"Have you ever lost yourself in a kiss? I mean pure psychedelic inebriation. Not just lustful petting but transcendental metamorphosis when you became aware that the greatness of this being was breathing into you. Licking the sides and corners of your mouth, like sealing a thousand fleshy envelopes filled with the essence of your passionate being and then opened by the same mouth and delivered back to you, over and over again - the first kiss of the rest of your life. A kiss that confirms that the universe is aligned, that the world's greatest resource is love, and maybe even that God is a woman. With or without a belief in God, all kisses are metaphors decipherable by allocations of time, circumstance, and understanding"
— Saul Williams (Said the Shotgun to the Head)

"1. Be Impeccable With Your Word
Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

2. Don't Take Anything Personally
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.

3. Don't Make Assumptions
Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

4. Always Do Your Best
Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret."
— Miguel Ruiz

"Knock, And He'll open the door
Vanish, And He'll make you shine like the sun
Fall, And He'll raise you to the heavens
Become nothing, And He'll turn you into everything.
"
— Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

"The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God."
— Rob Bell (Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith)

"Are you looking for me?
I am in the next seat.
My shoulder is against yours.
you will not find me in the stupas,
not in Indian shrine rooms,
nor in synagogues,
nor in cathedrals:
not in masses,
nor kirtans,
not in legs winding around your own neck,
nor in eating nothing but vegetables.
When you really look for me,
you will see me instantly —
you will find me in the tiniest house of time.
Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath."
— Kabir

"What has he found who has lost God?
And what has he lost who has found God?"
— Ibn 'Ata' Allah Al-Iskandari

"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."
— Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

"How often it is that a small action becomes great by its intention, and how often it is that a great action becomes small by its intention."
— Abdullah Ibn Mubarak

"Try to find pleasure in the speed that you're not used to. Changing the way you do routine things allows a new person to grow inside of you. But when all is said and done, you're the one who must decide how you handle it."
— Paulo Coelho

"Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love,
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life."
— Francis Of Assisi

"The spiritualization of sensuality is called love: it is a great triumph over Christianity."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.'"
— C.S. Lewis

"And if he had judged her harshly? If her life were a simple rosary of hours, her life simple and strange as a bird's life, gay in the morning, restless all day, tired at sundown? Her heart simple and willful as a bird's heart? "
— James Joyce (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man)

"Reflection is the lamp of the heart. If it departs, the heart will have no light."
— Imam Al-Haddad

"Crying is one of the highest devotional songs. One who knows crying, knows spiritual practice. If you can cry with a pure heart, nothing else compares to such a prayer. Crying includes all the principles of Yoga."
— Swami Kripalu

""The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that its center is really everywhere, it is within each of us." "
— Black Elk

"Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships."
— Robert M. Pirsig

""The Holy Land is everywhere""
— Black Elk

"Do not use your energy except for a cause more noble than yourself. Such a cause cannot be found except in Almighty God Himself: to preach the truth, to defend womanhood, to repel humiliation which your Creator has not imposed upon you, to help the oppressed. Anyone who uses his energy for the sake of the vanities of the world is like someone who exchanges gemstones for gravel. There is no nobility in anyone who lacks faith. The wise man knows that the only fitting price for his soul is a place in Paradise..."
— Ibn Hazm

"God sometimes you just don't come through,
Do you need a woman to look after you?"
— Tori Amos (Tori Amos: Tales of A Librarian)

"The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come. When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus his person is not endangered, and his States and all their clans are preserved."
— Confucius (The Analects of Confucius, the Great Learning, Doctrine of the Mean)

"When everything gets answered, it's fake."
— Sean Penn

"A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan."
— Martin Luther King Jr.

"When we retire at night, we constructively review our day. Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid? Do we owe an apology? Have we kept something to ourselves which should be discussed with another person at once? Were we kind and loving toward all? What could we have done better? Were we thinking of ourselves most of the time? Or were we thinking of what we could do for others, of what we could pack into the stream of life? But we must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse or morbid reflection, for that would diminish our usefulness to others. After making our review we ask God’s forgiveness and inquire what corrective measures should be taken.

On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives. Under these conditions we can employ our mental faculties with assurance, for after all God gave us brains to use. Our thought-life will be placed on a much higher plane when our thinking is cleared of wrong motives.

In thinking about our day we may face indecision. We may not be able to determine which course to take. Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision. We relax and take it easy. We don’t struggle. We are often surprised how the right answers come after we have tried this for a while.

What used to be the hunch or the occasional inspiration gradually becomes a working part of the mind. Being still inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with God, it is not probable that we are going to be inspired at all times. We might pay for this presumption in all sorts of absurd actions and ideas. Nevertheless, we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration. We come to rely upon it.

We usually conclude the period of meditation with a prayer that we be shown all through the day what our next step is to be, that we be given whatever we need to take care of such problems. We ask especially for freedom from self-will, and are careful to make no request for ourselves only. We may ask for ourselves, however, if others will be helped. We are careful never to pray for our own selfish ends. Many of us have wasted a lot of time doing that and it doesn’t work. You can easily see why."
— Bill Wilson

"We could all do with a bit more joy in our lives couldn't we? The wonderful thing is that when we start spreading joy, we begin to actually experience more joy in our lives too!"
— Steve Goodier

"در غم ما روزها بی گاه شد
روزها با سوزها همراه شد
"
— Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

"The saviour answered...and said, If you want to be perfect, you will keep these teachings. If not, you deserve to be called ignorant. For a wise person cannot associate with a fool. The wise person is perfect in all wisdom, but to the fool, good and evil are one and the same. For the wise person will be nourished by the truth...Some people have wings but run after what they can see, what is far from the truth."
— Various (Holy Bible: New Testament with Psalms)

"Religion is never more tested than when our emotions are ablaze. At such a time, the timeless grandeur of the Law and its ethics stand at our mercy."
— Abdal Hakim Murad

"By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green. The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet. "
— Thomas Merton

"It is not easy to convey a sense of wonder, let alone resurrection wonder, to another. It’s the very nature of wonder to catch us off guard, to circumvent expectations and assumptions. Wonder can’t be packaged, and it can’t be worked up. It requires some sense of being there and some sense of engagement."
— Eugene H. Peterson

"O heavenly Father,
protect and bless all things
that have breath: guard them
from all evil and let them sleep in peace."
— Albert Schweitzer

"She was startled. "But you're human, aren't you?"

"In some ways yes. But in other ways I'm a stranger to your kind. I have a friend who calls you plucked angels, and he claims you're a total waste of spirit. Do you ever think like that?"

"Of course, in honest moments. But I can be just as honest and think that we aren't a spiritual waste but a spiritual potential waiting to grow.""
— Deepak Chopra (The Return of Merlin)

"The way of Jesus cannot be imposed or mapped — it requires an active participation in following Jesus as he leads us through sometimes strange and unfamiliar terrritory, in circumstances that become clear only in the hesitations and questionings, in the pauses and reflections where we engage in prayerful conversation with one another and with him."
— Eugene H. Peterson (The Jesus Way: A Conversation on the Ways That Jesus Is the Way)

"Through the present moment, you have access to the power of life itself, that which has traditionally been called "God." As soon as you turn away from it, God ceases to be a reality in your life, and all you are left with is the mental concept of God, which some people believe in and others deny. Even belief in God is only a poor substitute for the living reality of God manifesting every moment of your life."
— Eckhart Tolle

"God help us to live slowly:
To move simply:
To look softly:
To allow emptiness:
To let the heart create for us.
Amen."
— Michael Leunig

"Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness."
— Meister Eckhart

"Presently the newly awakened psychology will gradually accomplish what pure religious devotion might have done: throw out Paul, and let Jesus in!"
— Jan Willem Kaiser (De Mysteriën van Jezus in ons Leven)

"I believe that around us there is only one word on all sides, one immense word which reveals our solitude and extinguishes our radiance: Nothing! I believe that that word does not point to our insignificance or our unhappiness, but on the contrary to our fulfillment and our divinity, since everything is in ourselves."
— Henri Barbusse (Hell)

"A culture that does not teach prayer soon runs mad with desire."
— Laurence Freeman

"Love transforms pleasure into pain."
— Imam Al-Busiri (The Burda of Al-Busiri)

"I've always been spiritual but I've never had a proper context, and it took me a while to find the proper context. It's hard to realize you can have any kind of relationship with God you want... and so I now have a punk rock relationship with God"
— Billy Corgan

"God can give or take away, Well who would make such an awful rule."
— Josh Ritter

"Death is someone you see very clearly with eyes in the center of your heart: eyes that see not by reacting to light, but by reacting to a kind of a chill from within the marrow of your own life. "
— Thomas Merton (The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals)