Emanuel Swedenborg Quotes

Peace has in it trust in the Lord, that He governs all things, provides all things, and leads to a good end.

True charity is the desire to be useful to others with no thought of recompense.

Destruction was effected after visitation, for visitation always precedes.

Love in its essence is spiritual fire.

The act of exploring what the men are, and moreover the separation of the good from the evil, is visitation; and the good are then removed, and the evil are left behind.

The essence of love is that what is ours should belong to someone else.

Feeling the joy of someone else as joy within ourselves-that is loving.

Conscience is God's presence in humans.

Seen in its own right, a loving person's inner spirit is an angel of heaven, and while we are living in the body we are also in the company of angels, even though we are not aware of it; and once we are released from the body we join them.

Charity is like warmth in springtime or summer that causes grass, plants, and trees to grow. Without charity, or spiritual warmth, nothing grows.

A man after death, is not a natural but a spiritual man;

nevertheless he still appears in all respects like himself.

Anyone can see that intending and not acting when we can is not really intending, and loving and not doing good when we can is not really loving.

The activity of love and faith is what makes heaven.

True wisdom is seeing what is beneficial to your eternal life, and managing your life according to that. You do this when you not only know these things and grasp them with your understanding, but also will and do them.

The life of any one can by no means be changed after death;

an evil life can in no wise be converted into a good life, or an infernal into an angelic life: because every spirit, from head to foot, is of the character of his love, and therefore, of his life; and to convert this life into its opposite, would be to destroy the spirit utterly.

The divine essence itself is love and wisdom.

Goodness and love mould the form into their own image, and cause the joy and beauty of love to shine forth from every part of the face.

In the spiritual body moreover, man appears such as he is with respect to love and faith, for everyone in the spiritual world is the effigy of his own love, not only as to the face and the body, but also as to the speech and the actions.

Two consorts in heaven are not two, but one angel.

In the Christian world... it is believed that angels were created at the beginning, and that heaven was formed of them; and that the Devil or Satan was an angel of light, who, becoming rebellions, was cast down with his crew, and that this was the origin of hell.

Man is so created that as to his internal he cannot die;

for he is capable of believing in God, and thus of being conjoined to God by faith and love, and to be conjoined to God is to live to eternity.

Love consists in desiring to give what is our own to another and feeling his delight as our own.

Self-love and the love of the world constitute hell.

Times of happiness, bliss, and sheer delight intensify as the higher levels of our minds are opened within us One our life on earth is over, these levels keep rising forever.

I am well aware that many will say that no one can possibly speak with spirits and angels so long as he lives in the body; and many will say that it is all fancy, others that I relate such things in order to gain credence, and others will make other objections.

Hell and Heaven are near man, yes, in him;

and every man after death goes to that Hell or heaven in which he was, or to his spirit, during his abode in the world.

Moreover, no one is judged from the natural man, thus not so long as he lives in the natural world, for man is then in a natural body; but everyone is judged in the spiritual man, and therefore when he comes into the spiritual world, for man is then in a spiritual body.

Marriages on earth--because they are the seminaries of the human race and of the angels of heaven also; because, likewise, they proceed from a spiritual origin, that is, from the marriage of good and truth; and since, in addition, the Lord's divine proceeding principally flows into conjugal love--are most holy in the estimation of the angels.

I have seen a thousand times that Angels are human form, or men, for I have conversed with them as man to man, sometimes with one alone, sometimes with many in company.

What a man thinks in his spirit in the world, that he does after his departure from the world when he becomes a spirit.

That all who have ever been born men from the beginning of creation, and are deceased, are either in heaven or in hell, follows from those things which have been said and shown in the preceding article, namely, that Heaven and Hell are from the human race.

Such as the love is, such is the wisdom, consequently such is the man (n.

368) (Divine Love and Wisdom, 1763)

Wherefore the brain must be looked upon as the universal and general sensory and at the same time as the universal and general motory organ of the body and finally as the universal and general laboratory of the animal spirits and the blood or of the essential juices of life.

For the judgment was accomplished not only upon all the men of the Christian church, but also upon all who are called Mohammedans, and, moreover, upon all the Gentiles in the whole world.

Sacred scripture is like a mirror in which we see God, although each in a different way.

All union is effected by love, and love is not love without trust.

It can in no sense be said that heaven is outside of any one;

it is within ... and a man, also, so far as he receives heaven, is a recipient, a heaven, and an angel.

Charity alone, or love and compassion, is what joins [the Lord and a person] together.

He who assists a poor or needy villain does evil to his neighbor.

..for through the assistance which he renders he...supplies him with the means of doing evil to others.

The more one is absorbed in so-called philosophy, the greater one's delusion and blindness.

If love is not married to wisdom (or if goodness is not married to truth), it cannot accomplish anything.

And as the Divine that goes forth from the Lord is the good of love and the truth of faith, the angels are angels and are heaven in the measure in which they receive good and truth from the Lord.

No one's character is completely like another'sthis infinite variety is like a mirror in which we can see the infinity of God the Creator.

Angels never attack, as infernal spirits do. Angels only ward off and defend.

Angels can recognize the nature of our unique essence on the basis of nothing more than a brief conversation with us. From hearing the tone of our voice angels sense what we love; and from hearing what we say, angels sense our level of understanding.

The angels taken collectively are called heaven, for they constitute heaven;

and yet that which makes heaven in general and in particular is the Divine that goes forth from the Lord and flows into the angels and is received by them.

First of all it must be known who the God of heaven is, since upon that all the other things depend.

Without such a Life, the Word as to the letter is dead.

But by all this I am not deterred, for I have seen, I have heard, I have felt.

It is no proof of a man's understanding to be able to affirm whatever he pleases; but to be able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is false, this is the mark and character of intelligence.