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Spirituality Quotes

Alice Bailey, Marianne Williamson, Helena Blavatsky and Eckhart Tolle account for most of the top entries, so the page leans toward modern and esoteric writing. The best-sourced pieces are less solemn. Woody Allen says he does not want to achieve immortality through his work but through not dying, and Henry Miller, in Sexus (1949), counts sex among the nine reasons for reincarnation.

Two flags. “Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology” is credited to Larry Niven and marked misattributed. “Corporations have neither bodies to kick nor souls to damn” is credited to Andrew Jackson and disputed, which says more about how the topic tag was applied than about spirituality.

Random quote on Spirituality

Most quoted on spirituality:

Indeed, what is magic but impossible science?

Michael Swanwick Stations of the Tide (1991)

We have never intended to enlighten shoemakers and servants—this is up to apostles.

Voltaire

This is a school in which no pupil ever fails; every one must go on to the end.

Charles Webster Leadbeater A Textbook of Theosophy (1912)

It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that distinguishes the philosopher.

Arthur Schopenhauer

The courage to be as oneself within the atmosphere of Enlightenment is the courage to affirm oneself as a bridge from a lower to a higher state of rationality.

Paul Tillich The Courage to Be (1952)

It is clear from Gurdjieff's writings that hypnotism, mesmerism and various arcane methods of expanding consciousness must have played a large part in the studies of the Seekers of Truth.

P. L. Travers

Self-interest is hostile to the common good, but enlightened self-interest is not. And this is the best key to the meaning of enlightenment.

Allan Bloom

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls.

Carl Jung Psychology and Alchemy (1952)

Was it worthwhile?
Everything is worthwhile
if the soul is not small.

Fernando Pessoa

Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.

Aleister Crowley Part III: Magick in Theory and Practice (1929)

From the religious books of ancient Egypt we learn that the power possessed by a priest or man who was skilled in the knowledge and working of magic was believed to be almost boundless.

E. A. Wallis Budge

It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.

Eugène Ionesco Découvertes (1970)

Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic.

Thomas Szasz The Second Sin (1973)

Since life is but a continuous series of experiences, everything ultimately helps me towards my final enlightenment.

Sri Chinmoy Ten Thousand Flower Flames Part 1-100 (1979)

I have a soul that like an ample shield
Can take in all, and verge enough for more.

John Dryden Don Sebastian (1690)

Were I so tall to reach the pole,
Or grasp the ocean with my span,
I must be measured by my soul;
The mind's the standard of the man.

Isaac Watts

I am the consummate scientist, Road-Storm. Science has suffered in having her name applied to mechanics, an ugly step-child of hers.

R. A. Lafferty Space Chantey (1968)

Above the vulgar flight of common souls.

Arthur Murphy Zenobia (1768)

There is no magic in parchment or in wax.

William Henry Ashurst Master v. Miller (1763)

Death must be an evil — and the gods agree;
for why else would they live for ever?

Sappho

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