By virtue of Creation, and still more the Incarnation, nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see.
The Present is the living sum-total of the whole Past.
God's Wisdom and God's Goodness!--Ah, but fools Mis-define thee, till God knows them no more. Wisdom and goodness they are God!--what schools Have yet so much as heard this simpler lore. This no Saint preaches, and this no Church rules: 'Tis in the desert, now and heretofore.
To trust in the force that moves the universe is faith. Faith isn't blind, it's visionary.
These infinitesimal distinctions between man and man are too paltry for an Omnipotent Being. How these madmen give themselves away! The real God taketh heed lest a sparrow fall. But the God created from human vanity sees no difference between an eagle and a sparrow.
If the highest things are unknowable, then the highest capacity or virtue of man cannot be theoretical wisdom.
Seek to learn on earth those truths which will remain ever valid in Heaven
I take the assumption that every religion has been rooted in some mystical or transcendent experience. From that assumption, I just look at all the different systems as metaphors or doorways to God.
To the artist is sometimes granted a sudden, transient insight which serves in this matter for experience. A flash, and where previously the brain held a dead fact, the soul grasps a living truth! At moments we are all artists.
The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can ever engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father.
Only through religion can logic develop into philosophy, only from this source stems that which makes philosophy more than science. And without religion we will have only novels, or the triviality today called belles lettres instead of an eternally rich and infinite poetry.
If we live in such a way that the considerations of eternity press upon us, we will make better decisions. Perhaps this is why President Brigham Young once said that if he could do but one thing to bless the Saints, he believed it would be to give them eyes with which to see things as they are.
Spiritual illumination and perspective are poured out through the windows of heaven and into our lives as we honor the law of tithing.
The assembled souls of all that men held wise.
When we begin to glimpse the reality of God, the natural reaction is to worship him. Not to have that reaction is a fairly sure sign that we haven't yet really understood who he is or what he's done.
There is a condescension on the part of the infinite to the mind of man. That is what looks like God.
People only have true understanding when they look at everything from God's perspective. Authentic wisdom begins when we understand that God is to be the object of our devotion, our adoration, and our reverence.
God, of course, is the greatest philosopher of all.
Human writing reflects that of the universe; it is its translation, but also its metaphor: it says something totally different, and it says the same thing.
When we say we begin with God, we begin with our idea of God, and our idea of God is not God. Instead, we ought to begin with God’s idea of God, and God’s idea of God is Christ
With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.
When the Spirit illuminates the heart, then a part of the man sees which never saw before; a part of him knows which never knew before, and that with a kind of knowing which the most acute thinker cannot imitate.
In the great and deep qualities of mind, heart, and soul, there is no change. Homer and Solomon speak to the same nature in man that is reached by Shakespeare and Lincoln. but in the accidents, the surroundings, the change is vast. All things now are mobile--movable.
There are many kinds of truth. But truth communicated by beauty is the only pure one. The only one that touches me in the heart.
It is God who is the ultimate reason things, and the Knowledge of God is no less the beginning of science than his essence and will are the beginning of things.
