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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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Huston Smith
Age: 97 †
Born: 1919
Born: May 31
Died: 2016
Died: December 30
Philosopher
Professor
Soochow
Huston Cummings Smith
Pride
Reveals
Saying
Heavenly
Shall
Larger
Poor
Vanity
Astute
Spirit
Welfare
Swollen
Cannot
Insight
Meek
Today
Blessed
Egotism
Anything
Program
Suggested

More quotes by Huston Smith

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We become compassionate not from altruism which denies the self for the sake of the other, but from the insight that sees and feels one is the other.
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If you are drilling for water, it's better to drill one 60-foot well than 10 6-foot wells.
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Most of the book deals with things we already know yet never learn.
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What is sickness? What is health? Both are distractions. Put them both aside and go forward.
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It has been estimated that one third of our Western civilization bears the mark of its Jewish ancestry.
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A nation can assume that the addition of the words under God to its pledge of allegiance gives evidence that its citizens actually believe in God whereas all it really proves is that they believe in believing in God
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...the single destination of sanctity could admit of so many different avenues leading to it.
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The faith I was born into formed me.
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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.
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The first koan do not have rational answers. They are techniques devised over the millennia for triggering an actual experience.
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We are free when we are not the slave of our impulses, but rather their master. Taking inward distance, we thus become the authors of our own dramas rather than characters in them.
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Swami Ashokananda was a brilliant and accomplished spiritual teacher in the West.
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The goal of spiritual life is not altered states, but altered traits
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We all carry it within us: supreme strength, the fullness of wisdom, unquenchable joy. It is never thwarted, and cannot be destroyed.
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Not only is the destiny of the individual bound up with the entire Church it is responsible for helping to sanctify the entire world of nature and history.
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I am profoundly moved and persuaded by the near-death experience.
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Science can prove nothing about God, because God lies outside its province.
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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.
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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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Swallow your pride and admit that we all need help at times.
Huston Smith