the Further Evolution of Human Nature
(Michael Murphy)
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| 7 |
"The whole fabric of human society, its laws and its ethics, is based on the dignity of every human being." Theodore M. Hesburgh, priest, author, social activist, 'Making a Difference'
A Parliament of Souls, In Search of Global Spirituality
(Michael Tobias, Jane Morrison, Bettina Gray, editors)
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| 8 |
"This is the sum of duty: Do naught unto other which would cause you pain if done to you." Mahabharata 5, 1517
The Quotable Spirit
(Peter Lorie and Manuela D Mascetti, editors)
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| 9 |
"May we grant one another the opportunity to live out our dreams, to care for the wounded child in one another, and to pass on to others still unborn an earth as alive and diverse and wondrous as the one we have inherited."
The Coming of the Cosmic Christ
(Matthew Fox)
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| 10 |
"Kindness…is an eternal absolute. It is the bond connecting all beings in the great web of interdependence in which we all participate and by which we are sustained."
The Mystic Hours, A Daybook of Interspiritual Wisdom & Devotion
(Wayne Teasdale)
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| 11 |
"That nature only is good when it shall not do unto another whatever is not good for its own self." Dadistan-i-dinik, 94:5 (Zoroastrian)
Basic Theosophy
(Geoffrey Hodson)
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| 12 |
"If you want to know with immediate and tangible recognition what God is like, examine kindness in yourself and others. It is your own deepest inner nature."
The Mystic Hours, A Daybook of Interspiritual Wisdom & Devotion
(Wayne Teasdale)
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| 13 |
"Confucius and Mencius maintained that the very core of the truly good life is a life lived in obedience to the moral law and in the awareness that the moral law is grounded in the Eternal."
The Nature and Truth of the Great Religions
(August Karl Reischauer)
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| 14 |
"To those who are good to me I am good; and to those who are not good to me I am also good; and thus all get to be good." Tao The Ching
The Ancient Wisdom
(Annie Besant)
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| 15 |
"Much of our normal living is….permeated with intuitive insights. Deep within each of us is the conviction that love is better than hate; beauty better than ugliness; justice better than injustice."
The Cosmic Womb, An Interpretation of Man's Relationship to the Infinite
(Arthur W. Osborn)
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| 16 |
"Codes of law and morality do not exist independently of human beings, to be restrictively imposed upon us. We ourselves create the codes."
Intuitive Thinking As A Spiritual Path: A Philosophy of Freedom
(Rudolf Steiner)
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| 17 |
"The sum of our souls is the potentiality of Some Thing, not yet made, which is to emerge from their mass. Collective aspirations accompany and assist this organic work, greater than ourselves, which is effected in each one of us. It is the function of Morality to guide our free decisions into fruitful and obedient co-operation in this task."
Writings in Time of War
(Pierre Teilhard deChardin)
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| 18 |
"Do not do anything you hate to another." Saying of the Desert Fathers and Mothers (monks and nuns of the Egyptian desert)
The Lion Christian Quotation Collection
(Hannah Ward & Jennifer Wild, compilers)
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| 19 |
"You are a part of the Infinite. This is your nature. Hence you are your brother's keeper." Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902),
The Quotable Spirit
(Peter Lorie and Manuela D Mascetti, editors)
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| 20 |
"The great law which St. Paul states 'Whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap' does work; it eternally works."
The Unfinished Autobiography
(Alice A. Bailey)
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| 21 |
"To create meaning in our lives, we have to go back to basics….It's morality. It's doing the right thing. It's choosing the right way to be for the good of the whole." Terry Lynn Taylor
Angels: The Mysterious Messengers
(Rex Hauck, editor)
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| 22 |
"In the domain of morality the Divine and the Terrestrial meet and are fused into one."
Writings in Time of War
(Pierre Teilhard deChardin)
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| 23 |
"The ceremonies of the Mysteries were intended to portray the higher evolution of man, his return to the divine source whence he came, through the development of the higher part of his nature, which is not merely consequent upon practices of meditation and ceremonial, but even more upon the living out of the ethical precepts which were taught."
Freemasonry and Its Ancient Mystic Rites
(C. W. Leadbeater)
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| 24 |
"With respect to other people, you must keep your conscience pure by not doing to them anything that you hate and that you do not want them to do to you." St. Symeon the New Theologian, 'The Three Methods of Prayer'
The Philokalia, volume 4
(various authors, compiled by St. Nikodimos and St. Makarios)
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| 25 |
"The idea of 'hybris', individual imprudence…runs through the philosophical as well as religious thinking of all high civilizations. There is a moral law, and it must be obeyed."
The Flight of the Wild Gander
(Joseph Campbell)
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We are gathering together the primary insights of spirituality and bringing them together into one place.
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