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Easter Quotes

The sources for this page are the faith, hope and spirituality pages, not a collection of Easter writing. A few entries do mention the day: Longfellow’s The Spanish Student (1843) sets a scene on a bright Easter Sunday with blossoming trees, and W. H. Auden, in A Certain World (1970), says Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry but Good Friday cannot, any more than Auschwitz.

Most of what else you find here is general. Expect devotional writers and poets, with sources and dates on every quote page. Anything flagged as disputed or misattributed carries a note that says what the editors turned up.

Random quote on Easter

Most quoted on easter:

He is not lolling on a lewd love-bed,
But on his knees at meditation;
Not dallying with a brace of courtesans,
But meditating with two deep divines.

William Shakespeare

Since our inner experiences consist of reproductions and combinations of sensory impressions, the concept of a soul without a body seem to me to be empty and devoid of meaning.

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein: The Human Side p. 40 - 5 Feb 1921 (1979)

But each day brings its petty dust
Our soon choked souls to fill.

Matthew Arnold

There is a god within us, and we have intercourse with heaven. That spirit comes from abodes on high.

Ovid

What profits now to understand
The merits of a spotless shirt—
A dapper boot—a little hand—
If half the little soul is dirt.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.

Voltaire

Charity keepeth us in Faith and Hope, and Hope leadeth us in Charity. And in the end all shall be Charity.

Julian of Norwich

The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years,
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
Unhurt amidst the wars of elements,
The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.

Joseph Addison Cato, A Tragedy (1713)

All creative art is magic, is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening, familiar and surprising, for the edification of mankind, pinned down by the conditions of its existence to the earnest consideration of the most insignificant tides of reality.

Joseph Conrad Henry James — An Appreciation (1905)

Love is no ingredient in a merely speculative faith, but it is the life and soul of a practical faith... A speculative faith consists only in the assent of the understanding, but in a saving faith there is also the consent of the heart.

Jonathan Edwards Charity and Its Fruits (1738)

Happy the heart that keeps its twilight hour,
And, in the depths of heavenly peace reclined.
Loves to commune with thoughts of tender power;
Thoughts that ascend, like angels beautiful,
A shining Jacob's ladder of the mind.

Paul Hamilton Hayne Poems (1882)

When the Will is exercised for the advantage of the lower self, when it is employed for personal ends and aims, then is the man a Black Magician, a danger to the race, and his results obstruct and delay human evolution.

Annie Besant A Study in Consciousness: A contribution to the science of psychology (1904)

Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore, seek not to understand that thou mayest believe, but believe that thou mayest understand.

Augustine of Hippo

There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and shallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said "Faith is believing what you know ain't so."

Mark Twain Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World (1897)

The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but something of it remains which is eternal.... We feel and know by experience that we are eternal.

Baruch Spinoza Ethics (1677)

It may be that no life is found,
Which only to one engine bound
Falls off, but cycles always round.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.

William James The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

We do not stray out of all words into the ever silent;
We do not raise our hands to the void for things beyond hope.

Rabindranath Tagore The Gardener (1915)

When we believe that science or religion "has the truth," we stop our speculations. While still referring to the theory of evolution, science accepts it as a fact, about existence, and therefore any speculation that threatens that theory becomes almost heretical.

Jane Roberts The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto (1981)

All worldly shapes shall melt in gloom,
The Sun himself must die,
Before this mortal shall assume
Its Immortality!

Thomas Campbell Theodric: A Domestic Tale; and Other Poems (1825)

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