Quote

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.

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
Helping
Bound
Nature
Bounds
World
Entire
Responsible
Destiny
Church
Individual
History
Sanctify

More quotes by Huston Smith

Image
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
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
'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
Image
When there are miles to go before we sleep, altered traits are more important than altered states.
Huston Smith
Image
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
Image
Exclusively oral cultures are unencumbered by dead knowledge, dead facts. Libraries, on the other hand, are full of them.
Huston Smith
Image
Science can prove nothing about God, because God lies outside its province.
Huston Smith
Image
Most of the book deals with things we already know yet never learn.
Huston Smith
Image
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
Image
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
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
God enters our lives when through our creative interchanges we make history more just.
Huston Smith
Image
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
Image
What is sickness? What is health? Both are distractions. Put them both aside and go forward.
Huston Smith
Image
The crisis that the world finds itself in as it swings on the hinge of a new millennium is located in something deeper than particular ways of organizing political systems and economies.
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
As known unknowns become known unknown unknowns proliferate the larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.
Huston Smith
Image
The Sufis say there are three ways to know fire - by hearing it described, by seeing it, or by being burned.
Huston Smith
Image
Swami Ashokananda was a brilliant and accomplished spiritual teacher in the West.
Huston Smith
Image
Imagine a man besottedly in love: he won't waste time speculating whether other women equally merit his affection.
Huston Smith