Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans – because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone – because we have the impulse to explain who we are.

If I love you, I show you I love you every day. Little things, big things.

Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.

If the grace of God miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door.

A lot of good love can happen in ten years.

Who shall measure the hat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body?

Heaven gives us hope and makes our present burdens easier to bear.

My mother loved children – she would have given anything if I had been one.

You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit.

God is not upset that Gandhi was not a Christian, because God is not a Christian! All of God’s children and their different faiths help us to realize the immensity of God.

The word ‚Christianity‘ is already a misunderstanding – in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross.

If I could give you information of my life, it would be to show how a woman of very ordinary ability has been led by God in strange and unaccustomed paths to do In His service what He has done in her. And if I could tell you all, you would see how God has done all, and I nothing.

I’m pretty sure I don’t have any songs that are about how much I love someone. They’re all either about, like, ‚I hate you,‘ or ‚You make me hate me.‘

In each individual the spirit is made flesh, in each one the whole of creation suffers, in each one a Savior is crucified.

You bring children into the world. You love them with heart and soul.

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.

I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn’t, than live as if there isn’t and to die to find out that there is.

Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand.

I was always respectful of people who were deeply religious because I always felt that if they gave themselves to it, then it had to be important to them. But if you can go through life without it, that’s OK, too. It’s whatever suits you.

Without Cambodia, I may never have become a mother. Part of my heart is and will always be in this country. And part of this country is always with me: Maddox.

I have done one thing that I think is a contribution: I helped Buddhist science and modern science combine. No other Buddhist has done that. Other lamas, I don’t think they ever pay attention to modern science. Since my childhood, I have a keen interest.

I dream of a church that is a mother and shepherdess.

Lo! The poor Indian, whose untutored mind sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.

Some people keep God in a Sunday morning box and say, ‚Hey, I did my religious duty.‘ That’s fine, but the scripture says to pray without ceasing. And I think that means all through the day you’re talking to God. Even if it’s in your thoughts.

The answer is, who you are cannot be defined through thinking or mental labels or definitions, because it’s beyond that. It is the very sense of being, or presence, that is there when you become conscious of the present moment. In essence, you and what we call the present moment are, at the deepest level, one.

You see, at the end of the day, my most important title is still ‚mom-in-chief.‘ My daughters are still the heart of my heart and the center of my world.

Great indeed is the sublimity of the Creative, to which all beings owe their beginning and which permeates all heaven.

God’s first line of defense – and offense – for every situation is prayer.

I am an example of what is possible when girls from the very beginning of their lives are loved and nurtured by people around them. I was surrounded by extraordinary women in my life who taught me about quiet strength and dignity.

Man is not born to atheism. He is born to believe.

‚Love Story‘ is actually about a guy that I almost dated. But when I introduced him to my family and my friends, they all said they didn’t like him. All of them!

Those thinkers who cannot believe in any gods often assert that the love of humanity would be in itself sufficient for them; and so, perhaps, it would, if they had it.

In the stillness of your presence, you can feel your own formless and timeless reality as the unmanifested life that animates your physical form. You can then feel the same life deep within every other human and every other creature. You look beyond the veil of form and separation. This is the realization of oneness. This is love.

I am afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of hell, unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures and engraving them in the heart of the youth.

I know My God commands, whose power no power resists.

You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment.

There’s love, and certainly children you care about more than yourself. But nevertheless, we’re alone in our heads.

I always tell people that religious institutions and political institutions should be separate. So while I’m telling people this, I myself continue with them combined. Hypocrisy!

Seemingly, man has learned to live without God, preoccupied and indifferent toward Him and concerned only about material security and pleasure.

My husband is everything to me and without him it’s just not the same.

Man’s only true happiness is to live in hope of something to be won by him. Reverence something to be worshipped by him, and love something to be cherished by him, forever.

The Koran shows every sign of being thrown together by human beings, as do all the other holy books.

Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.

Well look, I mean, I think that prayer and holy water, and things like that are all fine. They don’t do any good, but they don’t necessarily do any harm. It’s touching to be thought of in that way. It makes up for those who tell me that I’ve got my just desserts.

The truth is, if we don’t learn to submit to authority, we won’t ever learn to submit to God.

I do not think I should care to go on worshipping a Madonna even if she did wink. One cannot make much out of a wink. We want something more than that from the object of our adoration.

Tourism is a very big economic benefit to the Sherpa people, and also, they have very strong ties to their own social attitudes and their own religion, so fortunately, they’re not too influenced by many of our Western attitudes.

When I found somebody who I fell in love with, it made me feel different than I felt the rest of the day. It was electrifying. That’s what inspired the ‚Off to the Races‘ melodies. That’s one of the times when you’re feeling electrified by someone else and they make you happy to be alive.

Happiness is neither without us nor within us. It is in God, both without us and within us.

To you I’m an atheist; to God, I’m the Loyal Opposition.

Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?… It is necessary to accompany them with mercy.

All of us are guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

It is necessary to fall in love… if only to provide an alibi for all the random despair you are going to feel anyway.

I’m a child of God first. Before I became a celebrity, I was baptized a Christian.

There is a power in God’s gospel beyond all description.

There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.

I’m grateful for the evangelical resurgence we’ve seen across the world in the last half-century or so. It truly has been God’s doing.

In the long term we can hope that religion will change the nature of man and reduce conflict. But history is not encouraging in this respect. The bloodiest wars in history have been religious wars.

What we need is a system of thought – you might even call it a religion – that can bind humans together. A system that would fit the Republic of Chad as well as the United States: a system that would supply our idealistic young people with something to believe in.

Some people would claim that things like love, joy and beauty belong to a different category from science and can’t be described in scientific terms, but I think they can now be explained by the theory of evolution.