Seek the truly practical life, but seek it in such a way that it does not blind you to the spirit working in it. Seek the spirit, but seek it not out of spiritual greed, but so that you may apply it in the genuinely practical life.

Art, if one employs this term in the broad sense that includes poetry within its realm, is an art of creation laden with ideals, located at the very core of the life of a people, defining the spiritual and moral shape of that life.

Religion is not something separate and apart from ordinary life. It is life - life of every kind viewed from the standpoint of meaning and purpose: life lived in the fuller awareness of its human quality and spiritual significance.

I think we need to do some deep soul searching about what's important in our lives and renew our spirit and our spiritual thinking, whether it's through faith-based religion or just through loving nature or helping your fellow man.

We are empty shells if we do not possess, if we do not fill our life with furniture, with music, with knowledge, with this or that. And that shell makes a lot of noise, and that noise we call living, and with that we are satisfied.

If at times my productions do not express the conventionally beautiful, there is always an effort to express the universal beauty of man's continuous struggle to lift his social position and to add dimension to his spiritual being.

Physical growth is a function of time. No two-year-old child has ever been six feet tall. Intellectual growth is a function of learning. Spiritual growth is neither a function of time or learning, but it is a function of obedience.

There comes a time when it is vitally important for your spiritual health to drop your clothes, look in the mirror, and say, ‘Here I am. This is the body-like-no-other that my life has shaped. I live here. This is my soul’s address

I believe that the appearance of God the Father and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, in 1820 to Joseph Smith unlocked the heavens not only to the great spiritual knowledge revealed in this dispensation but also to secular knowledge.

The secret of a happy marriage is to serve God and each other. The goal of marriage is unity and oneness, as well as self-development. Paradoxically, the more we serve one another, the greater is our spiritual and emotional growth.

I know some teachers say that you shouldn't display the psychic powers and other powers referred to as the siddhas, but as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't really matter. There are no absolute rights or wrongs in spiritual practice

Gratitude is an attitude that hooks us up to our source of supply. And the more grateful you are, the closer you become to your maker, to the architect of the universe, to the spiritual core of your being. It's a phenomenal lesson.

Part of the advantage, and part of the result of trying to be a producer and director, are the practical things, you find. It's so advantageous to go to a place that you already have a feel for, a literal and spiritual familiarity.

In our universe there is God and there are people and things. We were made so that we should worship God, love people and use things. However if we worship ourselves, we will ignore God, start loving things and begin to use people.

Any nation or government that deprives an individual of freedom is in that moment committing an act of moral and spiritual murder. Any individual who is not concerned about his freedom commits an act of moral and spiritual suicide.

You must learn to live with the big questions and wait for the next steps to arise. Only with this patience and perseverance, can Heaven really trust you and rely upon you in the world. Oh my, I have had to wait for so many things!

Great changes are about to take place in the whole universe. It will not be a comfortable time. It is important that each one has no fear, no concern, knowing that this great upheaval is necessary before the next step can be taken.

Many people have turned back because they are afraid to look at things from God's perspective. The greatest spiritual crisis comes when a person has to move a little farther on in his faith than the beliefs he has already accepted.

The animal has its happiness in the senses, the human beings in their intellect, and the gods in spiritual contemplation. It is only to the soul that has attained to this contemplative state that the world really becomes beautiful.

It is through this physical body that the highest and greatest purpose of life is achieved. A person only calls it the physical body in ignorance. Once the knowledge has come...he begins to look upon it as the sacred temple of God.

Whatever relationships you have attracted in your life at this moment, are precisely the ones you need in your life at this moment. There is a hidden meaning behind all events, and this hidden meaning is serving your own evolution.

Learning how to love is the goal and the purpose of spiritual life - not learning how to develop psychic powers, not learning how to bow, chant, do yoga, or even meditate, but learning to love. Love is the truth. Love is the light.

There are few ideas in the world of thought which contain so much spiritual power as the idea of the Sabbath. Aeons hence, when of many of our cherished theories only shreds will remain, that cosmic tapestry will continue to shine.

Freedom is the basic concept and construct of life everywhere, because freedom is the basic nature of God. All systems which reduce, restrict, impinge upon or eliminate freedom in any way are systems which work against life itself.

Developing inner values is much like physical exercise. The more we train our abilities, the stronger they become. The difference is that, unlike the body, when it comes to training the mind, there is no limit to how far we can go.

All moments are beautiful, only you have to be receptive and surrendering. All moments are blessings, only you have to be capable of seeing. All moments are benedictions. If you accept with a deep gratitude, nothing ever goes wrong.

... the more the mind dominates, the more the ego comes into play, and the further people depart from their true inner self. So all the technological advances in the world mean nothing if people feel a spiritual void inside of them.

For me, I just want to sing about life. And since I come from a spiritual background, I turned to jazz, because I feel it's still sacred, like gospel. It's serious music, but it allows room to sing about so much other stuff as well.

The spiritual rest, which God particularly intends in this Commandment, is this: that we not only cease from our labor and trade, but much more, that we let God alone work in us and that we do nothing of our own with all our powers.

The attributes of God, though intelligible to us on their surface yet, for the very reason that they are infinite, transcend our comprehension, when they are dwelt upon, when they are followed out, and can only be received by faith.

Every Latter-day Saint should love the inspired Constitution of the United States - a nation with a spiritual foundation and a prophetic history - which nation the Lord has declared to be his base of operations in these latter days.

The purpose of fasting is to loosen to some degree the ties which bind us to the world of material things and our surroundings as a whole, in order that we may concentrate all our spiritual powers upon the unseen and eternal things.

God taking from us and loving us at the same time by providing comforters was a kind of spiritual equanimity. It seemed a phenomenon of life how a death insinuates us into the debt of those who stand by us in trouble and console us.

As the eye of the body once put out, can never be restored by the creature's art, so neither can the spiritual eye lost by Adam's sin be restored by the teaching of men or angels. It is one of the diseases which Christ came to cure.

I have a lot of spiritual books that I read that I really, really love - everything from the Bible to Joseph Campbell, who I love. He wrote The Hero of a Thousand Faces. It's about exploring what is heroic in you. It helps me a lot.

... in a history of spiritual rupture, a social compact built on fantasy and collective secrets, poetry becomes more necessary than ever: it keeps the underground aquifers flowing; it is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.

From the point of view of meditation, there is nothing that is not God. When we meditate, we are participating in a spiritual experience. We are seeing life is not perhaps as we thought, but a little bit different, vastly different.

I called my book 'When I Stop Talking, You'll Know I'm Dead' because that's the truth. I will keep talking until the big hand comes down from Heaven. But I am a spiritual man and I believe that even that does not have to be the end.

Joy is hidden in sorrow and sorrow in joy. If we try to avoid sorrow at all costs, we may never taste joy, and if we are suspicious of ecstasy, agony can never reach us either. Joy and sorrow are the parents of our spiritual growth.

When we get christened or married or die, we drift naturally in the direction of the church. And in moments of crisis, when our spiritual Tom-Tom is no longer telling us what to do, we find ourselves scrabbling at the vicarage door.

I think we need to do some deep soul searching about what's important in our lives and renew our spirit and our spiritual thinking, whether it's through faith-based religion or just through loving nature, or helping your fellow man.

You don't have to call it God or Jesus. That's religious humbug to a lot of people, but you've gotta believe that nature and spiritual things surround us. That is what put us here! I thank the universe for that every day of my life.

It has always appeared to me, that there is so much to be done in this world, that all self-inflicted suffering which cannot be turned to good account for others, is a loss - a loss, if you may so express it, to the spiritual world.

Cities and landscapes are illustrations of our spiritual and material worth. They not only express our values but give them a tangible reality. They determine the way in which we use or squander our energy, time, and land resources.

I have sought to offer humanists a detailed analysis of a technology sufficiently magnificent and spiritual to convince them that the machines by which they are surrounded are cultural artifacts worthy of their attention and respect.

We do not weary of eating and sleeping every day, for hunger and sleepiness recur. Without that we should weary of them. So, without the hunger for spiritual things, we weary of them. Hunger after righteousness--the eighth beatitude.

Spirituality is a word that is bandied about a lot. So I think it might mean different things to different people. I know that the United States of America is something of a religious country, but not necessarily a spiritual country.

The essential lesson I've learned in life is to just be yourself. Treasure the magnificent being that you are and recognize first and foremost you're not here as a human being only. You're a spiritual being having a human experience.

My first seven novels were contemporary spiritual novels, my next nine had strong elements of fantasy, and now I'm writing thrillers, more as a choice to spread my wings than anything. Writers, like good wine, should mature with age.

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

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