Thomas a Kempis Quotes

Being somebody who wants to be religious doesn't make me perfect and doesn't make me necessarily any better than anybody else. It maybe makes me better than I would have been if I didn't have that level.

Eventually, I joined a church. I didn't go there to find a boyfriend; I truly wasn't looking for anyone other than the person I wanted to be.

If you take the responsibility for your life you can start changing it. Slow will be the change, only in the course of time will you start; moving into the world of light and crystallization, but once you are crystallized you will know what real revolution is. Then share your revolution with others; it has to go that way, from heart to heart.

It is not my experience that we are here to fix the world, that we are here to change anything at all. I think we are here so the world can change us. And if part of that change is that the suffering of the world moves us compassion, to awareness, to sympathy, to love, that is a very good thing.

An eager pursuit of fortune is inconsistent with a severe devotion to truth. The heart must grow tranquil before the thought can become searching.

Once God and grace move us to the second half of life, religion becomes a mystical matter, rather than a moral matter.

Kyle Idleman’s Not a Fan is a crucial message for our time. It’s a powerful call to commitment and to following Jesus with all our hearts that has challenged me in the best of ways!

If our hearts and minds are not properly transformed, we are like musicians playing untuned instruments, or engineers working with broken and ill-programmed computers. The attunement of the heart is essential to the outflow of grace...We must aim at building the structures of God's kingdom but recognized that we will only create these through the transformation of our experience. Concentration on reformation without revival leads to skins without wine; concentration on revival without reformation soon loses the wine for want of skins.

The constant habit of perusing devout books is so indispensable, that it has been termed the oil of the lamp of prayer. Too much reading, however, and too little meditation, may produce the effect of a lamp inverted; which is extinguished by the very excess of that ailment, whose property is to feed it.

Making conclusions about life is a sure way to deny yourself the possibility of a human being transforming himself into the Divine.

Let those desert places in our hearts bloom.

Male initiation does not move toward machoism; on the contrary, it moves toward achieving a cultivated heart before we die.

Jesus was not sent here to teach the people to build magnificent churches and temples amidst the cold wretched huts and dismal hovels. He came to make the human heart a temple, and the soul an altar, and the mind a priest.

More than fifty-five years ago my father told me, "The Bible does not belong on the shelf but in your hand, under your eye, and in your heart."

I came to the conclusion that unless I found myself and became the change I wanted to see in the world - as Gandhi said - I couldn't contribute much, nor would there be anything fulfilling or meaningful in my life. So I went on a spiritual search.

The great end of all religionis to purify our hearts--and conquer our passions--and in a word, to make us wiser and better men--better neighbours--better citizens--and better servants of GOD.

If you knew me in the past, please do not think that I am the same person that you are meeting today. I have experienced more of life, I have encountered new depths in those I love, I have suffered and prayed and I am different.

Well, I kind of split my life into two pieces. One was where my chess career lies. There, I kept my sanity, so to speak, and my logic. And the other was my religious life. I tried to apply what I learned in the church to my chess career too. But I still was studying chess. I wasn't just "trusting in God" to give me the moves.

The enlarging of the soul requires not only some remodeling, but some excavating.

I think that really what our training, what our culture, our religious institutions, our educational and cultural institutions should be about is preparing the heart for that journey outside of the cage of the ribs.

Lord I'm Doing All I Can To Be A Better Man.

Once you realize that the way you exist right now is not enough, that there is something more, your spiritual process has already begun.

Such self-denial 'may appear demanding,' but it will allow you, so to speak, to be and to breathe within the heart of the church.

Work, my children, work with your whole heart and soul! That is the thing. Mind not the fruit of work. What if you go to hell working for others? That is worth more than to gain heaven by seeking your own salvation... Sri Ramakrishna came and gave his life for the world. I will also sacrifice my life.