Anais Nin Quotes

You can't evoke great spirits and eat plums at the same time.

Spiritual people should not be ashamed of being wealthy.

I would give up everything rather than have the blood of white men upon the hands of my people.

Rise above sectional interests and private ambitions... Pass from matter to spirit. Matter is diversity; spirit is light, life and unity.

I would have given my own life if I could have undone the killing of white men by my people.

There's guilt about our treatment of native peoples in modern intellectual life, and an unwillingness to acknowledge there could be anything good about Western culture.

To Western parents that want to adopt a child, I would say to people that money is not everything, wealth does not matter.

I am trying to get right with God. I'm sort of making a statement about the excessiveness.

Secularism is the experience of the Western culture and thought. Insisting on spreading it to places where the underlying intellectual background, and the political and social reasons for its appearance are lacking, is clearly a mistake, regardless of being desirable or not.

To me feminism is not simply a struggle to end male chauvinism or a movement to ensure that women will have equal rights with men; it is a commitment to eradicating the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels-sex, race, and class, to name a few-and a commitment to reorganizing U.S. society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material desires.

White guilt morally and culturally disarms the West. It makes the First World apologetic. And this, of course, only inflames the narcissism of the ineffectual.

I bought my parents a house. Then I bought myself a Rolex. My brother forced me to do it, but I'm glad he did.

The Westerners have lost the vision of heaven, they go hunting for the pure spirit in the belly. The pure soul takes not color and scent from the body, and Communism has nothing to do save with the body.

Jesus did not die for pastors to have a well paid job. Neither was He raised on the cross just to raise our standard of living. He died to seek and to save those who are lost.

I know it sounds old-fashioned to say we're too materialistic in the West, but happiness does not derive exclusively from things, and yet we seem to be structuring our whole society around things. I think that's partially why Westerners are joining ISIS and going to Syria. We have lost our way in the West in holding up a vision for humanity that is not exclusively shaped by materialism.

It's very different because the Indians live as if they are their souls and Americans live as if they are their egos.

The life of each and every one of us has been written. The crucifix is my autobiography. The blood is the ink. The nails the pen. The skin the parchment. On every line of that body I can trace my life. In the crown of thorns I can read my pride. In the hands that are dug with nails, I can read avarice and greed. In the flesh hanging from him like purple rags, I can read my lust. In feet that are fettered, I can find the times that I ran away and would not let him follow. Any sin that you can think of is written there.

Ironically, brothers and sisters, the natural man who is so very selfish in so many ordinary ways is strangely unselfish in that he reaches for too few of the things that bring real joy. He settles for a mess of pottage instead of eternal joy.

Then from the world all spirituality will be extinct, all moral perfection will be extinct, all sweet-souled sympathy for religion will be extinct, all ideality will be extinct; and in its place will reign the duality of lust and luxury as the male and female deities, with money as its priest, fraud, force, and competition its ceremonies, and the human soul its sacrifice. Such a thing can never be.

Greed is not defined by what something costs; it is measured by what it costs you. If anything costs you your faith or your family, the price is too high. Such is the point Jesus makes in the parable of the portfolio.

God is a luxury I can't afford.

I didn't mind giving up carnality, jewelry and red meat in return for comradeship and an afterlife.

I got the best of Jesus. He got the worst of me.

The Hindus have to learn a little bit of materialism from the West and teach them a little bit of spirituality.

We ought to live sacrificing, and singing, and dancing.