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Every society and religion has rules, for both have moral laws. And the essence of morality consists, as in art, of drawing the line somewhere.

Huston Smith

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Huston Smith
Age: 97 †
Born: 1919
Born: May 31
Died: 2016
Died: December 30
Philosopher
Professor
Soochow
Huston Cummings Smith
Every
Essence
Line
Lines
Consists
Law
Drawing
Moral
Somewhere
Society
Morality
Religion
Rules
Art
Laws

More quotes by Huston Smith

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What is sickness? What is health? Both are distractions. Put them both aside and go forward.
Huston Smith
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So always, if we look back, concern for face-to-face morality, and its modern emphasis on justice as well, have historically evolved as religious issues.
Huston Smith
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In nature, the emphasis is in what is rather than what ought to be.
Huston Smith
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First of all, my persuasion is what really breeds violence is political differences. But because religion serves as the soul of community, it gets drawn into the fracas and turns up the heat.
Huston Smith
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As human beings we are made to surpass ourselves and are truly ourselves only when transcending ourselves.
Huston Smith
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Human intelligence is a reflection of the intelligence that produces everything. In knowing, we are simply extending the intelligence that comes to and constitutes us. We mimic the mind of God, so to speak. Or better, we continue and extend it.
Huston Smith
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Rationalism and Newtonian science has lured us into dark woods, but a new metaphysics can rescue us.
Huston Smith
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The self is too small an object for perpetual enthusiasm.
Huston Smith
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I would not say that ethical behavior is not possible for the atheist or agnostic. It is. A couple of pretty good examples are Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre. However, I will have to say that if we take the human lot as a whole, these two men must be seen as exceptions.
Huston Smith
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When I read the Upanishads, which are part of Vedanta, I found a profundity of worldview that made my Christianity seem like third grade.
Huston Smith
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In mysteries what we know, and our realization of what we do not know, proceed together the larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder. It is like the quantum world, where the more we understand its formalism, the stranger that world becomes.
Huston Smith
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Swami Ashokananda was a brilliant and accomplished spiritual teacher in the West.
Huston Smith
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God enters our lives when through our creative interchanges we make history more just.
Huston Smith
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I've spent the last 50 years or so steeping myself in the world's religions, and I've done my homework. I've gone to each of the world's eight great religions and sought out the most profound scholars I could find, and I've apprenticed myself to them and actually practiced each faith.
Huston Smith
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God has to speak to each person in their own language, in their own idioms. Take Spanish, Chinese. You can express the same thought, but to different people you have to use a different language. Its the same in religion.
Huston Smith
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Poetry is a special use of language that opens onto the real. The business of the poet is truth telling, which is why in the Celtic tradition no one could be a teacher unless he or she was a poet.
Huston Smith
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The first koan do not have rational answers. They are techniques devised over the millennia for triggering an actual experience.
Huston Smith
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The Sufis say there are three ways to know fire - by hearing it described, by seeing it, or by being burned.
Huston Smith
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After his great awakening, the Buddha continued to meditate and to devote himself to others otherwise his vision would have receded into a pleasant memory.
Huston Smith
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With mind distracted, never thinking, Death is coming, To slave away on the pointless business of mundane life, And then to come out empty--it is a tragic error. (116) trans by Robert Thurman
Huston Smith