Huston Smith quotes

When I read the Upanishads, which are part of Vedanta, I found a profundity of worldview that made my Christianity seem like third grade. (Huston Smith)
Sex is the divine in its most available epiphany. View quote
Huston Smith
We are a blend of dust and divinity. View quote
Huston Smith
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. View quote
Huston Smith
I am very orthodox in thinking that Jesus acted in his life the way God would have acted if God had assumed human form. View quote
Huston Smith
It is commonly said and known that each civilization has its own religion. Now my claim is that if we look deeper, the different civilizations were brought into being by the different revelations. View quote
Huston Smith
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. View quote
Huston Smith
Exclusively oral cultures are unencumbered by dead knowledge, dead facts. Libraries, on the other hand, are full of them. View quote
Huston Smith
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. View quote
Huston Smith
The most powerful moral influence is example. View quote
Huston Smith
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)
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. View quote
Huston Smith
God is defined by Jesus but not confined to Jesus. View quote
Huston Smith
I think it matters almost infinitely that we practice one of the authentic religions. But if you mean does it make any difference which. The answer is no, as long as each is followed with equal intensity, sincerity, dedication. View quote
Huston Smith
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. View quote
Huston Smith
I don't have any fear of death. I do, however, have an inordinate fear of becoming dependent on other people. To me, that's the severest test, not death. View quote
Huston Smith
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. View quote
Huston Smith
Only while they are conforming their actions to the model of some archetypal hero do the Arunta feel that they are truly alive, for in those roles they are immortal. The occasions on which they slip from such molds are quite meaningless, for time immediately devours those occasions and reduces them to nothingness. View quote
Huston Smith
In nature, the emphasis is in what is rather than what ought to be. View quote
Huston Smith
...the only thing that continues is the consequences of our action. View quote
Huston Smith
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)
Religion teaches us that our lives here on earth are to be used for transformation. View quote
Huston Smith
Rationalism and Newtonian science has lured us into dark woods, but a new metaphysics can rescue us. View quote
Huston Smith
Swallow your pride and admit that we all need help at times. View quote
Huston Smith
The faith I was born into formed me. View quote
Huston Smith