Evelyn Underhill

The spiritual life is not a peculiar form of piety. It is, on the contrary, that full and real life for which humanity is made. . . . Still less does the spiritual life mean a mere cultivation of one’s own soul, poking about our interior premises with an electric torch. Even though in its earlier stages it may, and generally does, involve dealing with ourselves, and that in a drastic way, and therefore requires personal effort and personal choice, it is also intensely social. . . . You remember how Dante says that directly a soul ceases to say “mine,” and says “ours,” it makes the transition from the narrow, constricted, individual life to the truly free, truly personal, truly creative spiritual life, in which all are linked together in one single response to God. — Evelyn Underhill

William Ury

The peace we can aspire to is not a harmonious peace of the grave, nor a submissive peace of the slave, but a hardworking peace of the brave. — William Ury

Samuel Johnson

Prejudice, not being founded on reason, cannot be removed by argument. — Samuel Johnson

Ken Sehested

We recently had a person apply for our congregation’s music coordinator position. In her letter, she said “I am also a composer of sacred, spiritual music (of no particular religion). . . .” That’s something like saying “I’m an athlete, but of no particular sport,” or "I'm a musician, but of no particular instrument." — Ken Sehested

John Muir

Nothing dollarable is safe, however guarded. — John Muir

Wendell Berry

If we read the Bible, we will discover that we humans do not own the world or any part of it. . . . We will discover that God made not only the parts of Creation that we humans understand and approve of, but all of it. We will discover that God found the world, as he made it, to be good; that he made it for his pleasure and that he continues to love it and find it worthy, despite its reduction and corruption by us. . . . We will discover that, for these reasons our destruction of nature is not just bad stewardship, or stupid economics, or a betrayal of family responsibility: it is the most horrid blasphemy. It is flinging God’s gifts into his face, as of no worth beyond that assigned to them by our destruction of them. In Dante, “Despising Nature and her Gifts” was a violence against God. . . . We have the right to use the gifts of nature, but not to ruin or waste them. We have the right to use what we need, but no more. — Wendell Berry

Rumi

Let the beauty we love be what we do. Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love. — Rumi

Rushworth Kidder

Just observing the twenty-give thousand people who have gone through our seminars in the past 15 years. . . we’ve noticed there isn’t any salient distinction between the moral reasoning capacities of people who are religious and those we are not religious. — Rushworth Kidder

Seyyed Hossein Nasr

I don’t like the word “tolerance” very much, because you can also tolerate a toothache. . . . I think there’s no more crucial a problem for our day than to be able to cross religious frontiers while preserving our own integrity. In fact, I think this is the only exciting intellectual adventure of our times. — Seyyed Hossein Nasr