Alain de Botton Quotes

Spirituality is an inner fire, a mystical sustenance that feeds our souls. The mystical journey drives us into ourselves, to a sacred flame at our center. The purpose of the religious experience is to develop the eyes by which we see this inner flame, and our capacity to live its mystery. In its presence, we are warmed and ignited. When too far from the blaze, we are cold and spiritually lifeless. We are less than human without that heat. Our connection to God is life itself.

The roots of the Divine are entrenched in this body. If you nurture the roots, how can you avoid the flowering?

Anytime we feed soul, it guarantees increase.

The biggest surprise on the soulful journey to authenticity, whether as a philosophy or a spiritual path, is that the path is a spiral. We go up, but we go in circles. Eash time around, the view gets a little bit wider.

Meditation is valuable for all of humanity because it involves looking inward. People don't have to be religious to look inside themselves more carefully. It is constructive and worthwhile to analyze our emotions, including compassion and our sense of caring, so that we can become more calm and happy.

There is never a day in any mans life when repentance is not essential to his well being in eternal progress.

There's only what you choose, and how you can have it. If you choose peace and joy and love, you won't get much of it through what you're doing. If you choose happiness and contentment, you'll find little of that on the path of doingness. If you choose reunion with God, supreme knowing, deep understanding, endless compassion, total awareness, absolute fulfillment, you won't achieve much of that out of what you're doing.

[The Return of the Prodigal book] came out of my emotional and spiritual journey during the four months I was gone from Daybreak because of depression.

Real spiritual journey in life is the discovery of self. I think once you take all the religious bullshit away from Jesus Christ, it's saying it's about this journey of discovering who you are, and what's really important in life is simply love. That the journey of civilization, the journey of understanding, is forgiveness, is empathy. And that's what humanity is striving for.

... consciousness is an ever-unfolding, deepening, and expanding process with no end point. We are infinite and complex beings, and our human journey involves not just a spiritual awakening, but the development of all levels of our being - spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical - and the integration of all these aspects into a healthy and balanced daily life.

True success is ... the experience of the miraculous. It is the unfolding of the divinity within us.

Encouragement is oxygen to the soul. Good work can never be expected from a worker without encouragement. No one ever climbed spiritual heights without it. No one ever lived without it.

The path of spiritual growth is a path of lifelong learning.

The religious stories, the religious truths, the spiritual principles - obviously, they don't change. But as you get older and you experience more, you recognize the applicability, the profundity, and the fundamental truths of spiritual principles in ways that you couldn't when you simply were living a less dimensional life.

Surely the experience of all good men confirms the proposition that without a due measure of private devotions the soul will grow lean.

My spiritual journey has been a good kind of thing I've been on. I guess some people would say I'm obsessed with it, but in a really good way. It's just enjoyable. I don't really have crazy obsessions about things.

Nourish yourself with grand and austere ideas of beauty that feed the soul Seek solitude.

I've always been very spiritual, since I was a very, very young child. The older I get, I'm reading more, I'm experiencing more, and so that's all reflected in all of my music. All of my fans are pretty familiar with me and my beliefs. It's all about connecting to yourself and sticking to your own spirituality.

Jon passes from Darkness to Light.

In the spiritual life one becomes just like a little child, without resentment, without attachment, full of life and joy.

Whether you’re checked in or checked out, you’re always on a spiritual journey.

Life is about your soul, not about your body and not about your mind. Most people work hard to keep the body happy. Then they seek to stimulate their mind. Then... if there is time... they look after their soul. Yet the most beneficial priority has it just the other way around... When was the last time you paid attention to your soul?

Spiritually, it's always there. It gets better and better all the time. One of these days I'll just finally release all that out.

No one can write their real religious life with pen or pencil. It is written only in actions, and its seal is our character, not our orthodoxy. Whether we, our neighbor, or God is the judge, absolutely the only value of our religious life to ourselves or to anyone is what it fits us for and enables us to do.