33 Emanuel Swedenborg Quotes

Emanuel Swedenborg quotes

1. Man knows that love is, but not what it is.

2. A person who knows all that is good and all that is true---as much as can be known---but does not resist evils, knows nothing.

3. All religion relates to life, and the life of religion is to do good.

4. A life of kindness is the primary meaning of divine worship.

5. All in heaven take joy in sharing their delights and blessings with others.

6. There is one God, in whom there is the Divine Trinity, and he is the Lord Jesus Christ. This can be briefly illustrated in the following way: It is a certain and established truth that God is one, and his essence cannot be divided; and also that there is a Trinity. Since God is One, and his essence cannot be divided, it follows that God is one Person. And since he is one Person, the Trinity is in that Person. It is clear that this Person is the Lord Jesus Christ from the fact that he was conceived from God the Father (Luke 1:34, 35), and thus as to his soul and life itself he is God. Therefore, as he himself said, 'he and the Father are one.' (John 10:30).

7. Since the Bible is a divine revelation, every single part of it is divine. Anything that comes from the divine could be no other way. Everything that comes from the divine goes down through the heavens all the way to people on earth. In heaven it is adapted to the wisdom of the angels there, and on earth it is adapted to the understanding of the people there. So the Bible has an inner, spiritual meaning for angels and an outer, material-level meaning for people on earth. That is why our connection to heaven happens through the Bible.

8. Some people believe it is hard to lead the heaven-bound life that is called 'spiritual' because they have heard that we need to renounce the world and give up the desires attributed to the body and the flesh and 'live spiritually.' All they understand by this is spurning worldly interests, especially concerns for money and prestige, going around in constant devout meditation about God, salvation, and eternal life, devoting their lives to prayer, and reading the Word and religious literature. They think this is renouncing the world and living for the spirit and not for the flesh. However, the actual case is quite different, as I have learned from an abundance of experience and conversation with angels. In fact, people who renounce the world and live for the spirit in this fashion take on a mournful life for themselves, a life that is not open to heavenly joy, since our life does remain with us [after death]. No, if we would accept heaven's life, we need by all means to live in the world and to participate in its duties and affairs. In this way, we accept a spiritual life by means of our moral and civic life; and there is no other way a spiritual life can be formed within us, no other way our spirits can be prepared for heaven. This is because living an inner life and not an outer life at the same time is like living in a house that has no foundation, that gradually either settles or develops gaping cracks or totters until it collapses.

9. When someone's body can no longer perform its functions in the natural world in response to the thoughts and affections of its spirit (which it derives from the spiritual world), then we say that the individual has died. This happens when the lungs' breathing and the heart's systolic motion have ceased. The person, though, has not died at all. We are only separated from the physical nature that was useful to us in the world. The essential person is actually still alive. I say that the essential person is still alive because we are not people because of our bodies but because of our spirits. After all, it is the spirit within us that thinks, and thought and affection together make us the people we are. We can see, then, that when we die we simply move from one world into another. This is why in the inner meaning of the Bible, 'death' means resurrection and a continuation of life.

10. Angels from the Lord lead and protect us every moment and every moment of every moment. #5992

11. Angels never attack, as infernal spirits do. Angels only ward off and defend. #1683

1. The sky is an enormous man.

2. Heaven is not located on high, but where the good of love is, and this resides within a person, wherever he or she might be.

3. All union is effected by love, and love is not love without trust.

4. What is true is true, and what is false is false...

5. Seen in its own right, a loving person's inner spirit is an angel of heaven, and while we are living in the body we are also in the company of angels, even though we are not aware of it; and once we are released from the body we join them.

6. The human race is the basis on which heaven is founded, is because man was last created, and that which is last created is the basis of all that precedes.

7. Adultery is an image of hell.

8. Goodness and love mould the form into their own image, and cause the joy and beauty of love to shine forth from every part of the face.

9. The essence of love is that what is ours should belong to someone else. Feeling the joy of someone else as joy within ourselves-that is loving.

10. Man is so created that as to his internal he cannot die; for he is capable of believing in God, and thus of being conjoined to God by faith and love, and to be conjoined to God is to live to eternity.

11. A person's life from infancy to old age is nothing else than an advance from the world towards heaven, the last stage of which is death; the actual transition from one life to the next.

12. The church of the Lord is spread over all the globe, and is thus universal; and all those are in it who have lived in the good of charity in accordance with their religion…

13. Charity is like warmth in springtime or summer that causes grass, plants, and trees to grow. Without charity, or spiritual warmth, nothing grows.

14. And as the divine that goes forth from the Lord is the good of love and the truth of faith, the angels are angels and are heaven in the measure in which they receive good and truth from the Lord.

15. That every man after the life in the world lives to eternity, is evident from this, that man is then spiritual, and no longer natural, and that the spiritual man, separated from the natural, remains such as he is to eternity, for man's state cannot be changed after death.

16. The act of exploring what the men are, and moreover the separation of the good from the evil, is visitation; and the good are then removed, and the evil are left behind.

17. Faith is knowing and thinking truths. Charity is willing and doing them.

18. Anyone can see that intending and not acting when we can is not really intending, and loving and not doing good when we can is not really loving.

19. Our love is our life itself. What our love is like determines how we live and therefore everything about what we are as human beings.

20. The life of any one can by no means be changed after death; an evil life can in no wise be converted into a good life, or an infernal into an angelic life: because every spirit, from head to foot, is of the character of his love, and therefore, of his life; and to convert this life into its opposite, would be to destroy the spirit utterly.

21. Charity itself consists in acting justly and faithfully in whatever office, business and employment a person is engaged in.

22. He who is in evil, is also in the punishment of evil.