Martin Buber Quotes

We learn this by the precepts that Jesus left. He observed that the people were looking outward, and assured them that the kingdom of God cometh not with outward observation; and for this reason, that it was only to be known in man.

And it took me, since I was 17 and left home, running from God, to now, as a 30-year-old man, when I honestly feel like I've come full circle and my heart's finally in the right place.

Each one of us has our own evolution of life, and each one of us goes through different tests which are unique and challenging. But certain things are common. And we do learn things from each other's experience. On a spiritual journey, we all have the same destination.

Man learns through experience, and the spiritual path is full of different kinds of experiences. He will encounter many difficulties and obstacles, and they are the very experiences he needs to encourage and complete the cleansing process.

You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.

In my new book, 'Birth,' my goal is to share the path I have traveled in the spiritual sphere and in the business and philanthropic sphere in order to reveal the essential connection between the two.

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

Silence, you know, is the best place to get close to spirit for me.

There has already been the karmic work: that what life has transformed in me, this initiation brought on, of necessity, by trials.

To him who, though by no means near the end, is yet advancing, He is the way; to him who has put off all that is dead He is the life.

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.

And God is always calling me to open myself to all kinds of people that I've never thought about before and also calling me on this inward spiritual journey.

Lent is a time to renew wherever we are in that process that I call the divine therapy. It's a time to look what our instinctual needs are, look at what the dynamics of our unconscious are.

A person cannot approach the divine by reaching beyond the human. To become human, is what this individual person, has been created for.

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.

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.

The first step toward finding God, Who is Truth, is to discover the truth about myself: and if I have been in error, this first step to truth is the discovery of my error.

What the spiritual investigator has to do to acquire the faculty of looking into the spiritual world consists exclusively of processes of spirit and soul; they have nothing to do with changes in the body, nor with visions arising from an abnormal bodily life.

I spent a couple years just earnestly praying, asking the question that I don't think we ask enough: 'God what do you want to do with me?' Really getting into our prayer closet, seeking His heart, asking what He wants to do in our lives.

Spiritual growth-looking inward-is replacing the pursuit of external power-reaching outward to manipulate and control-as the cure for the insecurity at the core of human experience.

It's dangerous to assume that because a man is drawn to holiness in his study that he is thereby a holy man. I am sure that the reason that I have a deep hunger to learn of the holiness of God is precisely because I am not holy.

Religion must be life made true; and life is action, growth, development - begun now and ending never. And a life made true cannot confine itself - it must reach out and twine around every pulsing interest within reach of its uplifting tendrils.

I've gone through my periods. I've read the Bible completely, all the way through twice. I did it once when I was about 20 and I did it again when I was about 30.

When things hurt us, we're merely on our way to another spiritual environment.

No man ever learned to love God with all his heart, and his neighbour as himself, in a day.