Josiah Royce Quotes

Religion is a search for transcendence. But transcendence isn't necessarily sited in an external god, which can be a very unspiritual, unreligious concept.

I think there is a longing in everyone for a personal relationship with God.

The main object of religion is not to get a man into heaven, but to get heaven into him.

Heaven means to be one with God.

Eternal life and the invisible world are only to be sought in God. Only within Him do all spirits dwell. He is an abyss of individuality, the only infinite plenitude.

Wanting to feel good is synonymous with wanting to feel God.

Thou art my single day, God lends to leaven What were all earth else, with a feel of heaven.

When I was in my mid-20s, I traveled a lot around the world, and the question I had for everyone I talked to was, 'What is your conception of God?' I found that everybody basically felt the same: God is within and without. He's in everything.

I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong.

If God gave the soul his whole creation she would not be filled thereby but only with himself.

To be filled with God is a great thing, to be filled with the fullness of God is still greater; to be filled with all the fullness of God is greatest of all.

Mysticism and exaggeration go together. A mystic must not fear ridicule if he is to push all the way to the limits of humility or the limits of delight.

She saw the myriad gods, and beyond God his own ineffable eternity; she saw that there were ranges of life beyond our present life, ranges of mind beyond our present mind and above these she saw the splendors of the spirit.

Man is an imperceptible atom always trying to become one with God.

God has put within our lives meanings and possibilities that quite outrun the limits of mortality.

The idea of eternity lives in all of us. We thirst to live in a belief which raises our small personality to a higher coherence - a coherence which is human and yet superhuman, absolute and yet steadily growing and developing, ideal and yet real.

The soul... may have many symbols with which it reaches toward God.

I'm convinced we all have a God-shaped space in us, and until we fill that space with God, we'll never know what it is to be whole.

A religion without mystery must be a religion without God.

God owns heaven but He craves the earth.

I respect religion in general. I respect a lot, but I don't follow any religion. You know, I just follow my personal connection with God. For me, God is inside my heart and is inside everyone's heart.

As told in Friendship with God, if we simply decided to believe and act as if first, we're all one, and second, life is eternal, it would render virtually everything we've done all our lives pointless.

To love another person is to see the face of God.

The unseen world is what emanates from God.

I think there's a passion for God like never before.