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The first question here, then, is not What is best for my soul? nor is it even What is most useful to humanity? But-transcending both these limited aims-what function must this life fulfill in the great and secret economy of God?

Evelyn Underhill

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Evelyn Underhill
Age: 65 †
Born: 1875
Born: December 6
Died: 1941
Died: June 15
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Best
Limited
Soul
Aim
Firsts
Useful
First
Function
Must
Question
Great
Economy
Transcending
Even
Humanity
Aims
Life
Secret
Fulfill

More quotes by Evelyn Underhill

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It seems so much easier in these days to live morally than to live beautifully. Lots of us manage to exist for years without ever sinning against society, but we sin against loveliness every hour of the day.
Evelyn Underhill
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We mostly spend those lives conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have, and to Do.
Evelyn Underhill
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As the beautiful does not exist for the artist and poet alone—though these can find in it more poignant depths of meaning than other men—so the world of Reality exists for all and all may participate in it, unite with it, according to their measure and to the strength and purity of their desire.
Evelyn Underhill
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I do hope your Christmas has had a little touch of Eternity in among the rush and pitter patter and all. It always seems such a mixing of this world and the next - but that after all is the idea!
Evelyn Underhill
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We mostly spend [our] lives conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have, and to Do... forgetting that none of these verbs have any ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by and included in , the fundamental verb, to Be.
Evelyn Underhill
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The life, beauty and meaning of the whole created order, from the tomtit to the Milky Way, refers back to the Absolute Life and Beauty of its Creator: and so lived, every bit has spiritual significance.
Evelyn Underhill
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The direction and constancy of the will is what really matters, & intellect & feeling are only important in so far as they contribute to that.
Evelyn Underhill
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The business and method of mysticism is love.
Evelyn Underhill
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No metaphysician has yet shaken the ordinary individual's belief in his own existence. The uncertainties only begin for most of us when we ask what else is.
Evelyn Underhill
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Worship is the one, total adoring response of man to the one Eternal God.
Evelyn Underhill
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In the created world around us we see the Eternal Artist, Eternal Love at work.
Evelyn Underhill
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After all it is those who have a deep and real inner life who are best able to deal with the irritating details of outer life.
Evelyn Underhill
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Christian history looks glorious in retrospect but it is made up of constant hard choices and unattractive tasks, accepted under the pressure of the Will of God.
Evelyn Underhill
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Mysticism is the art of union with Reality.
Evelyn Underhill
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Spiritual achievement costs much, though never as much as it is worth.
Evelyn Underhill
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Never forget that the key of the situation lies in the will & not in the imagination.
Evelyn Underhill
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My growth depends on my walls coming down.
Evelyn Underhill
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A saint is simply a human being whose soul has ... grown up to its full stature, by full and generous response to its environment, God. He has achieved a deeper, bigger life than the rest of us, a more wonderful contact with the mysteries of the Universe a life of infinite possibility, the term of which he never feels that he has reached.
Evelyn Underhill
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As to the most prudent logicians might venture to deduce from a skein of wool the probable existence of a sheep so you, from the raw stuff of perception, may venture to deduce a universe which transcends the reproductive powers of your loom.
Evelyn Underhill
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The Christian is the person who sees every time and every situation, however dreary and repetitive, as God sees it - a fresh creation from his hand, demanding its own response in perhaps a wholly new and creative way. Under God he is free over it. He has won through to a purchase over events he has risen with Christ.
Evelyn Underhill