Stevie Smith Quotes

There is the type of man who gives his life to earn the pleasure of Allah...

The spiritual path wrecks the body And afterwards restores it to health. It destroys the house to unearth the treasure, And with that treasure builds it better than before.

Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.

I'm not in the world to guard my own life, but to guard souls

The Martyr finds her way to self-knowledge through pain, suffering, and surrender.

It's easy to become anything you wish . . . so long as you're willing to forfeit your soul.

The fear of Hell, or aiming to be blest, Savors too much of private interest. This moved not Moses, nor the zealous Paul, Who for their friends abandoned soul and all.

The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey.

The bird with the thorn in its breast, it follows an immutable law; it is driven by it knows not what to impale itself, and die singing. At the very instant the thorn enters there is no awareness in it of the dying to come; it simply sings and sings until there is not the life left to utter another note. But we, when we put the thorns in our breasts, we know. We understand. And still we do it. Still we do it.

To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not / You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.

To every man who struggles with his own soul in mystery, a book that is a book flowers once, and seeds, and is gone.

"If you die, you get to heaven; and if you win, you enjoy the earth" (Gita). Even if you die in this attempt, well and good, many will take up the work, following your example. And if you succeed, you will live a life of great opulence.

If we are the sheep of His pasture, remember that sheep are headed for the altar.

Sometimes I knew in all my mind and heart why I had done what I had done, and I welcomed the sacrifice. But there were times too when I lived in a desert and felt no joy and saw no hope and could not remember my old feelings. Then I lived by faith alone, faith without hope. What good did I get from it? I got to have love in my heart.

From this point on, she whispered, we will either find or lose our souls.

Most of the world's great souls have been lonely. Loneliness seems to be one price the saint must pay for his saintliness... Always remember: you cannot carry a cross in company. Though a man were surrounded by a vast crowd, his cross is his alone and his carrying of it marks him as a man apart. Society has turned against him; otherwise he would have no cross. No one is a friend to the man with a cross.

The dark night of the soul comes just before revelation.

I wish to be a martyr, and I don't fear death.

Misfortune makes of certain souls a vast desert through which rings the voice of God.

Christ calls us to carry the Cross; churches call us to have fun in His name.

Cheerfulness is a sign of a generous and mortified person who forgetting all things, even herself, tries to please her God in all she does for souls. Cheerfulness is often a cloak which hides a life of sacrifice and a continual union with God.

I would rather die for Christ than rule the whole earth.

It is more difficult, and it calls for higher energies of soul, to live a martyr than to die one.

Vice has more martyrs than virtue; and it often happens that men suffer more to be lost than to be saved.

Now let me burn out for God.