THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS
Huston Smith
Chapters on Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam, Judaism and Christianity, plus chapters on primal religions such as native traditions of the Americas, Australia, Africa and Oceania, with expanded sections on the inner dimensions of these great religions.
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| 1 |
"We live in a world in which there is no chance or accident. Those words are simply covers for ignorance."
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| 2 |
"God is being, awareness, and bliss. Utter reality, utter consciousness, and utterly beyond all possibility of frustration."
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| 3 |
"The One is none other than the All, the All none other than the One. Take your stand on this, and the rest will follow of its own accord." Seng Ts'an, 'Trust in the Heart'
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| 4 |
"All life down to its smallest element, can, if rightly approached, be seen as a reflection of the infinite source of holiness, which is God."
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| 5 |
"The entire world should be pervaded with thoughts of loving-kindness."
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| 6 |
"For nearly two thousand years the first sentence a Chinese child, living in the direct light of Confucius, was taught to read was…'Human beings are by nature good.' We may smile at the undisguised moralizing, but every nation needs it.'"
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| 7 |
"Every moment…is Indra's cosmic net, laced with jewels at every juncture. Each jewel reflects the others, together with all the reflections IN the others."
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| 8 |
"One has lived from an endless past and will live into an endless future. At this very moment one partakes of Eternal Life – blissful, luminous, pure." Ruth Fuller Sasaki, 'Zen – A Religion'
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| 9 |
"The career of a soul as it threads its course…is guided by its choices, which are controlled by what the soul wants and wills at each stage of the journey."
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| 10 |
"Everything is prepared for the good of human beings." Yi-Pao Mei, ancient Chinese philosopher, 'Motse'
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| 11 |
"When a heart is illumined by true knowledge, it knows that above all these wars of sects and sectarians presides the one indivisible, eternal, all-knowing bliss." Ramakrishna
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| 12 |
"The various religions are but different languages through which God speaks to the human heart. 'Truth is one; sages call it by different names.' [the Vedas]"
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| 13 |
"The Supreme Being is…everything in his creation. The various forms of creation have some of his spirit within them." Carl Gorman, Navajo (Native American) artist
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| 14 |
"It is a myth, not a mandate, a fable, not a logic by which people are moved." Irwin Edman
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| 15 |
"Human bodies are of course separate, but on a deeper level we are joined like icebergs in a common floe."
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| 16 |
"In the context of wholeness, the opposites appear as no more than phases in an endless cycling process, for each turns incessantly into its opposite, exchanging places with it. Life…bends back upon itself to come, full circle, to the realization that all is one and all is well."
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| 17 |
"Value, virtue, and spiritual fulfillment come through realizing the potentialities that are uniquely one's own; in ways that are not inconsequential, those possibilities differ from those of every other soul that ever has lived, or ever will live in the future."
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| 18 |
"The will remains free. The lawfulness of things makes the present state the product of prior acts, but within the present the will is influenced but not controlled. People remain at liberty to shape their destinies."
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| 19 |
"Twenty-five hundred years ago it took an exceptional man like Diogenes to exclaim, 'I am not an Athenian or a Greek but a citizen of the world.' Today we must all be struggling to make those words our own. We have come to the point in history when anyone who is only Japanese or American, only Oriental or Occidental, is only half human. The other half that beats with the pulse of all humanity has yet to be born."
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| 20 |
"The welfare of everything in creation is affected to some degree by what each individual contributes to or detracts from it."
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| 21 |
"A typical feature of religion is grace, the belief - ..that Reality is ultimately on our side. In last resort the universe is friendly; we can feel at home in it."
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| 22 |
"Life being one,…our duty to our fellows is to understand them as extensions, other aspects, of ourselves – fellow facets of the same Reality." Christmas Humphreys, 'Buddhism'
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| 23 |
"Locked in every human being is a store of love that partakes of the divine – the 'imago dei', image of God, it is sometimes called."
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| 24 |
"There is but one reality, like a brimming ocean, boundless as the sky, indivisible, absolute."
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| 25 |
"The overwhelming thrust of the Koran is to proclaim the unity, omnipotence, omniscience, and mercy of God."
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We are gathering together the primary insights of spirituality and bringing them together into one place.
This archive contains 11,754 quotes, taken from 635 references,
organized in terms of 39 primary categories. Quotes are randomized and appear in a different way at every click.
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We include
- All major spiritual and religious traditions, from all cultures, and all historical epochs
- Major psychologists, philosophers, writers, scholars and leading religious personalities
- Sources in classical religion as well as voices from new consciousness, esotericism and mysticism
- Choices are guided by the spirit of oneness, love, kindness, inclusion and community
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