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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
Even
Humanity
Aims
Life
Secret
Fulfill
Best
Limited
Soul
Aim
Firsts
Useful
First
Function
Must
Question
Great
Economy
Transcending

More quotes by 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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Worship is the one, total adoring response of man to the one Eternal God.
Evelyn Underhill
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If we ask of the saints how they achieved spiritual effectiveness, they are only able to reply that, insofar as they did it themselves, they did it by love and prayer.
Evelyn Underhill
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In prayer the soul comes nearest the experience of absolute love: in belief it ascends by means of symbols towards absolute truth.
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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We mostly spend those lives conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have, and to Do.
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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though humility and acknowledgement of one's real failings is good, the gratuitous eating of worms not put before us by God does not nourish our souls a bit - merely in fact upsets the spiritual tummy.
Evelyn Underhill
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For lack of attention a thousand forms of loveliness elude us every day.
Evelyn Underhill
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Adoration is caring for God above all else.
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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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 primary declaration of Christianity is not This do! but This happened!
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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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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Spiritual achievement costs much, though never as much as it is worth.
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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God is always coming to you in the Sacrament of the Present Moment. Meet and receive Him there with gratitude in that sacrament.
Evelyn Underhill
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Mysticism is the passionate longing of the soul for God.
Evelyn Underhill
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The spiritual life of individuals has to be extended both vertically to God and horizontally to other souls and the more it grows in both directions, the less merely individual and therefore more truly personal it will become.
Evelyn Underhill