Quote

If Rumi is the most-read poet in America today, Coleman Barks is in good part responsible. His ear for the truly divine madness in Rumi’s poetry is really remarkable.

Huston Smith

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Huston Smith
Age: 97 †
Born: 1919
Born: May 31
Died: 2016
Died: December 30
Philosopher
Professor
Soochow
Huston Cummings Smith
Really
Poet
Rumi
Good
Truly
Coleman
Poetry
Barks
Divine
Bark
Read
Remarkable
Part
Madness
America
Ears
Today
Responsible

More quotes by Huston Smith

Image
When there are miles to go before we sleep, altered traits are more important than altered states.
Huston Smith
Image
The self is too small an object for perpetual enthusiasm.
Huston Smith
Image
...but with my clamoring ego solidly in place, I considered the title, 'Memories of a Failed Nobody'.
Huston Smith
Image
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
Image
God enters our lives when through our creative interchanges we make history more just.
Huston Smith
Image
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
Image
The faith I was born into formed me.
Huston Smith
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Swallow your pride and admit that we all need help at times.
Huston Smith
Image
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
Image
The first koan do not have rational answers. They are techniques devised over the millennia for triggering an actual experience.
Huston Smith
Image
I am profoundly moved and persuaded by the near-death experience.
Huston Smith
Image
As human beings we are made to surpass ourselves and are truly ourselves only when transcending ourselves.
Huston Smith
Image
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
Image
The notion that Western religions are more rigid than those of Asia is overdrawn. Ours is the most permissive society history has ever known - almost the only thing that is forbidden now is to forbid - and Asian teachers and their progeny play up to this propensity by soft-pedaling Hinduism's, Buddhism's, Sufism's rules.
Huston Smith
Image
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
Image
If you are drilling for water, it's better to drill one 60-foot well than 10 6-foot wells.
Huston Smith
Image
In order to live man must believe in that for which he lives.
Huston Smith
Image
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