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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
Religion
Rules
Art
Laws
Every
Essence
Line
Lines
Consists
Law
Drawing
Moral
Somewhere
Society
Morality

More quotes by Huston Smith

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Reserved as he [Confucius] was about the supernatural, he was not without it somewhere in the universe there was a power that was on the side of right.
Huston Smith
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It must have been providence that directed Joel Morwood to dig in the right place, for he struck a lode of pure gold, as wide (comprehensive) as it is deep (profound). What he mined from that lode is a spiritual treasure.
Huston Smith
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The self is too small an object for perpetual enthusiasm.
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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I'm not a chauvinist. I'm a universalist. I think that God imploded, like a spiritual big bang, to launch the eight civilizations that make up recorded history and the religions in those civilizations.
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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If human life is to survive on this planet, the old dualistic worldview, with people on one side and the environment on the other, must yield to a new vision that connects us with everything else and leads us to care for and take responsibility for it.
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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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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Entheogens are not to be lightly trifled with... However, if taken with the right attitude and in the proper setting, psychoactive drugs may produce religious experiences. ...it is far less clear that they can produce religious lives.
Huston Smith
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Walnuts have a shell, and they have a kernel. Religions are the same. They have an essence, but then they have a protective coating. This is not the only way to put it. But it's my way. So the kernels are the same. However, the shells are different.
Huston Smith
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My body was born into the - baptized in the Methodist church, and it will be buried in the Methodist Church. Meanwhile, I have a soul. And my soul cannot be confined to any human institution.
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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Institutions are not pretty. Show me a pretty government. Healing is wonderful, but the American Medical Association? Learning is wonderful, but universities? The same is true for religion... religion is institutionalized spirituality.
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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At the center of the religious life is a peculiar kind of joy, the prospect of a happy ending that blossoms from necessarily painful ordeals, the promise of human difficulties embraced and overcome.
Huston Smith
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'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall see God' suggested to me a heavenly welfare program for the meek. Today that saying reveals an astute insight into egotism, about how those with swollen pride or vanity cannot see anything larger than themselves.
Huston Smith
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Imagine a man besottedly in love: he won't waste time speculating whether other women equally merit his affection.
Huston Smith
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...the single destination of sanctity could admit of so many different avenues leading to it.
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