Evelyn Underhill quotes - page 2

Because mystery is horrible to us, we have agreed for the most part to live in a world of labels; to make of them the current coin of experience, and ignore their merely symbolic character, the infinite gradation of values which they represent. (Evelyn Underhill)
It is reasonable, even reassuring, that hard work and discipline should be needed for this: that it should demand of you, if not the renunciation of the cloister, at least the virtues of the golf course. View quote
Evelyn Underhill
The visionary is a mystic when his vision mediates to him an actuality beyond the reach of the senses. The philosopher is a mystic when he passes beyond thought to the pure apprehension of truth. The active man is a mystic when he knows his actions to be part of a greater activity. View quote
Evelyn Underhill
As it is not by the methods of the laboratory that we learn to know life, so it is not by the methods of the intellect that we learn to know God. View quote
Evelyn Underhill
Because of that corporate life, transfusing you, giving to you and taking from you - conditioning you as it does in countless oblique and unapparent ways - you are still compelled to react in to many suggestions which you are no longer able to respect: controlled, to the last moment of your bodily existence and perhaps afterwords, by habit, custom, the good old average way of misunderstanding the world. View quote
Evelyn Underhill
Hence the most scientific classification is a rough-and-ready business at the best. View quote
Evelyn Underhill
The mystics aim (Union with Reality) is not the suppression of life but it's intensification. View quote
Evelyn Underhill
Contemplation does not mean abject surrender to every "mystical" impression that comes in. It is no sentimental aestheticism or emotional piety to which you are being invited: nor shall the transcending of reason ever be achieved by way of spiritual silliness. View quote
Evelyn Underhill
The deeper your realisation of the plant in its wonder, the more perfect your union with the world of growth and change, the quicker, the more subtle your response to its countless sugestions; so much more acute will become your craving for Something More. View quote
Evelyn Underhill
Meekness and temperance or as we may quite properly translate, Humility and Moderation, - the graces of the self forgetful soul - manifest not in some peculiar and supernatural spiritual manner, but in ordinary human nature. View quote
Evelyn Underhill
For years your treasure has been in the Stock Exchange, or the House of Commons, or the Salon, or the reviews that "really count" (if they still exist), or the drawing-rooms of Mayfair; and thither your heart perpetually tends to stray. Habit has you in its chains. You are not free. (Evelyn Underhill)
Recollection, the art which the practical man is now invited to learn, is in essence no more and no less than the subjection of the attention to the control of the will. View quote
Evelyn Underhill
No nation is truly defeated which retains its spiritual self-possession. No nation is truly victorious which does not emerge soul unstained. View quote
Evelyn Underhill
Never forget that the key to the situation lies in the will and not in the imagination. View quote
Evelyn Underhill
The will is what matters - as long as you have that, you are safe. View quote
Evelyn Underhill
You don't have to be peculiar to find God. View quote
Evelyn Underhill
The helm went down hard and we just cleared the rocks.Otherwise it would have been the end of this poor craft. Our ancient skipper, who was responsible for the error in pilotage, is now wearing what is called his "stuffed monkey expression!" View quote
Evelyn Underhill