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

SHOW detailed search and navigation | Quotes | References | JoAnn

1		"Accept that you are a child of God. Sing your own song with gusto. Fulfill your mission as a copartner with the Holy One in the unfolding drama of the universe."

2		"The moving finger of God in human history points ever in the same direction. There must be community." Howard Thurman

3		"God is creating the entire universe, fully and totally in the present now." Meister Eckhart, 13th century mystic

4		"We are embedded in communities, circles within circles of communities, both small and large, focused and abstract. Holding up the ideal of unity, we strive to break down the walls which separate us from others – not only other nations and peoples, but other species and the natural world."

5		"Take good care of the best that is within you. Self-exploration and personal growth continue throughout our lifetimes and equip us to tend to the needs of others."

6		"The world's sacred poetry, ritual, prayer, and art are filled with images of incarnated divinity, or the eternity that lies in the temporal, or the transpersonal that animates our personal lives." Thomas Moore, introduction

7		"Why does anybody tell a story? It does indeed have something to do with faith, faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically." Madeleine L'Engle

8		"We are here to awaken from the illusion of separateness." Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist poet

9		"Seen from space, Earth has no national borders, no military zones, no visible fences. Quite the opposite. You can see how storm systems swirling above a continent may well affect the grain yield half a world away. The entire atmosphere of the planet – all the air we breathe, all the sky we fly through, even the ozone layer – is visible as the thinnest rind. The picture eloquently reminds one that Earth is a single organism." Diane Ackerman, 'The Rarest of the Rare'

10		"The interrelationship of all of Creation is sensitive in a way we are just beginning to understand." Madeleine L'Engle, 'A Stone for a Pillow'

11		"Anything can become a disclosure of grace. We experience intimations of the divine in a lover's embrace, a rainbow, a baby's smile, a bird's flight overhead, a friend's forgiveness, a dolphin's leap, or the selfless service of a volunteer."

12		"One day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it came to me: that feeling of being part of everything, not separate at all….I knew that if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed." Alice Walker, 'The Color Purple'

13		"Our lives extend beyond our skins, in radical interdependence with the rest of the world." Joanna Macy

14		"I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world." Mother Teresa

15		"If you love it enough, anything will talk with you." George Washington Carver, American who discovered over 200 uses for the peanut plant

16		"When I touch the flower, I touch my consciousness, your consciousness, and the great planet Earth at the same time….If you really touch one flower deeply, you touch the whole cosmos….When you touch one, you touch many, when you touch many, you touch one….Look more deeply, and you will see yourself as penetrating everywhere, interbeing with everyone and everything." Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Buddhist monk, 'Cultivating the Mind of Love'

17		"Looking deeply at any one thing, we see the whole cosmos. The one is made of the many."

18		"The real world…is not a world of isolate things, but of processes in concert." William Bryant Logan, 'Dirt'

19		"Accept the mystery of being loved by the Divine Magnet."

20		"The Great Spirit is the life that is in all things – all creatures and plants and even rocks and the minerals. All things – and I mean all things – have their own will and their own way and their own purpose." Rolling Thunder, Native American elder

21		"In each of us is a seed of understanding. That seed is God." Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist author and activist

22		"To pray is to move to the center of all life and all love. The closer I come to the hub of life, the closer I come to all that receives its strength and energy from there….What does the hub represent? I think of it as my own heart, the heart of God, and the heart of the world. When I pray, I enter into the depth of my own heart and find there the heart of God, who speaks to me of love. And I recognize, right there, the place where all of my sisters and brothers are in communion with one another." Henri J. M. Nouwen, Catholic author, 'Here and Now'

23		"If I deny the oneness of man, I deny the oneness of God. Therefore I affirm both. Without a belief in human unity, I am hungry and incomplete." Norman Cousins, American editor

24		"We obviously have close ties to partners, family, and friends, but we are also part of layers and layers of communities."

25		"Even the common articles made for daily use become endowed with beauty when they are loved."