Many / One

A database of 11,000+ illuminated guiding quotations in 40 categories from 600+ inspired books by our most brilliant and influential authors.
Compiled by JoAnn Kite

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1		"What happens in your innermost being is worthy of your whole love." Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), German poet, 'Letters to a Young Poet'

2		"There exists an ultimate Reality that is by nature both transcendent and immanent. The immanent aspect, this something of God in man, traces its ancestry to early Hindu sources, thence to the Socratic movement in philosophy, and on to the teaching of Jesus. Since then it has been variously expressed as: 'the deep center', 'the ground of the soul', 'the inward Voice', the Real Self', 'the inner Vocation', 'that something which binds us to the deeper processes of consciousness', 'that potentiality of an extension of consciousness', et cetera."

3		"Fortunately, we have proof that the spirit always renews its strength in the fact that the essential teaching of the initiations is handed on from generation to generation. Ever and again there are human beings who understand what it means that God is their father. The equal balance of the flesh and the spirit is not lost to the world." Carl G. Jung (1875-1961), 'Freud and Psychoanalysis'

4		"We are inescapably all members of one another." Rose Terlin, contemporary American editor and writer, 'Christian Faith and Social Action'

5		"In broadest outline we see the universe evolving life and life evolving to continually extended awareness. We see our individuality as a phase – perhaps a hairpin bend in the zig-zag spiral of ascent – and we see that our task in cooperating with the purpose of life and the universe is so to act and to think that we become increasingly aware of our extra-individuality – that is, the common life which unites us with our fellow creatures with all life and the universe." Gerald Heard (1889-1972), English philosopher and author, 'The Third Morality'

6		"I realize that in 'my' chemistry I am akin to earth and water; I recognize my kinship with flowers and grass and trees, with brooks and lakes and rivers, and I feel their rhythms flow through me with peace and power, as I yield my sense of them-in-separateness to the Unity which is their underlying reality." Ruth Raymond (1878-1969), American art educator, written for this anthology

7		"Somehow we are part of a creative destiny, reaching backward and forward to infinity – a destiny that reveals itself…in our striving, in our love, our thought, our appreciation. We are the fruition of a process that stretches back to star dust. We are material in the hands of the Genius of the universe for a still larger destiny that we cannot see in the everlasting rhythm of worlds." John Elof Boodin, (1869-1950), American philosopher, 'Cosmic Evoltuion'

8		"Every act of love brings happiness; there is no act of love which does not bring peace and blessedness as its reaction. Real existence, real knowledge, and real love are eternally connected with one another, the three in one: where one of them is, the others also must be; they are the three aspects of the One without a second – the Existence-Knowledge-Bliss." Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), Hindu mystic, 'Karma-Yoga'

9		"Oh, who will give me a voice that I may cry aloud to the whole world that God, the all highest, is in the deepest abyss within us and is waiting for us to return to Him." Hans Denck (1495-1527), German mystic, 'On the Law of God'

10		"Prayer is not the pleading to be saved suffering; it is the pleading that one will be spared no suffering which is necessary to achieve the end one desires: unity with God and co-consciousness with all people." Rose Terlin, American editor and writer, 'Prayer and Christian Living'

11		"Who are you who go about to save them that are lost? Are you saved yourself?.... Be sure, very sure, that each one of these can teach you as much as, probably more than, you can teach them. Have you then sat humbly at their feet, and waited on their lips that they should be the first to speak – and been reverent before these children – whom you so little understand? Have you dropped into the bottomless pit from between yourself and them all hallucination of superiority, all flatulence of knowledge, every shred of abhorrence and loathing? Is it equal, is it free as the wind between you? Could you be happy receiving favors from one of the most despised of these?.....Arise, then, and become a savior." Edward Carpenter (1844-1929), English author, poet, 'Towards Democracy'

12		"God can show Himself as He really is only to real people. And that means not simply to people who are individually good, but to people who are united together in a body, loving one another, helping one another, showing Him to one another. For that is what God meant humanity to be like; like players in one band, or organs in one body." C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), English professor, author, 'Beyond Personality'

13		"This is the real message of the Bhagavad Gita: in short, temporal life and spiritual values stand in a relation of harmony – one divine life, as the Gita tells us." Swami Prabhavananda (b. 1893), monk of Ramakrishna Mission, 'Vedic Religion and Philosophy'

14		"It is through the symbol – the language of the unconscious – that the deeper levels of man's being have always expressed themselves."

15		"Do whatever stirs the chords of genuine We-feeling. Seek to set them vibrating more and more until they become the dominating or sole satisfactions in your experience." Fritz Kunkel (1889-1956), American psychiatrist, 'How Character Develops'

16		"Tao acts without assertion, yet all things proceed in conformity with it." Laotzu, 6th century bce Chinese philosopher, 'Laotzu's Tao and Wu-Wei'

17		"The Kingdom of God is not imminent but immanent; it is not 'among you', about suddenly to break like a thunderstorm, but 'within you', ready to be expressed the moment you understand your latent, common nature and how you must and can transcend your individuality, your egotism, which makes the world the obstacle it proves today to be to you." Gerald Heard (1889-1971), English author and philosopher, 'The Third Morality'

18		"God is the one systematic, complete fact, which is the antecedent ground conditioning every creative act." Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), English mathematician and philosopher, 'Religion in the Making'

19		"All of us are individual spirits created to evolve into a common union." Anonymous

20		"Freedom comes through complete acceptance of reality." Alan W. Watts (1915-1973), American philosopher and author, 'The Spirit of Zen'

21		"Everything I do is like the pebble thrown into a pool, making larger and larger ripples in the waters of other lives." Joshua Loth Liebman (1907-1948), American rabbi, educator, 'Peace of Mind'

22		"I can see that in the midst of death, life persists; in the midst of untruth, truth persists; in the midst of darkness, light persists. Hence I gather that God is Life, Truth, Light. He is Love. He is the supreme Good." Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948), Hindu statesman and mystic, 'Gandhi's Ideas'

23		"That we must give if we are to receive is not a rule, as is so oftern supposed, in defiance of Nature. Rather all the processes of Nature reflect its unconscious action. Life could sustain its being in no other way." Hugh l'Anson Fausset (1895-1965), English critic, poet, 'Proving of Psyche'

24		"Live in simple faith….just as this trusting cherry flowers, fades, and falls." Issa (1763-1827), Japanese poet, 'Japanese Haiku'

25		"Self [capital S] is the focal point of the psyche in which God's image shows itself most plainly and the experience of which gives us the knowledge, as nothing else does, of the significance and nature of our likeness to God." Jolande Jacobi