A Quote by Wendell Berry

No wonder so many sermons are devoted exclusively to "spiritual" subjects. If one is living by the tithes of history's most destructive economy, then the disembodiment of the soul becomes the chief of worldly conveniences.

Wendell Berry

Quote Topics

Becomes Chief Destructive Devoted Economy History Living Many Most No Wonder Sermons Soul Spiritual Subjects Then Wonder Worldly

Quote Author

Wendell Berry
American - Novelist
Born: August 5, 1934

Man is spiritual being -- a soul, in other words -- and that this soul takes on different bodies from life to life on earth to order at last to arrive at such perfect knowledge, through repeated experience, as to enable one to assume a body fit to be the dwelling-place of a Mahatma or perfected soul. Then, they say, that particular soul becomes a spiritual helper to mankind.

H. P. Blavatsky

The key is realizing - and believing - that this world is not your home. If you and I ever hope to free our lives from worldly desires, worldly thinking, worldly pleasures, worldly dreams, worldly ideals, worldly values, worldly ambitions, and worldly acclaim, then we must focus our lives on another world.

David Platt

Are you honest with the Lord in the payment of your tithes? Living this divine law will bring both spiritual and material blessings.

Ezra Taft Benson

We are living in the most destructive and, hence, the most stupid period of the history of our species.

Wendell Berry

How is it that there are not many who are led by sermons to forsake open sin? Do you know what I think? That is because preachers have too much worldly wisdom.

Teresa of Avila

What the spiritual investigator has to do to acquire the faculty of looking into the spiritual world consists exclusively of processes of spirit and soul; they have nothing to do with changes in the body, nor with visions arising from an abnormal bodily life.

Rudolf Steiner

As an artist, I identify with Sandro Botticelli. We know him as the man who painted Primavera and The Birth Of Venus. The goddesses and ancient subjects he chose represented virtues which were meant to inspire people. Then he went through a dark phase when he was listening to the sermons of Savonarola, who preached against the worldly pleasures of the Renaissance. But Botticelli's works live on, inspiring people to this day. Five hundred years after his death, he still has thousands of fans!

Mary Pope Osborne

When the congregation becomes the norm by which sermons are measured, a minister has put a mortgage on his soul.

Ralph W. Sockman

Poetry is essentially the antithesis of Metaphysics: Metaphysics purge the mind of the senses and cultivate the disembodiment of the spiritual; Poetry is all passionate and feeling and animates the inanimate; Metaphysics are most perfect when concerned with universals; Poetry, when most concerned with particulars.

Samuel Beckett

Numerous are the posthumous museums and memorials devoted exclusively to one artist, architect or author and designed to preserve or artificially reconstruct the namesake's original working or living conditions.

Hans-Ulrich Obrist

Zeal is the chief source, or one of the chief sources of spiritual power. God employs living souls to communicate life. In all ages, men of zeal have produced great results. This qualification, in the absence of others, can accomplish wonders.

Charles Hodge

Instead of having a set of policies that are equipping people for the globalization of the economy, we have policies that are accelerating the most destructive trends of the global economy.

Barack Obama

Religion is a comprehensive concept. According to our learned people, our scholars, to pave the path for public welfare in worldly life and to provide spiritual uplift is part of religion. I think a yogi can do both things quite easily. And I manage to balance both worldly and spiritual concerns.

Yogi Adityanath

Yes, I heard my people singing!-in the glow of parlor coal-stove and on summer porches sweet with lilac air, from choir loft and Sunday morning pews-and my soul was filled with their harmonies. Then, too, I heard these songs in the very sermons of my father, for in the Negro's speech there is much of the phrasing and rhythms of folk-song. The great, soaring gospels we love are merely sermons that are sung; and as we thrill to such gifted gospel singers as Mahalia Jackson, we hear the rhythmic eloquence of our preachers, so many of whom, like my father, are masters of poetic speech.

Paul Robeson

Wonder blasts the soul - that is, the spiritual - and the skeleton, the body - the material. Wonder interprets life through the eyes of eternity while enjoying the moment, but never lets the moment's revision exhaust the eternal.