Selected sacred quotes

1. A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease. Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves. No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself.

2. There must be something strangely sacred about salt. It is in our tears and in the sea.

3. Today, the degradation of the inner life is symbolized by the fact that the only place sacred from interruption is the private toilet.

4. Direct me gods, whose changes are all holy, To where it flickers deep in grass, the moly.

5. 'The road to the sacred leads through the secular.'

6. Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery.

7. I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper's wounds, I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. Is it not a beautiful experience?

8. There is but one Temple in the World; and that is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier than this high form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this Revelation in the Flesh. We touch Heaven, when we lay our hand on a human body.

9. I wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred. I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant.

10. The groves were God's first temples.

11. Government seems to me to be a part of religion itself- a thing sacred in its institutions and ends.

12. It is a mark of insincerity of purpose to spend one's time in looking for the sacred Emperor in the low-class tea-shops.

13. Ay, call it holy ground, The soil where first they trod; They have left unstained what there they found - Freedom to whorship God.

14. These temple-destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar. Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.

15. The highest point a man can obtain is not Knowledge, or Virtue, or Goodness, or Victory, but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe!

16. There is clearly a sacred dimension to our existence, and coming to terms with it could well be the highest purpose of human life.[2]

17. At the bottom of the heart of every human being, from earliest infancy until the tomb, there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all experience of crimes committed, suffered, and witnessed, that good and not evil will be done to him. It is this above all that is sacred in every human being. The good is the only source of the sacred. There is nothing sacred except the good and what pertains to it. [p.51]

18. And truly, I reiterate, . . nothing's small! No lily-muffled hum of a summer-bee, But finds some coupling with the spinning stars; No pebble at your foot, but proves a sphere; No chaffinch, but implies the cherubim: And,-glancing on my own thin, veined wrist,- In such a little tremour of the blood The whole strong clamour of a vehement soul Doth utter itself distinct. Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God: But only he who sees, takes off his shoes, The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries, And daub their natural faces unaware More and more, from the first similitude.

19. This is probably the first time and this is the first country in which people are being taught to realize that, of all the tasks which we have to face, the noblest and most sacred for mankind is that each racial species must preserve the purity of the blood which God has given it. : The greatest revolution which National Socialism has brought about is that it has rent asunder the veil which hid from us the knowledge that all human failures and mistakes are due to the conditions of the time and therefore can be remedied, but that there is one error which cannot be remedied once men have made it, namely the failure to recognize the importance of conserving the blood and the race free from intermixture and thereby the racial aspect and character which are God's gift and God's handiwork. It is not for men to discuss the question of why Providence created different races, but rather to recognize the fact that it punishes those who disregard its work of creation. : As I look back on the great work that has been done during the past four years you will understand quite well that my first feeling is simply one of thankfulness to our Almighty God for having allowed me to bring this work to success. He has blessed our labors and has enabled our people to come through all the obstacles which encompassed them on their way. : Today I must humbly thank Providence, whose grace has enabled me, who was once an unknown soldier in the War, to bring to a successful issue the struggle for the restoration of our honor and rights as a nation.

20. Bon Dieu; la voila terminee, cette pauvre petite messe. Est-ce bien de la musique sacree que je viens de faire, ou bien de la sacre musique ? J'etais ne pour l'opera buffa, tu le sais bien! Peu de science, un peu de coeur, tout est la. Sois donc beni et accorde-moi le Paradis.

21. Atop the tallest of earth's peaks dwell the gods of earth, and suffer not man to tell that he hath looked upon them. Lesser peaks they once inhabited; but ever the men from the plains would scale the slopes of rock and snow, driving the gods to higher and higher mountains till now only the last remains. When they left their old peaks they took with them all signs of themselves, save once, it is said, when they left a carven image on the face of the mountain which they called Ngranek. ... They are grown stern, and where once they suffered men to displace them, they now forbid men to come; or coming, to depart. It is well for men that they know not of Kadath in the cold waste; else they would seek injudiciously to scale it.

22. Above the mists on Hatheg-Kla, earth's gods sometimes dance reminiscently; for they know they are safe, and love to come from unknown Kadath in ships of clouds and play in the olden way, as they did when earth was new and men not given to the climbing of inaccessible places.

23. At the foot of the Cross on Calvary Three soldiers sat and diced, And one of them was the Devil And he won the Robe of Christ.

24. She shows herself to the audience like the Host to the congregation. (p. 217)

25. Illic, precor, optime ductor, famulam tibi praecipe mentem, genitali in sede sacrari quam liquerat exsul et errans.

26. Nothing is more sacred than the facts.

27. A poet's Mistress is a hallowed thing.

28. I believe in the sacredness of the human body, this transient dwelling place of a living soul,

29. At every moment of crisis an array of men risk their lives in the front ranks as standard-bearers of God to fight and take upon themselves the whole responsibility of the battle. Once long ago it was the priests, the kings, the noblemen, or the burghers who created civilizations and set divinity free. Today God is the common worker made savage by toil and rage and hunger

30. Surely that little pseudo-gothic church on Broadway, hidden amongst the skyscrapers, is symbolic of the age! On the whole face of the globe the civilization that has conquered it has failed to build a temple or a tomb.

31. That fellow would vulgarize the day of judgment.

32. 'I believe that appreciation is a holy thing, that when we look for what's best in the person we happen to be with at the moment, we're doing what God does; so in appreciating our neighbor, we're participating in something truly sacred.

33. The hallmark, then, of the advanced religious, nonsectarian or any other (and I graciously include in the definition of an 'advanced religious,' odious though the phrase is, all Christians on the great Vivekananda's terms; i.e, 'See Christ, then you are a Christian; all else is talk') - the hallmark most commonly identifying this person is that he very frequently behaves like a fool, even an imbecile.

34. Seymour once said that all we do our whole lives is go from one little piece of Holy Ground to the next.

35. It is far more important to build a home than to erect a church. The holiest temple beneath the stars is a home that love has built.

36. One laugh of a child will make the holiest day more sacred still.