Pico Iyer Quotes

I feel very at home in an empty church. I feel the most protected. It's very mystical.

I found that quiet place in my home that is my place of refuge. I don't care if you got kids or if you are married. You got to find that one place that is your everybody-off-limit place: unless this place is on fire, or you need to go to the emergency room, don't disturb me. You can go to this place and cleanse, meditate, let God speak to you.

People ask me where I go to get away, and I say 'Home.'

As we attend the temple, there can come to us a dimension of spirituality and a feeling of peace which will transcend any other feeling which could come into the human heart. We will grasp the true meaning of the words of the Savior when He said: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you. … Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”

I still go to church occasionally. I went the other day and found peace.

I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods.

I'm happiest in an empty church. I love the smell of a church.

It is nice finding that place where you can just go and relax.

I just go in my back garden. It's the only place where people don't come and bother you.

Me, I'm spiritually retarded, I need to be knee deep in water with a fly rod in my hands, that's about as close to God as I get.

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be.

I grew up in a forest. It's like a room. It's protected. Like a cathedral... it is a place between heaven and earth.

I like nothing more than walking down a country lane or along a mountain path - it's not proof that there is anything bigger than ourselves, but I feel very much at peace.

No matter what happens, I can go back to the mountains. I have nature and my wonderful friends and neighbors. I get so much by being there.

Silence has a regenerative power of its own. It is always sacred. It always returns you home.

How do you spell peace? P-R-A-Y-E-R! Anything you believe you need is available to you through prayer. We are not talking here about a magic formula of proper and distinct words. Oh no! We are talking about opening your heart and your mouth, saying what's on your mind, knowing that once you do, the answer will be revealed.

What a hideout: Holiness lies spread and borne over the surface of time and stuff like color.

Now I am past all comforts here, but prayer.

By a garden is meant mystically a place of spiritual repose, stillness, peace, refreshment, delight.

I once listened to an Indian on television say that God was in the wind and the water, and I wondered at how beautiful that was because it meant you could swim in Him or have Him brush your face in a breeze.

In a library, you can find small miracles and truth, and you might find something that will make you laugh so hard that you will get shushed, in the friendliest way. I have found sanctuary in libraries my whole life, and there is sanctuary there now, from the war, from the storms of our families and our own minds. Libraries are like mountains or meadows or creeks: sacred space. So this afternoon, I'll walk to the library.

Grant us safe lodging, and holy rest,” Mrs. Grogan was saying, “and peace at last.” Amen, thought Wilbur Larch, the Saint of St. Cloud’s, who was seventy-something, and an ether addict, and who felt that he’d come a long way and still had a long way to go.

It is in that inner peace and stillness that things begin to happen, and it was in that peace and stillness that I began to hear God's voice.

Thrice happy he, who by some shady grove, Far from the clamorous world; doth live his own; Though solitary, who is not alone, But doth converse with that eternal love.

He was not oppressed by a crowd because in the midst of all the hullabaloo he always found a quiet place for his soul.