Evelyn Underhill Quotes
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Grace is God himself, his loving energy at work within his church and within our souls.
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Mysticism is the art of union with Reality.
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You don't have to be peculiar to find God.
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There is no place in my soul, no corner of my character, where God is not.
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All things are perceived in the light of charity, and hence under the aspect of beauty; for beauty is simply reality seen with the eyes of love.
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I do not think reading the mystics would hurt you myself: you say you must avoid books which deal with 'feelings' - but the mystics don't deal with feelings but with love which is a very different thing. You have too many 'feelings,' but not nearly enough love.
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It is important to increase our sense of God's richness and wonder by reading what his great lovers have said about him.
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Much is now being said about evangelism; but before we get effective evangelism, we have to get effective evangelists. Evangelism is useless unless it is the work of one devoted to God, willing and glad to suffer all things for God, penetrated by the attractiveness of God. New machinery, adaptations and adjustments, are not the first need... but more devoted, adoring, sacrificial souls.
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The heart outstrips the clumsy senses, and sees - perhaps for an instant, perhaps for long periods of bliss - an undistorted and more veritable world.
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Adoration is caring for God above all else.
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Saints are the great teachers of the loving-kindness and fascination with God.
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The mystic cannot wholly do without symbol and image, inadequate to his vision though they must always be: for his experience must be expressed if it is to be communicated, and its actuality is inexpressible except in some hint or parallel which will stimulate the dormant intuition of the reader.
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In my relations with my father, which are difficult and where I'm often met by coolness and indifference, I am constantly tempted to be cold and indifferent. Yet I know that this is a test if I could take it rightly.
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If by losing the spirit of prayer, you mean losing the heavenly sensations of deep devotion, I am afraid that does not matter a scrap.
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If we ask of the saints how they achieved spiritual effectiveness, they are only able to reply that, insofar as they did it themselves, they did it by love and prayer.
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Worship is the one, total adoring response of man to the one Eternal God.
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God is much in the difficult home problems as in the times of quiet and prayer.
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Spiritual achievement costs much, though never as much as it is worth.
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Try to arrange things so that you can have a reasonable bit of quiet every day.
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All artists are of necessity in some measure contemplative.
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Love is creative. It does not flow along the easy paths, spending itself in the attractive. It cuts new channels, goes where it is needed.
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On every level of life, from housework to heights of prayer, in all judgment and efforts to get things done, hurry and impatience are sure marks of the amateur.
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Spiritual reading is a regular, essential part of the life of prayer, and particularly is it the support of adoring prayer.
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Faith is not a refuge from reality. It is a demand that we face reality ... The true subject matter of religion is not our own little souls, but the Eternal God and His whole mysterious purpose, and our solemn responsibility to Him.