Edward Norton Quotes

We are not born all at once, but by bits. The body first, and the spirit later; and the birth and growth of the spirit, in those who are attentive to their own inner life, are slow and exceedingly painful.

Help us to be ever faithful gardeners of the spirit, who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth, and without light nothing flowers.

Every time you are passing the test, you are coming closer to Krishna.

Spiritual formation is for everyone. Just as there is an 'outer you' that is being formed and shaped all the time, like it or not, by accident or on purpose, so there is an 'inner you.' You have a spirit. And it's constantly being shaped and tugged at: by what you hear and watch and say and read and think and experience.

I don't think I have spiritual beliefs in the structured sense - but I believe in the absolute necessity of spirit and a healthy spiritual life. It grew inside me by itself, which is surely the very nature of spirit, and instinctively I protected and nourished it. I also absorbed spirituality by osmosis.

The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond, and must be polished, or the luster of it will never appear.

As a child that is born into the world requires nourishment, so also the Christ that is born within is a babe and requires to be nourished to the full stature of manhood.

What's positive is moving from a place of growing in faith to really feeling more grounded in faith, to understand that faith is hard, that I'll stumble, that I'll make mistakes, that I'll sin. But, that's part of being on a faith path; it's part of being a human being.

Spiritual formation is character formation. Everyone gets a spiritual formation. It's like education. Everyone gets an education; it's just a matter of which one you get.

The tree has been always an allegory for spiritual growth.

That mystic clasp of love lies not on the threshold but at the end of spiritual life, and can be reached for the most part only after much spiritual exercising, many denials, self-denials, watchings, and, it may be, the Cross of pain and disillusionment.

We are fighting the greatest battle of all time with the most untrained army on earth. If strict discipline is necessary in art and athletics, how can we expect to be advanced Christians and stay in kindergarten?

I think we're intrinsically spiritual. We're spiritual beings in a physical universe and we are here to make a spiritual contribution.

The real spiritual journey is work. You can make a naïve assertion that you trust in Jesus, but until it is tested a good, oh, 200 times, I doubt very much that it's true.

In my creature impatience I am often caused to wish that there were some way to bring modern Christians into a deeper spiritual life painlessly by short, easy lessons; but such wishes are vain. No shortcut exists. God has not bowed to our nervous haste nor embraced the methods of our machine age. It is well that we accept the hard truth now: The man who would know God must give time to Him.

If our lives are made up of a string of a thousand moments, at some of those moments we look a lot more spiritually evolved than at others.

The only thing you're taking out of here is your spirit and your soul, so we need to be conscious to try and develop that part of ourselves, because we're all spiritual creatures.

A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.

A steady diet of the higher truths might prove exhausting, but it's important that we acknowledge their validity and celebrate their survival.

Learning how to operate a soul figures to take time.

I have discovered that just because we grow weaker physically as we age, it doesn't mean that we must grow weaker spiritually.

I decided years ago that if I'm going to keep teaching contemplation, then the last years of my life should be contemplative.

Every soul is a melody which needs renewing.

Over the years as I went through a lot more things, I've gotten closer and closer to God as far as praying a lot more, being into the Word.

A sincere seeker knows what his goal is: the highest Truth. He will not delay his journey. In spiritual life, we aspire for the highest Truth, for God, nothing else.