I’m in awe of the universe, but I don’t necessarily believe there’s an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance. The incense is powerful and provocative, whether Buddhist or Catholic.

Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours.

I can’t believe that God put us on this earth to be ordinary.

No man can succeed in a line of endeavor which he does not like.

I am a deeply religious nonbeliever – this is a somewhat new kind of religion.

I started out as a poet. I’ve always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.

I think Buddhism should open the door of psychology and healing to penetrate more easily into the Western world.

As a member of the Church, you have made sacred covenants with the Lord.

Heaven means to be one with God.

Marriage is a series of desperate arguments people feel passionately about.

Art is man’s expression of his joy in labor.

Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.

I’m in awe of the universe, but I don’t necessarily believe there’s an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance.

There was something undifferentiated and yet complete, which existed before Heaven and Earth. Soundless and formless, it depends on nothing and does not change. It operates everywhere and is free from danger. It may be considered the mother of the universe. I do not know its name; I call it Tao.

If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little – somebody who is obsessed by Making.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

And I try to give the best bang for the buck. I love performing more than anything else.

Our country does not believe in the concept of your God and my God. We believe that all gods are one. We have different ways of accepting Him. All ways lead to Him.

India has 2,000,000 gods and worships them all. In religion, all other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire.

My work as an artist is completely separate from my work as a philanthropist.

Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe.

Perhaps I can say that I am a bit astute, that I can adapt to circumstances, but it is also true that I am a bit naive. Yes, but the best summary, the one that comes more from the inside and I feel most true is this: I am a sinner whom the Lord has looked upon.

I always ask God to work through me and let me be a light of some kind and help in this world, so I always pray for that, and I always want to do good.

The highest proof of the spirit is love. Love the eternal thing which can already on earth possess as it really is.

A saint serves others, knowing that the more one serves, the greater the opportunity for the Spirit to sanctify and purify.

When we understand string theory, we will know how the universe began. It won’t have much effect on how we live, but it is important to understand where we come from and what we can expect to find as we explore.

For years, my early work with Roger Penrose seemed to be a disaster for science. It showed that the universe must have begun with a singularity, if Einstein’s general theory of relativity is correct. That appeared to indicate that science could not predict how the universe would begin.

Love is of all passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart and the senses.

It occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well.

So many people live with anger and unforgiveness, and many of them are Christians.

Was Jesus the son of God? Yes. But so are you. You just haven’t realized it yet.

Before 1915, space and time were thought of as a fixed arena in which events took place, but which was not affected by what happened in it. Space and time are now dynamic quantities… space and time not only affect but are also affected by everything that happens in the universe.

Success in its highest and noblest form calls for peace of mind and enjoyment and happiness which come only to the man who has found the work that he likes best.

I would get out of school and go straight to my computer to create beats.

I’m just telling you, God permits things in our lives sometimes for reasons that we do not understand yet because of the spiritual level that we’re on. We can’t have any understanding of it, because we’re not at a place of spiritual growth yet where we understand the deeper things of God.

By its birth, and for all time, Christianity is pledged to the Cross and dominated by the sign of the Cross. It cannot remain its own self except by identifying itself ever more intensely with the essence of the Cross.

A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this – that offences against Charity are about the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made – not to understand – but to feel – as crime.

Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.

If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.

If we do discover a complete theory, it should be in time understandable in broad principle by everyone. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people be able to take part in the discussion of why we and the universe exist.

God is cruel. Sometimes he makes you live.

I just am committed wholeheartedly to theatre with no intermission.

People are looking for something a little more stable; people are feeling like they need to get closer to God.

Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order.

It’s hard work making movies. It’s like being a doctor: you work long hours, very hard hours, and it’s emotional, tense work. If you don’t really love it, then it ain’t worth it.

Sometimes I just sit still and enjoy God’s presence.

Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain.

I like being a writer.

I’ve always been very one-sided about science, and when I was younger, I concentrated almost all my effort on it.

In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong.

One of the greatest lessons of my own life was learning to turn the inner rampage of hatred and anger toward my own father for his reprehensible behavior and abandonment of his family into an inner reaction more closely aligned with God and God-realized love.

The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice.

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

As I approached my 95th birthday, I was burdened to write a book that addressed the epidemic of ‚easy believism.‘ There is a mindset today that if people believe in God and do good works, they are going to Heaven.

Being brought up very religious, I have a fear of people that look to idol gods.

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.

I sincerely hope I can contribute to the progress there has been in relations between Jews and Catholics since the Second Vatican Council in a spirit of renewed collaboration.

I do not concern myself with gods and spirits either good or evil nor do I serve any.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place. Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

Admiration is a very short-lived passion, that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object.

Neither of my parents went to church, but they did everything that you needed to do to be Christian. That’s something a Quaker would call an intimation of the divine.