Many / One

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

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The Choice Is Always Ours
Dorothy B. Phillips, Chief Editor
An anthology about the spiritual Way, chosen from psychological, religious, philosophical, poetical and biographical sources

1 "It is human to go through negative experiences, disappointments and frustrations. It is one of the ways leading us to maturity. Indeed, it is the opportunity to become We-feeling, objective, creative." Fritz Kunkel, M.D. (1889-1956), American psychiatrist, 'How Character Develops'

2 "Know that, by nature, every creature seeks to become like God….Secretly nature seeks, hunts, tries to ferret out the track on which God may be found." Meister Eckhart (1260-1327)

3 "Self [capital S] is the focal point of the psyche in which God's image shows itself most plainly and the experience of which gives us the knowledge, as nothing else does, of the significance and nature of our likeness to God." Jolande Jacobi

4 "As a matter of fact, the factor of conscious choice, of deliberate decision is the constituent element of human wholeness." Gerhard Adler (b. 1904), English Jungian analyst, 'Studies in Analytical Psychology'

5 "The ability and willingness to enter into experience, honestly appraising it, finding its value in outer life and courageously exploring its inner meaning to us, is the attitude that sets free creative energy and makes life move within us." Frances G. Wickes (1875-1970), American psychotherapist, 'The Creative Process'

6 "All of us are individual spirits created to evolve into a common union." Anonymous

7 "There are times when doubts over me steal, but I know Thou are there and awake. Thou art – and art – and I feel no surging of aeons can shake Thee – Life is a ring, I have found – I am child, boy, man, more – I learn the circle is rich, the full round complete in its perfect return." Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), German poet

8 "I feel myself part of eternity, part of the Being which was eons of years before I was born, and will be eons of years after I die. This is an expression, it seems to me, of 'The peace of God which passes understanding.'" Rollo May (b. 1909), American psychoanalyst, 'Paulus'

9 "Any friendship – between two or between a hundred – entails a new emergent unity, where each of the constituent selves is far more in its functional oneness with the rest than it ever was in its apartness." Gregory Vlastos (b. 1909), Canadian professor of philosophy, 'The Religious Way'

10 "What happens in your innermost being is worthy of your whole love." Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), German poet, 'Letters to a Young Poet'

11 "They who are long gone are in us, as predisposition, as a charge upon our destiny, as blood that stirs, and as gesture that rises up out of the depths of time." Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), German poet, 'Letters to a Young Poet'

12 "God can show Himself as He really is only to real people. And that means not simply to people who are individually good, but to people who are united together in a body, loving one another, helping one another, showing Him to one another. For that is what God meant humanity to be like; like players in one band, or organs in one body." C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), English professor, author, 'Beyond Personality'

13 "I know that God exists. There is utter Reality, complete creative power holding the entire creation in its grasp. The whole of time and space is no more than an incident, a minute episode in the immeasurable order, power, and glory of complete Being." Gerald Heard, (1889-1971), English author and philosopher, 'The Creed of Christ'

14 "The invisible replies and materializes in the form in which it is summoned and imagined." Gerald Heard (1889-1971), English author and philosopher, 'The Third Morality'

15 "Everything I do is like the pebble thrown into a pool, making larger and larger ripples in the waters of other lives." Joshua Loth Liebman (1907-1948), American rabbi, educator, 'Peace of Mind'

16 "We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us." Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), German poet, 'Letters to a Young Poet'

17 "There are facets of failure in every person's makeup and there are elements of success. Both must be accepted while we try to emphasize the latter through self-knowledge." Joshua Loth Liebman (1907-1948), American rabbi, 'Peace of Mind', quoted in 'The Choice Is Always Ours', edited by Dorothy B. Phillips, Re-Quest Books 1975, p. 199

18 "Prayer is a pure act of the will, seeking an integral understanding of and union with the Whole, the One." Gerald Heard (1889-197), English author and philosopher, 'A Preface to Prayer'

19 "The whole gist of the matter lies in the will, and this is what our Dear Lord meant by saying, 'The Kingdom of God is within you.' It is not a question of how much we know, how clever we are…. it all depends upon the heart's love. External actions are the results of love, the fruit it bears; but the source, the root, is in the deep of the heart." Francois Fenelon (1651-1715), French Archbishop of Cambray

20 "God is. That is so real, that to talk of His love, or of serving Him is saying less, not more. He is, and He is with us." Alfred Romer, (b. 1907), American professor of physics

21 "Prayer is the act by which man opens himself to the total values for wholeness that exist in each situational moment of his life." Elizabeth B. Howes and Sheila Moon, 'Man the Choicemaker'

22 "He who would in his own person test the fact of God's presence can do so by a living faith. Exercise of faith will be the safest where there is a clear determination summarily to reject all that is contrary to Truth and Love." Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1848), Hindu statesman and mystic, 'Gandhi's Ideas'

23 "The command to love is written in the material structure of our everyday life. Mutuality is not just a shiny ideal that catches the eye of a few idealists. It is the demand of the historic process. It is not merely a moral obligation, which can be set aside because of more urgent practical necessities. It is the most urgently practical need of our life. It is a moral obligation precisely because it is also a material necessity." Gregory Vlastos (b. 1909), Canadian professor of philosophy, 'Christian Faith and Democracy'

24 "The miracle of rebirth seems to be a natural element in human life….we feel behind the sunrise of the new life a higher Living Power who brings it about." Fritz Kunkel, M.D. (1889-1956), American psychiatrist, 'How Character Develops'

25 "We are inescapably all members of one another." Rose Terlin, contemporary American editor and writer, 'Christian Faith and Social Action'

This body of quotes compiled by JoAnn Kite