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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:

Whatever answers faith gives, regardless of which faith, or to whom the answers are given, such answers always give an infinite meaning to the finite existence of man; a meaning that is not destroyed by suffering, deprivation or death. This means only in faith can we find the meaning and possibility of life.

Leo Tolstoy

If what I assume is true, it is still excellent to be convinced of it, but if there is nothing after death, I will at least during the time before my death be less burdensome to my companions because of complaints, and furthermore this folly of mine will not last long—for that would indeed be an evil—but in a short time will vanish.

Plato

Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind.

Henry David Thoreau

Today the journey is ended,
I have worked out the mandates of fate;
Naked, alone, undefended,
I knock at the Uttermost Gate.
Behind is life and its longing,
Its trial, its trouble, its sorrow,
Beyond is the Infinite Morning
Of a day without a tomorrow.

Wenonah Stevens Abbott

I have reared a memorial more enduring than brass, and loftier than the regal structure of the pyramids, which neither the corroding shower nor the powerless north wind can destroy; no, not even unending years nor the flight of time itself. I shall not entirely die. The greater part of me shall escape oblivion.

Horace

Many of the typologies that have shaped the study of African spirituality were developed in colonial contexts, often by scholars who, despite their best intentions, viewed African spiritualities through the lens of Christianity or secular rationalism.

Massimo Introvigne

Poem on Pythagoras
Death, so called, is but older matter dressed
In some new form. And in a varied vest,
From tenement to tenement though tossed,
The soul is still the same, the figure only lost.

John Dryden

I believe we are reincarnated. You, I, we reincarnate over and over. We live many lives, and store up much experience. Some are older souls than others and so they know more. It seems to be an intuitive "gift." It is really hard-won experience.

Henry Ford

I did not begin when I was born, nor when I was conceived. I have been growing, developing, through incalculable myriads of millenniums… All my previous selves have their voices, echoes, promptings in me... Oh, incalculable times again shall I be born.

Jack London

The Law of Rebirth (Reincarnation) is a great natural law upon our planet... It is a process, instituted and carried forward under the Law of Evolution... It is closely related to, and conditioned by, the Law of Cause and Effect.

Alice Bailey

Antony, however, according to his custom, returned alone to his own cell, increased his discipline, and sighed daily as he thought of the mansions in Heaven, having his desire fixed on them, and pondering over the shortness of man's life. And he used to eat and sleep, and go about all other bodily necessities with shame when he thought of the spiritual faculties of the soul. So often, when about to eat with any other hermits, recollecting the spiritual food, he begged to be excused, and departed far off from them, deeming it a matter for shame if he should be seen eating by others.

Athanasius of Alexandria

Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, of sickness, or captivity, would, without this comfort, be insupportable; nor does it appear that the happiest lot of terrestrial existence can set us above the want of this general blessing; or that life, when the gifts of nature and of fortune are accumulated upon it, would not still be wretched, were it not elevated and delighted by the expectation of some new possession, of some enjoyment yet behind, by which the wish shall at last be satisfied, and the heart filled up to its utmost extent.

Samuel Johnson The Rambler (1750)

God is alive. Magic is afoot. God is alive. Magic is afoot. God is afoot. Magic is alive. Alive is afoot. Magic never died. God never sickened. Many poor men lied. Many sick men lied. Magic never weakened. Magic never hid. Magic always ruled. God is afoot. God was ruler though his funeral lengthened. Though his mourners thickened Magic never fled...

Leonard Cohen Beautiful Losers (1966)

[W]e were inspired by the fierce dignity of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, as she proved that no human being can truly be imprisoned if hope burns in your heart.

Barack Obama Yangon University Speech (2012)

If we’re not working in order to get rich, then why are we working at all? What are we supposed to do all day? Just sit home and watch TV?
Not at all, but thinking so is a temporary phase many people go through — when the values of the old world no longer have a hold on us, but the values of the new don’t yet grab your soul. They will.

Marianne Williamson A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles (1992)

The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Matthew Arnold New Poems (1867)

Faith is a vice pretending to be a virtue, its lies and errors and frothy nonsense deluding us and distracting us from action. There's no salvation in wishful thinking, only inertia. Faith is the enemy of reason. The one thing every single one of us here must be united in despising is faith. It's the barren refuge of the vacuous, the fearful, the frauds, and the obstacles to accomplishment.

PZ Myers

Like legend and myth, magic fades when it is unused — hence all the old tales of elfin Kingdoms moving further and further away from our world, or that magical beings require our faith, our belief in their existence, to survive. … That is a lie. All they require is our recognition.

Charles de Lint The Little Country (1991)

With regard to their actual course of studies, the main object of all education is, in their opinion, to imbue their scholars with a firm belief in the indestructibility of the human soul, which, according to their belief, merely passes at death from one tenement to another; for by such doctrine alone, they say, which robs death of all its terrors, can the highest form of human courage be developed.

Julius Caesar

Practically all the teaching given anent rebirth or reincarnation, has emphasised the material phenomenal side, though there has always been a more or less casual reference to the spiritual and mental gains acquired in the school of life upon this planet, from incarnation to incarnation. The true nature of the unfolding awareness, and the growth of the inner consciousness of the true man, have been little noted; the gain of each life in added grasp of the mechanism of contact, and the result of increased sensitivity to the environment, are seldom if ever stressed.

Alice Bailey

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