It tends to happen at an odd moment. We are standing at a sink, or waiting for a kettle, or walking back from somewhere at dusk, and for a few seconds the ordinary scene seems to carry more weight than it should, as if it were pointing at something we cannot name. Then a message arrives and the moment closes. Most of us have had it, and many of us have no idea what to call it, because the words on offer feel either too churchy or too much like a wellness feed.
When Sai first wrote this page in 2022, he put the spread of it plainly.
“Some find their spiritual connection with the gods of this world and some others get that connection with other things like nature, art or passion.”
Sai Subramaniam, founder of VentSpace, on the 2022 version of this page
That is a generous starting point, and the most careful writers on the subject would agree with it. William James, writing in 1902, chose to define religion not by its doctrines but by “the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude”. Across traditions, the oldest and steadiest description of spirituality is a kind of attention, which is why the believer and the person who left their religion at nineteen can both recognize the moment at the sink.
So the 48 quotes below are sorted by the moment we are in, not by religion. They come from many traditions and from writers with none, and every one carries the book, poem, sermon or verse it comes from. The page does not ask anyone to believe anything.
The short version
Spirituality starts as attention. That is the thread from William James to Simone Weil to Mary Oliver.
Six moments: noticing, ordinary places, a dark stretch, prayer, a busy mind, and love.
Forty-eight quotes, each traced, from the Psalms and the Dhammapada to Anne Lamott and Eckhart Tolle.
Corrections. Two lines from the 2022 page were scripture with no name on them. One line it doubted turned out to be genuine. Three famous lines could not be traced to the people they are credited to.
No doctrine, no promises. Nothing here claims that spirituality will fix anything.
Spirituality starts as attention, not belief
Eight quotes for the moment at the sink. What they share is the suggestion that we do not need to settle what we believe before we can begin, because the beginning is noticing.
“Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.”
Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, English translation 1952
If you only take one from this category, take this. It is five words long, and it moves prayer from the question of whom we are addressing to the question of how fully we are present.
“Attention is the beginning of devotion.”
Mary Oliver, Upstream, 2016
“the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.”
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture II, 1902
James offered this as a working definition, the meaning he asked his audience “arbitrarily” to take for his lectures. The phrase “whatever they may consider the divine” is what makes it hospitable to all of us.
“Wonder or radical amazement is the chief characteristic of the religious man’s attitude toward history and nature.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man, 1955
“I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth.”
Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness, 1975
“And men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty billows of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, and pass themselves by”
Augustine, Confessions, Book X, E. B. Pusey translation
“spiritual life does not remove us from the world but leads us deeper into it.”
Henri Nouwen, Making All Things New, 1981
“The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.”
Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 277
Quick Summary
Q: What is spirituality, in the words of the people who wrote about it best?
A: Most of them describe it first as a kind of attention. William James defined religion by “the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude”, Simone Weil wrote that “Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer”, and Mary Oliver that “Attention is the beginning of devotion.” None of the three requires us to settle a belief first.
Insight: The 2022 version of this page printed the Nouwen line above as “commonly attributed to Henri Nouwen”, with a hedge. The hedge was unnecessary. The sentence is in his 1981 book Making All Things New, which is a rarer outcome for a famous spiritual quotation than it should be.
The sacred in ordinary places
Eight for the people Sai described in 2022, whose connection runs through nature, art or work. We often assume that the holy needs a special building. These writers found it in a wood, a field of grass and a monastery kitchen.
“In the woods, we return to reason and faith.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, 1836
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854
“I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars”
Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”, section 31, Leaves of Grass
“There lives the dearest freshness deep down things”
Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur”, written 1877, published 1918
“The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.”
Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali, 69, 1912
“a sense sublime / Of something far more deeply interfused”
William Wordsworth, “Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey”, 1798
“The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer.”
Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God
If you only take one from this category, take this. Brother Lawrence worked as the cook for his religious community, and this is a sentence others remembered him saying, about a kitchen full of people calling for different things at once. It is the most practical spiritual sentence we know, because almost all of us spend our days in some version of that kitchen.
“Work is love made visible.”
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, “On Work”, 1923
Quick Summary
Q: Can spirituality come from nature, work or art rather than religion?
A: Many of the writers who shaped the word thought so. Emerson wrote that “In the woods, we return to reason and faith”, Whitman found the stars’ work in a leaf of grass, and Brother Lawrence, a monastery cook, said the time of business did not differ for him from the time of prayer.
For a dark stretch
Eight for a season when nothing feels holy, when we doubt, or when the path has disappeared. This is not a page about grief, and if a loss is what you are carrying, our page of grief quotes was written for that. These are for the more ordinary darkness of not knowing.
“Midway upon the journey of our life / I found myself within a forest dark, / For the straightforward pathway had been lost.”
Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Canto I, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow translation, 1867
Perhaps the most famous opening in European poetry is an admission that we have lost our way, and it is written in the first person plural before it turns to “I”.
“all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, chapter 27, Grace Warrack edition, 1901
Usually quoted as comfort, and it is, but in the text it is an answer to a hard question. Julian had been asking why sin was allowed into the world at all, and this is the reply she reports receiving.
“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me.”
Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude, 1958
If you only take one from this category, take this. It is the opening of a prayer, and it begins with not knowing. It gives the rest of us permission to start there too.
“Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing.”
Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart, 1997
“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.”
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, “On Pain”, 1923
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face”
1 Corinthians 13:12, King James Version, 1611
“Hope is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul, / And sings the tune without the words, / And never stops at all”
Emily Dickinson, Poems, Second Series, 1891
“Let nothing disturb thee, / Nothing affright thee; / All things are passing; / God never changeth”
Teresa of Ávila, “Santa Teresa’s Book-Mark”, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow translation
If you are struggling right now. If a dark stretch has turned into feeling hopeless, or you are thinking about harming yourself, please contact a crisis line now. In the US, call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline). Anywhere else, findahelpline.com lists free, confidential services by country. This page is not a substitute for that, and talking to a doctor or therapist is a legitimate step at any point.
Quick Summary
Q: What is a good spiritual quote for a hard time?
A: Thomas Merton’s prayer from Thoughts in Solitude (1958), which opens “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going”, because it starts from not knowing rather than from certainty. Julian of Norwich’s “all shall be well” is the classic, and in her text it is an answer to a hard question, not a slogan.
Prayer, for people who are not sure they pray
Eight on prayer, from several traditions and from writers who would hesitate to call themselves religious at all. We include two lines the 2022 page printed with no name on them.
“Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer”
Romans 12:12, King James Version, 1611
The 2022 page had this as “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer”, with no source. That wording is the New International Version of the same verse.
“Truly my soul waiteth upon God: from him cometh my salvation.”
Psalm 62:1, King James Version, 1611
Also on the 2022 page without a name, as “My soul finds rest in God alone”. The current New International Version reads “Truly my soul finds rest in God; my salvation comes from him.”
“Be still, and know that I am God”
Psalm 46:10, King James Version, 1611
“But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret”
Matthew 6:6, King James Version, 1611
“for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee.”
Augustine, Confessions, Book I, E. B. Pusey translation
“Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel, “On Prayer”, 1969
“Prayer means that, in some unique way, we believe we’re invited into a relationship with someone who hears us when we speak in silence.”
Anne Lamott, Help, Thanks, Wow, 2012
If you only take one from this category, take this. The phrase “in some unique way” leaves room for those of us who are not sure what we are doing when we do it.
“The kingdom of God is within you, saith the Lord.”
Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book II, chapter 1, William Benham translation
À Kempis is quoting the Gospel of Luke here, and the translation’s footnote gives the verse, Luke 17:21.
Quick Summary
Q: What did the 2022 page’s unnamed prayer quotes come from?
A: Both are scripture. “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer” is Romans 12:12 in the New International Version, and “My soul finds rest in God alone” is a modern rendering of Psalm 62:1. The King James wording of each is printed above.
The mind you carry everywhere
Eight for the “mind” in this page’s title. Several traditions arrived at the same uncomfortable observation: that we can travel anywhere and still bring the same restless companion with us.
“All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts.”
The Dhammapada, verse 1, F. Max Müller translation
“He who knows other men is discerning; he who knows himself is intelligent.”
Laozi, Tao Teh King, chapter 33, James Legge translation, 1891
“It were all one, I think, / To hold the wayward wind, as tame man’s heart.”
Bhagavad Gita, chapter 6, Edwin Arnold, The Song Celestial, 1885
If you only take one from this category, take this. It is Arjuna objecting that the calm he is being taught is impossible, and the reply he gets is not a denial. Krishna agrees it is hard, and says the heart may grow steadier by habit.
“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.”
Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, 2005
Tolle’s earlier book has its own page on this site, our lessons from The Power of Now.
“all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.”
Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 139
“we must reserve a backshop, wholly our own and entirely free, wherein to settle our true liberty, our principal solitude and retreat.”
Michel de Montaigne, “Of Solitude”, Essays, Book I, chapter 38, Charles Cotton translation
“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”, 1841
“it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book IV.3, George Long translation, 1862
Quick Summary
Q: What do spiritual traditions say about the mind?
A: Strikingly similar things. The Dhammapada opens with “All that we are is the result of what we have thought”, Laozi rates self-knowledge above knowing others, and in the Bhagavad Gita Arjuna complains that taming the heart is like holding the wind. None of them pretends it is easy.
Insight: The 2022 page carried a long Eckhart Tolle quotation about spiritual awakening. We could not find it in any Tolle book in the book archive we searched, so it is gone, and the Tolle line above comes from A New Earth. Not every famous line by a living teacher is by that teacher.
Love, the oldest spiritual subject
Eight on love, the subject on which almost every tradition sounds most alike. We end here because it is where the attention of the first category usually leads.
“Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up”
1 Corinthians 13:4, King James Version, 1611
Where the King James has “charity”, modern translations such as the New International Version have “love”: “Love is patient, love is kind.” We kept the older word because it reminds us that this love is a practice, not a mood.
“Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it”
Song of Solomon 8:7, King James Version, 1611
“Love was His meaning.”
Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, chapter 86, Grace Warrack edition, 1901
If you only take one from this category, take this. Julian writes that she wanted to know what her visions meant, and the answer came “fifteen years afterwards and more”. Four words, after fifteen years of waiting.
“Somewhere somebody must have a little sense, and that’s the strong person. The strong person is the person who can cut off the chain of hate, the chain of evil.”
Martin Luther King Jr., “Loving Your Enemies”, sermon at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, November 17, 1957
From a recording of the sermon. He was preaching, he told the congregation, under the handicap of having seen a doctor that morning.
“The light of love is always in us, no matter how cold the flame.”
bell hooks, All About Love, 2000
“for wheresoever a man seeketh his own, there he falleth from love.”
Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book III, chapter 5, William Benham translation
“By all means they try to hold me secure who love me in this world. But it is otherwise with thy love which is greater than theirs, and thou keepest me free.”
Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali, 32, 1912
“The Love which moves the sun and the other stars.”
Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, Canto XXXIII, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow translation
The last line of the whole Divine Comedy. The journey that began in a dark forest ends here.
Quick Summary
Q: What is a good spiritual quote about love?
A: Julian of Norwich’s “Love was His meaning”, the answer she says came fifteen years after her visions, or the last line of Dante’s Paradiso, “The Love which moves the sun and the other stars.” For a modern voice, bell hooks in All About Love (2000): “The light of love is always in us, no matter how cold the flame.”
Insight: Three of the most-shared lines in this genre could not be traced to the names on them. “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience” is credited to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, but the earliest copies we found, in two 1992 books, print it with no name, and a 1997 collection gives it to Ram Dass. “Religion is belief in someone else’s experience. Spirituality is having your own experience” appeared on the 2022 version of this page under Deepak Chopra’s name, and the copies we found begin in 2014 and none of them names him. “The wound is the place where the Light enters you” is credited to Rumi everywhere, but the copies we found name no translation, and, as our house attribution guard records, most popular English “Rumi” lines are Coleman Barks’s loose modern versions rather than translations.
What to do with the line that found you
A quotation does its best work when we stop collecting it and start keeping it. The writers on this page did not read about attention, they practiced it, usually by writing something down: Augustine’s Confessions, Julian’s revelations, Merton’s prayer and Mary Oliver’s essays are all, in their way, records of noticing.
If you would like somewhere to keep that kind of record, VentSpace is one option. It is a journaling app that turns what you write into a clear read on your life balance, plus small, doable next steps. As of October 2026 it is free to start and Android only. Not on Android, or at a desk? VentSpace Live runs in your browser, free, with nothing to install. A notebook by the kettle does the same job, and has done it for centuries.
We are none of us good at paying attention, and that is the most common thing about us. The traditions on this page seem to agree that it can be practiced, one ordinary moment at a time, and that the moment at the sink was never nothing.
Questions people ask about spirituality quotes
Who said “We are spiritual beings having a human experience”?
It is usually credited to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, but we could not trace it to him. The earliest copies we found, from 1992, print it without a name, and one 1997 collection credits Ram Dass. Treat it as anonymous.
Did Rumi say “The wound is the place where the light enters you”?
We could not confirm it. The copies we found cite only “Rumi”, with no translator or poem named. Many popular English Rumi lines are loose modern versions, so this page does not print it as his.
What is the difference between religion and spirituality?
There is no settled answer, and the quotations disagree. William James defined religion itself by private “feelings, acts, and experiences”, which is close to how many people now use “spirituality”. Most of the writers on this page treat spirituality as attention to something larger, practiced inside a religion or outside one.
Are these quotes from one religion?
No. They come from Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu and Stoic texts, and from poets and essayists with no tradition at all. The page takes no side.
What is a short spiritual quote?
Simone Weil’s “Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer” and Julian of Norwich’s “Love was His meaning” are both four or five words, and both carry a whole way of seeing.
About this article
Written by
Sai Subramaniam
Founder, VentSpace
I write these guides because I have been where you are. I am working through my own hard seasons, and I share the things that actually helped me, so that anyone going through it has a steady companion close by instead of facing it alone. VentSpace is the app I built for exactly that: a journaling app that turns what you write into a clear read on your life balance, plus small, doable next steps toward feeling more like yourself.
This writing is honest and every claim is sourced, and it is not a substitute for professional care. If you are struggling, reaching out to a professional is a strong move, not a failure.
Explore VentSpaceTry VentSpace LiveHow this one was checked. Every factual claim traces to a named source, and the source is printed next to the claim rather than kept in a footnote. Quotes are pinned to the work they come from, with the year, the letter or the chapter where one exists. Where a widely repeated claim could not be traced, it was left out and the omission recorded. Where a figure is contested, both sides are printed.
No affiliate links, no paid placements, and nobody paid to appear here. Where we mention our own app, we say that it is ours, we state its limits, and we never position it as a substitute for care.
Reviewed: October 2026. Prices, platforms and product availability move quickly, and anything we could not verify at the time of writing is marked as unverified rather than turned into a number.
Corrections. If something here is wrong, we would rather know. Corrections are made in place, with a note saying what changed.