Spiritual Quotes

Hope

If one of evil life turn in his thought
Straightly to Me, count him amidst the good;
He hath the high way chosen; he shall grow
Righteous ere long; he shall attain that peace
Which changes not. Thou Prince of India!
Be certain none can perish, trusting Me!
—The Song Celestial (Bhagavad Gita), translated by Sir Edwin Arnold

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor. —Henry David Thoreau

Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around. —Henry David Thoreau

Thought is eternal in its effects, and every hopeful thought which enters the mind sets vibrations in motion, which shall help minds millions of miles distant and lives yet unborn. —Ella Wheeler Wilcox, The Heart of the New Thought

He who trusts the divine Source of Life shall find his hopes more than realized here upon earth. —Ella Wheeler Wilcox, The Heart of the New Thought

Each man must sooner or later learn to stand alone with his God; nothing else avails. Nothing else will ever make you master of your own destiny. There is in your own indwelling Lord all the life and health, all the strength and peace and joy, all the wisdom and support that you can ever need or desire. No one can give to you as can this indwelling Father. He is the spring of all joy and comfort and power. —H. Emilie Cady, Lessons in Truth

Howsoever tightly a man may have bound himself round he can always unbind himself. Into whatsoever morasses of trouble and trackless wastes of perplexity he may have ignorantly wandered he can always find his way out again, can always recover the lost highway of uninvolved simplicity which leads, straight and clear, to the sunny city of wise and blessed action.... If he will but quietly take himself to task, and retrace, in thought, the more or less intricate way by which he has come to his present position, he will soon perceive where he made mistakes; will discover those places where he took a false turn, and where a little more thoughtfulness, judgment, economy, or self-denial would have saved him. He will see how, step by step, he has involved himself, and how a riper judgment and clearer wisdom would have enabled him to take an altogether different and truer course. Having proceeded thus far, and extracted from his past conduct this priceless grain of golden wisdom, his difficulty will already have assumed less impregnable proportions, and he will then be able to bring to bear upon it the searchlight of dispassionate thought, to thoroughly anatomize it, to comprehend it in all its details, and to perceive the relation which those details bear to the motive source of action and conduct within himself. This being done, the difficulty will have ceased, for the straight way out of it will plainly appear, and the man will thus have learned, for all time, his lesson; will have gained an item of wisdom and a measure of blessedness of which he can never again be deprived. —James Allen, Byways of Blessedness

Just as domestic, social, and economic difficulties are born of ignorance and lead to riper knowledge, so every religious doubt, every mental perplexity, every heart-beclouding shadow, presages greater spiritual gain, is prophetic of a brighter dawn of intelligence for him on whom it falls. —James Allen, Byways of Blessedness

You have come to your present state by degrees, and you can recover yourself by degrees. —James Allen, Byways of Blessedness

As a progressive and evolving being, man is where he is that he may learn that he may grow; and as he learns the spiritual lesson which any circumstance contains for him, it passes away and gives place to other circumstances. —James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

Let a man cease from his sinful thoughts, and all the world will soften towards him, and be ready to help him; let him put away his weakly and sickly thoughts, and lo, opportunities will spring up on every hand to aid his strong resolves; let him encourage good thoughts, and no hard fate shall bind him down to wretchedness and shame. —James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

A man can only rise, conquer, and achieve by lifting up his thoughts. —James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

He who cherishes a beautiful vision, a lofty ideal in his heart, will one day realize it.... Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals; cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built. —James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your Vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your Ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.... Your circumstances may be uncongenial, but they shall not long remain so if you but perceive an Ideal and strive to reach it. You cannot travel within and stand still without.... The Vision that you glorify in your mind, the Ideal that you enthrone in your heart—this you will build your life by, this you will become. —James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

What we are to understand is this, that what we call mistakes or evil, we commit because we are weak, and we are weak because we are ignorant. I prefer to call them mistakes. The word sin, although originally a very good word, has got a certain flavor about it that frightens me. Who makes us ignorant? We ourselves. We put our hands over our eyes and weep that it is dark. Take the hands away and there is light; the light exists always for us, the self-effulgent nature of the human soul. —Swami Vivekananda, The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda (8 Vol. set), Volume 2

Though it is so hard to reach the goal [of oneness with God], yet even our smallest attempts are not in vain. We know that nothing is lost. In the Gita, Arjuna asks Krishna, “Those who fail in attaining perfection in Yoga in this life, are they destroyed like the clouds of summer?” Krishna replies, “Nothing, my friend, is lost in this world. Whatever one does, that remains as one’s own, and if the fruition of Yoga does not come in this life, one takes it up again in the next birth.” —Swami Vivekananda, The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda (8 Vol. set), Volume 2

There is a sense in which every day may be regarded as the beginning of a new life, in which one can think, act, and live newly, and in a wiser and better spirit. —James Allen, Morning and Evening Thoughts

Of all the beautiful truths pertaining to the soul,...none is more gladdening or fruitful of divine promise and confidence than this—that man is the master of thought, the molder of character, and the maker and shaper of character, environment, and destiny. —James Allen, Morning and Evening Thoughts

Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals; cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the Loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment; of these, if you will remain true to them, your world will at last be built. —James Allen, Morning and Evening Thoughts

Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream so shall you become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your Ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil. The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream.... Your circumstances may be uncongenial, but they shall not long remain so when you perceive an Ideal and strive to reach it. —James Allen, Morning and Evening Thoughts