Umberto Eco Quotes

Those who meet Jesus always experience either joy or its opposites, either foretastes of Heaven or foretastes of Hell. Not everyone who meets Jesus is pleased, and not everyone is happy, but everyone is shocked.

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.

We take people to the threshold of religion. Our aim is to induce immediate experience that is beyond the odd, beyond the strange, and beyond the weird. It verges on the wholly other.

I have always been interested in religion, especially in forms of ecstatic religion, where people are touched directly by the Spirit and go completely out of themselves.

A theology should be like poetry, which takes us to the end of what words and thoughts can do.

I had a mystical experience when I was in my late teens, early 20s, and I spent years trying to recapture that.

Religious life is an encounter with the living God. Sometimes that encounter is preceded by a kind of soul-searching agony that tries desperately not to hear, runs in the opposite direction, and frantically tries to reason itself out of answering the invitation.

There are very few religious experiences that aren't explained using the vocabulary of light.

We use the vocabulary of light to describe a spiritual experience.

As a magnifying glass concentrates the rays of the sun into a little burning knot of heat that can set fire to a dry leaf or a piece of paper, so the mystery of Christ in the Gospel concentrates the rays of God's light and fire to a point that sets fire to the spirit of man. ... Through the glass of His Incarnation He concentrates the rays of His Divine Truth and Love upon us so that we feel the burn, and all mystical experience is communicated to men through the Man Christ.

A sturdy, hardened sinner shall advance to the utmost pitch of impiety, with less reluctance than he took the first step while his conscience was yet vigilant and tender.

Nor does God whisper through the trees. His voice is not to be mistaken. When men hear it they fall to their knees and their souls are riven and they cry out to Him and there is no fear but only wildness of heart that springs from such longing.

To regain her lost power the Church must see heaven opened and have a transforming vision of God.

I was six when I saw that everything was God, and my hair stood up, and all, Teddy said. It was on a Sunday, I remember. My sister was a tiny child then, and she was drinking her milk, and all of a sudden I saw that she was God and the milk was God. I mean, all she was doing was pouring God into God, if you know what I mean.

In this instant, shaken to her very depths, this ecstatic human being has a first inkling that the soul is made of stuff so mysteriously elastic that a single event can make it big enough to contain the infinite.

I am convinced that life in a physical body is meant to be an ecstatic experience

Won't You guide me through the dark night of the soul That I may better understand Your way... Let me purify my thoughts and words and deeds That I may be a vehicle for Thee... Give me my rapture today.

That was what gospel was meant to do - make you hate and love yourself at the same time, make you ashamed and glorified.

The grace of God has no charms for men till the Holy Spirit gives them a taste for it.

Creativity has nothing to do with creating something, creativity is simply the presence of God. Those who are fortunate enough to come in contact with a buddha's silence will be transformed; they will know what creativity is. He has not done a thing and miracles have happened. He has not uttered a word and the message has been heard. He has not moved, but he has transformed you. He has not even touched you, and you are no longer the same.

I was in the death struggle with self: God and Satan fought for my soul those three long hours. God conquered — now I have only one doubt left — which of the twain was God?

The first step towards attaining a higher standard of holiness is to realize more fully the amazing sinfulness of sin.

Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.

Think of the mystical three days between the crucifixion and the resurrection as the time it takes for a situation to change once spirit has infused our consciousness. As we come to look at an experience differently, in time in begins to transform.

Like a saint's vision of beatitude. Like the veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see—and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning! Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone, lost in the fog again, and you stumble on toward nowhere, for no good reason!