A database of 11,000+ illuminated guiding quotations in 40 categories from 600+ inspired books by our most brilliant and influential authors.
Compiled by JoAnn Kite
SHOW detailed search and navigation | Quotes | References | JoAnn
1 | ![]() |
"On the sense and emotional levels there may be little or no peace, but in the center of the soul there are stability and serenity." Fire Within: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and the Gospel - on Prayer' (Thomas Dubay, S.M.) |
2 | ![]() |
"The inter-personal contains the hopes of higher union on which evolution lives. It is the milieu of the monads' mutual attraction and confluence that sustains their final centre of coalescence." Writings in Time of War (Pierre Teilhard deChardin) |
3 | ![]() |
"One aspect of the soul is always joined with the center of creation, and this is our eternal link with truth." God Is A Verb, Kabbalah and the Practice of Mystical Judaism (Rabbi David A. Cooper) |
4 | ![]() |
"There is a saying in China that the nature of man is found there, in the center, where emotions are not yet manifest. In this center is the potentiality of everything to come." Lectures on the I Ching: Constancy and Change (Richard Wilhelm) |
5 | ![]() |
"In the centre of the heart dwells the true soul, the breath of God." Paracelsus, 'Liber Azoth' Collected Works (Carl Jung) |
6 | ![]() |
"In Black Elk's vision, the hoop of his people will be reunited only when the tree of the center flowers once again. This is the vision of a Mandala of global consciousness." Mandala (Jose and Miriam Arguelles) |
7 | ![]() |
"The personal center of the individual is essentially the Self (atman), which is beyond the particularities of physical-psychic-mental life or of any changeable things or of change as such." The Unity of Reality (Michael vonBruck) |
8 | ![]() |
"There is but one point in the universe where God communicates with us, and that is the center of our own soul." Archbishop Ullathorne, 'Humility and Patience' (19th century) The Book of Catholic Quotations (John Chapin, Editor) |
9 | ![]() |
"However vast the divine milieu may be, it is in reality a centre. It therefore has the properties of a centre, and above all the absolute and final power to unite (and consequently to complete) all beings within its breast." The Divine Milieu (Pierre Teilhard deChardin) |
10 | ![]() |
"The source and center of all existence is pure spirit existing in all created things simultaneously." John Redtail Freesoul, 'The Native American Prayer Pipe: Ceremonial Object and Tool of Self-Realization' Shamanism: An Expanded View of Reality (Shirley Nicholson, Compiler) |
11 | ![]() |
"God is central in each part of the universe, down to the tiniest atom." Mysticism, Its History and Challenge (Bruno Borchert) |
12 | ![]() |
Always in the centre shall come a new Word." Mexican aphorism From Bethlehem to Calvary (Alice A. Bailey) |
13 | ![]() |
"The mandala is, above all, a map of the cosmos. It is the whole universe in its essential plan, in its process of emanation and of reabsorption…..the universe not only in its inert spatial expanse, but as temporal revolution and both as a vital process which develops from an essential principle and rotates round a central axis." G. Tucci Mandala (Jose and Miriam Arguelles) |
14 | ![]() |
"The circular sea with no outlet, which perpetually replenishes itself by means of a spring bubbling up in its centre, is to be found in [the writings of] Nicholas of Cusa as an allegory of God." Collected Works (Carl Jung) |
15 | ![]() |
"Hindu doctrine declares that God resides in the centre, at that point where the radii of a wheel meet at its axis. In diagrams of the cosmos, the central space is always reserved for the Creator." A Dictionary of Symbols (J. E. Cirlot) |
16 | ![]() |
"Circular yantras appear in most spiritual and religious practice. A peek through to the collective cortex perhaps. From the sand paintings of the Navajo to the floor mosaics and dome designs of many churches, synagogues, mosques, and cathedrals." Turning Toward the Mystery: A Seeker's Journey (Stephen Levine) |
17 | ![]() |
"Each cell divides (by mitotic or amitotic division) and gives birth to another cell similar to itself. First, a single centre; then two. Everything in the subsequent development of life stems from this potent primordial phenomenon." The Phenomenon of Man (Pierre Teilhard deChardin) |
18 | ![]() |
"We will see how we are a tribe and a company, in circle after circle rippling out and intersecting. We will see how we are all entering each other – as gifts to each other, mirroring and completing each other: and how we are all unique angles on the centre." Alchemy, The Art of Transformation (Jay Ramsay) |
19 | ![]() |
"By birth and growth the spirit-architect expands into this mass of which we consist, spreading outwards from the heart. Thither again it withdraws, winding up the threads of its web, returning by the same path along which it advanced, passed out by the same gate through which it entered. Birth is expansion of the center….death contraction to the center. It is the soul that gathers about it, groups and vivifies the atom-mass." Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), Italian philosopher and poet, quoted in J. Lewis McIntyre's 'Giordano Bruno', Macmillan, 1903 Reincarnation: The Phoenix Fire Mystery (Cranston/Head, editors) |
20 | ![]() |
"From what source will human individuals ultimately draw the desire to accept one another and draw one another towards joyful unity? There is only one conceivable source: a growing attraction to the centre of consciousness in which their fibres and their bundle must complete themselves by reuiniting." The Vision of the Past (Pierre Teilhard deChardin) |
21 | ![]() |
"The Alcoran [Koran] describes Allah's character and attributes thus: 'He alone is self-existent; has no rival; is from everlasting to everlasting; fills the universe with his presence; is the center in which all things unite.'" A Dictionary of Freemasonry (Robert Macoy) |
22 | ![]() |
"I dreamed of a common centre into which all things would drive the most vital roots of their sensibility and energy; a universal Centre, living and benign, that would itself reinforce our desire to do what is right, when we are at a loss to express it, or preserve it, or realize it." Writings in Time of War (Pierre Teilhard deChardin) |
23 | ![]() |
"The unconscious can be reached and expressed only by symbols, and art, myth, dream, and fantasy, with their symbolic propensities, are effective psychopomps, leading the mind to an anamnesis of the origins of psychic life. The result of this anamnesis (an 'unforgetting' or rediscovery) is, on the one hand, an accession to power and vitality resultant from this integration. On the other hand, the mind experiences a perception of something akin to essential form and divinity at the heart of the creation and begins to sense an underlying acausal pattern of continuous creation. The two aspects coalesce in spontaneous images, often taking the form of a mandala and emphasizing a unifying centrality surrounded by a symmetrical quaternary or circular structure suggesting a microcosmic-macrocosmic identity between creature and the cosmic creation." The Strong Eye of Shamanism, A Journey Into the Caves of Consciousness (Robert E. Ryan, Ph.D.) |
24 | ![]() |
"All centres are symbols of eternity, since time is the motion of the periphery of the wheel of phenomena rotating around the Aristotelian 'unmoved mover'." A Dictionary of Symbols (J. E. Cirlot) |
25 | ![]() |
"At the center of our Self, deep within our consciousness, is a calm 'I.' Like the calm 'eye' within a storm, our center is untouched by psychological turbulence. Peaceful, it observes all from the vantage of wisdom. Placid, it is unmoved by the turbulent weather of the surrounding psyche. When you're feeling connected with your center it seems very familiar. It feels like the Self you know best, like who and what you know your Self to be, calm in knowing without thinking. To be centered is not the same as being 'self-centered' or selfish. Instead, it is identity with the deep, divine power that motivates us." A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe: The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art & Science (Michael S. Schneider) |