Evelyn Underhill was an English writer and pacifist best known for her numerous works on religion and spiritual practice. She wrote over twenty books on the subject of mysticism, and was one of the most influential spiritual writers of the 20th century. Underhill was also an active pacifist, and was a vocal opponent of World War I and World War II.
What is the most famous quote by Evelyn Underhill ?
If God were small enough to be understood, He would not be big enough to be worshipped.
— Evelyn Underhill
What can you learn from Evelyn Underhill (Life Lessons)
- Evelyn Underhill encourages us to take time for self-reflection and spiritual contemplation in order to gain a greater understanding of ourselves and our place in the world.
- She emphasizes the importance of living a life of purpose and passion, and of cultivating a deep connection with the divine.
- She also encourages us to be open to the beauty and mystery of life, and to trust our own inner wisdom and intuition.
The most uplifting Evelyn Underhill quotes that will be huge advantage for your personal development
Following is a list of the best Evelyn Underhill quotes, including various Evelyn Underhill inspirational quotes, and other famous sayings by Evelyn Underhill.
God is always coming to you in the Sacrament of the Present Moment.
Meet and receive Him there with gratitude in that sacrament.
For lack of attention a thousand forms of loveliness elude us every day.
After all it is those who have a deep and real inner life who are best able to deal with the irritating details of outer life.
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.
Every minute you are thinking of evil, you might have been thinking of good instead. Refuse to pander to a morbid interest in your own misdeeds. Pick yourself up, be sorry, shake yourself, and go on again.
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.
Mysticism is the art of union with Reality.
The primary declaration of Christianity is not "This do!" but "This happened!
Mystic quotes by Evelyn Underhill
Deliberately seek opportunities for kindness, sympathy, and patience.
In the created world around us we see the Eternal Artist, Eternal Love at work.
The spiritual life is not a special career, involving abstraction from the world of things. It is a part of every man's life; and until he has realized it, he is not a complete human being, has not entered into possession of all his powers.
The world of religion is no longer a concrete fact proposed for our acceptance and adoration. It is an unfathomable universe which engulfs us, and which lives its own majestic uncomprehended life: and we discover that our careful maps and cherished definitions bear little relation to its unmeasured reality.
The heart outstrips the clumsy senses, and sees - perhaps for an instant, perhaps for long periods of bliss - an undistorted and more veritable world.
The direction and constancy of the will is what really matters, & intellect & feeling are only important in so far as they contribute to that.
I have just been given a very engaging Persian kitten.
.. and his opinion is that I have been given to him.
Mysticism is the passionate longing of the soul for God.
Quotations by Evelyn Underhill that are spiritual and devotional
A simple rule, to be followed whether one is in the light or not, gives backbone to one's spiritual life, as nothing else can.
Christian history looks glorious in retrospect;
but it is made up of constant hard choices and unattractive tasks, accepted under the pressure of the Will of God.
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.
A saint is simply a human being whose soul has .
.. grown up to its full stature, by full and generous response to its environment, God. He has achieved a deeper, bigger life than the rest of us, a more wonderful contact with the mysteries of the Universe; a life of infinite possibility, the term of which he never feels that he has reached.
In prayer the soul comes nearest the experience of absolute love: in belief it ascends by means of symbols towards absolute truth.
though humility and acknowledgement of one's real failings is good, the gratuitous eating of worms not put before us by God does not nourish our souls a bit - merely in fact upsets the spiritual tummy.
It is important to increase our sense of God's richness and wonder by reading what his great lovers have said about him.
The mystic lives and looks; and speaks the disconcerting language of first-hand experience.
The spiritual life is a stern choice.
It is not a consoling retreat from the difficulties of existence; but an invitation to enter fully into that difficult existence, and there apply the Charity of God and bear the cost.
The Christian is the person who sees every time and every situation, however dreary and repetitive, as God sees it - a fresh creation from his hand, demanding its own response in perhaps a wholly new and creative way. Under God he is free over it. He has won through to a purchase over events; he has risen with Christ.
Christianity is a religion which concerns us as we are here and now, creatures of body and soul. We do not "follow the footsteps of his most holy life" by the exercise of a trained religious imagination, but by treading the firm, rough earth, up hill and down dale.
Delicate humor is the crowning virtue of the saints.
We have descended into the garden and caught three hundred slugs. How I love the mixture of the beautiful and the squalid in gardening. It makes it so lifelike.
Adoration is caring for God above all else.
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.
The life, beauty and meaning of the whole created order, from the tomtit to the Milky Way, refers back to the Absolute Life and Beauty of its Creator: and so lived, every bit has spiritual significance.
The life of prayer is so great and various there is something in it for everyone. It is like a garden which grows everything, from alpines to potatoes.
As the genuine religious impulse becomes dominant, adoration more and more takes charge. 'I come to seek God because I need Him', may be an adequate formula for prayer. 'I come to adore His splendour, and fling myself and all that I have at His feet', is the only possible formula for worship.
The business and method of mysticism is love.
Meditation is a half-way house between thinking and contemplating.
As the beautiful does not exist for the artist and poet alone—though these can find in it more poignant depths of meaning than other men—so the world of Reality exists for all; and all may participate in it, unite with it, according to their measure and to the strength and purity of their desire.
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.
Love makes the whole difference between an execution and a martyrdom.
As to the most prudent logicians might venture to deduce from a skein of wool the probable existence of a sheep; so you, from the raw stuff of perception, may venture to deduce a universe which transcends the reproductive powers of your loom.
You don't have to be peculiar to find God.
The London streets are paths of loveliness; the very omnibuses look like colored archangels, their laps filled full of little trustful souls.
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.
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.
A wise man has said: 'Only a Christian can live wholly in the present, for to him the past is pardoned and the future is safe in God.' ...the Christian life must be a life without regrets, without remorse.
Man's will and God's grace rise and fall together
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.
I do hope your Christmas has had a little touch of Eternity in among the rush and pitter patter and all. It always seems such a mixing of this world and the next - but that after all is the idea!
I have an idea heaven will be both absolutely happy and absolutely dark, to protect us from the blaze of God.