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The self is too small an object for perpetual enthusiasm.

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
Enthusiasm
Object
Objects
Small
Self
Perpetual

More quotes by Huston Smith

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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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As human beings we are made to surpass ourselves and are truly ourselves only when transcending ourselves.
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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Daily the world grows smaller, leaving understanding the only place where peace can find a home.
Huston Smith
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I have a body and I have a soul. And my body belongs to the faith - in fact, the church - into which it was born, the Methodist Church.
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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Science can prove nothing about God, because God lies outside its province.
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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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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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
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I am profoundly moved and persuaded by the near-death experience.
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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Built into human makeup is a longing for a 'more' that the world of everyday experience cannot requite.
Huston Smith
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If you are drilling for water, it's better to drill one 60-foot well than 10 6-foot wells.
Huston Smith
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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
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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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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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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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...the single destination of sanctity could admit of so many different avenues leading to it.
Huston Smith
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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.
Huston Smith